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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

‘It’s a bit like metal, I guess,’ said Davidson after a moment. ‘They say it takes hundreds of people to get that special metal stone out of the ground, and heat it up in fires, and gather the wood for the fires. The only way the big people over there can get the small people to do all that is to force them at the point of a spear.’

This interested Marius, tired and ill as he was.

‘You’re making metal? Already? ’ He seemed quite impressed. ‘Where is this?’

‘Oh it’s far away from here,’ Davidson said. ‘It’s another ground across the water called New Earth, and—’

‘But what I still don’t get,’ I interrupted, ‘is why was it kept a secret that the Defiant had come back?’

‘Well,’ Gaia said. ‘That’s kind of complicated too, but it was to do with the fact that it wasn’t supposed to come here in the first place.’

Deep had come out as well now, that tall tall man with his strange pale skin that had so little colour in it that you could see the pink blood beneath it. He smiled at us when we noticed him, a bright warm smile, and raised one big hand in friendly greeting. Their hands fascinated me, I remember. I kept looking at the little marks on their skin, the tiny wrinkles, the uneven edges of their nails. I guess they sort of proved to me that these people weren’t shadows or dreams or characters in stories. Only real people, surely, could have wrinkles on their skins you could count?

‘The thing is that the Defiant wasn’t supposed to come here in the first place,’ Deep said, squatting down. ‘Things were really bad on Earth back then. There were floods and storms in some places and no water at all in others. There wasn’t enough to eat. Folk were starving in many different places. Folk were running from their homes in search of new places to live. All over the world, people were fighting for . . .’ He said another word we didn’t know but which seemed to mean ground. ‘And there were fights for water too. I know you have a war going on here at the moment,’ at least we knew that word now, ‘but back then there were lots of wars on Earth, all going on at the same time.’

‘That’s right,’ said Gaia. ‘That’s how it was then. And a lot of people thought it wasn’t right that this huge effort should be going into trying to find another world, when they already had all these problems at home, particularly since finding a new world really wouldn’t solve any of them. I guess if I’d been alive then, I would probably have agreed with them.’