http://JonathansCorner.com/writing/firestorm/
When I read a book, I usually skip or maybe skim the acknowledgements; I find a long list of names of people I've never heard of to be deadly dull. There have been two times that I've read a list of acknowledgments that I've actually liked. One was written by a very witty writer who could, and did, make even technical documentation interesting to read. (Making someone want to read a list of names is only slightly more difficult than writing interesting documentation, and I don't consider myself a good enough writer to do either.) The other time was an acknowledgement that personally named and thanked me, and that was my favorite part of the whole work. Apart from that, I don't think that a list of strangers' names is fair to inflict on the reader. So I'm not going to try it.
Of course this is not solely my work; many others paid a role in it. You know who you are. I do wish to explicitly thank one person, though, whom many authors omit from their long lists. I wish to thank you, the reader. Of course the people who helped me write this are important, but they are not nearly so important as the people who take the time to sit down and read it, let the story live in their imaginations, and (I hope) tell a friend if they think it's cool. My work is only half done when, I write down my thoughts and put them on the web. It is finished when you breathe life into the story as you read it, and consider its ideas and make them a part of you. Only then can my story be complete. I therefore give my thanks to you, the reader.
"I still do not understand," Grizelda said, "why you asked your father not to find you a wife, if you are not going into a monastic order. And why he listened to your request."
"As Solomon said, he who finds a wife, finds a good thing," said Taberah, and then paused. A quotation from a written source came quickly to him, but a more substantial reply would take a moment's thought. I am at home among most all of the people I have visited, Taberah thought, but I am not like any of them. And explaining myself is difficult.
Grizelda stopped and looked at him; her pale blue eyes bore a gaze that was intense and probing, and yet not piercing. Her hair was pulled back from the sides of her head, and fell darkly onto her blue dress. The people at the castle spoke highly of Grizelda; some said she had a mind like a man. Her husband, Melibée, stood at her side, listening. They were in a forest glade outside the town walls, and were nearing the banks of a river.
Taberah nimbly climbed a tree, and tossed down two large pears. Then he climbed down, an even larger pear in his teeth.
"One good need not be the only good; even God, when he was the only good, chose to become not the only good. That is what creation means. For a man to have a wife is not the only good; there is also good in a man being single."
Melibée spoke up. "But then why not enter a monastery? Surely that is a good place."
Taberah shook his head. "Being celibate is good, a good that monastic life embraces; it does not follow that being celibate requires entering a monastery. I see another option; marriage and monkhood are not the only possibilities."
Grizelda began walking again, followed by the others. "There is still something in it I question. The different kinds of heretics often see other options, and the Church has condemned them. I know you don't have condemnation from the Church, but I don't see why you don't."
Taberah thought for a moment about whether to explain a logical principle, but decided not to. "All of the monastic orders were also started by people who saw other options; if you will think on the saints' lives, you will see that God led them outside of what everyone else was doing."
Grizelda stopped, and asked, softly, "You claim to be a saint?"
"Hardly," Taberah said. "I try to serve God, but I do not reach that standard. The reason I brought them up is that they are examples of how God wants us to live life. They play by the same rules as us; they just do a better job. I am not married because I am serving God in a way that does not involve marriage, at least not yet; I seek to follow him."
Grizelda began to speak when there was a thunderous boom. The ground shook, and a luminous being stood before them. Around the being was a presence, a reality of terrifying glory, as solid and real as if the weight of a mountain were pressing down on their spirits, and then more real. It was like a storm, like the roaring of a lion. The three friends fell to the ground in fear.
The Presence spoke with a voice like roaring water. "Fear not! Stand up!" As the quaking bodies heard those words, the command gave them the power to rise, and they did rise, and bow low. Again he spoke: "Never!"
As the friends stood in awestruck fear, the being turned towards Taberah and said, "Taberah. Will you go wherever God leads you? I have been sent to call you to come on a voyage, to a land you do not know and have never heard of, a voyage you may never return from. Will you come along?"
Taberah closed his eyes. In an instant, time stopped, and Taberah was thinking, neither in his native Provençale nor erudite Latin nor any of the dozen other languages he had worked with, but beyond words, beyond language. He looked into his own heart, and into God's, and a single word formed on his lips, without effort or volition: "Yes."
There was a tremendous flash of light, and Grizelda and Melibée fainted.
Taberah looked around. Four immense young men were throwing around a dinner plate -- or at least that's what it looked like on first glance. They were brawny, and the plate had something unearthly about it --
One of the men shouted something, and hurled the plate at Taberah. He dodged, and then watched in amazement as it bounced off a tree but did not shatter. It was red, and it had an unearthly symmetry, symmetry like he had never seen before. He went over and picked it up; it was light, and felt vaguely like leather or wood.
One of the men walked over, and said something in a language he did not recognize. Taberah said, "Taberah," and looked at him. The man extended a finger towards him and said, "Taburah," and then took the artifact and tugged on his arm. He was standing on the edge of a forest, and was being led into a clearing with buildings. The architecture was alien, and looked like a slightly grotesque simplification of what he was used to. There was a strange precision to the buildings, and a smell like smoke and roasting flesh -- though he could see no firepit, nor any animal.
The man took him out into the open field -- the grass was strangely short and uniform in height, lacking the beautiful variety in the fields he was used to seeing. He bent over, and plucked a blade of grass. It had been clipped. Not grazed by animals, but painstakingly clipped.
Looking around, he saw the men tossing the strange plate between each other. It sailed through the air, almost as if it had wings. One of them caught his eye, and tossed it over. Taberah snatched it out of the air with one hand, and then tried to throw it. It fell like a stone.
One of the men came over, and made the motion of throwing it with exaggerated slowness. It was different from how one threw daggers, or stones, or much of anything else; it vaguely resembled skipping a rock. Taberah took the plate and held it properly; one of the men took it and turned it upside down. Holding it upside down, Taberah tried to imitate the throw he'd seen; the plate wobbled and fell to the ground. The people clapped.
One of the people said something that he didn't understand; seeing Taberah's incomprehension, he repeated his words, only louder. When Taberah didn't understand that, they beckoned him over to where the smoke was coming from. There was some sort of miniature fire, above which geometrically shaped pieces of meat were roasting; one of them gave him a large piece of meat -- they were all large -- wrapped in bread, with some brightly colored liquids poured over -- some sort of decoration? He wondered what the feast was, that they were eating meat, and had such a sumptuous banquet. The meat tasted slightly strange, although fresh, and the bread was finer than anything he had ever tasted. It didn't have any pebbles, and it was softer than cake.
