Dark Eden

by Chris Beckett

  ‘Yes. All that.’

  ‘That’s the same thing as not thinking about where they are or where they might be,’ I said. ‘That way they don’t even have to try.’

  Tina frowned.

  ‘But wouldn’t you like to be on Earth? With the light in sky and everything?’

  How we all longed for that bright light. How we’d always longed for it.

  ‘Yeah, of course,’ I said. ‘But there’s no point in going on about it, is there? I’m not on Earth, am I? I might never get there in my lifetime. I’m in Eden. We’re in Eden. This is what we’ve got.’

  I waved my hand at the scene in front of us: that little jewel bat leaving a sparkly trail as it skimmed the surface of the water with the tips of its fingers; that whitelantern branch hanging down over its own reflection; those tiny shimmery little fish nipping in and out of the tangle of roots round the pool’s edge.

  Hoom! Hoom! went the starbird off in forest.

  Aaaah! Aaaah! came back the reply.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Tina, ‘this is what we’ve got.’

  She moved over near me, and looked right up close into my face.

  It was different now to last time. Sometimes boys and girls did a slide together just to stop themselves having to talk, and stop themselves having to notice what was happening. Sometimes it was like going to sleep, or stuffing your face with food. Sometimes it was like hiding from the leopard up the bloody tree. That was why I hadn’t wanted to do it before. But right now, if we did it, it would be different. It wouldn’t be like hiding away from the leopard. It would be like facing it. I leaned forward to kiss her sweet cruel funny mouth. I leaned forward. She moved towards me. I . . .

  Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!

  The sound came from Family and echoed round the rocks. Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp! An ugly sound on many different notes that didn’t fit together. Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp! Up from Circle Clearing. Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!

  ‘Gela’s tits!’ hissed Tina, sitting back up.

  We’d heard it many times before. It was the signal for whole Family to come together. It was Any Virsry. Oldest must have finally agreed on their days and their years. They must have decided that this was the moment – this was three hundred and sixty-five days after the last Any Virsry – and called for Caroline and the rest of Council to get out the hollowbranch horns and get hold of all the newhairs and young men they could find to blow them.

  Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!

  It was an ugly noise but it carried well. It carried all over the valley, querulous like Oldest themselves. If there were woollybuck hunters up by the snows at Cold Path they’d hear it. If there were people digging out blackglass out by Exit Falls they’d hear it. If there were people up by Dixon Snowslug looking for stumpcandy, they’d hear it and know what it meant.

  Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!

  ‘We don’t have to go straight away,’ Tina said.

  ‘We don’t have to go at all,’ I said.

  She looked at me.

  ‘That’s true. What could they do to us?’

  ‘Nothing really. Nothing much.’

  Tina smiled ruefully.

  ‘No. But if we don’t go now, that’s all we’ll be thinking about, isn’t it? The fact that we’ve been called to Any Virsry and haven’t gone.’

  I nodded. Family was inside us, not just out there in the world. If we didn’t do what Family asked, Family out there wouldn’t need to say anything, because it would be accusing us already from inside our own skin. Kissing would be no fun, slipping would be no fun. I felt my dick shrivel just at the thought of it.

  So we started climbing up the rocks away from Deep Pool and back to Family.

  London was at the beginning of their waking. Blueside had been right in middle of their sleep. In Brooklyn, only the youngmums and oldies and clawfeet and little kids had been there in group, because everyone else was out on a big groundbuck hunt up Alps way. But it didn’t matter whether it was your waking time or your sleeping time or whether you were inside or outside of Family Fence. Everyone was now moving towards Circle Clearing.

  As we came back through Family, we saw oldies, youngmums, little kids, newhairs, people who’d been sleeping, people who’d been eating, people who’d just been starting a new waking, all already on their way. And, though we couldn’t see them, we knew that, across forest, hunters and scavengers would be abandoning whatever it was they were doing too and turning back, though some would have a couple of wakings’ walk ahead of them. All the people in Eden, all the people in the world, were heading for Circle Clearing. That was how it was: you could be out in forest, or up on the edges of the hills, or over by Exit Falls where the water goes roaring down into darkness, but wherever you were, and whoever you were, you were still in Family.

