Dark Eden

and pinched each other, and Oldest themselves, who’d started off so excited that they couldn’t bear to let each other finish what they had to say, got too tired to carry on. In fact they were so drained and pale and wobbly all of a sudden that they looked like they might die right there in front of us in their precious Circle of Stones. They had to be helped to step back and sit down and wrap up with skins and be given stuff to drink. And then Caroline and Council and Oldest and helpers got out of the way, and in came Big Sky-Boat, and everyone cheered and clapped and laughed.
    It was time for the Show, and it was Brooklyn’s turn to do it. A whole bunch of them were carrying that great silly wooden thing that was supposed to be the starship
Defiant
. It was three times the length of a normal boat, and not quite straight. It had poles sticking up from it to hold up a wobbly bark roof like the roof of a shelter, and long branches sticking out of its sides for people to carry it with. It even had another little boat inside it, which was supposed to be the Landing Veekle. And crammed in, at the front and back, were the Three Disobedient Men, laughing and waving to us.
    Of course Big Sky-Boat was
tiny
tiny compared with the real
Defiant
. The real starship was longer than Greatpool, and so big that if it ever came down to the ground it would never get back up again into sky. (Even the real Landing Veekle was the size of Circle of Stones, and it was carried
inside
of
Defiant
.) But all the same our silly little Big Sky-Boat still looked stupidly big compared to the little log boats that we used to fish on Greatpool and Longpool, and it had so much stuff on top of it that anyone could see that it would have toppled over straight away if you actually put it in water. Plus, with that curve in middle of it, there was no way you could have paddled it straight.
    But of course Big Sky-Boat never
did
get put in water. It was carried every Any Virsry by a bunch of people holding the ends of three strong branches that were stuck through holes in its sides. Those three grinning Brooklyn men inside it were supposed to be Tommy Schneider, our first father, from whose dick came every one of us, and his two friends Dixon Thorleye and Mehmet Haribey. They were setting out from Earth into Starry Swirl, as calmly and cheerfully as if they were just going fishing out on Greatpool. Tommy’s face had white wood-ash mixed with buckfat smeared over it, to show that he had white skin.
    ‘Let’s go further out,’ says Dixon, when they’re getting near the edge of Circle of Stones.
    ‘No, we shouldn’t,’ says Tommy. ‘Earth Family doesn’t want us to do that, do they?’
    ‘Yeah,’ says Mehmet, ‘and this Sky-Boat belongs to everyone, remember, not just to us.’
    It was said that it took thousands of hundreds of people to build
Defiant
, and take it up to sky in pieces, and to put it together up there. It took thousands of people all across Earth to find the metal and plastic and everything else they needed in the rocks, and thousands more to get it out and carry it to where it was needed. All Earth was part of the work, which took hundreds or thousands of wombtimes.
    ‘I mean,’ says Mehmet, ‘it’s not like we made it ourselves.’
    ‘True,’ says Tommy, looking serious serious. But then he smiles and looks out at the people all around the clearing: in front of him, behind, left, right.
    ‘Should we do it, kids?’ he calls out. ‘Should we go further out?’
    ‘No! No! Don’t do it!’ yell all the kids in Family, laughing and squealing with delight.
    ‘Yeah but why not?’ says Dixon. ‘It won’t hurt anyone. And anyway, I feel that it’s what Jesus wants us to do. To cross over Starry Swirl and find new worlds. Let’s just do it!’
    ‘No! No!’ yells everyone.
    But Tommy laughs, and cups his hand over his ear, and shrugs, like he can’t hear us any more.
    ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘You’ve persuaded me. Let’s give it a go, eh?’
    ‘Well,’ says Mehmet, ‘I suppose so. But I feel bad bad about Earth Family.’
    ‘They’ll get over it,’ says Dixon, and off they move in their giant boat right up to the edge of Circle of Stones.
    It felt kind of shocking to see that silly thing there next to Circle, where none of us were allowed to go.
    But then in comes President, the Family Head of Earth, wearing a special President’s wrap with four five big white stars on it done in ash on a square stained blue