Mother of Eden (17 page)

Clare Bluesigh

We spent twenty wakings opening up that hole: me, my brother, my three biggest boys, two of my girls, and my brother’s girls. For twenty wakings we crawled in the mud under a two-
foot roof, breathing in rock dust and the smoke from our buckfat lanterns, scraping our backs and our elbows, working away from before First Horn to long after Fifth—
not that we could hear the bloody things in there—
hacking away at the stone, dragging it out. And then, when we finally hit green and thought we were getting somewhere at last, the roof fell in.

Thank the Mother, no one was in the hole at the time. We had old Johnny Fourfingers and his blokes as our ringmen, who are pretty fair as ringmen go, and they’d let us have a half-
waking rest after we found the green, to give us a chance to go and see the rest of our family, and check on my old mum. (She’s got the lung sickness. The same sickness the Headman has, if you believe the talk from the ringmen.) If it wasn’t for that, we’d all have been down there.

As it was, though, all we lost were six bats. Three of them must have died straight off when the rocks came down on them—
they were completely mashed up when we found them—
but three were still alive. Tom’s dick, you should have heard them shrieking as they lay there under the rock. It nearly drove us crazy, having to listen to that racket as we worked and worked to clear the hole, but we had to put up with it for a whole long waking, because a lot of the rock had come down in big chunks that needed breaking up before we could move it, and of course we didn’t have the bats to help shift the rubble. Anyway, we got to them in the end and shut them up with spears. After that we were another two wakings clearing the rest of the hole until we were back at the greenstone.

“Get one car load of green out,” Johnny Fourfingers said, “and then we’ll say you’re done for this waking.”

He didn’t come right down the hole, of course—
they never do—
but he had a fair idea what we were up against because his mum was a metaldigger over Batsky.

We set to then, but we’d barely shifted half a load when Johnny started yelling down the hole again.

“Hey, you can stop and come out now. The Ringwearer’s on the way! She’ll be down at the cluster soon. Cubes and everything.”

Well, I was as excited as a little kid. Last time I saw the Ringwearer it was back in the time of Jane, and I never thought I’d see this new one so soon. We crawled backward along the hole as quick as we could and came out into the blue light of the single spiketree that grew near the hole’s mouth.

“Never mind sorting out the stone now,” said old Fourfingers when he saw me looking at the broken rock on the ground. (The chief is fussy fussy about his stone, and there’s trouble if you send your green to the ovens with anything else mixed up in it.) “Leave it here for next waking, and go and get your kids and your mum ready. Ringwearer won’t be here long.”

I’d hurt my knee on a stone and it was sore sore, but I still ran all the way back to the cluster. Luckily Mum had managed to stir herself enough to get the littles more or less ready, so I splashed water on my face and hands to wash away the bat blood and the worst of the stone dust, and we all took up places by the path: a big crowd of us—
there must have been better part of a hundred people—
chatting away excitedly all at once. And then someone saw the car coming, and we all started to scream.

“Mother! Mother! Mother!”

Oh, Gela’s heart, the power of it! I’d only shouted it out three four times before the tears came running down my face. Life is so hard and so scary and so full of trouble, but here was the beautiful mother of us all.

“Mother! Mother! Mother!”

Oh, and she
was
beautiful. She was
beautiful
beautiful. I guess she wasn’t even as old as my oldest daughter, Sue, but all the sadness of the world was in her face, and all the gentleness and kindness of the world’s mothers.

“Mother! Mother! Mother!”

She stopped right in front of us, sitting there in a car next to the Headmanson, who I must say had a kind face, too. There were ringmen from Edenheart riding round them, and the chief behind them, looking out at us suspiciously, as he always did, like he thought we never worked at all. But who cared about Chief Dixon when
she
was here?

And then a ringman got off his buck and helped her down. I could hardly believe it. She was standing on the same ground as us, as near to me as my shelter is to my sister Tina’s, and she was looking straight into our faces: me, my mum, my kids and grandkids around me. She had sharp sharp eyes. It felt like she could see into our lives and our thoughts, like she knew our griefs and our worries and our longings.

“What’s your name?” she asked me.

I told her Clare. Her speech was strange strange but, apart from that, she was as natural and ordinary as anyone you might meet.

“And this is your mum?”

“Yes, this is my mum, Caroline.”

“You look like people who have to work hard hard.”

People said the Ringwearer came from somewhere beyond the Pool, a ground with water all round it. And I guess that was the reason her speech was so strange that I could only just make out the words. But it was kind of musical—
her voice went up and down like a song—
and one thing I liked about it specially was that it wasn’t at all the way the chiefs and teachers talked. It might be strange speech, but it wasn’t Big Speech at all.

“We do work hard, Mother.”

“I’ve never been down a metaldig, but I do know what it’s like to work hard with your hands. We used to cut bark from trees where I come from, and make it into boats.”

Everyone around us was quiet quiet, listening to the Ringwearer talking to me.

“This is Gela’s ring, look,” she said. “Would you believe that? This is the ring from the story. I’m still getting used to it, I must admit.”

