And so we hauled that bloody old leopard down from the tree again and off we went, virtually all forty-odd of Redlantern group, with more joining in from other groups as we passed through them. People who'd normally be sleeping came out of shelters to look at us. Even people in boats on Long Pool waved as we went past.
'It's my cousin!' Gerry kept calling out. 'Only fifteen years old and he killed a big leopard. I saw him do it.'
He was pleased pleased about the glory I was getting. He was smiling smiling and kept looking round at me to check that I was smiling too.
I didn't want to disappoint him, and I did my best to look pleased, but truth was I was getting tired tired of it, and fed up with this silly little world we lived in, where one boy doing for one animal could be the most exciting thing that happened for wakings and wakings. I mean, okay I took a risk, but it wasn't that big a risk really, not if you kept your nerve and concentrated on what you had to do. It wasn't such a small target, after all, a leopard's gaping mouth.
You're all of you hiding up in trees like Gerry did, I said in my head to all those friendly smiling people, and that's the trouble with bloody Family. You eat and you drink and you slip and you quarrel and you have a laugh, but you don't really think about where you're trying to get to or what you want to become. And when trouble comes, you just scramble up trees and wait for the leopard to go away and then afterwards giggle and prattle on for wakings and wakings about how big and scary it was and how it nearly bit off your toes, and how so-and-so chucked a bit of bark at it and whatshisname called out a rude name. Gela's tits! Just look at you!
And the thing was, the meat was starting to run out in Circle Valley. It was no good just hiding up a tree and giggling. Something was going to have to happen or a waking would come in the end when people in Family would starve. That's assuming that there wasn't another rock fall down by Exit Falls, in which case we might all drown instead.
Never mind drowning or starving from lack of food, though. I was going to starve inside my head long before that, or drown in boredom, if I couldn't make something happen in the world, something different, something more than just this.
That's what I was thinking about; but Gerry, who loved me so dearly, he didn't see all this going on inside me at all. He was happy happy. I put on a smile and that was enough for him. It was enough for everyone else too.
Well, nearly everyone. Tina understood, and Jade could have seen I was faking it too, not because I was close to her – I wasn't – but because I was like her. I was restless like she was. Restless and empty inside and hungry for something more than just ordinary things.
And there was one other person too that saw what was really going on for me. It was Gerry's little clawfoot brother Jeff, who shared a sleeping shelter with Jeff and me. He was only fourteen fifteen wombtimes old, not even a newhair, a weird little kid with a gentle face and great big eyes, like Gerry's big gentle eyes, but with something completely different going on inside them. He'd been hobbling along after us ever since I got to Redlantern area, and it was only when we reached Circle Clearing and stopped by the edge of it that he finally got close enough to speak to me.
'You're sad, aren't you, John?' he said to me.
I just shrugged, and stood there, and waited to be told when Oldest were ready to see me. And half of bloody Family stood there and waited with me.
They were sitting side by side on the edge of Circle Clearing like three empty skin bags: Gela, Mitch and Stoop. Their backs were propped up against a big old whitelantern trunk with several layers of bark and a woollybuck hide wedged in between them and it to stop them getting burnt by its heat. And, like always, women were fussing round them with food and wraps and scoops of water.
Beside Oldest was the hollow log in which they kept the Mementoes, and someone had opened it up for them and taken out the Model Sky-Boats, which Tommy Schneider, the father of all of us, is supposed to have made himself: the big starship Defiant, the little Landing Veekle, and the Police Veekle, in which Angela and Michael chased after Defiant when Tommy, Dixon and Mehmet tried to take it away from Earth. The three Models now lay at their feet, dark and shiny with the buckfat that had been rubbed into them for generations to stop the old wood from shrinking and cracking.
But Oldest had got bored of the Models, and now they were arguing between themselves, while Caroline Brooklyn, the tall grey woman who was Family Head, squatted beside them and tried to soothe things down.
'Each Any Virsry was supposed to be three hundred and sixty-five days after the last one,' old Mitch was saying.
'I know that, you stupid old man,' said old Gela. 'We all know that. But what I'm telling you, if you'd only bloody listen, is that you count the days all wrong.'
'I'm sure we can come to an agreement,' purred Caroline.
'I don't get them wrong, you lazy old woman,' Mitch told Gela. 'You just get behind in your count because your fat heart beats so slow and you sleep too much.'
'Yes, she's behind alright,' said bent old Stoop, 'but you're behind as well, Mitch. You're days and days behind the true time.'
