Child of Earth (16 page)

Mom-Woo said, “Let's talk about our situation. And our choices. What exactly do we want?” That quickly she discarded Lorrin's dangerous path. She turned to me. “Kaer? What do you want?”

Everybody looked at me. I flushed with embarrassment and I didn't want to say anything at all. I stared down into my tea mug, but there was no answer there either. I felt as if I didn't really have a vote anymore. Not after the chocolate cake business. Not after Mom-Woo had told me Aunt Morra couldn't go with us. While everybody else had been arguing back and forth, I'd been wondering if perhaps I shouldn't stay behind with Aunt Morra. But now, Mom-Woo insisted. “Kaer, what do you want to do?”

My words surprised me. “I want to go to Linnea,” I said softly. “I really do.” And I was terrified that I had screwed it up so badly that none of us could go....

“Why?” said Mom-Woo, in that
voice
of hers that she used when she was speaking for God. Even though I was mosty staring into my mug, I could tell that everybody was still looking at me, waiting for my answer.

I shrugged in embarrassment. “I like the horses,” I admitted softly. I knew they wouldn't understand, but I said it anyway.

“Thank you, Kaer.” Mom-Woo smiled and patted my hand in a way that suggested that she really
did
understand. Then she glanced down the table. “And the rest of you? Why do you want to go to Linnea?”

Cindy and Parra looked at each other. Cindy said, “We want to become scouts. We want to go exploring—where we have something
important
to explore.”

Gamma said, “I want to stay with my family. No matter what.” Gampa reached over and squeezed her hand.

Lorrin looked up from his tea mug. He said, “I want to make a difference. A difference that counts.”

Big Jes grunted, “I like the work.” He thumped Klin meaningfully—Klin grinned sheepishly. “Yeah, that goes for me too.”

Mom-Lu said, “What Irm said before. I like seeing this family work together. I like hearing this family laugh. We didn't have that before. I don't want it to stop.”

Mom-Trey agreed, “We do best when we do things together. If nothing else, Linnea promises that.”

Finally, Mom-Woo spoke. “Well, I guess that settles that. But just to make sure we've considered both sides of the question. Does anyone want to argue for quitting?” She made a show of looking up and down the table. No one did. “Well, let me say this anyway. Even if we wanted to, we've come too far to turn back. Morra and I ran the numbers a month ago—just to see where we are.” She smiled with apple-pie satisfaction. “It should please you all to hear that we can't afford to quit. The penalties would bankrupt us. But then again, I hear no one arguing for quitting anyway, so the subject is just another horse turd forgotten on the prairie. Leave it for the dung-mice. Did I say that right?” Everyone laughed, because Mom-Woo was normally so
polite
. She would never use crude language. At least, not in English. “So let's celebrate that we all want to keep going—because we don't have any other options anyway. More tea, anyone?”

Rinky raised her hand then, not for tea, but because she wanted to speak. She was another one who didn't say much at meetings, mosty because she didn't think the moms would take her words seriously; but now she raised her hand now. Mom-Woo nodded to her. “Rinky?”

“Um, it seems to me ... that if we can handle anything Administor Rance says or does, then we can certainly handle anything Linnea has in store for us. I mean, what do we care about a few lousy work points? We'll make more bricks and we'll earn them back. Besides, I've got a great new work song!
You deserve a brick today—
”

Da-Lorrin laughed out loud at that, because it was so outrageous-stupid, and then so did everyone else. And that was that. Because whenever Da-Lorrin laughed,
everybody
laughed. Rinky smiled with delight at his guffaws. Whatever tension might have been left at the table, it evaporated in the sound of Lorrin's hearty booming roar. Aunt Morra tittered, Mom-Lu giggled, Big Jes chuckled appreciatively. Administor Rance was no longer a threat to us, just something else to leave for the mice and the beetles. Klin added jubilantly, “Right! We're bigger than any lump in the road—big enough to step over it and keep on going!”

