Mahrree didn’t even realize that nearly two thousand people—nearly half of Edge—had come to watch the argument, because nothing could ruffle her that night. Not the captain, nor even the fact that she would likely lose, unless the captain proved to be a complete idiot. And if he did prove to be such an idiot, well, that would just make the evening that much more enjoyable.
The argument was to be the origin of their people. Even though Mahrree had told Rector Densal she wanted to defend the version taught in The Writings, he thought her skills would be better used posing all the fantastical ideas instead. She had to agree—she loved those stories that stretched children’s imaginations by offering alternatives to explaining the world.
After the usual introductions, Mahrree took to the platform and launched into every alternative she’d read about, beginning with the theory that their lives were shot into existence by an arrow sent from another plane of reality.
Then she related the idea that the world came from a fortunate accident that occurred through a random sequence of unrelated events.
She continued with the belief that everyone existed in some lonely woman’s head, and when she finally went to sleep they would all vanish.
She concluded with Terryp’s theory that the world just appeared one day, and it was dragged behind enormous animals such as elephants, bears, turtles, and squirrels—depending upon the season—in search of peace and tranquility. Or a large stash of nuts. For some reason all of the animals, it was believed, craved nuts.
A few times Mahrree was amazed at the rapt attention of the captivated audience. It was as if most Edgers had forgotten about the tales, and perhaps, she thought sadly, they had.
Captain Shin just observed her with patient amusement.
When she paused to catch her breath after fifteen minutes, he asked, “But Miss Peto, what proof do you have that any of these theories are possibly true? Why would there be a giant squirrel anyway?”
“Why can’t there be a giant version of something small? I see it in dogs all the time. Just because we can’t see the giant squirrel doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist beneath us,” she smiled mischievously. “But travel to the bottom of the world to prove to me there is no squirrel. Or anything else. Go.” She shooed him.
His studious expression didn’t change, even though the villagers snickered.
“Just because you and a few others imagine it doesn’t mean it exists, either. You’re suggesting you’ll believe whatever someone can imagine.”
“Only by taking our imaginations seriously, even for just a moment, can we expand our minds to bigger ideas,” she insisted. “I’ll attempt to believe whatever I can imagine, until I can dismiss the idea as false or illogical.”
“You simply can’t entertain every single imagined idea. That would be hundreds of thousands of ideas,” Captain Shin pointed out.
“That’s exactly what I try to do!” she declared.
To the amusement of the villagers, Teeria shouted, “She does—really!”
“She never quits. We wished she did!” Sareen added loudly.
The captain shook his head slowly in sympathy as the audience laughed.
Mahrree nodded appreciatively at her students. “We must be imaginative, Captain Shin! The Creator is the most inventive Being ever, and since He created us, He expects us to think as ingeniously. Wasn’t it you who said on our first debate that the Creator wants each of us to also become creators?”
Captain Shin glowered and nodded.
Mahrree beamed. “I believe the world holds all kinds of possibilities we’ve never expected. Ancient mysteries can be unraveled if we just take the time to ponder them. Our accomplishments in the upcoming years have to be imagined now before we can make them happen later. The sky’s the limit. And the color of the sky right now, by the way,” she added impishly, “is a deep gray-blue darkening to black with white spotty stars and two larger spheres of the full moons.”
As the captain rolled his eyes, Mahrree continued enthusiastically. “But maybe not even the sky is the limit! Maybe someday we’ll even find a way to fly like the birds or even visit the Greater Moon. We just haven’t worked out those possibilities yet, but we could if we started imagining it.”
The entire audience burst out in dubious laughter, but Mahrree wasn’t bothered. She didn’t believe they would ever visit the Greater Moon either, or even the Smaller Sister, but she felt passionately about everything else she said.
And she thoroughly enjoyed the steady gaze of the captain as he tried to discern just how serious she was.
“In fact,” she continued, “over the past two weeks I’ve given a great deal of thought to your argument about progress, Captain Shin. You said you’d never met someone so opposed to progress, but you didn’t know me very well. I believe in a great many possibilities in our progression. Already in 319 years we’ve accomplished so much. Our ancestors couldn’t make melodies as intricate as we do now, or drawings or stories. I’ve even heard of people now carving objects out of rock.”
Several in the audience gasped. Supposedly Terryp the historian had seen carvings in the rocks of the distant western ruins 120 years ago. That was one of the things that seemed so unbelievable: how could anyone carve rock?
But Captain Shin nodded. “We call them sculptors. There are a few in Idumea, and have been for quite some time. You can see their work on the Administrative Headquarters. Even one of Terryp’s associates began experimenting with carving large stone and was fantastically successful.”
The rare few in the audience who had actually travelled the distant eighty miles to Idumea murmured in agreement.
Mahrree smiled. “Thank you for making my point for me, Captain Shin. Until Terryp brought back those accounts no one here considered cutting stone. But now we have those who chisel stone for house foundations, and even sculptors in Idumea. Too often we make an assumption about an idea without contemplating if that assumption is correct. Cloth out of cotton plants? That seemed ridiculous generations ago. Now cotton is on everyone’s body in the hot Weeding Season.”
