Chris Beckett - Dark Eden

‘You . . . You what ? You’re bloody joking, aren’t you, John? Tell me you’re joking.’

But of course she could see by my face, and by everything that had happened so far, that I wasn’t.

‘Tom’s neck, John! You idiot . You bloody idiot. Who do you think you are?’

She grabbed her wrap and started climbing up the rocks away from me.

‘Hey Tina, wait . . .’

‘Keep away from me, John. You did it on your own. You can take what’s coming to you on your own. I’m not part of it, alright? I’m going back to Spiketree. Don’t come after me. I mean that, John, I really mean it.’

Well, I could see she meant it and I really hadn’t expected this. I’d thought that she’d be of the same sort of mind as me. In fact I’d thought she’d be impressed by what I’d done, like she was impressed with the way I spoke out at Any Virsry. I’d thought it would make me seem brave and strong in her eyes.

I listened to her climbing up the rocks, heading back to sleeping Family where some time soon, maybe in an hour, maybe in two or three or four, someone or other would wake up and pass through Circle Clearing and see what I’d done.

And I knew I was alone in whole world. I was lonelier even than Angela was, all those wombs ago, when she came up here by herself and cried.

I took Angela’s ring out of the pocket in my wrap. Of course I didn’t really believe Angela would come to me or anything. I wasn’t like Lucy Lu. But I sort of hoped I would be able to see her in my mind as I’d seen her before.

It didn’t happen, though. Why should it? And why would Angela want to help me out anyway, when she and Tommy made Circle and started Any Virsries? They didn’t want those things ended, did they? Whole point of those things was to last and last. And Angela had specifically told all of us to stay by the stones and wait for Earth.

I put the ring away again. For a bit I just sat there rocking back and forth on my haunches, like I’ve seen mothers do when they’ve lost a child and they don’t know how to get through it, just rocking and rocking and rocking themselves to make a rhythm and make the time go past.

After a bit I made up my mind to get back in control of myself.

‘It’s not like I’ve made some kind of blunder,’ I told myself. ‘This wasn’t a mistake. I thought about it. I knew what I was doing. I knew it would be horrible, for everyone else and for me. But I was trying to make something happen that needed to happen.’

I couldn’t see Angela or feel her presence, but I could sort of feel the voices of people in the future watching this scene that I was in. John All Alone , they’d call it. The scene that came after John Destroys Circle and Tina Dumps John .

I imagined them standing round me, those future people, looking in, calling things out. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Maybe they were thanking me for what I’d done. Maybe they were shouting out to me that I’d done wrong. But in a way it didn’t matter, the same as it didn’t really matter whether Tommy and Mehmet and Dixon, the Disobedient Three, did wrong that time they refused to listen to President and carried on instead towards Hole-in-Sky.

‘No. Don’t do it!’ we yelled out to them, every Any Virsry. But the fact is that if they hadn’t made that choice, we wouldn’t have existed. We wouldn’t even have been there to yell back to them. Most probably no human being would ever even have heard of this dark world called Eden.

So we couldn’t really mean it, could we, when we called that out to them? Or at least we could only really mean it in those dark dark moments that no one ever talks about when life itself seems to have no worth at all.

Then I heard a shout coming from Family way. It was quite faint. I couldn’t hear the words.

Soon there was another shout, and another, and then the horns started up. It wasn’t long slow blasts this time but the quick Parp! Parp! Parp! Parp! Parp! that means a Strornry Meeting. All over Family people would be waking up, afraid. What could it be? What dreadful thing could have happened? They’d look round anxiously at each other, to see if anyone else had a clue. What could it mean? What terrible event could justify another meeting so soon, when they hadn’t even had half a sleep to let them recover from the three wakings of the last one?

I stood up. A couple of jewel bats were zipping along just above the surface of Deep Pool: dark shadows, fast and smooth across the smooth bright water, one just a little in front and to the side of the other. Their little arms were hanging down and their fingertips were trailing over the surface as they swerved and darted around the lilies looking for fish. If they saw one — grab! — they’d have it in a flash and then, all in one smooth smooth movement, they’d curve off up to the rocks and the trees to find a place where they could divide the fish up between them with their sharp little teeth and their nifty little hands. If I’d left the stones alone I could have been out here now watching those bats with Tina, with nothing at all to worry about. Life would have been easy for me. Family wasn’t going to starve yet, after all. Not for a long time. Not for another generation maybe.

But it was like with the leopard. I’d made a decision that I knew could turn out badly, I’d taken a chance on it and now it was too late to go back. The leopard had to be faced.

I started up the rocks, heading back towards Family.

The thing with John was that everyone thought he was so brave, and he thought he was too. I’m not saying he boasted about it because he didn’t, but that’s how he saw himself: someone who faced things, someone who never flinched or turned away.

And in one way he was brave brave. He did things that no one else would do, like facing that leopard, and throwing the stones in the stream. No one else in whole Family would have done either of those things. Well, okay, some would face a leopard, but not on their own and not without a strong blackglass spear, and not when they were only twenty wombtimes old. But definitely no one no one else would have done what he did with the stones. No one else would have even dared to think about it.

So he was brave in those ways, but there were other things, things that most people did every waking and didn’t think anything of, that John just couldn’t bring himself to do. People didn’t think of it as him being scared. And he didn’t see it that way either. But all the same he was.

He didn’t really have any close friends was one thing. I mean, he was a good-looking bloke and he was smart smart and strong and a fighter and a leader — and no one had any complaints if he wanted to hang out with them, no complaints at all. So if you asked him to name his friends he could give a long list, and if you asked them, they’d say, ‘Yeah, sure, we’re friends with John Redlantern, he’s alright.’ But he didn’t have any particular kids he hung out with, except only his cousin Gerry. And Gerry, well, he was more like John’s shadow. John could handle Gerry up close to him because Gerry didn’t ask anything of him at all. Gerry wasn’t his equal.

And then there’s the way he didn’t want to slide with me that first time up at Deep Pool. I reckon that was because he was scared too. I mean he was okay doing it with the mums around Family, like that Martha London, so why not with me? Well, it was that equal thing again, wasn’t it? I was equal to him, and that scared him.

I don’t mean he didn’t want equals. I’m just saying it scared him. I mean those oldmums, they didn’t ask anything of him, did they, only his juice. He could say yes, he could say no, it made no odds. Either way he could just walk away. But it scared him if he couldn’t be in control of things. It really scared him.