Dark Eden (13 page)

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 …

‘We’ll help you move the Blueside fence further out,’ said London leader Julie. ‘We’re not expecting you to do it all on your own. But our group is getting bigger.’

‘You’ve been helping with that, haven’t you, eh, John?’ I whispered to John. ‘You’ve been helping London get bigger. You and that woman Martha.’

He pulled a face at me and stuck out his tongue. I laughed.

‘We’ll help you pull down the fence and move it, Blueway,’ Julie repeated.

‘No chance,’ said Blueside leader Susan, who was round and solid and stubborn, like Lava Blob. ‘We’ve worked hard to get our group all nice with shelters and everything. Why would we want to hand it all over to you lot?’

‘Yes, but we can’t help that we’re in middle of Family. We haven’t got any new forest to move into.’

‘Maybe you should split your group into two. Start a new group beyond Blueside, like we did when Starflower started at hundred and fortieth Any Virsry …’

But Caroline stopped the discussion.

‘This is for Council, not for now. Right now we are just deciding on the Genda. What other things are going to be on it?’

Some little kids near to where me and John were standing started a silly playfight, chasing round and round the grownups’ legs.

‘Not enough meat any more,’ said old blind Tom from Brooklyn. He was the only group leader that was a man. ‘Not enough meat, not enough fruit and seeds and stumpcandy.’

‘So what are we going to do about it?’ Caroline said. ‘What do you want us to discuss?’

‘Last useful thing we did was back at Any Virsry hundred forty-five,’ Tom said, ‘when we stopped School.’

What he was talking about was that up to hundred and forty-fifth Any Virsry, there was School for kids between six years and twelve. Every waking, all the kids came together in Circle Clearing and a grownup called Teacher told them about writing and counting and the lost things from Earth and all that stuff. But at hundred and forty-fifth they’d decided they couldn’t spare kids from hunting and scavenging. So now most kids couldn’t write and Family relied on the remembering that happened at Any Virsries to pass on the old stories. There was a big argument in Council back then, apparently, when they finished with School, one of the biggest arguments ever.

‘We got more food in after that,’ Tom Brooklyn said, ‘with the kids to help, and no grownups tied up with being Teacher. Life was easier for a bit.’

‘So what should we give up now?’ asked Caroline.

‘That’s what we need to talk about.’

And then, Harry’s dick,
John
joined in the discussion!

‘It’s not a matter of giving something else up,’ he called out.

Well, everyone looked at him, every single person in whole Family. Even the little kids mucking around the legs of the grownups stopped and stared, because every single person in Family that was old enough to talk knew that, when the Genda was being agreed, the only ones who spoke out were the group leaders. Okay, maybe once twice in the past at an Any Virsry, a group leader had asked a grownup in their group to comment on something, but there was no way a kid or a newhair would ever have said anything, no way that they’d even have been asked. And no one, newhair or grownup, had ever ever just shouted something out.

So now everyone was looking at John. But they all looked in different ways. His mum Jade was looking across at him with a funny puzzled face, like she didn’t know what to feel. Gerry was looking at him like he was some kind of hero. David Redlantern, that hard batface, was glaring at him like he was a piece of buck shit. Bella Redlantern, standing out there with the other leaders by Circle, looked embarrassed but also a little bit proud.

And that, I suppose, is how I felt too. Embarrassed but a bit proud.

‘It’s not a matter of giving something up any more,’ John went on. ‘We haven’t got anything else to give up now anyway. We all scavenge and hunt every waking anyway, don’t we? What else are we going to do without? Sleep?’

Caroline looked at Bella Redlantern as if to tell her: ‘He’s one of yours. You sort him out.’

‘I think what John’s trying to say …’ Bella began.

‘We need to find a way of getting past Snowy Dark,’ John called out, ‘find new places for people to live.’

Tom’s dick and Harry’s, that settled it for me! John
wasn’t
one of those people who only do one brave thing.

‘Past Snowy Dark?’ exclaimed Caroline. ‘Past Snowy Dark? Oh come on, boy,
everyone
knows that’s impossible.’

She looked firmly away from him.

‘Anyway,’ she said briskly, ‘that’s enough time wasted. Let’s move on to …’

But John
still
hadn’t finished!

‘How do we know it’s impossible?’ he said. ‘How do we really know? We’ve never tried, have we? Not for a long time anyway. You should talk in your Council about having another go at it. Trying somehow to get across Dark. Or down Exit Falls.
Or something
.’

‘We certainly should
not
. For one thing you’re just a newhair boy and you can’t tell us what to talk about, and for another it’s a stupid idea. We’ve just talked now about how we had to give up School to have more time for hunting and scavenging, and how the hunting has got hard again. How could we possibly spare people for trips up onto Snowy Dark when we need all the grownups and newhairs and big kids to find food? It makes no sense at all.’

‘It makes no sense not to,’ John said. ‘There’s going to be more and more people and less and less for us to eat. We’ve got to find more to eat somewhere else.’

Everyone was embarrassed and uncomfortable by now. Quite a few people shouted out to John to shut up.

‘Leave it, boy, we need to get on with the Genda.’

‘Shut up, newhair! It’s not your place to talk.’

But he
still
kept on.

‘Well, if we don’t try and get past the mountains, then why don’t we at least spread ourselves out a bit across forest? Send one group over to Cold Path Valley maybe. One up by Dixon Snowslug.’

Now Caroline lost her temper.

‘Be quiet, boy!’ she snapped. ‘Be quiet
now
. Whole Family is here,
whole
Family, and it’s not the business of one silly newhair to stand up and tell us what we should discuss.’

With a mighty effort, and the assistance of two helpers, old Mitch rose up to his feet.

‘What’s the newhair saying?’ he demanded to know.

‘He says we should send groups over to different parts of the valley,’ said Bella, ‘so as to make it easier to find food.’

‘No!’ blind Mitch cried out into the pitch darkness around himself. ‘No, no, no, no!’

Stoop and Gela were also getting up now, staggering to their feet with their helpers fussing round them.

‘We must stay here,’ Stoop cried, and then gasped for air. ‘This is where they’ll come to find us! This is where they’ll come! And we must remain one, one Family, that’s what Angela taught us. One Family that does things together.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Caroline said, putting a hand on Stoop’s shoulder. ‘No way are we going to ever break up Family. We have one mother and one father. We always have been one Family and we always will be. If we break up then things will turn bad, one group against another, that’s what Angela said. But it is not going to happen and that’s final. So no discussion. No argument.
We
–
all
–
stay
–
here
.’

David Redlantern was pushing grimly towards John through the Redlantern people.

‘But Family can’t go on growing and growing,’ called out John, ‘and …’

David grabbed his shoulder.

‘Enough!’ he hissed.

Caroline pretended she hadn’t heard.

‘So what other things do we have to put on the Genda?’ she asked briskly.

When Genda was set, that was the end of the first waking of Any Virsry, and everyone could go back to their groups to eat and sleep. The next waking Council would meet and talk about the Genda and then we’d all sleep again, and then there would be the final waking when we’d all be called back in and be told what Council had decided. After that Oldest would do the Earth Things, and we’d have the Show.