Another clear summer day dawned early, but they knew the sun wouldn’t get to the lake until mid-morning. Neti used the last of Farmer Koto’s oats to make a thin porridge. Comments around the breakfast fire told Ilika they were ready to tear themselves away from the beautiful lake and head for the nearest settlement for supplies.
Tera pretended not to hear until Mati used the do-or-die tone of voice that was occasionally necessary with her donkey. She pulled one more mouthful of tender grass and walked over to be saddled.
By the time the sunshine found the lake, the students and their teacher were half-way up the slope to the next pass. At the top, just a gentle ridge between two peaks with a cool breeze blowing, Ilika announced they were seven thousand three hundred feet above sea level.
“Did you figure that out with trigonometry?” Sata asked.
“No. My bracelet has an altimeter function.”
Buna came and stood by Ilika. “What’s an al . . . timeter?”
“Altitude meter. It can tell about how high we are above the ocean. I’ll do a lesson on it this evening.”
“Okay, thanks!” Buna said, grinning with delight at discovering yet another of the bracelet’s magical powers.
While Ilika was answering Buna’s question, he was also contemplating the scene before them. They could see into two small mountain valleys, to the
NEBADOR Book Three: Selection 7
northeast and the southeast. Both contained small lakes, but neither hosted any kind of settlement.
Ilika’s brow furrowed. The trail forked, just a few yards in front of them, with one branch going into each valley. He sat down on the rocky trail and pulled out their map. Everyone gathered around to help him consider the situation.
“The trail on the map looks like it goes sort of northeast about here,” Neti observed.
“Yes. That gives weight to the left branch. But sometimes mapmakers aren’t careful, and just draw a wiggly line when they know the way is wiggly, without being careful to match the wiggles they draw with the real wiggles.”
“That sucks,” Boro said with a frown.
“Yes. I’d like some scouts to go down both trails a little way to see if one or the other is more heavily used.”
“Me!”
“Me!”
“Me!”
“Me
too!”
“All of you, go ahead — the more opinions the better. You too, please, Rini.”
Sata, Miko, Neti, and Buna headed down to the right. Rini stood thinking for a moment, then set his feet on the trail to the left.
Kibi sat down close beside Ilika.
“Any idea which way we should go?” he asked her.
Kibi was silent for a long moment. “Which way the settlement is, or which way we should go?”
He flashed her a grin. “There’s a reason we’re in these mountains. I just can’t see it yet.”
The group of scouts returned and headed down the left trail.
“What if we get lost?” Toli suddenly asked in a loud voice.
Ilika looked at Kibi. His glance pleaded with her to deal with Toli on this occasion.
“Then we’ll just have to find ourselves,” she said over her shoulder.
“Thanks,” Ilika whispered.
NEBADOR Book Three: Selection 8
All of the scouts returned, and Rini quietly slipped away down the right-hand trail.
“They look the same to me!” Miko announced proudly.
“Me too,” Neti agreed.
Sata and Buna nodded.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Ilika said with a slight frown, then went back to staring at the map.
Eventually Rini returned and sat down with Ilika and Kibi. “Not much difference. More moccasin prints, even some bare feet, to the left.”
Ilika stood up. “Okay, unless anyone has other opinions, I’m going with Neti’s observation that the trail on the map goes northeast here.”
Everyone was silent.
“Sata, I’d like you to lead a project.”
She came and stood before her teacher, then took a deep breath of the cool mountain air to fill herself with courage.
Ilika handed her one of their last blank sheets, a thick piece of drawing paper. “I’d like you to make a map of all the trails, lakes, mountain peaks, and other interesting things we find, starting back at the first pass. You do the mapping, but let others get compass bearings and distance estimates. I’ll give you the elevations.”
“This sounds like fun!”
Ilika got out his knowledge processor and selected the magnetic compass.
Sata started drawing. “Um . . . Mati, would you get a compass bearing on our lake? How high was that, Ilika?”
