Dark Eden

Mehmet get back in the Landing Veekle and go up to the Big Sky-Boat
Defiant
and squat down by it with pots of glue and skins to try and fix it. And while they work up there, Angela and Michael (who’s started to feel better again) wander about and explore Eden.
    But of course really they are wandering around among us, through the crowd, round the edge of the clearing and back again into Circle.

    This part of the story is called
Michael and His Names
, and it’s the bit that kids love the best.
    ‘Where is this place anyway?’ Angela asks. ‘What do you think it’s called?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ says Michael. ‘Let me think. Perhaps we could call it . . .’
    He pauses.
    ‘It’s Eden!’ yell out all the kids round Circle, because of course any fool knows that!
    Michael frowns, like he thinks he’s heard something but he’s not sure. He holds his hand to his ear.
    ‘Perhaps,’ he says, ‘we could call it . . .’
    ‘
Eden!
’ the kids yell again even louder.
    ‘I don’t know,’ he says, ‘it’s on tip of my tongue, but I can’t quite think of the name.’
    ‘
Ed-en!
’ the kids bellow.
    Michael smiles.
    ‘E-den,’ he says slowly, ‘I think we could call it Eden.’
    The kids all cheer.
    ‘Look at this,’ says Angela. ‘What’s this?’
    She’s pointing to a whitelantern tree.
    ‘
It’s a tree!
’ the kids yell out, laughing. How could anyone be so dumb as to not know what a tree is?
    I guess it made everyone feel good to see Angela and all of them not knowing these things we knew so well, after we’d had to listen for so long to that big big list of wonderful things they had on Earth, which we didn’t understand at all. It was kind of reassuring to know that they didn’t even know what a tree was, when we were feeling useless useless for not knowing about metal and telly vision and horses and the Single Force.
    ‘We’ll call it . . .’
    Michael hesitated. The kids laughed. They
loved
all this. I suppose I did too. I loved it but at the same time I hated it for trapping us and making us feel so helpless and babyish and small.
    ‘We’ll call it . . .’
    ‘
A tree!
’ yell out the kids.
    The grownups are smiling and laughing too, and a lot of them are joining in with the kids. Everyone is tired tired, what with the wakings being changed, and the long weary list of Earth Things, and the Laws and the Genda and all, but now everyone is brightening up again.
    ‘We’ll call it . . . a . . .
tree
!’ goes Michael, who is really a skinny little guy of forty wombs or so called Luke Brooklyn who’s mainly known in Family for being clever with blackglass.
    Everyone cheers.
    ‘And what’s
this
?’ asks Tommy, looking over from Big Sky-Boat, which he’s trying to fix, and pointing at a little jewel bat swooping overhead. (He was supposed to be up in sky at this point, but no one seemed to mind!)
    ‘What’s
what
?’ goes Michael, looking where Tommy pointed. The bat has gone.
    ‘This!’ says Tommy, pointing to another bat.
    ‘What’s
what
?’ goes Michael again.
    ‘
This here!
’ says Tommy, showing him another bat again.
    ‘Oh
that
,’ says Michael. ‘Well, I don’t know about that. I’ve no idea. I’ve never seen anything like it. I don’t know
what
to say.’
    ‘It’s a
bat
!’ yell the kids.
    Michael frowns and screws up his face. He can almost hear them but not quite.
    ‘It’s a
bat
!’ they yell again.
    He holds his hand to his ear.
    ‘
It’s a bat!
’ the kids bellow again.
    He frowns like he still can’t hear, and he scratches his head.
    Michael was called the Name-Giver because he gave us the words that we still use for all the animals and plants that live in Eden, and found out things about them like how they came up from Underworld when everything was ice, and how dry starflowers could feed our skin like Sun did on Earth. But in the Show he was also the name-
hearer
, because he didn’t actually
choose
the names. He only heard us, faintly faintly, shouting them back to him from the future. And then he took them, and gave them to the things in the world, and sent them out again to us the slow way, through the five six long generations between us and him.
    ‘
It
–
is
–
a
–
BAT!
’ the kids yell even louder.
    He nods. He smiles.
    ‘I think we’ll call it a bat!’ he says, and everybody cheers.
    And then the same thing happens with flutterbyes and birds and anything else that Luke Brooklyn happens to see, until Dixon brings the