Dark Eden by Chris Beckett

it? So that at least some life would carry on?’
    I nodded. ‘And it’s been two hundred wombtimes, so something must have gone wrong or they could have mended Defiant and come back long ago. But even if the Three Companions died and Defiant was too damaged to be mended, it still might well have got back to Earth. You know, like a boat drifts back to the shore. And …’
    ‘And Earth would have found out what happened from the Rayed Yo and the Computer. Yes, I know all that. But it would take them a long time to build a new starship. They say that first one took them thousands of years.’
    ‘ Years ,’ I teased him. ‘Who says “years” except oldies?’
    He shrugged.
    ‘Thousands of wombtimes, then. And that’s why we shouldn’t live like waiting for Earth was the purpose of everything. And we shouldn’t just huddle up like this in one place and do the same things over and over and over again.’
    ‘But the True Story says that Earth will come to Circle of Stones, and if we aren’t there, they won’t find us.’
    ‘I know,’ John said. ‘I know.’
    He thought for a long time, and twice he started to speak and then stopped again.
    ‘But surely,’ he said at last in a small quiet voice, like he almost didn’t want to hear himself say it. ‘Surely, if they can get a boat all the way across Starry Swirl, they’ll still be able to find us if we’re a few miles away from Circle? Isn’t that a chance worth taking? I mean, there’s not much point in us all waiting here if we’re going to run out of food and starve, is there? Otherwise all Earth will find is a pile of bones.’
    I kissed him.
    ‘Now do you want a slip, John?’
    ‘No, not now. Another time. There’s too much in my head.’
    I wasn’t offended this second time. In fact I quite liked that he had things going on in his head that were big enough to drive out that one thought. Not many other boys in Family would have had anything but slippy in their heads. Not if they’d been up here beside me by Deep Pool, with no wraps on, and no one else there, and me telling them I was up for it. In fact I couldn’t think of one that would say no. Except for the ones that preferred other boys, of course.
    ‘It would be easier in a way,’ I said, ‘if we knew for sure they weren’t coming from Earth. We’re a bit like a mum whose kid’s been lost in forest. She can’t get on with anything until they find the bones.’
    John thought about this.
    ‘But it would be lonely lonely, if we knew that,’ he said. ‘It would be sad sad sad.’

7

     

John Redlantern
     
    Old Lucy Lu said that every living thing had a shadow hiding away inside its body, waiting to get out. It was crap, but in a way it was true of a lot of people. Take Gerry: he might laugh and shout and play the bloody fool, but there was a shadow looking out of his eyes that was different from what he showed the world, a worried worried shadow peeping out that was always afraid of being left alone, or being laughed at, or even just being seen. Or take Bella: she was clever and wise, but she was half shadow. More than half. So much of her was shadow that it was like she hardly knew her own body at all.
    But Tina had no shadow like that. Her face and her body weren’t hiding places, they were her , and she knew it, and that was why men and boys couldn’t take their eyes off her. They could tell that what was pretty pretty about Tina went all the way through her. It was all of her.
    I had wanted to slip with her badly badly as we walked up to Deep Pool. And at the end of that waking, when I crawled into that little shelter I shared with Gerry and Jeff, I couldn’t sleep for ages, thinking about how badly I wanted her again. And I wondered why I didn’t have a slide with her while I had the chance, and I knew the reason was more than what I’d told her, but I didn’t know what it was.
    And when I did sleep, I had that dream that everyone had in Family, that dream of Earth, coming