‘Yes, up Cold Path way.’
‘Long way off then. You can’t get much further than that.’
‘No.’
‘Only maybe Exit Falls. That’s further, isn’t it?’
‘No, it’s nearer, but of course there’s also whatever’s below Falls, as well. And whatever’s across Dark.’
‘Below Falls? I’ve never heard of that. Are you sure . . . ?’
Then a slow smile spread over his face.
‘Below Falls! Michael’s names, you’re winding me up aren’t you, you slinker? There’s no such place as Below Falls, is there? You had me for a minute there.’
‘Well, of course there’s something below it, Pete. Where do you think the water goes? You could even climb down next to it once, until that big slab slid down on Rockieside, and Fall Pool filled up.’
Pete shuddered.
‘Who’d want to climb down? There might be anything there. And we’ve got everything we need right here in Circle Valley.’
A woman in one of the shelters heard us speaking and stuck her head out, a plump big-breasted grownup woman two three times my age with, I guessed, five six kids sleeping there in the shelter with her.
‘You’re John, aren’t you? The boy that did for the leopard out there?’
Out she came smiling. She didn’t have her wrap on.
‘I’m Martha,’ she said. ‘Would you like a little slide, my dear?’
Pete looked away politely and began to hum.
‘We could go over there in the starflowers,’ Martha said, pointing to a big bright clump growing over beside the stream.
A lot of women thought if you did a slip with a young guy who was fit and healthy, it would stop you having batface babies, or clawfeet. Us young guys didn’t argue.
‘Yeah, okay,’ I said.
We went over to the clump of starflowers and she knelt down so I could give it to her from behind. This wasn’t about pleasure for her. She didn’t move or moan, only gave the odd tiny little sigh for the sake of politeness. And we could hear that kid over in Batwing all the while we did it, wailing and crying in pain.
‘Kid called Paul, apparently,’ she said while I was still pushing in and out of her. ‘Nasty sap-burn when they got down that big old redlantern tree.’
She considered this while I kept on humping away behind her.
‘Wouldn’t happen here in London. We keep our kids under control. No way would a London kid be let near a tree that was about to come down. And we’d always have a pot of water ready just in case as well.’
‘Keep the littles under control, eh? It’s got to be the . . .’ I muttered but then I came in her with a shudder, and she rolled over on her back among the flowers, lifting her knees and cupping her hand over herself to keep the juice that she hoped would make her another well-behaved London kid with straight lips and unclenched feet to live its life out in that particular little trampled clearing called London, among those particular bark shelters and that particular little group of people, who liked to think there was something different about them from everyone else in Family.
And there were differences, I thought, kneeling above her but looking away across Family towards Batwing on the far side, and thinking about the groups between here and there. For example, the names. Blueside just means the group that’s furthest over Blueway, the side nearest Blue Mountains, Redlantern just means we’ve got a big bunch of Redlantern trees (which we’re slowly cutting down and replacing by chucking whitelantern seeds down the stumps). But London and Brooklyn were proud proud of the fact that their names came from across Starry Swirl, from Earth. The Earth folk had a big big Family, with many many groups in it. Angela’s group was called London and the people there had black faces like Angela did. Tommy’s group was called Brooklyn, though some people called them the Juice. (As for the Three Companions, who took Defiant back across Starry Swirl, leaving Tommy and Angela in Eden, we don’t know the group names of Dixon and Michael, but they say Mehmet’s group was called Turkish, even though his last name was Haribey. I don’t why.)
So, yes, London were different from Blueside, Blueside were different from Batwing, Batwing were different from Redlantern. Each Family group woke at a different time, slept at a different time, had its own particular way of doing things and deciding things, its own little things they were proud of about themselves (like London and Brooklyn being the names of groups on Earth), its own particular combination of strong people and weak people, kind people and selfish people, batfaces and clawfeet. But the differences were so small, I thought, and so dull dull dull. Really we were all alike. In fact, we were so on top of one another, so in each others’ lives and in each others’ heads, we were hardly separate from one another at all. Like Oldest always banged on and on about, we were all one. It was really true: one Family, all together, all cousins, all from one single womb and one single dick.
‘I’ve got some milk if you want some,’ Martha said, cupping her hands under her breasts.
‘Yeah, okay,’ I said, and I bent down while she held one of them for me to kneel and suck the warm sweet stuff.
‘That’s better,’ she said after a bit. ‘They were beginning to hurt.’
She stroked my hair briefly, without much interest.
‘Had a new baby die on me,’ she explained. ‘Twenty thirty sleeps ago. Little batface baby. Really bad batface, poor little thing. His little face was practically split open from top to bottom, and he couldn’t suck, no matter how hard I tried to help him. In the end he just . . .’
I felt her shaking as she began to cry. That was the reason she’d been awake. She couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t think of anything else but the dead baby. That was what it was like for mums when a baby died. They couldn’t think of anything except the gap where the baby had been. Martha London didn’t know how to fill up the time. She didn’t know how to let the baby go.
‘Ten kids I’ve had in all,’ she said. ‘All but two of them were batfaces. And, well, you love them anyway, but . . .’
She released the breast she was holding and scooped up the other one for me.
‘Only three of my kids are still alive,’ she said. ‘Three girls. All the rest died. All my boys died. Last three all died as babies.’
I sat up.
‘Well, maybe your luck will turn now.’
She nodded, lying there under the flickering starflowers, her face all smeary with tears. The flowers were so bright that their stems made little lines and shadows, always moving and changing, all over her body. Her hand was still cupped between her legs to hold in my lucky juice.
‘If I have another boy a wombtime from now,’ she said, ‘I’ll call him after you.’
Those slips with oldmums were funny things. When you thought about it later, you got hard all over again and you remembered your dick going in and out of her, and you wanted to do it some more. And when you heard other boys boasting to each other about the grownup women that had asked them for a slide, you worried that maybe they were getting more of it than you, or maybe that they were getting something better than you’d had. And the batface boys who oldmums never wanted to slip with, they listened to rest of us and thought to themselves, It’s not fair. Why can’t that happen to me? (But they didn’t say it, because they knew us smoothfaces would just laugh at them and say, ‘It’s because you’re ugly, Einstein. Ugly ugly. The clue’s in the name. It’s because you’ve got a face like a bloody bat.’)
But straight afterwards, you felt sort of empty, like the spark had been taken out of you along with your juice, and nothing meant anything at all. That was what it actually felt like afterwards, but that feeling didn’t last long, and seeing as that part of it wasn’t fun to think about or talk about, you soon pushed it out of your mind, you forgot about it till next time, and no one ever spoke about it at all.