Child of Earth

by David Gerrold

  “You’re being too polite, Tasha. We’re deporting them for their failure, for not keeping up with the world.”

  “Whatever. It’s good for them; it’s even better for the rest of us.” Behind them, Rinky had a hand over her mouth, trying not to laugh out loud; she covered it with a coughing fit. Mom-Trey turned her back to the rest of us and pounded Rinky’s back. Aunt Morra looked angry, but Irm had had a strong hand on her shoulder, squeezing hard and holding her back. Da was looking at the ceiling, as if studying a bug. Big Jes was rummaging in a corner for something; I couldn’t see his face.

  To her credit, Birdie kept a straight face. She looked to us and spoke quickly in Linnean. “Yes, they are boffili droppings. Please regard them as strange animals in a place for strange animals.” That triggered another coughing fit from Rinky, and even Da had to smile.

  “So where do they all sleep?” Red Jacket asked bluntly.

  Birdie indicated the firebed. “Usually, they all sleep together on top of the brick stove. It conserves fuel. In larger burrows, they might have two or three beds, but this is fairly normal.”

  “They all sleep together?” Both of the men and all three of the women exchanged glances—as if Birdie had just suggested we regularly practiced incest, cannibalism and theocracy.

  “It’s the Linnean custom,” Birdie said. “You cannot judge any of this by the standards of Earth; Linnean culture has evolved for the conditions found on Linnea.” She started to explain that Linnea had a much more limited ecology than Earth because only a subset of Earth plants and animals had been imported—

  And then, suddenly, I got it. I looked across at Da and said excitedly, “Da! These people think they’re really on Linnea. I bet they insisted on a trip through the gate, but the administors couldn’t allow that, so they brought them into the dome and told them they’re on Linnea. They think we’re colonists. I bet I’m right.”

  Da’s reaction of surprise and recognition ricocheted around the room. The angry expressions of the rest of the family softened immediately. The joke was on them, not us. Rinky even giggled aloud.

  Birdie interrupted herself, stopped in the middle of a discussion of the versatility of the genetically enhanced grass, to look to me specifically. “Very smart, Kaer. Not quite accurate, but close enough. Thank you for understanding.” She winked, then turned back to the guests and dryly resumed a dissertation on what a marvelous evolution lab Linnea had become. The rapid spread of known species into new niches had startled even the most radical of theorists, and therefore the people emigrating to the new world were pioneers in the truest and bravest sense.

  The visitors stood around uncomfortably and listened to Birdie’s lecture with ill-concealed impatience. At last, one of the women raised her hand, “Yes, yes, we know all that. What I don’t understand how can they live in this squalor? Don’t they know any better?” I thought Mom-Lu was going to spill soup on her, but instead, she turned away and handed the bowl to Birdie.

  Birdie—bless her soul—took the bowl held it high and gestured north, east, south and west, each time thanking the Old Woman in the Grass; then, appropriately, she took a sip and passed the bowl to the guests. “You must each take a sip. It’s an enormous insult if you don’t accept their offer of hospitality.” The visitors took the bowl and sniffed, but despite Birdie’s instructions, only the men sipped at the soup. The women made more faces. “Do you think it’s safe?” “It doesn’t look safe.” “God knows what’s in it.” I wondered if they’d been born women, or if they’d chosen to be such witches.

  I looked around at the rest of the family. Big Jes was sanding the edge of his axe, as if it were some chore he’d been meaning to attend and only now had gotten around to, except the rest of us knew better; whenever he was annoyed, he sharpened his axe. Little Klin leaned against a wall, arms folded, eyes narrow. Bhetto had gathered both the little-uns into her arms and had turned away from the guests to rock them. Mikey hid behind her skirt and stared. Cindy and Parra glowered from the top of the steps. Gampa and Gamma simply left the room. Irm and Morra looked furious, but I wasn’t sure at who. All in all, we must have looked seriously ferocious to these poor stupid tourists. Only Da and the moms wore their company faces, but I could see it was a strain even for them. Despite the joke. Despite their ignorance. Despite Birdie’s fervent words. These people were abusing our hospitality. They were bad guests—because they weren’t letting us be good hosts.