Not knowing the local language, Taberah expressed his gratitude with his eyes; he listened intently to the conversation, trying to see if he could make sense of the language. Every once in a while, he heard a word that sounded vaguely like Latin, and by the end of the conversation he had figured out these people's names. The man standing by the fire was very old, so old that wisps of silver hair were beginning to appear among the black locks of his temple. He looked mature, regal, venerable. He must be a king, owning the small palace nearby and the ones around it; he could look in the windows (fitted with glass -- and glass so smooth you could barely see it), and see the illumination of a thousand candles. Or was he a servant? He looked mighty, built like a great warrior, and was even taller than the other men. And it was a lordly thing to give food to anyone who came. He was cooking, but the demeanor of the other men treated him as their elder, and not just in years. By the end of the conversation, Taberah had conveyed his name, and knew their names. After the effort of listening to the conversation and trying to see if he could hear any words related to ones he knew, he sat down in one of the chairs -- at least he thought it was a chair; it was sturdy, but so light he could lift it with one hand.
Taberah sat down in this chair, happy to sit and think as the others romped on the plain. Where to begin thinking? The language had Latin words, but it did not sound like any Romance language; that was confusing. And these people owned massive wealth, wealth far beyond anything his lord owned, and different goods than he had seen before. And they were immense. But that was only the surface of what he was sure was there. These people seemed to treat him hospitably, but what struck him wasn't exactly hospitality so much as something like friendship. Why were they treating him as a friend when they had just met him? When he watched them, he was puzzled at seeing respect in the younger men's treatment of the elder, but not etiquette. How could this people have respect without having its form? They did, but how? Or was their etiquette merely strange? They were not accustomed to wayfarers; they didn't look like heathen, but they didn't recognize Latin -- or Greek, or even Arabic, for that matter. And what would motivate anyone to cut grass at a uniform, mathematically precise height? What strange symbolic gesture would be manifested in that way? Or was it a symbolic gesture? It seemed more like a rash vow. Or was it something stranger still?
To the eyes around him, Taberah looked lost in thought. And he was -- he saw certain things that were human, but there were other parts that he could not understand at all. What did they mean?
Aed looked on the stranger as he gazed. He was unbelievably short and scrawny, not to mention gamy; his clothing looked like a getup from the Middle Ages, a tunic and hose with irregular stitching and any number of holes. He could readily believe it when he walked by and saw lice. He had a thick, scraggly head of hair with a very thin beard. And yet, for all this, Taberah was quite attractive. He had a merry, comely face, with a deep, probing gaze. It was a penetrating gaze; Aed had the feeling that if he stared at a piece of paper too long, it would catch fire. Taberah had been listening intently, and was now off in his own little world.
I must look up one of those charities that deals with foreigners, Aed thought, as he seems quite lost. For now, he can have the guest bedroom. It's a good time it's summer; I have a little more free time to deal with him. He looks a little older than my children. Aed began to gather up the food, called his son and daughter to help, and then they went in; it only took the stranger a couple of times to learn the gesture that meant, "C'mon! You're invited over here!"
The stranger looked with some bewilderment over the contents of a room, and then his eyes lit up over a chess table packed in the corner. He started to pull the pieces off and walk over to the table; Aed stopped him, pulled out the table, and arranged a game before them. The international game, he thought. We don't know a common language, but we have a common game.
Aed's first thought upon seeing the stranger play was, "He has seen this game before, but does not know how to play." This was revised to, "He does know how to play, but he cheats -- making moves that are almost legal and always to his advantage." Then a moment of dawning comprehension came, and he realized that the stranger was not cheating -- he just didn't understand that chess was played over a grid. Aed groaned, and picked up the pieces and arranged them on the table, understanding why Taberah had made such a bizarre action as to take them from what he now understood was taken as a storage place, and decided to play it his way.
Aed was rated at 1975, although on a good day he could give almost any chess player a run for his money. He was therefore stunned after he lost five games in a row. The young stranger was very, very cunning, and saw things that would never occur to him. After the fifth game, he felt quite tired, and he could see that the stranger was tired--
--and was therefore quite stunned as, in the living room and in the presence of his teen-aged son and daughter (his wife was away at a conference), Taberah took off all his clothes and lay down on the floor. He sent his daughter Fiona out of the room, and then covered Taberah with a blanket that lay at hand. Taberah's face told a thousand words; shocked as Aed was, he saw at once that Taberah's action was not sexually provocative, or for that matter done as anything significant; he apparently saw that he had made a social blunder, but was at a loss for what. He did not feel any shame or guilt, but perhaps regret that something he had done had upset his generous host -- and gratitude to be given a blanket, and puzzlement at why his host had invited him into his house but not to crawl into his family's bed. Puzzling, but Taberah had enough to think about already, and was sure that tomorrow would have enough puzzles of its own.
Aed, for his part, could see how to send him out, but not how to tell him to put his clothes on first; he went to bed, grumpily thinking, He may stay tonight because he's here, but tomorrow night he's spending at PADS. What kind of manners is it to strip in front of your host's daughter? ... He had a feeling of shock, of wrongness, of indignation at a transgression against reality; he told himself that this was culture shock, but that did not make things easy.
He drifted in and out of sleep, and was awakened by the sound of someone vomiting. Habits of a father, habits stronger than the weight of his grogginess, marched him out to the living room, where he stared in horror. Taberah was shaking, shivering in a cold sweat.
What shocked Aed most was not that one side of Taberah's face was wet with his own vomit.
What shocked Aed most was that Taberah looked so miserable that he didn't seem to even care.
The hospital was a nightmare. Taberah had no insurance, no paperwork and no legal guardian; it was only because of the dire nature of the emergency that he was admitted at all. In the absence of identification or any ability to speak English, the hospital was by law required to file paperwork with the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization Services; an embarrassed hospital representative explained that Taberah was in the eyes of the law an illegal immigrant and nothing more; if there was a way for him not to be deported to his country of origin, he didn't see it.
Aed came back each day for a week, during which his whole parish was speaking with him; his conversation with the doctors was alarming.
"I am baffled by this young man's condition. He is sick, but no test has been able to tell what he has. It might be a virus."
"Do you have any ideas of what it is?"
The doctor looked slightly embarrassed.
