Child of Earth

by David Gerrold

  First, we had no idea how many people were over there. We knew that there had been at least three major plagues in the past three thousand years, but we still believed that there were at least three million people living on Linnea, maybe as many as ten million. That was just too many. Even if we had a million-man army, it wouldn’t be enough; because we would never be able to find them all.

  And second, it wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t be right. These people had lived their whole lives in a society that had adapted itself to life on Linnea. If we took it away from them, the cultural shock could be as devastating as when the first European settlers invaded the African and American continents. Plus, if we came in with force to take over their land, their world, then we’d be establishing a precedent that it was all right for the next guy to come in with force and take it away from us.

  There was a third reason too. The sociologists had never had an experiment like this. They wanted to see what kind of society the Linneans had invented for themselves before it was tainted by contact. I could see the value in that, but I didn’t agree with it. Human beings aren’t experiments. Of course, that point came up too. Little Klin said it. And that’s when the argument got really interesting—because that’s when Bhetto replied, “If human beings aren’t experiments, then why did Authority build this dome, and what are we doing in it? We’re an experiment too. The only difference is that we know it.”

  Nobody really had a reply to that. The conversation sort of trailed off into the whys and wherefores and justifications for invisibly integrating scouts into Linnean society, and besides, it’s too late for the pebbles to vote after the avalanche has already started.

  MORE SNOW

  JUST BEFORE MIDWINTER ENDED, we had another three weeks of snow. That wasn’t fun. The burrow was cold and damp, and we couldn’t dry it out. We didn’t have enough fuel. We had to damp the fire by noon to save wood and grass-bricks and boffili chips. We all had runny noses all the time, everybody had a cough, and if we hadn’t already been vaccinated against seven hundred and fifty-seven different possible infections, we probably would have all died of quadruple pneumonia.

  Bhetto and Little Klin were sure they’d figured out why we got this sudden unexpected storm. The Arizona farms needed more water. Authority could have piped the water directly from the frozen world, but Arizona wouldn’t need the water for another two or three months, so what better place to store it than inside Linnea Dome? Some of it would raise the local water table, but most of the runoff would go directly into Lake Linnea, with the overflow getting piped westward as the water level rose. So the more overflow, the more water they’d have to sell. Whether or not that was the reason for the midwinter snowstorm, that was definitely where the snow would eventually go.

  None of us were very happy about it. The snow piled up higher than ever, and we went from cold and damp to bitter-cold and sodden. We’d peel off our clothes and do our best to wring them dry, lest they be frozen into boards by morning. We’d lay them on the edge of the firebed and hope for enough heat to turn the damp to steam.

  Finally, in frustration, Mom-Woo scheduled a curse so we could all rage at how angry we were about everything. Everybody took a turn; we went round and round the circle, with each person standing up and cursing all the different objects of his or her rage, everything we could think of. You couldn’t leave anything out, and nobody could interrupt. Everybody had to curse. And it wasn’t enough just to shout your anger—you also had to be inventive.

  We started out heating ourselves up with our irritation and annoyance about the snow. We didn’t have a lot to say about the cold and the wet that we hadn’t said a hundred times already, so very quickly we moved on to the folks who’d ordered the snow. They hadn’t given us enough food, enough fuel to keep warm, enough time to prepare for the winter. So we started cursing the administors, listing all the things we’d like to do to them, all the things we’d like to see happen to them.

  “I wish they’d get their heads caught in the hind end of a boffili.”

  “I wish they’d all get eaten by kacks—except kacks would spit them out because they don’t like the taste.”

  “I wish they had to live in burrows like us.”

  “Oh, that’s cruel—”

  “If the administors had to dig their own homes, they’d have a lot more appreciation for what we have to do out here.”

  “How do you know they don’t? I thought the administors had to have served as scouts.”

  “None of them had to suffer winter. Not like this.”

  “No, only on Linnea, where it gets worse—”

  “Hey!” interrupted Mom-Trey. “Did you forget? We made this circle to curse!”