  The senator pulled out his pocket-machine and looked at it. “We’re running late. We’ve fallen way behind schedule. We’d better be moving on. Come along, people.” He started ushering them toward the ladder steps. Birdie wisely fell silent and followed them up. I followed Da and Big Jes and Mom-Woo. I wanted to hear what they would say to Birdie. Or what Birdie might say to us. Nobody stopped me, so I went right up after.

  Most of the visitors were already picking their way along the ramp toward the chopper. Blue Jacket and the senator were talking quietly to Birdie, adamantly shaking their heads. “I’m not sure these people made all that good an impression on the committee. Perhaps you should have chosen a more appropriate family?”

  “You said you wanted to see a real Linnean home, Senator. We showed you a real Linnean home.”

  “Well, perhaps—but this isn’t as inspiring as we’d been led to believe. These poor people—couldn’t you have done better for them? This is shameful.”

  “This is Linnea.”

  “Well.” The senator glanced around, looked up at the yellow sky, the endless plain of pink-glowing snow. He wiped his hands together as if rubbing the last of Linnea off his shining gloves. “If this is your way of saying you need more money, you’ve made your point. I’m not happy about this.” Next to him, Blue Jacket pulled off one of his gloves and reached inside his coat, reached deep, pulled out a thick wallet and extracted a fat wad of bills. He crunched a few steps over to Big Jes and pushed the money into his huge gloved hands. “Here. Maybe this will help. You deserve better.”

  Big Jes stared at the money, the green and peach bills, then he held the cash aloft, laughing. “Look everyone—toilet paper! We have toilet paper!” Even Mom-Woo laughed out loud. Da guffawed. Rinky and I slapped each other’s shoulders, laughing. Little Klin shouted, leapt backward into a snowbank and kicked his feet up in the air.

  “See?” Blue Jacket said to Birdie. “They understand what’s important.”

  That set off a new round of laughter. Joyous, raucous, uninhibited, silly laughter.

  The senator agreed. “Well ... they may be simple people, but they’re happy. I can’t argue with that. Maybe they know something the rest of us don’t.”

  Pleased with himself, Blue Jacket turned and began crunching through the snow back toward the chopper. The senator followed close behind. I wanted to wave my hand and call “Thank you,” in English, but Rinky must have read my mind; she put a hand on my shoulder. Birdie looked at us, at our merriment, and realized there was nothing she could say.

  “Wait,” said Mom-Woo, touching Birdie’s arm. “The babies need medicine. We need help out here—”

  “Yes, we know. But you know the rules. You agreed to the rules. We cannot bring you help. You have to survive on your own. Or not at all.” Mom-Woo hung her head, dejected, but Birdie caught her before she could turn away. She pointed toward a stack of boxes the pilot had unloaded while we were all below. “But we have imposed on your winternap, so we have brought you gifts of gratitude. Administor Rance sends her most gracious appreciation for your help and cooperation. And we hope you’ll find the contents a lot more useful than ... all that toilet paper. Toilet paper, yes. Big Jes has the right attitude.” Shaking her head bemusedly, she followed the senator back to the aircraft. A few moments later, it clattered up into the air, turned in the wind and headed back toward Callo City.

  REAL

  IT TOOK TWO OR THREE TRIPS, even with each of us carrying one or two boxes at a time, but we got them all safely downstairs. Da wouldn’t let u
s open any of them until everybody was unwrapped and warming themselves with soup. The first package was the smallest, but it was filled with medicines, all kinds; a note was included. “The red syrup is for the babies. One spoonful every morning for three days. Everyone else should take one yellow pill every day for three days. This is an update to your vaccinations.”

  Da made a face, and muttered something under his breath. Something about God arriving in a constructed tool. Whatever.

  The bigger boxes contained slow-burn logs. Enough to last for two months, if we were careful. Two others had warm blankets and some clean clothes.

  “I thought they weren’t supposed to help us,” said Bhetto, grumpily.

  “This isn’t help. It’s a gift. There’s a difference.”

  “A difference of words, not results.”

