Child of Earth

by David Gerrold

  Earth animals are designed for Earth gravity, for Earth sunlight, for Earth atmosphere; on Linnea the stresses occurred differently. And sometimes, those stresses would occur in ways that put more strain on different parts of the system. Until the necessary muscles grew and the reflexes adapted, Earth-born creatures could be at serious risk for broken legs. This means you, stupid.

  Earth gravity requires Earth-walking. You have to lean forward, shifting your center of gravity, almost falling, and put your foot out to catch yourself, shift your weight onto that foot, continue almost falling, and put the other foot out to catch, shift your gravity forward again, and so on. On Linnea, with less gravity, you have to lean farther to walk. You walk with a different gait. An Earth gait won’t work, because you aren’t shifting your center of gravity far enough forward. Running is a whole other problem. On Linnea, you have to run falling down.

  But that part was still theory for us. We wouldn’t know it until we actually got to Linnea. Even the few days we spent in simulators wasn’t enough; it only gave us a sense of how much different our physical activities would become. The good news was that we’d be able to lift heavy things with less effort. The bad news was that all our muscles would ache in unfamiliar places for the first two or three weeks until we adjusted.

  Some of this interested me, some of it bored me to exhaustion; but the arguments and discussions over dinner always held my attention, because I not only got to hear what different members of the family thought, I got to hear a lot about their past lives and experiences, things I never knew before. Aunt Morra had been a dancer. In a club. Earning money for school. That’s where she met Irm and Bhetto, who were also students, already in a partnership contract. Rinky, who was my favorite sister, had been adopted by Big Jes and Little Klin before they joined the rest of the family. Big Jes and Little Klin had been in Little Klin’s family, they met Rinky in the system; when their previous family rejected her adoption, they moved out and started a new family, but they couldn’t get the adoption approved without guarantees of continuity, so they joined Da’s family. Da only had two wives then, and only Gamma and Gampa—except Gamma and Gampa had never been partnered. Gamma was Mom-Lu’s mother, and Gampa was Mom-Woo’s father. Mom-Trey came along later, with Cindy and Parra from her previous marriage.

  I knew a little of this from before, but now I was getting a lot more details—because now we were inventing new histories for all of us. Linnean histories.

  Once we got to the other side, we couldn’t just pretend we’d been there all along. People would ask us questions—things like, “Where did your Gampa meet the Old Woman?” which was kind of like asking, “What church do you go to?” And that was always a tricky question because every church kept records of every birth, death and marriage—so we couldn’t just claim to have come from some city here or some church there, because if anyone checked those records and they didn’t find our name, they’d know we were lying, and that meant that if we weren’t part of a known church, we weren’t recognized as human, therefore we were demons. Maiz-likka. And therefore dead.

  So we had to have backgrounds that were consistent, but couldn’t be checked—like if the church burned down and the records were lost. Or maybe we were the lost survivors of a family that had emigrated west a hundred years ago. Or, if we wanted to live really dangerous, we were wildlings—folks who had left the Church without permission. Except that was really, really close to being maiz-likka. Some places tolerated wildlings. Places where they needed extra hands to bring in the crops. Others drove them away.

  Human beings had only lived on Linnea for three thousand years, Linnean time. They had mosty forgotten that they had come from Earth. The anthropologists weren’t sure how that had happened—there were a lot of theories. The theory that everybody liked the most suggested that some kind of catastrophe had happened that had decimated the settlements. It had probably happened early. Maybe in the first two or three generations, before they had a chance to establish a sense of permanency. This was logical; Linnea’s history since then recorded three major plagues and seven lesser ones. Maybe the survivors of the first plague no longer believed in Earth. I could understand that. If you’re living in a mud hut, it’s hard to believe in towering cities and silver airships. I remembered how strange the chopper looked when it came clattering over the snow. Maybe the tales of Earth seemed so fantastic to the generations on Linnea that they became fairy tales. Maybe the fairy story of the Old Woman in the Grass made more sense to them. Da said it best; it’s a lot easier to believe in the Old Woman in the Grass, when you have old women and grass in your experience. Lots of grass. And probably lots of old women too. That’s when Mom-Woo slapped him. Not hard, but hard enough to make everybody laugh.