She held out her hand to me and there it was, the lovely ring made of strange metals that were shiny like our redmetal, but not red at all. I could hardly believe I was really seeing it up close with my own eyes, but that was only the beginning of it, because then she took the ring off and handed it to me. Gela’s heart, I was just a metaldigger from Johndigs who slept in a bark shelter and could barely read, but I was holding our mother’s ring in my own hand, I was holding the ring from Earth.

“Try it on your finger if you like!”

So I slipped it on. I was trembling all over. I just couldn’t believe I’d lived to experience this, or that something this wonderful could be happening to me. And I suppose my feelings were just too much to hold inside because suddenly, though I couldn’t have said why exactly, I began to sob and sob, and the Ringwearer reached out and hugged me as a mother hugs a crying child.

“Just think,” she said, as she took back the ring, “there must have been metaldiggers like you on Earth who dug up the metal to make this.”

Then she kissed me, right on my ugly twisty old batface, which most big people won’t even look at.

“It was good to meet you, Clare,” she said.

Simple as that! Just like anyone you might meet.

Later she stood up on her car with the Headmanson and the chief beside her, and made a speech about how hard we all worked, and how grateful she was, because metal had made New Earth great and would make it greater still, until one waking we’d be like Old Earth, where Mother Gela was born, with cooking boxes and everything.

“And who knows?” she said. “Maybe we’ll even find the starship up in the sky that brought Tommy and Gela here from Earth, and then we can go home at last, after all these generations alone here in dark dark Eden.”

We all shouted and cheered.

“Mother! Mother! Mother!”

“So keep working hard, everyone!” she told us. “Keep on digging! The faster you work, the quicker we’ll get there. And keep on having babies: The more kids you have, the more people you’ll have to share the work with.”

We’d often heard the chief say the same sort of thing, of course, but it was different coming from her. It wasn’t like she was demanding something or threatening us; it was like she was
asking
for our help. And I felt I’d do anything for her,
anything,
because she’d given me the most perfect moment I’d ever had in my life.

My knee was better, too. That sore knee that had been bothering me all waking was completely healed.

Starlight Brooking

Those poor people. Each one of them alone, like their skull was a kind of cage, waiting for someone from far away to reach down to them and lift them up. Greenstone gave me a bag of cubes as we moved off again in the car, and I threw the whole lot out for them. Just like the people in all the other clusters we’d passed through, they yelled with excitement as they raced to pick them up. It was only when we were a little way off that it struck me how weird it was to throw out metal for metaldiggers, and for them to be excited to receive it.

“It’s not just them that make the metal, though,” Greenstone said. “It has to be broken up and put in an oven, and poured into shapes and beaten and polished. There’s a lot more people than just diggers involved.”

“But still. They get the greenstone out of the ground. It seems hard that they see so little of the stuff that’s made from it.”

Greenstone wriggled uneasily on the seat. “The metal doesn’t belong to them, though. It belongs to New Earth, to make useful things for everyone.”

“How come the chiefs get to keep so much of it, then?”

“Because they’re in charge, aren’t they? Their job is to make everything work. Each chief looks after the metal from his own digs, and my dad takes a share for Edenheart.”

The path passed between tree stumps and piles of stones.

“I’m surprised those people even stay here,” I said. “They’d have a better life foraging in forest.”

Now he looked really uncomfortable. “Well, they
have
to work in the digs,” he said.

“You mean they don’t have a choice?”

“No. And I’m afraid we’re going to have to bring even
more
forest people down into the digs. It’s one of the things Chief Dixon is asking for as a trade for his support. More helpers and more bats, so he and the other metal chiefs can dig out more metal. I don’t like it, but I don’t think we’ve got a choice, either.”

What do you mean we don’t have a choice?
That’s what I wanted to shout at him. And I would have done, too, if I hadn’t suddenly seen that what he’d said might really be true. New Earth was like a big pile of those stone blocks the chiefs used for their houses. The Headman sat on the top, below him the chiefs and teachers, below them the ringmen and the underteachers, and underneath all of them the small people, who dug the metal and gathered the starflowers and raised the bats. No one in that pile could do what they liked, not even the Headman. Everyone was weighed down by someone above, or kept from falling by someone below.

But I thought about the batfaced metaldigger Clare and how she’d cried with happiness to see me, and I felt a jab of deep deep shame.

“The forest people wouldn’t be in New Earth at all if it wasn’t for John,” Greenstone said. “They do owe something to John’s children, don’t you think? And in the long run, they’ll be helping build up New Earth, which will benefit their children as well as ours.”

“You could just as well say that John would never have got to New Earth if their great grandparents hadn’t helped him paddle, so John’s children owe something to
them.
”

“I guess so, but it was his idea, and they wouldn’t have—”

“And anyway, a lot of them must be John’s children, too. Apart from anything else, think of all the batfaced kids you big people give away. For all you know, that woman I kissed back there could have been your own sister.”

He didn’t like me saying that at all, and he turned away from me with his face closed up like a box. I touched his hand.

“I didn’t mean to upset you, Greenstone. But we’re all the children of one father and one mother, aren’t we? Everyone in Eden. We should try and make things better for everyone, surely? We should think about what metaldiggers need as well as chiefs.”

