They were back in our story. They existed again, and I was pleased about that, in spite of the sadness and loneliness of knowing they never even made it to Defiant, and the horrible sadness of losing even the hope of Earth.
For a moment I had a sense of people from the future all around us, generations and generations of them, watching this scene, calling to us in their faint thin voices. But I couldn’t make out what they were saying because living people right in front of me were shouting things out as well.
‘What will we do with the bones?’ asked Tina.
‘We can’t just go,’ sobbed Martha London, arm in arm with bulgy-eyed tear-stained Lucy. ‘There’s telly vision here, and lecky-trickity, just like Earth.’
‘We should take the bones out of the Veekle and bury them properly with stones,’ Gela said. ‘Give them a funeral.’
‘No time to find stones,’ I said at once, pulling myself back into the moment. ‘And anyway, remember why we buried people under stones when they died? It was so Earth could find them and take them home. And that’s . . .’ I stopped to steady my voice. ‘Well, like we’ve just talked about, that’s not going to happen, is it?’
Several people started to sob again at the thought that even our bones would never return to Earth. But one or two were already trying to figure out a new way of dealing with our dead.
‘Maybe we should just take them out and lie down them here, then,’ said Janny.
‘What?’ said Gela. ‘So David’s lot can find them and take them back for Lucy Lu to drool over?’
‘I know what we’ll do,’ said Tina. ‘We’ll put them in Worldpool, and all that swirly water will take them away.’
That was what we did.
Clare scratched their names on stones, with her tongue hanging out just like Secret Ree’s, and we laid them on the ground next to Veekle like the stones in Ash Clearing back in Circle Valley:
FIRST DIXON, ASTRONORT
MEHMET, ASTRONORT
MICHAL, ORBIT PLICE
Then we carried the bones down the rocks, and waded two three yards out to the place where the bottom of Worldpool dropped down into a deep deep waterforest. And we let them fall, twisting and turning and falling apart as they sank through the water lanterns and the shining shoals of fish, deeper and deeper into Eden.
We all clapped and cheered, except for sobbing Lucy and Martha London, who were still grieving for the telly vision and the lecky-trickity. And then we went back up the rocks and everyone started loading things up again onto the bucks. I didn’t even have to ask them to do it.
‘John? Alright? Everything’s ready now. Shall we go?’
Tina spoke in that pained voice she used when she could see I was troubled about something. Bloody old Tina, it was always the same: she wanted me to show myself more, but she wanted me to hide myself more as well, both at the same time.
‘Just a moment,’ I said. ‘Just give me a moment.’
I walked over to the edge of the cliff. The shining water of Worldpool was bright bright and three big fatbucks were swooping and swerving through the swaying branches and coloured lanterns of underwater trees.
I took Gela’s ring off my little finger and turned it around in my hand. Of all the things we had in Eden that came from Earth, this was still the most perfect and the most beautiful, this little ring with the words inside it: ‘To Angela with love from Mum and Dad’. But we were saying goodbye to Earth here, weren’t we? So perhaps I should leave it behind here, or throw it out into Worldpool, along with the bones of the Three Companions?
‘No! No! No! Don’t leave it!’ called out the voices of future people, looking in on our story, appalled. ‘It’s the most precious thing left! You will never, never be forgiven!’
But other voices said the opposite:
‘Leave it! Leave it behind! It’ll just bring trouble, trouble, trouble, and more blood. You destroyed Circle, you’re leaving the sky-boat behind, so why not leave Gela’s ring as well and be done with it all?’
I turned the ring round in my hand. I held it up close to my face so I could read the message written inside it to the woman who was the mother of everyone. Everyone’s mother, even mine.
I looked back towards the others waiting beside the broken sky-boat.
I slid the ring back onto my little finger.
Starry Swirl shone down. It shone down over everything: the wide forest with its thousand thousand trees, the fatbucks gliding through the shining water, the black black shadow of Snowy Dark, the distant volcano burning red . . . It even shone down over David and his Guards somewhere out there, still far away, but creeping towards us like little angry ants over the great face of Eden.
Tina and Gerry came over to me, and so did handsome gentle hobbling Jeff.
I smiled. These were my Three Companions, I thought, these were my First Three, the ones who were with me from the beginning of all this.
As he reached me, Jeff opened his mouth to speak.
I put my finger to his lips.
‘I know, Jeff, I know. We are here. I just said it back there, didn’t I? I said it for you. We really are here.’
And Tina laughed her sweetly mocking laugh.
Hoom! Hoom! Hoom! went a starbird out there in forest between us and Tall Tree ridge.
Aaaah! Aaaah! Aaaah! another one answered back.
‘We should pick up those loose bits of metal there and take them with us,’ I said. ‘They’ll be useful for spears and knives.’
Dark Eden Page 39