Everyone sighed with relief when Neti unwrapped Miko’s hand the following morning to discover that his blisters were still intact. She lovingly applied ointment while Kibi used a rock to squeeze juice from a bowl full of sour berries. Miko puckered up just watching.
Ilika took the entire morning to talk about microbiology. In the process, he used smaller measurements than they had ever before imagined, millionths of an inch as he drew several types of bacteria, and even smaller units to talk about viruses.
By mid-morning, they knew the common effects of a bacterial or viral infection, how the little critters might get in, and what the body did to keep them out. Miko gained a new appreciation for the fragile layer of damaged skin that covered his blisters.
During a break for lunch, Ilika smiled when he noticed several of his students looking for microbes behind trees and between rocks.
On the third day at the hot springs, Ilika brought out the lice potion, and again insisted they splash water from a nearby pool. He was careful to do a very good job on Kibi’s head.
As wet, clean hair slowly dried, regular lessons resumed. Ilika made two paper cones around a slender stick, glued together with tree sap, and introduced the conic sections. He had their undivided attention, as they knew geometry was only a small step away from navigation.
NEBADOR BookTwo: Journey 85
Miko’s eyes suddenly grew large as he remembered the first time they had discussed ellipses — in a dark tunnel, under the city walls, when he was thinking of jumping across a gaping hole in the floor. They ended the lesson by looking for the mysterious curves as they watched each other throw rocks toward the river.
The following day, when everyone gathered for lessons, Ilika just said,
“Follow me.”
At first they thought he was going to the terraces to do chemistry. Instead, he headed for the steam vent.
Miko had not gone anywhere near the place since the accident. Now, as he saw Ilika’s destination, he started to fall to the back of the line, shuffling his feet and looking around for some sour berries to pick.
Neti, noticing his reluctance, sat at the back of the group so he could easily join her.
“I know at least one of you isn’t very comfortable here. That’s why I didn’t do this yesterday or the day before. How’s the hand, Miko?”
“Hurts just being here.”
“I can imagine. Let’s see what we have — something that can send a column of vapor a thousand feet or more into the air, day and night, every day for, I don’t know, probably the last ten thousand years . . . and make this hissing, almost roaring sound doing it. All that tells me there’s a lot of power here, and I had better respect it. What do you guys think?”
“I agree!” Miko said with a big grin.
Almost everyone laughed.
“Respect it and fear it,” Sata said with wide eyes.
Ilika cocked his head. “I disagree with that. We’ve talked about how our minds don’t think very well when feeling strong emotions. When close to something of great power, we need to be on our toes and thinking clearly.
Respect, yes. Careful, yes. Fear, no.”
Sata squirmed. “I think I meant . . . more like . . . careful.”
“Okay. Let’s see what we can learn about this, without getting hurt. We can see and hear the vent. We can see the white plume of water vapor up there. I think Miko was on the right track. He realized there must be something in between, something that connects the two. His problem was that he used the wrong instrument. Everyone know what an instrument is?”
“Like a compass on a ship?” Rini guessed. “I saw one once.”
“Yes, a compass is an instrument, a device that measures something, and every instrument has its limits. If you try to make an instrument work beyond its limits, it will give you the wrong information, and probably be damaged.”
“Like my hand!” Miko blurted out.
Ilika grinned. “Everyone, help me think of ways we can learn something about this mysterious thing here.”
Boro raised his hand. “We can see it a little. When I look through it at things on the other side, they’re wavy, like looking over a fire.”
“So what quality does fire have that this might have?”
“Heat.”
“Yes. More ideas?”
“We could poke a stick into it,” Toli proposed.
“Sounds pretty safe. You may try that, Toli.”
The nineteen-year-old looked around for a way out, but seeing none, summoned the courage to find a stick and approach the steam vent. Even though he held it with two hands, the stick was immediately jerked upward.
“It’s strong!”
“Water’s starting to drip down the stick!” Kibi noticed with alarm.
“Very hot water!” Toli said as the drops reached his hand and he let go of the stick. It twirled away and landed near Boro.
“This is true steam,” Ilika went on, “the gaseous state of water. It is
invisible. Most of the time when people say steam, they mean water vapor, white cloudy stuff they can see. Vapor can be hot, but this vent is pouring out steam much hotter than boiling water, and it’s under high pressure. If you ever forget the difference between the two, just ask Miko.”
As evening approached, Ilika decided to join the foraging team. As they headed out of camp with shovel, cooking pot, bowls, and hats, he noticed Sata and Boro down by the river having a heated discussion, but he couldn’t hear their words.
The stew was tasty that evening, as they found wild onions and garlic, and shared the last of the hard cheese from Keni’s farm. After dinner, Kibi proposed they climb the hill behind the camp to see what they could see, maybe discover a few more berries.
Everyone liked the idea. Sata began striding up the hill, clearly intending to walk alone. Boro joined Rini and Kibi. Mati grabbed her crutch and joined Ilika.
A quarter hour later they discovered a group of boulders on the hillside that gave an excellent view of the hot spring terraces, the vapor column from the steam vent, and the valley beyond, already deep in evening shadow.
Everyone climbed onto the rocks and sat in silence contemplating the scene.
“Why are we staying here so long?” Sata asked in an irritated tone of voice.
