Child of Grass: Sea of Grass, Book Two Page 8

  We approached low—what Byrne called “boffili high.” The rock stretched out to fill the display, and then it expanded to fill the view out my window as well. It was a giant red wall. If it looked like an impassible barrier in a chopper, I wondered what it must seem like to Linneans crossing the prairie with nothing but horses and wagons.

  “The Linneans say that the eufora live here, don’t they?”

  Da looked at me, surprised. “How did you know?”

  “Because if the eufora live anywhere, they would have to live here. This place looks magic. It feels magic. Can’t you feel it?”

  He patted me on the shoulder. “Yes, Kaer, I can.”

  The chopper entered the shadow of the rock and we started rising, higher and higher, until we came up and over the top. I thought we’d see another installation on top, but the only thing the display showed were a few landing lights outlining a wide flat place at the northern, higher end of the rock. To one side, there were several small buildings, as if someone had picked up a small Linnean village and reassembled it here. The landing area and the houses were set back far enough from the cliffs that nothing could be seen from the ground.

  We touched down lightly, the whole squadron almost at the same time. Almost immediately, the ground opened up around us and technicians in jump suits rushed out to service the machines. From somewhere else, three fuel trucks appeared, rolling across the roof of the rock toward us.

  “Come on,” said Byrne, unbuckling her seat belt. “Lunch! Maybe they’ll have boffili stew.”

  Da laughed and gave her a look. “They always have boffili stew.”

  “Wonderful!” said Byrne, completely unsurprised. “Let’s go then. Kaer, have you ever had real Linnean boffili stew?”

  “We used to have it in the Dome.”

  “Definitely not the same experience—you’ll see.”

  We hiked across the rock toward the distant buildings. I didn’t expect the amenities of a real airport, but just the same it felt strange to be on top of the world like this. A cool breeze swept across the orange rock, rippling through my hair with its song. “It feels like another planet,” I said.

  “Uh, Kaer. . . ?” Da said.

  “Oh, right.” I felt stupid. It was another planet. “But you know what I mean. Even here on Linnea, it feels like another planet.”

  He rumpled my hair gently. “Yes, I know what you mean.”

  I stopped and turned around slowly. It was almost half a klick to the station buildings. The choppers had grown small behind us. Above, the yellowing sky looked higher and brighter than the sky at home.

  Da stopped with me. “What?” he asked.

  “Linnea,” I said. “I want to feel Linnea. I haven’t had a chance until now. We just rush from station to station.” I held my arms out and turned slowly around and around. “Smell the air, da? I can smell razor-grass. And maybe boffili too. Not very close though. But a lot of them. A herd approaches, or perhaps it has already passed. I can see all the way to forever! And I smell. . . .” I sniffed again, shook my head. “. . . A whole bunch of stuff I don’t recognize yet.” I laughed. “Da, thank you for bringing me here. I love Linnea. Everything here—” I ran out of words, so I just grabbed him and hugged him. “Thank you!”

  Da laughed with me and hugged me back. “You make me very happy, Kaer.” And then, still holding my shoulders, he squatted so he could look at me directly, eye-to-eye. “You and Rinky and all the little-uns—you stand as the real reason why we signed up for the program. We did it for you. So you would have a better place to live. We will make this world safe for our people yet.” And then he kissed me. Standing again, he rumpled my hair. “Come on, my little angel. You must have hunger pains gnawing at your belly like pack of baby badgerines.”

  The little village was exactly that. Three small houses, a smoke-house, a public latrine, a commonstore, some sheds, a large covered area with tables and benches, and a cook-house close by—that must have been the dining area. It was the rudest looking restaurant I’d ever seen. In fact, the whole settlement was the poorest-looking Linnean village I’d ever seen. But then again, I hadn’t seen very many Linnean settlements, except in pictures, so I really didn’t have much experience to judge by.