  “Oh, yeah, right—” Big Jes picked up the thought. “You know what I don’t like about the administors? I don’t like their little beady eyes and their narrow little mouths and their nasty expressions.”

  “And don’t forget those ugly earrings they wear,” added Little Klin.

  “I hate their shoes,” said Mom-Lu. “They look so uncomfortable.”

  “No taste,” agreed Aunt Morra, clucking her tongue. “You’d think with all their authority, they could at least have some sense of style.”

  “Maybe they could wear scarves. Bright red to go with their bloodshot eyes?”

  “A feather boa,” said Little Klin.

  Auncle Irm laughed out loud. “I’d like to see that!” And then everyone began laughing. And then it got even sillier. “And the scouts. Have you ever noticed that the scouts all look constipated?”

  “It comes from drinking all that grass soup and eating all that grass salad.”

  “It comes from eating too much boffili.”

  “It comes from having to deal with administors.”

  “No,” said Da. “It comes from being so tight-assed, they just can’t poop.”

  Big Jes laughed. “Even when they want to poop, they can’t. It all plugs up inside. That’s why they all have brown eyes—the internal filling showing through.”

  “If they want to poop, they have to stand in a high wind with their mouths open and let it all get blown out the other end.”

  It went on and on like that. Most of it was pretty silly, some of it was just plain stupid. But it made us feel better to say it. We didn’t end up any warmer. It didn’t fill our bellies. And it didn’t dry us out. But we ended up feeling just a little bit better, and that was something anyway. And even for a few days after, all that anyone had to do was mention the scouts or the administors and we’d all start smiling in remembrance of the most outrageous remarks.

  But we all knew the biggest joke of all—that we had chosen this. That was what made the rest so funny and proud at the same time. Because we could resign any time we wanted. All we had to do was take a family vote and call a scout. We could have hot food, clean sheets and steaming baths in just a couple of hours. And as the winter dragged on, we heard that a few families had done just that. I think it was baths I missed the most. Real baths. We all kept clean, after a fashion, but it wasn’t the same.

  Every sixth day, Mom-Woo would make us bathe. We’d boil up a big tub of hot water and everybody would line up. When each person’s turn came, they’d strip off their clothes and the moms would scrub them all over with hot soapy lather. Then they’d rinse them with hot wet rags. Then they’d wrap the shivering victim in a boffili robe to dry off, hairy side in. The thick fur of the boffili mane worked better than a towel. By then, the moms had already started scrubbing the next person in line. We could wash everyone with just two tubs of water.

  We never got as clean as we wanted, so in addition to feeling cold and wet all the time, we also felt dirty. And as the fuel supplies dwindled, we started bathing every ninth day. It was just too much, and one afternoon I started crying in Da-Lorrin’s lap that I didn’t want to do this anymore. I just wanted to go home. Da tried to comfort me, but I couldn’t hear him, I felt so bad. I ached all over, I was shivering and hungry, and I felt
dirty and ugly. As Da patted my head, I could feel how stringy my hair had become.

  That night, Da called a family meeting. Everybody knew what he wanted to discuss. Everybody had seen my outburst. Everybody sat around the inside of the burrow, on the benches we’d carved out of the dirt. The little-uns huddled on the firebed between me and Cindy. In the flickering lantern light, we all looked like strangers. Mom-Woo, Da-Lorrin, Big Jes, Little Klin, Rinky, Auncle Irm, Bhetto, Aunt Morra, Gamma and Gampa, Parra, Mom-Trey, and Mom-Lu. I’d never thought about why all these separate people had come together as a family; I’d always assumed that we were family because we all fit together. But tonight, everybody looked different, like a group of people who’d just met for the first time. I couldn’t imagine them staying together. Maybe Big Jes and Little Klin. Maybe Gamma and Gampa. Maybe Da-Lorrin and Mom-Woo. But the rest? I had the strangest feeling that if we left this room tonight, we’d all scatter like embers in the wind, quickly burning out in the cold night.

  Da spoke quietly. “We have to think about the children.” He said it in English.

