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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

‘Gela! Gela!’ Candy joined in enthusiastically, bellowing as loudly as her small lungs would let her. Fox joined in too until he looked round at me and noticed I wasn’t shouting along with everyone else. I knew that Gaia didn’t like it that people thought she was Gela, and she’d said many times that she wasn’t. But people hear what they want to hear.

When the shouting had quietened down a bit, Gaia held one of those linkups in front of her mouth and began to speak. Everyone gasped – you could hear the sound of that gasp right across the clearing – because, though we could see her lips moving, what we heard was a loud loud version of her voice that came booming down from the veekle, like it was a huge creature that could speak for itself.

‘Welcome Head Guard Strongheart. Welcome Headman Newjohn. Welcome Head Woman Starlight. Welcome everyone,’ the booming voice said, speaking slowly slowly, so we Eden people would understand.

Then Deep held his own glass square in front of his mouth, and the booming voice changed so that it sounded like his instead of hers: ‘Hello there, everyone. Thanks so much for coming.’

Marius said ‘Hi’ in the awkward way he had when he was faced with a bunch of Eden people. Both Deep and Marius had proper beards now, just like Eden men.

There was another big gasp as a picture suddenly appeared on the screens, exactly the same on each. We all stared at it. How could that happen? How could a picture suddenly be there without anyone to draw it or scratch it or paint it? And of course it wasn’t a picture like we might make ourselves on a piece of bark or a stone. It was like the pictures Gaia had showed me and the other Michael’s Place people of our own faces: not so much a picture, more a copy of the thing itself.

‘Hey! That’s Starry Swirl!’ someone shouted out.

Gaia’s booming voice laughed. ‘That’s right. Starry Swirl. On Earth we call it the glacksy, though we’re right inside it of course back there, so we can’t see it so clearly as you can. But look at this! What can you see now?’

There was a tiny black dot against the brightness of the Swirl, and as we watched it, we saw it grow, like it was coming towards us. Worried voices started to murmur. Candy pressed her face into my shoulder. Fox grabbed my hand. People who’d never seen these Earth pictures before jumped and backed away, and some cried out or shouted angrily – ‘Hey! Watch out! What’s going on?’ – like they thought they’d been tricked. But the black dot didn’t come out at us. It became a big black circle that filled up most of the screen, but the screen was where it stayed.