And then, still chortling, Big Jes added that the difference between a horse turd and an administor was that at least a horse turd was useful as fertilizer, and Da-Lorrin roared again. We snickered about that comparison for a bit, with Klin and Parra each adding their own scatological dimensions to Big Jes' joke. The biggest laugh of all came when Klin suggested that Administor Rance would probably have to listen to the playback of this conversation in the same room with all her assistants.

At last, we all felt like a family again—so Mom-Woo adjourned the
meeting and ordered everyone to bed, because we still had to get up early the next day. We had a lot of bricks to make before winter set in.

But it wasn't quite over for me. I went over to Da and put my arms around him and just held onto him, smelling his wood-and-sweat smells, and told him how sorry I was for all this trouble. He held me close and patted my head softly and told me not to worry about it anymore, and that was all I needed to hear. I started crying again, but this time with relief.

CULTURE SHOCK

A FEW DAYS LATER—and we had no way of knowing if it was part of the larger program or if it was a suddenly decided result of the chocolate cake incident—the Dome Authority started a new series of seminars about life on Linnea.

Instead of our regular instructors, we now had real scouts coming in to speak to us. Now we started seeing pictures that weren't released to the public, and a lot of it wasn't very pretty. But then, I guess, a lot of pictures taken on our world wouldn't look all that wonderful to someone from the other side either, even with an explanation, so it probably wasn't fair to judge all of Linnea by just this little bit.

It wasn't unusual to have scouts leading the seminars. Scouts came back for intensive debriefing as often as they could. Most scouts stayed on Linnea no more than six months at a time, but some had gone on extended explorations and traveled for more than eighteen months before getting back to Earth. Whenever scouts came back, the administors had them speak to the trainees. The scouts spoke a lot more candidly about conditions on the other side than the instructors, and most of us appreciated their honesty, because they didn't try to hide the uglier side of the things they'd seen. Mom-Woo fretted that some of this might not be good for the “children” to hear, meaning me in particular; but by now, I had grown into a pretty
old
child. And what the scouts said fascinated me.

During the second week, three scouts came in we'd never seen before.
They'd just come back after a long time on the other side. All three wore boffili robes over Linnean kilts and aprons. The women were solid-muscled and leathery and they had their hair cut so short they looked like boys; one was short and stout, the other was tall and rangy; and they had weather-hardened faces.

The man had the same built-from-bricks appearance. He had a beard and eyes so dark they were beautiful in a scary sort of way. He wore a silver earring with a single red feather hanging from it. The way he stood, he looked important—not like a boss or a leader or someone like that, but like someone who
knew
. If I were ever in trouble, I would want him on my side; not because I liked him, but because I
didn't
like him and didn't ever want someone like him angry at me. I thought of him as the Man with the Silver Earring.

These three had come back to Earth to debrief and then go back through the gate. If everything went according to plan, they would lead a small group of families up to the northern plains. Several of the families ahead of us had just passed their certification exams; we knew some of them, the ones who had worked as teachers and trainers for us while they waited to cross over; but the Gate Authority had abruptly delayed their departures without saying why. People asked the scouts why the delay, but they just shook their heads and said that the administors still had things to discuss.

Smiller, the stout woman, had been one of the first scouts ever to cross over. She'd gone to Linnea even before Novotny, our language instructor; and while he'd spent most of his time studying videos and deciphering the language in a lab, she'd spent her time actually speaking it—and at far greater risk. She didn't talk about it much, but later we found out that Smiller had spent more time on the other side of the gate than almost any other human alive. She'd gone all the way to the south continent and back, and she'd traveled to seven different cities on mapping expeditions. She'd planted thousands of remotes and monitors all over everywhere. Whenever anyone had a question that no one else could answer, they took it to Smiller. Even Novotny acknowledged her as the primary authority on the nuances of the Linnean language. She had trained most of the language instructors and more than half of the active scouts—over two hundred people.

