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Back Daughter of Eden
Chapters (68)
  1. Title page
  2. Dedication
  3. Part I
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-one
  25. Twenty-two
  26. Twenty-three
  27. Twenty-four
  28. Twenty-five
  29. GAIA YOUNG. SUBJECTIVE IMPRESSIONS.MISSION DAY 20. 20:25 MT.
  30. Part II
  31. Twenty-six
  32. Twenty-seven
  33. Twenty-eight
  34. Twenty-nine
  35. Thirty
  36. Thirty-one
  37. Thirty-two
  38. Thirty-three
  39. Thirty-four
  40. Thirty-five
  41. Thirty-six
  42. Thirty-seven
  43. GAIA YOUNG. SUBJECTIVE IMPRESSIONS.MISSION DAY 22. 20:05 MT.
  44. Thirty-eight
  45. Thirty-nine
  46. Forty
  47. Forty-one
  48. GAIA YOUNG. SUBJECTIVE IMPRESSIONS.MISSION DAY 25. 15:30 MT.
  49. Forty-two
  50. Forty-three
  51. Forty-four
  52. Forty-five
  53. Forty-six
  54. Forty-seven
  55. Forty-eight
  56. Forty-nine
  57. Fifty
  58. Fifty-one
  59. Fifty-two
  60. Fifty-three
  61. Fifty-four
  62. Part III
  63. Fifty-five
  64. Fifty-six
  65. Fifty-seven
  66. Fifty-eight
  67. Also by Chris Beckett
  68. Copyright page

Half a waking must have gone by like that at least. At some point, a kind of table was brought into the clearing, and David Strongheart was helped up onto it to welcome the people from Earth on behalf of all the Davidfolk. Then Headman Newjohn did the same for the Brown River Johnfolk. And then, when my friend Starlight had done it for the Tinafolk over in Half Sky, all three of them hugged and shook hands, up there on the table in front of all of us, I suppose so as to show that they were all friends now.

I’m not sure if it was straight after that or later on, but I know Gaia climbed up onto the table too, along with the two Earth men. I remember how the shouting and screaming carried on for a long long time before they got a chance to speak, but eventually Gaia called out her name again and told us that her many-greats grandmother was Gela’s twin sister Candice, and the men said they were Deep and Marius, and Deep said his many-greats uncle was Dixon Thorleye. This news made people go suddenly rather quiet. ‘So this isn’t Gela herself, then?’ people were asking one another. ‘These weren’t Tommy or Mehmet?’ But later on, a story went round that the Earth people really were those three, but that they’d chosen not to tell their names, like in those old stories that are told about Great David’s son Harry Stonehand, and how, when he became Head Guard, he sometimes used to put on a skin waistwrap like a low person, so he could walk round among the low people and find out what they really thought. People were never quite sure who the two men were, but everyone went back to thinking that Gaia was really Gela.

Gaia said some other things too, but she spoke so many words we didn’t know that no one understood much of what she was talking about. The starship Defiant had gone back to Earth all by itself, from what I gathered, not long after the Veekle crashed with the Three Companions in it. We’d always thought that it was still waiting up there somewhere in the sky! But apparently it could think for itself like a person – or that’s what I understood Gaia to say – and it managed to find its own way home. That was how Earth learned that Eden was here, and the way to reach it, though why this had all taken so long, I really couldn’t make out.