“Six thousand one hundred.”
NEBADOR Book Three: Selection 9
With the help of others, Sata soon had all the information they could remember, or discover from their current location. Having already chosen their path, they shouldered their rucksacks, only to discover that Misa had just taken off her moccasins.
When she noticed everyone looking at her, she pouted for a moment and said, “I heard Rini say he saw bare footprints. I wanted to try it.”
Rini
smiled.
The rest shrugged and headed down the left-hand trail.
The little alpine valley they entered was even more beautiful than the first, containing two crystal-clear lakes and a little waterfall in between. When they stopped for drinks, Misa plunged her sore feet into the icy water and dug out her moccasins.
When they came to the far side of the valley, three paths continued onward. One followed the stream southeast, another went over a low pass eastward, and the third climbed a higher pass almost due north. Sata got busy with her map.
“Ilika, what happened to the ONE trail through the mountains on the map?” Neti asked pointedly.
“I guess it’s ONE of these,” he replied, just as pointedly.
“But
which
one!”
“The trail down the stream probably just joins the other trail we decided not to take,” Toli speculated.
Several people nodded.
“The north way looks . . . hard for a donkey,” Mati said, shading her eyes.
“It looks hard for anything!” Boro added.
“Do we have an agreement to take the trail to the east?” Ilika asked.
Everyone nodded and shouldered their rucksacks.
The trail forked twice more before they stopped for lunch at a little meadow where Tera could graze. Boro passed out scraps of stale bread and small pieces of dried goat cheese. Sata worked on her map, asking for estimates of the distances they had walked.
The afternoon brought more choices of direction, more alpine lakes, and
NEBADOR Book Three: Selection 10
plenty of work for Sata. They tried to pick trails that would take them east, but were often forced to go toward the north.
Ilika could see Neti getting more and more frustrated, and Toli was clearly on edge. Everyone else seemed fine, and were picking little red berries at every opportunity.
A group of slender trees beside a tiny lake became their final stopping place of the day. Rini and Buna, both as happy as little children at play, ran off to pick berries, while Boro asked Toli to help him with firewood. Kibi started a soup with whatever she could find in their bags. After updating the map, Sata helped with spices.
“Okay, I promised you a lesson about altimeters,” Ilika began as everyone sat around warming their hands at the fire. “Under the influence of gravity, the atmosphere tends to pile up and be denser at the planet’s surface. It gets thinner and thinner as you go up. It does so in a very predictable way, so we can make an instrument that tells us how high above sea level we are.”
“How can we do lessons when we don’t know where we are?” Neti moaned.
Ilika looked at her for a moment before answering. “Because it doesn’t matter where we are. We have everything we need, we are safe, and the lesson is just as important here as anywhere else.”
Neti rolled her eyes but said no more. Miko put his arm around her.
“The problem with a simple altimeter is that several factors can change the air pressure at a given location from one hour to the next. Wind can cause the pressure to go up or down. Temperature changes cause pressure changes, since a gas is heavier when it’s colder. Moisture in the air also changes the pressure.”
“So how can your bracelet figure all that out?” Buna asked.
“It can take into account the temperature and the humidity, because it can sense both of those directly, but it has no way of knowing the current sea-level pressure. I can tell it, if I know. If not, it assumes the usual, which is the pressure that will push mercury up about thirty inches.”
“Element eighty, liquid at normal temperatures, and there’s only four of them,” Boro said from memory.
“Right. Very useful, but also very poisonous.”
NEBADOR Book Three: Selection 11
“We’re lost, aren’t we?” Neti burst out in a voice close to tears.
“Anyone who doesn’t like our situation is free to leave,” a voice said.
There was a moment of astonished silence. Neti would have expected that from Ilika, maybe even from Kibi, but to hear it coming from Buna was almost shocking.
“I agree, Buna,” Ilika said calmly. “But let’s give some attention to Neti’s concern. Please share with us what you’re worried about, Neti.”
