Midsummer Fest Ch. 02

"Hahr?"

Grandmother smiled benevolently. "Yes, Krista, her hair is different from yours. See? No! Don't pull! Just pat. That's our baby."

Two young women retrieved their offspring and a third stepped up and kissed all three elders. Ingmar took her by the hand and pulled her over to Lanhua. "Dear, this is my granddaughter Keitha Miasdottir. Keitha, this is Lanhua Lee."

Keitha turned out to be remarkably petite in a world populated by the tall. Barely two inches taller than Lanhua, though more strongly built, the small blonde had a slight but suspicious bulge in her tummy. She smiled in greeting.

"Hi, Lanhua. Grandmother tells me you're going to room with me while you settle in. It will be no problem, at all. The bed's a California King."

"But I thought you were married."

Keitha giggled. "Very, very married but we're matrilineal here and women have their own suites. The men just come and 'visit' at night. They have dormitories of their own for when there's no one to sleep with or they're sick or working so late they don't want to wake us up."

"But—but I'll be in the way."

"You will not!" Keitha was emphatic, "you have a great deal to learn and a lot of your time will be easing into our ways. It's not like we'll be joined at the hip. Beside, you have to meet enough men to decide which one's you like. Not that there's any hurry."

"O—okay, if you're sure I won't be any bother."

"Not a bother, Lanhua, an honor. Mikko, another setting for dinner!"

To Lanhua, who really had not eaten in a week, the invitation was irresistible. She was about to start spooning in a deep bowl of clam chowder when she found herself sharing her chair with little Krista who was messily eating a cookie. It was obvious the tot had taken an interest in the small woman with the long dark hair and chattered through the crumbs while Lanhua ate.

When she was finally full, the girl turned to her hosts and asked, "Wheredoes all this come from?"

"Well," Mikko the senior husband began, "we run fully integrated greenhouses. Chickens, rabbits and dwarf sheep provide eggs, wool, milk and meat and their droppings fall into tanks. That water is diluted further and pumped into hydroponics galleries that grow just about every vegetable known on old Earth plus alfalfa and some grain for the animals. These crepes that we call levsa are made from the pods of the genetically engineered graintrees that grow on the tops of the headlands between the fjords. But the majority of our protein is shellfish that are grown in hanging cages that float down in the fjords. We grow six varieties of oyster, two of mussels, and four of clams. They're all spawned in tanks so that they never escape into the wild."

"Also," Konrad, who was the junior of the three men continued, "we found that there are a couple of species of seabirds here that are safe to eat, digestible and good tasting so we have improved and expanded their nesting habitat and crop out the squabs in season. And of course, there are a couple of native species of fish that aren't too toxic. We don't eat them except on special occasions because we don't want to make the little ones ill. Most of our finfish are tilapia and grass carp that we grow in the greenhouses. You could say that we are high-tech organic communal farmers."

"Wow!" Lanhua was impressed. "And you fabricate your material needs out of the minerals of the land and metals pulled out of the sea? I always wondered how colonies were able to survive. The planners of Project Lifeboat must be ingenious."

The entire pod nodded. "And of course, all the plans and every other kind of knowledge we need are on file in The Library. You can contact it, can't you?" Helga asked.

"Oh sure," Lanhua replied, "but it's organized differently here than on Earth. It will take me a few days to reorient myself. So how does this group marriage work?"

Everyone grinned. "Well," Keitha began, "Helga and I were best friends growing up and Mikko was sweet on her. Turned out he was sweet on me, too, but I was so introverted I didn't notice."

"Jeez, girl," Mikko interrupted, "what's a guy have to do?"

Keitha stuck her tongue out at him and continued, "They got married and conceived little Olaf when they were nineteen and the next year Thorvald joined and then Konrad. Helga was kept pretty busy for the next few months until this spitfire," she pointed at Freya, "joined and Konrad knocked her up with Krista. Now Helga is pregnant by Thorvald and next year Freya will be carrying Mikko's second."

Lanhua pointedly looked at Keitha's belly. "And you?"

The others laughed and Keitha shrugged dramatically with her palms up. "I have no idea. The whole pod proposed to me and once I accepted all three guys were on me so much I couldn't say for sure. I could get a genetic test to find out but I'm not going to. This little guy," she patted her tummy, "is Karl Rolf Keithasson and that's all anyone needs to know."

