Dark Eden

except for Bella Redlantern, who just looked terrible, like she was about to be sick.

    And then John came, poor old John, all by himself, coming from Londonside. There was a sort of gasp from all round the clearing and people standing on Londonside pulled hastily aside to let him past, like they were afraid of even touching him, like they were afraid of catching something from him if they stood too near to him.
    A dreadful silence fell. Even the babies seemed to know to shut up crying. And he walked right out into middle, walking
stiff
stiff and straight straight with his head held up, as if to say he was ready to take whatever they were going to do to him. But his face was white, and he wasn’t looking anywhere but straight in front of him. (I bet he looked like that when he faced the leopard.) When he was three four yards in front of Caroline, he stopped.
    He was only twenty wombs old. Only fifteen years in the old time.
    ‘You did this, didn’t you, John Redlantern?’ Caroline said.
    And there were three four seconds of total silence.
    ‘Yes I did,’ he said then in a small quiet voice. ‘I did it because . . .’
    ‘I don’t wish to hear why you did it.’
    ‘I did it because . . .’
    ‘I don’t wish to hear, do you understand?’
    ‘I did it because I . . .’
    Well, Caroline stepped right up to him and slapped him across the face so hard that he nearly fell over. You could see that she’d hurt her hand as well.
    ‘Those stones were laid here by your great-great-grandparents,’ she hissed into his face, ‘laid here to mark the special place where our Family arrived in this world, and the place we’re to wait for Earth to return. We’ve honoured them and kept them safe and clean for six generations, the special stones that Tommy and Angela chose and touched with their own hands and laid out in the exact spots where they’ve been ever since. And you, at twenty wombs old, you arrogant sneaky little tubeslinker’ (her voice went all ugly and twisted and choked up when she said that), ‘you think you know better than everyone else alive or everyone who’s ever lived.’
    ‘Don’t be too hard on him, Caroline,’ muttered Bella behind her. ‘Remember he’s only a kid.’
    ‘Only a kid?’ called out David Redlantern, striding out from the crowd into the clearing.
    Oh boy, what an ugly, evil brute he was with his thick short limbs and his red batface always oozing, always quivering. Not that all batfaces are like him. My own sister Jane was a batface, and she was as sweet-natured as anyone could be, but David, he was cruel and cold and hard, and his batface just made him seem crueller and colder and harder still.
    ‘Only a kid, you say, Bella,’ he sneered in his spluttery voice, ‘but that didn’t stop you from getting him to slip with you in your shelter, did it? It didn’t stop you having a little slide with him on the exact same waking he insulted Council here in front of whole Family. We thought you were calling him in to tell him off, but no, you got him in and slipped with him, with whole group awake all around you. We knew what was going on. We heard the silence. We heard your breathing getting fast. We heard you gasp. What kind of group leader is that?’
    ‘Is this true, Bella?’ demanded Caroline, turning round.
    Bella’s head was hanging down.
    ‘We didn’t slip but we did, well,
touch
. I did tell him off but I wanted him to know also that he was valued and that his concern was . . .’
    ‘What nonsense,’ Caroline said, and we’d never in our lives heard Head of Family talking to a group leader like that. ‘I’ve never heard such total garbage. We’ll need to reconsider the leadership of Redlantern, because you obviously aren’t fit to lead anything. But we’ll sort
that
out later. For the moment . . .’ She turned back to John. ‘For the moment the business of Strornry is this. How do we deal with this selfish, stupid, arrogant little slinker of a boy, who has defiled the memory of Mother Angela and of Father Tommy and of the Three Companions? How do we deal with a silly boy who has deliberately broken something that was precious to every single one of us?’
    ‘Hang him up from a spiketree like we hang a buckskin out to dry,’ said David. ‘Spike him up to burn, like Hitler did to Jesus.’
    He gave a hard laugh.
    ‘They say Jesus was the leader of the Juice,’ he said. ‘Which sort of fits when you think about it, because juice is about the only