“It just bothers me . . . that we don’t know where we are or . . . where we’re going or . . . when we’re gonna . . . find food . . .” Her voice broke into sobs.
Ilika let some time pass as Miko held her tightly.
“We’ve got food for about a day,” Boro explained, “two if we cut back and eat like slaves.”
Sata shriveled her face slightly, then took a deep breath.
Rini spread his arms wide. “There are berries all over the place!”
“We’re going to be okay,” Miko said tenderly. Neti buried her face in his cloak and let herself cry for several minutes.
Ilika whispered to the others that he would continue the lesson another time.
When Neti collected herself and wiped her eyes, Ilika was sitting beside her, and to her amazement, put his bracelet on her arm and snapped it closed.
Then he peered at his knowledge processor, sometimes touching it with a finger in different places.
Toli and Buna watched carefully but didn’t ask any questions.
Ilika frowned. “Neti, I’m not surprised you feel terrible.”
“What?”
“You’re dehydrated, anemic, and hypoxic. Remember what those mean?”
“Um . . . all dried up . . . and . . . I don’t know.”
Ilika smiled. “Our bodies don’t work well when we’re dehydrated. Also you’re very low on iron. That and the high altitude are making it hard for your body to get enough oxygen. I bet you’ve been headachy.”
“Yeah . . .”
“You’re usually so self-controlled, I knew something was wrong when you became grumpy.”
“It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her like this!” Miko said with concern.
NEBADOR Book Three: Selection 12
“You
get
three bowls of soup for dinner, Neti. Make more if you have to, Kibi. Have you been eating the red berries?”
“No. They’re not very tasty.”
“Well,” Ilika continued, “they may be just what you need, and we can’t afford to pass up any source of nutrition right now.”
Rini handed her a bowl half-full of berries.
“Remember when I had to eat all those sour berries?” Miko reminded her.
“These are lots better!”
“Okay . . .”
Miko made sure Neti got plenty of liquids at breakfast the following morning, and lots of berries. She seemed to feel better, but was still weak.
“On a Transport Service ship,” Ilika began as they huddled around the morning fire, “every member of the crew reports any health problems to the commander. I don’t blame Neti, since she wasn’t familiar with altitude sickness, and she didn’t have a bracelet.”
“You mean, even the crew gets bracelets?” Buna asked excitedly with wide eyes.
“Of course. A captain can’t expect his crew members to do their jobs unless they have the proper tools. On a ship, we run into so many strange situations, the whole crew has to be constantly watching for anything unusual.
A headache could be a clue to something dangerous, like radiation. Men have more trouble than women admitting something hurts or feels funny.”
“Does that mean if someone got sick, they could rest?” Toli asked with a hopeful voice. “When we were slaves, we had to work even if we were sick.”
Ilika had to think about the question for a minute. “Very different situations. As slaves, you couldn’t rest because your masters wanted as much work done as possible. But your work was never critical. No one’s lives were depending on you.
“In the Transport Service, your commander will let you go off duty if possible, but there are times you’ll have to stay on duty until some dangerous maneuver is completed. The safety of the ship comes first. Without the ship, the crew and passengers are dead. See the difference?”
Toli scrunched his face in thought. “I think so.”
NEBADOR Book Three: Selection 13
“Makes sense,” Boro said, nodding. “On the ship, we would depend on each other.”
“But even if you couldn’t go off duty immediately,” Ilika continued, “the commander needs to know about any weakness in the crew or the ship. That way, you’ll get what you need just as soon as you can be spared.”
For Neti’s sake, they took their journey more slowly that day, stopping for drinks and wild berries often, and having snacks between meals, to the extent they could find anything to eat in their rucksacks.
The trails continued to branch every mile or two, and Sata faithfully recorded the details. As often as not, they were forced to go farther to the north than they wanted.
The soup was very thin that evening. Everyone searched their bags. A few nuts and a bit more cheese came to light.