  By Dixon Stream, passing through old Jeffo’s place, with his logs and his gluepit and his skins, we caught up with Gerry and little Jeff.

  Gerry looked at me like he always did, checking out my mood, getting ready to adjust his own.

  ‘Bloody Any Virsry!’ he said, as soon as he was sure that I was annoyed, and he slashed at a low-flying bat with a stick.

  It was a lucky shot. He broke its wing. It fell to the ground, twitching and squealing and holding out its tiny naked little hands as it if was appealing to us for pity.

  ‘Gotcher!’ Gerry muttered, stamping out its life.

  Jeff looked down at the little corpse for a moment – it was a silvertip, no good to eat – and he looked at his brother and at me and at Tina, then back at Gerry again.

  Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp! went the hollowbranch horns, demanding our presence and our obedience.

  8

  Tina Spiketree

  Soon everyone who’d been in or near Family when the horns began to blow was in Circle Clearing. Hunters and scavengers who’d been a bit further out were still coming in. Others might not be there for a waking or two.

  In middle of Circle stood Caroline Brooklyn, the Family Head, and Oldest, and Oldest’s helpers. The rest of us stood in the space between Circle and the edge of clearing, each group in its own little clump with its leader at the front. And one by one these leaders – fat old Liz Spiketree, thin weary Bella Redlantern, blind Tom Brooklyn – went up to Caroline to say how many in their group were here already, and how many were out hunting or scavenging and not back yet. A woman called Jane London, who was known as Secret Ree, sat just outside Circle with a bit of white bark, listening to all this and scratching the numbers down. Then we all had to wait while they added up the group counts and worked out the count for whole Family. This went on and on, like it did every Any Virsry.

  ‘Harry’s dick,’ I said to my sister (who was also called Jane), ‘how hard can it be to add up the numbers from eight groups?’

  There was a lot of muttering and a lot of going back and forth from the edge of Circle to the groups waiting around. Some babies cried. That Batwing kid with the burn was groaning and moaning. Newhairs were giving each other looks and chucking things.

  Then at last all the group leaders gathered together with Caroline and Oldest in Circle, and Caroline shouted and raised up her hands to get our attention.

  ‘There are two hundred and twenty-six women in Family,’ she announced, ‘one hundred and fifty-six men . . .’

  Same number of boys and girls are born, they say, but loads more boys than girls die when they’re still small. That’s why there are always more women, even though women sometimes die having babies.

  ‘ . . . and a hundred and fifty children under fifteen years,’ Caroline said. ‘That makes five hundred and thirty-two people in Family, with sixteen of them still on the way here.’

  ‘Five hundred and thirty-two,’ wavered old Mitch, leaning on Caroline’s arm in middle of Circle, like a skeleton covered in dry yellow skin, with wispy white hair and a thin straggly beard. Little wizened Stoop and fat Gela stood beside him. All three were held upright by a couple of those women that were alw
ays fussing round them.

  ‘Family has never been this big,’ Mitch said. ‘When I was a child there were barely even thirty.’

  ‘Imagine that,’ I whispered to Jane. ‘Imagine just thirty people in whole world. How could they bear it? Even five hundred and thirty-two is way too few.’

  Now the count was done, we didn’t have to stay in our separate groups, so I whispered ‘See you later’ to my sister and started to make my way through Family towards John.

  ‘One hundred and sixty-three years it’s been,’ says fat Gela in her heavy wheezy voice, ‘one hundred and sixty-three years since Tommy and Angela came to Eden.’

  ‘In a boat they came,’ went on little Stoop, when Mitch had poked him irritably with his bony fingers. ‘First in the starship Defiant, a wonderful sky-boat that could travel across the stars, and then in the Landing Veekle that came down from Defiant to the ground.’

  ‘Remember!’ Mitch called out in his thin wavery voice. He had a batface, not the full batface split right up into his nose, but a little split in his upper lip, and ‘Remember’ came out more like ‘Rememfer’. He was about to say something else, but then began to cough, and his eyes went even more red and watery, and he couldn’t speak.

