Child of Earth (27 page)

“Do you want to know the saddest part? We feel for the Linneans, for the trap they've built around themselves. If we could break them out, we would—but we can't, we just can't. I can't even begin to tell you all the reasons why it doesn't work; but think of it this way. You cannot help a baby chick out of its shell, or it dies. It has to peck its way out by itself. It has to learn that life only happens when you attack it aggressively. If you help it out of its shell, it never learns that lesson, so it just lies there and waits for life to happen; it lies there until it dies.

“We can't help the Linneans out of the shell they live in, because they
don't remember how they got into it. They have no memory, no experience, of anything else. Someday we'll know enough; we'll find a way to get them back to where they once belonged. But we can't do that until we know more. We just don't know enough yet.” He paused. “Y'know, sweetheart, I think that's the exciting part. Think of it this way; every new thing you learn about the Linneans—no one else will know that until you tell them. You will have the first bite of every new apple you pick off the tree of knowledge. Oops—I can't use that phrase, can I? ‘Tree of knowledge.' That doesn't exist on Linnea. Shame on me. Off to the firepit I go. Come on, we'll go together this time. We will have an honorable death together.”

That should have been frightening, but it made me laugh. And everyone else as well. Somehow, we always felt better after attending class, no matter how hard the work had been.

THE OLD WOMAN AND HER PROMISE

THE RIDE HOME

WE COULD HAVE SPENT ONE MORE NIGHT at Callo City, but the administors had scheduled a major storm and wanted everyone back in their own burrows, so we all bundled back into the wagon and lurched off into the evening. Twilight ran late and both the moons shone high and bright, so we rolled through a silent blue-green world. I felt as if we had gone underwater, to some magical realm of faeries. Except Linnea didn't have faeries. Linnea had little grass people. But we didn't know much about the little grass people; the scouts hadn't had the temerity to ask.

This time around, the classes had exhausted us. The trainers even acknowledged the exhaustion, telling us not to worry at it; this particular set of classes always frustrated trainees. “Don't try to understand it; just sit with it awhile and let it sink in. You'll get it.” I didn't like that answer; there was still so much I didn't understand and it seemed like neither did anybody else, and even though the trainers explained it over and over again, sometimes the explanations just didn't make sense. It felt like a game of Hide the Potato. They wouldn't tell you where the potato had gone, only where it hadn't.

So when we rode back this time, we didn't sing or cheer or even howl. We just huddled in our robes and blankets and wished the ride would end as quickly as possible. We had boxes of firebricks and even a case of fresh meat we'd picked up at the commonstore. The moms planned to make sweet-stew with it. Maybe it was the scent of the meat that drew the kacks to us—

We had Kilter and Kale pulling the great-wagon, and they always stopped to rest at the bottom of Little Hill. It looked little to us, but we sat high in the wagon. Perhaps, to Kilter and Kale, pulling the wagon, the hill didn't look as little.

Willow, as usual, pulled out his tablet and studied the display. Without comment, he pulled out his phone and called the monitors. I could see by the look on his face that he felt the situation had turned serious. I sat too far back to hear him clearly, but I made out enough. The kacks no longer watched from their usual place on the northern slopes. They had moved southward, arranging themselves along the road ahead. The horses stirred uneasily, stamping their feet and snorting.

Burr leaned over her shoulder and the two of them whispered together grimly. Any change in kack behavior stopped everything. So far, we'd all taken extreme care, regarding the kacks with enormous caution and giving wide berth to their hunting grounds. Although we'd had numerous sightings of kacks tracking great-wagons, as yet, we'd had no serious attacks. Not on humans, not on horses. Everyone wanted to keep it that way.

Authority wanted the dome environment as realistic as possible; the trainees could not regard Linnea as safe. We had to stay aware of the risks, every moment. Wildfires, floods, cyclones, kacks and other humans. But while Authority could control the threats of fire, flood, wind and human behavior in the dome, the kacks remained a wild, unknown quantity—an uncontrollable danger. Despite their implants, the kacks had become much more aggressive, and almost everybody believed that they would soon start attacking travelers on the main road. Even the scouts used the word “inevitable.”

Despite demands from some of the trainees, Authority remained reluctant to act. With three adult kacks and four surviving pups in the dome, the administors wanted to see how a wild kack pack behaved. And, if necessary—if the kacks attacked a wagon—they were willing to sacrifice one or two of the animals to see how well humans could defend themselves using only Linnean weapons. Crossbows. But those had to be a weapon of last resort. And if those didn't work ... the wagons carried other devices, things the scouts didn't want to use at all.

