Child of Earth

AFTER THE SIXTH OR SEVENTH WEEK, our skill with the language was good enough so that the classes began to include discussions of how things worked on Linnea and how they were different from Earth. That’s when things got really interesting, because just like Birdie said, everything we knew was wrong. Nothing on Linnea was like we thought.

Our teacher was this old, rumpled, scruffy-looking guy with a potbelly and a tendency to spit, so nobody sat in the front row. His name was Novotny; he’d been on the linguistics team studying the very first videos of the Linneans after the gate was opened. He was famous for figuring out large parts of the language; and later, he was one of the first people to cross over and visit a Linnean town.

Novotny had a funny way of teaching. He would say stuff about Linnea and let us react to it and then he’d say some other stuff and we’d start arguing about it, and then he’d grin at his assistant and sit down and listen to us for as long as we kept arguing—always in Linnean. Finally, when we’d exhausted ourselves, arguing about the way things should work, he’d get up and tell us the way things really worked over there. And then he’d tell us the annoying part, that we didn’t get a vote on it. Deal with it, he said.

The biggest argument was about the Linnean Church. Linnea actually meant mother or mother-world or mother-goddess. The Linneans believed that the world was the living body of God, and that God had given birth out of her own flesh to everything that walked, crawled, slithered, swam or flew. Therefore, they divided all life into two categories: life which honored the Mother, and life which despoiled the Mother—and life which honored the Mother had a sacred duty to wipe out life which despoiled the Mother; that meant outcasts, hostiles and nonbelievers.

The Linneans had a nasty word for things that despoiled the Mother; they called them maizlish. The word meant unclean or evil or hurtful—things that were infused with the dark spirit of a maiz-likka. The maiz-likka were demon-spirits. They didn’t come from the Mother and they owed her no allegiance. They were the spirits of coldness and death; they came out of the dark between the stars, hungering for warmth and light, of which the Mother had plenty.

Like parasites, the maiz-likka burrowed deep into the Mother’s flesh, drinking her blood, killing her eggs and poisoning her children. The maiz-likka thrived in dirt and corruption, they lived in cesspools, in rotting carrion, in pus and vomit and plagues. The maiz-likka hunted beyond the edge of the horizon or high in the mountains; they circled the world with the night, always fleeing the dawn. They dived out of the darkness to prey on warm-blooded life of all kinds. The maiz-likka caused illness and death in boffili and emmos, and even in kacks. Wherever the Mother’s children died, it was caused by something maizlish—and if it was serious enough, it was the work of a maiz-likka. What the maiz-likka most liked to do was infect human beings and let them do maizlish things, so human beings constantly had to watch themselves for maizlish tendencies.

According to the Linneans, the maiz-likka hated the Mother and all her children and would not return to the dark between the stars until the Mother was dead and cold, a barren rock. Therefore, it was the responsibility of all human life to seek out anything maizlish and neutralize it. Maizlish things couldn’t be killed—because killing was a maizlish act—but they could be neutralized. Although sometimes the way the Linneans did it, there wasn’t a lot of difference between killing and neutralizing. Many Linneans believed that the maiz-likka were so powerful and so hard to stop that eventually they would succeed in destroying all life, and after that the Mother herself, so they tended to be a little fanatic about maizlish stuff.

But somewhere along the way, about a thousand years ago, somebody figured out, or realized in a vision—or maybe just made it up—that the Mother had some pretty powerful defenses of her own. Whenever the Mother felt uneasy or upset or threatened by dark demonic forces, parts of herself broke off and went out into the world to act like antibodies to neutralize the maiz-likka. The Linneans called these antibodies eufora. The word meant mother-piece or mother-spirit.

The same way the maiz-likka demons could infect human souls, so could the eufora. The Linneans believed that the eufora visited every human during his or her life, not just once but many times, and always during moments of great emotion or joy, like when you fell in love or when you got married or when you gave birth to new life. When the eufora visited you, you would feel overwhelming happiness and peace and clarity of vision—because in that moment, you would be at one with the Mother herself. Just as the maiz-likka lived in the darkness, so did the eufora live in the sky. Their job was to watch over Linnea and her children and invigorate all life with the spirit of the Mother’s grace. The Linneans had a blessing which translated simply as, “Life celebrates life.”

A lot of the Linnean scripture detailed the encounters of human beings with the eufora. Sometimes people sought out the eufora; sometimes the eufora selected you, whether you wanted to meet them or not.

Sometimes also, the maiz-likka took someone over and sent warnings to all humanity through his or her voice. And sometimes the eufora sent messages too, sometimes even direct from the Mother—not exactly commandments or laws, but parts of an ever-growing covenant between the Mother and her children. The Linneans didn’t have commandments—they had agreements.