Aed stood in silence and prayed.
"Uh, have you read Ahmik Marison's How the West Was Lost From a Medical Point of View?"
"Never heard of it."
"Off the record, this young man is suffering from one -- or several -- of the conditions that ravaged the American Native population when European settlers came."
Aed stood in stunned silence. This did not make any sense at all. Or (he had the exacting honesty to admit to himself) it made sense in a way he couldn't believe.
"Noah, he doesn't speak any English." By now, Dr. Pabst and Dr. Kinsella were at the doorway to Taberah's room; they turned in, and saw him looking with interest at a book. Taberah looked up and said, "Grace and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ." His accent was thick, but mostly understandable.
"I'm an anthropologist and not a linguist," Noah said, "but that sounded an awful lot like English to me."
Aed opened his mouth, closed it, and said, "This isn't the first time he's surprised me." He explained about Taberah playing chess, and undressing.
Dr. Pabst turned to the young man. He said, "Do you understand me?" The man scrambled off his bed with remarkable speed, and crouched in front of the anthropologist, and said, "I thou under stand."
Dr. Pabst simplified his language, and spoke slowly, separating his syllables. "How speak English?"
"English, that is what?"
"This language."
"Language, that is what?"
"How we speak now."
Taberah's eyes lit up. "I am in read Bible."
The anthropologist scratched his head. The young man appeared not to be lying, but even for a genius, learning a new language was difficult, and learning from a book written in the language without any people to help, unless--
"What you call Bible in your language?"
"No Bible in language."
Noah scratched his head. Then he said, "Have you read Bible before here?"
"Biblia Sacra Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem. I not know not how to say in English."
Aed said, "The lad is tired from concentration, and perhaps he shouldn't have jumped from his bed to --" Dr. Kinsella cleared his throat, "--under stand you. Perhaps we could talk out in the hallway?"
In the hallway, Aed said, "So, what nationality is he?"
Noah said, "I haven't the foggiest idea. He looks Western European, perhaps Mediterranean, by ancestry, Third World by nourishment. His accent is that of a Romance language, but I don't know. Picking up an alien language by studying a text in that language is next to impossible; the Mayans have left behind three codices that we still haven't deciphered for the most part. Or at least, it's almost impossible unless you already know the text in another language. I don't know how to coalesce my observations into a coherent picture. He -- is it OK if I change the subject slightly to recommendations?"
"Certainly."
"He's very bright and is picking up English quickly. He probably knows multiple languages, which makes it easier to pick up another; I'd get him three Bibles -- one in the Latin he knows, one in a literal rendering in modern English, and a free translation to contemporary English. And continue to visit him. My summer class starts tomorrow, so I won't be able to visit, but in brief: speak slowly; in-it-ial-ly break up the syl-la-bles; pay attention to what words he uses. (And, when he understands it, speak as you would to another American.) Contrary to intuition, he might understand you better if you use big words."
"What?"
"He already knows Latin, or perhaps some other language or languages derived from it; there are a lot of common roots in the bigger words. They came over with the Norman invasion of England; small words change much more quickly, and many of our small words are Germanic in character. And you know the artificial intelligence findings that big words are impossible for a computer to deal with, and small words doubly impossible? What is easy for us and what is easy for him may be two very different matters."
"Yes, I see," Aed said.
"Oh, and one more thing. Keep me posted; if you want, I may be able to send in a grad student. He's a puzzle, and I like puzzles. Maybe something will click about him."
"I'll keep the grad student in mind; maybe later, when I have more to tell. Actually, why don't you give me the net address of a student whom I will be able to talk with? I'll probably have some questions. Or should I ask you?"
"Feel free to ask me. Just keep it down to a few minutes a day."
After a phone conversation with Dr. Pabst, Aed began to understand how the universality of good will he believed in coexisted in an arbitrariness of manners; he restrained himself from knocking on the door before entering, and saw Taberah bright-eyed as he entered.
"Hell!" Taberah said eagerly, jumping up. He had a long tether from his intra-venous tubes, and he was becoming stable on his feet. (He still felt slightly dizzy as he rose.)
"What?" said Aed and the other visitor.
"Hell! Hell!" Then Taberah saw their puzzlement, wondered what was wrong, and then reminded himself of how important pronunciation was. "Hello!" he said.
Aed laughed, and said, "Hello! Taberah, I'd like you to meet my wife, Nathella. She is--"
Taberah grinned, said, "Beautiful!" and jumped up, pressing up against her and kissing her on the lips.
Nathella stood in paralyzed shock for a second, then drew back and ran out of the room, Aed on her heels.
She slowed to a brisk walk after they reached a second corridor, and said, "I don't know why you let him in our house. I don't want to see him again. There are differences between cultures, but that lust is unacceptable in any culture."
Aed said, "I am sorry he did that. I was not expecting that when I brought him in."
They walked on in silence, Nathella setting a fast pace in silent fury.
"You're holding out on me," she said. "You're not telling me something."
"His eyes," Aed said.
"What?" Nathella said.
"Did you see his eyes?" Aed asked.
"I assure you, I was quite occupied with his lips!" she snapped.
"What do you think was in his eyes?"
"Lust. Selfishness. A lack of any caring and decency."
"I saw his eyes," Aed said.
They walked on in silence, now a bit more slowly.
"You're waiting for me to ask you what you saw in his eyes. Out with it," Nathella finally said.
"I was watching his eyes, and I didn't see the faintest trace of greed or lewdness. I saw a rambunctious energy, the same rambunctious energy Clancy uses when he's picking on Fiona."
"Are you saying that what that man did to me was right?"
"No; I'm saying that he didn't know what he was doing."
As Aed walked back, he processed through a memory, and realized the look in Taberah's eyes after Nathella had run out of the room. He looked like a hurt puppy. Aed had promised his wife not to have the man back on their property without talking with him and then talking it over with her.
The conversation that ensued between him and Taberah was maddening. It wasn't just the language barrier, even though they got a good half hour into the conversation before Aed realized that Taberah thought Aed was talking about something else entirely. It was rather that Aed was just beginning to see an alien conceptual map, an alien interpretation of the world. After clearing up the initial confusion, Aed managed to paraphrase "You don't have the right to go around kissing women on the lips," in different ways until Taberah appeared to understand, when he got to the second difficulty: "What is a right?" Taberah seemed not to think in terms of rights, to find them an alien philosophical concept; this difficult was not surmounted so much as circumvented, in being told, "It is wrong to go around kissing women on the lips." That was met with a third difficulty: "Why not?"
