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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

She paused for a few hearbeats and, when she spoke next, there was so much anger in her voice all of a sudden that it made me jump. ‘Shit! Shit! Shit!’ she hissed, and you could hear her hitting out hard at something with her fist, as she made herself hold in her tears. ‘Bloody fucking shit ! Of all the bloody luck! And my life was going so well, too!’

Candy could hear the anger and it scared her. She pressed up against me, hiding her face in my breasts. I held her and Fox tightly and rocked them gently back and forth. The helplessness I could hear in Gela’s voice was just like the helplessness I was feeling now myself. We too were trapped with nowhere to go. We too had no power to change things. Gela herself had been our one hope of there being something different out there somewhere, something more than life in dark dark Eden. We’d always known that Gela herself felt trapped and alone when she lived on Eden, so there was no surprise there, but it was hearing her voice, hearing that she was just an ordinary human being like us, that made our hope seem so empty and foolish. How could we ever have imagined this woman had come alive again on Earth? How could we ever have thought that she would guide us all home?

When Gela spoke again, her voice had changed once more. You could tell she was trying to make the best of things now, trying to find something to hang on to. ‘But if one of the guys stayed with me,’ she said, ‘we could have kids, and that would be company at least, I guess, company and something to live for.’

The crackling hissing sound went on so long then that I began to wonder if the voice was going to come back at all.

‘Admittedly that would make things kind of complicated,’ she finally said, just when people were starting to get restless, ‘if we did eventually get back home.’ Then she laughed harshly. ‘Kind of complicated! What a fucking stupid pathetic thing to say! That would be easy ! This is complicated.’ There was another short pause, and in among the hissing and crackling we faintly heard a clicking sound, like some people make with their tongues against the roofs of their mouths when they’re busy thinking: tk–tk–tk. ‘There’s always death, isn’t there? On Earth, here, anywhere: death is always an option, it never lets you down. It’ll come soon enough, anyway, and if push comes to shove, we always have the choice of bringing it sooner.’ Again she laughed. ‘Not that I ever will. I’ll always want to know what happens next.’

Tk–tk–tk went her tongue.