The way it worked, if a prophet went up onto a mountain and came back with a pair of stone tablets, he wouldn’t say things like, “Thou shalt not kill,” or, “Thou shalt not steal.” He would say, “I will not kill,” and, “I will not steal.” If you accepted those agreements and made them part of yourself, then you accepted that part of the covenant with the Mother. And if you didn’t, well then, maybe you were a parasite on the Mother....

Apparently, not all Linneans accepted all the agreements. And that was the source of a lot of social unrest over there. But the Linneans had an agreement that they wouldn’t force themselves on others, so if they disagreed, they moved on. They moved to communities that had agreements they could honor. Or they kept moving on. Settlements on Linnea weren’t very big, and most of them were scattered.

We had a big argument about all that. Eventually, it came around to asking how did the Linneans know if a prophet told the truth or not? Anyone could say he was a prophet and come out of the wilderness with all kinds of outlandish stories. How could you know? Maybe all the prophets had been liars or delusionaries? And of course, that’s when the discussion got really interesting because Big Jes said, “Well, maybe that’s true about all the prophets in the Old Testament, too ... even Moses.” Oops.

The Dobersons didn’t like hearing that at all. They’d been very uncomfortable during the entire discussion of Linnea the Mother-Goddess, asking lots of questions and arguing and just fussing in their chairs at having to listen to such heathen ideas. They said that all they needed to know about God was in the Bible; so when Big Jes said that about all the prophets being liars or madmen, Jim Doberson took it as a personal affront. He stood up and said, “Jes, you know that I won’t tolerate blasphemy in my presence, or in the presence of my wives and children. I would appreciate it if you would keep a God-fearing tongue in your head.”

Novotny clucked at that and held up a hand. There wasn’t any way to say “God-fearing” in Linnean, and Jim Doberson’s construction had been clumsy and grammatically incorrect. It was hard to explain without switching to English, but finally Novotny made it clear that some words weren’t allowed to be used with some other words. Words that were negative—like angry or frightened or crazy—couldn’t be used with the words for Mother or Linnea. If you tried to talk about someone being “afraid of the Mother” like Jim Doberson had just done, they would look at you as if you were crazy. Or worse, a parasite. Doberson scowled at that.

The interruption had only amused Big Jes. He just grinned at Jim Doberson and said something in Linnean, which really didn’t translate well, but made everybody laugh anyway. “You can put a ribbon on it if you want, but that horse turd still stinks.”

Novotny gave him two points for using a Linnean phrase, and took away three points for using it inappropriately, and we all laughed at that too. “Better you should have said, ‘Why do you bring old turds into the barn when we have plenty of fresh ones?’”

And that’s when Jim Doberson got really angry. I think he was angrier about being embarrassed in front of the whole class than he was at the blasphemy, but he made it sound like he was angry on behalf of God. He accused Big Jes and Novotny and everybody who laughed of disrespecting God. And he was ready to do some “God-fearing” of his own, if that’s what it took to stop the swearing in here. He shook his fist in the air and glowered at anyone who dared to laugh at him again.

Novotny didn’t back down and neither did he apologize. If the stories were true, he’d faced a lot more scary things than Jim Doberson. He waved everybody back down into their seats and waited until we’d all stopped talking at each other. By now, we knew the drill. He was going to tell us something important.

“Forget God, forget Jesus, forget Buddha, forget Muhammad, forget the angel Moroni, forget Confucius, forget Elron, forget Manson, forget all of them. Where you’re going, they don’t exist. The Linneans do not tolerate heresy against the Mother.” He said this next part directly to Jim Doberson, stepping right up to him. “Are we asking you to abandon your religion? No, we are not. Are we asking you to keep it private? Yes, we are. Keep it as private as how often you masturbate, or which hand you wipe your ass with. Keep it even more private than that. Because if you don’t, if you give the Linneans a reason to suspect you of treason to the Mother, you can be expelled and exiled. Or worse, tortured and burned.”

Novotny’s face clouded. The rest of us didn’t have to be told that was the wrong answer, and things had just gotten very serious in the room. “Perhaps then, you should rethink your goals, Citizen.”

When he said that, I snuck a look at his wives and children, and while a couple of them were nodding in agreement, some of the rest looked scared. How could he say that without asking them what they thought?

“And how about Jes’ family? Or Milla’s? Or mine, for that matter? Your blasphemy—yes, I use that word deliberately—puts all the rest of us at risk too. Should we die for your faith too?”

Novotny looked more sad than angry. “That kind of attitude will endanger the entire mission.” He waved his hand as if to indicate the entire Linnea Dome and everyone in it. “You would throw away ten years of preparation and ten years of work that casually? Is your faith so important that it gives you the right to discard all the hard work of others?”

