Child of Earth by David Gerrold Read Free Book Online

what do you do for entertainment?”
    â€œWe make our own,” said one of the mom-scouts. “We play instruments. We read books—usually one person reads aloud while others knit or do other work. We act out plays. We have our children recite their lessons. We do all the things that folks on that world do. Understand this,” she said. “When you’re over there, you have to fit in perfectly. You have to forget you ever lived on another world. We can’t risk cultural contamination.”
    Auncle Irm said, “Morra and I won’t be going, we’ll be staying behind to manage the family affairs here. Will we have any contact at all? We’re used to regular conferences, you know.”
    One of the da-scouts stepped forward then. “While we don’t specifically discourage contact, we do try to limit it—for the protection of the families on the other side. It represents too great a risk. Someone might say or do something that’s so bizarrely out of character for that culture that it would taint the local relationships.”
    He exchanged a glance with the mom-scout, then shrugged and added, “Look, it depends on the circumstances. Last year, the winter was so bad that some families were snowed in for months. We gave them an open line until spring. We fed them lots of their favorite entertainment. We’re not out to punish anyone. But once the snow began to thaw, they had to work extra hard to get back into character. There’s a price to be paid, no question. You’re going to be isolated over there. Not everybody can handle it. Even the folks who think they can handle it sometimes crack and call for emergency pickup.”
    â€œYou mean it’s possible to quit?” Da-Lorrin asked.
    The mom-scout nodded grimly. “If you’re thinking that you can bail out the first time you hit turbulence, don’t go. We don’t want to waste the investment. And besides, we don’t make those kind of pickups easily. There’s too much risk. We have to send a chopper through, and that risks a UFO incident. We’ve already had one too many ‘sightings.’”
    The da-scout was even more direct. “Quitting is a disaster. If we have to pull you out, we have to fake your deaths. Usually by fire. We can’t have you just go missing, and we can’t leave bodies unless we find donors.
If we have to go to that kind of effort, there’s a mandatory board of inquiry. And if it’s determined that it wasn’t absolutely necessary, well...I don’t like to say this, because it gives the wrong impression, but we’ve had people fined and imprisoned for putting the project at risk. You don’t want to do it.”
    Lorrin held up his hands in defeat. “Okay, I got your point. I wasn’t looking for a way out. I was just curious.”
    The da-scout had a hard expression. He didn’t look like he laughed very often. Lorrin sat down again and the scouts went on to talk about other stuff, like crops and seasons and how to build houses and furniture and other stuff.
    We wouldn’t be totally cut off, he said. We would have some technology. Only it would all be disguised to look like things that were normal over there—a doll, a music box, a mirror, a book, ordinary-looking stuff like that. If you didn’t know what it was and how to work it, you wouldn’t know it was anything special, even if you broke it open. Everything would be nanotech. Even us. The scout said we’d each be implanted. And whatever tech we might have, it wouldn’t work for anyone who wasn’t implanted. There were all kinds of safeguards.
    It was Mom-Woo who said what everybody was thinking. She usually did, that was why she was Mom-Woo. She said, “If it’s that dangerous, why do you send families over there at all?”
    â€œThat’s a good question,” said the mom-scout. “I’ll be honest with you.