  The buildings were unpainted, two of them leaned badly, and the wood was gray with age. They looked like they had all been built out of a dismantled great-wagon. Almost all the roofs were thatched with razor grass; the roof over the dining area was thatched with razor-grass, of course, and now that we were closer, I could see that the poles supporting the roof were bundles of thick razor-grass stems. The tables and benches were made from wood, but there were chairs of woven razor-grass too. The Linneans used razor grass for everything. Near the cook-house, I saw a huge pile of fuel-bricks like the ones we made at home, more than enough for a whole winter. At first I wondered why they needed so many bricks, until I glanced beyond the pile and saw that someone had laid the first few courses of bricks for a brand new block house. Pretty clever. I wondered what they were going to make the fireplace out of—probably bricks of pressed dirt, heavier but safer.

  Da told me that they dropped ropes and lowered themselves down the sides of the rock to harvest razor-grass, water, boffili, and almost everything else they needed. The more I looked around, the more I realized that despite appearances, these people had carved out a pretty good life up here. When the real Linneans finally made it to the top of Surprise Rock, they’d find a surprise all right—a community that looked totally self-sufficient. What they wouldn’t find, da said, would be the massive installation buried deep underneath it.

  “Oh,” I said, and followed him to the dining area.

  The plates on the tables were a ragged assortment of thick, hand-made pottery, each with a wooden spoon laid across it. Nearby, the pilots and other Scouts were washing their hands and faces around a wide wooden tub. Da steered me over there and we washed up too. It wasn’t just good manners, it was an essential part of the Linnean religion. We had practiced it in the Dome. Water is the Mother’s gift; washing is a blessing. When you wash, you honor the Mother, and in turn, she will bless you with health and long life.

  Smiller and Byrne needed to confer with the other crews, so we were pretty much on our own for this meal—which was okay with me anyway, because I hadn’t had much time at all with da since we’d left home, so I was glad for the chance to be alone with him finally.

  “I don’t see a menu,” I whispered. Da grinned. “They don’t use menus here. They try to serve only what they can grow off the land.” He pointed toward the southern end of the rock. “They’ve carved a reservoir down there, and they’ve also begun composting all their waste material. And they bring up a few kilos of dirt, every time they raise something up from the prairie. Eventually, they’ll have a real farm up here. But that won’t happen for a long time. So mostly, we get boffili. One boffili can last a month or more, depending on how many flights come in. The tenders bring in supplies every other day, mostly to keep the fuel reservoirs full. Fortunately, we have plenty of nearly-pure methane just on the other side of the Gate, so I doubt we’ll ever have to worry about a shortage of fuel.”

  We were joined then by several men we didn’t know. They looked at us curiously, me in particular, but they didn't speak to us directly. They looked like ordinary Linneans to me, but by now almost everybody looked Linnean to me, so I assumed they were Scouts.

  A sweaty woman with stringy hair came by then, passing out crude ceramic mugs and pitchers of lukewarm pepper-tea. “No problem,” she said. “We boiled the maiz-likka out of the water yesterday and again today. No problem.” A thin-looking boy followed after her, carrying a woven basket. He passed out flat round loaves of bread. Da grabbed one and broke it into pieces, putting one piece on my plate, a larger piece on his, and then passed the rest to the person on his other side, who grunted thanks. I picked up my bread and sniffed it curiously; it was a dark bread, very hard and very dense. Kind of like pumpernickel,
only more so. I took another sniff, started to take a tentative bite—

  Da touched my shoulder. “Kaer. . . ?”

  At first I didn’t understand what he wanted, then I realized he meant for me to say a blessing. For some reason, I was suddenly embarrassed. Here on Linnea, the blessings actually meant something—because this time, the Mother would actually hear me. I gulped and picked up the piece of bread from my plate. I cleared my throat and said, “Thank you, Mother Linnea, for the fruits of your flesh.” Then I poured myself a cup of pepper-tea from the pitcher in front of me. I held up the mug. “Thank you, Mother, for the tears of your joy.”

  “Very good,” said da. I noticed the other men at the table nodding their approval.

