Child of Earth (5 page)

Birdie told us that this was a good day because we were getting to see so many different kinds of animals. The spookiest were the coyote-lizards, spidery-gaunt horrors that watched us warily as we flew past. They had the most intelligent faces. Birdie said they were mosty carrion-eaters, following the allosaurs like hyenas and jackals; but they'd occasionally been seen hunting their own prey in packs. She said that mosty they went after the gazelle-things, but they'd been known to worry some of the larger animals too, especially during calving season.

But the highlight of the afternoon was when the pilot checked his scanner-display and took us around to see King Rex, the one they show in all the videos. He wasn't as big as the allosaur-things, but he was impressive just the same, and someday he'd be a lot bigger. He had just killed one of the rhino-things the day before and he was still torpidly guarding the kill until he was hungry again. He made me think of a sleeping alligator and I didn't want to be around when he woke. Pilot must have felt the same way. We didn't approach too closely.

Later, three of the red-brown raptors chased underneath the monorail for awhile, hissing and screeching and leaping; but we were high enough off the ground that we knew they couldn't get to us. Mikey called them names, but Nona hid her eyes against Mom-Lu's side. The expression on Mom-Lu's face suggested that she didn't like the raptors either.

JINKER

IT WASN'T UNTIL AFTER LUNCH that we got to Halfway Dome, one of only two domes that had great-horses. This one was a lot safer. You could actually go down to the floor. Birdie said that this dome was a “compromised” dome, where Linnean plants and animals could be safely exposed to Earth plants and animals. That's why we could actually enter.

There wasn't any danger of contamination. The Linnean creatures had all been sterilized of microbes and bacteria when they were brought over. This dome served as a halfway station where the Linnean plants and animals could be monitored for compatibility with Earth conditions. Eventually, some of these life-forms might be imported for Earth agriculture. But not for years yet. Not until they'd been fully tested in side-by-side conditions.

Inside, it was just like being outside—only outside on a different planet. We had to pass through six airlocks and a whole set of long corridors, but finally we came out on a balcony overlooking a giant bowl. From underneath, the dome looked just like sky. We walked down some wooden steps and we were
there
—on that other world.

The first thing you notice in the dome is the color of the light. Everything was yellower. It hurt my eyes. I thought that I'd get used to it after a while, and I did, sort of; but everything looked more orange, more red, more brown—not a whole lot, but enough to make everything more dusty-looking. It made my eyes water and I was rubbing them a lot more. Birdie said that was a normal reaction. Linnea's sun was just a few
degrees redder than ours and they had accurately duplicated its spectral output. If we were actually living in the dome, she said, our eyes would adjust within a week or two. But for a while, I was wondering if I really wanted to live under such a yellow sky.

The rest of the landscape was different, too. There were rolling hills, and a lake, and that was normal; but there were scrubby little trees that didn't look like trees at all. They didn't have any real leaves, they were furry instead. And the grass was dry and brownish. It was end of summer here.

We followed a long dirt path that curved back and forth between some little hills without really getting anywhere. The little hills went all around the outside of the bowl. I guess that helped make it look more real from the center.

Then finally, we came around a curve and there they were. The great-horses. And I forgot everything else.

They were taller than trees. Bigger than elephants. They had huge, thick legs, thicker than tree trunks, all covered with shaggy white hair and great flat hooves that made the ground thump when they pawed at it. They were so big most of us stopped, afraid to approach the corral any closer.

“Come on, Kaer,” Birdie said. “Let's go say hello.” She nudged me forward. I let myself be pushed. In person, the great-horses didn't look so glamorous anymore. They looked
big
. And they smelled. Not a bad smell, but definitely a horsey smell.

“Are they, um ...?”

“Friendly?” Birdie finished my question. “Yes. They're used to people. See that dappled one? That's Jinker. She's the mom-boss. You can't say hello to any of the horses until you make friends with Jinker first. She's very fussy about that. Here, Kaer—” Birdie reached into a big wooden crate just outside the corral. “Give her this apple. Go ahead, she likes apples. And she won't bite. Just hold it out on the flat of your hand, like this.”