After a bowl of hot soup, most of the group spent time hunting for wild foods, looking in the water for frogs or turtles, or pulling up plants to see if the roots were edible. Kibi brought back a few tender greens, but everyone else shook their heads.
NEBADOR Book Three: Selection 14
Tera looked up from her plentiful supply of fresh grass and wondered what the fuss was all about.
The teacher and students turned their attention to what was available.
Mati stayed to tend the fire as everyone else fanned out with bowls and cups to gather all the berries they could find before dark.
Ilika wore a frown as he picked. Several times Kibi noticed him fingering his bracelet thoughtfully, but each time he would stop himself before doing anything and go back to picking more berries.
As the evening deepened into night, the somber group sat around the fire.
Only occasionally would someone share a story.
Kibi exchanged glances with Ilika, then looked around at the others. Rini was, as always, unaffected by their situation. Boro and Sata seemed fine.
Other than a little soreness in her good knee, Mati looked okay. But worry lines crossed Kibi’s face when she glanced at the other four students and listened to her heart.
As Ilika sat warming his hands and quietly observing his students, he became aware of a change in the weather and consulted his bracelet to verify what he was sensing. “The air pressure is falling.”
“Isn’t it a little late for lessons?” Toli asked in a testy voice.
Ilika looked up as the first flakes drifted down from the sky and gleamed in the firelight. “Yes, too late for lessons. But a very good time to get ready for snow.”
Deep Learning Notes
Sata’s map is shown, as it was when she first started it at the 7300 foot pass.
Why did Ilika ask Rini to scout the mountain paths when four other people had already volunteered?
Kibi realized that the way they “should” go might be a different direction than the settlement. This is a kind of thinking process that not all people can understand. It involves belief/faith that the universe has purposes that are
NEBADOR Book Three: Selection 15
different than, and sometimes in conflict with, our human will. Some people have this kind of belief/faith, but hold their own will to always be more important. In Kibi’s question, what can we tell about her feelings on the subject?
Do you think that Ilika chose the northeast trail because of the direction of the trail on the map, as Neti observed, or for some other reason?
What emotion did Toli and Neti have in common in this chapter?
The map Sata drew used the old “mixed perspective” technique that renders different things from different points of view. The trails, lakes, and streams are as they would look from above, as no other point of view would be useful.
The mountains are drawn as they would look from the side, as no other point of view was within human experience. Ilika’s map of the kingdom used this same perspective technique. It is still commonly used today.
What was Misa attempting to say to her fellow travelers by walking a mile or so in bare feet?
When Boro passed out “scraps of stale bread,” he was using a value system that many of us have not experienced. We are used to thinking of “food” as
“things that taste good.” What was the definition of “food” in that situation?
Most altimeters today take into account only air pressure, and can be adjusted for sea-level pressure, if known. Some can compensate for temperature, and the effect of humidity is slight. A pilot usually uses the closest and most recently-known sea-level pressure to adjust the instrument. Lacking even that, standard sea-level pressure is 29.92” Hg (inches of mercury) or 1013.25
millibars at 15°C (59°F). The air pressure at any point, when all possible factors have been taken into account, is called “density altitude.”
Anemia (low iron) almost directly causes hypoxia (low oxygen) because an atom of iron in each red blood cell is essential to its ability to carry oxygen
NEBADOR Book Three: Selection 16
throughout the body. Neti’s hypoxia, therefore, had two causes: the thin air at high altitude reduced the amount of oxygen available, and her anemia reduced the ability of her blood to carry oxygen.
How many warning signs can you see in this chapter that something was wrong with Neti?
When Ilika talked about the need to report any health problem on a ship, what warning did he give especially to the boys?
Why was Tera unconcerned about the lack of frogs, turtles, edible roots, and other kinds of food?
Why was Ilika taking every opportunity to observe his students as they ran out of food?
Sata's map is shown after two full days of travel north and east. What part of it was drawn from the 7300 foot pass where she first started the project?
