Child of Earth by David Gerrold

Author:David Gerrold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BenBella Books, Inc.
Published: 2011-01-11T16:00:00+00:00

WINTER BEGINS

IT STARTED WITH A COUPLE DAYS of light flurries while they tested the snow machines. Then we had two more days of gentle snow that drifted down in feathery drifts but didn’t really get in anyone’s way.

We had already moved most of our heavy stuff underground, but we still had a lot of little things to pack away for the winter, and we had to make sure that the ventilation chimneys were clean before we socked in for the coming storm. Linnean storms usually lasted a week at a time, sweeping across the plains like great avalanching blankets. We’d seen simulations of the way the storms formed up in the great northern ocean before they came rolling inexorably south, so we had some idea what to expect. The arc of the Desolation Mountains wouldn’t let them spill west, so they angled eastward, meeting the hot air of the prairie and creating great walls of lightning and rain in the summer and smothering white in the winter. We wouldn’t have satellite access on Linnea, at least not for a while, so until then we’d have no idea how long any storm would last. So we had to assume and prepare for the worst.

The snow continued intermittently while the Authority ran various weather tests, and we used the time as best we could. We wrapped ourselves a little warmer and concentrated on the last few chores we needed to do. We had to put canvas covers over everything we wouldn’t be taking down into the house and we had to pull all the rest of our winter supplies down out of the wagon we had been living in. It was cold and nasty work, and Mom-Woo drove us all harder than ever. She fussed and fretted and nagged, and a couple of times she even raised her voice impatiently at Da-Lorrin.

Maybe it was just the tension coming from the administors in the Dome Authority. And maybe she knew something in that secret way that mothers always do. And maybe it was just winter. The days had turned bitter-cold and everybody had to work long hours, and we were all cranky and hurting all the time.

Mosty, it was because we didn’t know how long winter would last. On Linnea, sometimes the snow stays on the ground for as long as six months. They say they get a gut-buster like that every seventh year. Administor Rance hadn’t given us any idea how long we would have to stay underground, but Mom-Woo assumed that was part of the test and she acted like we had to lay in half a year’s supplies.

For that, we’d dug a snow locker—another underground room—and after the snow came down, we filled it with as much ice as possible. On Linnea, we would hang emmo or boffili carcasses there and keep them frozen for as long as the ice lasted; if the snow locker was big enough and deep enough, a family could have ice all spring and most of the summer.

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