After a long and involved conversation, Aed pieced together the following observations:
Taberah looked crestfallen when Aed told him not to touch women without asking permission; Aed revised this to, "Don't touch people in a way you haven't seen," knowing full well that this would lead the door open to further confusion. When Aed told Taberah in an authoritative tone of voice, "Don't kiss anyone you don't know well," and then thought and added, "Don't touch women's breasts," the hurt Taberah cried for a few minutes, and then asked, trembling, why he was not ever to give a woman a hug. Aed was puzzled as to why Taberah would make such a connection, and then when he saw the very straightforward reason why, it seemed that his explanation of why it was OK to touch a woman's breasts with his chest but not his hands caused more confusion than it alleviated.
Aed's head was spinning when he left the room. He was barely able to call his friend Noah and explain what had happened.
Dr. Pabst cursed himself for not coming himself, and had his graduate student teach the first day of class so he could try to provide the young man with band-aid coaching for at least one cultural land mine.
Taberah sat, shaking in sadness. He knew he would make mistakes, but to make such a big mistake so soon, and then not be able to understand why he was wrong -- this was the most confusing place he had ever been in. He closed his eyes and cried himself to sleep.
Aed had barely slept, and when he returned early the next morning with Dr. Pabst, he found three men in dark suits standing near Taberah. "Good morning. I am Dr. Kinsella, a professor at the University. Who might you be?"
One of the men showed a badge and said, "Salisbury, Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization Services."
A chill ran down Aed's spine. "May I ask what your interest in this young man is?"
"This patient is an illegal alien. We are here to deport him to his country of origin."
If I thought, I could make enough publicity to hurt the INS badly if they deport this wayfarer, Aed thought, but even then felt a prompting of intuition, that is not the way. Still, he continued thinking, I could say, "I can't stop you from deporting this man, but I can see to it that you will have publicity that hurts you. Do you have authority to stop the deportation? No? Would you rather give me contact information for someone who has such authority now, or have me find out as I create publicity and then contact him and have you fired?" If I think further, I can probably think of something truly Machiavellian...
Even as he thought, he struggled, and Aed resolved to follow his conscience. "I'll be praying for you; I'm an interested party, and if you need to get in contact with me, the hospital has my net address." He decided it better not to give the INS agents a brain dump of the interactions; a description of a rocky adjustment to American culture was sure to hurt the lad. Dr. Pabst didn't think there was any advantage to staying, so they left. Aed returned home and brooded.
Taberah was not well; he was mostly over his sickness, but the INS agents had pressured the hospital staff for a release as soon as possible. He left the hospital weak and slightly unsteady on his feet.
His first ride in a moving room, he had been too miserable to notice what was going on. Now, he was able to observe, see what he had to learn. The room was bouncing around, but not nearly as much as a galloping horse -- even though it was moving faster. Through an arrangement of squares and a glass window he could see the city and countryside whizzing past; the speed was unpleasant, and it nauseated him. If he hadn't tried hard to control himself, he would probably have thrown up.
The two men were in the compartment with him, along with some men who looked vaguely like Saracens, only with redder skin, who seemed to be ill at ease. The two men looked -- not exactly like soldiers; there was a noble bearing and heroic resolve to even commoners who took arms to war with a neighboring city-state, but these men looked more like mercenaries set to guard. He tried to speak with them, but they would not speak to him; even in the hospital, they had spoken with the hospital staff but never addressed him personally.
Two of the red-bronze Saracens began talking, and he found with delight that they spoke with a familiar accent. He could not recognize the language, but he felt that he could learn their language quickly.
He tried to see what else he could grasp -- with his mind; there were some kind of thin shackles about his wrists, which set him ill at ease -- was he being taken to the torturer's for whatever crime he had committed against Nathella? There was noise about, a strange alien noise; everything about his surroundings was alien. And the bouncing room made it impossible to think.
Taberah realized he was ready to throw up, and he focused his attention on trying not to throw up.
Aed was sitting in his living room, staring sadly at the chess pieces on the table. Taberah's king had been knocked down, even as the pieces stood to checkmate Aed. Nathella walked into the room, leaned against Aed, and said, "Do you want to talk about Taberah? I've -- adjusted; I can deal with his rambunctiousness."
Aed said, "The INS is taking him to be deported. I don't want to talk about it."
Nathella put her hand to her mouth, and then held Aed. "I'll be waiting in the kitchen, when you're ready to talk. I'll be praying," she said, and kissed him.
Aed sat and stared at the dusty bookshelf for a while, and then picked up Taberah's king and set it down. He stared, and realized that he had placed the king in check from one of his knights.
Aed looked at the king and said, "Did you have to leave before I knew you?"
The game gave him no reply. Aed went to the computer room, got in to the computer, and went to a dreamscape where colors and shapes shifted. He watched the forms flow. Maybe that could distract him. No; time dragged, and even the fantasia of images could not fascinate him.
An avatar appeared before him. He looked; the avatar said, "May I speak with you?"
Muttering, "This had better be good" under his breath, Aed said, "Who is it?"
"Salisbury, Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization Services."
Aed winced. He doubted he could go through an interview without hurting both himself and Taberah. "Yes?"
"We have had a number of translators try to talk to the young man, and none of them is able to identify his language beyond something coming from the Romance family. We have run genetic tests on him, and France, Spain, and Romania among other countries have all said not only that he was not born there, but that they do not have any close relations on file. We are therefore unable to identify his country of origin, and are releasing him to your temporary protective custody. Are you at your home?"
Aed caught himself, and said, "Yes, we will be waiting."
After talking about a few technical details, Aed went upstairs. Someone had bumped the table, and tried to set the pieces back up where they were -- Clancy? If he did, he was in a hurry; the pieces were not in a similar state. This looked a little different. Taberah's king was now in check from both the knight and a rook, but he had a few moves left to stave off checkmate. And they were not playing on a grid; there were uncertainties. Could Taberah escape?
Taberah spent a few days in the hospital, regaining his strength, but the staff could see that he was eager to escape its confines. He avidly read the three Bibles, plus a Latin-English dictionary Aed had procured; Aed for his part was reading a book Dr. Pabst had given him on the art of crossing cultures, both for his own sake and to be able to explain things to Taberah. He had never kissed a man on the lips before -- not even his own son -- but when he saw how delighted Taberah was at Noah giving him a kiss, he set his mind to enter Taberah's world as much as possible. He slowly realized, with certainty, that his willingness to do one thing against his gut reactions was only a shadow of what Taberah was willing to, and had to be willing to, do. He was not surprised when Noah explained to him that culture shock is one of the top causes of suicide, ranking with divorce.
