Child of Earth (14 page)

We had to get up early every morning, even before the sun rose, because that's when the razor grass was the freshest. We'd pack a quick breakfast of hardtack and cheese and sausage to eat while we worked, and then we'd all go out together and cut a quarter-acre of razor grass, because that's how much we needed each day. It grew faster than we could cut it—at least it seemed that way. Then we'd start it boiling down while we stopped for second breakfast—our first real meal of the day. After second breakfast, we'd start digging down to get the dirt for the day's bricks. By the time we had enough dirt and the tarpay was bubbling, it was time for lunch. By the time we finished lunch, the tarpay was ready for pouring.

There was no shortage of dirt—we already had a big pile of it—and as we shaped the walls and dug out extra rooms and storage space, we had more than enough. We weren't going to run out of dirt. It wasn't the same kind of dirt as we'd find on Linnea, but it was close enough, and the experience was good for us.

We worked every day until we ran out of tarpay. We couldn't afford to waste it, so sometimes we worked until after sunset. Any extra tarpay and razor grass we smeared on the hardened walls as a lining. We also had to harden the ramp that Mountain had left leading down into the hole, because eventually that would be our ladder up and out, after we put the roof on.

There was another way too, even faster, but you needed a lot of canvas. You sewed canvas sacks and filled them with dirt, then you made sandbag walls. That's how the forts were constructed. You could put up a lot of wall in a very short time, if you had enough people working. But we didn't have enough canvas, and besides, the purpose of this exercise was to see how much we could do with grass and dirt alone.

After a couple of weeks, we got used to the work and our backs stopped hurting and our muscles stopped complaining. And we had three huge piles of bricks growing around a hole that was finally taking shape as a house. Despite all the hard work, it was one of our happiest times. Or maybe it was because of all the hard work. Like Auncle Irm said, we were all working together—and that was special. We made a game out of it, laughing and singing and seeing how many bricks we could make in a day. On our best day, we made 900 bricks.

We didn't win the brick-making competition, though. We only came in second. The Kelly family, our closest neighbors, only a kilometer away, worked day and night in shifts and turned out twice as many bricks. We rode over there on one of the days we had use of a horse, and they had a long row of brick piles, all neatly stacked, more bricks than they would need for building a house. Unless they were planning to build some kind of warehouse too. And in fact, they were. Their idea was to build a secret underground room outfitted for emergencies.

The scouts agreed that this was a good idea, but all those extra piles of bricks looked suspicious. If they planned to do that on Linnea, they would have to find a way to camouflage what they were doing. They had to hide their extra bricks. A week later, most of the brick piles were gone. They'd put them down in the finished rooms of the house they were digging. It probably meant a lot of extra work, moving all those bricks around, and it made me think of Sokoban, a Japanese game where you have to push little crates around a funny-shaped warehouse until each one is in its right place. But it worked, because the next time we went over there, you couldn't tell that the Kellys were digging a bigger-than-usual house.

The Kellys were Traditionalists. They believed in only one mom and
one dad—and a whole bunch of kids. But there were three Kelly families in the Kelly compound. Gamma Mary Kelly had three daughters and each daughter had her own husband and her own children. But they raised them all together, so they were pretty much like a normal family anyway.

I liked visiting the Kellys. When we weren't at church, they were very friendly people. Rose Kelly always had something good-smelling on the stove. Whenever we went visiting, she had oat-bread or oatmeal cookies or pumpkin pie. And once ... she made a chocolate cake for Ned Kelly's birthday.

They didn't have chocolate over on Linnea, along with a lot of other stuff we liked, so most of us were learning to do without. But when little Ned cried that he wanted chocolate cake for his birthday, Rose indulged him. Technically, chocolate in the dome was a rules violation. And the Kellys could have been fined a hundred work points for it. But they managed to keep it a secret simply by not using the word chocolate. It was just “Rose's special recipe.” Patta Kelly shared a piece with Rinky and me on picnic, but only on condition that we wouldn't tell. I hadn't had chocolate in so long—

We'd all signed agreements, even the children, that we wouldn't do anything Earthlike while we were in Linnea Dome. At first, a lot of it felt like playacting, but after awhile it began to seem real, and Earth was like some place out of a fairy tale or a history book that didn't exist anymore. So anything that came over from Earth looked and felt
wrong
to us now.

