Charlinder's Walk (52 page)

"Yeah. If you look far enough into the future, I guess the possibilities
are
endless."

"Right. I like that we're important to the coast, but I want my boys to be worth more than how many trees they can haul."

Charlinder had never heard it described that way, and as he looked out over the North Sea, he realized that there were a lot of conversations he had failed to have during his time on the Scottish coast, and this would be to his detriment far more than theirs. "I hope they meet with success," he said. "Did I hear correctly from the boys that your family's expecting another baby soon?"

"My wife is ready to burst, and it didn't make me feel good about leaving on this voyage, but you heard what I said about work."

"But, this can't be the first time you've left home while your wife was pregnant, can it?"

"It may be the first time I'm away when my wife gives birth," Duncan clarified.

"Yeah, that's something else. I wish her a safe delivery, in any case."

"Thank you. You can go now; make sure Cook hasn't skinned your rabbit."

"There's hardly any meat on him," said Charlinder as he turned back for the cabin where he'd stashed Smoky.

"But you don't know if Cook knows that," he warned. "And, Char?"

"Yes?"

"Lighten up, will you? You'll be around women again before you know it, and you won't suffocate from being surrounded by blokes."

"I do not care about that," he muttered. At the same time he thought,
Although this arrangement
is
unnatural.

The ninth day of sailing brought them to Iceland. Michael and Duncan took him to a family who would host him until the following day. They warned him that the northern part of the population didn't speak English.

"I can deal with that," he responded easily.

After more than five months at Cape Wrath, he started marking the map again with his Icelandic hosts. He made admirable time, he thought, in traversing that country which was not nearly as chilly as its name. His hosts were very helpful in showing him over the rivers and other geographical obstacles he would encounter, which helped to keep the trip flowing smoothly. Although they raised a lot of sheep, Charlinder was relieved to see that they were used mostly for wool.

After he left the boat and said goodbye to the Scotsmen, he thought more about the months he'd just spent as their community's schoolteacher. He also thought more about his time spent with Gentiola, and some of the last talks he'd had with her. He appreciated--and somehow, relished--the ironic appropriateness in how he'd set out to cut the Faithful off at the pass, and found out how the Plague was the biggest thing a believer had ever done on behalf of her chosen god. She was uniquely capable of achieving her ends, but despite her madness was not uniquely devout. Perhaps the Faithful would say Gentiola was an instrument of their God. Charlinder couldn't stop them, but there was something tremendously entertaining in imagining that the monotheists' God would choose as His instrument of holy retribution a woman who maintained that He didn't exist.

The unavoidable reality was that his time in Scotland had reminded him that he loved teaching. He took great pleasure in watching students clamor for their turn to speak up. He enjoyed preparing lessons the night before, maintaining a classroom space over time, and writing tests. He loved tracking children's progress; he even took a certain perverse pleasure in asking an ill-behaved child, "What will happen when I talk to your mother?" Mainly, he loved the gift of education itself, and no matter how unimpressed his neighbors were with the merits of esoteric knowledge, he thought that was a battle worth fighting in its own right. At the same time, Gentiola had alerted him to another complicated reality, but it wasn't that teaching children was beneath his dignity. He valued his occupation more than ever, but he could not simply go back to Paleola for business as usual. He needed to offer more than he had at his disposal. He had undertaken his journey in order to do his job as a teacher, and he would return as such, but the job he’d been doing before wasn’t enough.

Walking between settlements gave him a lot of time to think, but the perpetual motion didn't lend itself to writing. He had some paper in his bags on which he'd written out a lot of lessons for his Scottish class. Once he was on a boat headed to Greenland, he broke out his quill and ink and started writing in the margins.

--Long term plan for Paleola: open learning center. Bring youths together from surrounding villages, post several teachers, divide students into groups by age; teach them all.

--What subjects to teach?,
he asked himself.

--World history: cover time periods from ancient world up to Plague, as many countries as possible.
--Psychology, sociology, philosophy.
--Biology: learn about microbes, all phyla of animals and plants.
--Religion: various belief systems, their role in history, their influence on societies, effects of cultures on religion. Debates on religion between older students.
--Chemistry: roles in biology and technology.
--Physics: Eileen had little to say on this, but necessary for development.
--Mathematics: more advanced than division and multiplications, more diverse than geometry. Necessary for physics and chemistry.
--Environmental science: air quality, water, climate, soil, species diversity, animal habitats, forest coverage, population.
--Technology: how much do we need to recreate? How much more do we need to invent? Light, heat, transportation, cooling, cooking, washing, communication, information, medicine. How do we produce energy? How to harvest raw materials? (metals) How to do this without environmental damage?
--Economics: socialism, capitalism, communism. Wealth, poverty, work, housing, food, energy. Regulation, international trade, growth, income inequality, taxation. Effect on religion, environment, sociology.
--Geography: continents, countries. (Learn boundaries pre-Plague.) Oceans, rivers, lakes; saltwater, fresh. Coastlines, islands, mountains, deserts, valleys, forests, plains.
--Sociology: urban/rural, youth/age, gender, sexuality, race, religion, economics, education, family values, structure, population density, technology, method of government.

--How to access knowledge?,
he asked himself.

--Find remains of old libraries--the cities are not dangerous after all, and we need to know the urban remains won’t harm us--gather books on necessary subjects, copy out information, store in safe place.
--Other methods of information storage?

