The Forest at the Edge of the World(18)
Hmm.
She hadn’t expected that. She rather thought he’d be as ridiculously thick as his neck. But he was a tricky one.
“Progress is change that improves everyone’s lives,” she told him. “Our way of living, thinking, behaving.”
“And how do you know if something is progressive or not?” he squinted.
“We test it,” Mahrree said, “as The Writings have said we should do: test all things, as we are tested. Oh, wait. I’m sorry.” She batted her eyelashes. “I understand most people from Idumea no longer read The Writings. Too trite and unprogressive?”
She enjoyed watching his face tighten.
The captain nodded. “I have, in fact, read The Writings once or twice. I seem to remember a line where the Creator told the first five hundred families He placed here that they should test all ideas and knowledge for the truth of it. So, how can you dismiss the educational suggestions of the Administrators without even testing it yourself?”
The audience chuckled nervously for Mahrree. He had a point.
She had one to match.
“I’m all for finding out the truth, Captain. You won’t find anyone more determined than me. So this is being tested first in Idumea? Then I’ll wait to see the results before I suggest to my students’ parents that we try any of it here.”
“So you’re willing to trust someone else’s experience?”
“Yes, Captain. I don’t need to fall off my roof to know it’ll hurt. I saw my poor neighbor Mr. Hersh learn the ‘truth’ of the hardness of the ground after a long fall.”
The audience laughed and Captain Shin nodded slowly. “So you’re not opposed to progress?”
“If I were, I would still be wearing animal skins and living in that same cave where in the Creator first placed our ancestors when He brought them to this world 319 years ago!”
“You enjoy citing The Writings, don’t you, Miss Peto?” he said with just a slightly condescending tone. “You probably know all of it, how the Creator taught the women to shear sheep and card wool, and how He taught the men to smelt iron, make tools, cut down trees, and make planking for houses?”
She folded her arms in a manner she hoped also seemed slightly condescending. “I do, Captain. I enjoy discovering the truth the Creator and His guides left for us.”
Captain Shin held up a finger. “Can truth be found from other sources, Miss Peto? Can’t we learn to do things without the guidance of the Creator? We’ve been without the influence of guides for almost 120 years now, and we seem to be just fine.”
“Are you suggesting, Captain Shin,” she glowered, “that losing our last guide in 200, his murder in the forest above Moorland, ending the words of the Creator to us, was progressive?”
The angry tension that filled the amphitheater told the captain what his response better be if he had any hope of winning any hearts and minds that night.
“Miss Peto, any man’s murder is tragic,” he said somberly. “And the death of the last holy man is beyond that. Of course I’d never suggest the death of Guide Pax was acceptable. But I would submit that we have carried on admirably since then, and those in this audience who still revere The Writings as deeply as you do, demonstrate that the spirit of the guides is still strong and viable. Perhaps the Creator now wants us to act for ourselves and progress to the best of our abilities without His direct guidance. Miss Peto, we didn’t need a guide or the Creator to discover how to turn flax to linen, or discover silk.
“But, perhaps,” he said with a growing smile that warmed his features and began to warm the audience as well, much to Mahrree’s disappointment, “the Creator did influence that woman to do her wash under the mulberry bushes so that the silk cocoons would fall into her hot water and make such an absurd but useful mess. And it wasn’t because of the guides that men discovered ways to combine different soils, gravel, and water to create mortar to hold rock together. Our ancestors discovered that themselves. They also learned how to turn the pines north of Quake and to the west of Trades into pulp and thin paper, allowing us to print far more books than if we had only costly parchment. We did all that!
“Miss Peto,” he continued earnestly, “I believe the Creator gave us minds and choices so that we could become creators ourselves. He wants us to experiment, try, fail, and try again until we succeed. That’s progress, Miss Peto, and I submit that the Creator is pleased with us when we experiment. In that light, the Creator is pleased with the Administrators when they experiment. These changes in education? Just experiments to see if we can progress to something even greater.”