BooksBarbecue
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

‘We’re sorry we can’t help you more right now,’ Gaia called out, glancing at the two Earth men as she stepped forward, and holding her linkup near her mouth so the veekle would make her voice louder. ‘We know you’re disappointed and we can understand that. We would be too if—’

‘Shut up, woman!’ a man shouted out. ‘We’re sick sick of all of you!’

Gaia waited for the shouts and jeers to die down a bit. Someone threw a stone at one of the screens, and it fell from its pole to the ground.

‘I’m sorry we can’t give you everything you’d hoped for,’ she said. ‘But don’t forget—’

‘We don’t want to hear your excuses!’

‘—don’t forget that we’ve asked the leaders of the Johnfolk to come and talk to us, and we’re going to tell them to stop fighting you. That at least will help you, surely? I know many of you have had to come here across the mountains to get away from those ringmen, and we’re going to try and make it possible for you to return.’

The shouting didn’t stop but it died down a little. Being able to go back to our clusters would be better than starving here, even if our shelters had been burnt down, and even if the dead bodies of guards were lying rotting all round them. It wasn’t what we’d hoped for when we sang songs round our circles of stones – Earth was supposed to rescue us from that sad hard life we’d lived in Wide Forest, not help us return to it – but it would still be better than what we had now.

‘But now we’ve got that new thing to show you that Deep told you about,’ Gaia said, speaking a bit too eagerly, like a grownup trying to distract a crying child. ‘We’ve looked inside the old screen that used to belong to Angela, and we’ve managed to find some of the things she left there. There are bits missing, but if you listen you’ll hear her voice, the real voice of your own precious Angela, the Mother of you all.’

No one was shouting now. We could hear the trees, we could hear the flip and flap of flutterbyes, we could hear the stream at the edge of the clearing, running over its stones. Then a loud crackly hissing sound came from the veekle, like the sound of a fire and the sound of a waterfall, all mixed up together.

A face appeared on the screens, blurred like it was in a fug, with little lines and sparks of white light that kept shooting out across it. We couldn’t really see what the face looked like, but you could just make out human eyes in there, looking downwards at something inside the picture, and a human mouth moving.