Then the picture started to move. We heard the sound of an angry crowd, everyone shouting out at once. We saw Tommy raising his hands to ask for quiet.
‘Hey guys,’ I think he said, though it was hard to make out, ‘we don’t make the decisions, we just—’
But the crowd in the picture wouldn’t let him finish. Their shouting rose up again and drowned out whatever he’d been about to say, and then the picture stopped moving.
‘Why were those people yelling at them?’ someone called out.
‘They didn’t think Tommy and the others should go up to the starship,’ Deep said. ‘They thought they should stay on Earth.’
‘Here’s Angela again,’ said Gaia as another picture appeared, and we saw the young woman with black skin. She looked even younger here, and she was holding out her hand to show off her two-coloured ring. ‘That’s her coming-of-age ring!’ said Gaia. ‘I hear you have lots of stories about it. I’ve got one just like it here on my finger, look. It was given to Angela’s sister, Candice.’
Then the picture changed and Gaia moved on, like what she’d just told us was nothing much at all. Like Gela’s ring was just some ordinary thing you saw every waking, and not the cause of fighting that had done for hundreds of people and was doing for even more right now, just across the Dark in Wide Forest. ‘And here’s another picture of Tommy,’ she said. ‘He’s meeting the Presid—’
But before she could even finish saying the word, Strongheart had stood up and started to bellow.
‘No more pictures! Do you hear me? Stop the pictures now.’
Forty
Not feeling like talking with her helpers or her guards, Mary had ridden out in front of them, and now she’d pretty much forgotten they were even there, plodding along behind her. She was struggling struggling inside herself as she turned the news from the Valley over and over in her mind. She was trying to figure out how to be happy about it, as she knew she should be, working with all the huge energy that she possessed to find a way of understanding it that wouldn’t mean throwing away everything she’d done in her life so far.
Could she really have been mistaken all that time, she wondered, when she thought she’d been listening to Gela? And if she’d been mistaken, then who had she been listening to? Whose voice had that been that seemed so strong and so clear? Yes, and why had the true Gela not reached out to her and put her straight, when Mary had always tried so hard to be true to her? It just didn’t make sense.
The cruel part was that, for all these years, making sense of things was what Mary had done for other people. All that time, she’d travelled back and forth across the Davidfolk Ground, from blueside to peckside, from rockside to alpside, giving up the chance of any sort of home of her own, any sort of family, so that she could tell people a story that would tie things together for them, giving meaning to their lives, however hard and sad, and give them a way to follow, like a string laid out through forest. So many times she’d helped people deal with grief and death and pain. So many times she’d gone down with them into their saddest and loneliest places, crying alongside them but then showing them a way to move forwards. Yet now she couldn’t do it for herself.
‘I’ll tell you something,’ she’d said to me once. ‘If we shadowspeakers didn’t keep up our work, the Davidfolk would forget they had a Mother called Gela, or that they came from Earth, or that Earth and Gela will return again to the Circle of Stones. They’d end up like those Hiding People we met with their Leopardman and their Great Bat Mother.’ And in one way the arrival of Earth people in Circle Valley proved that she’d been right. Earth had returned, it had come back to the Circle, and, or so it seemed, Gela really was alive! And yet, in the moment of being proved right, she’d been proved completely wrong as well.
‘I can’t figure it out,’ she muttered. ‘There’s something missing here. It makes no sense at all.’
Ahead of her a guard fire was a flickering point of red. In the distance behind her, beyond her helpers and guards, a long line of beads of grey bucklight and shadowy people were following after her to Circle Valley.
Meanwhile, Harry was riding in the other direction with his eight men. They had already passed Tall Tree Valley, and were riding as fast as they could go towards Wide Forest. Sometimes Harry felt with his hand to check for that little black square of glass with Gaia’s voice inside it that he carried in a pocket in his wrap. Once twice he even took it out and touched it so he could hear her speak, and remind himself this wasn’t all some kind of dream.
‘Hello Johnfolk,’ it said, each time in just the same way, ‘this is Gaia from Earth. Three of us have come in a starship. Please stop fighting now and come to meet us.’
And still further across the Dark, another high man was riding towards Harry with another bunch of men with spears. They were climbing up the mountains from Wide Forest, and they were angry angry. They were going to do for every guard they met.
Forty-one
The Earth people stopped showing pictures as soon as Strongheart told them to. The screens went black. All three of them looked worriedly at the old man. They had no idea what they’d done to offend him. Most of the people watching had no idea either. Myself, I’d got used to Earth speech, but most folk could only barely make out what the Earth people said, so that if something made no sense to them, they just assumed they must have heard it wrong. Some folk even began shouting angrily at Strongheart, upset that their show of Earth pictures had suddenly come to an end. It was a strange thing to see: before the Earth people came, no low person from the Davidfolk Ground would ever have shouted like that at any high person, no matter how angry they might be.
With helpers standing anxiously round him, and his two shelterwomen Jane and Flowerlight gripping his hands, old Strongheart climbed down slowly from his seat and made his way towards the Earth people. Us Michael’s Place folk pulled back to let him through.
