Dark Eden by Chris Beckett Page B

and tired too, and when Mitch didn’t respond, she carried on herself. ‘And Stoop and Lu and Gela and …’ She named all the rest of the twenty-four brothers and sisters in her generation. ‘And Peter,’ she finished with a gasp. ‘And we were the ones who started the first seven groups in Family, and made the big fence. And we were the last to know Tommy who came from Earth, so you should remember us.’
    And then at last Oldest were done. Their helpers settled them down on the ground with logs and buckskin to hold them up, and then the group reports began. One group leader after another gave their account of all the things that had happened over the year since the one hundred and sixty-second Any Virsry: the babies born; the people who’d died; the girls who’d got pregnant; the big hunts. It was boring boring. Bloody Batwing alone must have spent twenty minutes talking about that redlantern tree they’d chopped down and how they were shoving whitelantern seeds down the tubes in the hope that a whitelantern would grow up in its place.
    ‘Well I never!’ I whispered to John. ‘How unusual! Whoever would have thought of that !’
    He smiled, and, seeing him smile, Gerry smiled too.
    Two hunters from London came in from forest, so then there were only fourteen left to come, fourteen from Brooklyn still on their way back from their buck hunt out Alpway.
    ‘Now it’s time to discuss the Genda for Council,’ said Caroline, when the last report was done.
    And now each of the group leaders came up with things they wanted to talk about: fish getting scarce in Greatpool, a leopard seen skulking half a mile from Batwing, an argument between Blueside and Starflower about some trees, a request from London for Blueside to move their group further up Blueway, so London could have a bit more space …
    ‘We’ll help you move the Blueside fence further out,’ said London leader Julie. ‘We’re not expecting you to do it all on your own. But our group is getting bigger.’
    ‘You’ve been helping with that, haven’t you, eh, John?’ I whispered to John. ‘You’ve been helping London get bigger. You and that woman Martha.’
    He pulled a face at me and stuck out his tongue. I laughed.
    ‘We’ll help you pull down the fence and move it, Blueway,’ Julie repeated.
    ‘No chance,’ said Blueside leader Susan, who was round and solid and stubborn, like Lava Blob. ‘We’ve worked hard to get our group all nice with shelters and everything. Why would we want to hand it all over to you lot?’
    ‘Yes, but we can’t help that we’re in middle of Family. We haven’t got any new forest to move into.’
    ‘Maybe you should split your group into two. Start a new group beyond Blueside, like we did when Starflower started at hundred and fortieth Any Virsry …’
    But Caroline stopped the discussion.
    ‘This is for Council, not for now. Right now we are just deciding on the Genda. What other things are going to be on it?’
    Some little kids near to where me and John were standing started a silly playfight, chasing round and round the grownups’ legs.
    ‘Not enough meat any more,’ said old blind Tom from Brooklyn. He was the only group leader that was a man. ‘Not enough meat, not enough fruit and seeds and stumpcandy.’
    ‘So what are we going to do about it?’ Caroline said. ‘What do you want us to discuss?’
    ‘Last useful thing we did was back at Any Virsry hundred forty-five,’ Tom said, ‘when we stopped School.’
    What he was talking about was that up to hundred and forty-fifth Any Virsry, there was School for kids between six years and twelve. Every waking, all the kids came together in Circle Clearing and a grownup called Teacher told them about writing and counting and the lost things from Earth and all that stuff. But at hundred and forty-fifth they’d decided they couldn’t spare kids from hunting and scavenging. So now most kids couldn’t write and Family relied on the remembering that