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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

‘They don’t know anything, you mean!’ a woman answered him. ‘They don’t know anything that’s any good to us.’

There were shouts and jeers after that, and harsh angry laughs, and once again Treelight called out, the one who’d lost her eight sons and her man to the Johnfolk over in Wide Forest.

‘They’re useless !’ she yelled. ‘They’re useless useless. And they’re cruel too. Our boys are dead and we’re hungry and scared, and what do they bring us? Pictures and voices inside a screen! Things you can’t even touch. Things that just make us smaller and lonelier than we ever were before.’

‘Well, we tried to . . .’ began Gaia, but shouts and jeers stopped her from going on. And then, for a long time, no one spoke at all, and the crowd just roared on its own.

Poor Gaia, poor Deep, poor Marius: just three of them, far away from home, facing hundreds of angry Eden folk. They could feel the depth of the rage round them, of course they could. And, for all their linkups and lecky-trickity and bikes, they were just people, made of flesh like we were. Spears and arrows would do for them as easily as they’d do for us.

Gaia hadn’t been able to quiet the crowd, but when Mary held up her hands to ask to be allowed to speak, everyone stopped shouting at once. Even the voice and the crackling from the screens had gone silent. I guess one of the Earth people had stopped it.

‘There’s no need to take it out on these Earth people,’ Mary said. ‘From what I’ve seen of them, it doesn’t seem to me that they meant us harm. And, okay, they’ve told us they can’t take us with them, but do we really need to be sad about that? I mean, would we even want to go to that sad watery world they just showed us? I don’t think so, do you?’

Lots of people shouted out: ‘No! No! No!’ at that. Who cared about that pale place with its cold trees and its stupid shouting animals?

‘And what we mustn’t ever forget,’ Mary said, ‘is that, even when they’ve gone, we will not be left on our own. Because we still have Gela. Look inside yourselves and you’ll see you already know that without me even telling you. We’ll still always have Gela. And, if only we listen to her, we’ll always have the true home she’s keeping for us, where all our troubles will end.’

There was another big roaring cheer. It wasn’t a happy cheer, it was still angry angry, but it was proud proud as well. It was like the Davidfolk were telling the people from Earth that they could do what they liked, because we hadn’t needed them anyway.