Chapters (68)
- Title page
- Dedication
- Part I
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-one
- Twenty-two
- Twenty-three
- Twenty-four
- Twenty-five
- GAIA YOUNG. SUBJECTIVE IMPRESSIONS.MISSION DAY 20. 20:25 MT.
- Part II
- Twenty-six
- Twenty-seven
- Twenty-eight
- Twenty-nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-one
- Thirty-two
- Thirty-three
- Thirty-four
- Thirty-five
- Thirty-six
- Thirty-seven
- GAIA YOUNG. SUBJECTIVE IMPRESSIONS.MISSION DAY 22. 20:05 MT.
- Thirty-eight
- Thirty-nine
- Forty
- Forty-one
- GAIA YOUNG. SUBJECTIVE IMPRESSIONS.MISSION DAY 25. 15:30 MT.
- Forty-two
- Forty-three
- Forty-four
- Forty-five
- Forty-six
- Forty-seven
- Forty-eight
- Forty-nine
- Fifty
- Fifty-one
- Fifty-two
- Fifty-three
- Fifty-four
- Part III
- Fifty-five
- Fifty-six
- Fifty-seven
- Fifty-eight
- Also by Chris Beckett
- Copyright page
When Tommy speaks, him and Gela have been listening to starbirds calling out to each other in the distance. Hooom! Hooom! Hooom! From inside our little square of glass, me and Mary could still just hear that bird from four hundred years ago, faintly faintly, behind all the crackling and hissing. And then, even more faintly, we heard another one answering it back in the way that starbirds do: Aaaaah! Aaaaah! Aaaaah! It was so familiar and yet so strange at the same time that it made us both laugh. I don’t know how long a starbird can live if no one does for it – how would you begin to find out? – but I guess those two birds we could hear are long since dead, so that all that remains of them now are those calls inside our little square of glass. When the bat-tree dies, they really will be gone for good.
We were listening for the first bird to call out again, when suddenly Tommy spoke. ‘They don’t give a damn, those starbirds, do they?’ he said. ‘They don’t even notice that great wheel burning up there in the sky. They don’t give it a moment’s thought.’
‘No, they don’t,’ said Gela. ‘You’re right. This Eden, this dark Eden, it’s just life to them, isn’t it? It’s just the way things happen to be.’
And then a real starbird cried out right next to us, so loud that it made us jump. Hooom! Hooom! Hooom! said the starbird, and straight away, maybe a hundred yards off, another one answered: Aaaaah! Aaaaah! Aaaaah!
Also by Chris Beckett
Also by Chris Beckett
The Holy Machine
Dark Eden
Mother of Eden
Copyright page
First published in hardback in Great Britain in 2016
by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.
Copyright © Chris Beckett, 2016
The moral right of Chris Beckett to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
Hardback ISBN: 978 1 782392 39 2
Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 782392 38 5
E-book ISBN: 978 1 782392 40 8
Printed in Great Britain
Corvus
An imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd
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