  Finally, a burly man in a leather apron came out of the cookhouse, pushing an obviously hand-built wooden cart. On top of it was—ugh!—a carved out boffili head. It wasn’t a full-sized boffili either, only a calf—but still the head was bigger than the whole cart. Someone had turned it into a giant cauldron. When he got closer with the cart, I saw that inside the boffili skull was a huge ceramic pot filled with boffili stew. It smelled . . . different than I was used to. He moved down the table, ladling huge portions onto every plate. When he got to me and da, he took a longer time than usual, stirring deep into his vat as if dredging up treasures from the bottom.

  “Here you go, Kaer,” he said, smiling fondly at me, as if I were an old friend. He spoke thickly, as if he were having trouble with the language. I could understand that—losing the verb to be meant thinking twice before starting any sentence. “I make fresh stew, just for you,” he said. “Use only fresh hump-meat, the best. You eat hearty here. Then go make us all proud. Eh?”

  I remembered what da had said to me earlier. I nodded and did my best to smile back. “Thank you,” I said. “I will.” The burly man looked pleased, but he didn’t move on. He was waiting for me to start eating. “The stew? You like it?”

  I looked at my plate uncertainly. The stew was thick and filled with suspicious-looking lumps. I assumed everything in it was either boffili or prairie-apple. Or maybe razor-grass shoots. Who knew? I certainly couldn’t tell. I picked up my spoon and started to scoop just the tiniest bit onto one edge—da coughed softly, in that way of his that could fill a library or two with meaning, but this cough didn’t really require much interpretation. Quickly, as if I’d meant to all along, I scooped up a big gobbet of stew onto my spoon. I held it up to my nose and—stopped myself from sniffing suspiciously, that was very bad manners too. Instead I inhaled deeply, said, “Mmm, this smells so good,” and shoved the whole spoon into my mouth in a single fast motion.

  I tried to chew without tasting, while I made a great show of nodding my approval. “Mmm, yes. Yes. Very good. Very good. I like this very much.” I turned to the burly man. “Thank you, yes. Yes.” Then I gave up and grabbed for my mug of tea—“Mmm, hot, hot!”—while everyone around me laughed.

  But somewhere in there, I realized this was pretty good stew, so I took a second bite, this one a lot smaller, and this time I meant it when I said, “Mmm, somebody around here knows how to make very good stew.” There were big chunks of boffili meat—a lot easier to chew than we got back home. And it had a serious beefy flavor, only somehow both darker and redder at the same time. You could actually taste the meat under the sauce. It was a more grownup flavor than I was used to, but . . . it was good. And I said so. The burly man patted my shoulder and moved on to feed the rest of his hungry customers.

  “You made him very happy, Kaer. Your approval meant a lot to him. You did good.”

  “Thank you, da.” And then I stopped talking while I shoved bread and stew into my face, occasionally washing it down with long draughts of pepper-tea.

  After a bit, I sat back with a grunt. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was or how fast I had stuffed myself. My belly actually hurt. I noticed that the men sitting on the other side of da were looking at me as if waiting for permission to speak. “Hello. . . ?” I said.

  “You . . . are . . . Kaer?” asked the man closest to us. He spoke with an accent, I couldn’t place it—and then I realized, he’d spoken in English. “You come from . . . Oerth, yes?”

  “Uh—” I looked to da, uncertain. Was this a test? I started to frame a noncommittal reply.

  “In Anklish, please? I need to be practicing mine. Do I say that right? My name is Varro.” I suddenly realized he was younger than I’d thought. Behind his full beard, he was just a teenager, probably only three or four years older than me. He looked like a brick wall, all hard and red-faced, and in a lot of ways he made me think of Earring—Jorge—but where Jorge had a glower, Varro had smiling eyes. Like someone who was still marveling at the adventure of life.

  “Um, yes,” I answered slowly. “Your English is very clear.” And as I said that, I realized something else. “You are native to Linnea, yes?”

  He beamed, delightedly. “Yes, I am. I hope to visit Oerth sometime. I come to Oerth. Will you meet me there and show me around? I be your guide here, if you ask.” He was very eager.

