Dark Eden

gladly.
    On Earth that had sometimes happened, the stories said. One human being would sometimes do for another like we did for bucks and slinkers. In fact sometimes whole groups would turn on one another like when Hitler and the Jar Men turned on the Juice. It was said it had happened there because Family on Earth had split apart, with groups moving away from one another and acting like each one was a Family on its own. It was even said that the White people had once taken the London people – whose skins were black like Angela’s – and tied them up with ropes and traded with them like we in Family traded blackglass and buckskins and leopards’ teeth between the groups. (That was
history
, and it was one of the things that kids used to learn when we had a School.)
    And when I saw that look on David’s face and saw what it was that he would like to do to me, I had a glimpse of what would happen to us if Family was broken apart. I had an image come into my mind of a big old tree being pulled down, a big old tree that gave warmth and light and fruit and bark for shelters, and I saw the deadly scalding sap that comes spurting up from Underworld when the trunk first breaks.
    ‘Making juice for women that should know better than go with a silly boy who’s got nothing to him but a pretty face,’ David said. ‘That, and trying to break up Family, that’s all John here is good for. Oh, and getting big ideas just because he was lucky enough to have some leopard run right onto his spear.’
    He gave me a horrible smile.
    ‘Tell the truth, Johnny boy. You didn’t plan that at all, did you? You didn’t plan to do for the leopard. You were just so bloody scared you were frozen to the spot.’
    Gerry stood up for me at once.
    ‘That’s crap, David. He could easily have run like I did, but he . . .’
    Paaaaarp! Paaaarp! Paaaarp!
    David broke off. We all broke off the ugly little play we were acting out to listen to the horns from over Circle Clearing. They weren’t calling us back to Circle, just telling us that the Council had finished the Genda and that we should finish what we were doing soon and go back to our groups and eat and sleep.
    ‘I’ll be watching you, John,’ David told me, ‘when Any Virsry starts again, so don’t try any more of your tricks.’
    His speech was always a bit spluttery, like all batfaces’ speech, but his anger and his hate made it even more so. He was spitting his words out like they were poison. I had to wipe them off my face.
    ‘And don’t think you can get away with whatever you want just because you’re Bella’s little darling and her little slip-buddy, because you won’t. She may be group leader but that doesn’t mean the rest of group will go along with whatever she wants, nor the rest of Family. And anyway a waking will come soon when she sees through you too. Slippy might make people go silly and lovey-dovey, but lovey-dovey doesn’t last forever, Johnny boy. It doesn’t last long at all.’
    Met had his stupid mouth wide open. Gerry had tears in his eyes. Candice looked sour. Janny looked like she was trying to see the funny side but couldn’t.
    David pulled his spear out of the dead buck and transferred it to his left hand. Then with his right he took the animal’s back feet and slung the warm carcase over his muscly shoulder in one single move.
    ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘if you’ll excuse me, I must be going.
I’ve
got some food to take back.’
    ‘Looks like you’ve met your match, Mr Leopard Killer!’ said Janny when he was out of hearing.
    I shrugged. David scared me, it’s true, and I was scared by the thought of whole Family turning against me, with Bella no longer able to protect me. But David hadn’t told me anything I didn’t already know.
    ‘We’ll see about that,’ I said. ‘The play’s not finished yet.’

    We went back to Redlantern with our scraps of food, and we accepted our small share of David’s buck. He smirked at us as we laid out our sorry little haul of bats and grubby stumpcandy.
    Bella looked strained and distant. She wasn’t supposed to tell us what she’d been talking about in Council until we were all together again in Any Virsry, but there was more to her distantness than that. She avoided my eye and slipped off early to her shelter, after ordering us all to stay in group for that sleep and not go wandering.
    But I went to the group latrines that we’d dug in middle of a clump of starflowers and I took out the