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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

‘Mother Gela will be calling out to you,’ Mary said, ‘but what use will that be if you’ve never got to know her, and never learned to hear her voice? You’ll have no one to guide you. And so you’ll wander, you’ll wander forever, out there where it’s a hundred times colder than Snowy Dark, a hundred times darker than Deep Darkness far out there in middle of Worldpool. And you’ll be all on your own, shivering, lonely, lost, forever and ever and ever.’

Brightwater covered her face with her hands and sobbed. Again, Mary looked round at all of us, searching our faces, sizing us up.

‘You silly, foolish people,’ she said again. ‘Do you think you can hide from death? Do you think that Watcher of yours is going to show you the way home? The Watcher who looks out of your eyes? The Watcher ! How could it find the way anywhere, when you yourselves admit that it’s only inside your head? Only Gela can help you, and if you want her help, you need to reach out to her. Turn away from the ringstealers, turn from the ones who brought killing to Eden, turn away from John and his clawfoot cousin Jeff, and come back to the people of Gela and her son Great David, strong strong David, who held Family together when John and Jeff tried to break it apart.’

She fell to her knees and again she began to shake. She wasn’t faking it, you could see that. She was really hurting, and at the same time she was listening listening listening to some faint voice that she could hear but we couldn’t.

‘Our Mother is begging me,’ she said. ‘She’s begging me. “Please, Mary, do your best,” she’s saying. “Please please do everything you can to bring these poor people back to me before it’s too late.”’

Perhaps we’d got it all wrong, I thought. Jeff used to say (or so we’d been told) that the only place that was important was the one we were in right now, but maybe the opposite was true? Perhaps this wasn’t the real world at all, and the world that mattered, the world that would last, was out there somewhere across the stars, far far away from this dark sad place? Maybe that’s why this life seemed so empty, so full of sadness and disappointment. We were on a sort of journey, and hadn’t yet arrived at where we were going. The Davidfolk knew that, but we Kneefolk had huddled together out here on our little patch of sand with our backs turned, telling ourselves that we were already there.