‘It’s a bat!’ the kids bellow again.
He frowns like he still can’t hear, and he scratches his head.
Michael was called the Name-Giver because he gave us the words that we still use for all the animals and plants that live in Eden, and found out things about them like how they came up from Underworld when everything was ice, and how dry starflowers could feed our skin like Sun did on Earth. But in the Show he was also the name-hearer, because he didn’t actually choose the names. He only heard us, faintly faintly, shouting them back to him from the future. And then he took them, and gave them to the things in the world, and sent them out again to us the slow way, through the five six long generations between us and him.
‘It — is — a — BAT!’ the kids yell even louder.
He nods. He smiles.
‘I think we’ll call it a bat!’ he says, and everybody cheers.
And then the same thing happens with flutterbyes and birds and anything else that Luke Brooklyn happens to see, until Dixon brings the 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 his mistake, and corrects himself.
‘Our eyes need the bright light. So do our hearts. We won’t be . . . We won’t be here forever. If they could make Hole-in-Sky once, they can do it again.’
Suzie Brooklyn nods.
‘We’ll make a Circle of Stones here to show where Landing Veekle stood,’ she says. ‘That way we’ll always remember the place and know to stay here. And we’ll hunt in forest round it and fish in the pools. And we’ll tell our children, and our children’s children, they must always stay here, and wait, and be patient, and one waking Earth will come.’
‘Yes, Gela, my dear,’ says John Brooklyn. ‘But don’t you worry. Earth will come, it really will. One waking they’ll come and take us home.’
One waking they’ll come and take us home.
Tom’s dick and Harry’s, there were tears all round the clearing.
14
Caroline Brooklyn
So that was another Any Virsry done. While everyone left Clearing to go and eat and sleep, I made sure Oldest were alright, and said thankyou to the group leaders: Liz, Flower, Candy, Susan, Tom, Mary, Julie, Bella. (There was something weird going on with Bella but that was for another waking.) A few of the older people in Family came over to say thankyou for my work, but most people just hurried away as quick as they could back to their group fires and their shelters. They’d had more than enough of me these last few wakings: me and the Laws and everything.
Well, I didn’t mind that. I’d had enough of them too, to be honest. I felt tired tired. The characters in the Show had to play a part for less than an hour, but I’d had to play a part for three whole wakings, and play it like it was really me. No giggling, no winking, no forgetting my words. Rest of Family had no idea how tiring that was, except maybe some of the group leaders, the really good ones I mean, the ones who understood there was more to it than just enjoying the feeling of being someone big. Not that I minded playing the part of Family Head, of course I didn’t. I’d played it so long that in a way it seemed more real than ordinary Caroline Brooklyn. After all, even to be an ordinary person you have to play parts. It’s just that you don’t have to stick to one; you can be a strong person one minute, and the next be weak. I liked the discipline of sticking to one thing. And I liked being the centre of things too, and that always kept me going when Any Virsry was happening, knowing that I was at the centre of it all, but afterwards the tiredness always hit me.