Firestorm 2034: Chapter Fifty-Four: Like an Emerald

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A metal keychain knocked on the door. Nathella opened the door, and a young woman asked, "Is Taberah in? I'm Emerant; we've talked a little. I'm a phoenix."

"Come in," Nathella said, "I don't know where Taberah is." She called, "Taberah!" and Taberah came, holding a knife and a half-carved block of wood. The emerging figure was already discernible as a madonna.

Taberah looked sad; his expression brightened when he saw Emerant. Emerant hugged him and said, "Back at that first meeting, there was something I wanted to sit down and talk with you about, but I've been so busy since then! The courses get harder every year, and I've got one that's harder than a darwin. I'm sorry for not calling earlier, but I was wondering if you wouldn't mind going to a coffeeshop. There's this one shop on campus that only sells decaffeinated coffees, but you have to try their carbonated cappucino!"

Taberah set down the knife and statue and said "Sure!" He started to muse about how this people seemed to use big words for little ideas and little words for big ideas -- 'darwin' was slang for a course designed to weed out the less suited students from a major, and evoked the substantial philosophical idea captured in a "survival of the fittest" argument -- a discredited idea, to be sure, but a magnificent achievement none the less. On the other hand, Taberah did not know what a cappucino was, or why one would carbonate it, but from usage it was clear that the word meant a drink.

They walked along to the coffeeshop, not speaking, the loudest sound being the crunch of leaves under their feet, but they were not speaking for different reasons. Taberah was not speaking because he lived naturally in silence, did not have anything to say, and did not need to fill the time with sounds; Emerant was not speaking because she had made a conscious and counter-cultural choice to embrace silence and not fill it with noise -- the noise that came so easily to a soul raised in a society that was afraid of silence and stillness and slowness. In walking two miles to the coffeeshop, they had their fill of silence, and Taberah took fifteen minutes to decide between a carbonated cappucino and some hot cocoa. He ended by ordering both, and Emerant, who ordered an herbal mint Italian soda, did not explain to him that this was a faux pas.

Emerant sat down with Taberah and said, "How has your day been?"

Taberah said, "A good day. I have not carved for a long time." Then he remembered etiquette and said, "And yours?"

Emerant said, "A day with a lot of thinking. There was something I wanted to explain to you, and I've been trying to think of a good way to explain it, and I haven't found any good ways."

Taberah stiffened, anticipating a rebuke. Better to have it done with than to put it off. He said, "What have I done wrong?"

"It isn't about anything you've done wrong. It's something that I don't think anyone's ever explained to you."

"Is it about being left-handed? Aed has tried to explain about that, and I am at peace with it now. I wasn't earlier; one of my culture's peculiarities."

"It isn't about being left-handed -- something I don't know enough about, especially given that I'm ambisinistrous. It's about something else. Taberah, do you know what the word 'genius' means?"

"In Latin it means the angel watching over a person. In English, I have gathered it means something different, but I don't know what. It is a word applied to some persons, but not others."

"'Genius' means someone possessing extraordinary intelligence and giftedness, someone who has a unique potential to shape society."

Taberah drew back. "Shape society? How would someone do that? Why would someone do that? Why would some people be specially qualified to do so? Your wording means that this is desirable. Why?"

In the ensuing discussion, Emerant was challenged; she had come to explain something to Taberah, and was not expecting herself to learn something new. She had thought of medieval time as hierarchical, holding some people to be born superior -- and saw her own time as having practically invented egalitarianism. Emerant saw in her reactions to Taberah that she not only believed some people were more intelligent than others, but that the highest measure of intelligence was taken to bring a prerogative and duty to shape society as one's naked reason led him to believe was best. Taberah found this to be madness; he would as soon consider himself qualified to redesign the human body from scratch, making surgical alterations so that his beneficiaries would have one less leg and one more arm, as to attempt to redesign human society from scratch. Taberah did not mind the concept of a special word for the most intelligent humans, as the implicit belief that this difference translated to a moral entitlement to do something he found abhorrent.

