Dark Eden

Because it was fixed in that one place.’
    He had the ring on his little finger (it didn’t fit on any other). There was no need to hide it now. He stopped, took it off and passed it to me to hold. I must say, it was
perfect
perfect, so smooth and heavy in my hand, with those tiny little letters inside it. And it did prove that, whether John had truly seen her or not, there really had
been
an Angela, and she really
did
come from Earth. No one in Eden could make anything like that ring.
    ‘Just think, Tina,’ John said. ‘When Angela first wore that she wasn’t here in Eden at all, she was there on Earth. Imagine that! This thing, this bit of metal you’re holding in your hand, was there on Earth, with light shining down on it from sky!’
    He took the ring back from me, replaced it on his finger.
    ‘Probably everyone there has metal rings like this with tiny words on them, given them by their mums and dads.’
    ‘Maybe.’
    ‘I don’t want us to keep wishing ourselves back on Earth, though. Earth will come when it’s ready, and most probably not for a long long time. But meantime we should aim to make Eden more like Earth with rings and sky-boats and lecky-trickity and telly vision. Coming over Snowy Dark was just a start, Tina. It was just the beginning of what we need to do. And Gela’s heart, we haven’t even finished crossing Dark yet. We’ve still got to get down the other side.’
    ‘Forget that for now, John,’ I said sharply. ‘Alright? Forget that
completely
for now. This place is fine. No one’s going to want to move for a
long
long time. No one’s even going to want to
talk
about moving.’
    We’d reached a spot where a stream had come up against some rocks and made a pool, four five yards across and two three deep, shining with wavyweed. John took his wraps straight off and dived in without saying a word in answer to me.
    ‘Tom’s dick, it’s
cold
cold
.
’
    He came to the surface spluttering and laughing, swimming as quickly as ever he could to the bank and hauling himself straight out. Wet and freezing cold as he was, I put my arms around him and gave him a hug. I hadn’t seen him laugh for a long time.
    Then he shook himself dry, put his damp wraps back on and we went back towards where the others lay cuddled up in twos and threes round the fires. Just before we reached them, John found a place to lie down between the warm roots of a tree, and he gestured to it, inviting me to lie there with him. I hesitated because I knew Dix was waiting, but then I nodded and we lay down together. He put an arm round me.
    ‘I’ve been thinking about the Three Companions lately,’ he said. ‘I’ve been thinking about how their story doesn’t really have an ending, or not as far as we know anyway. That’s a sad sad thing, isn’t it? Not to have a story that carries on. But if they’d managed to get back to Earth and fetch help for Tommy and Angela, well, then their story would have been the
big
story about Eden, wouldn’t it? Tommy and Angela would only have been a small small part of it, because they wouldn’t have had kids together and they’d just have been ordinary Earth people again, not the Mother and Father of a whole world at all.’
    He thought about this for a moment.
    ‘And you and me wouldn’t exist,’ he added, ‘and nor would anyone that we know.’
    ‘I guess.’
    Gela’s tits, why did he want to talk about this
now
? We were so tired. We’d been through so much. I’d thought he might want to slip with me before we slept, and I’d sort of wanted that too. But now I wished I’d gone back to Dix. Dix wouldn’t have wanted to go on about people who were dead long before we were born. He would have wanted
me
.
    ‘Do you often wonder about the Three Companions?’ John asked.
    I shrugged.
    ‘Not a lot.’
    ‘They say Dixon – first Dixon – was the one who first suggested to Tommy and Mehmet they disobey President, don’t they? He was the one that wanted to take
Defiant
across the stars. He thought that Jesus Juice was telling him to do it, whoever Jesus was.’
    ‘Claiming to get instructions from some old dead person. Now what does that remind me of?’
    He didn’t respond to that. He didn’t even seem to notice it.
    Typical of John, I thought, to have a soft soft spot for his great-great-grandmother who was buried under stones long before he was born.
    Having a soft spot for someone you never knew was another way of not having to be with equals,