He remembered the tiny skein of yarn from Gentiola. More important, he remembered how no amount of obliviousness to the reality of her powers had shielded his community--or any other survivor descendants--from their consequences. The world looked the way it did because of that delusional woman in southern Europe who could access a type of energy that most people thought was strictly myth. There would always be some people who could do magic, and, he asked, what would be better: to suppress that knowledge, or understand it?

--Eileen's range of knowledge was limited. Find people in other communities; experts in other areas. Explore neighboring villages further for specialized knowledge. Travel farther away, find other expert people. Find other literate communities. Need more technical expertise. More labor specialization.
--Build printing press, bind books. Need metal for that.
--Literature: gathered from libraries.
--Music: develop new instruments, learn old songs, write new ones.
--Art: drawing, painting, sculpture. Need metal for sculpture tools, knowledge of chemistry for paints.
--Medicine: redevelop antibiotics, antiseptics, diagnostic methods, contraceptives (more advanced than condoms), blood transfusion, surgery (with anesthesia, especially with antiseptics, better knowledge of physiology), anti-cancer drugs (better than old chemotherapy methods), anti-viral drugs (did they ever really work?), hormones (insulin for diabetes, but how do we synthesize it?)

--Resources for learning center:
--Space for classes. Building with rooms, fireplaces, storage space for supplies.
--Supplies: lots of paper, pens, ink, boards for teachers (not clay on the floor), books.
--To furnish books, need a printing press.
--Need to make paper and ink more efficiently.
--What about time? How will the students do their chores? The teachers--their work?
--Where will students and teachers live outside of class time?
--Our village can take teachers into our population, but what about kids?
--Learning center to go outside of our current land. Build dormitories for kids. Find someone good at architecture and large-scale construction.
--Villages will need to grow crops more efficiently. Need to do a lot of work more efficiently: greater output, fewer hands, less time. (But how?)

At this point, Charlinder was honestly baffled. To do their work more efficiently, they would probably need better technology, and how long would it take to develop that? Especially without the benefit of more sophisticated education?

Then he decided, they would deal with the obstacles later, and with the knowledge of wiser folks than he. Now was the time to dream big.

--Teachers? Anyone with knowledge and energy to contribute can ask to participate.
--That means textile-making needs to be more efficient, too.
--Should we merge land with neighboring villages? It's going to happen anyway, eventually.

He arrived in Greenland in June. Saying goodbye to the Icelanders, he put on some of the outerwear he'd knitted from Smoky's wool and set off across the ice. He didn't need to stop immediately, as his last hosts had stocked him up very well. The country put him, however, in conditions more bizarre than he'd ever encountered. After the winter in Great Britain in which he'd been desperate to squeeze every possible minute of productivity out of the few hours of daylight, he now found himself in a land that was still cold, still frozen, and always light. He had no concept of how long to walk each day, as there was no boundary between one day and the next. He became sleep-deprived and restless, and Smoky also appeared increasingly uncomfortable. Thus, although Charlinder was nowhere near out of food, he introduced himself to the first settlement he found after the eastern trading port. His hosts told him when to eat and when to sleep, and they often pulled him as far as the next village in their sleds pulled by large groups of dogs. In fact there may have been more dogs in Greenland than people, which meant Charlinder had to keep Smoky buried under his jacket much of the time.

Just as he thought he might be getting accustomed to the conditions, he found himself at the western edge of the country with some people who could speak a little bit of English. Charlinder explained that he wanted to go to Canada, and the next day they put him on another boat, where he began writing again in the margins.

--Later: we will have boats to cross the Atlantic. Send people to other countries to learn other languages. When they're fluent speakers, they come back.

--Bring new friends with them, maybe?

--Teach those languages to our students.

--When we have groups of people who can speak foreign languages, we send them abroad again, set up branches of learning center in other countries, gather knowledge from foreigners.

--How to communicate between branches and foreign learners?

--Research communication in technology. Or else it will take months to send a simple message.

In fact Charlinder expected that, if he managed to establish the learning center, they wouldn't reach the stage of sending people abroad until well after his lifetime, but that just made it more important to put it down in the plan. There were far too few people around who could speak second languages, and the world needed far more. At the head of the front page, he wrote:

PURITY AND ORDER ARE FOR CHEMICALS AND BLOCKS.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Home

Then he was in the eastern territory of Canada, and there was nothing between him and Paleola except a lot of rivers and a little bit of time. He was speaking his own language again, the weather soon warmed up to a lovely roasting heat, and the diurnal cycle, though still short on nighttime, resumed. He could let Smoky hop beside him again and no longer had to struggle to set a fire.

The changes felt as though he was suddenly losing weight that he had long since forgotten he could do without. He gave away his sheepskin vest; he still had Lacey's bones in his pack, and her hide was more useful to the people who received it than to him. A family that hosted him in New Brunswick had a little boy who loved Smoky so much that Charlinder let him keep the rabbit. Though it was a shock at first to go without the little fur factory's company, he knew that Smoky would be happier and healthier with that family. After he left their property, he took Lacey’s bones out and buried them in the ground.

He got into New England and his return to Paleola started to appear in his dreams. He saw Miriam; so happy to see him, while her brother and children eventually stepped in so Charlinder could keep going. He saw Sunny and Meredith and couldn't wait to tell them everything. There was Yolande, still snapping at Kenny and keeping Bruce at bay; he wondered how big Stuart would be now. There were Nadine and Phoebe, ready to get him caught up. There was Kenny, ready to joke around with him, there was Darrell welcoming him back. There was Roy, welcoming him home. He saw a different set of images with each dream, but the theme was consistent. He couldn't wait to see them.