Emerant said, "Taberah, let's start this discussion again. You know that you are different from other people?"

Taberah hung his head. "Wherever I go, I can't be like other people. I make mistakes -- terrible mistakes. I can't connect with other people."

"Taberah, there's a very special kind of intelligence, one that brings the ability to do things very few people can do -- but it brings pain and failures. It means that you think very seriously. Classical literature has the image of a blind seer. Do you know this image?"

Taberah nodded his head, and his expression brightened.

"The seer has supernatural vision, but the price of it is the loss of his natural vision. It is a great boon at a great price. Taberah, you're not completely blind -- you can and will, with time, be better able to connect with people -- but your natural eyes are weak because of the brilliance of your supernatural eyes. You are not a second-rate Abanu. You are not a second-rate Tala. You are not a second-rate Emerant. You are a first rate you, and you are close to God's heart. You have already managed one accomplishment most of us can only dream of."

Taberah looked surprised. "What was that?"

"The Turing Award, Taberah! Don't you know what that means?"

Taberah looked confused. "There was a lord of a city who had me over. There is not a custom like that in my land. I understand I was honored, but -- if there is one city that practices that custom, surely there are other cities that practice it! What I did wasn't any big deal."

"Taberah, dear, there is only one city that does that, and they search through the whole world before awarding that prize, once per year. There have only been seventeen other people who have received that award. Taberah, there is probably not one person in a million who is as bright as you. I want to talk with you about how you plan to use your intelligence."

Taberah was silent; he was trying to sift Emerant's words, sort them. The image of the blind seer struck a powerful chord with him; for one of the first times he could remember, he was able to think about his failures without feeling inferior. The Turing Award was still difficult to think about; he was beginning to understand that it was something bigger than a prize at a fair, but he had never begun to guess the true magnitude of his achievement. In his mind it was like the time as a boy when he was summoned to a monastery where Thomas Aquinas was passing through, and the theologian told him that he had chosen a good symbol to illuminate the Trinity -- only with more hoopla; it was still not a very big deal, and its chief significance to Taberah was the warmth the people of this land had shown him. It seemed to him a very hospitable land. He was warmed, but it did not occur to him to think that he was fundamentally more intelligent than others -- the idea of possessing a superior aptitude ran contrary to medieval culture. Taberah was touched by Emerant's statement that not one person in a million was as bright as him; his culture embraced exaggeration as a means of emphasis, and he was warmed that Emerant would make her point by exaggerating that much.

"Well?" Emerant said. "What do you want to do with your intelligence? Have you given it any thought?"

"I don't know," Taberah said. "I will need to think about what you have said. And your question is not a day's question to answer."

"Well, don't feel hurried. It'll take me some time to process this discussion as well. Taberah, you haven't touched your drinks; they've gotten cold by now. Here, let me microwave them for you. What have you been doing this past week?"

The remainder of the conversation was light and pleasant; it was a kind of conversation which Taberah had only mastered in the past couple of years, had learned did not mean anything in the sense of deep philosophy, but meant a warm personability and sharing -- that much translated across cultures. Both of them, for different reasons, learned something of the other's culture -- Emerant was enjoying an elective on ethnographic interviewing and even more enjoying an opportunity to apply her learning, and Taberah had crossed cultures from the time he was a little boy, learning something in each case. 'Student' seemed at least as interesting and difficult as any of the other professions he had seen and participated in, and went at a much faster pace with much more difficult material than an apprenticeship. He made a mental note to ask Aed if he could arrange for Taberah to work as a student.

Emerant walked Taberah home, again in silence, and then walked back to the dorm. She climbed into her bunk and punched a name on the phone.

"Tala, this is Emerant. You were right; he made my head spin. But I think that was less due to his being medieval than being astronomically intelligent." It was 3:00 in the morning before she hung up and went to bed.

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