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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

‘It isn’t just shadowspeakers who can hear Mother Gela,’ Mary told her listeners. ‘We hear her more clearly because we’re the ones she’s chosen to bring back the ones who are lost, but everyone can hear her if they let her in. If only everyone would remember that. If only. Because when we all listen to our Mother, Family will be one again, and then we won’t even have to wait for our deaths to be able to go home, we won’t have to become shadows to return to Earth. No, when that waking comes, a starship will come and fetch us all.’

The Kneefolk thought that the shadowspeakers were liars, just like Trueheart did. They thought shadowspeakers were just tricking people so as to make them hand over sticks and presents, sometimes by frightening them and sometimes by telling them things that they longed to hear. Well, I think there are some speakers out there who are like that, and Mary herself thought the same. ‘That woman’s only interested in how many presents she can get,’ she’d say of one two of the others. But I know Mary wasn’t lying. When she finished a show, she was shaking shaking all over. She couldn’t eat, she couldn’t keep still, she couldn’t attend to what was going on round her. Each time it was like she’d stripped off her own skin, so there was nothing left between her and the people of Eden, nothing to protect her from their loneliness and fear, their greed and their stupidity.

‘How did I do, Angie?’ she’d ask me when we were on our way to the next cluster. ‘Do you think I got through to them?’ And sometimes: ‘Just hold me a moment, could you, Angie? Just hold me.’

As she stood there in my arms, I could feel her heart pounding, I could smell the fresh sweat on her hot hot skin, I could feel the trembling in her limbs. It seemed strange that she asked me for comfort, when she seemed so much more grownup than me, like a mother asking for comfort from a child, but I felt proud that she wanted it from me, and I gave it as best I could.

‘It’s like beating and beating on a cliff of stone,’ she said, ‘trying to get through to these people, trying to get them to see.’ And I could see it was so. To Mary, putting on a show wasn’t just telling a story, or playing a part. It was a mighty struggle. It was a struggle against lies, a struggle against forgetfulness and laziness and selfishness, and it was hard hard work, because in her struggle she opened herself up to all the things that people normally want to push away from themselves.