“One of us was stupid enough to burn himself,” Miko said.
Neti put her arm around him and kissed him on the cheek.
“We needed to kill our lice eggs,” Rini said. “Only one more treatment, right Ilika?”
“I think so. If we can keep Kibi lice-free, the rest of us should be easy.”
Kibi snarled, then rubbed her hair against his.
“And there’s lots of food in the area!” Neti said happily.
“But that’s all stuff we could do at Port Town,” Sata said in a voice close to a whine. “Don’t you guys feel something strange here? Am I the only one who thinks there’s something . . . evil . . . about this place?”
All the other students remained silent.
“Sata,” Ilika began, “can you tell us what it is about this place that makes you think that?”
“Something about it isn’t . . . natural. I’ve never seen or heard of a place like this before. It smells weird, and look what it did to Miko!”
Ilika pondered her words in silence.
“I feel a lesson coming,” Neti said softly.
Ilika smiled. “What you’re doing, Sata, is something almost everyone does. When we’re uncomfortable with a person or a place because it’s strange, unknown, or difficult, we pass judgment on it, call it a bad name, and try to push it away.
“I agree this place is unusual, it has a funny smell, and it has dangers, one of which Miko discovered. But I assure you that everything here is completely natural. None of it fits any definition of evil I’ve ever heard. The world has many places that can make us uncomfortable. Calling them evil, or any other bad name, doesn’t make them go away.”
There was a long silence.
Sata looked at Boro, then back at Ilika, and sighed. “I think . . . that’s what Boro was trying to tell me.”
Boro shrugged. “I’m just not as good as Ilika at explaining things.”
“What did you say?” Buna prodded.
“I said, ‘Too bad, so sad.’ She didn’t like it.”
“It’s a hard thing to hear,” Ilika said.
Kibi nodded. “Why don’t we think of things Sata can do to get over her feelings about this place . . . if she wants to.”
Sata took a deep breath. “I want to.”
Miko scooted closer to Sata. “Sata, what happened to my hand was completely my fault. If it was normally a flower garden, and then it suddenly hissed steam just for me, I might think something was up. But it’s just hot water, doing what hot water does.”
Sata thought about his admission, and nodded her thanks.
“To me,” Rini added, “this place is really beautiful. All the colors in the terraces are like a picture Pica would paint. The steam vent is just a pretty fountain that happens to be a little too hot for us to touch, but it’s still beautiful.”
Sata looked at Rini with respect, then nodded slightly.
“I hope,” Ilika began when everyone else had fallen silent, “you will give
serious thought to what ‘evil’ or ‘bad’ or ‘weird’ means to you. They are easy words to use when we don’t think about what they mean. They are much harder to use correctly.”
Sata did her share of the berry picking on the way back to camp, then spent the rest of the evening quietly pondering all she had heard.
The next morning, Ilika asked Sata what she thought about the idea of leaving that day.
After a long pause, she said she wanted another day to try to make peace with the place.
Ilika did several short lessons that day, starting by opening their story book and teaching them all the parts of speech. They remembered nouns, pronouns, verbs, and adverbs from Ilika’s test. Kibi and Sata picked up the rest very quickly, as they always did with anything about language, then helped the others.
Ilika noticed Sata wandering around the geothermal area during some free time after lunch, even poking a stick into the steam vent. It collected hot water, then twirled away, just as it had for Toli.
After dinner, as everyone else was sitting around munching on berries, Sata crept alone to the best bathing pool, removed her clothes, and slipped in.
Deep Learning Notes
The microbiology lessons are a good example of how most people learn. It doesn’t happen all at once, but rather in phases. No matter how skillful the teacher, new information is hard to absorb because meanings are often somewhat circular: you have to know the last thing taught before you can fully understand the first. In this example, Ilika taught them many things about microbes, but some of them missed the fact that they were too small to see, and went looking for them behind trees and between rocks. In a future lesson, with a foundation of understanding already in place, they would get many more of the “puzzle pieces” of the subject.
Ilika used the same pollution-control technique again with the lice potion, probably a mixture of soap and herbs, by asking his students to keep it out of the hot spring pools.
The conic sections give us several useful curves, all very important when dealing with moving objects. Miko, trying to jump over the pit in Book One, chapter 38, would have followed the top half of the ellipse, and might not have had enough vertical space. If you slice the cones just right, you can also get a point and a straight line. Can you see where?
In your opinion, was Ilika being too hard on Miko by making him return to the steam vent, or too soft on him by allowing him to wait two days first?
At the steam vent, Ilika taught them the basics of empirical research, the process of coming to understand the universe by observation, experience, and the use of instruments. Miko was the first to admit that the use of his hand as an instrument was not a good idea when trying to understand steam.
Sata’s attitude about the geothermal area is called “externalizing evil,” and it usually arises from fear. All people have a natural need to feel good about themselves. There are many ways to do that, but one of the easiest is to label something, or someone else, as “bad.” The person then, by comparison, feels better. It is, of course, a cheap and immature way of feeling good about ourselves, and Ilika did not encourage it.
What do you think of Miko’s attitude as he gained some distance from his accident?
Who do you think would be more careful around steam in the future: Miko, who had direct experience, Rini, who always had a positive outlook, or Sata, who feared it?
Why did Ilika let Sata decide if it was time to leave?
