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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

And then suddenly the picture came alive, like that picture had done of me and Fox and the others, where you could see us move and hear us speak. Again, some people yelled out with the shock of it, seeing the waves moving, just like the waves on Worldpool, and hearing Gaia and her brother talking inside the screen, though they were talking too quickly in their strange Earth speech for us to be able to make out a single word. Behind the voices, we could hear the sighing sound the waves made on the beach, and those of us who knew Worldpool – and of course there were many here who didn’t – could hear that it was the exact same sound that Worldpool made as it broke on poolside here in our own Eden.

Then the sound stopped all at once, and another picture came.

‘This is my house,’ Gaia said.

House, we knew that word. A house was a kind of shelter with a door and windholes. Traders in Veeklehouse would give you a toy one for ten sticks, and offer you a car with wheels to go with it. But this was a real Earth house, so big that you could only see a part of it in the picture. It was made of something smooth and white – Earth seemed to be a pale pale place – and in front of it, small like they were far away, stood Gaia’s brother and another woman. This second woman had skin like Deep’s: skin so pale that you could see the pink blood inside it. Next to them was a big thing that we couldn’t figure out at all. It was pale green and many times taller than they were.

‘It’s a tree,’ said Gaia’s booming voice, when people called out to ask what it was. ‘That’s what trees look like on Earth.’

Candy jumped up indignantly from my lap. ‘That’s not a tree !’ she shouted out. And everyone laughed, in that way people do when a child says something that grownups think but don’t like to say themselves.

It had no lanterns, that Earth tree, and it was the wrong shape, all covered by that pale green stuff that looked a bit like a cloud. Yet when I looked carefully I could see that – yes – hidden under the green was a sort of trunk and branches that were a little bit like a tree. Behind it was a blank pale greyness, almost white, in the place where a sky ought to be.

The Earth people had laughed at Candy’s interruption along with the rest of us. ‘Well, I’m sorry if we’ve got it wrong,’ said Deep, ‘but that’s what we call a tree on Earth. I suppose it is pretty useless compared to your Eden trees.’