NEBADOR Book Three: Selection 17
Chapter 3: Blind Faith on an Empty Stomach Several inches of white snowflakes piled up on their bedroll covers before stopping in the middle of the night. Misa had joined Buna in her bedroll, and everyone stayed warm. Toli had to get up several times during the night, and everyone knew, by the grumbling, that he was unhappy.
During the early dawn hours, Kibi caught little bits of conversation between Miko and Neti. She was feeling better, but their situation still worried her. Miko tried to comfort her, but was powerless to remove her concerns.
The morning dawned gray, with a cloud ceiling so close they could almost reach up and touch it. No one hopped out of bed to build a fire, even though they had piled their rucksacks on top of the firewood to keep it dry.
Suddenly those who were awake heard the sound of footsteps crunching through the snow.
Before Ilika could respond to the sound, the flap of his bedroll was pulled back, and the weathered face of a middle-aged woman looked down at him from deep inside the hood of her cloak. She smiled slightly, and gestured for him to follow.
Rini found himself looking into the eyes of a girl no more than eight years old.
The same happened to all the others, and everyone was soon sitting up, looking at the ten or eleven hooded figures who had returned to the nearby trail. Some wore moccasins, and others were standing barefoot in the snow.
NEBADOR Book Three: Selection 18
“Who are you?” Miko challenged assertively.
“Where are we?” Neti asked with a shaking voice.
“Where are you taking us?” Toli whined.
None of the figures spoke. When all the questions had faded away, one of the women repeated her hand signal to follow.
“I think we found the monastery,” Rini declared.
Kibi smiled. “I think it found us!”
“It must be an order with vows of silence,” Ilika said. “My country has those also.”
Several of the hooded figures nodded.
Ilika stretched his arms. “We’re being offered guidance. Let’s get ready and go!”
No one complained. Within five minutes, boots were laced, beds rolled up and strapped to packs, and the donkey saddled.
They kept out their bowls and cups of wild berries, all they had for breakfast and possibly beyond. Toli clutched one of the cups protectively.
Rini picked up the biggest bowl, with about half their supply, and looked at Ilika.
He
nodded.
Rini presented the bowl to the girls and women waiting on the trail.
After looking at each other with surprise for a moment, they accepted it with a slight bow. Each of them took a handful of the precious food, then returned the bowl and began to lead the way up the trail.
The group walked under gray skies, following their silent hosts ever upward and ever northward into the fog while chewing the remaining berries.
At their first rest stop, they all got drinks of icy cold water and put away the bowls and cups.
As they continued, Ilika dropped back to the end of the line. Looking around at the silent and still landscape, he noticed they had climbed above the elevation where the berries grew. He caught occasional glimpses of mosses, lichens, and hearty grasses, but absolutely nothing they could eat. Then he took a good look at Neti, not far ahead. Somehow she was finding the energy to keep going, and was not stumbling too often. He touched the surface of his
NEBADOR Book Three: Selection 19
bracelet with a worried frown, then plunged his hands back into his pockets and focused on the task at hand — getting to wherever they were being silently guided.
“I think it’s our mountain!” Boro yelled as they rounded a rock outcropping, came out of the fog, and suddenly beheld a snowy peak towering above them in the sunlight. “The thirteen thousand foot one we did the trigonometry with!”
Ilika checked his bracelet. “We’re at eight thousand five hundred. You could be right, Boro.”
“Look!” Toli squealed. “There’s some kind of house over there!”
Everyone looked in the direction he was pointing. Another quarter mile along the trail and just slightly lower, in a sheltered nook on the side of the mountain, a cluster of pine trees ringed a small meadow, currently covered with snow. A simple building perched between the trail and the meadow.
Without word or gesture, their hosts led them in that direction.
The monastery’s guest house was a one-room rock shelter with a steep roof of slender logs, and slabs of bark for shingles. The door, just a simple opening in one wall, faced east and overlooked the alpine meadow. A small fire pit took up the middle of the room, and the dirt floor gave enough space for all their bedrolls, as well as Tera if the weather turned foul.