Getting him home from the hospital bore an unexpected surprise. Taberah was happy to be walking out of the hospital, and then stiffened when he saw that they were walking towards Aed's car, a sleek hybrid between a minivan, a sport utility vehicle, and a station wagon. Noah said, "He's had more trauma in the past two weeks than most of us have in a year; is there any way to circumvent a car trip?
Nathella looked at Aed for a moment, and said, "We can walk."
Aed winced. "It's eighty-five degrees, and we're eight miles from home. It will take two hours to walk home!"
Nathella said, "I'll walk with him. He has a lot of extra energy. Why don't you drive home and make lemonade?"
Aed said, "Um, you want to be alone with him, even in public? I know he hasn't given us his last surprise."
"I'd rather take whatever risks there are than force that child through a car ride. And trusting people can make them worthy of being trusted. Honey, did he ride in a car with the INS?"
"Uh... I'll walk, too, and we can get the car later."
Noah said, "If you give me your keys, I'll get my son, and we can drop your car off at your house."
Three hours later, the trio arrived at home, hot, sweaty, tired, and parched. They made a gallon of lemonade, and then another; it took two and a half gallons of lemonade to fill them all. Aed expected a conversation of some sort, but Taberah was happy to sit in a chair and smile and fall asleep.
Aed expected it would be an interesting endeavor to teach Taberah to take a shower.
Taberah read avidly; he wished to derive as much benefit from the four books he had been lent (four! -- the Vulgate Versio, the Revised New American Standard Bible, The New Message: Complete Text, Revised, and Harrah's New College Latin and English Dictionary, Revised) before they had to be returned to the patron who owned them. He very much wished to meet the man. It was about a week before he began to see that his hosts wanted him to talk with them from time to time -- mostly out good manners; he had never been in the possession of even two books at the same time, and never encouraged to read outside! -- and another week before Aed sat down with him to try to explain to him that there was life outside of books.
Then Taberah became a fount of unending questions, questions as startling as those Clancy and Fiona had asked as a child -- and yet questions that showed the intellect of a sharp adult. They were, nine times out of ten, questions about things he would never think about, and questions he had no ready answer for. At times Aed thought it would have been easier to answer, "Why do things look smaller when they are farther away?"
One day, Aed was sitting in his chair and thinking about how quickly his children were growing up -- and he was beginning to think of Taberah as a child, or a foster child at least -- and realizing that things had been silent for too long. This was longer than the silence after Taberah had realized that a screwdriver can unscrew the screws that were holding the blender together...
"Aed!"
"Yes, Taberah, what is it?"
"Aed, what is this?"
The sound of his voice was coming from a specific room, it was coming from --
Oh, no! Aed thought. Anything but that. I am ready to explain anything but-- but his feet had carried him to the room Taberah was in.
"Aed, what is this?" Taberah repeated.
A dozen replies flitted through his mind: a moving picture, something to think with, a hobbyist's delight, a shortcut in talking with people --
"This is a rock that can do logic."
"What?"
"This is a rock that can do arithmetic and logic very, very quickly."
Taberah said, confused, "How numbers they and logic they make a picture move?"
Aed sighed. "Taberah, can I answer another question? This one's awfully hard to explain."
Taberah slowly said, "Yes. What question to answer?" But his eyes betrayed him.
Aed thought, and asked, "Do you know that clock in the living room?"
Taberah said, "Yes. Why have you a clock? And not you use it to pray? It rings bells, but I not you see not pray."
Aed said, "One question at a time, please. Do you know what it has inside?"
"I have seen opened one clock."
If he'd opened the grandfather clock, he had put it back in working order. Aed respected the lad's abilities, but this seemed too much. Or had he opened another clock? "What did you see inside, child?"
"Springs rods gears moving beautiful!" Taberah said, his eyes glowing with excitement.
"Do you know how clocks work?"
Taberah said, "Yes," followed shortly by, "No. What?"
Aed moved his forearms like the hands of a clock. "Know why hands turn?" he said.
"Yes! Fixed hands, stopped turning."
Aed said, "You can do many things with gears and pulleys. You can store numbers, add them, make decisions: if this rod is here, turn. A computer is like that, only it uses things besides gears. It uses pictures on tiny rocks. And it is very fast."
Taberah looked at Aed, and then looked at the computer screen. He was trying to believe him, but just couldn't see a connection.
Aed said, "See this wall? Look very closely. There are arranged pieces of color. They are called pixels. Do you see them?"
Taberah squinted, and touched the surface. "I see."
Aed said, "The computer uses numbers and rules to decide what color to make each pixel. All of them together make a picture."
Taberah closed his eyes in concentration. He moved his hands, sorting out concepts. Then --
"Why is the picture moving?"
"Because the computer is making many different pictures, one after another, and together they look like they're moving. The moving picture is made up of still pictures like the still pictures are made up of pixels."
Taberah stared at a small patch of the wall as colors flowed. His face met with a dawning comprehension. Then he said, "The computer very, very intelligent! I want talk with computer."
Aed shook his head. "You can't, son."
"Why not?"
"The computer is not intelligent."
"But you said it can do logic!"
"It can do logic, but it's not intelligent."
Taberah ran out of the room, and returned holding the Latin-English dictionary. He flipped through several the entries, several times, and then looked at Aed in puzzlement. "I don't understand."
Aed said, "Can you write?"
Taberah said, "I can write Latin. I not know not the script of your books."
Aed said, "One moment." He returned, holding a notebook and a pencil.
"Write down, with logical rules, how to talk in a conversation. In your language," he said.
Taberah's jaw dropped in shock. "Write that on paper?" Taberah would as soon scratch the surface of a painting as write something that unimportant on precious paper.
Aed scratched his head. He didn't see what could possibly be so offensive about an innocuous attempt to write rules. "Ok, don't write that. But can you think of rules for a conversation?"
Taberah began to translate a Quixotic code of etiquette.
"No, not those rules. Logical rules."
Taberah looked frustrated. "But polite is reasonable!"
"Explain to me how to talk using only if-then-else and while-this-is-true rules, and words you decide ahead of time."
