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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

‘Screens?’ interrupted Strongheart. ‘Did you say screens? We have a screen here! It’s one of the Mementoes from Tommy and Gela.’

‘Really? ’

All three Earth people had spoken at once. It was obvious that they were interested interested. Pleased to have impressed them, Strongheart called out to one of his helpers: ‘Go to my store and fetch the Screen.’

‘It doesn’t show pictures, though,’ he warned the Earth people. ‘It doesn’t do anything at all.’

‘Well, it wouldn’t,’ said Marius. ‘It’s four hundred years old and its bat-tree would have died long ago.’ He looked at Gaia. ‘But if the . . .’ he began and then said a whole string of words – dayter, files, kruptid, coad – that meant nothing to any of the Eden people. Deep and Gaia nodded, and each of them commented on what he’d said. Starlight recognized many of the words these two spoke, but she still couldn’t figure out what they were talking about. But after thirty forty heartbeats of this, Gaia turned back to Strongheart, Newjohn and Starlight, and tried to explain.

‘Screens have memories, you see. They have memories inside them: that’s how they can show us pictures and sounds. We might still be able to find things in there that Gela and Tommy said after the Defiant came back to Earth. Wouldn’t that be great? To hear what they were thinking in that time at the beginning when the two of them were on their own!’

When the Earth people finally came back to where we were waiting round their shelter, they had the Screen with them, a grey square, with some crumbling dirty-looking brown stuff round it, which, so the story went, had once been smooth and white. Marius handed it to me to look at, and I passed it on to the others. Only a few wakings ago, the Michael’s Place people would have been amazed to see such a thing, and even more amazed to be allowed anywhere near it, let alone touch it with our own hands, but now, as we handed it about, it seemed a rough, broken, tired old thing compared with the new and shiny things from Earth that we knew were in the shelter right behind us.

‘When we get back from our trip in the forest,’ Marius explained, ‘we’ll open it up. We’re not sure, because it’s very old, but we think there’s a good chance that we may be able to find words or pictures inside it, or even voices, that were put in here by Tommy or Angela when they were here on their own.’

Trueheart reached out and touched it. ‘But how does it work? How can a thing like this hold pictures and voices at all, never mind hold them for four hundred years?’