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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

The two old men looked at each other, unsure what was being offered to them.

‘If I may, Head Guard, I’ll show you an example,’ Deep said, and he took out another flat square thing from a kind of bag he was carrying. It was what they called a linkup, much like the one that Leader Harry was carrying to the Johnfolk right at that moment up there on Snowy Dark, with Gaia’s voice inside it. It looked like it was made of blackglass, though it was smoother than any blackglass on Eden. ‘Here is my little daughter, Avi,’ he said, and handed it across to David Strongheart.

Strongheart took the glass from him and looked into it. His eyes weren’t so good – many people his age, after all, couldn’t see at all – so he held it out at arm’s length. Then he, Newjohn and Starlight all peered at it.

‘I can see something moving,’ Strongheart said.

‘It’s a little girl!’ cried Starlight, whose eyes were still sharp as ever. ‘Listen! You can hear her voice!’

‘Oh yes, I can see her!’ shouted out Newjohn, forgetting for a moment that he was Headman of all the Riverfolk, and acting like an excited child.

Strongheart could hear the little girl, but he still couldn’t make her out. ‘Maybe you need these?’ Marius said, taking out from his wrap another strange new object: two circles of a special kind of glass that wasn’t black like most glass, but could be seen through as if it was water, like the glass on top of the veekle. Marius showed Strongheart how to fix them over his eyes and now, when the old guy looked at the picture again, it had suddenly become perfectly clear to him.

‘It is!’ he cried out, and burst out laughing. ‘It is a little girl. I can see her wave and smile.’

Tears came to his eyes. Tears came to Newjohn’s eyes too, and to Starlight’s as well. It was so wonderful and so strange, she said, to think that this little human child was alive right now, far far away through all that cold black empty sky, under the sky of Earth.

‘And yet there was something sad about it,’ she told me. ‘The distance made it sad. Like a happy thing feels sad when you’re looking back on it, and it’s long long ago.’

‘We thought you and your people might like to see more pictures like this,’ said Deep, ‘pictures of Earth, and maybe pictures of people from your own past, like Gela.’

David Strongheart stared at him. ‘Pictures of Gela? Pictures that can move and talk?’

‘Yes, I’m pretty sure we can find some,’ Deep told him. ‘And we have some other screens in our veekle, bigger than this one, which we can take out and—’