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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

With helpers standing anxiously round him, and his two shelterwomen Jane and Flowerlight gripping his hands, old Strongheart climbed down slowly from his seat and made his way towards the Earth people. Us Michael’s Place folk pulled back to let him through.

‘President was a woman!’ Strongheart hissed, when he was close enough to speak to the Earth people without shouting. Most people there wouldn’t have been able to hear him, but of course, we Michael’s Place people were right there at the front.

The Earth people stared at him for several heartbeats, while forest pulsed round us – hmmmph hmmmph hmmmph – and Starry Swirl blazed down from the black black sky.

‘The President of Merka, you mean?’ Marius asked. ‘There have been women presidents of course, going well back before then, but at that particular time—’

Old Strongheart shook off his two shelterwomen. His face was purple with rage, but at the same time he looked like he might be about to cry.

‘All our stories say President was a woman.’

‘Like Marius said,’ Gaia soothed him, ‘many presidents were women but—’

‘But at the time of the Defiant mission, President was a man,’ Marius said. ‘His name was Rivera, and—’

‘All our stories say it was a woman,’ Strongheart repeated stubbornly – he didn’t look so much like a Head Guard right then as a scared and wobbly old man whose life would soon slip away from him, ‘and it was her that called the three men in the starship and told them to come back down from the sky.’

‘She called the three men?’ Marius smiled. ‘Ah! I think I can see what’s happened here! You’re thinking of Kate Grantham, the Drektor of the Glacksy Project. It was her who called the three of them to say the mission was cancelled, and her that ordered the Orbit Police – you know them as Angela Young and Michael Tenni­son – to go after them when they ignored her. Grantham was a woman, but the President was a man. I reckon you’ve got the two of them mixed up somewhere along the line.’

All round us, people were watching the conversation intently, trying to make out what was being said. Far off in forest, a starbird called: Hooom! Hooom! Hooom! And just when you might have expected another starbird to answer it, the veekle answered instead. Beep! Beep! Beep! It was pretty funny, but only a couple of people laughed.

‘I’m not sure you’ve even mixed it up all that much,’ Gaia said kindly. ‘It’s more like you’ve made it a bit simpler. You’ve just combined the two characters into one. Not surprising after such a long time. It was a woman that called them back, you’re quite right about that, and she was a very powerful person, just as you remember in your stories, but she wasn’t the President of Merka.’