Dark Eden

looked surprised that I knew. More fool him. You can’t do anything in Family without everyone knowing about it, and weighing it up, and picking it over, and making their bloody minds up about what they thought about it. I’d heard about John and Martha London from four five people and I wasn’t too pleased about it. Okay, all the boys go with oldmums when they get the chance, but I’d let him know he could have me, hadn’t I? And you’d have thought that would have been enough to keep him going a waking or two, wouldn’t you? You’d have thought he’d have saved himself for me.
    ‘It’s nothing to do with that,’ he said. ‘That’s different. That’s just a Family thing. It’s just . . .’
    He stopped to think. In fact he ended up spending so long thinking about it that he seemed to have forgotten me entirely. Certainly, when he did speak, he didn’t show much sign that he knew why it bothered me.
    ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Maybe it’s not such a good idea, going with oldmums whenever they suggest it. Maybe it’s one of those things that I was talking about: the things we do because it seems easier at the time, and we don’t . . .’
    ‘Yeah, whatever, but coming back to my question . . .?’
    ‘Well, it’s . . .’
    ‘Don’t you
want
me?’
    ‘Yes I do, but . . .’
    He laughed.
    ‘Come on, you know I want you. You’ve just had your hand on my dick! I could hardly keep it inside my wrap when we were walking over here. But just now I want to eat oysters and talk about things. Is that so weird? There’s loads of things I want to talk about and not many people who would know what I meant. We could have a slip, but that would be the easy thing, the obvious thing, and maybe it would be more interesting if . . .’
    ‘Talk to me then,’ I said. ‘Tell me something you think only I will know what you mean.’
    He pulled open another oyster, ripped out the fizzing pink meat and tossed the empty shell back into the water.
    ‘Well, you know what I said about why I did for the leopard. I’ve been thinking a lot about that. I’ve been thinking that that’s what we always get wrong in Family. It’s like whenever we get a choice like that, we always run to the tree, and we’ve been doing that so long that it’s become what Family is: a thing that hides away from anything scary and waits for help to come.’
    ‘So what would we do if we were different?’
    ‘Well . . .’ He hesitated here, like he himself was in two minds about what he was going to say next. ‘Well, I don’t think we’d live in a huddle round Circle of Stones, waiting for Earth to come and fetch us back.’
    ‘Don’t you think Earth will come, then?’
    He looked at me sharply.
    ‘No, I’m not saying that. Of course not. They’ve got to come sooner or later. I’m just saying that we shouldn’t just spend our lives waiting for them in the same spot, and dreaming about going back to Earth. People say we must be good good, and make sure that Earth will like us when they come, so that they’ll want to take us back. But they’d like us better, wouldn’t they, if we tried to live like Earth people? Finding stuff out, trying new things, making things better. What’s there to like about a Family that huddles up in one place wake-dreaming, and won’t budge even if that means starving or drowning?’
    I laughed at that idea.
    ‘Not much,’ I agreed.
    ‘And anyway,’ he said, ‘it’s not as if there’s any reason to think Earth will come any time soon. Okay, we know the Three Companions went back to
Defiant
, and we reckon they’d have taken
Defiant
back through Hole-in-Sky. But there was something wrong with
Defiant
, wasn’t there? It was damaged when Angela and Michael tried to catch it in the Police Veekle. And the True Story tells us that the Three Companions knew the chances were against
Defiant
getting back in one piece, or them getting back alive. I mean, that’s why Tommy and Angela stayed, isn’t it? So that at least some life would carry on?’
    I nodded. ‘And it’s been two hundred wombtimes, so something
must
have gone wrong or they could have mended
Defiant
and come back long ago. But even if the Three Companions died and
Defiant
was too damaged to be mended, it still might well have got back to Earth. You know, like a boat drifts back to the shore. And . . .’
    ‘And Earth would have found out what happened from the Rayed Yo and the Computer. Yes, I know all that. But it would take them a