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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 a voice spoke, a young woman’s voice. It was sometimes hard to make out what she said, through that crackling hissing sound, and yet we found her easier to understand than the Earth people in front of us, her speech more like our own.

‘So . . .’ she said, ‘to sum up, we can’t all go back together. That’s obvious. The state the ship’s in, those of us that do go back in it will most probably die anyway, but if we all try and go at once, we’ll all die without any doubt at all.’

Forty-eight

The Crying Tree stood by itself at the bottom of that dim white bowl of snow, its lanterns shining out their pure white light, and a thin trail of steam rising upwards from its airholes. A strange little group rode along the ridge above it. The war was still going between guards and ringmen back in Wide Forest, but there were three guards and ten ringmen riding up there together, along with the Headmanson of New Earth. Under their head- and bodywraps, it would have been hard to tell which ones were the Davidfolk and which the Johnfolk.

Behind them came three bucks with corpses tied to their backs, their legs dangling down one side, their heads and arms down the other. The bodies had long since turned cold and hard, and they jolted stiffly as the bucks made their way over the uneven snow. One of the corpses was bare to the waist.

‘I’m guessing that must be the tree where John saw the greatbat,’ Luke Johnson said to the guard Roger. ‘Though I guess you people might not know the story?’

‘Of course we know that story. Mehmet was there, remember, Wise Mehmet who came back to David.’

‘Wise Mehmet? Mother of Eden, is that really what you call that little slinker?’

‘He was a good good man. It was down there by the tree that he first realized that he’d been wrong to follow Juicy John. It’s a brave man that admits he’s wrong.’

Luke would never have let one of his own ringmen talk to him like that before, never mind a guard of the Davidfolk, but now he just rode on in silence.

‘It does take a brave man,’ he finally said. ‘You’re right about that. Some of us are going to have to do that pretty soon, aren’t we – admit we’re wrong – now the Earth people are here to set us straight? And maybe all of us. Who knows what story this new Gela will have for us?’