'No I'm not,' said Mitch, 'your heart beats way too fast, and it always has done. And anyway I'm oldest of Oldest, and you should listen to me. I'm a hundred and twenty years old, you know, and I'm closest to the beginning, and that means my wakings are the true days like they had back on Earth.'
'Don't talk rot,' spat fat old Gela, 'you're just a muddled-up old ...'
Caroline laid her hand on Gela's arm.
'Here he is,' Caroline said in that special kind voice that people used with Oldest, half respectful, and half like they were talking to a little kid. 'Here they all are: the boy John Redlantern who did for the leopard and most of Redlantern with him by the look of it, plus a whole lot of other folk besides.'
All three Oldest peered towards us with their blind blind eyes. You don't get much past Old Roger's age without losing your sight, and our Roger was forty fifty wombs younger than any of these three.
'Hello Oldest,' I said.
Caroline gestured to me to approach.
'And the leopard too,' she instructed. 'Bring it forward. My, will you look at that!'
Reluctantly I squatted down in front of the three Oldest. They reached for me with their thin and shaky hands, and I crawled closer as I knew I was supposed to do, and guided their bony old fingers so they could feel my face and my hair and my shoulders, prodding me and pinching me like I was some bloody thing and not a person at all.
'John Redlantern, you say?' queried Stoop. 'Who are you, boy? Who was your grandmother?'
'Yes, come on boy, spit it out. Who are you?' complained old Mitch.
'My mother's mother is Star.'
'Never heard of her,' said Gela, who was named for the first Gela – Angela – the mother of us all. 'Who was her mother?'
'Star's mother was Helen.'
I looked at the Models that were still lying there. Defiant is a tube covered in long spikes. The real one was longer than Greatpool, more than a hundred fifty yards, and so wide that the Landing Veekle could hide inside it. When it set out from Earth those long spikes would start to burn with purple fire, until suddenly the Single Force would open up Hole-in-Sky and let Defiant fall through from one side of Starry Swirl to the other. It was like jumping across Greatpool without crossing the water in between.
'Helen Redlantern?' Stoop gave a wheezy little laugh. 'That cheeky minx. Gave me a bit of a slip once or twice way back. Gave me a nice little slippy slide. She still alive, is she?'
'No, Oldest. Cancer ate her, four five wombs ... I mean four five years ago.'
'Four or five wombtimes is not the same as four or five years,' muttered old Mitch, giving me a weak slap across the face. It didn't hurt, but I dare say he intended it to, the vicious old sod. 'And you should count properly in years as befits all true children of the planet Earth. Don't you forget it, young man.'
'Where's this leopard, then?' Stoop demanded, and all three of them withdrew their hands from me and gazed greedily beyond me with their sightless eyes.
'Tell the boy to pay his respects,' they said, as if I couldn't hear them for myself. 'Tell him to pay his respects to Circle while we examine the beast.'
So I walked out by myself into middle of the clearing where Circle of Stones was laid out: thirty-six round white stones, as big as baby's heads, in a circle thirty feet across, marking where the Landing Veekle had rested when it came down to Eden, with five stones in middle of it representing Tommy and Angela, the parents of all of us, and their Three Companions who'd tried to return to Earth. You weren't supposed to go nearer to Circle than a couple of yards. Some people even said that if anyone were to touch the stones or go inside Circle, other than Oldest and Council and those they chose, then that person would surely die before their next sleep. I didn't believe that, but I knew the rules, so I stopped three yards from Circle and, as I was supposed to do, bowed my head slightly slightly towards the five stones in middle.
Those stones were the centre of everything. Everyone knew that we had to remain here in Family, in our groups packed in close around Circle, because this was where the Earth people would head when they came back to find us.
But as I finished paying my respects and turned away again from the stones, a thought came to me.
'If they had crossed sky and found their way right across Starry Swirl,' I said to myself, 'they would surely look a little more widely for us than just this one place.'
And then I felt a bit scared by what I'd just thought, like a little kid might feel if he had wandered too far out into forest and, just for a moment, wasn't sure of the way back.
We ate well in Redlantern at the end of that waking, and when I finally lay down in the shelter with Gerry and Jeff, sleep didn't come to me for a long time. The leopard's heart was heavy heavy in my belly and the leopard's life, its echo, kept prowling prowling through my mind, like a blackness slipping by behind the little steady lights of my thoughts, singing its tricksy song. Every couple of minutes it was there in front of me again, about to strike. Every couple of minutes I lunged out at it again with my spear.
