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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

‘I mean, when you think about it, I’m no worse off than my ancestors, am I? When they were taken from Affricker in chanes, they didn’t get to choose where they lived, did they, or who they had kids with? And there was no way they could ever hope to get home. Things look pretty bad for me, but I’m still better off than they were. At least I won’t have guys beating me if I don’t work hard enough . . . Or I bloody hope not anyway! . . . No, it really was much worse for them. And yet even so they still chose to live, didn’t they? In spite of everything, they chose to carry on and see what happened next. Otherwise there’d be no me.’

The head on the screens moved. You could tell somehow that she was about to finish.

‘Okay. I’m going to make the offer to all of them, though I know it’ll be Tommy who says yes. Just my fucking luck. He’s handsome, I’ll give him that, he’s got a beautiful body, but he’s so . . . I don’t know . . . He’s such a kid . . . He’s this world-famous astronaut, and he’s never had to grow up. He thinks the whole story’s all about him.’

The face vanished. The crackling and hissing stopped. The screens went black. We were back in Circle Clearing with the trees pulsing all round us. No one knew what to say. We were all kind of numb.

‘That’s the end of that bit,’ said Marius, ‘but there’s another bit here from later on, from the time after the other three had gone, and only Angela and Tommy were still here.’

Fifty

Headmanson Luke rode forward to join Roger and the other two guards. They’d made it pretty clear they didn’t want to talk to him but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to leave them alone.

‘So they came down in the Circle of Stones, did they, these people from Earth?’

‘That’s right,’ said one of the guards. ‘Smack in middle of it. Their veekle’s sitting there right now.’

‘I’m sure you know my ancestor John destroyed the Circle. He thought it was holding us back. He chucked the stones in a stream.’

Roger sighed. ‘Well, we Davidfolk put them back again, didn’t we?’

Luke rocked back and forth on his buck, like he was so anxious and agitated he just couldn’t keep still.

‘Do you know what we keep telling ourselves to do in New Earth?’ he said. None of the guards answered him. They rode together side by side without even looking round at him, like he was just some stranger that was bothering them. They didn’t want to speak to him and, in any case, they had no idea what he was talking about.