After a few heartbeats he turned to me. “I know, Starlight. I do know. I’m afraid to look out at New Earth through your eyes, if you want the truth, because when I do I see what a cruel place it is. But we have to remember that we won’t be able to do anything for anyone unless I stay Headman and you stay Ringwearer.”

We were climbing out of the valley. A row of cutbats, tied one to the other with string, was being led down to the digs by a big man in a woollybuck skin wrap, shouting and slashing at them with a stick. But when he realized who we were, the bat keeper’s mouth fell open in amazement, and he ran to the car so he could kiss the ring.

“At least the bats make it a bit easier for the metaldiggers,” Greenstone said. “Before we figured out how to use bats, people in the digs had to do even the most dangerous jobs, and lots of diggers died.”

We came to the top of the slope. There was another valley on the other side. It seemed bright bright after Johndigs, and it was still shining and pulsing with life, but out in forest all around us people were cutting down trees.

Greenstone Johnson

“Kindness should be no concern of yours, Greenstone,” the old man said. “The Ringwearer’s concern, of course, but not yours.”

He lay facedown under a woollybuck skin on a bed that was tilted upward at the foot end, so as to help the green muck flow out of his lungs into the bowl that lay below his head. He coughed and spat, Purelight pounding his back. The wallcave had a sour smell of sick and sweat.

“Don’t we have a duty to the small people as well as the big ones?”

“You don’t have a duty to small
or
big people, boy. You have a duty to New Earth. Your duty is to give New Earth what it needs from its Headman. And that
 
.
.
. And that
 
.
.
.”

The coughing overwhelmed him again. Me and Starlight stood and waited. It was obvious Dad was near the end. He was thin thin. He could no longer walk more than a few paces. The skin of his face was yellow and pulled so tightly that we could see the skull beneath, like it was straining to get out.

“What New Earth needs from its Headman isn’t kindness, it’s strength.”

“But surely kindness is also—”

“Tom’s dick, boy, will you
shut up
and listen? New Earth is like a body. It has different parts: a brain to think with, eyes to see with, a heart to pump the blood. Eyes can’t pump blood. Hearts can’t think. Brains can’t see. Each must stick to its own job, and
your
job is to be strong. You’ve never got that. My brother never got it, either. That’s why New Earth needed me. Weaken even for a moment, and there’ll
be
no New Earth. Each chief will be headman of his own little ground, squabbling with the other chiefs until the Davidfolk come over and sweep them all away.”

“It just seems unfair—”

“What has fairness got to do with it? Do you think Earth built starships by being
fair
?”

Again, he stopped to hack and hack while Purelight beat on his back, hard hard, to loosen the grip of the sticky green stuff in his lungs. He must have been covered in bruises. Not that I cared.

“It’s like building with stones,” Starlight suddenly said. “If you want the wall to be high, you have to put one stone on top of another.”

Dad turned his fierce, glittery eyes on her. “Tom’s dick, boy. The girl understands better than you do.”

“I understand because the place I came from was a place where all the stones lay side by side on the ground. It was fair and it was kind, but we would never have learned how to make metal, or cars with wheels. Let alone a starship.”

“Good girl, good girl. You could teach my boy a thing or two.”

He looked back at me. How well I knew that expression of contempt.

“John’s walk, boy, I never thought a time would come when the Ringwearer would have to teach the Headman how to
be
a Headman. If you were a healer, your job would be to heal. If you were a teacher, your job would be to teach, but your job is to hold the body of New Earth together and keep it moving forward. That and only that. Forget all this stuff about kindness and fairness. As the girl said, it’s like building a wall. Your only concern is that the wall stays firm and doesn’t topple when you place more stones on top of it. Upward: That’s the only way back to Earth.”

Starlight looked at me. “I didn’t say I
agreed
with how it works here,” she said. “I just understand it.”

Dad didn’t hear her, though, because he’d begun to cough and spew. Purelight pounded his back, glancing across at me and Starlight as she did so, with something knowing in her look, like she was up to some secret game of her own. I’d never liked her. But then I’d never liked any of Dad’s pretty favorites, except for Quietstream.

“I suppose you’ve told the girl about Harry and the boys?” the old man said when he’d finally coughed himself out. Purelight wiped his beard with a dry.

“Yes, of course.”

He nodded, and his eyes turned back to Starlight. “He’s always hated me since I did for his little playmates. I didn’t take pleasure in it, as he seems to think—
he forgets that Harry was
my
playmate when I was kid—
but there was a split opening in New Earth and my job was to make it whole again. I know people say power is all I care about. They’re wrong. I’ve
given
myself to power, as a speartip maker should give himself to metal and fire, or a hunter should give himself to the forest. But what I
care
about is New Earth. Making New Earth strong.”

“You admire strength,” Starlight said, “and so do I. But what’s strong about giving way to Dixon on his demands to force all the forest people to the digs?”

He studied her face for a while. I could see he liked her. He liked the fact that she wasn’t afraid of him. He liked the way she spoke to him like he was just a man and not the Headman of all New Earth. And I could see that Starlight had noticed he liked her