Dark Eden

game to a stop by calling down from sky.
    ‘Michael? Gela? We’ve done all we can without metal and lecky-trickity to help us,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t look that good to be honest. Do you want to chance it, or do you want to stay here?’
    ‘I’m going back,’ says Michael. ‘I miss Earth, and I’ve already given names to everything that’s here, so my job’s done.’
    The other three men come back from
Defiant
(they don’t bother with the Landing Veekle this time: they just walk). And Michael walks over to stand with them, leaving Angela facing them all by herself.
    ‘I miss Earth too,’ says Angela, ‘I miss it so much. I miss Sun and I miss all the people I love. But I’d still rather live in this place than die in sky. If one of you blokes will stay here with me, then if no one comes back for us quickly, we could have kids and start a new Family here in Eden, and wait for however long it takes for Earth to come and find us.’
    Of course, it wasn’t Angela really, that woman standing there with her face smeared with fat and clay, it was a plump little red-headed woman called Suzie Brooklyn. And she wasn’t much good at acting. She didn’t know how to say the words like she really meant them, and you could hear she was just repeating things that someone else had taught her. But even so it was sad sad, seeing Angela there all alone, facing those four men, making up her mind not to go back to Earth.
    ‘Go on! Give her a slip!’ some man yells out from over in Starflower group, and quite a few people laugh, including Angela, who has to put her hand over her mouth to stop herself.
    ‘I’ll stop with you, Angela,’ says Tommy. ‘We took you here against your will. We should let you have what you want now. We owe you that.’
    It’s said that of those four men, it was Mehmet that she fancied most, and Tommy that most got on her nerves. But Mehmet didn’t offer to stay with her, and Tommy did.
    ‘You owe her a damn good slipping, mate!’ that bloke yells out again.
    Not so many people find it funny the second time, but Tommy is really a bloke called John Brooklyn (a tall thin dark bloke with curly black hair, who reckoned to know all the best fishing places in Longpool) and he
does
find it funny. He sort of grins and gives the bloke a thumbs up, forgetting that he is supposed to be playing a part. And that makes Angela giggle too, and she has to compose her face and make it sad again.
    ‘You owe me more than that, mate,’ she says, but she holds out her hand anyway, and he leaves the other three, and walks over to her, and takes it. And then the other three say goodbye and they get into the Landing Veekle and go up to Big Sky-Boat
Defiant
in sky. With a lot of difficulty, whole of the Landing Veekle is put back into
Defiant
with the men still inside it, and then it’s carried out of Circle.
    Those three, Michael, Mehmet and Dixon, the three that went back up to the starship, were the Three Companions. (They weren’t the same three as the Three Disobedient Men, because Michael was with them, and Tommy wasn’t.) And of course, we didn’t know what happened to them. Did they get back to Earth? Did they drown? And if they drowned, did the starship get back without them, like an empty boat drifts to the bank? We all thought it must have done, or at least got near enough to Earth to shout out with its Rayed Yo. How could a huge great thing like that be completely lost?
    ‘This sky-boat is so busted up,’ yells down Mehmet as
Defiant
moves out of the clearing, ‘that they’ll probably need to build a whole new sky-boat to come and fetch you.’
    ‘Yeah,’ says Dixon. ‘It could take a long time getting together all that metal and plastic from under the ground. You’re going to have to be patient patient.’
    ‘But we won’t forget you,’ calls out Michael as they disappear into the trees. ‘And Earth won’t forget you either.’

    ‘I wish you’d never brought me here,’ says plump red-headed Suzie Brooklyn.
    She knows this is an important moment, and she tries her best to put Angela’s anger and sadness into her voice.
    ‘I wish I hadn’t too,’ says John Brooklyn.
    ‘I wish I could go home to Earth,’ she says.
    ‘A waking will come sooner or later when they come back for us,’ he says, saying the words all in a rush, without any feeling at all. ‘Or someone else will come in their place. You’ll see. We belong on Earth. Our eyes nod . . .’
    He pulls a face at