It was a bit too much information for poor Lanhua so when Krista coughed on her cookie the young woman took the opportunity to look elsewhere and be busy while the subject changed.

*****

That night, with Keitha asleep next to her, Lanhua concentrated. Technology had moved on enormously since the Icelanders had left old Earth and the tiny Chinese mentally rolled her eyes to see the people of Ný Heimasíða having to touch subcutaneous switches to contact The Library or the Worldwide Mind. Mentally prowling the digital pathways, jimmying locks, knocking at windows, and prying open doors Lanhua searched. There had to be a way in. She had hacked her way to the Gate before; she would do it again. These people were sweet and kind but they weren't her people and she was dead set on finding her friends and joining them.

ACCESS DENIED was a notice for other people, she thought, in full confidence that there was no one who could equal her ability to infiltrate systems. Deeper she worked and ever deeper until, at last, she reached the Core. Now to figure out how to find her friends . . . .

HELLO LANHUA. CONGRATULATIONS. YOU HAVE PENETRATED FARTHER THAN ANY BEFORE BUT THIS IS THE END. YOUR FRIENDS ARE SAFE AND WELL BUT YOU ARE MORE IMPORTANT TO NÝ HEIMASÍÐA. CONTACT CLOSED.

And suddenly she was back in bed.

*****

After breakfasting in the clan dining hall with Keitha, her mother and a flock of aunts, uncles and cousins, Lanhua was handed off to Grandfather Rolf and given a tour of the village and its surroundings. Rolf was a big man and like most of the big and strong he was remarkably gentle and soft-spoken. Lanhua realized that here was a man who rarely said much and then only after some thought. Paying close attention when he did speak seemed a good idea.

"Lanhua, imagine Earth where the Chicxulub Incident never happened. Dinosauroids continue to dominate the land even though certain kinds, like the sauropods, became extinct. There are mammals here but they're all small and insignificant while beaked and toothed 'birds' are everywhere."

Lanhua's eyes grew wide at the thought. "Are—are you ever worried about things like tyrannosaurs?"

"Not as such. There is no predator that large on the land. I think the reason is that the continental plates here are different. There really aren't any continents, per se. Instead the land area is mostly made up of archipelagos of islands with the biggest around the size of New Guinea or Greenland. Because the land area isn't big enough to support giant herbivores, it doesn't support giant carnivores though the apex predators are plenty fearsome all the same. We wall ourselves off from them with triple-rowed hedgerows of really thorny natives and then plant our groves and build our towns. The real danger comes from the sea."

The man's face turned grim as he spoke. "About five years ago my daughter-in-law Anna was standing on the wharf watching the men and dogs work the shellfish beds. A gigantic bird, fully six fathoms long with a bill full of teeth as long as my fingers rose up out of the water. It grabbed her across the chest, threw her up into the air, bit her twice more and swallowed her headfirst. We hunted it down, of course."

The men's reaction had been immediate. Boats launched and caused a great ruckus to drive the gigantic beast up the fjord. When it was forced into water too shallow to dive in, a man on the beach with a rifle sent two rounds into its head. They dragged it ashore and recovered Anna's remains and buried her in the churchyard. Then they took tissue samples, did a whole body scan and de-fleshed the carcass so the skeleton could be displayed.Megalogavia annae, the Death Loon, was added to the list of Dangerous Species and across Ný Heimasíða bubble walls and nets were deployed at the mouth of each fjord. The folk did not intend to be taken by surprise again.

Gunner was disconsolate. Unlike the norm among Tomissonians, he and his wife had been monogamous, never inviting even their best of friends to join their marriage. Alone with a three-year-old that his clan took over rearing; the man had grieved long and hard. Even now he showed no interest in remarrying and only joked about fathering more children with any willing woman. To Pastor Haakon, he was one more reason for concern.

"How horrible! The poor man." Lanhua was visibly upset by the story. Large predators on Earth were more endangered than dangerous. The thought that this new planet might hold such primitive risks had never occurred to her. And her friends' new home was even more undeveloped since they hand only been gone six months. It gave pause to her plan to follow them. Still, she was determined and later that morning sought out Pastor Haakon.

As she explained the previous night's efforts at hacking back into the system, he listened patiently until she reached the point about the Core. He stopped her.

