The trap was set.
The camp had been rearranged, with packs and saddlebags all near the center. Wide avenues, where no one was sleeping, led to both the entrance and into the depths of the cave, as they had no idea from which direction the thief would come.
All evening long, by the fire, they ate mussel stew, reviewed the rules of logic, savored sweet biscuits, and talked about all the units of measurement they had ever used, or Ilika thought they could understand. But not a word was spoken about thieves, missing items, or traps.
After getting comfortable in his bedroll, Ilika checked the programming of his little handheld device. Everything looked good, so he snuggled close to Kibi and drifted off to sleep.
A tingling sensation from his bracelet nudged Ilika awake. He strained to listen, but could hear nothing over the constant sound of the ocean. His hand felt for the little device and found it a few inches away. Touching the screen control, at its dimmest setting, he could see the eleven dots that were his students, himself, and Tera. Another dot, hotter by its color, represented the coals of the fire. One more dot, about three hundred feet deeper into the cave, moved slowly toward them.
He knew he was well hidden from that direction by boulders, so he carefully sat up and slipped into his boots. Then he pulled gently on the ropes
that went in one direction to Boro’s bed, and in another direction to Miko’s.
The three of them formed a triangle around the packs and bags. Ilika glanced at the screen and saw the intruder still slowly approaching.
Now they had only to wait. Boro had one knife, Miko the other, and Ilika his bracelet.
Ilika crawled forward a few feet to be closer to the bait as the mysterious dot on the screen passed the one-hundred-foot mark. He breathed slowly. No sight or sound revealed the locations of his helpers.
Suddenly Ilika realized that the thief had picked up speed. Fifty feet, forty, thirty, twenty. He set down the device, waited two more seconds, then sprang from his hiding place, tapping a code into his bracelet even as he jumped.
He landed near the packs at the same time the light came on. Boro and Miko, seeing him spring, were a heartbeat behind, knives raised.
The bright light revealed a hand grabbing a pack strap, then a little boy who squinted and howled with pain and confusion. The three were instantly around him, the others only seconds behind, not bothering with boots.
“Dim your light,” Kibi said firmly as she took charge of the situation, going to her knees in front of the boy who was dressed in nothing but tattered shorts. She put her hands on his bare shoulders. “You’re okay now. We’re not going to hurt you. You’re safe with us.”
Ilika gave Kibi and the boy some space. “Boro, Miko, please build up the fire. Sata, make a bowl of food for the boy. Everyone else, relax. Morning is not far off.” Then he perched on a nearby boulder where he could oversee the situation.
For the next several minutes, the boy’s eyes shifted every possible direction, looking for a way out, but the grown-up girl in front of him continued to hold him firmly while saying things to him.
“My name is Kibi, and the man sitting on the rock is our teacher Ilika.
Over here is Buna, and this is Neti. What is your name?”
The boy’s lips opened several times as he slowly began to relax, but at first no sound came out.
Kibi waited, seeing that he was trying to speak. About six years old, he appeared quite wild with hair that had not seen a comb in a very long time, if ever.
His mouth moved slowly, as if searching for an old memory. “K . . .”
Kibi again pointed to herself and those around, saying their names. Then she pointed to him.
“K . . . it,” he intoned slowly.
“Kit?”
A tiny smile flashed across his eyes.
“Kito?” Buna asked.
He frowned, then repeated, “Kit.”
At that moment, Sata arrived with a bowl of bread, cheese, and fruit, and passed it to Kibi.
“Kit, this is Sata. She brought you some food.”
Kit jerked the bowl from Kibi’s hands, huddled into a defensive crouch, and started eating rapidly.
“You were hungry! I know how that feels. I used to be a slave, and often didn’t have much to eat.”
The fire was beginning to illuminate the cavern. Kibi continued to hold Kit firmly, talk to him, and name the people within sight.
Ilika relaxed, seeing that Kibi had everything under control.
Kit soon finished the food. “Neti, we have a sweet biscuit left, don’t we?”
Kibi asked.
“Yep. Two of them.”
