If we had actually been on Linnea, we’d have had to dig out a barn and a root cellar and a fuel cellar as well, but the house we built proved that we knew what we were doing, so that was enough. The Dome Authority didn’t want us building things we weren’t going to need or use here.
We did have a small fuel cellar, though, which was a much politer name for it than it deserved. At the end of every day, Parra and Cindy and Rinky and I had to go out and gather up all the dried out manure we could find. Either horse manure or boffili manure would do. Sometimes we went over to the corral, and sometimes we looked along the trails, but usually we had to go over to where the herd was grazing. We couldn’t take a great-horse, but we could take a wheelbarrow, and we had to bring it back full. The manure had to be completely dried out before we could toss it in the fuel cellar. In the winter, this would be our only source of fuel for the fire.
If we had started earlier, we would have harvested razor grass and dried it, rolling it up in bundles and pressing them in the brick presses to make fuel bricks for our fires. But we needed to concentrate on building the house first, so the brick presses were mosty busy. After we finished making bricks for the house, we did make some for the fire, but we were quickly running out of time.
We stored as many fuel bricks as we could make, but Da-Lorrin had calculated how many we’d need per day, and we knew we wouldn’t be able to make enough to last through our first winter. And we’d already used most of our grass making tarpay. In future years, we’d start earlier and store a lot more fuel bricks; but for now, we kids had to take the wheelbarrows and go out looking for manure.
When it came time to put a roof on the house, we used the heavy axles from the wagon as cross beams. And we used the chassis boards too. Then we laid the rest of the planks across them to support a ceiling of bricks and earth. Then we laid more planks, more bricks and more dirt. The roof had to be strong enough to support the weight of a boffili stampede and thick enough to insulate us against a range fire. The scouts had told us that two meters of ceiling should be enough, but Irm and Bhetto had both been trained as engineers and decided that an extra meter of thickness was worth the extra effort.
One week after tossing the last shovelful of dirt onto the roof, we saw the first sprouts of razor grass poking through. That was good. The root system of the razor grass was a tough interwoven mat. Give it a few months to grow and it would knit the dirt of the roof into a strong solid piece.
That evening it started to snow.
It was almost like it had been waiting for us to finish.
WINTER BEGINS
IT STARTED WITH A COUPLE DAYS of light flurries while they tested the snow machines. Then we had two more days of gentle snow that drifted down in feathery drifts but didn’t really get in anyone’s way.
We had already moved most of our heavy stuff underground, but we still had a lot of little things to pack away for the winter, and we had to make sure that the ventilation chimneys were clean before we socked in for the coming storm. Linnean storms usually lasted a week at a time, sweeping across the plains like great avalanching blankets. We’d seen simulations of the way the storms formed up in the great northern ocean before they came rolling inexorably south, so we had some idea what to expect. The arc of the Desolation Mountains wouldn’t let them spill west, so they angled eastward, meeting the hot air of the prairie and creating great walls of lightning and rain in the summer and smothering white in the winter. We wouldn’t have satellite access on Linnea, at least not for a while, so until then we’d have no idea how long any storm would last. So we had to assume and prepare for the worst.
The snow continued intermittently while the Authority ran various weather tests, and we used the time as best we could. We wrapped ourselves a little warmer and concentrated on the last few chores we needed to do. We had to put canvas covers over everything we wouldn’t be taking down into the house and we had to pull all the rest of our winter supplies down out of the wagon we had been living in. It was cold and nasty work, and Mom-Woo drove us all harder than ever. She fussed and fretted and nagged, and a couple of times she even raised her voice impatiently at Da-Lorrin.
Maybe it was just the tension coming from the administors in the Dome Authority. And maybe she knew something in that secret way that mothers always do. And maybe it was just winter. The days had turned bitter-cold and everybody had to work long hours, and we were all cranky and hurting all the time.
Mosty, it was because we didn’t know how long winter would last. On Linnea, sometimes the snow stays on the ground for as long as six months. They say they get a gut-buster like that every seventh year. Administor Rance hadn’t given us any idea how long we would have to stay underground, but Mom-Woo assumed that was part of the test and she acted like we had to lay in half a year’s supplies.
