Monument. Lloyd Biggle jr.

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СКАЧАТЬ water recreations would drive the koluf to new feeding grounds, and unless the natives were able to follow it—continuously—or effect radical changes in their diet, their social structure, and their manner of living, they would starve. Obrien doubted that they could do any of those. And a century or two later, scholars, always worrying deeply about yesterday’s tragedies while blithely ignoring today’s, would bemoan the loss. “They’d achieved a splendid civilization. Some of its facets were highly original and even unique. It’s a pity, really it is. One would think there’d be a law about that kind of thing.”

      * * * *

      The young people came from all of the villages. They swung lightly down the coast with flashing paddles and rollicking songs-ten at a time they came, handsome boys and lovely girls bronzed from their days in the sun, all of them equally experienced at the koluf hunt and the loom, for in this society either sex did the work it preferred.

      Theirs was the age of carefree happiness, the age the natives called the Time of Joy, for they were granted the leisure for singing and dancing, for courtship, for—if they chose—doing nothing at all, before assuming their adult responsibilities. And though they solemnly beached their boats along the point and came into the august presence of the Langri with appropriate reverence, he knew that no talk about tomorrow’s doom would easily divert their thoughts from today’s delights.

      His questions startled them. They grappled awkwardly with strange concepts. They struggled to repeat unutterable sounds. They underwent bewildering tests of strength and endurance, of memory, of comprehension. Obrien tested and rejected, and others took their places, and finally he had chosen fifty.

      In the forest, remote from the attractions of sea and shore and village, Obrien had a small village constructed. He moved in with his fifty students, and he worked them from dawn until darkness and often far into the night, while other natives loyally brought food, and the villages in turn sent help to prepare it. Fornri stood by alertly to do whatever was needed, and Dalla waited patiently with a cool drink and a damp leaf for Obrien’s brow when he tired, and an entire people watched and waited. The pain in Obrien’s abdomen came and went. When he was able, he ignored it. When he could not ignore it, he dismissed his students until he felt better.

      His own formal education had ended the moment he became large enough to outrun his school’s attendance officer, but he had never stopped learning, and in his wandering he had acquired a smattering of all sorts of knowledge. Not until this moment did he realize what a scant thing a smattering amounted to, nor had he been aware that he could know something well and still have no notion of how to explain it.

      He knew nothing at all about teaching.

      He stood at one end of a forest clearing. Behind him was an improvised writing board, a fiber mat stretched between two trees with a layer of moist clay smoothed across it. With a pointed stick Obrien had written the numbers one through ten, and below that he had carefully inscribed what he considered the beginning of an education in arithmetic:

      1 + 1 = 2

      1+1+1=3

      His fifty students sat on the ground before him in varying stages of inattention or perplexity. Around the edges of the clearing children peered out curiously, for native children were ubiquitous, and their curiosity was insatiable. Behind his class, at the far end of the clearing, stood the village.

      “One means one of anything,” Obrien announced. “One dwelling, one spear, one koluf, one boat. One and one are two—two dwellings, two spears, two koluf. You, Banu!”

      A youth in the front row started, and as Obrien continued to talk, his face assumed the contortions of total bafflement. “If you have a spear,” Obrien said, “and I give you another spear, how many spears do you have?”

      “Why would you give me a spear if I already have one?” Banu blurted.

      Eddies of discussion and comment swirled about the class and merged into larger eddies. Obrien took a heroic grip on his patience. “You’re hunting koluf, Banu, and your friend gives you his spear to hold while he secures the bait. How many spears do you have?”

      “One,” Banu said confidently.

      “You at the back—pay attention here!” Obrien shouted. He turned to Banu. “Banu—you have two spears. One and one are two!”

      “But one of them is my friend’s,” Banu protested. “I only have one. I always have one. Why would I want two?”

      Obrien took a deep breath and tried again. “Look at your fingers. On each hand you have one plus one plus one plus one plus one. Five. Five fingers on each hand. If a koluf bit off one of your fingers, how many would you have left?” He held up his hand, fingers outspread. Then he folded one finger down. “Four! Five take away one leaves four. Count!”

      The entire class sat staring intently at outspread fingers. Banu had ahold of one of his, wiggling it back and forth. “I can’t take away one,” he announced finally. “I still have five.”

      “Damn it, can’t you understand? Five of anything take away one leaves four. Five koluf, you eat one, you have four left.”

      A student seated at the side of the clearing got to his feet and absently ambled forward, keeping his eyes on the writing board. Obrien went to meet him. “What is it, Larno?”

      “What happens after ten?” Larno asked.

      Obrien showed him, writing the numbers eleven to twenty as he spoke them.

      “Yes, yes!” Larno exclaimed. “And after twenty?”

      Obrien patiently went on writing numbers and pronouncing them. The class had lost interest. Talk became louder; a girl squealed; some youths began playing a game with a small gourd. Obrien, sensing Larno’s intense interest, ignored the disturbances and continued with the numbers until he had filled the writing board.

      “Yes, yes!” Larno exclaimed. “And after ninety-nine?”

      “One hundred. One hundred one. One hundred two. One hundred—”

      “And after one hundred ninety-nine?”

      “Two hundred.”

      “And after two hundred ninety-nine is three hundred?” Larno asked. “Yes, yes! And four hundred? And five hundred? Yes, yes! And if one and one are two, then eleven and eleven are twenty-two, and one hundred and one hundred are two hundred. Yes, yes! And if five take away one is four, then five hundred take away one hundred is four hundred. And if each of us has ten fingers, then two of us have twenty fingers, and all fifty of us have five hundred fingers, not including you and Fornri and Dalla. Yes, yes!”

      Obrien turned grimly and walked away. “Yes, yes!” he muttered. “Now tell me how a dumb mechanic like me can teach arithmetic to a class with one mathematical genius and forty-nine nitwits.”

      * * * *

      He taught language. That much was all right. Through some freakish tradition this small population of isolated natives practiced bilingualism—they had a speech that was like nothing Obrien had ever encountered, but they also had a ceremonial speech that was a bastardized derivative of the galaxy’s one universal tongue that men everywhere called Galactic. Obrien had grown up speaking Galactic, and a man who couldn’t teach his own language was a fool. He had been teaching it ever since he arrived on this world, and many of the older natives had СКАЧАТЬ