  “Maybe this is their way of admitting that they scheduled winter too soon, that we did not have enough time to properly prepare, starting from scratch,” said Rinky. “By the time we finished digging our burrow, we had no time left for anything else.”

  “It will be that way when we get to Linnea,” said Big Jes. “Now we’ve learned our lesson.”

  “When we get to Linnea?” asked Cindy. “I thought we had decided to quit.”

  “I dunno,” said Little Klin. “After all those stupid things those stupid visitors said, I’m just angry enough to stay. They insulted our home.”

  “I feel the same. Who wants to stay on the same planet with that ugly old bitch in the red jacket? She had a face like an elbow wrinkle.”

  “And a mouth like a torn pocket,” said Morra. “Even worse than me.” Everybody laughed. Even Irm looked at her in surprise. Big Jes went a little pale. “Uh, I didn’t know you’d overheard that—”

  “Oh, hell, dear—I hear everything. This family has no secrets. I thought you knew that.” She patted his arm. “For a moment there, I thought you were going to use that axe. You certainly polished it hard enough.”

  “If he didn’t sharpen the axe, he would have had to use his bare hands. And I don’t think he wanted to dirty himself.”

  “Um, there is that,” said Mom-Trey. “For all their shiny cleanliness, they felt like the dirtiest people I’d ever met. I wanted to wash the whole nest as soon as they climbed out—to get rid of their stink. That awful perfume. I still want to wash this room. I can still smell it.” She wrinkled her nose and put her bowl aside. “It makes the soup taste soapy.”

  “Poor Birdie,” I said. “She tried so hard.”

  “I thought she would choke when Blue Jacket handed Big Jes all that money. How much was it, Jes?”

  Big Jes shook his head. “I didn’t even bother to count it.” He took it out of his pocket and handed it to Da. Da riffled through it, then laughed. “Two hundred and sixty. Even their generosity is stingy. Here, Kaer. Next time you see Birdie, tell her to send this back to them.”

  “After we use it as toilet paper ...?”

  Da laughed. “Imagine the looks on their faces.”

  “They wouldn’t see it as an insult, you know,” Mom-Woo pointed out. “They’d just think we’re too stupid to recognize money.”

  “There is that,” said Da. “Kaer, just give the money to Birdie and tell her to buy herself something nice.”

  “Speaking of Birdie,” Parra added, “I liked what she told them. She called us real Linneans.”

  Cindy poked him. “Well, we are real Linneans. Thanks to the visitors, we now distrust Earthers.”

  “And that brings up another reason why we have to stay,” Mom-Woo said. “If we quit now, it would certainly embarrass Birdie. And I think she has already suffered more than enough embarrassment for one day. Perhaps we should wait and embarrass her next week.” Everybody laughed at that. Mom-Woo didn’t really tell jokes, but many times the things she said had the same effect.

  Then she looked at me. “Kaer, what’s that look about?”

  “We can’t quit next week either. We can’t quit ever. If we did ... we’d still have to work off our contract. And they’d probably give us Birdie’s job. Or one just like it where we’d have to spend all our time with people like the stupids.”

  Everybody looked at everybody else—and then everybody laughed out loud. It was funny. Uproariously funny. And that was the last time we ever talked about giving up. Now that we knew who we were, we knew where we belonged.

  Inside the last box we opened, we found packages of spices, all kinds. More than anything, that brought cheers from everybody. And even a few short arguments what we should prepare for dinner that evening. Sweet butter pudding? Bean pie? Jerked boffili savory stew? Mom-Lu ended the argument when she said, “All of those things would bring us great delight. And more. But if we make the food too delicious, we will eat more of it, and we will run out of food before spring. We must make it last.” She took the box of spices and put it away on a shelf. “We shall give ourselves a hint of flavor, just a bit, but we shall delay the real feast until we have something to celebrate.” And then, just to make sure that everybody understood that she was not inviting them to argue the point, she added, “I have spoken.” And even though everybody laughed, it was a laughter of agreement. It was what a real Linnean family would do.

  After that, life in the hole didn’t get easier, but it stopped being hard. It was just life in the hole. We were still cold and hungry and cramped, but we weren’t crazy anymore.

