Dark Eden

wasn’t it? Dead people can’t talk back, and you can choose what you want to hear them say, and know they’ll never tell you you’re wrong. Lucy Lu found
that
out, long long before John ever did.
    But I didn’t say that to him.
    ‘And first Mehmet,’ he went on. ‘His group was called Turkish, wasn’t it, and it’s said he was funny and kind and he was the one that Angela loved best. She said that once to Tommy, didn’t she? “Why couldn’t it have been Mehmet that stayed, not you?” she said. “Mehmet I could
really
have loved.” And then Tommy hit her, in front of all their kids, and called her miserable and cold and cruel. Remember that story?
The Big Row.
They used to act that one out sometimes, do you remember?’
    ‘Yes, of course.’
    ‘And first Michael. He was gentle and quiet, they say. He was with Angela at first in that other little sky-boat. They were called Orbit Police, weren’t they? Their job was to make sure people followed the rules of Earth when they were up there in their boats in sky. He was like Angela. He didn’t want to come here. He wanted to stay in sky of Earth . . .’
    He broke off.
    ‘Someone will come from Earth eventually,’ he said after a bit. ‘I mean, we know the Companions went up to
Defiant
, don’t we? Okay, I know it was damaged. I know it was like a boat whose skins are beginning to come off. But the story doesn’t say it couldn’t make another Hole-in-Sky and fall through it, does it? The story just says that falling through most probably would have done for it, and for the Companions, and that means the remains of it would still have ended up somewhere near Earth. Sooner or later Earth people would have found them, even if the Rayed Yo was broken and didn’t call them. You’ve got to remember sky round Earth was busy as Greatpool, Tina, full of sky-boats doing this and sky-boats doing that. Just like Greatpool with all the groups out fishing. One of them would have found it. I mean, there were Police Veekles and . . .’
    I thought at first that he was just trying to remember what other kind of boat there’d been.
    ‘ . . . and Sat Lights?’ I suggested.
    But he didn’t answer me. Pretty soon he began to snore.

36

John Redlantern

    I didn’t like Tall Tree Valley one bit. I knew that when we first followed Jeff down from Snowy Dark. I knew it when me and Tina and Harry and Dix sat up trying to get a fire going. I knew it when I lay down to sleep with Tina. And I
still
knew it when I woke up again on my own.
    There was a smell of roasting buckmeat, and I could hear people already awake, but first thing I did was walk up the slope a bit, up near the bottom of the snow, so I could see out over the valley.
    ‘No,’ I said out loud as I looked down at this little bit of forest with Dark high high above it on every side, ‘there is
no
chance that I’m going to settle for this place.’
    Tall Tree Valley wasn’t anything like a good enough trade for Bella’s death, and for bringing killing into the world. It might make us feel tiny tiny like ants under those big trees, but it was
small
small itself. You could walk from one side to the other in one two hours. And how many people could a place that size support, when there was hardly enough meat in whole of Circle Valley to feed Family? There might be lots of bucks here now – I could see five six of them just standing where I was – but there’d been lots back in Circle Valley too, hadn’t there, before Family did for most of them.
    And anyway, who wanted to stay in a place where you had to cover up your skin just to keep warm?
    I walked back down towards the others. They were already busy. Tina and Gela had been giving people jobs to do. Someone had done for a little buck and roasted two of its legs, and Jane Spiketree was cutting off strips of greeny meat with a leopard tooth knife, and tossing them onto a bark plate that Harry was holding out for her. Mike Brooklyn and Candy Blueside and Gerry were dragging branches over for a simple fence. Dave and Johnny Fishcreek, with those awful shadowy faces people have when someone they love has just died, were slowly slowly spreading out a pile of fading starflowers to dry, with Angie and Julie helping them. Jeff was sitting in front of Def, offering it handfuls of wavyweed from a heap he’d gathered from a pool. The woollybuck prodded and stroked each handful with its feelers before it gulped the stringy stuff down.
    Sound carried a long