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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

Strongheart and Newjohn looked at each other. They hadn’t expected this at all.

‘Animals and trees?’ said Strongheart after a moment. ‘Of course. But don’t you—?’

‘If we can learn more about the life on Eden,’ Gaia explained, ‘we may one day be able to help you with useful things like new . . .’ She stopped, realizing she’d been about to say a word they wouldn’t know. ‘We might be able to help you find new ways of helping people when they’re poorly, like I helped that baby girl with the infected shoulder.’

‘Or things that will make you all grow bigger and stronger,’ said Deep.

Since neither of the two old men seemed to know what to say about this, Starlight stepped in.

‘It sounds a good plan in that case, doesn’t it, Head Guard? You can explain to your people that our friends from Earth aren’t leaving us when they go out into forest, just trying to understand more about the world we live in. It might seem strange to us that they want to look at animals and trees, but we know, don’t we, that on Earth people know much much more than we do? I guess we’re learning something now about how they actually find out all that stuff !’

‘That’s right,’ said Marius. ‘We call it science.’

None of the Eden people knew the word, but he repeated it for them, and told them how it was written, and later on Starlight came back and told it to me.

‘Science,’ she said. (How quickly I’d grown used to the idea that it was Starlight here talking to me, really Starlight, really my old friend!) ‘From what I gathered, it’s not a thing, exactly, but more a way of figuring stuff out. It’s like the world itself has a story – this thing happened because of that, that happened because of the other, and so on – and science is a way of figuring out what that story is, without getting it all mixed up with our own stories.’

Trueheart was listening carefully carefully while Starlight was explaining this. ‘That sounds good good,’ she said. ‘Us humans are such babies. Us Eden people are, anyway. We always try and make our stories come out the way we want them to.’

‘Sci-ence,’ Strongheart slowly repeated, as he sat on his pile of skins in his big shelter, turning the word over, as you might turn over some creature from forest that a hunter had brought in, figuring out what kind of thing it was, what kind of teeth it had, what kind of legs and hands. ‘Sci Ence.’