Taberah's gaze bore into him. Then, "I can't. That isn't how I talk."
"That isn't how anybody talks. You can't talk that way. But that's the only way a computer can work. Computers can't think."
"Then how create beautiful moving picture?"
"Some people spent a lot of time thinking of clever ways to explain how, using only math and logic. There are a lot of things we can do, but a lot of things we can't do. We have an old phrase, 'silver bullet', which refers to a way to make everything easy with computers and fix all problems. The term is kind of a joke; calling something a silver bullet is a way of saying that it's supposed to do something impossible. And the same thing has happened with the effort to make computers think -- it's called artificial intelligence, and people have learned a lot from trying to do it, but they haven't succeeded. A very great mind named Alan Turing proposed the Turing Test: a computer is intelligent if you can't tell it from a human when you talk with it. No computer has been able to make it."
Taberah looked irritated, flipped through memories of conversations, and said, disgustedly, "Bad reason! False reason!"
"What, Taberah?"
"Is bad think. What human is and what human talks like is much different thing. If logic is not whole human reason, talk is not whole human reason." He flipped through the book, and read out, "Confusion, accident, substance." He closed the dictionary. "Is accident confused with substance. And is possible cheat Turing Test."
"Cheat on the Turing Test? How? How can you talk like a human without understanding human reason?"
Taberah closed his eyes, and said, "Moving picture? How? How can you move like world without understanding world?"
Aed thought for a moment, and said, "I see how you can think that. But decades of attempts have failed to produce anything that can even cheat on the Turing Test. Most people don't try."
Taberah looked in the book. "Fifty attempts are not many."
Aed said, "Not fifty. Over fifty years' worth."
"Why number attempts in years? Is not sense."
It took a good two hours more conversation to answer all the questions Taberah came up with, and afterwards Aed padded off to his bedroom, exhausted, but at least happy to have gotten that conversation out of the way. He drifted off to sleep in blissful happiness that tomorrow was Saturday, and he could sleep in until noon.
At 10:00 he was awakened by a voice calling, "Aed! Aed! How to use computer?"
"Taberah, can I please get a couple of hours' sleep? This is Saturday, and I'd like to sleep in."
Taberah was puzzled as to why one should sleep in on a particular day, but thought this a poor time to ask. "Okay!" he said, and went to try to memorize parts of the dictionary. He was beginning to feel accustomed to the books -- their size, their print, their light weight, their smooth sides -- at least, although he was still puzzled about why someone had bothered to make a book for the sole purpose of keeping track of words. Were there not scholars who could be asked about these things?
Aed woke up some time later, and looked at the clock. It was 13:00. Taberah had given him a fair amount of time. He lay in bed, ruminating about how to explain how to use a computer. Taberah knew enough of how a computer worked -- explaining memory and parallel computing should not be that much harder -- but how to explain how to use it?
Space would be the first major obstacle to overcome. The computer gave a virtual reality environment, with the walls of a room as screens; when you put on a pair of goggles, it was as if the walls were transparent and you could see through them to the world, as if the walls were only a glass box. But space behaved differently than in the real world. Aed thought for a moment about the mathematical abstractions by which the space worked -- the classic introduction described taking a tessellation of cubes, and then cutting them apart and connecting the sides arbitrarily. You could take two windows of a bedroom, and attach them so that looking out the North window gave a view as if you were looking in the East window, and vice versa. It was fantastic and dreamlike; it allowed portals between different areas of space, so that there were no difficulties in taking a room in Chicago and making a doorway open out of a subway closet in Paris. Aed remembered the first time he played a game with a labyrinth connected in this manner; he had been awed when he walked around a pillar again and again and never came to the same place twice.
Space might be the first obstacle, but it wouldn't be the only obstacle. How could he describe the richness of the environment? And how could he describe its weak points?
Aed thought over the many things that contributed to the richness of the environment. There were:
Aed wondered, "What time is it?" Then he looked at the clock. 15:00. Yikes! He got up, got dressed, and looked for Taberah.
Taberah was reading the bilingual dictionary with rapt concentration.
Aed walked over to the computer room, grabbing two pair of goggles. He showed Taberah how to put one of them on, and then said, "Sit down and wait here for a moment."
In a few minutes, an avatar appeared before Taberah and said, "Take my hand." Taberah reached for it and grabbed, but felt nothing. He was confused. The scene changed, and he saw that he was inside a sunny field, with forest to the east.
Taberah asked the avatar, "Who are you?"
The avatar said, "I am Aed."
Taberah said, "But you not resemble not Aed. You look -- your clothes are different, and skin different, and --"
Aed said, "Never mind that. Do you see my hands?"
Taberah said, "Yes."
Aed said, "Move your hands like mine."
Taberah did, and found himself moving rapidly through space. His stomach lurched; he put his hands over his eyes.
Aed said, "Take your hands off your eyes, son."
Taberah did, and saw he was a good fifty hands off of the ground. He braced himself for the fall, and put his hands over his eyes again.
Aed thought for a moment, and said, "We're going to try something different. It takes a little while to get used to moving about, but you'll learn. In the mean time, I'll let you see through my eyes."
Instantly the perspective changed. Taberah looked down, and saw a pair of hands pull a book-shaped object from a pocket, with a picture on front. The hands pulled on the book and expanded it, then pressed buttons, flipping through pictures. Taberah saw a picture of a stag, and said, "Ooh!"
The picture expanded, and they fell through it. They were in a forest glade; a stag was looking at them curiously.
Then Taberah saw himself walking rapidly to a door with a picture over it; he said, "Too much of fastness!" and the pace slowed. He was through, to a dark forest with unfamiliar plants, and a large snake slithering towards them. Afraid, he said, "Snake!" and saw himself walking towards another door with another picture, and he looked around. The landscape was alien; it was rough terrain covered completely by snow, and he saw fat black and white birds walking around, and some big black fish-like animals on the ice.
Taberah looked intently at all that was around him; it was strange, but none of the animals began to threaten him. After a few minutes, he said, "I have sick of sea." He wasn't feeling very good.
There was moment of nothing happening, then a jar of perspective, and then stillness. Taberah closed his eyes to shut out the view. Then he heard Aed calling, and touching his shoulder. He was holding a tiny cup of the thinnest glass, with something that looked like wine. "Drink," he said.