  “I thought we were thinking about the children when we signed up for this misadventure,” Bhetto replied, always the first to sink his teeth into the argument.

  Da nodded. “We thought that life on a new world would be better for everyone. I think most of us still think that. Maybe Linnea isn’t the right world. Maybe we miscalculated. Maybe we underestimated the difficulties. And maybe we’re not suited for pioneer life. I think we’ve all had our doubts. Maybe we should talk it out.”

  Big Jes, who hardly ever argued with Da, shook his head. “How many times do we have to talk this out? We’ve been having this conversation for months. It always ends the same way. We have to stick it out. Because that’s who we are. We’re bigger than our problems. We’re not quitters. Blah blah blah. And every time we remind ourselves of that, we’re good for two days, and then something else happens and we have to have the conversation again. We’ve spent how many months now trying to convince ourselves that we want to do this? Either we’re in this or we aren’t. So either we quit tonight or we stop pissing on ourselves.”

  A couple of people applauded, but not for very long. Everybody looked to Da for his response. “I could just as easily have made the same speech, Jes. And I probably would have, under other circumstances. But you saw Kaer this afternoon, everybody did. I’ve never seen such anguish in any child, and for the first time since we began, I actually felt guilty for putting Kaer and all of the rest of us into this.”

  “You didn’t do it alone. We all voted. We all came willingly.”

  “But—well, yes. But I still feel that—” He trailed off.

  “Lorrin,” said Irm. “For you, of all of us, to have doubts, it’s startling. Because you’re the one who always stood firm. You’ve always been the strength. Whenever any of the rest of us felt frustrated or weak, all we had to do was look to you and remind ourselves what kind of strength is possible. We weren’t going to let you down, we weren’t going to let each other down. And speaking only for myself, I have to say, there have been times when I’ve wondered if you were truly human inside. Sometimes you’ve seemed so obsessive that I wondered if you had lost all rationality. So I have to admit, for you to express doubts now—well, it’s refreshing. It kind of confirms how bad things have gotten in this hole. Finally, even Lorrin has misgivings. Thank the Old Woman in the Grass. Lorrin has revealed he has feelings. But—so what?” Irm smiled grimly. “More than once, you’ve said to the rest of us that the emotional reason is the single stupidest reason for doing anything. Yes, we can have our emotions—you’ve said it over and over—but our emotions don’t control us, we control our emotions. So what’s it to be, Lorrin? Who’s in charge here? Us—or our feelings?”

  Da smiled gently, that slow thoughtful expression that reveals nothing about what he’s thinking, only that he’s listening, hearing and considering. He finally responded, “Yes, of course. And that’s why I asked for this meeting. We’ve had months to live with our feelings. Now, perhaps it’s time to apply our logic. Will it be good for us to continue this way? Are we the right people for this job?”

  “If we aren’t,” said Big Jes, “then who is?”

  “Eh?”

  He nodded toward the other room, where we gathered for video classes. “You’ve seen what the other families are up to. They’re clumsy, they’re undisciplined, they’re sick and weak. They all have lousy accents, they’re cold and wet and hungry. They’re badly trained—”

  “Just like us,” Parra said, shivering in the robe she shared with Rinky.

  “No,” said Jes. “Look around. We’ve trained ourselves better than any other family, and we work harder than anyone else in the dome. We look like Linneans, we talk like Linneans, we eat like Linneans—”

  “—when we eat, which isn’t very often anymore—”

  Jes ignored it. “If we’re not capable of doing this job, then nobody is.”

  After he said that, there was silence in the burrow. Because he was right.

  “We can’t run away from the responsibility,” Jes continued. “Authority has invested over a million dollars in us by now. Maybe ten times that much. We don’t know. But if any of this is going to work, we’re the ones who have to make it work, because if we can’t, no one can.”

  Da nodded and looked across at Jes. “What if you’re right? What if no one can?”

  Jes snapped back immediately, “What if no one tries?”

  “Why do we have to be the ones?”