  I had reached John meantime. He was standing with his cousin Gerry. I squeezed his hand. I could feel the grownups’ eyes watching us. I could feel them thinking, That’s no way to carry on in an Any Virsry.

  ‘In the round Landing Veekle boat they came,’ said old Gela, her blind eyes bulging as if she’d just swallowed a big fat flutterbye by mistake, ‘and this Circle marks the place where they came to land.’

  Their helpers led the three of them slowly round Circle of thirty-six white stones, which were supposed to mark the outline of the Landing Veekle, and guided Oldest’s blind hands so they could brush each stone with a bundle of twigs.

  Michael’s names, it took a long, long time! There were whispers and murmurs. A little child began to wail and was hissed at to be quiet. Another little announced he wanted a piss. John’s cousin Gerry farted loudly, and newhairs and children laughed. Even some of the adults had a job to stop themselves smiling. Any Virsry had only just started and everyone was already bored. Even our grandmothers and their men were bored, though they wore a mask of respect.

  Round and round the thirty-six stones went Oldest, slowly slowly slowly. People whispered. People wrinkled up their faces as Gerry’s fart wafted past them. People yawned. Blueside had been in middle of a sleep when the horns went, after all, and Redlantern and Spiketree were both right at the end of a waking.

  Finally, Oldest returned to the centre once again and Gela poked Stoop, who looked cross at first, but then remembered what he was supposed to be doing.

  ‘There were five people who came down in the Landing Veekle,’ he went on, ‘and three of them returned in it to Defiant to try to get back to Earth. They were the Three Companions.’

  Stoop paused and gazed at us as if his brain was stuck. We waited.

  ‘Defiant was damaged,’ he finally said in his little high voice, ‘and they knew it might break. But it had a thing inside it called the Computer, which could remember things, just like a person can, and another thing in it called the Rayed Yo, which could call out across space, so even if the Companions died, Earth could get news of us. And . . . and even now . . .’

  Again he stopped, as if thoughts had suddenly stopped happening inside his shrivelled old head.

  ‘And even now Earth may be finishing a new sky-boat like Defiant to come and find us. So . . . So . . .’

  ‘So we must stay here and be a good Family and wait patiently,’ said Gela impatiently, ‘so that they will be pleased with us and will want to take us all back home to Earth.’

  ‘Sky-boats take a long long time to build,’ wheezed old Stoop, holding up his hand to stop Gela. ‘Defiant was as long as Greatpool, remember. And made . . .’ He had to stop to cough. ‘And made . . . and made not of wood but of metal, which takes a long long time to find.’

  ‘Think how long we’ve been looking for metal in Eden,’ wheezed Gela, ‘and we still haven’t found a single bit.’

  ‘Rememfer!’ gasped Mitch, before he began another fit of coughing.

  A flock of jewel bats darted back and forth across the clearing. The trees had been pruned for generations to encourage them to grow more flowers and give off more light, and that meant there were lots of flutterbyes for the bats to feed on.

  John looked at me, and I gave him a little oyster smile. He seemed alive alive and new new new, next to this old tired boring Any Virsry, going slowly round the same old things.

  ‘Remember that Tommy and Angela stayed in Eden,’ Mitch said when he’d finally managed to clear his throat, ‘and they made four daughters: Suzie, Clare, Lucy, Candice – and one son, Harry. But Candice was bitten by a slinker when she was a little girl and she died before she had reached six years.’

  ‘And Harry slipped with his sisters,’ said Stoop, ‘and . . .’

  ‘But Tommy said we must remember that a man should not slip with his sisters,’ interrupted Gela, ‘nor his daughters, nor even his cousins, not if there are others to slip with.’

  ‘And Suzie gave birth to two daughters who lived: Kate and Martha. And Clare gave birth to three daughters: Tina, Candy and Jade,’ said Mitch.