For that, we’d dug a snow locker—another underground room—and after the snow came down, we filled it with as much ice as possible. On Linnea, we would hang emmo or boffili carcasses there and keep them frozen for as long as the ice lasted; if the snow locker was big enough and deep enough, a family could have ice all spring and most of the summer.
Gampa said we could smoke the extra meat if we wanted to dig a smokehouse too. But the only fuel we had for smoking meat was boffili chips, which didn’t really appeal to anybody, so we talked about pickling the meat in clay jars instead. Gamma said she could make a pretty good corned beef out of boffili, and next year we’d have cabbages and potatoes to go with. But those were decisions we wouldn’t have to make until we got to Linnea. Here in the dome, we didn’t have to build a whole ranch, just demonstrate that we could when we got there. On Linnea, we’d gather grass all summer and make fuel logs for the winter.
But here in the dome, this first time, it wasn’t going to be a long or a severe winter. Mosty because it was more a test of the weather machines than anything else. They wanted to see how everything worked, so they could see what kind of problems they might have. Drainage was one concern; humidity was another. But the authorities also worried about the lack of sunlight and something they called “winter depression.”
Living on Linnea, spring was spent planting; summer was about digging and repairing and gathering; and autumn was for harvesting as much as you could, as fast as you could, and getting it safe underground. Winter—that was about hunkering in the cold dark earth and waiting for spring, so you could start all over.
Not that the winter had to be an unhappy time, but it was definitely cramped. Older families on Linnea would dig one or two new rooms every year. Sometimes more. Some of the oldest families had grand underground villas, sometimes even four or five levels deep. Whatever you were willing to dig.
At first, most of us kids thought living underground would be fun. Nona and Shona and the toddlers played at being bunnies. They crunched Linnean carrots and asked each other, “What’s up, Doc?” They never tired of it, but the rest of us soon found it boring, even annoying.
As we settled in, we discovered that there are lots of advantages to living in a burrow. For one thing, once you’re underground, you don’t have to worry about heat and cold the same way you do aboveground. Da-Lorrin explained it. Because we roofed over the rooms with the natural insulation of dried razor grass, we created a kind of underground umbrella, and once you get deep enough, the surrounding soil temperature is pretty much the same in summer or winter. Ten degrees Celsius or fifty degrees Fahrenheit.
Because you heat the house with a firebed, the whole dwelling acts as a heat-radiator in the ground, and eventually, the surrounding soil starts to warm up, maybe a degree a year. It takes a lot of time and living to heat up a home. The scouts said that some of the older burrows actually get up to a comfortable twenty Celsius or sixty-eight Fahrenheit, and really old dwellings sometimes need to open extra ventilators.
The firebed was like a big flat brick oven. Big Jes and Klin had taken a week to build it. The top was a platform as big as a king-sized bed; underneath was a deep fir
epit with a chimney up on each side. Every morning we started a roaring fire in the pit and by the time we’d finished the rest of our chores, the top of the bricks were hot enough for the moms to cook breakfast. The center of the platform was always hottest, and the edges were the coolest, so you could boil things in the middle or just keep them warm on the sides. After breakfast, the moms would start lunch and dinner stews in different pots and leave them to cook slowly all day. As the fire ebbed, the pots would get pushed closer to the center. By bedtime, the firebed was comfortably toasty, so we’d stretch out our sleeping pads on top of it or next to it and we’d be warm all night. It was kind of like camping out, only forever.
We had originally planned separate sleeping rooms, but as we finished the burrow, we realized that wouldn’t work for a couple of reasons. First, we wouldn’t have enough room for everybody, and second, the rooms would be too cold. Big Jes and Klin tried it the first night and they both woke up shivering and moved back in with the rest of us, so they could be closer to the fire. Next evening at dinner, we decided we’d use these rooms for when anyone needed private time, because sometimes people just need to be alone. But more important, real Linneans don’t have separate bedrooms. Linnean families all sleep together on firebeds. So we would too.