Miko spotted the dry firewood and chopping block, and set to work with flint and knife, while Boro quickly organized a team to collect more wood.
While the travelers were getting settled, one of the priestesses sat down out of the way and closed her eyes. The rest of the women and girls of the monastery silently departed.
“Do you think they know we need food?” Toli asked in a desperate voice.
Kibi nodded. “Yes, I think so, Toli.”
Overhearing Kibi’s firm but comforting tone, Ilika smiled to himself.
Buna came in with the bronze pot full of clean, cold water, and Ilika poured a cup for Neti, warming herself by the fire. Neti accepted the cup and looked into the gentle eyes of her teacher. “You knew we were going to find something, didn’t you?”
NEBADOR Book Three: Selection 20
“I knew we were going to be okay,” he assured her, “but I didn’t know we would find the monastery.”
Rini came in from the meadow with numb hands from helping Tera scrape snow off the grass. The fire was soon built up and they all gathered around.
Cups of water were passed, and sparkling eyes met, sharing a moment of happiness even as hunger gnawed at their bellies.
At that moment a large wooden tray appeared, carried by one of the sisters of the monastery — bread, butter, cheese, plums, crab apples, and sprigs of fresh greens. She set the tray on the chopping block by the wood pile, sat down out of the way, and the sister who was already there rose and silently departed.
“Eat slow, everyone,” Boro asserted. “You remember what can happen when you haven’t had food for a while and suddenly you get some.”
“We remember,” Buna assured. “You can’t be a slave very long and not know that!”
During their meal, more guests arrived. A bushy-tailed gray squirrel begged for a piece of Ilika’s apple, then ran and sat on the meditating sister’s lap to eat its meal. A sparrow flew in the window, landed on Neti’s shoulder, and received a bit of bread. Rini soon discovered his bony knees were preferred by two chipmunks, both of whom received handouts.
Neti smiled for the first time in two days.
The teacher, nine students, and one fellow traveler spent the remainder of the afternoon getting everything dry, building up a large pile of firewood, and just resting and talking. Toli paid close attention as Ilika placed his bracelet on each person’s arm.
Neti was no longer dehydrated, and her iron had improved a little. Toli’s blood pressure was high. Everyone was slightly hypoxic due to the altitude, but otherwise in good health.
Another tray arrived in the evening, brought by a different sister, who stayed and sat with eyes closed. Two squirrels and three chipmunks also showed up. After giving away a small part of his dinner, Boro asked Ilika to continue the lesson on air pressure and altimeters.
Somewhat to Ilika’s surprise, all of his students were wide awake. Misa
NEBADOR Book Three: Selection 21
and the five little meadow creatures seemed just as interested. He talked about the weather patterns typically created by different pressure, temperature, and humidity conditions. The chipmunks, however, soon got bored and left.
As they prepared their beds that evening, the last tray was silently carried away, including the two silver pieces Ilika had placed upon it. The squirrels followed the sister out the door, and the travelers were left alone for the night.
Deep Learning Notes
In our world, the Cistercian and Trappist monastic traditions include vows of silence. It is a method of making even daily routines more meditative and mindful, as we often use speech to distract ourselves from uncomfortable aspects of our lives.
Boro’s warning about eating slowly is difficult for most of us to understand.
When the stomach has been empty for a while, it will often reject the first food put in it, especially if that food is heavy. It has the best chance of accepting fruit, as most fruit is acidic, and so is the stomach.
What would make Toli’s blood pressure high? Hint: it was not a factor in the external environment.
Most monasteries have guest houses so that visitors can be kept separate from the residents, and not disturb, or be disturbed by, the routine of the monastery. In a silent order, it also allows the visitor to talk. Can you see, in this case, another purpose for the guest house? Hint: one of the women of the monastery sat in the guest house, out of the way, with eyes closed, all day long.