Taberah drank it, and the nausea began to go away. Had he been given a magic potion? He was confused, but pushed this question to the back of his mind. He wasn't sure yet what was magic in this land and what wasn't -- that seemed a confusing question here, and the people treated the moving rooms as something as believable as a horse! Aed asked him to step out and sit on the sofa.
Aed was trying to think of how to explain the way space worked. He was expecting a question about why there was a door, all by itself, in the jungle, and the moment you stepped through it, you were in Antarctica. When Taberah remained silent, he asked, "Taberah, was there anything you found confusing about that world?"
"Yes, movement."
"Ok. Anything else?"
"Yes, doors."
Aed went into a long and involved attempted explanation of how different parts of space were connected, and saw the confusion on Taberah's face growing with each step. Finally, he said, "Taberah, why are you confused?"
"What is it that the pictures?"
"Huh?"
"Pictures on doors. Why?"
Aed said, "I don't understand. Could you rephrase that?"
"Pictures. Doors. Top."
Aed said, "One moment," and went over to the computer to look at one of the doors. "Aah," he said, returning. "Those are advertisements."
"What is advertisement?"
"An advertisement is a message from a company telling a customer about one of its products."
"I not understand not. For what is it that advertisement needed? Is it that townspeople not tell not where merchant is?"
Aed thought for a moment, and said, "Advertisements exist to stimulate sales, to help a company sell things to people that otherwise wouldn't buy them."
Taberah looked even more confused, thought for a moment about wording and grammar, and said, "And which of the seven deadly sins is it that this custom embodies?"
In the ensuing discussion, Aed slowly realized that Taberah had not been troubled by the nature of space. He had been able to accept as perfectly natural a portal between two different regions of space, and Aed wondered what kind of conception of space his culture had to let him accept that at least quite placidly. The first time he had entered that kind of virtual environment, Aed had been thrown off by the conception of space. And he had felt nauseated, his head spinning after -- suddenly he found Taberah's "sick of sea" more understandable. And he began to see something that he had not thought about, not for a while: that advertisement does not exist for the customer's benefit, but for the company's benefit, so that it can get more money out of the customer; this practice clearly ran contrary to Taberah's way of thinking, and at the end of the discussion, Aed walked away, for once, with his head not spinning, and thinking not only that Taberah's way of thinking was understandable, but that he might have a point.
The next few days saw animated discussions, a lot of reading on Taberah's part, and a few more minutes using the computer -- at Aed's urging; Taberah wanted nothing more to do with it.
Taberah was sitting on the ground outside, drinking a glass of nice, warm water, when he saw a large, black, almost grown Newfoundland puppy come wandering by. And gulped. Such a beast would be a prime candidate for a dog race.
Dog races, in his homeland, occurred when people would gather together stray dogs, tie metal pots to their tails, and then let the dogs go. The dogs would start to walk, then hear the sound of the pots scraping against the stones of the road, get scared, and start running to get away from the noise. When the noise grew louder, the terrified dogs would run, and run, and run, and run -- until they dropped dead from exhaustion. The winner was the boy whose dog ran the farthest before dying.
Taberah hated the dog races with a passion. They made him sick; after his protestations, his lord issued a rule that no dog races were to be held while Taberah was around, but that was the best that had happened. He was humored at best; nobody else save Grizelda shared his objections to the races. Most people were so blazé that they didn't see what the big deal was in the first place. Yes, it was his homeland, but it wasn't his homeland. It was the place he was from, and the place where he had spent most of his life, but he wasn't at home there. In a way, he could adjust to almost any place -- was adjusting to the kingdom he was in now (what was it called, and who was its king?) -- but in a way he was never at home. There was always something about him that didn't fit. Why was he the only one who cared about dogs? Francis of Assisi was venerated, but the people who venerated him did not imitate his treatment of animals. Well, he could try to save at least one dog from the races --
Hastily setting down his glass, Taberah sprinted at full speed after the dog, which ran away from him, barking. He continued chasing the dog for a full hour, his toughened feet pounding on the asphalt until they were sore, until he dropped in exhaustion, panting and thirsting. It wasn't until he stopped that he realized the exquisite pain in his feet. He looked down, and realized his feet were cut. Where was he? The buildings looked different; the outside looked more like buildings than outside. He was by a room of sorts with two walls missing, but with a ceiling. It was raining; he crawled over to a puddle, and began to lap at it.
He looked up, and saw the dog drinking from the other side of the puddle. It came over and sniffed at him; Taberah hugged and kissed it. Beginning to feel chilled, Taberah crawled under the shelter, holding the Newfoundland next to him. He could not get to sleep, both because of all the moving rooms passing by, and because he had plenty to think about.
Taberah felt happy and comfortable as he had not felt in a long time. The wealth he had been in was strange to him; it did not seem real. Out, even in a strange, semi-open place (why would someone build two walls and a roof of a room, and then make the inside part of a thoroughfare?), finally next to another warm body (even if only a dog's), Taberah felt happy. He settled into a slumber, thanking God for bringing him to a place that felt a little home-like.
Aed drove around, trying to see if he could find where Taberah had gone. Fiona had run and told him that had seen a dog and bolted; as he drove around, he called the police and summarized what had happened. The dispatcher explained that he could not be classified a missing person until he had been gone for twenty-four hours; that was twenty-four hours in which to brood. The family looked until three in the morning, and then went home because both Aed and Nathella were too tired to continue driving.
At four in the morning he was awakened by a call. Groggy, Aed turned on the videophone and said, "Yes?"
A police officer in a car sent a still shot and said, "Officer Shing, State Sheriff. Is this the man?"
"We found him sleeping under a bridge, along with a dog he refuses to part with. He had lacerations to the soles of his feet; the EMT thinks he ran barefoot over broken glass. We have taken him to Mercy Memorial Hospital; he is presently in the emergency room, waiting for treatment."
Aed said, "Thank you. Why did you take him to Mercy? I don't understand that. Mercy is almost fifty miles away from here."
Shing replied, "Mercy is the closest hospital to where we found him. Is there anything else we can help you out with?"
Aed thought for a moment, and said, "Not now, but I might call you if I think of something else. I'm going to grab a few coffee beans, and then go to pick him up. Is there anything else I need to know?"
The officer said, "No, but you might want to take him shopping for some clothing and shoes. He's wearing a ragged getup, and -- the hospital will be able to tell you about his special needs to heal from the lacerations."
Aed said, "Thanks. Over and out."
Nathella rolled over and said, "You weren't thinking of getting him without bringing me, were you, honey?"