  Linnea has two large sprawling continents, each larger than Asia, and four small ones, about the size of Australia. She’s got two big oceans, one larger than the Pacific. For most of her history, Linnea had people only on the western edge of one of the big continents, with settlements creeping slowly east. About a thousand years ago, settlements were established on two of the smaller Australia-sized land masses. A hundred years ago, or so, the Linneans finally reached the eastern edge of the large western continent. That was the one we were learning how to live on. Most of the settlements were young, it was a frontier situation, and most of the people were grudgingly tolerant of each other, because there was too much work to do and not enough hands; they couldn’t afford to waste anyone. At least, that’s what we were counting on.

  Some of the scouts thought that it might be easier to infiltrate the bigger cities on the eastern continent, but Authority was reluctant to take the risk. Observations of even the smaller towns suggested a frightening level of theocratic control. Linnean society was in a kind of dark ages. Although we weren’t allowed to see the pictures from the remotes, the scouts reported that witch-burnings had become common in some of the larger settlements. We couldn’t take chances.

  Some people on this side thought we should just send in an army. We had bullets, bombs and beams; they had rocks and crossbows. We had tanks and armored troop carriers; they had great-horses and wooden wagons. We had VTOLs and choppers, we had satellites and robots and probes; they had ... what? Nothing.

  Da told us of one of the seminar series he’d sat in on, where the possibility of repossession—they didn’t want to use the word invasion—had been discussed. The military experts said that a relatively small strike force could capture the average Linnean town in a single day. It would be like Martian war machines invading medieval France or frontier America or pre-colonial Africa. There would be no resistance. It would simply be a matter of rolling in and taking control.

  The real problem would come after the invasion.

  The Linneans would simply disappear into the surrounding countryside; ten meters into the sea of grass and you’re invisible. The result would be at least three generations of culture shock, occupation, continued resistance, guerilla warfare and terrorism. The effectiveness of the resistance would not diminish with time; it would grow—especially as the Linneans learned the nature of Earth technology. The Linneans already knew how to build catapults and fire-bombs. They would be determined, angry and ferocious. They would see the invaders from Earth as monsters and demons; for them, it would be a holy war and they would fight to the death.

  Da said that was why even the most optimistic of the military planners advised against any kind of direct intervention. We had no real understanding of the psychology of the Linneans, only a few broad strokes and educated guesses. It wasn’t just culture shock, it would be cultural destruction; it would be genocide. It would be one more failure to learn from the lessons of history.

  The problem was that there were people in Authority who were impatient. They didn’t want to do this the slow and careful way; they wanted the land and the lumber now. They said that the Linneans would just have to be assimilated one way or another, but the need for the new world had become critical. The Ga
te Authority had adamantly refused; the charter made the Gate Authority an independent agency, but the funding governments were now making ugly noises about decertifying the charter and replacing the Authority. The administors were threatening to shut down the gate entirely if that were done. Da didn’t know if they were bluffing or serious, but he said that the political situation had become delicate.

  We talked about that for a while. Gampa, who hardly ever said anything in these discussions, cleared his throat politely, and suggested that this might explain the attitudes of our recent visitors. Gampa didn’t speak much, but when he did, he always said something important. If the visitors had already made up their minds what to do about Linnea, they would not want to see Linneans as people worthy of respect. They couldn’t dare to see Linneans as having any dignity at all—because the moment they recognized that, they would also have to recognize the essential immorality of any plan for repossession. Invasion. Destruction. Genocide. That made us angry all over again. Twice over. Because if the repossession plan went through, then all of us would be drafted as interpreters. We would be forced to betray the people we had learned to identify with. That realization left us with an ugly simmering resentment.

