Child of Earth (28 page)

“We don't know if it will keep them from stalking prey. We need to find out.”

“You have the call on this one.”

“Keep the choppers on the ground.”

“You sure?”

“So far. Position?”

“Still holding. Inching forward. How do you think they'll come in?”

“Sideways across the slope. Halfway to the top. They'll want to exhaust the horses quickly by forcing them to run uphill.”

“The kacks have the same disadvantage—too large for Earth-gravity.”

“Yes and no. We don't know. We've hobbled the horses. We'll stand and fight. If we don't run, it could confuse them.”

Burr's voice now. “Use your rangefinders now, people. Get a sense of the distances across this hill. You won't have time later.” She pointed. “See that stand of leftover summer grass—too confused to lie down and die—right, the tall one. Halfway between here and there, anything farther than that, you won't make the shot. Wait till they cross the halfway mark.”

Willow picked out a similar landmark on the right. “Everybody clear? Don't fire until I say. If you don't have a clean shot, don't waste your bolt. Tranks and tasers first. Crossbows only on my command. Kaer, stand ready—”

He yanked the handle he held; so did Burr. Kilter and Kale lurched forward, grumbling and complaining. The wagon jerked. I heard a couple of unhappy remarks from below. One of the babies had started crying and Mom-Lu couldn't comfort her.

“I see them.” That was Da. He pointed across the snowfield to the edge of the slope.

“Got it,” said Willow. Almost immediately, the others confirmed. I could barely make out the dim black shapes shifting in the darkness.

The kacks didn't come running in. And they didn't come in howling. They moved easily across the snow, barely breaking the crust. Sitting high on the driver's bench at the top of the wagon, I could see everything. The kacks came in on the right. Willow and the others spread out sideways, putting themselves between the kacks and the horses. Burr and her squad moved forward of the horses, to provide crossfire and keep the kacks from flanking the team.

“Kaer! Hit the growler!” I began cranking as hard as I could. The sound started low, like a deep scrape; then as I turned harder, the sound became louder and higher-pitched. It became a siren, then a scream, then an incredible banshee howl. The kacks stopped, uncertain. They
cocked their heads. They stepped sideways, as if trying to figure this new thing out.

Beside me, Rinky turned her lantern like a spotlight, focusing it toward the approaching beasts. On my other side, Driver held up what looked like a flare gun and fired a stink-grenade. It arced up high, reached its peak and came down trailing a billowing plume of smoke. Strange perfumes filled the air—musky, rotten, repugnant, a fruity mix of pheromones and flavors. For a moment, I thought I might vomit.

The horses caught their scent then—of the kacks or the stink-grenade, I couldn't tell—but it upset them. They whinnied and stamped and snorted, suddenly eager to get away. Driver held the reins tight and made comforting noises. “Easy, girl, easy—” but they ignored him. Da had hold of Kilter's bridle strap, and Big Jes had Kale's now; leaning in with all their weight against the great-horses' urgency, forcing their heads down and keeping them from bolting in fear.

Disconcerted by the noise, by the brightness surrounding the wagon, by the sudden confusion of strange smells—the kacks hesitated. Rinky focused the glow of her lantern on the largest.

I'd seen pictures of kacks, lots of pictures. Big-screen, high-resolution pictures. Pictures more vivid than reality. Close-ups from the probes and overhead shots from the sky-cameras. I'd always thought them beautiful, impressive. I'd always felt a kind of nobility in these predacious giants. But not tonight, not now—this was different. This was
real
. I could smell the creatures; they stunk of sourness and rotten meat—a stench of carrion and rot. Whatever nobility I'd imagined, that had been an illusion; these were stinking death-machines.

