Free Child of Earth by David Gerrold Page B

too. Nobody said it aloud, of course, but there was a lot of sighing about stuff that we missed. This wasn’t a vacation anymore, this was forever.
    One day, Shona fell down and broke her leg. And Mom-Woo burned her arm on the stove. And Big Jes and Da-Lorrin and Klin and Parra all got sprayed by a stink-badger while they were out learning how to plow a field, and that meant that their clothes had to be burned and they had to go and do penance in the stink-house for a week. And Rinky and I said a whole bunch of bad words where the trainers could hear us and they penalized the family twenty-five work points. And finally Mom-Trey just broke down and started crying and nobody could get her to stop. The other two moms had their hands filled with washing and cooking and dirty little-uns who needed baths, and everybody was all short-tempered and angry, and Mom-Lu started yelling at Mom-Trey, telling her to save her crying for some other time and get off her fat butt and help—so of course, Mom-Trey just bawled into her hands all the more. “I don’t like it here, I’m not having any fun, I want to go home. Look at my hands, my face. I look like a hag. I feel like an old woman. I just want to go home again and take a hot bath and have my hair done, and feel like a real person again—”
    And that’s when Irm and Bhetto and Morra came in. They’d heard everything. I thought they were going to tell us (again) what a bad idea this was and that we should just call the trainers and tell them to pull us out of here. Everyone knew they didn’t like it in the dome—but instead, Morra said something I couldn’t hear and pushed Irm in one direction and Bhetto in the other. Irm grabbed the little-uns and hustled them off to the bath. And Bhetto went over and started chopping up meat and potatoes for the stew. And then Morra grabbed the three moms and made them all sit down at the table for a good bawling out. I got up to leave, but Morra said, “No, Kaer, you need to hear this too.” She said, “All of us have worked too damn hard for this. I’m not going to let you quit. Not after all we’ve been through already.”
    Mom-Trey started to say, “Oh, shut up, Morra. You’ve been against this from the beginning,” but Morra said a very bad word I’d never heard her use before, and before Mom-Trey could respond to that, Morra said, “Don’t even think it, Trey. I’m not going to have you or anyone else blaming me for your failure. So I’m not going to let you fail.” She took
Mom-Trey by the shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. In English, she said: “This is the biggest damn thing this family has ever tried. If we don’t beat this, then this family is going to fall apart—and this family is all we have. And I’m not going to let it go. Not just because you’re going through menopause or anything else. Yes, I know. So what? You’ll get over it. I did. We all do. But don’t you know how inspiring you all are to Irm and Bhetto and me? We made a commitment to you, Trey— our commitment is to see you succeed in yours. You might feel like quitting today, but tomorrow you’ll regret it. So go ahead, have your cry; cry as much as you want, as long as you want, until you’re through crying. But save it for later. Right now, we need you to get off your fat ass and help us get dinner on the table.”
    Mom-Trey sniffed and said, “My ass is not fat.” But she got up anyway. And she grabbed Morra and hugged her tight. And so did all the other moms too. And that’s when I knew everything was going to be all right. We were going to make it.

CHURCH
    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