“Miss Peto,” the captain interrupted, “as fascinating as the history of cotton may be to you,” he said in a bored voice, “you’ve gotten off topic. You’re supposed to be making a case for where we came from.”
Mahrree rubbed her hands together. “Oh, but I am, Captain! I’m first establishing that we shouldn’t be quick to judge something. I believe we addressed this issue during our first debate?” She tapped her lips with her finger.
Captain Shin turned a slight shade of pink and gestured for her to go on.
She was having far too much fun. “My point is, perhaps our lives came from a possibility we haven’t even yet imagined. The world surprises us each year with new creatures and plants we never knew existed, so who knows what else there may be?” She beckoned to her students sitting near the front row.
Scowling, Teeria and Sareen picked up the large covered basket Mahrree left them and walked it up the steps of the platform. Captain Shin folded his arms and watched. Mahrree smiled smugly as the girls set down the basket on a table already waiting for it. They backed away and then bounded down the stairs to their seats.
“Thank you, girls. I know how that difficult that was for you.”
Mahrree opened the basket cover and recoiled slightly, but forced a smile as she faced the audience.
“We never know what the world may grow. I, for one, am suggesting,” she emphasized to the captain who was straining to see into the basket, “that all kinds of matter could become something more. Something greater than it originally started as.”
She reached into the basket and pulled out a large platter with something on it. What that was, exactly, no one could tell.
Captain Shin grimaced as the stench of it reached him.
On the kiln-fired pottery was a mass the size of a loaf of bread. Mostly white, it also had striations of gray, green, and bluish-black. Its texture was bumpy and slimy, and a bit oozy. As Mah
rree set the platter on the table, the mass jiggled ominously until a puff of something rose up from it.
The audience, almost in unison, said “Ewww!”
Mahrree grinned. “This, as you see it right now, is not what it was yesterday, or the day before, or even the day before that, as my students will attest. They’ve observed its changes with me. This is . . . well, we don’t have a name for it yet.”
Captain Shin dared to take a few steps closer to inspect, still keeping his arms folded. “What is it?”
“Last week it was my midday meal,” Mahrree confessed. “I forgot about it at the school, and returned this week to discover that this . . . blob had grown. It seems the drawer I kept it in, along with some other items I had stored there for science experiments, produced this over the Holy Day.”
The audience began to chuckle and shift uncomfortably at the thought of the unrecognizable midday meal.
Captain Shin looked at Mahrree. “So this, essentially, is your cooking? And you’re still unmarried?”
Mahrree turned bright red as the audience burst into laughter.
“Don’t worry, Captain. I wasn’t ever thinking of inviting you over to share a meal.”
The audience oohed in sympathy as Captain Shin backed up.
“I’ll sleep better tonight with that knowledge. Thank you.”
The audience howled again as Mahrree rolled up her sleeves.
“Now,” she said loudly to draw their attention back to her, “as I said earlier, this is not what it was yesterday. It’s changing and developing. Perhaps, if left to stew and ferment over many generations, it may just develop into something even more intelligent than . . . the captain here.”
She gave him a sidelong glance and saw him take an insulted breath.
The audience chuckled.
“It would take several more generations, though,” Mahrree continued, “before it became clever enough to become a teacher.”
The audience broke out into applause and cheering.
Captain Shin remained immovable, keeping his arms folded.
Mahrree folded her arms similarly and looked at him.
His face was stern and set, but his dark eyes were bright and warm. She couldn’t bear to look into them for long. The captain waited until the audience started to quiet down. Then he took a few steps towards her midday-meal-turned-science-experiment and jiggled the table slightly.
“Moves all on its own, doesn’t it?” Mahrree pointed out. “Definition of something alive: begins, grows, moves, and dies. Just watch it for a moment and you’ll see it doing something like breathing.”
She was impressed that she could remain so poised. The blob had made her so nauseated that she’d been close to retching ever since she discovered it at school. Yet she knew it would be the perfect example for her class to test the Administrator of Science’s recently released definition of “life.” And when Rector Densal prepared her for the night’s debate a few days ago by telling her the topic, she knew she had to cultivate the blob as lovingly as the illegal mead brewers watched over their hidden stills.
Captain Shin nodded, and she was sure he knew exactly what she was doing. “So you’re suggesting that this is a form of life? You just recited the new definition of life in reference to it.”
“I thought you might approve of my using that definition. It came from your Administrators after all.”
There it was again, welling up in her chest: that inexplicable disdain for the Administrators. She had to be careful. She glanced around the darkening amphitheater, searching the area lit by torches for anyone wearing an official red jacket.
The captain opened his mouth as if to challenge that they were his Administrators, but she continued on, hoping to lighten the moment.
