Child of Earth

Table of Contents

 

 

 

~ PRAISE FOR CHILD OF EARTH ~

“Like some perfect fusion of Clifford Simak's
Ring Around the Sun
and Robert Heinlein's
Tunnel in the Sky
, David Gerrold's
Child of Earth
depicts a vivid, alluring future of limitless possibilities, where world upon world awaits human exploration and colonization. His adolescent narrator, Kaer, offers a charming and wise-beyond-her-years perspective on the thrilling events of what I predict will be a landmark trilogy.”

—PAUL DI FILIPPO, author of
Neutrino Drag

 

“
Child of Earth
provides further evidence that David Gerrold has to be a clone: his genome clearly includes genetic material from Robert A. Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, Ursula K. LeGuin, Anne McCaffrey, Roger Zelazny, Edgar Pangborn, Frederik Pohl, and James Tiptree, Jr., at a minimum. For newcomers to sf, that means he is
better than
as good as it gets, and this is one of his very best novels.”

—SPIDER ROBINSON, author of
The Crazy Years

 

 

 

 

~ PRAISE FOR DAVID GERROLD ~

 

“David Gerrold is one of the most original thinkers and fluent writers in contemporary science fiction.”

—BEN BOVA

 

“Gerrold bores easily—that's why you'll never see him using the same idea or angle of attack twice. Hold on for the ride!”

—GREGORY BENFORD, author of
Timescape

 

“Without question, David Gerrold is one of the most talented and creative writers of this generation and always fun to read.”

—JOHN C. DVORAK, columnist,
PC Magazine
and
CBS Marketwatch

ALSO BY DAVID GERROLD

The Star Wolf Series
The Voyage of the Star Wolf
The Middle of Nowhere
Blood and Fire

 

 

The War Against the Chtorr Series

 

 

The Dingilliad Trilogy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*With Larry Niven

for Brad Frank,
with love

THE OLD WOMAN WHO LIVED IN THE GRASS

A FAMILY MEETING

WHEN I WAS EIGHT, Da showed up for a visit with pictures of a world where they had horses so big a whole family could all ride at the same time. They were bigger than elephants. Da said the world was called Linnea, but we kids called it Horse World. He also showed us pictures of some of the other worlds that you could get to through the gates, but none of them had horses and some of them looked pretty awful.

Horse World had a sea of grass all the way out to the end of the world. Da said it was called razor grass and it covered half the continent, all the way from the Rainbow Ridges in the east to the Desolation Mountains in the west, which were like a big wall that stretched from the far north almost all the way down to the equator. On the other side of the mountains were the broken lands and the long deserts, full of wild howlers and swarms of biting things, and then another mountain range that fell into the Ugly Sea.

But I didn't care about any of that, I liked the horses and I asked if we could go there. Da-Lorrin grinned at me—that big grin of his that made me want to marry him when I grew up; except we were already married, sort of, because of the family-contract; but I meant the old-fashioned kind of marriage, two people only—and said, “Maybe we could. But only if everybody else in the family agrees. Because if we go there, we'd have to stay.”

I said that was okay with me, and he rumpled my hair affectionately and told me to go set the table for dinner.

So I asked Mom-Lu, “Da-Lorrin says we might go to Horse World. Will we really?”

She said, “It's not decided yet, honey. And if we do go, it won't be for a long time. First, we have to see how everyone in the family feels about it.”

That meant a family meeting. Uh-oh. Most of the time, family meetings were just an excuse for a big party, and folks would phone in from all over, wherever they were. But sometimes there were important things to decide, like whether or not to start a new baby or offer someone a contract. And once even, before I was born, whether or not to divorce someone. Mom-Lu said she'd tell me about that when I was older. I didn't pay attention to a lot of the discussions, partly because most of them weren't very interesting, and partly because nobody listened to the kidlets anyway. Not until after you're thirteen do you get a real vote. But this time, because it was about the great-horses, I made sure to do all my chores and extra too, so I'd at least have merit points to spend.

The meeting didn't happen for two weeks. It took that long for everyone to arrange their separate schedules. There were more than twenty voting adults, and everyone had to attend, even though we were scattered across four continents. Mom-Lu had to coordinate all the time zones, and she spent a lot of time sending messages back and forth, because Cindy was in Paris and Parra was in Sydney. Cindy and Parra were clone-twins, except Cindy was a boy now. All the little-uns lived in New Paso with the moms, so most of them were put to bed at their normal times, but I cashed in my merit points and Mom-Lu agreed I could stay up past midnight for the conference, but only if I took a long nap in the afternoon.

According to Da, a contract family is a corporate entity, with every member holding an equal share of common stock but unequal shares of voting stock determined by age and seniority, parentage and reproductive status. Which meant that Mom-Trey, who came into the family after Mom-Lu, actually had more voting shares, because she'd borne three babies and Mom-Lu had only borne one. And Cindy and Parra, because they were purchased babies from before my time, had different shares because that was part of the terms of the adoption. So even though it's supposed to be equal, it isn't. Not in voting, and not in distribution of resources. And that always makes for arguments. Mom-Woo used to say, “That's why you should never marry a lawyer,” which was her own little joke, because she was a lawyer and she was the one who negotiated the various member-contracts every time we married someone new.