‘President was a woman!’ Strongheart hissed, when he was close enough to speak to the Earth people without shouting. Most people there wouldn’t have been able to hear him, but of course, we Michael’s Place people were right there at the front.
The Earth people stared at him for several heartbeats, while forest pulsed round us – hmmmph hmmmph hmmmph – and Starry Swirl blazed down from the black black sky.
‘The President of Merka, you mean?’ Marius asked. ‘There have been women presidents of course, going well back before then, but at that particular time—’
Old Strongheart shook off his two shelterwomen. His face was purple with rage, but at the same time he looked like he might be about to cry.
‘All our stories say President was a woman.’
‘Like Marius said,’ Gaia soothed him, ‘many presidents were women but—’
‘But at the time of the Defiant mission, President was a man,’ Marius said. ‘His name was Rivera, and—’
‘All our stories say it was a woman,’ Strongheart repeated stubbornly – he didn’t look so much like a Head Guard right then as a scared and wobbly old man whose life would soon slip away from him, ‘and it was her that called the three men in the starship and told them to come back down from the sky.’
‘She called the three men?’ Marius smiled. ‘Ah! I think I can see what’s happened here! You’re thinking of Kate Grantham, the Drektor of the Glacksy Project. It was her who called the three of them to say the mission was cancelled, and her that ordered the Orbit Police – you know them as Angela Young and Michael Tennison – to go after them when they ignored her. Grantham was a woman, but the President was a man. I reckon you’ve got the two of them mixed up somewhere along the line.’
All round us, people were watching the conversation intently, trying to make out what was being said. Far off in forest, a starbird called: Hooom! Hooom! Hooom! And just when you might have expected another starbird to answer it, the veekle answered instead. Beep! Beep! Beep! It was
pretty funny, but only a couple of people laughed.
‘I’m not sure you’ve even mixed it up all that much,’ Gaia said kindly. ‘It’s more like you’ve made it a bit simpler. You’ve just combined the two characters into one. Not surprising after such a long time. It was a woman that called them back, you’re quite right about that, and she was a very powerful person, just as you remember in your stories, but she wasn’t the President of Merka.’
They could tell our pride was hurt, but I don’t think any of the Earth people really understood how much this mattered to us, or why. The Davidfolk said President was a woman, so did the Tinafolk at Half Sky and the Jeffsfolk from Knee Tree Grounds, and so, even, did the Johnfolk down at Brown River. The only people whose stories said President was a man were the Johnfolk from New Earth. And they were our enemies, they were the ones who were over in Wide Forest right now, doing for our people, burning our shelters, mocking our precious circles. More than half the people here in the clearing had had to leave their homes to escape them. Almost everyone, including Strongheart himself, had boys and men over there in the guards, or members of their families who hadn’t yet crossed the Dark when they last heard of them, and could be alive or dead. It was hard hard to bear the thought that the New Earthers’ story might be the one that was right.
‘But how could we have got it wrong?’ croaked old Strongheart. He seemed to be finding it hard to breathe. It was as if this single bit of news had finally pushed him, in a few heartbeats, from being the tough old guy who still ran the Davidfolk Ground, and had got both of his new young shelterwomen pregnant, to a weak pathetic little oldie on the edge of death. ‘We tell the story over and over! Every single Virsry we act it out! If someone had changed it, everyone would have noticed and put them right!’
He looked like he might fall over, and his shelterwoman Jane took his arm to support him. The other shelterwoman, Flowerlight, had turned to say something to his helpers, so Starlight took his other arm. (My old friend, taking the arm of the Head Guard: any other time that would have been a story good enough for me to tell for all the rest of my life!)
‘I don’t really get this either,’ she told the Earth people, as she helped hold the old guy upright. ‘It’s true that in New Earth they say President was a man, but that’s only because they’ve decided to change the story. Believe me, I know. Even they admit there was a time when everyone in Eden believed President was a woman.’
‘And they say President was Gela’s dad,’ Strongheart said wearily. ‘I suppose you guys are going to tell us that’s not true as well now?’
Gaia burst out laughing. ‘Angela’s dad ? The President of Merka ! Certainly not! Angela’s dad was a postman ! He lived in London and his family were from J’maker. As far as I know, he never even visited Merka! As to the President, well, there’s no way he would even have heard of Angela until the men in the Defiant made her famous by taking her away!’
None of us knew what a postman was, of course, but the Earth people explained later it was a guy who took messages from one cluster to another. J’maker was a little grounds like Knee Tree, far out in the pool called See, and was where all the Black People came from. And as to Merka, well, it seemed that President wasn’t boss of whole Earth as we’d always thought, but only of one big ground. Merka was sort of like the Davidfolk Ground of Earth.
‘I don’t understand,’ Strongheart complained miserably. All our stories were unravelling, like an old fakeskin wrap, and a cold wind was blowing in through the holes where the wrap had once kept us warm. Strongheart’s pregnant young shelterwoman, Jane, held on grimly to his arm, glaring at the Earth people like they’d insulted him on purpose.