By morning, the firepit was always a dark smolder, and the air in the burrow would be as crisp as dawn, so mosty I tried to stay under the snuggly blankets until Mom-Lu roused everybody up for chores. There was a lot to do. We had to light lanterns, stoke the fire, empty the night-pots, hang the beds and sheets to air, get the little-uns up, help fix breakfast and clean up afterward. My job was washing the dishes in a big tub over the firebed. I didn’t mind because it was the warmest job in the burrow. Big Jes and Klin had to go upstairs every morning and bring down buckets of snow, so we could have fresh water for washing and cooking. They said they didn’t mind, but later on, when the snow got deeper, I figured they might change their feelings about that.
Over breakfast the second morning, I asked Da-Lorrin if we’d have to stay underground the whole winter, or if we’d be allowed to go up and play in the snow. Mom-Lu and Da and Aunt Morra all looked at each other and I got the feeling that they knew something that they weren’t going to say.
“Might as well say it,” Morra said. She put down her tea.
Da nodded. “Should have told you before.” Everybody sitting around the table went silent and waited for Da to continue. He didn’t look happy. “They’ve let the kacks out.”
“All of them?”
Da nodded. “We have only three kacks in the dome, but one of the females is pregnant. That’s why they opened the canyon. She’ll need to feed her litter. They get hungrier in winter and have to hunt more. They have to eat as much as they can as fast as they can, before the snow buries the kill and it freezes solid. By springtime, they can get fairly hungry; when the snow starts to recede, the kacks feed on the carrion as it thaws. They’ve got great noses for sniffing out meat. And near as we can tell, they’re pretty good at remembering where their own kills were frozen and how deep.”
I must have looked impatient, because Da smiled at me. “Yes, Kaer, I know that you learned all this already. But Mom-Trey missed that class, so I have to retell it for her benefit, all right?” I knew he wasn’t telling the exact truth, because Mom-Trey had sat beside me in that class. I remembered it because every time the scouts talked about the kacks, Mom-Trey would make those little fear-noises that she does in the back of her throat. So I figured Da was talking for the microphones more than anything else, because we knew they were watching all of us a lot more closely now.
“We think—we do not know—that because the kacks are hungrier now, the implants might not work.” Birdie had told us that all the kacks were implanted so if they got too close to a human, they would get an unpleasant nerve-jolt. But it had never been tested. And we hadn’t seen Birdie in months anyway—not since we’d moved into the Linnea Dome. So she wasn’t the expert anymore—we were. Da held up a hand to keep anyone from interrupting. “We’ve had an incident in the north ranges. Nobody got hurt, but for a few moments, it looked serious.
“Three scouts went in for a close-up examination of a bunny-deer kill. They needed to take samples. They could have dropped a probe from overhead, but Authority uses the dome for training scouts too, not just families, so they have to attend their own exercises. While they were cutting slices from the kill, the kacks came circling. The scouts have trained well, so they knew what to do. One runs the growler, the noisemaker; you’ve seen how that works, haven’t you, Kaer? It makes a very loud noise. Loud enough to make a kack slow down and study the situation. Long enough for the other two to mount their horses and arm their crossbows. Then they stand guard while the first one climbs up. Kacks have great cunning; they don’t just run in. They circle slowly and stalk their prey first. Their hunting strategy is to worry the prey to exhaustion.
“Great-horses can’t outrun a pack of kacks, but we’ve always assumed it unlikely that three kacks would take on three horses. We assumed wrong. Even though a recent kill still lay on the ground, the kacks kept advancing on the scouts. Not a good thing.”
“Didn’t the implants work?” Big Jes asked.
Da nodded. “They did and they didn’t. The scouts could see the kacks shuddering with the shock of the nerve-jolts. But they still kept advancing. Nobody wants to say for sure why, but apparently the winter-kill instinct overrules everything else. For a moment, the scouts feared they might have to kill the kacks.”
“What happened?”
