Dark Eden

hand to stop Gela. ‘
Defiant
was as long as Greatpool, remember. And made . . .’ He had to stop to cough. ‘And made . . . and made not of wood but of metal, which takes a long long time to find.’
    ‘Think how long we’ve been looking for metal in Eden,’ wheezed Gela, ‘and we still haven’t found a single bit.’
    ‘Rememfer!’ gasped Mitch, before he began another fit of coughing.
    A flock of jewel bats darted back and forth across the clearing. The trees had been pruned for generations to encourage them to grow more flowers and give off more light, and that meant there were lots of flutterbyes for the bats to feed on.
    John looked at me, and I gave him a little oyster smile. He seemed alive alive and new new new, next to this old tired boring Any Virsry, going slowly round the same old things.
    ‘Remember that Tommy and Angela stayed in Eden,’ Mitch said when he’d finally managed to clear his throat, ‘and they made four daughters: Suzie, Clare, Lucy, Candice – and one son, Harry. But Candice was bitten by a slinker when she was a little girl and she died before she had reached six years.’
    ‘And Harry slipped with his sisters,’ said Stoop, ‘and . . .’
    ‘But Tommy said we must remember that a man should
not
slip with his sisters,’ interrupted Gela, ‘nor his daughters, nor even his cousins, not if there are others to slip with.’
    ‘And Suzie gave birth to two daughters who lived: Kate and Martha. And Clare gave birth to three daughters: Tina, Candy and Jade,’ said Mitch.
    ‘And Lucy gave birth to three daughters, Little Lucy and Jane and Angela. And Harry was father to all of these, so he’s our Second Father. Just like Tommy, he’s the father of us all.’
    I yawned, and John yawned, and Gerry yawned in imitation of John.
    ‘And Harry had to slip with
these
girls too,’ said Mitch, ‘though they were his own daughters, and the children of those unions were Janny and Mary and . . . and . . .’
    A look of panic came over that bitter old shrivelled batface of his . . . He’d forgotten! The long string that held his precious years together was broken! He couldn’t remember the next name in his list.
    And then he smiled. Of course, of
course
.
    ‘The children of those unions were Janny and Mary and
Mitch
. . .’
    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