Pathfinder (Pathfinder 1)

“As I was saying, there might be those who think that it doesn’t matter in the slightest what you decide about anything. For the rest of your life, other people will decide everything that matters, including whether you live or die.”

She sat back down. Again there were murmurs of protest, but Rigg spoke loudly to cut them off. “I’m not afraid to face the situation I’m in. I’m quite aware that my power to decide is limited right now, and might be ended completely at any time. There have already been two attempts on my life since I was arrested—two that I know of, that is. In both cases, I managed to be alert enough to stay alive, but how long can I keep that up? One of you will have to write about that after the answer is known.”

There were a few nervous chuckles.

“But there’s always the chance that I might not die young. How will I occupy the long years of a very l

imited kind of life? My choice is to pursue scholarship. To do that I need to find out what I’m good at. To do that I need to have access to the library. Eventually I may be able to contribute to the sum of human knowledge. If I don’t, then at least I will have had an interesting life. A larger life than is possible in this house, with so few books.”

More murmuring, and then someone started to speak. Rigg didn’t even let him get a whole word out. “Please! Learned doctors and philosophers like you certainly have enough answers from me to make your decision. Let me ask you a question.”

“We are not here to be examined,” said the botanist stiffly. “And you do not decide when the—”

“Of course you’re here to be examined,” said Rigg. “All of you have carefully phrased your questions so as to impress each other with your profundity. I know you’ve impressed me. So I want to ask you all: What do you expect of a child my age? I am all potential, without accomplishments. If I were your student, would you find me promising? Would you trust me with a book in my hands? Is mine a mind worth teaching? My father thought so, because he spent every waking moment doing it, and then testing me on it—including the very kinds of tests that you’ve been putting me through here, taking me beyond the boundaries of my education, seeing what I could figure out for myself. He died without telling me whether I was meeting his standards or not. He never said or implied that I had learned enough about anything. But he also never stopped teaching me. Was my father right? Am I worth teaching? And if I’m not, why in the world have you spent all these hours pressing me further? Is there some great wisdom to be gained by calibrating exactly how worthless a mind I have?”

“This examination is over,” said the botanist.

Gratefully Rigg rose from his stool. His back was as tired as if he’d slept on cold hard ground. He had probably offended everyone by his final question, but there was a point where continuing the examination was a waste of everyone’s time.

To his surprise, the scholars did not go out the door leading into the garden. Instead, most of them came immediately into the room where Rigg was stretching himself. Some of them walked with great dignity, but others rushed in, hands extended. They said nothing at first. But each in turn held out a hand to him. Rigg took each hand, held it for a moment between his, and looked into their eyes.

The message in every face was the same, if he could dare to believe it. All the men and women who came into the room looked at him with warmth. With—or so it seemed to him—affection.

As he held their hands, and they held his, each one said his or her area of specialty. Not the general subject matter, like botany or physics, but the particular study that had made their reputation. “Mutation of plants through interspecies pollination.” “Propulsion of machinery through the controlled release of steam.” “The redevelopment of noun declensions through the accretion of particles in the transition from Middle to Late Umik.” “The tails of comets considered as ice boiled off by the heat of the sun.”

Each one, after letting go of his hand, stepped back to let the next approach. In the end, they formed two lines, and it was into the space between them that the last two from the other room finally came. The botanist was one, and the other was the woman who had asked him the practical and dangerous question near the end. Her face was set and hard—it was quite possible the botanist had been telling her off. Even now, she hung back and let the botanist come to Rigg ahead of her.

The botanist took his hands and said, “Alteration of a species through direct injection of cell nuclei from a species with a desired trait.” Then he stepped back.

The old woman came last. She took his hands as the others had, but said nothing.

“Go ahead,” the botanist said.

The old woman cocked her head slightly and got a touch of a smile. “The likelihood of two separate origins for the flora and fauna of this wallfold.”

This was something Rigg had never heard of—something Father had never touched on. “How could they be separate?” he asked. “Did life begin twice?”

She winked, even as a few of the other scholars groaned.

“That’s not the subject of her master piece,” said the botanist. “This is the scab she picks whenever she can find someone willing to listen to her. Her paper on that topic was never published.”

“Will I see you in the library?” Rigg asked the woman.

She smiled. “Isn’t the question whether we’ll see you?” Then she let go of his hands and left the room, walking out into the garden.

Flacommo must have been waiting outside, because Rigg could hear his voice as he protested that she couldn’t want to leave without sharing the meal that his cooks had prepared for such distinguished company.

“She was once very great,” said the botanist.

Rigg looked at him; he was watching her through the still-open door.

“Who is she?” asked Rigg.

“Bleht. She practically invented the science of microbiology, or revived it, anyway. But she got on a weird kick about two separate streams of evolution that only came together eleven thousand years ago—mystical claptrap. What does an ancient religious calendar have to do with science, I’d like to know,” said the botanist.

But Rigg understood immediately what she meant. He had skinned and gutted many of the “anomalous creatures,” as Father called them, and knew well how their anatomy differed from the patterns of most of the animals. He had also had to learn the “anomalous plants,” for the excellent reason that they could not be digested by humans and sometimes had toxic effects.

Now, just from her words, it occurred to him that instead of regarding these anomalous beasts and plants as the result of random chance, what if they were all related to each other? Instead of one great stream of life, with inexplicable variations, could there really be two streams of life, each one consistent within itself?