‘It’s a bit small for all of you at once,’ said Gaia. ‘You’d better take turns. Angie and Trueheart first, I reckon, seeing as you were the first people we saw in Eden.’

Trueheart nodded and headed straight up the steps. I hesitated. I don’t know why. ‘Come on, Angie dear,’ Gaia said. ‘It won’t hurt you.’ So I followed Trueheart. Of course I half-knew what to expect from the other veekle by the Pool, but that was an old dead thing, a rotted corpse, while every part of this veekle was alive. Little lights shone and flickered. Pictures and writing moved across screens. It was like a kind of tiny forest in there, with its own shining lanterns and bright pools and animals darting about, but this was a forest that people had made.

Gaia pointed things out to us. ‘This tells us how high up we are . . . That shows us which way we’re facing . . . When we’re flying, those lights there help us to see whether we’re tipping forwards or back . . .’

The lanterns in this forest didn’t feed flutterbyes, or grow into fruit. They were only there to tell people things, to help them understand the world, to help them see and hear and touch things beyond the reach of their own eyes and ears and fingers. So, although it was like a forest, it was also like being inside a person’s mind. It was a forest of meaning. I saw Trueheart looking at it in delight and wonder, trying to take it all in and store it in her head, so she’d have something to feed herself with for the rest of her life.

‘You people understand so so much,’ I said to Gaia, ‘and we understand so so little.’

Gaia came to stand between me and Trueheart, taking each of us by the arm.

‘We know a lot, but maybe not as much as you think. People on Earth have dug down deeper and deeper into smaller and smaller parts of things than you’ve been able to do here, and further out into time and space. Or some Earth people have, anyway. A few. Most of us can’t follow them even half the way. I’ve no idea how this veekle works, for instance, and nor does Deep. But the thing you should remember, Angie, is that even for the smartest people, however far they get, the mystery’s still always there, beyond their reach, just as it is for you. And it’s not because they’re not smart enough, it’s because it goes on forever. Isn’t that so, Marius? There’s no bottom, no end. However many questions we answer, there are always new questions beyond.’

Marius looked up. He was putting a box of tools away somewhere, through a kind of small metal door.

‘Well, I guess, although—’