The adults were as tall as bison. The pups were the size of ponies. These things were just too big—all meat and bone and muscle. Their skulls were oversized, their jaws were long and distended, their heads were all teeth. And each of them had two large incisors that curved down below its lower jaw—saber-tooth wolves, huge and hungry, white eyes glistening in the moonlight, fur bristling, low throaty growling—

I turned the crank of the growler and the kacks stared up at me, unblinking, curious, focused intently, studying, examining, weighing—

“Easy there, easy....” I didn't know if Driver was talking to the horses or to me. I turned the crank, afraid to stop, afraid to look away. Beneath us, Willow's squad took careful aim—

And then it was over. Two of the kacks were down. And the rest were retreating up the slope, hesitant, unsure, each one pausing to look back, then resuming the strategic withdrawal, following its fellows. Too fast.
So fast, I wasn't sure exactly what had happened. I'd have to see the pictures from the ceiling cameras.

Slowly, carefully, Willow and Burr approached the fallen kacks. They stood off a distance, Burr surveying each with a scanner. Satisfied, they turned and waved to us. The animals were tranquilized; they'd each be out for hours. A bio-team was on its way to retrieve the animals, take them back to the labs and properly implant them.

Willow and Burr unhobbled the horses, then removed their hoods. They reassured the animals, giving each a dozen apples. Kilter and Kale were not assuaged, but they ate the apples anyway.

Da climbed back up into the wagon and pulled me into his lap. He wrapped his great arms around me, and I should have felt safe, but I didn't. I wanted to cry, but I didn't know why. “Shh,” said Da, stroking my hair. “Save it for later.”

A few moments later, we were on our way again. We got home just as the first flurries of snow began to fall. There really wasn't much to say anyway. This was Linnea.

NEWS

THE CALL CAME IN THE MIDDLE OF BREAKFAST. We had fifteen minutes to get dressed and get upstairs. By the look on Da-Lorrin's face, we knew it was urgent. By the time we got up the ladder, a tractor-bus was already crunching across the plain from the direction of the Kelly farm, leaving harsh tracks in the snow.

The Kellys were already aboard and as we climbed up into the warmth of the cabin, they hailed us warmly. We hadn't seen anyone for a while, so even the Kellys seemed like good company now. I sat down next to Patta and we started chatting as if nothing bad had ever happened between us. She told me that they were going to be listed on the next crossover schedule, and I nodded politely without saying anything at all. I wondered what Da-Lorrin would say when I told him; nothing repeatable, probably.

All the moms were talking about the snow, how real it looked—of course, it was
real
—and Patta and I just rolled our eyes upward. All the dads and uncles were talking about this emergency meeting; not exactly speculating, but not hiding their concerns either. Whatever had happened on Linnea to make the Dome Authority so darkly secretive, we were about to find out. I felt as much dread as anticipation.

The main auditorium was almost filled by the time we got in, and Administor Rance was already at the podium impatiently ringing her bell and demanding that everyone take their seats as quickly as possible. Da-Lorrin led us down the aisle toward our assigned section. We
saw families from all over the dome, a lot of people we hadn't seen in months. I wanted to wave hello, but Mom-Woo pulled me down onto a bench and hushed me up quickly.

Administor Rance looked like she'd swallowed a frog. She rang the gathering sternly to silence. “We have some information for you,” she said, and then stepped away from the lectern. A scout named Byrne stepped up to the podium and began speaking immediately. At first, I didn't understand why we needed to hear her story, but as she talked the enormity of the situation became apparent.

Byrne had been traveling across the western continent on the Linnean rail lines. The Linneans didn't have real railroads, not with locomotives. They didn't have an iron industry and they hadn't invented steam engines yet. But they had rails, sort of. They made bricks—the same kind we made—and used them to build heavy roadbeds with raised edges like rails; then they ran horse-drawn wagons along them. The wagons looked a lot like the ones we used, except they had wheels shaped for running on the rail-edges.

A horse-drawn wagon could go fifteen kilometers a day over dirt, but three or four times as far on rails. The Linneans didn't have rail lines across the continent yet, but they were building steadily, if slowly. The railroad extended all the way to Callo City now, the real one.