  And something else, too.

  We were Linneans now, real Linneans. Not just because Birdie said so, but because we did. And that made everything different. We felt different. We acted different. Even the way we talked to each other changed; we stopped acting the various rituals and started meaning them. Even the blessings over tea became important. The Old Woman in the Grass became a real person to us. When we celebrated Winter Solstice, when Da actually got up from the table and opened the door to the world and invited the Old Woman to join us, I half-expected to see her come toddling down the stairs wearing a long grass cloak and a happy smile. I felt her spirit arrive, but I was genuinely disappointed she had not sent her corporeal self as well.

  Now that we had become real Linneans, our studies also became more serious. There was still too much to learn, so many things that you could only know if you had lived all your life on Linnea—like knowing to look both ways before crossing the street, that red means stop and green means go; like knowing that the black beetle colonies are mosty harmless, but the bright red ones have a nasty bite; like knowing how to find your way through the grass when it’s taller than you. That last one—well, I never really figured it out. The best I could ever do was backtrack along my own trail of crushed stalks until I got back to my starting point.

  Sometimes, it felt like we had double vision. We had to learn about Linnea from the inside, as if we had always lived there; but at the same time, we had to learn about Linnea from Earthside too. It felt like an avalanche of facts, as if all that information was pummeling us. It seemed the more we learned, the more we had to learn.

  Like all gate projects, the design for Linnea had started with the design parameters for Earth; then the scientists widened the criteria. You couldn’t find an exact duplicate, but if you widened the criteria to allow for slight differences in gravity and atmosphere, you would increase the likelihood of actually finding a useful world. They knew the planet would need a moon, not just for its tidal effects, but because the gravitational influence of a moon would keep the planet stable on its axis, instead of wobbling like a top losing its momentum. The planet would have to circle its star at a livable distance and exist within a specific temperature range. The star couldn’t be too old or too young and it had to have a usable spectrum of light. The planet would have to have a strong magnetic field, useful metals, available water, not receive too much radiation, and would have to be old enough to be geologically stable. It couldn’t be all volcanoes. Everything had to be the right age, the right size, the right color—or close enough that it wouldn’t kill you.
Linnea had turned out better than most.

  From Earth’s point of view, the best thing about Linnea was that it could be terraformed. You drop in some anaerobic bacteria, close it up, and come back in a hundred thousand years; next you add aerobic bacteria and wait another hundred thousand years. Now you’ve got the beginnings of an atmosphere. And if evolution has done its job, you might even start seeing some lichens and fungus; but if not, you add some. You can start putting in other ingredients too; maybe some plankton and diatoms. Maybe even some grass seeds. Put the top back on, shake well, and come back later. The time-slip effect made it possible to do real-time evolution on a whole world.

  Eventually, Linnea had a whole subset of Earth’s ecology: basic bacteria of decomposition to feed the grass and trees, the flowering shrubs, the vines and ferns; then insects and spiders and beetles, bees and ants, worms and mollusks and slugs, lizards and mice and birds, all the little creatures that lived off the plants. And finally, the animals. Wolves, buffalo, horses, antelope, emus, camels, dogs and cats. And in the ocean, cod and mackerel, yellowtail and tuna, salmon and sharks. And eventually dolphins and whales too. The oceans on Linnea were almost as salty as the oceans on Earth; most fish would survive.

  But Linnea wasn’t Earth. It was different—just different enough that life had to adapt. Because Linnea had a slightly lighter gravity, plants could grow taller, animals could grow larger; but that meant that all the other parts of the ecology had to adjust as well. A taller plant means that water has to rise higher to nurture the leaves or blossoms. That affects the composition of the stems. And that ultimately affects the teeth of the creatures who feed on the plants. Insects could grow larger, but that would affect their ability to “breathe.” Insects don’t have lungs; their ability to take in oxygen is a function of their size. If they get too big, they need bigger hearts and that means more oxygen and that affects the shape of their chitinous shells. The larger animals too—they could leap higher on Linnea, but coming down put a different kind of stress on bones and muscles.