I took the apple. It was as big as a pumpkin, only heavier. I held it with both hands reaching over the wooden rail. Jinker raised her huge head and shook it ponderously. She looked directly across the corral at me. And then she snorted, a sound like an old steam locomotive warming up. Then, as if building up steam, she took a single step, then another, and finally three more and she was
here
.

She lowered her gigantic head toward me—I leaned back away as far as I could, I was afraid to look—but she never touched me. She just
inhaled the apple up off my outstretched hands and it was gone in a single quick crunch.

“Attagirl,” said Birdie, slapping Jinker's nose with her hand. Jinker took another step forward and lowered her great head so it was right in front of me. Her eyes were as large as spotlights. Her nostrils were deep caves. The flat of her nose was like a wall. “Go ahead, Kaer. You can't hurt her.”

I reached out and touched her. She was
warm
.

“Harder than that,” said Birdie. “Otherwise she can't feel you. You have to slap her. Don't be afraid.”

Jinker snuffled impatiently, a sound like an earthquake clearing its throat. So I slapped her—gently.

“Harder.”

I slapped again, this time as hard as I dared. Jinker bobbed her head once or twice in approval. She made an
mmph
noise in her throat.

“Good, she likes you,” said Birdie. “Of course, she likes everybody who gives her apples.”

“Can I give her another one?”

“She'll eat as many as you give her.”

“Really?” I was already reaching into the barrel. Jinker watched me closely.

“Jinker's very considerate. She won't hurt your feelings by saying no to an apple.”

I held out another apple. This time I watched as Jinker curled back her great lips, parted her teeth and vacuumed the apple into oblivion. I didn't think I would ever get used to the sight. But I reached for another apple.

“How much food does she have to eat a day?”

“You couldn't give her enough apples to keep her alive. She needs a dozen bales of hay per feeding. A half ton a day, just for maintenance. And a dozen barrels of oats on a heavy work day.” Birdie slapped Jinker's head again. “And of course, all the carrots and apples she wants.” Jinker snorfled in agreement.

“It sounds like a lot of work.”

“No, feeding the horse is fun. It's cleaning up afterward that's a lot of work. All that hay comes out the other end. We've got half a dozen great-horses here. Each one leaves hundreds of kilos of droppings. That's quite a load. On the open prairie, dung-mice would take care of it. But here, we shovel it into a compost pit. On the world Jinker comes from, it gets plowed into the fields. It's very good fertilizer.”

“Oh, ick!”

“Where do you think fertilizer comes from, Kaer? If it weren't for the great-horses, a lot of those folks on Linnea might starve to death.”

I looked at Jinker with new respect. She nudged me with her nose and knocked me flat on my butt.

“She wants more apples,” Birdie laughed, helping me up. “I think you've made a new friend.”

SCOUTS

LATER, RINKY EXPLAINED TO ME that the great-horses were a test. Because if we were going to go to Horse World, we would probably have to go with horses and wagons, so they needed to see how everybody in the family felt about the horses. I didn't believe her, but she said, “If we passed the first test, they'll take us out riding. Then you'll see.” Birdie had said we might get a chance to go riding, if the schedule allowed. So maybe she was right.

Dinner that night was in a big restaurant overlooking the interior of the dome. We could see the horses in their paddock as they pulled at the bales of hay, and I spent the whole meal talking about Jinker until Mom-Trey finally asked me to change the subject or be quiet.

They didn't serve normal food here. Everything was from Linnea. They had meat from a big bird, kind of like an ostrich, only scruffier looking. They called it an emmo. And there was boffili stew. The boffili was like a big hairy cow, even bigger than the great-horse. Birdie said there were vast herds of them on the western continent. I didn't like the boffili, but the emmo wasn't too bad. It tasted like hamburger.

