Child of Earth

“Some people might think that too young. I don’t. The Linneans do not distinguish childhood the way we do on Earth. You take on adult responsibilities when you can handle them, and that makes you an adult. I need you to take on an adult responsibility now. Can you do that?”

“Da thinks I can.”

“Do you think you can? Don’t answer too quickly.” She stared into my eyes, studying my face, waiting for my reply.

I said, “Yes, I think I can—but even if I had doubts, it wouldn’t matter, because you’ve already chosen me and you have no one else to do the job, do you? So I’ll do it, whether I think I can or not.”

Smiller blinked, surprised. And then she grinned. “You’ll do fine, Kaer. I could not have asked for a better answer.” She shook her head with rueful amusement. “I did ask for that, didn’t I?” And then, her smile fading, she looked into my eyes again. “I have a lot to tell you. Much of it will upset you. But the sooner you can get past your upset—”

“You can’t rescue the scouts, can you?”

“It looks difficult,” she admitted. “The situation has gotten much more complex in the past few days. The High Council won’t travel to Callo City. They fear the political risk—don’t ask. When politics and religion mix, nothing makes sense. Let’s just say that they don’t want to leave the safety of their city on the hill and put themselves at physical risk on the lowlands.

“Instead, they’ve sent a panel of Magistrates to Callo City to examine the prisoners. If the Magistrates find cause, and we expect they will, then they’ll probably order the captured scouts transported east to Mordren Enclave, where the High Council will hold a formal Inquiry.” She paused. “What do you know of the Enclave?”

“Not much,” I admitted. “Some kind of fortress, I think.”

“Aye, some kind of fortress. When the Linneans first began colonizing this continent three centuries ago, they had a series of long bloody wars over who would control what. Eventually, the settlers seized control of their own cities—but then the cities started fighting among themselves. Peace came hard to these people and it continues only as the product of an uneasy balance of power. The cities need each other for trade more than they need to conquer each other. But they still distrust each other. Faith in Mother Linnea remains the only unifying authority among all the cities, so whenever a conflict arises, the Church has the only authority and the only machinery for any kind of a resolution. Do you follow this, so far?”

“We studied this at home. I mean, in the dome.”

“I know, but I need to make sure you understand. You see, when the Church decided to build a High Temple in the new land, they needed to choose a city-state so powerful that no other city-state could conquer it. A number of cities competed for that honor, because they all knew that whatever city the Church chose for its continental administration, that city would become the capital city of all the states. It would have enormous power over the others. The Church eventually chose to build its own city, on a site of its own choosing. Mordren Mesa. It towers nearly a kilometer over the land, and only three narrow winding trails lead up to the top. They have long since widened the trails, of course, but the avenues give them total control over the access to the city. No one gets in or out without appropriate papers.

“On top of the mesa, they grow most of their own crops, they raise boffili and emmos, they have a vast reservoir in which they store water against the summer droughts. They live very well up there. The city has gleaming walls of shining pink marble, minarets and towers. Beautiful trees line broad avenues. And if you could walk through its streets, you would think it a marvelous place to live. But it serves as both a fortress and a prison. And if they take our scouts there, we will likely never see them again.” Smiller paused there, to give me a chance to understand.

“Will they torture them?”

“Very likely, yes.”

“Then we have to rescue them, don’t we?”

“Yes. Everybody feels that way.” She smiled gently. “You know Jorge?”

“Yes,” I nodded. “I call him Earring.”

“That will make him laugh, when he hears. He went into Callo City last week to prepare a plan. But almost immediately, he had to go into hiding. The Soldiers of the Church have sealed the entire town. The rescue operation that we wanted to do won’t work anymore. We can’t get our people in close enough.”

“But I thought—?” I stopped. It didn’t matter what I thought.

“So did we. We all thought that our anesthetic darts and our tear gas and our night-vision goggles would work because they gave us such a significant advantage. We still think we might have a chance using them. But our people can’t move. Almost all of them have had to go into hiding. We don’t even know if our safe houses remain safe. The Soldiers have begun searching.”

“Searching—? For us?”

Smiller looked grim. “Yes, they search for more Oerth-people.” She explained, “We have found out that a family we thought killed by hostiles did not die at all. The Hale-Stone family. James, Andrew, Jack, Brent, Stephen, Brad, Morgan, Alia, Patty, Donna and Philip. I don’t remember the rest of them; they had a very large marriage, all of them very grim about everything. Very serious and severe. All except for Phillip. He had some kind of brain defect; he babbled and raved and ranted like a lunatic—so of course, that made him seem like the most intelligent one in the bunch. And probably the most likable. How they got approved remains a mystery. But the Linneans think that crazy people speak with the Mother’s voice, so maybe the Administration considered crazy Philip an asset to the Hale-Stones once they crossed over.

“Jorge remembers them as the biggest problem he ever saw in training. But they had a lot of political backing to get them into the program, and apparently the Dome Administration had to send them through the gate to ensure the support of some of the members in the recalcitrant voting bloc in Congress.” She spat sideways, an eloquent opinion.

“I’ll tell you, Kaer, I didn’t like them. I didn’t mind hearing that they’d died—and it annoys me to no end that they didn’t. Two of our scouts spotted Stephen, Jack and Andrew in Callo City, posing as prosperous merchants. They saw them spreading around a lot of money—all kinds of pelts, gold and silver, and who knows what else—so now they have the best friends that money can buy. And now we know where the stories of fabled Oerth have come from. They’ve become active in the leadership of Callo City. They did what we trained them to do, but they didn’t do it for us.”

