But of course Big Sky-Boat never did get put in water. It was carried every Any Virsry by a bunch of people holding the ends of three strong branches that were stuck through holes in its sides. Those three grinning Brooklyn men inside it were supposed to be Tommy Schneider, our first father, from whose dick came every one of us, and his two friends Dixon Thorleye and Mehmet Haribey. They were setting out from Earth into Starry Swirl, as calmly and cheerfully as if they were just going fishing out on Greatpool. Tommy’s face had white wood-ash mixed with buckfat smeared over it, to show that he had white skin.
‘Let’s go further out,’ says Dixon, when they’re getting near the edge of Circle of Stones.
‘No, we shouldn’t,’ says Tommy. ‘Earth Family doesn’t want us to do that, do they?’
‘Yeah,’ says Mehmet, ‘and this Sky-Boat belongs to everyone, remember, not just to us.’
It was said that it took thousands of hundreds of people to build Defiant, and take it up to sky in pieces, and to put it together up there. It took thousands of people all across Earth to find the metal and plastic and everything else they needed in the rocks, and thousands more to get it out and carry it to where it was needed. All Earth was part of the work, which took hundreds or thousands of wombtimes.
‘I mean,’ says Mehmet, ‘it’s not like we made it ourselves.’
‘True,’ says Tommy, looking serious serious. But then he smiles and looks out at the people all around the clearing: in front of him, behind, left, right.
‘Should we do it, kids?’ he calls out. ‘Should we go further out?’
‘No! No! Don’t do it!’ yell all the kids in Family, laughing and squealing with delight.
‘Yeah but why not?’ says Dixon. ‘It won’t hurt anyone. And anyway, I feel that it’s what Jesus wants us to do. To cross over Starry Swirl and find new worlds. Let’s just do it!’
‘No! No!’ yells everyone.
But Tommy laughs, and cups his hand over his ear, and shrugs, like he can’t hear us any more.
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘You’ve persuaded me. Let’s give it a go, eh?’
‘Well,’ says Mehmet, ‘I suppose so. But I feel bad bad about Earth Family.’
‘They’ll get over it,’ says Dixon, and off they move in their giant boat right up to the edge of Circle of Stones.
It felt kind of shocking to see that silly thing there next to Circle, where none of us were allowed to go.
But then in comes President, the Family Head of Earth, wearing a special President’s wrap with four five big white stars on it done in ash on a square stained blue with starflower juice.
‘Hey! Come back!’ she yells up to them. ‘We don’t want you to do that now. Things are hard hard for us on Earth just now. Every time you take one of those sky-boats out across the stars, we all have to work extra hard to give you the stuff you need to make the Single Force. We haven’t got the time for that now. We’ve got better things to do.’
Mehmet looks at Tommy. Tommy looks at Dixon.
‘Just this once?’ Dixon pleads with the other two. ‘I promise you, it’s what Jesus wants.’
Tommy and Mehmet look at each other.
‘Yeah, just this once,’ they agree, and they carry on right up to Circle, ignoring the President, who shouts up ‘Stop! Stop! Stop!’ in a silly high voice that makes littles laugh.
In comes Small Sky-Boat, which is meant to be Police Veekle. It also has a bark roof and is carried on another set of branches, but it looks even more wobbly and silly than Big Sky-Boat, because it is made to come apart. The real Police Veekle was as big as Landing Veekle, apparently, and it went round and round sky of Earth, looking for problems and trouble. (Sky there was more full of boats than a hundred Greatpools, and in some of them people were doing bad things, like dropping things onto Earth.)
Sitting in the Small Sky-Boat are Angela our mother and Michael Name-Giver. They were called Orbit Police. Angela has her face darkened with clay and buckfat to look like the real Angela.
‘Go after those silly buggers, you two,’ says President, ‘and get them back before they go and lose our boat in Starry Swirl. They really don’t know what they’re doing, and anyway, they’re not doing what Earth Family wants.’
Being Orbit Police meant that Angela and Michael had the job of stopping people who didn’t do what the President and Family wanted. Their boat hurried after the Big Sky-Boat Defiant, with Angela and Michael both yelling and shouting out:
‘Hey! Come back! Stop! That’s not your boat to take away!’
Angela looks out at us standing all round the clearing. She looks left, she looks right, she looks in front of her and behind, and then she raises her eyebrows and holds out her hands, palms upwards, as if to say, ‘Are you guys not even going to help?’
The kids know quite well this is their invitation to join in.
‘Stop! Don’t do it!’ they yell out excitedly to those three naughty men in Big Sky-Boat. Lots of the little kids have fierce angry faces as if they’re really cross, and really think they can change the story.
‘Stop!’ they yell. ‘Go back!’
But the men in Big Sky-Boat take no notice at all of them, or of Angela and Michael either, until Small Sky-Boat is really close. Then finally Dixon looks back at them.
‘Back off, you two, or you’ll get hurt!’ he yells out. ‘We’ve got the Single Force here. We’ve already started it going. We’ve made Hole-in-Sky and we’re going through. You can’t stop us! So back off!’
‘No, we won’t back off,’ says Angela. ‘We won’t back off and we will stop you — or sink trying. You come back here, mate! We’re not going to let you go!’
If only the men in Big Sky-Boat had listened, was what we were all supposed to think. If only they’d listened and followed the Laws of Earth and respected President, then we wouldn’t be here in Eden, standing around in our buckskin wraps and wondering how you find metal and what lecky-trickity is and how you make a sky-boat. We’d be there on Earth with that big star above us and the light all around us, the sweet white light, pure and bright like the inside of a whitelantern flower, and we’d know about metal and lecky-trickity and all of that. Telly vision, computers, we’d know it all, without even trying.
But then it wouldn’t have been us, though, would it? I thought to myself. Tommy and Angela would never have got together, would they? No way would she have slipped with him if she had all the men on Earth to choose from. And that means that none of us five hundred and thirty-two people would ever have lived on Earth, or on Eden, or anywhere else.
It was a strange strange thought. All this time we’d been grieving about how things were, but if things weren’t this way, there wouldn’t be an ‘us’ to grieve anything.
Well anyway, pretty soon, that Defiant starts to spin round and round like a log in the water at the top of Exit Falls.
‘Oh, oh, oh!’ yell Dixon and Mehmet and Tommy together as they whirl round.
Purple fire is flashing along the long metal spikes that stick out from the huge starship’s shiny metal sides, each spike as tall as a full grown tree. It’s tipping tipping on the edge of Hole-in-Sky, just like a log on the edge of Exit Falls. Single Force is pushing it closer, the Single Force that made the Hole itself. It’s tipping over, it’s tipping, it’s about to fall . . .
Small Sky-Boat comes nearer and nearer till it’s right alongside, and then it starts to go round and round too, and it starts to tip over as well, pulled towards Hole-in-Sky.