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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

Things? None of us knew what she meant. Did Gaia think Trueheart had boxes full of tools as she did? Trueheart had nothing, of course, none of us had anything more than a few skin wraps, and maybe the odd bone tool, or ring made of wood or stone. What good would such things be on Earth?

‘I’ve . . . I’ve got a little doll in our shelter,’ Trueheart started to say, and then she began to cry. ‘Dad made it for me out of wood and bone, and Mum made a tiny wrap for it out of fakeskin. It will help me to remember you all, when I’m . . .’

She couldn’t bring herself to finish what she was going to say. But her sister Starflower glanced across at her dad and, when he nodded, released Trueheart’s arm and ran to fetch the doll.

‘Why are you crying, Mum?’ Candy asked me.

‘Trueheart’s going to Earth, dear, and we’re going to have to say goodbye.’

Candy laughed. ‘That’s silly, Mum. Of course she can’t go there. That’s only a place in a story.’

We were nearly at the end of it. Trueheart took her doll and climbed inside the veekle with the three Earth people. The metal door shut, the lights shone out, and that whining sound started up somewhere deep inside the veekle’s body that Trueheart and I had once heard and not been able to figure out what it was. It was quiet at first but quickly grew louder.

We saw four faces looking out at us from that glass bowl on the top of it. A few people threw stones and shouted: ‘Go home!’, ‘We don’t want you!’, ‘What use are you to us?’, but there was grief in every single face all the same. I’m sure that everyone there who was old enough to understand, even the ones who were shouting, felt pretty much as I did when they saw the veekle lifting up from the ground and rising up into the black black sky. It was like the insides had been scooped out of me, and someone had put in their place a bit of that cold emptiness that lies between the stars. It didn’t matter whether the Earth people had brought anything for us or not. They’d still come from Earth.

And now all that was left was the Eden we’d known since we were born, the Eden where we had to work so hard, the Eden where our worries were, and our deadly enemies, the Eden that was the home of all the problems and threats that faced us every single waking. The Earth people had shown us light, but we were still where we’d always been, in dark dark Eden.

Part III

Fifty-five