But the chocolate cake tasted
soooo
good. And I hadn't had a birthday party of my own and Patta Kelly knew that, otherwise she wouldn't have snuck a piece of cake out of the house for me.

ONE HUNDRED PERCENT

THAT PIECE OF CHOCOLATE CAKE cost a thousand work points for our family and the Kelly family. They got fined for sneaking chocolate into the dome. We got fined because Rinky and I didn't report it. If we hadn't been so close to finishing our underground flood-proof house, Administor Rance would have dropped us from the project.

Rinky and I had to stand up and publicly apologize to the entire dome for putting their lives at risk. I cried a lot. “I have to apologize; Mom-Woo says so. I know I did wrong by not reporting an infraction. But I didn't get a birthday party this year and—”

Administor Rance cut me off. She was very angry and very severe—as if she were a Linnean administor. “We do not celebrate birthdays on Linnea! We do not tempt the demons to rise up out of the ground. Nor do we eat of the demon beans! Who knows what poisons such demon foods contain? Will you burn for the practice of witchcraft, Kaer! You live on Linnea now! You must choose between
chocolate
and life.” She made it sound evil.

I started to weep. “I just wanted something for my birthday, that's all.”

Administor Rance's face grew sadder. She came down from the podium and spoke directly to me, “Kaer, do you want to see your family burned alive—all of them screaming in agony, just because you wanted a piece of
chocolate?”

I couldn't help myself. I broke down completely, falling to my knees
on the floor in front of her. Administor Rance ignored me. She walked back up to her podium and waited impassively. “Do you want that, Kaer?” She asked again.

That's when Aunt Morra stood up. “For Christ's sake,” she said. “You've made your point. Stop picking on the poor child. This won't happen again. The family has already taken responsibility. You don't have to subject us to an unholy Inquisition!”

Somehow, I stopped sniffling long enough to look up. Administor Rance scribbled little notes on the paper in front of her while Morra went on. “Look,” she said. “We've cooperated one hundred percent with this program. We've worked as hard as anyone. And we haven't complained. We've done our best to learn the language, the culture, the traditions. We eat the food, we wear the clothes, we make our own tools, we've built a house and we've planted crops. Doesn't that count for anything? You can't expect perfection.”

Administor Rance picked up her paper. “Fifty-point penalty for the use of the word ‘Christ.' Fifty-point penalty for the use of the term ‘Inquisition.' Fifty-point penalty for the use of the term ‘one hundred percent.'” She put the paper down. “Yes, I know this seems harsh and cruel and unfair to you. Especially to you, Kaer. But we cannot allow even the smallest breach in discipline. If we make one excuse for one child's birthday, then we'll make another excuse for something else later on. And another and another, until we've punched so many holes in our integrity, we can use it for a sieve. I take no pleasure in these proceedings, believe me—but better that you learn this lesson
here
than after you arrive on Linnea where anything out of the ordinary can result in an Inquiry by the local administors. I doubt very much that you will like their Covenant of Justice.

“We have had good results with our first group of colonists only because we trained them so rigorously. We will not risk their lives
or yours
. Each and every one of us needs to have a total commitment to the agreements. And that includes the children most of all, because if anything gives you away, it will probably come from the children. I do not apologize for trying to save your life, Kaer.” She looked at me sternly. “You must regard all references to Earth as profane, so profane that you would rather die than betray the existence of the home world.”

Morra sat down and folded her arms across her chest. I knew that look. She was through listening for tonight. Probably for a long while. Like the way she acted when we first told her we wanted to apply for Linnea. She probably wouldn't say anything at all for a week, and then
after she'd thought about it for a while, she'd turn into a real witch—on the side of the agreements. But she wouldn't talk about how she changed her mind; she'd just insist on us keeping strictly to our word.