“The horses. When a great-horse rears up and comes down hard, it makes for a remarkable sight—impressive enough to make a pack of kacks back off. The horses put on an astonishing display, whinnying and snorting and even shrieking—a noise we’ve never heard them make before. Scared the maiz-likka out of the scouts. And the kacks too. They retreated. A strategic withdrawal. You’ll see the video next time we have a meeting. Irm thinks we could build a growler that makes the same kind of noises, but nobody on Linnea has done that, so we can’t either. But maybe we can; we don’t know yet. Maybe we can do it with native technology, maybe we can print the electronics into the carvings on the outside; we have to look at all the possibilities. But this gives us two dilemmas, you know—what do we do on Linnea, when our lives get threatened? Do we use our advantages and risk giving ourselves away as aliens? Or do we not use our advantages and put ourselves in physical danger?
“But we will consider those questions over time. Right now, we have three hungry kacks running loose. We do not have enough bunny-deer in the dome to feed them for a full winter, so we will have to continue to provide Earth-meat for them. The thing is—all the Earth-meat they’ve been eating, the kacks have developed a taste for it. The administors think that’s why the nerve-jolts didn’t work. Perhaps the animals’ nervous systems have changed. Unless we dissect one, we won’t know for sure. But that question has to remain for another time as well.
“More important, we now face the same problem that the Linneans do. We have hungry kacks prowling the grasslands. The boffili can live off their fat for a while, but the kacks need to eat at least once a week. We have to assume that they will prowl the whole dome—”
I knew I shouldn’t interrupt, but I couldn’t help myself. “What about the horses? They’ll go for the horses, won’t they?”
Mom-Lu started to shush me, angry that I had spoken out of turn; but Da reached over and touched her arm. “No, dear, please. Let the child speak. We all share Kaer’s fears for the great-horses.” To me, Da said, “The scouts have already moved the horses behind the stockade walls of Callo City. They will have to live off hay and oats for a while, but they will suffer no further attacks.”
Mom-Woo nodded. “A very wise precaution, Lorrin. How soon do they plan to return the kacks to their canyon? How will they accomplish that task?”
Da looked surprised. Hadn’t Mom-Woo understood? “They have no plans for that,” he s
aid quietly.
“Then they intend to kill them? I don’t understand. I thought the administors intended to duplicate life on Linnea as much as possible.”
“Yes, exactly,” said Auncle Irm. He got it. “Linnea has kacks running wild. So do we. The kacks will continue to run free, right, Lorrin?”
Da nodded. “Yes,” he said, his voice still soft. “That means that we cannot allow anyone, especially the children, to go up alone and unguarded. We will have to take special precautions from now on, every time someone has to go upside. The children may have chances to play in the snow, but only when we have certainty that we have no kacks anywhere near.”
SNOW
AFTER A FEW MORE DAYS OF INTERMITTENT FLURRIES, the sky darkened over and stayed dark. We only went up in groups, and all the grown-ups carried whistles and crossbows now. Several of the scouts had ridden out to all the farms and delivered additional supplies, including extra weapons and bolts. The administors had decided that the kacks represented too big a danger; they’d have to break their own rules. When we’d entered the dome, they’d told us that we would have to build our own equipment. Big Jes had built one crossbow, but it hadn’t turned out well and he had planned to use the winter to try again. In fact, he intended to keep at it until he got it right. He said he’d build as many as necessary so that everyone in the family would have protection. But with the kacks running loose, we couldn’t afford to wait.
Most of the families had turned angry when they heard about the kacks. Buzzard Kelly wanted to hold a special meeting to demand action. He wanted the Authority to either capture and contain the kacks or send the scouts out to kill them. But on this point, the administors dug in their heels. We had to learn to live like Linneans, and that meant with Linnean danger too. Buzzard never got his meeting; not enough families wanted to risk the journey across the dome.
In the evenings, we could hear the kacks howling. Sometimes they yipped and called to each other across the darkened prairie. Maybe the great roof overhead bounced the sounds back down. Little Klin tried to explain about standing waves and focus points and reflectivity. The curved walls and ceiling could made the kacks sound closer and louder if you stood at the right place.
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