“The word of God takes precedence over everything,” said Doberson, and a lot more stuff in that same vein. “We do not have the right to set aside God’s commandments.” And a lot of people groaned and rolled their eyes upward.

But Novotny held up his hands for silence again. As silly as this had been a minute ago, the silliness was over. This was very serious business now. “Citizen,”—and he used that word deliberately—“the strength of your faith in your God is no less than the strength of the Linneans’ faith in their Goddess. As willing as you are to die for your beliefs, that’s how willing they are to kill you for them.”

“And they would say the same about what you believe. The Son of God, born to a virgin? He died and came back from the dead? Not exactly great theology when you compare it to some of the other great faiths. Kind of a slap-dash put-together-in-a-political-hurry thing, eh?”

“After the war—as part of the treaty—the leaders of all the great faiths signed the Contract of Human Rights, promising to respect everyone’s right to his or her own faith.” If he had stopped there, he would have been all right. But he didn’t stop. “But not everybody signed the Contract, you know. A lot of people saw the perfidy in that document.”

“You may see it that way,” said Novotny. “But the existence of the Contract protects your right to believe, free of the evangelism of others. Your faith is respected under the Contract, whether you accept the Contract or not.”

Doberson shrugged and muttered something about one horse turd being like every other. Novotny gave him three points for that, then turned back to the issue at hand. “You will not have the protection of the Contract on Linnea. The Linneans have no Contract. They have only one faith—the Covenant with the Mother. The agreements may vary from place to place, but the Covenant is near-universal in every place we have explored. I tell you this in sorrow, not anger, because I respect the intensity of your belief; but you will have to set aside your commitment to Jesus and replace it with a commitment to the Covenant—or you will never cross over to Linnea. You choose, Citizen.”

That wasn’t the end of it, of course. Doberson and his family fussed and complained for days, calling it religious prejudice and communism and everything else they could think of. It was weird, really, because the Doberson family was the best disciplined of all of us. They were always head of the curve, learning the language and all the other skills of farming and building. They were the best students of all. Da-Lorrin said it was because they were bringing a preexisting discipline to their Linnean lessons. So for Jim Doberson to become so abruptly resistant was like his brain had all suddenly seized up. Mom-Woo said only, “His head is full. It can’t hold any more.” And then she told us to drop the subject.

The Doberson argument lasted most of the month, and a few times people got so angry they leapt out of their chairs and almost started fighting. And not everybody was against the Dobersons either. The Kellys and the O’Hares stood up and defended Jim Doberson’s right to believe in God as he saw fit. That wasn’t surprising, because those three families stuck together on a lot of things anyway.

Novotny didn’t say much during the arguments, except to correct someone’s grammar or yell at him about his nyet kulturny accent. Sometimes someone would ask for help with a word; sometimes he told him, but more often he just shook his head because there wasn’t such a word on Linnea.

Eventually the argument just died away with no resolution at all. Nobody had convinced anybody, and everybody was tired of fighting. A few people asked Novotny to settle it; but Novotny only said, “You’ve already agreed to the agreement. Why do you argue with it now?” And after a while, most of us got it. After you get on the boffili, don’t complain about the smell. I got a point for saying that one in class. About a week after that, the Dobersons quit the program; the Kellys and the O’Hares stayed on, but they wouldn’t talk about God anymore, at least not where anyone else could hear, so everyone figured they’d probably gotten the point about learning to think Linnean.

Not every discussion was that angry; most of them were sort of funny. One conversation, we all got angry about the clothes. How come the Linneans hadn’t learned how to soften linen? How come they weren’t cultivating cotton? We knew they had it. How come—?

That time, there was a scout named Zindre visiting the class. She was tall and had red hair and a great smile. She was beautiful; I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. She said that the Linneans wanted to cultivate cotton, but the weevils were more ferocious on Linnea than on Earth. Science Division was working on a weevil-specific parasite to destroy the bugs, but Cultural Division said that if cotton became practical before industrialization, it would further the institution of slavery, and we weren’t ready to give these folks the tools for industrialization, so we couldn’t give them cotton either. So we couldn’t have underwear that didn’t itch. That’s when three more families dropped out. I don’t think it was the underwear; I think it was because they wouldn’t be allowed to invent, not without permission. Besides, I knew that Rinky was already studying how to make grass-silk, because I was helping her in my free time.

I almost asked if we could quit too, that’s how much the underwear itched, and that’s how little progress Rinky was making, but that’s when they started teaching all the kids how to groom and feed and care for the great-horses. We went out every afternoon—we had to groom them in teams of six, they were so big—and I didn’t want to stop doing that, because I’d fallen in love with Mountain and Thunder and Jumbo. So I solved the problem my own way. I stopped wearing underwear.