  But whatever the funding governments intended to do in the future, right now we were still down in a hole, still drinking grass soup and eating grass stew and sleeping under grass blankets.

  KACKS

  SHORTLY AFTER THAT, we began a new series of classes. Seminars. Exercises. Workshops. The snow had halted and a great-wagon came out from Callo City. It was one of the big ones, two stories high, with two stoves and sealed glass windows, and actual velvet curtains; the best part, it had padded seats. The whole family bundled up, climbed up the steps into the wagon and bounced and jostled together all the way into town.

  Gamma and Gampa and all three of the moms rode down below in the enclosed section of the wagon, all wrapped in blankets and huddled around the stove, taking turns rocking the babies. Morra and Irm rode with them too. The rest of us sat up topside and cheered the melting snow and slush, the promised end of winter.

  The air still felt bitter-cold on our cheeks, but we all looked rosy and bright, happy to get out of the cramped burrow, even for school. We laughed and passed around flasks of hot spice-tea. We sang defiant songs, daring the winds and the kacks to howl; we would just howl louder. The great-wagon rolled and bumped and skidded across the frozen ground; the great-horses snorted and stamped. The wooden bells on their harnesses klacked and klonged.

  The road cut round the whitened hills; the snow glowed amber in the day. We’d gotten a late start, but we still expected to reach Callo City before nightfall. We’d have a hot dinner at the inn and even a community bath; then we’d bundle up in warm soft beds and sleep without care, so we could all rise fresh and ready for tomorrow’s sessions. But an unannounced set of flurries had dropped a few more fingers of snow on the road in late afternoon and that slowed us down, putting us perhaps as much as an hour behind schedule. The great-horses crunched slowly through the fresh white blanket, picking their steps as carefully as old ladies. Already the westering sky shone pink and rose. Big Jes and Little Klin no longer argued about the mechanics of the show; they simply appreciated it in silence.

  Twilight on Linnea lasted an hour longer than on Earth. The snow glistened, the magic hour sparkled. Soon the lanterns on the wagon would cast a warming glow, and we’d bundle across the plain in a pool of bright. This time, we had two of the smaller great-horses pulling the wagon; Kilter and Kale. Usually, we had the larger, older horses; but Kilter and Kale had not had much chance to exercise since winter began and they had become restless in their stalls. The trainers felt that perhaps the time had come to let them earn their apples the old-fashioned way, working for them.

  Kilter and Kale looked proud. It even seemed as if they jingled their bells deliberately. They were the first two great-horses born on Earth, and they had more monitors implanted than most of the scouts and trainees. The scientists wanted to know what would happen when Linnean life-forms returned to Earth-normal gravity. Could they survive, or would the additional strain on their bones and muscles shorten their life spans? Would they die young? Would their offspring gradually dwarf back to Earth-normal sizes? And if so, how many generations? Even more important, could they crossbreed with regular-sized horses to create new Earth breeds of greater size and strength? We had few answers, but we made up for it with extra questions.

  Abruptly, the horses whinnied and stopped. The great-wagon skidded as the driver leaned on the brakes. I didn’t know the driver, but we had two of the younger scouts with us, riding lookout. Willow and Burr. We knew them from class. Both of them had been to Linnea, and both had met real Linneans. They had even visited the real Callo City, but only for a one-day walk-through. Neither had engaged in any lengthy interactions. Next visit, perhaps.

  Da called forward. “Why did we stop?”

  “The horses—they’ve called a halt.”

  “Yes, I see that. Why?”

  “They do that sometimes,” said the driver. “They don’t like the gravity here.”

  “Did they say that?”

  The driver didn’t answer. He began rummaging through the warm blankets at his feet, looking for his own flask of hot spice-tea. “You can’t work these horses too long in Earth-gravity. It puts too much strain on them. They don’t have the same endurance as they would on Linnea. Every so often, they have to stop and rest. So they stop when they feel like it.”

