Chris Beckett - Dark Eden

Being Orbit Police meant that Angela and Michael had the job of stopping people who didn’t do what the President and Family wanted. Their boat hurried after the Big Sky-Boat Defiant , with Angela and Michael both yelling and shouting out:

‘Hey! Come back! Stop! That’s not your boat to take away!’

Angela looks out at us standing all round the clearing. She looks left, she looks right, she looks in front of her and behind, and then she raises her eyebrows and holds out her hands, palms upwards, as if to say, ‘Are you guys not even going to help?’

The kids know quite well this is their invitation to join in.

‘Stop! Don’t do it!’ they yell out excitedly to those three naughty men in Big Sky-Boat. Lots of the little kids have fierce angry faces as if they’re really cross, and really think they can change the story.

‘Stop!’ they yell. ‘Go back!’

But the men in Big Sky-Boat take no notice at all of them, or of Angela and Michael either, until Small Sky-Boat is really close. Then finally Dixon looks back at them.

‘Back off, you two, or you’ll get hurt!’ he yells out. ‘We’ve got the Single Force here. We’ve already started it going. We’ve made Hole-in-Sky and we’re going through. You can’t stop us! So back off!’

‘No, we won’t back off,’ says Angela. ‘We won’t back off and we will stop you — or sink trying. You come back here, mate! We’re not going to let you go!’

If only the men in Big Sky-Boat had listened, was what we were all supposed to think. If only they’d listened and followed the Laws of Earth and respected President, then we wouldn’t be here in Eden, standing around in our buckskin wraps and wondering how you find metal and what lecky-trickity is and how you make a sky-boat. We’d be there on Earth with that big star above us and the light all around us, the sweet white light, pure and bright like the inside of a whitelantern flower, and we’d know about metal and lecky-trickity and all of that. Telly vision, computers, we’d know it all, without even trying.

But then it wouldn’t have been us , though, would it? I thought to myself. Tommy and Angela would never have got together, would they? No way would she have slipped with him if she had all the men on Earth to choose from. And that means that none of us five hundred and thirty-two people would ever have lived on Earth, or on Eden, or anywhere else.

It was a strange strange thought. All this time we’d been grieving about how things were, but if things weren’t this way, there wouldn’t be an ‘us’ to grieve anything.

Well anyway, pretty soon, that Defiant starts to spin round and round like a log in the water at the top of Exit Falls.

‘Oh, oh, oh!’ yell Dixon and Mehmet and Tommy together as they whirl round.

Purple fire is flashing along the long metal spikes that stick out from the huge starship’s shiny metal sides, each spike as tall as a full grown tree. It’s tipping tipping on the edge of Hole-in-Sky, just like a log on the edge of Exit Falls. Single Force is pushing it closer, the Single Force that made the Hole itself. It’s tipping over, it’s tipping, it’s about to fall . . .

Small Sky-Boat comes nearer and nearer till it’s right alongside, and then it starts to go round and round too, and it starts to tip over as well, pulled towards Hole-in-Sky.

‘No! No!’ yell Angela and Michael, the two orbit police.

‘Back off, you idiots!’ yells Mehmet from Defiant . ‘Back off or you’ll get dragged through as well!’

‘Back off!’ yell Dixon and Tommy.

‘It’s too late,’ yells Michael back, ‘the bloody resin’s gone. The skin’s come off the end of our boat. The water’s coming in. We’re sinking. We can’t paddle any more. You’ve got to help us!’

‘Yeah! Help us!’ yells Angela. ‘We’re sinking.’

‘And whose fault is that?’ ask Tommy, Dixon and Mehmet all together, looking at Family round the edge of the clearing, like they expect us to say it’s Michael’s and Angela’s for being foolish enough to chase after them.

‘Yours! Yours! Yours!’ yell out the kids, and the newhairs, and most of the grownups too.

‘Come on! Hurry up! Help us!’ Michael and Angela scream and yell, like they haven’t got time for all this discussion.

Tommy and Mehmet and Dixon look at each other.

‘Quick! Quick! Help them!’ yells out whole Family under the whitelantern trees.

‘Yes,’ says Mehmet, ‘I suppose it is our stupid fault really, and we’ve got to save them. Quick, Dixon. We’ll try and get them into Big Sky-Boat before we drop through Hole.’

This bit is tricky for the people holding the branches, who have to move round each other, and duck under each other’s branches, but, as it tips over, the Police Veekle presses up against the starship Defiant , and Dixon and Mehmet and Tommy reach out and pull Angela and Michael across into their boat, and then Big Sky-Boat, with all five of them inside, moves between the stones and out into the forbidden Circle to show that it has fallen through Hole-in-Sky.

Just in time. Only just in time. The people carrying Small Sky-Boat let it fall into pieces and throw them away in different directions, to show that Police Veekle has been destroyed by Single Force and its purple fire.

Meanwhile the great starship Defiant goes right out into darkness beyond Starry Swirl until Earth and Sun are hidden completely among all those stars. And there they find Eden, a world on its own, far from any stars, which isn’t like Earth at all.

‘There’s no Sun here like we have on Earth,’ says Angela, looking out. ‘But look, everywhere is shining shining, as far as you can see.’

And the others look out, each one in a different direction.

‘Shining everywhere,’ they say. They are amazed amazed, because they didn’t have shining forests on Earth, and they thought light only came from stars and Sun.

‘Let’s get down and look at it,’ says Tommy.

They have that other little Boat inside the Big Sky-Boat, the Landing Veekle, and they take it out and all get into it, helped by the people from Brooklyn that were carrying the Police Veekle until it fell apart. (The real Landing Veekle was round, but we don’t know how to make boats that way, so ours is long and thin.) It carries them down from sky, right into middle of Circle of Stones.

Out get Tommy and Dixon and Mehmet, out gets Angela. But Michael is sick sick and they have to help him down.

‘You bloody idiots,’ Angela tells the three men. ‘Look what you’ve done to Michael. Look what you did to our boat. Look where you’ve brought us. Take us back to Earth now. I want to see my group again. I want to see my mum and my friends. I didn’t want to come here to this dark dark place.’

Tommy looks ashamed, so do Dixon and Mehmet. The Three Disobedient Men all stand in a row with their heads hanging down like naughty kids.

Some of the real kids laugh.

‘Bad boys!’ they shout out. ‘Bad bad boys!’

‘Our boat’s damaged too, I’m afraid,’ says Mehmet. ‘We’re sorry sorry. It’s cracked. It might leak. We’ll try and mend it, but we may sink and drown on the way back.’

‘You bloody idiots,’ says Angela again.

Then Tommy and Dixon and Mehmet get back in the Landing Veekle and go up to the Big Sky-Boat Defiant and squat down by it with pots of glue and skins to try and fix it. And while they work up there, Angela and Michael (who’s started to feel better again) wander about and explore Eden.

But of course really they are wandering around among us, through the crowd, round the edge of the clearing and back again into Circle.