After dinner, we met with some scouts—folks who had gone over to Linnea to explore and then come back to help train more families. They told us what it would be like if we went there. There wouldn't be any electricity, they said. The Linneans hadn't discovered it yet, so that meant none of us could have it either. And we weren't going to be allowed to “discover” it for them. So that meant no music or
television or computers. And no lights after sunset except candles and lanterns.

“But what do you do—?” Aunt Morra asked.

“Mosty, we go to sleep. And get up at the first light of dawn. You'll get used to it. It can be a good life.”

“I mean, what do you do for entertainment?”

“We make our own,” said one of the mom-scouts. “We play instruments. We read books—usually one person reads aloud while others knit or do other work. We act out plays. We have our children recite their lessons. We do all the things that folks on that world do. Understand this,” she said. “When you're over there, you have to fit in perfectly. You have to forget you ever lived on another world. We can't risk cultural contamination.”

Auncle Irm said, “Morra and I won't be going, we'll be staying behind to manage the family affairs here. Will we have any contact at all? We're used to regular conferences, you know.”

One of the da-scouts stepped forward then. “While we don't specifically discourage contact, we do try to limit it—for the protection of the families on the other side. It represents too great a risk. Someone might say or do something that's so bizarrely out of character for that culture that it would taint the local relationships.”

He exchanged a glance with the mom-scout, then shrugged and added, “Look, it depends on the circumstances. Last year, the winter was so bad that some families were snowed in for months. We gave them an open line until spring. We fed them lots of their favorite entertainment. We're not out to punish anyone. But once the snow began to thaw, they had to work extra hard to get back into character. There's a price to be paid, no question. You're going to be isolated over there. Not everybody can handle it. Even the folks who think they can handle it sometimes crack and call for emergency pickup.”

“You mean it's possible to quit?” Da-Lorrin asked.

The mom-scout nodded grimly. “If you're thinking that you can bail out the first time you hit turbulence, don't go. We don't want to waste the investment. And besides, we don't make those kind of pickups easily. There's too much risk. We have to send a chopper through, and that risks a UFO incident. We've already had one too many ‘sightings.'”

The da-scout was even more direct. “Quitting is a disaster. If we have to pull you out, we have to fake your deaths. Usually by fire. We can't have you just go missing, and we can't leave bodies unless we find donors.
If we have to go to that kind of effort, there's a mandatory board of inquiry. And if it's determined that it wasn't absolutely necessary, well...I don't like to say this, because it gives the wrong impression, but we've had people fined and imprisoned for putting the project at risk. You don't want to do it.”

Lorrin held up his hands in defeat. “Okay, I got your point. I wasn't looking for a way out. I was just curious.”

The da-scout had a hard expression. He didn't look like he laughed very often. Lorrin sat down again and the scouts went on to talk about other stuff, like crops and seasons and how to build houses and furniture and other stuff.

We wouldn't be totally cut off, he said. We would have some technology. Only it would all be disguised to look like things that were normal over there—a doll, a music box, a mirror, a book, ordinary-looking stuff like that. If you didn't know what it was and how to work it, you wouldn't know it was anything special, even if you broke it open. Everything would be nanotech. Even us. The scout said we'd each be implanted. And whatever tech we might have, it wouldn't work for anyone who wasn't implanted. There were all kinds of safeguards.

It was Mom-Woo who said what everybody was thinking. She usually did, that was why she was Mom-Woo. She said, “If it's that dangerous, why do you send families over there at all?”

“That's a good question,” said the mom-scout. “I'll be honest with you. We've had that discussion ourselves—every time we meet a new family. We ask ourselves, is it a good idea to send
these
people over? But the truth is we
have
to send families. We can send singles or couples, but families work best. People trust families. And families can live in a community and observe its workings a lot easier than any other kind of observation team. And—” The mom-scout paused. “There's another consideration too. Our long-range planning.