  “How long?”

  “Fifteen minutes at least. More likely thirty. You might as well go down below and keep warm.”

  “Perhaps we should,” said Da. “Will you come in with us?”

  “No, we can’t. We have to keep watch.” He glanced to me, then added, “For kacks.”

  “Do you think they’ll come this far south?”

  “It depends.”

  “On?”

  “On the size of their litters, how much food they’ve had, how much their bellies growl.” Driver shrugged. “Kacks—hard to say. Kacks always have room for another meal. Even if they’ve just eaten.”

  Willow put a hand on Driver’s shoulder. “Enough of that talk, you’ll scare the children.”

  Driver grunted and drank from his flask. He pulled his boffili robe closer around his shoulders.

  “Nothing to worry about,” said Burr. “We’ve got growlers. And if the growlers don’t work—” She held up her crossbow.

  “The administors have given you permission to shoot them?”

  Burr hesitated. “Only as a last resort. But we have tranquilizer and taser weapons.” She patted the bulge under her robe. “You didn’t hear that from me. Those kinds of things don’t exist on Linnea. But only if those don’t work will we use the crossbows. We had a hard enough time capturing those damn kacks, all to make the dome more realistic. I understand the argument—we need to keep the pig-mice and bunny-deer populations in check—but sometimes I think we have given ourselves much more trouble than we need.”

  “Have you seen many kacks out here?”

  “Kaer,” Da patted my back. “You ask too many questions.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Burr. She smiled at me. “Yes, we’ve seen kacks out here, but only from a distance. They haven’t come near the wagons.”

  “I heard—well, Patta Kelly said that kacks followed their wagon almost all the way to their burrow.”

  “And when did Patta say this happened?”

  “Last Nineday. After last class.”

  Willow and Burr looked at each other, then both looked back to me. Willow shook his head. “It didn’t happen. At least, not like Patta tells it. They saw kacks, yes. But the kacks kept their distance.”

  “Do you think we’ll see any?”

  “We’ve already seen them,” said Willow. “You probably can’t make them out from here—they keep well beyond the circle of the light—but if you had eyes sharp enough to see through yellow twilight, yo
u would have already spotted three large kacks hunkering low on those hills over there. Watching us.” He inclined his head north.

  “How do you know?”

  He opened his robe and pulled out a tablet display. “See? Those three red blips? Kacks. The green blip? Us.”

  “How far?” I gulped.

  “Far enough,” Willow said. “They track all the wagons now. They’ve done it for several weeks. They’ve learned the roads. We think they’ve begun teaching the pups to hunt.”

  “How many pups?”

  “Only four. The little one didn’t make it. We haven’t implanted them yet, so we have to track them with overhead probes and cameras. The pups all have white fur, so that makes it even harder to spot them against the snow. But the infrared should give us good targets.” He started tapping at the display. “Ahh, we’ve got them now. They’ve spaced themselves out along the ridge. Hunting behavior. They don’t have the endurance of the great-horses, so they run a relay to exhaust their prey. We haven’t seen the pups do this before.” He unclipped his phone and punched for Authority. “Yeah, Willow here. We might have a situation. Have you got us on monitor? Look at the positioning of the pups. ... Yes, definitely a shift in behavior. No, they haven’t moved yet. But look at their readings—they look more intense than usual. I don’t think we can count on them holding back much longer. The flush of adrenalin could push them over the edge. And remember, we haven’t implanted the pups yet. What do you advise? Yes, we have a kit. I think. Wait a minute, we’ll look.” He motioned to Burr.

  Burr came back to the passenger area of the wagon and motioned for me to get up. I stepped forward while she pushed the cushion aside and lifted the seat to access the compartment beneath. She pulled out a large plastic case. “I’ve got it,” she called. She opened it up, looked and added, “All current.” Inside the kit, I saw various medical supplies, but also a few things with metal and straps that I didn’t understand.