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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 were here in Circle Valley,’ said Strongheart, without looking up from his dead son, ‘but they had to go. They went back up into the sky over a waking ago.’

Something shifted inside Luke. Up to that point he’d been willing to admit that he had been wrong, that everything was his fault, and even maybe that the Johnfolk themselves had been in the wrong all these years in their argument with the Davidfolk, but now, all at once, a new, suspicious mood took hold of him. It was a bit like the moment when a tubeslinker suddenly pulls right back inside the airhole of a tree – snap! – when it’s been reaching right out, as far as it can go without toppling over, and swaying from side to side in the lanternlight.

‘If they’d really asked me to come here, why would they go before I came? You’d have told them when they sent the message how far away I was, and how long it would take me to get here. And I came faster than you could have expected because you couldn’t have known I was already up on the Dark.’

‘It’s no good asking us why they went, Headmanson,’ Newjohn said. ‘They’re people from Earth. They make their own decisions.’

Luke glanced down at Strongheart, who was still kneeling by his son’s body on the packed dirt of his shelter floor, but was beginning to struggle back up to his feet with the help of his two shelterwomen. Then he looked back at Newjohn. Luke’s eyes narrowed as he considered the Headman of the Brown River Ground. No wonder his dad hadn’t trusted this guy, with his cunning pointy face.

‘Tom’s stinking dick,’ he hissed. ‘This is a trick, isn’t it? Gela was never here. Earth never came. Of course not. It was just a trick to get me to stop the fight!’

‘Oh come on, Headmanson,’ snorted Newjohn. ‘Look at what you’ve got in your hand, boy! Surely you can see that comes from Earth? Surely it’s obvious that no one in Eden could make a piece of glass that can talk?’

Luke looked down at the linkup. Of course it was obvious it came from Earth. And he’d seen the light as well, of course, the light of Earth’s sun, as that guard Roger had described it, shining out accusingly from the Circle as he stood looking down from the Dark. He hadn’t seen the veekle rising up into the sky, because by that time he and the men with him were under the trees, but he had seen the light that the veekle made, and he knew that there was no light like it on Eden.