Mom-Woo said that when you looked up stubborn in the dictionary, you found Aunt Morra's picture. But Morra had spoken up for me, and I'd never seen her speak up for anyone like that before, and I spent the rest of the evening looking at her as if I'd never really seen her before.

Administor Rance then turned her attention to the Kelly family. “By rights, I should drop you from the program here and now. I have the authority to do so. The severity of your infraction leaves very little choice in the matter. And I must ask you now what
other
contraband you've brought into the dome. If you want to continue in this program, I expect you to turn over everything immediately. And that includes that Bible you smuggled in....” She ignored the gasps in the room. “Yes, we know about it, Citizen. It will not go to Linnea with you.”

Buzz Kelly stood up. He wore only his blacksmith's apron and leather kilt. Everybody called him Buzzard Kelly because he looked so tall and gangly. But all the hours hammering at the forge had given him arms like tree trunks, so when he stood up, people shut up and listened.

“The Good Lord made all the worlds, not just this one,” he said quietly. “He will reign wherever we go. So how can we leave our faith in Him behind?”

Administor Rance didn't like that question. Even I could see that. Probably because it didn't matter how she answered it, someone was going to get angry. She took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose for a moment before putting them back on. “Dr. Whitlaw has already addressed that. Perhaps you should revisit that lesson. I am not asking you to relinquish your faith, Citizen Kelly. Only your Bible.” And then she added in a more thoughtful tone, “As far as we know, Christ doesn't exist on Linnea. Not now. Maybe not ever. We don't know what specifically happened to our lost settlers. Whatever records they left behind may have disappeared when the plagues decimated the continent more than fifteen hundred years ago, almost wiping out all human life. We do know that the Linneans never developed monotheism as we know it. As
you
know it.”

She stopped herself. “Never mind all that. For reasons we cannot yet identify, the Linneans have developed a profound hostility to changes in their fundamental belief systems. That may be the result of holy wars in their past. But the practice of any Earth religion on Linnea represents a serious possibility of cultural contamination, with consequences we
cannot predict. We can't run the risk of triggering an inquisition, or worse. We can say with certainty that the discovery of religious artifacts among your goods would endanger you and probably everyone you came in contact with as well. The Linneans do not yet have the concept of religious tolerance.”

She held up her hand to keep Buzzard from replying. “Consider this, Citizen Kelly. You will have privacy in your own home. And if you choose to use that privacy for the kinds of prayers that succor you, you will do exactly that, no matter what I say here. If you build your home five hundred kilometers out in the wilderness, and if your nearest neighbors remain a two-day ride in any direction, and if you assume that distance equals security—then in all likelihood you will grant yourself the privilege of violating the integrity of your agreement to not practice any Earth-based rituals. And by so doing, your immersion in the Linnean way of thinking will remain incomplete. You will have carved a hole in your integrity large enough for the danger to you and your loved ones to come galloping through like a stampede of enraged boffili. Yes, Morra, chocolate cake by itself carries no danger. Neither does a quiet faith in Christ. But the breach of integrity that such actions demonstrate also proves an intolerable failure to assimilate.

“Had we not already invested so much time and energy in all of you, I would recommend your immediate dismissal from the program. By now, we expect all of you to know better. Administor Moffin gave you high recommendations. This does not give me confidence in any of his other judgments. Nevertheless, based on his prior faith in you, I will withhold immediate judgment and place you on indefinite probation, pending further incidents.”

She rang her bell to close the meeting—and exited without saying another word to anyone. That was the way she always did it, but this time it really hurt.

HOME

THAT NIGHT WE HAD ANOTHER FAMILY MEETING around the table. At least we had a table, even if we didn't have a house yet. We were still sleeping in the great-wagon, or underneath it—just like we would do on Linnea someday. And that thought always gave me a curious feeling too, because it meant that someday we'd be leaving this house behind. Even though we hadn't even finished building it yet, it already felt like home.