But it didn't seem like she wanted to train us. She glowered angrily as she watched us file into the room. And with her first words she laid it out clearly. “I'd rather get back to my work on Linnea. Administor Rance told me of your sorry progress—I told her to make sure you pack your
shovels. I expect you folks will dig a lot of graves before you learn—if you ever learn at all. I don't think you have what it takes. I'd just as soon drop the lot of you and start over. And don't anyone assume that we have too much invested in you to do that. We don't. You can consider these sessions our one last attempt to salvage you.”

Behind her, pictures began flashing on the display wall. She didn't bother to explain any of them. “Let's talk about Linnea now. You don't understand how much difficulty you will have trying to think like a Linnean. You will slip, you will speak of something that doesn't exist over there or something they don't know about yet—like the speed of sound or the speed of light—and the people around you will blink in sudden confusion, wondering what you just said. And you won't even understand what you just did, not until you go back and replay the conversation in your mind. Do that enough times and the people around you will begin to think you a little bit odd. And after they've decided that you're odd ... then it's a very short step to the accusation of maizlish behavior. And if that happens, you lose everything you've worked for. If you survive ... if you escape to the west and go into exile, don't think about starting again in some new location. The word will go out to every settlement. It may take a while, but the news will travel. We have several families in exile now. We may have to bring them back, we may try to build a settlement of exiles as a halfway station. We don't know yet.

“I cannot understate the seriousness of the effort required. Just as we have concerns for your safety, so do we have the same concerns for the Linneans. You will have an effect on the people you meet. If you endanger yourselves, yes, we will make every effort to get you out safely; but we cannot rescue the people you endanger around you—the innocent Linneans who will have the misfortune to befriend you, and who will suffer the same consequences you will, when you fail.

“We have grave concerns over the cultural contamination of Linnea. More so as we have learned the dangers. We have had these concerns for ten years—from the very first day we discovered that people lived on Linnea. It took us four years of unseen monitoring to learn the language and the culture and the day-to-day behavior of the people well enough to risk penetration. That first contact represented an enormous gamble—and the risk increases with every subsequent contact.

“In the six years since first insertion, scouts have brought back books, newspapers, all kinds of artifacts, anything we could buy, borrow or steal. We've had a lot of difficulty gathering items that you now take for granted. Think about it. We arrived with no money, no identities, no
credential of any kind. We had some boffili robes we thought we could trade. We had some gold nuggets in reserve, just in case. We thought we understood the market—but what if a tradesman asked us for a license or a permit? Or any kind of document?

“So we operated on the fringes for another two years. We penetrated their society slowly. We acted with careful deliberation, and we made few assumptions. Circumstances have repeatedly proven our caution justified. Look at these pictures behind me. We've found a lot of fear and suspicion in the Linnean culture. These people live a hard life—not a joyous one. They see danger everywhere. Something in their history has made them fearful. Do you wonder why we put you through such rigorous training?

“Five years ago, we began moving the first family groups over, only a few, and we kept them away from the cities. We put them on the trails west and let them join whatever wagon trains would have them. Two of our wagon families disappeared within a month of insertion. Their monitors stopped working, and we have no idea where they went or what happened to them. Another family was expelled from the train they had joined; we still don't understand why. But three of our families did complete their westward trek and have since settled in as members of flourishing communities.

“That small success encouraged us to insert another dozen families. Seven of those families took root. Two returned for additional training. Two others ran afoul of the Authority; we were able to pull one of those families out. The other retreated into the high mountains. Our contact with them remains sporadic, and we have considerable concern about their mental state; but they have refused our repeated offers of extraction and we remain hopeful we can get them back into the mainstream at some point, or build a halfway station around them. The last family simply disappeared, possibly killed or captured by hostiles. We don't know what happened, but as a direct result of these missteps we decided to increase the coverage of our monitoring technology. Despite the increased risk of detection or contamination, we judged the additional coverage absolutely necessary for the protection of the next set of families crossing over.