"The Core. You actually reached the Core? None of us, even our most technically adept have ever done that. We've always thought it was possible in theory but in actual practice? Ms. Lee you obviously have abilities that are an order of magnitude above anyone here."

"Then you won't help me? I'll do anything you want . . ."

"Child, it isn't that we won't help you. Please believe me when I tell you that we would bend every effort for you. No one knows the tragedy of exile and rejection better than we. Nor would we blackmail you for our assistance. It is a simple fact that you are so far beyond anything we are capable of that our help would do you no good. However, I am most intrigued by what it told you."

"It said I was important here. How would it know? What's important about me?"

"Genetic diversity, Lanhua. Iceland was founded by a lot of Scandinavians with a handful of Celts. For over a thousand years the same genes cycled over and over until the population was very, very homogeneous. It's a bottleneck. And though there's no sign of congenital problems now, by the time the population stabilizes at three hundred million it could be bad. Your ancestors and ours diverged probably forty thousand years ago. What's important about you? What you can add to our gene pool. Whether by children or donated egg cells is up to you but The Library is right. Your importance here cannot be overstated. And I am coming to believe that when you hacked into the system you did not do it without being detected. I think you were sent here."

*****

Alone on a rock in the sum, Lanhua sat with her face in her hands. Sent! Someone knew what she was doing from the beginning. He or she had let her into the System and probably sniggered at her efforts. Then, when the girl had thrown the switch, she was rerouted—exiled her to a world where the technology was fifty years out of date, where monsters rose from the sea to eat you and where the people treated reproduction as a team sport. It was all too much. It was—it was not fair! Tears flowed, angry tears.

A whimper made her look up. A large, shaggy black dog with red patches laid its head on her lap and slowly wagged its tail. In wonder Lanhua stroked its head and scratched it behind the ears. "I guess I have a new friend," she said and laughed when it licked her face. "I wonder what your name is."

"Rya," a chuckling voice behind her answered, "because she looks like an old rug. I wondered where she'd gotten to. I guess I am not the most forlorn soul in Öruggur Harbor anymore. I'm Gunner, Lanhua. I was sitting at the other end of the table from you this morning."

"Yes. Oh, you're the one . . ."

"Mm-hmm. Rya's funny. She's supposed to be a water dog, pulling lines, retrieving floats and helping out on boats and at the wharves but we've decided that she thinks she's really a psychiatrist or consulting philosopher. Pastor can always tell when someone needs help or sympathy because Rya just gravitates toward that person. Angry toddlers, pre-teens with issues and the grieving get hunted down and consoled. For the last five years she's spent most of her time with me but when I looked up and saw she was gone, I was curious."

Despite her own misery, Lanhua ached for the man's loss. She scooted sideways to give him room to sit down.

"I guess we're partners in pain," she said with a wry little smile. "It's a good thing Rya's a big dog so we can share her."

Gunner looked down at the sad little face next to him. "Need a hug?"

"Oh, please. Hold me?"

She buried her face in his shirt and wrapped he arms tight around him as he enfolded her in turn. The tableau of man, woman and dog lasted quite a while.

Eventually Lanhua lifted her head. Gunner took out a clean handkerchief and wiped the tear streaks from her face. "How about some lunch?" he asked.

They walked together across the green to where Helga, Freya, Olaf and Krista sat. As Freya finished feeding Krista and wiping her face and hands, Olaf cheerfully cried out "Doggie!" and wrapped his arms around Rya's neck. She licked his face leaving nothing but dog slobber for Helga to clean up.

Lanhua looked around. There was food to prepare and the youngsters were fed but . . .

"Where are Keitha and the guys?"

Helga smiled and Freya answered with a lecherous grin. "Oh, off together somewhere. We kind of expect them anytime, now, but with Keitha in early pregnancy, her hormones are making her pretty demanding so they may be longer than usual."

Lanhua was aghast. "What? All three of them?"

"Why not. They are her husbands, after all."

"But all at once?"

Frey laughed out loud. "Oh no, not all at once. They guys take turns doing her while the others watch. It's kind of a husband bonding thing." She leered sideways at her co-wife. "We each get shared about once a month though it does seem that Keitha's sneaking more than her usual share these days."

"Well," Helga replied placidly, "she should be. After all, she's got several years to make up for."

Before the stunned Lanhua could respond a young boy in dungarees and rubber boots ran up.