‘What they’re saying,’ Starlight told him, ‘is that our story here in Mainground is wrong about President, but—’
‘But the New Earthers haven’t got it right either,’ interrupted Jane. She wasn’t going to have some jumped-up creature from the Women’s Ground taking it upon herself to explain things to the Head Guard of Eden. ‘And that’s something, isn’t it? At least they’re wrong as well.’
Strongheart looked at her uncertainly. ‘The New Earthers too?’
‘That’s right, Head Guard,’ said Marius. His voice was weary weary now, like he wished this could be over and he could be somewhere else. I guess he was missing his animals and trees. ‘If those New Earthers think President was Gela’s dad, they’re absolutely and completely wrong.’
Headman Newjohn had been fiddling with his beard and quietly watching all this. Now he cleared his throat. ‘But wait a moment,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to be rude, but who’s to say that you Earth people have got the story right any more than we have? These stories are way more important to us than they are to you. Way way more important! Surely we’re the ones who’d remember them best?’
It seemed like a good point to me, but Marius obviously didn’t think so. He looked round at Deep and Gaia, as if to say, You deal with this. I’m fed up with trying to explain things to these dumb Eden people.
‘The thing is . . .’ began Deep. ‘The thing is that you people rely on stories that one person passes on to another, and of course, no matter how careful you are, they’re bound to change over time. But we’ve got these pictures and clips and—’
‘Deep means we can make copies of voices and words that don’t change in the way that stories do,’ Gaia said.
The people round us were getting bored.
‘Show us some more pictures!’ a man shouted out.
‘I want to see Gela again!’ called out a woman. ‘I want to see Gela and her ring!’
GAIA YOUNG. SUBJECTIVE IMPRESSIONS.
MISSION DAY 25. 15:30 MT.
‘How can it matter so much to them who the President of America was four centuries ago?’ Marius grumbled. The three of us had returned to the landing vehicle so we could talk without being overheard. We’d turned the lights down so as not to feel like goldfish in a bowl. All round us, our softly glowing screens offered us information about the world we were in, beautifully organized into diagrams and tables. ‘I mean, it’s not as if they’ve got the slightest understanding as to what a President was – or what America was, for that matter!’
I like Marius a lot, but I think he suffers from a common delusion of very clever folk. Since he’s much better at reasoning than ninety-nine point nine per cent of the people he meets, he’s prone to assume that his way of thinking about the world is the only one that makes any sense at all.
‘It’s an article of faith,’ I said. ‘It’s just one of the things that binds these people together and defines who they are.’
‘That’s right,’ Deep said. ‘Come on, Marius, it’s not that hard to get! The President thing is a little part of a larger story. And the story means a lot to them.’
‘It’s a powerful story,’ I said, ‘about how Angela was brought to Eden against her will, and suffered here, and longed for light and Earth, just as they all do, and eventually found it again after her death.’
Marius snorted. ‘Which of course is nonsense. If we try and protect this belief system, we’re essentially denying them access to the truth.’
‘Which is what?’ I asked.
‘That Earth isn’t a paradise. That Gela isn’t waiting there. That there’s no life after death. That no more than a handful of people from Eden will ever visit Earth. Yes, and that the universe doesn’t work in the way they think it does. It isn’t a backdrop for human stories. It’s—’
‘What gives your life meaning, Marius?’
‘Science, I guess. Getting to the truth. Peeling away the surface and figuring out how things really work.’
‘And why does the truth matter?’
‘Because . . . Well, for lots of reasons, but for one thing it’s only if you know the truth about the world that you can really understand it and make it different.’
‘And why would y
ou want to make the world different?’
‘Well, to make life better, and richer, and—’
‘And why would you want to do that?’
‘Because . . . Sacred Earth, Gaia, why the interrogation? What point are you trying to make?’
‘That even supersmart, superrational Marius has things he just believes in.’
He half-smiled, like he was conceding I’d very nearly got one over on him, even if not quite. ‘I guess. In a sort of way. But come on, be honest with me, Gaia, what would you prefer: to have the intellectual vistas that are available to us, or to be stuck inside this infantile story that the Eden folk tell each other? I mean, look at Trueheart! Look at that sheer hunger she has for knowledge.’
‘Fair point. Though most people aren’t like Trueheart, here or on Earth. But we can’t give Trueheart or anyone else here the knowledge we have, however much they might want it. We can’t build universities for them. We can’t teach them the whole of science, or even the beginnings of it. Yes, we can easily destroy their old stories if we choose to, but we’ve got nothing to give them to put in their place.’
Marius shrugged. ‘Well, that’s up to them, isn’t it? They’re not kids, Gaia. It’s not our business to protect them from the truth. It’s up to them what they do with it, but it’s our job to give it to them as best we can.’
Deep nodded. ‘Marius is right about that, Gaia. We don’t have a right to hide things from them.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I accept that. But their beliefs aren’t nonsense, Marius. I’m not having that. They’re not literally true, I grant you, but that doesn’t mean there’s no truth in them. Truth isn’t some binary yes–no thing, as you seem to think. All kinds of wisdom can be wrapped in old stories. Throw away the story and you throw away the wisdom as well.’
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