In all seriousness, I asked, “Will I get points taken off if I say what I think of such people?”

Smiller laughed. “Nah, you’ll probably get a round of applause. But we still have a problem. The Charter limits our actions. But not theirs anymore. And they know it. So they can say and do things that we can’t.”

I said what I thought.

Smiller nodded her agreement. “Yes. One of those bas—individuals—identified Jaxin and the other scouts. Stephen S. Hale-Stone. The ‘S’ must stand for snake. Do you know what they’ve done? They’ve put our scouts on public display. In cages. Suspended above the public plaza in the center of the town!

“Even worse, they’ve stripped our scouts naked. The Hale-Stones must have suggested that. So we have no monitors on them anymore. No transceivers, nothing. We have no communication from them at all, and no way to get someone in close enough. A religious hysteria has swept Callo City. Pilgrims have traveled from all over the region to see the Oerth-men. Preachers hold daily services. They hold prayer vigils all night long. Crowds surround the cages and mock the prisoners. They throw trash and garbage and offal at them.

“The only good news in any of this, the swarming crowds have given some useful cover to the last few observers we have who can still move safely through the streets. We have five or six who remain unknown to the Hale-Stones. Your da’s suggestion to use colonists instead of scouts has proven very wise. Here—” She fumbled in her pack and pulled out some ragged sheets of paper. “Look at these. They’ve circulated handbills and posters identifying almost all of our senior scouts. At least they’ve done us a small favor here; they’ve let us know who to warn or recall.”

They were drawings of people I knew. Scouts. Below their pictures, Linnean writing spelled out their names. Across the top, each one said in big letters: “Beware of Oerth-folk!”

I paged through them, astonished. “I see you. And Earring—Jorge. I recognize this one, but I don’t know her name. This looks like Byrne. Novotny. I don’t know this one or this one.” I looked up. “These likenesses, all so accurate—they must have used a camera. How could they do this?”

“Obviously, they planned this for a long time,” said Smiller.

“I guess so.” I felt sick inside. As if somebody had taken a bulldozer to the home we’d worked so hard to build.

“The Magisterial Panel will convene in four days—the day after they arrive. We expect a very short hearing.”

“And then what—?”

“Jorge says that four armored railcars arrived this morning. The Callo City authorities wouldn’t prepare for such a trip if they didn’t expect to make it. Politics plays a big part here. With such hysteria in the city, the Magistrates can’t afford to dismiss the investigation. Better for them that they should pass the responsibility upward to their masters. If the situation blows up, let it blow up in someone else’s face.

“So just about everyone believes that the Magistrates will order the prisoners sent east to Mordren Enclave. They’ve already announced how they’ll do it. They’ll send a caravan of rail-wagons east, with armed guards surrounding each one.”

“Armed guards—?”

“They expect a rescue attempt,” said Smiller. “The Hale-Stones have warned them that the Oerth-people always try to rescue their own. So the Soldiers of the Church have armed themselves as if for a war. I want you to think about something. We had a good plan to rescue our people from the jail. We moved a team through the gate, but before we could get on-site, the Linneans moved the hostages to the town square.

“So we came up with another plan. Let them transport the prisoners, and we catch them on the prairie. Destroy the tracks, stop the rail-wagons, put everyone to sleep and break the cars open. We start moving more equipment through the gate. All of a sudden, the Linneans announce they’ll send guards with the train. How do they know so much?”

“The Hale-Stones tell them?” I offered.

“How do the Hale-Stones find out?”

I realized she was waiting for me to reply. I guessed. “Their equipment for making miracles. The person who smuggled it through the gate probably sees all the other equipment that comes through the gate. He signals them, I’ll bet.”

Smiller looked to Da, pleased. “You have a very smart child, Lorr.”

Da grinned. Smiller turned back to me gravely. “So you see the problem?”

“Yes’m. All too clearly. They’ve locked us out of our own planet. I mean, they’ve locked us out of the Linneans’ planet. And we can’t protect the Linneans from the Hale-Stones without creating even more uproar, can we?”

Da spoke up then. “Might as well tell the rest of it now, Smil.”

“It gets worse?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said sadly. “Do you remember Buzzard Kelly’s Bible?”

I nodded. “Everyone does. Administor Rance nearly threw the Kellys out of the program.”

Smiller sniffed. “Like the Hale-Stones, the Dobersons and the Kellys both came to us as a Congressional scholarship. Fortunately, the Dobersons disqualified themselves very quickly; but we have suspected the Kellys of the same sympathies for some time. How did they get the chocolate into the dome? And the Bible? They must have had some help, obviously. Someone has compromised dome security somehow. Yes, Administor Rance wanted to expel the Kellys. And she would have, but right now it serves us to keep them in the dome and watch them carefully and see if we can find out who they work with.”

“Someone we know?” I looked to Da worriedly.

Smiller shook her head. “I don’t want to say. What if I say the wrong name? What if we have more than one spy? I don’t want to start any gossip about something so serious. But I’ll tell you this—we never thought we’d have this kind of a problem. We never thought anyone would betray the program and leak our secrets directly to the Linneans. The Hale-Stones have caught us totally off balance.