"Dad! Dad! Ember and I were out at the fjord-mouth, fishing, and there's a whole pod of Death Loons swimming by."

"Death Loons? Good God. Arne, what did you do?"

"Ember shoved me into the cabin and sent out an alarm to all the other boats. Then she put the engine on full and we came back in."

"Good work. Where's Ember?"

"She's down unloading the fish we caught. I told her I'd come tell you and then go back and help. We caught a bunch."

Gunner visibly relaxed and turning to the rest of the group said, "Well, excuse me, ladies. I'm going to go help with this offloading and thank Ember for bringing my boy in unscathed." And he left.

"Ember?" Lanhua asked when the two were gone.

Helga and Freya smiled in a sad sort of way. "Ember and Logi are twins" Helga replied, "Last Midsummerfest, Ember called Gunner out, much to his surprise, and now she's carrying his second child. She'd really like to marry him but he's not picking up on it. It might be on purpose but I doubt it. Gunner would never be unkind to anyone so I suspect he simply doesn't get it. Poor man. He really does need back in a marriage and if you ask us, in a pod. "

Freya nodded agreement. "The Tomissonians strongly believe that no one should be alone. That's why we live in clans and marry in groups. The women own the clan houses and the men own the boats, greenhouses, shellfish beds and groves. We don't believe in being alone and we don't think celibacy is good for you. We worry about Gunner."

"He seems to be a really sweet man," Lanhua said softly. "And—and he smells good."

"Uh-huh!" Freya put on a determined look. "Definitely needs to be in a pod. You, Gunner and Ember? It would be a match made in Heaven."

*****

That night Keitha woke up. Behind her Lanhua cried quietly into her pillow. The blonde rolled over and without a word pulled her charge up close to her and held on tight until the sobs faded away and the girl slept.Pastor was right. This poor baby is in bad shape. And what else would anyone expect? No family anymore and no friends? We even look strange by her standards. Softly Keitha kissed the top of Lanhua's head and went back to sleep.

*****

In her quarters on the top floor, Grandmother Ingmar snuggled into Rolf's arms and was about to drift off when he whispered, "Ingmar, The Library has doubled."

Jerked awake by the news, she rolled over to face him. "Doubled? How in the world can it double? We're over a hundred light years from Earth. No transmission can have reached us, yet."

"I was in The Library doing some metallurgical research before Lanhua came. When I went back to it this evening a lot of what I'd seen before had been replaced, updated. My first reaction was the same as yours so I looked further. Ingmar, we now have an additional fifty years of research results at our disposal if we can get to it. All I can figure is that when it rerouted Lanhua here, Library Prime sent a packet of new data to us."

"What do you mean, 'if we can get to it'?"

"The Operating System is different."

Ingmar was silent for a long time. The implications were staggering. Lanhuahad been sent and the Gate back to Earth had opened a crack. What had changed back there?

*****

During the night the wind shifted. Indian Summer ended abruptly and soon the autumn gales would pound the coastline. Lanhua didn't notice a thing, sound asleep behind the yard-thick walls of the clan house and when she woke up in the morning she was surprised by a knock on the inner door. Answering, she looked down to see Keitha's youngest brother, Piet, standing in the hall holding a bundle of clothing.

"Mama says these are for you. They'll fit good 'cause Dr. Airikasdottir scanned your size while you were ridin' down? You're gonna need 'em. It'scoldoutside."

Laying the bundle on the bed, Lanhua unwrapped it to find inside a bright, intricately knit sweater with cowl collar, a pair of thick knit pants and a pair of knee-high boots with a curious ruff at the top. She picked the left one, ran first her hand and then her face across the bright ruff. Was it fur? Was it some sort of feather?

"Keitha, what is this stuff?"

Her roommate paused in the midst of donning a similar outfit. "That? It's dinosauroid skin. There're these things that look like therapods? They weigh about four stone and are covered with those feathery filaments. There are any number of species, each one different and each in a different color. See? Mine are blue. We hunt for them in the winter. We can't eat the meat 'cause it tastes like iodine but the skins make great hats, cloaks, boot tops and muffs. You got here during the tail end of Indian Summer when it's really nice out. For the next four months, though, you'll be glad you've got those. When we go outside, I've got another couple of hats and cloaks you can borrow. Maybe one of the guys will take a shine to you and go get you a couple in—I think canary yellow would look really good.