  “Because, once upon a time, when we still lived under a blue sky and not a yellow one, we said that we were the ones. We gave our word.”

  Da continued to nod. “I hear the words. I hear all the words. I’ve said them myself, many times. Not only in family meetings, but out there in the fields, in the dirt and the snow—I’ve reminded myself over and over again. But this afternoon, with Kaer crying in my lap—I felt helpless.”

  “So you would give the entire decision to Kaer?”

  And in that moment, every eye in the room turned to me. And I suddenly realized this meeting wasn’t about Da, had never been about Da, had always been about my frustrated outburst. I felt strangely detached. I felt like an alien in my own home, as if all of these people had suddenly become something I couldn’t become, couldn’t even comprehend. I felt left behind. That feeling of being in a room full of strangers came back stronger than ever.

  I wanted to get out of this hole, more than anything. I wanted out of this burrow. I wanted to stop being cold and hungry and wet. I wanted a bath, a cup of hot chocolate and big fat hamburger smothered in juicy red relish. I wanted a root beer float with vanilla ice cream. I wanted clean sheets and a soft nightshirt. I wanted everything we’d left behind—everything we’d said we wanted to get away from. I wanted to quit.

  Mom-Woo asked softly. “Kaer, darling? Do you remember why you wanted to come to Linnea? Because of the horses. You said you wanted to go to Horse World. Remember? Every time you talked about the great-horses, your eyes lit up. The first time you saw the horses, your whole face shone with wonder. You radiated such sheer happiness, everyone in the family laughed with joy. You love the horses. More than anyone else in this burrow, you’re the one who wanted Linnea the most. I don’t want to say that your love of the horses was the only reason we chose this world, because it wasn’t, but it was certainly one of the important reasons. None of us had ever seen you so happy ever before in your life. When we all sat down to make our final decision, Da said it for all of us, ‘There are lots of places we can go, and there are lots of good reasons for choosing any of those gates; but I think we should add one more question to our discussion. I think we should choose a world that makes the children happy.’ So if this world isn’t making you happy, Kaer, we want you to say so.”

  By now, there were tears rolling down my cheeks, probably leaving dirty streaks in the ever-present soot and grime that we all wore as burrow-makeup. I shook my
head. “I don’t want—” I started, then stopped. I choked on the words and tried again. “I don’t want to be the reason anyone quits or stays. I don’t want it to be my fault.”

  Mom-Woo nodded. “What do you want to do, dear?”

  “What I want—?” I shook my head, I choked on the words. All of these strange people, these orange jack-o-lantern faces, lined and drawn, with rings and paint and hair in the Linnean style. Like American Indians, like the Inuit, like the natives of some small forgotten village in some dark southern jungle. All these aliens. These natives of Linnea, asking me if I wanted to go home. All I had to do was click my heels three times and wish—

  But all these people had worked so hard, so long. We couldn’t quit now. It would all go to waste. Well, no—it wouldn’t go to waste. We could continue on as trainers. Or atmosphere people, living in Callo City, helping others to learn how to become Linneans, so they could take our place and go on through the gate and actually live on the new world and ... and ... ride the horses. No, we’d worked too hard, we couldn’t give it up. We couldn’t quit. I knew the speech as well as anyone.

  “I don’t know what I want,” I said. “But this isn’t fun anymore. We’re all hurting too much. I just want the hurting to stop.”

  Mom-Woo looked across at Da-Lorrin. “Kaer is right about one thing. This isn’t fun. We are not having a good time.”

  Big Jes said, “That’s no reason to quit.”

  Mom met his eyes. “That’s not what I said. That’s what you heard.” To the rest of the room, she said, “This stopped being fun a long time ago. We have no holidays, we have no treats, we have no joy down here. We have nothing to look forward to except the possibility of escape. We’ve imprisoned ourselves. Maybe this is part of the training—maybe the administors have to do this to sort us all out, so that only the toughest of the tough will survive the training. Maybe this is how we harden ourselves for the trials still to come.” Abruptly, she laughed. “And maybe this is the easy part.”