Mother of Eden Read Online Free PDF Page A

There was a great stack of cages in which stood little sweet-bats, gripping the wooden bars with their wrinkly hands and clicking their tongues as they gazed out at the people going by.
    “Come on, people, get yourself a little House or a Car with wheels,” shouted a woman standing behind a table piled with models of things from Earth. “It’ll bring you close to Earth, my dears,” she called out to us in the odd, flat Veeklehouse way of speaking. “Close to dear bright Earth and dear dear Mother Gela.”
    “Get your fresh-killed batmeat here! Delicious sweet-bat. Done for and cooked on the spot.”
    “Come on over, my friends! Best feather wraps in Vee!”
    “New spears! Best blackglass!”
    “Just for you, my darling! Rings and bracelets. Touched by the heart of Mother Gela.”
    Angie took hold of my arm and gave me another kiss.
    So many things! So much to see!
    “Hey, wait for us, you two,” panted Dixon as he came up behind us. “Don’t just go running off again. Julie can’t walk as fast as the—”
    He broke off as an enormous black-skinned animal came by. It was four times the height of a man, with its long long neck topped with a big head and a pair of muscly arms. But it was being led along by a small boy all by himself, and no one else so much as glanced at it.
    “Hey, you heard of kneeboats?” Dixon asked a trader. “We got eight ten-foot ones to trade. All new-made. Know anyone who might want them?”
    The trader wore a longwrap of woollybuck skin, his gray hair tied in a ponytail and decorated with feathers. Paddles and nets lay in piles in front of his shelter.
    “Eh? Kneeboats, did you say? Slow down, mate. You talk funny. Where do you come from, anyway?”
    “We’re Kneefolk. We the ones who make those boats.”
    “Kneefolk? John’s spear, I’ve met all sorts, but I never met one of you lot before. I get my kneeboats from a bloke called Dave up Nob Head way. They’re new-made, these boats of yours? I’d need to see them, of course, but I could probably give you twenty sticks or so for the lot of them. Maybe twenty-two twenty-three, if they’re really good.”
    Big, gentle Dixon glanced back at me and Angie and Delight and Julie and gave what he thought was a superior smile. “We don’t need sticks, buddy. We’ve got all the sticks we need back on Grounds. And if we did want sticks, we’d want a few more than twenty for eight boats.”
    The trader shook his head sadly. “This isn’t some little swapping place like Nob Head, mate. People trade here from all over Eden, and they always always trade for sticks.”
    “Why? What do they want sticks for?” I asked, pushing forward before Dixon could say something dumb.
    The man laughed. “Mother of Eden! You people don’t have a clue, do you? They want sticks to trade with, of course.” He reached under his table and produced five short lengths of wood. “There you are, look. I’m a fool, but I’ll offer you twenty-five for your eight boats, if they seem all right to me when I take a look.”
    He held them out to Dixon.
    “We don’t want” began Dixon, then he broke off. “That’s not twenty-five sticks! Jeff’s shining ride! We might not know much about how you do things here, but we know how to bloody count !”
    The trader sighed. “These are each worth five sticks,” he explained slowly, as if he was talking to a little child. “That’s what these marks here mean, look. Just one of these would get you four good blackglass spears.”
    Dixon took one of the lengths of wood from him, then gave it to Julie. I held my hand out so she would pass it on to me.
    The wood was super-smooth and shiny, and had five deep grooves carved across it, each groove stained bright purple with some kind of dye. As I frowned at the thing, trying to understand, I felt a flush of shame spreading across my face. What fools we must look, standing here with our mouths open in our silly buckskin bitswraps, trying to figure out something that