“I’m going to let go of you now,” Kibi said to Kit. “You are not my prisoner. You can run away if you want to. But also you could come and sit by the fire, be our friend, and have a sweet biscuit.”
Buna, Neti, and Sata went over to the fire. Kibi took the empty bowl and went that way too, glancing back with a sparkle in her eyes, and leaving a space between herself and Buna on the sitting log.
“His name is Kit, and he seems to understand a lot, but I don’t know if he can talk except to say his name,” Kibi reported.
“I wonder why he has an animal name,” Buna questioned.
Ilika shrugged. “It may have been given to him when his parents, or whoever raised him, realized he was different.”
Soon Kibi and Buna noticed Kit peeking over the log between them.
“Let’s give him plenty of time,” Ilika said. “He may have had no human
company for years, surviving on stolen scraps and wild foods.”
“Fr . . . iend?” Kit asked unexpectedly.
“We will all be your friends,” Boro said, “if you will be our friend.”
Cautiously, he moved forward and sat between Kibi and Buna, looking up at each of them to check their reactions.
Neti reached across and handed him a sweet biscuit. His eyes lit up when he tasted it.
Ilika discouraged his students from questioning Kit too much. The boy was most comfortable with Kibi and Buna, and seemed to feel safe with all the girls. He looked at Mati with special interest, seeing her crutch and her handicap, but remained shy of Ilika and the boys.
Kit had no lack of appetite at breakfast, and tagged along with the girls, helping them carry things as they were cleaning up and tending the donkey.
When Ilika brought everybody together for lessons, Kit had no idea what was going on, so he snuggled close beside Kibi and peered out from under her arm.
“You may have noticed that your first formula, Speed times Time equals Distance,” he said, laying the sheet down so they could all see it, “was in the correct form if we already knew Speed and Time, and were looking for Distance.
“Now we have to learn to transform the formula so that we can find Speed if we know Time and Distance, or Time if we know Speed and Distance.”
“Seems like we would usually know Time and Distance, not Speed,” Toli said.
“I’ll do that one first. Since both sides of an equation are the same, if you add, subtract, multiply, or divide the same number on both sides, the equation remains good. So we look at our formula. To get to the version Toli suggested, we need to get Speed alone in the equation. So we need to get rid of Time on that side.
“Remember what you get anytime you divide a number by itself?”
Rini waited a few seconds for anyone else to answer. Finally he said,
“One.”
“And remember the identity factor, the number you can multiply or divide
NEBADOR BookTwo: Journey 118
anything by without changing it?”
“One,” Sata said, grinning as she saw the connection.
“So if I divide the left side by Time, then we have Time divided by Time, which is one, the identity, so we can toss it out. But we have to also divide the right side by Time to keep the equation good. There it is. Speed equals Distance divided by Time.”
It took about half an hour for Ilika to work through enough examples for all his students to understand the new formula. By that time, Kit had slipped away.
Kibi stood up and looked around, then took some deep breaths and sat back down.
Deep Learning Notes
Ilika was prepared to capture a man. Why didn’t he complain when Kibi quickly changed methods?
In what two ways did Kit have an animal name?
When transforming formulas, it is important to remember to apply the same change to the ENTIRE expression on BOTH sides of the equation. For example, if one side is 2 + 3 and you want to multiply it by 4, then the result is (2 + 3) x 4, not 2 + 3 x 4. The correct change equals 20, and the incorrect one could easily be seen as 14 (and would be in many computer languages).
The goal, in algebraic transformations, is usually to get rid of terms (adding or subtracting) or factors (multiplying or dividing) while keeping the equation valid. To get rid of a multiplication by T, Ilika divided by T. In the same way,
if the formula is adding X, we can get rid of it by subtracting X. If it subtracts Y, we can add Y. Then, of course, we have to do the same to the other side of the equation.
If we are ever transforming a formula and we wind up with something like 1 =
2, we know we have made a mistake that caused our equation to become invalid. Another mistake is when we get something like 0 = 0. It is not invalid, just completely useless.
What two conflicting motivations did Kibi have when Kit left?