  I looked to da. “Do we need a guide?”

  “We might. Smiller has to make that decision.”

  “Um, I don’t understand—I thought there weren’t any Linneans who knew.”

  “There aren’t supposed to be any, but there are a few. It happened unavoidably.”

  Varro grinned. “I am captured by mistake. With my friends. No harm intended, but here we are, yes? This ugly fellow here is Kzam, he is my how-you-say . . . stepped-brother? And this man next to me, he is partner, called Chirl. We hunt in high mountains for pelts. We are quite good hunters, yes? Yes. We show you sometime, please? And fourth partner, Popo, he is make stew special for you. You like? Yes? Like your da say, you make him very happy. He worries that many day to make you smile-food.”

  There was something about Varro, his amazing enthusiasm surprised me. After all I’d heard from Smiller and Byrne and Jorge and all the other Scouts about how dangerous the Linneans were, Varro’s friendliness was both charming and disarming. It was like being hugged by a boffili. In fact, all four of the Linneans looked like happy boffili. Kzam had bushy hair and a bushy beard, sticking out in all directions like his head was caught in a giant curly nest and he couldn’t get it out. He had a broken nose, his chest was as big as a barrel, and his arms were as thick as tree trunks—but his eyes were friendly and he smiled and laughed a lot. Chirl was tall and gangly and easy-going; his hair was braided all the way down to his waist—even his beard. I doubted he’d ever had a haircut in his life.

  “If you’re here by mistake . . .” I started to ask, looking from one to the other, frowning and trying to figure it out. “Can’t you just go home?”

  Varro shook his head sadly. The others looked uncomfortable. “What do we say to others who ask where we have gone for so long? By the time we learn Anklidge here, it be too late to go back. We not the same. No. We are not the same.”

  Kzam said, “I not do want to go home. I have fun here. I learn computer. I like to watch the television shows from Oerth. And besides—” he rapped his broad chest. “Orth-magic kill maiz-likka in chest. I am breathing healthy now, like when I was child again. And my teeth, look! I have teeth again. Without pain. No, I not do want to go back. Neither does Popo. But Varro here, he has left behind young wife and baby. He much very wants his family to see again. You understand? You have lucky, Kaer—you family come with soon-time. Through Gate. Varro have not so lucky. So we train here to be good guides for Oerth-people. We go to Oerth soon and help teach you families to live on Linnea, so Varro can go home soon-time as possible. We help good Oerth-people stop bad Oerth-people.”

  Suddenly, I had a very uncomfortable thought—so uncomfortable that I had to get up from the table. “Excuse me,” I blurted.

  I headed for the latrine, with da following immediately after. “Kaer, do you feel ill?”

  Revelations I

  Smiller and Byrne came hurrying after both of
us. “Kaer, has something happened?”

  “No,” I said, a little too quickly. And then corrected myself. “Yes—” I pointed back at the table. “You told me we couldn’t tell any Linneans the truth about Earth, but what about them? They know—and now they can’t go back to their families, can they? You have to keep them prisoner here!”

  “No,” said Smiller. And then she admitted, “Well, yes—but not the way you think. We have to keep them here for their own protection. The last time this happened, the last time we let someone who knew the truth go back to his own community, his thinking had changed so much they declared him maizlish and expelled him naked onto the prairie. We couldn’t get to him, and he took a long time to die. That hurt us all very badly, Kaer. But you don’t know how badly the Linneans fear outsiders.”

  “Varro said you captured them.”

  “We rescued them,” said Byrne. “An avalanche cut them off. They would have died. Their horses died, they couldn’t get out. They came hiking across the hills, half-starved, and stumbled into North Mountain One. We couldn’t turn them away, could we? Would you? So we brought them into the station and nursed them back to health. We had no camouflage then, no way to pretend for them. So we taught them English and let them teach us things about Linnea we couldn’t learn any other way.”

  “But you don’t trust them to go home.”

  “No, we do trust them,” said Smiller. “But we don’t trust their communities. And neither do they. They know why they can’t go back.”