Byrne and two companions had boarded at Callo City and traveled as far east as anyone had yet dared. Their instructions were to turn back at the first funny look, but they had gone all the way to the eastern seaboard, and then north as far as the wall of glaciers. Beyond the glaciers, the mountains looked as sharp as knives, so they turned south and west again, working their way back to Callo City through the northern wastelands and scrub forests. That took a while because there weren't any railroads there. Few Linnean families lived that far north and those that did kept mosty to themselves. The people held their trust close and did not talk easily to strangers who might be outcasts or hostiles.

But the scouts did attend a few county fairs and local celebrations and other gatherings where few questions were asked. They listened to conversations everywhere they went—“everything from preaching to speeching to barroom screeching,” as Byrne put it. They went to church services and town meetings and market days. They traded boffili robes and beaver pelts for copper and iron coins. And once they'd traded a gold nugget for paper banknotes printed by the Church.

Wherever they traveled, they always learned new things about the Linneans; but this time, they had noticed something
different
in the talk
of the people, especially as they worked their way back westward. They discovered not just a growing awareness of strange sightings in the sky, but stories even more worrisome. A new mythology had sprung up, about another world just beyond the wall of purple mountains lining the western edge of the continent: a world called Oerth.

The people of Oerth weren't like the people of Linnea; they were sort of like elves, tall and thin, pale and emotionless—and they had mysterious magicks. They lived a hundred years or more and they never fell sick. They flew to the moon in fiery chariots. And they dove under the sea in ships of metal. The pale folk of Oerth had mirrors that let them look a thousand miles away and oracles of captured-lightning held in glass that gave them answers to any question they could ask. They built bridges ten kilometers long and towers a kilometer high. The cities of Oerth shone with magical light all night long, and carriages without horses ran through the streets. Paintings of the dead could talk to their grandchildren. And eeriest of all ... some of the faerie-folk of Oerth lived under a giant bowl twenty kilometers across and pretended to be Linneans, practicing for the time when they would move unseen among the Linnean people for purposes of their own....

When Byrne told us that last part, an audible gasp swept through the auditorium. Her words shocked us. It was like what Gampa said about a bucket of cold water in the face. It wakes you up. Well, we were definitely awake. What dismayed us the most, I think, was the terrible realization that somebody who had gone through the same rigorous training as the rest of us had betrayed his silence and put everybody else at risk. We couldn't believe it.

Byrne said that most of the stories she'd heard were told as fantasies for children—too outlandish for the Church to consider them “evil mischief.” But lately, some Linneans had begun warning their children that the unreal-folk of Oerth were roaming the land, looking to steal the souls of good Linneans. And even more lately, some folk had begun wondering aloud where such stories had come from and what they really meant....

THE MAN WITH THE SILVER EARRING

THEN BYRNE RELINQUISHED THE PODIUM to the Man with the Silver Earring. He ignored the lectern and started talking even before he got to the center of the stage. He was just as brusque as ever. “We've known about these rumors for several months now. They seem to have started in the west and traveled east with returning caravans. Because the Linneans have a great deal of curiosity about what lies in the unknown regions of their continent, any story—no matter how outlandish—gets repeated endlessly.

“Now, the Linneans don't believe all the fabulous tales of Oerth, but many of them do believe that a great and prosperous land lies beyond the western mountains—and some Linneans believe that the Oerth-folk will work evil mischief to keep honest folk from finding them. They talk of a secret pass through the mountains, which they call the gateway to Oerth. We know of several Linnean explorers who have announced their intentions to search for that gateway.”

Earring continued, “You all know that we've had families disappear. Perhaps the stories started with them. Maybe bandits or hostiles captured one of those lost families. Perhaps the family tried to bargain its way to freedom. The other possibility...” He rubbed his nose distastefully. “We suspect that the families that disappeared ... may have vanished
deliberately—
that they intended all along to colonize Linnea at cross-purposes to the Gate Authority's goals. If so, they have put us all at danger.”

Earring held out a hand to silence the cries of horror and anger, but for a moment, everyone was too upset to calm down. A lot of hands went up then; some people stood up and shouted for attention. Earring just stood his ground, looking from face to face with those dark eyes of his, and after a moment, people began sitting down again.