  ‘And Lucy gave birth to three daughters, Little Lucy and Jane and Angela. And Harry was father to all of these, so he’s our Second Father. Just like Tommy, he’s the father of us all.’

  I yawned, and John yawned, and Gerry yawned in imitation of John.

  ‘And Harry had to slip with these girls too,’ said Mitch, ‘though they were his own daughters, and the children of those unions were Janny and Mary and . . . and . . .’

  A look of panic came over that bitter old shrivelled batface of his . . . He’d forgotten! The long string that held his precious years together was broken! He couldn’t remember the next name in his list.

  And then he smiled. Of course, of course.

  ‘The children of those unions were Janny and Mary and Mitch . . .’

  Silly old fool. The child he’d forgotten was himself! The older people laughed affectionately with him. A lot of the younger people didn’t laugh at all.

  But for some reason I did suddenly laugh. It came out loud and harsh. And John looked at me in surprise and then laughed too, and then of course so did Gerry, and other newhairs also took it up as well, all round the clearing.

  Old Mitch noticed the mocking bark of us newhairs and turned on us, his watery blind eyes wide with distress.

  ‘You mock, newhairs, you mock our memories. But think of this! I’m a great-grandfather to you, and though I’m old old, one hundred and twenty years, I’m standing before you now. And listen . . .’

  He coughed and spluttered and had to have his back patted by one of the helpers before he could go on.

  ‘And listen to this,’ he went on at last. ‘When I was young like you, I knew an old man too. He was my father’s father, and my mother’s grandfather, and I saw him standing there in front of me, just as you see me. And – listen to this! – that old man, my grandfather, was Tommy who came from Earth. I saw him, I touched him, and he came from another world beyond the stars!’

  Tears of frustration were running down his face. He knew that, whatever he said, whatever threats he made, the time would soon come when he was dead, and then the time when our grandparents were dead, and then our parents. And when that point came it would be up to us whether we kept the True Story alive or let it die.

  ‘I saw and touched Tommy,’ old Mitch almost sobbed. ‘Think of that before you laugh, newhairs! Think of that!’

  His sadness was so painful that I had to look away. Some of the younger ones around me actually wept, they felt so ashamed of laughing at him. I felt ashamed too but yet at the same time I was angry with myself for allowing the old bastard to touch my feelings like that. Gela’s tits, had he or the other two ever spared
anyone else’s feelings? They spoke harshly to children. They told us we knew nothing. They prodded and poked us as if we were things.

  ‘The children of those unions were Janny and Mary and Mitch and . . .’ prompted Gela. She was bored and tired too, and when Mitch didn’t respond, she carried on herself. ‘And Stoop and Lu and Gela and . . .’ She named all the rest of the twenty-four brothers and sisters in her generation. ‘And Peter,’ she finished with a gasp. ‘And we were the ones who started the first seven groups in Family, and made the big fence. And we were the last to know Tommy who came from Earth, so you should remember us.’

  And then at last Oldest were done. Their helpers settled them down on the ground with logs and buckskin to hold them up, and then the group reports began. One group leader after another gave their account of all the things that had happened over the year since the one hundred and sixty-second Any Virsry: the babies born; the people who’d died; the girls who’d got pregnant; the big hunts. It was boring boring. Bloody Batwing alone must have spent twenty minutes talking about that redlantern tree they’d chopped down and how they were shoving whitelantern seeds down the tubes in the hope that a whitelantern would grow up in its place.

  ‘Well I never!’ I whispered to John. ‘How unusual! Whoever would have thought of that!’

  He smiled, and, seeing him smile, Gerry smiled too.

  Two hunters from London came in from forest, so then there were only fourteen left to come, fourteen from Brooklyn still on their way back from their buck hunt out Alpway.

  ‘Now it’s time to discuss the Genda for Council,’ said Caroline, when the last report was done.

  And now each of the group leaders came up with things they wanted to talk about: fish getting scarce in Greatpool, a leopard seen skulking half a mile from Batwing, an argument between Blueside and Starflower about some trees, a request from London for Blueside to move their group further up Blueway, so London could have a bit more space . . .