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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

‘Like leopard hunters,’ Mary said. ‘That’s how I always explained it to myself. If they allow themselves to doubt at the last moment, if they hesitate or change their minds about what they’re going to do, then they’re dead. And if they allowed themselves to doubt before they even started, well then, they’d never go after leopards at all. They’d hunt bucks instead, or gather starflowers.’

‘Well, it is brave to take a story and stick to it. You’re a brave person, Mary. That’s why people come to hear you. They know you believe what you say. They know you won’t waver. That’s why I wanted to be with you too.’

Mary nodded, but she’d spotted a groundrat ahead of us, and she held out her hand in front of me to tell me to be quiet, so she could creep up on it. We were always on the lookout for food in Circle Valley. But the rat ran off, and she relaxed and carried on.

‘But you were always so honest, Angie, always so straight with me, always on the lookout for ways in which the True Story might be bent or broken by other things, like what the high people wanted, or what would make my life easier. Remember how you used to ask me about that, again and again? Was I just saying what the high people wanted me to say? Why did Gela only tell off the low people? So when you said you couldn’t hear Gela, part of me was angry with you for not having the guts to believe, but another part of me was afraid that you actually had more guts than I did. Because it would have been much easier for you, wouldn’t it, to tell me you’d heard Gela than to tell me you hadn’t? Just as it was easier for me to say to old Firespark that I’d heard our Mother, and have her hug me and tell me what a clever girl I was.’

We came to a little stream. The shining wavyweed under the water made it into a kind of smooth, glowing path, winding through the criss-cross pattern of light and shadow under the trees. Without even thinking about it, we both peered down into the water for fish.

‘I thought about all this all over again,’ Mary said, ‘when I heard the news about these people from Earth. It made me doubt everything. It made me wonder if I’d been completely wrong all my life, claiming to hear the voice of Gela, and then not even knowing it when she was right here in Eden. And it made me think about you, and the courage you’d shown by not saying something was true unless you were sure. And—’