The dome was more than a training ground. It was also an experiment. And this part of the experiment was the treacherous part. This was the one thing that everybody argued about the most. It was an unnecessary risk—it was a necessary risk. The argument raged without end. And now, tonight, it looked like we would have to test it.

“No,” Willow said, before Da could even ask. “We won't try to capture a pup. Not tonight. Not here. Not without an entire team. We've talked about it, all the scouts. We can't afford the risk to the trainees. As much as we want you and your family to have the experience, not here, not now. Perhaps some other time. If the Old Woman sings true, we may never have the need. In the meantime—” He climbed back to the passenger part of the coach and started pointing around. “Kaer, do you know how to work the growler? Good. I want you to come up forward. No, don't start cranking yet. Wait until I tell you.” He began opening up compartments and handing out weapons—crossbows, trank guns, taser-darts and even a couple of things I didn't recognize. “I don't want to use the crossbows. But we've never had a real confrontation with these things, and if nothing else works, I will take them down. I'd rather lose the entire pack than a single one of you.”

We'd performed this drill before. All of the adults already had their defense positions assigned. Burr opened the hatch to the compartment below and handed weapons down. But this time, it wasn't a drill.

When everybody had taken up their posts, Willow and Burr stopped for another quick conference. They pointed to Da, Big Jes, Little Klin, Bhetto, Parra and Cindy. “The six of you, the two of us. We'll walk the horses up the hill.”

“Wouldn't we be safer staying in the coach?”

“We would, but the horses would not. You three, with me on the right. The rest of you, take the left. Kaer, you and Rinky ride next to Driver. Rinky, don't fire unless I tell you. Kaer, do not turn the crank on the growler until I order it. We don't want to panic the horses. All right, let's move.” They didn't wait to lower the steps; they went down the ladders on the sides.

Driver tossed a couple of dark sacks down to the snow. Willow and Burr opened them and pulled lengths of leather-wrapped chain down to the ground—hobbles for the horses. We couldn't risk having them bolt in fear. They could easily topple the wagon. The sacks themselves unfolded to become blackout hoods. Willow tapped Kale's neck with a baton, reached up, grabbed the strap at the bottom of the horse's bridle—it had a handle on it that looked like a subway handle—and pulled down hard. The great-horse obediently lowered his huge head so that Willow could throw the sack over the top of his skull and cinch it tight, tight enough that Kale couldn't shake it off. Then he helped Burr do the same with Kilter.

We couldn't keep the horses calm, but we could keep them from seeing
the danger. We could keep them from running and hurting themselves and us. If they ran, the kacks would run them to exhaustion and surely bring them down.

Now the scouts hobbled the horses with the leathered chains. Burr hobbled Kilter, Willow hobbled Kale. Both the horses stamped and snorted, shook their heads unhappily and made ugly threatening sounds. When an animal the size of an elephant makes noises like that, most people step back; but the two scouts just poked the horses hard in the ribs with their batons, harder than I would have, hard enough to make them both go
oof
, a great punch to the belly. “Shut up, you great noisy sack of potatoes. We have too much work to do to listen to your complaints. Damn, I hurt my hand.”

Then, each of the scouts went back to the lead, reached up and grabbed the handle straps hanging from their horses' bridles—and began pulling the animals forward. One lumbering step at a time. “Come on, you lazy things. Let's go show the kacks who really runs this world.” It took a couple baton pokes. Once I would have thought it cruel, but to the great-horses, those pokes must have felt like gentle nudges.

The wagon was 600 kilograms lighter now. At least. Probably closer to 800. Assume eighty kilos per person, not counting boots and robes and weapons and ammunition; figure another ten per person for all that. And even more for Big Jes and Da. Okay, 700 kilos. Enough to make a difference. The horses grunted—more for show than out of any real sense of weight. I'd already learned that great-horses love to complain, especially in Earth-normal gravity.

Up the slope we headed. Rinky had the tablet display and held it so the driver could see. So far, the kacks hadn't moved. I could hear the overlapping conversations coming from the speaker. A lot of unfamiliar voices. It felt strange to see an electronic device here on Linnea. For the first time in a long time I wondered how many people were watching us.

“Do you need backup?”

“Dunno. Probably wouldn't hurt—”

“We've got you all on the ceiling cameras. And we've got armed skyballs moving in. We can scare off the kacks with shock-grenades—”

“That might frighten the horses.” A pause. “We need to see how well the growler works.”

“The growler works, we know that—”