“Interestingly, the definition of life fits even for this world we live in, doesn’t it, Captain? We weren’t around for its beginning, of which there certainly was one, nor will we be for its end—at least, I hope I won’t be around to see the Last Day. Sounds a little frightening to me. But the world itself grows and moves, especially during a land tremor. Therefore, the world must be alive.
“But,” she continued, putting a thoughtful finger to her lips, “it seems tragic that trees and plants aren’t ‘alive’ since they don’t ‘move’ unless the wind blows them. Perhaps the Administrators will amend their definition to grant life to things that can’t move?” she said in a sugared tone. “Let our orchards, vineyards, and crops live? I may be only a simple teacher in Edge, but even my students realized that the university-trained Administrator of Science seemed not to recognize that ‘moving’ isn’t necessarily an indicator of life.”
Why did she keep saying such things about the Administrators?! She bit her lip in worry as the audience chortled.
But the captain didn’t look offended as he sighed loudly. “You’re drifting off topic again. What do the trees have to do with your . . . blob here?”
“Glad you asked!” she answered brightly. “This, according to the Administrators’ definition, is most definitely alive.” She gestured to the disgusting mass. “So now I have one more theory to present about our origins. I will be so bold as to suggest that we may have even derived from something similar to this, thousands of years ago. Look at the colors—they change daily. Yesterday there was a lovely pink streak right along there, but now it’s darkened to purply black. What if all of us derived from something like this lump of neglected midday meal? Under the right conditions, in the right temperatures, with the right elements, who’s to say something like this didn’t advance—progress—into something like us?”
Captain Shin stared hard at her with his deep dark eyes. They were nearly black, but still somehow warm. Mahrree tried not to look into them, but since he was only a couple feet away, he was impossible to ignore.
“I assure you, Miss Peto, I for one did not progress from something like that!”
“Can you prove it?” she dared.
The audience chuckled in expectation.
“Can you prove I progressed from that?” the captain challenged.
The villagers laughed.
“Prove to me that you didn’t!” she snapped back. “In a few days, there might be a strong family resemblance.”
Another “ooohing” sound arose from the crowd.
Captain Shin had been waiting for that moment—Mahrree could see it in his small smile. She had no proof that her blob was actually “progressing” and not just some aggressive molds multiplying under ideal circumstances. She was just presenting a debate.
So was he.
Even though she’d seen the captain in the congregation at Rector Densal’s Holy Day services, after that second debate when he dismissed The Writings as a guide from another time, she still had many doubts about what he believed. Now she’d get to see just what he knew.
“Miss Peto,” the captain began, “and with all due respect to Rector Densal who selected this topic,” he nodded to him and his wife sitting on the front row, “the question of our origins shouldn’t even be a debate. None of us can prove any theory to be true. We each choose what to believe. So Miss Peto, if you truly want to believe your cooking will become something intelligent, which is its only hope since it’s clearly inedible,” he paused. “Probably always was, too,” he added as the crowd snickered, “I won’t argue your belief.”
“You’re quitting?” Mahrree exclaimed. “Not even going to try to offer a counter argument?”
“Oh, no—I’ll debate this matter. I’m just stating this is not actually debatable.”
Mahrree smirked. “You’re just afraid of my blob and what it may represent, aren’t you? Always wanted a brother?” She jiggled the table.
She didn’t anticipate the sudden rise of emotion in his face as he seemed to choke back a laugh. His eyes were so warm and bright Mahrree could feel their heat in her body.
“Slide your ‘blob’ over, Miss Peto. I’ve got my own little demonstration for the table.” He gave her an
unexpected wink that only she could see, then turned and trotted down the front steps over to Rector Densal.
Mahrree turned away from the audience to slide her platter over to the side of the table, and so that no one would see the effect the captain’s wink had on her. She must have gone purple. She quickly composed herself and turned to see the captain coming to the top of the platform with a large, heavy crate in his arms which he easily carried.
Yes, girls, Mahrree thought. He’s as strong as an ox.
As a bull.
He set the box down with a thud on the table, and the blob quivered in fear. The captain shuddered at it.
“Can’t you cover that up or something?” he asked in a low voice and winked at her again.
Mahrree couldn’t have moved even if she wanted to.
Positioning himself behind the crate, Captain Shin turned to face the audience.
“Miss Peto, and each of you, can believe whatever you wish about where we came from. Cling to whatever theory or even ridiculous suggestion that brings you comfort as you struggle in this difficult existence. There’s no law to force you to believe—”
“Yet,” Mahrree interrupted coldly, just as she had at the second debate when he pointed out she was still free to speak her mind.
The captain gave her a studied look, then turned back to the crowd.
“Despite what I may have said at the second debate about The Writings, I do see them as a valuable work. And I choose to believe that the Creator brought our first five hundred families here 319 years ago. That gives me great comfort. And, I will suggest,” he emphasized in a nod to Mahrree, “it is the most reasonable belief.”
Mahrree craned her neck to see what was in the crate as he pulled off the top.
The Forest at the Edge of the World Page 12
