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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

Not long afterwards, Trueheart came back with the Earth people. They unloaded a pile of things they’d gathered up – some wood, some wavyweed, a dead bat, a piece of rock, a whole bunch of tiny creepy-crawlies like ants and worms – and Gaia and Marius began to do tests on it all, as they called it, with their lecky-trickity tools. Trueheart watched and asked questions, trying with all her might to understand. Deep, meanwhile, picked up the Screen again and another set of tools, and carried on trying to find things inside it.

‘We’ll show some more pictures tomorr . . . I mean, next waking,’ Gaia told me, ‘and we’ll talk to everyone about how long we can stay, and what Earth might be able to help them with. Your friend Starlight was quite right to ask about that. We can see we’re making things difficult for everyone by not being clear.’

‘You saved my sister’s life,’ Trueheart said. It was the first time I’d heard her speak of baby Suzie as her sister. ‘And you’re going to stop the fight with the Johnfolk. I don’t call that making things diff—’

But at that moment an old woman began to screech from across the fence. ‘Gela! Our Mother! You’ve come back for us!’ She was standing among a group of nine ten people who’d just arrived from across the Dark. She was thin thin, and all she had on was one bit of fatbuck skin wrapped round her dry old belly, but she and her companions’ faces were cracked in toothless smiles of delight to see the Earth people sitting there. So it was true! Just as they’d heard on the Dark! Earth had really come!

Gaia sighed, laid down the tool she was working with – it was like a tiny screen with a metal needle attached to it by a kind of string – and stood up to go over to the fence. We’d been through this scene many times now. The old woman and her friends laughed and clapped their hands as Gaia came near, tears running down their faces. They stretched their arms out to her over the fence. ‘I never thought . . .’ they would tell each other later. ‘To think that I was alive when . . .’ ‘If only my old mum could have . . .’

Gaia touched the hands straining towards her, squeezing some of them, and stroking the cheeks of little ones that were held out to her over the fence. She looked so tall and strong, so beautiful and sure of herself, next to those funny shrivelled little Eden people in their rough skin wraps, that it was strange to think that she and them were even the same kind of creature.