Aed said, "Get dressed, and come along. I'll get the coffee beans."
Two voices from below said, "Me, too!"
The emergency room was fairly quiet; doctors were removing glass shards from Taberah's foot and stitching up the cuts. Taberah looked confused; there was something in his eyes that even Nathella didn't understand. He was under local rather than general anaesthesia, but he still started nodding off to sleep.
He received some soft "shoes" made of bandages, and the doctor told Aed to keep his feet bandaged and give him high top athletic shoes a couple of sizes too large. When it was time to go, everybody climbed in to their van, the dog brought along as well. Aed tried to ask why this attachment to a dog (it belonged to a neighbor, and periodically ran loose), but could find out nothing beyond that Taberah did not want it to be raced. Aed let that be; he wanted to get back to sleep, and wait until tomorrow to tackle the puzzles. Taberah agreed not to leave the house without having someone else along, and seemed relieved to learn that this kingdom didn't race that type of dog. He was even happier to find out that the dog belonged to someone nearby, and would be taken care of; he wanted to meet the neighbor the next day. "Very well," Aed said, "but we need to get some sleep first." This time, Taberah joined everybody else in sleeping in until the afternoon.
Nathella and Fiona were working in the kitchen; good smells came upstairs. The Kinsellas (and Taberah) settled down for a late dinner, a family complete, such as it were.
They sat in silence around the table; there was a simple joy in everyone -- or almost everyone. After Dr. Kinsella said grace and the food was passed around the table, Taberah broke the silence by saying, "Nathella, would you pass the I Can't Believe It's Not Better?"
Nathella smiled and passed the spread, and made a mental note to buy butter the next time she went shopping. As she passed it, she saw something in Taberah's face. "Taberah, are you homesick?"
Taberah looked at her. "What is 'homesick'?"
Nathella thought for a moment and said, "Homesick is when you aren't comfortable in one place, and you miss the place that is your home."
"I don't know if I'm homesick. Maybe. Yes. No. I don't know if I have a home; maybe if I understood the word better..." His voice trailed off, but the others remained silent. "It's just a bunch of little things, like strange foods and too soft bread without any rocks and no touching, not even wrestling, and... Or maybe that's not a little thing." He stared at his food.
Clancy said, "C'mon out back dinner. We can roughhouse in the back. Fiona and I wrestle a lot, only not recently. We've been busy with you, and we didn't know you liked to horse around. Fiona's in the house to be picked on," Fiona made a face at him, "and I'll flip you around. I would pin you, but you need to be soft on your feet."
Taberah's face brightened.
Nathella said, "Is there anything we can do that will bring you a little piece of home?"
Taberah hesitated, and then said, "Have you no wine in this country?"
Nathella smiled gently and looked at him. "Yes, we do, but not in this house. I'm an alcoholic."
Taberah asked, "What's an alcoholic?"
Nathella said, "Do you know the word 'drunkard'?"
Taberah said, "You're not a drunkard! I haven't seen you drunk. I haven't even seen you drink wine."
Nathella said, "Not now, but once my life was given over to alcohol. Escaping alcohol was the hardest thing I ever did, and if I start to drink, I won't be able to control it. It would control me. So I can't have alcohol in the house."
Taberah looked disappointed. He said, "Then it is good of you not to drink."
Nathella said, "Thank you, Taberah. Maybe sometime when I'm visiting with one of my friends, Aed will buy a small bottle of wine for you two to have. He likes a good drink, and he will have a beer when he's out with his friends. But he doesn't drink in the house. He doesn't want to tempt me."
Taberah smiled. He was warmed with a patient assurance that he would have wine, and was in no particular hurry. He looked around, and then his gaze settled on Fiona. "Why are you homesick, Fiona?"
Fiona smiled, and said, "I'm not homesick, at least not for a place. I wish it were Christmas, with the family and gifts and wassail and -- ooh! the music. I miss the music."
Taberah said, "What kind of music?"
Fiona said, "One is, O come, O come Emmanuel. Do you know it?"
Taberah thought for a moment, and then thought a little more, and said, "Could you sing it for me?"
Fiona sang, in her thick countertenor,
O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lowly exile here
Until the Son of God appear.Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.
Taberah said, "I think I know it. Let me sing it as I know it." He took a sip of milk, and then stood up on the chair, and began to sing:
Veni, veni Emmanuel!
Captivum solve Israel!
Qui gemit in exsilio,
Privatus Dei Filio.Gaude, gaude, Emmanuel
Nascetur pro te, Israel.Veni, o Sapientia,
Quae hic disponis omnia,
Veni, viam prudentiae
Ut doceas et gloriae.Gaude, gaude, Emmanuel
Nascetur pro te, Israel.Veni, veni Adonai!
Qui populo in Sinai
Legem dedisti vertice,
In Majestate gloriae.Gaude, gaude, Emmanuel
Nascetur pro te, Israel.
Veni, o Jesse virgula,
Ex hostis tuos ungula,
De specu tuos tartari
Educ et antro barathri.Gaude, gaude, Emmanuel
Nascetur pro te, Israel.Veni, Clavis Davidica,
Regna reclude caelica,
Fac iter tutum superum,
Et claude vias inferum.Gaude, gaude, Emmanuel
Nascetur pro te, Israel.
Veni, veni o Oriens!
Solare nos adveniens,
Noctis depelle nebulas,
Dirasque noctis tenebras.Gaude, gaude, Emmanuel
Nascetur pro te, Israel.Veni, veni, Rex gentium,
veni, Redemptor omnium,
Ut salvas tuos famulos
Peccati sibi conscios.Gaude, gaude, Emmanuel
Nascetur pro te, Israel.
Taberah sat down and was very still. The room was very still -- one could hear a pin drop. His singing voice was a tenor, but there was nothing flimsy about it; it was rich and powerful, like silver, like something between a stream and a waterfall, and for the moment he had looked like a bard. It was hard to believe that such a mighty voice, filled with silent strength, could come from such a tiny body -- and yet, somehow, after that song, Taberah did not again look tiny to the Kinsellas. Nothing about his physical appearance was changed, but none the less the way he looked to them was different.
Aed finally broke the silence by saying, "I never knew you could sing like that, Taberah, and I should very much like to have you over for Christmas. Is there any way I can thank you for that song?"
Taberah said, "Over for Christmas? All twelve days?"
Aed thought. School resumed classes from winter break on the third of January; getting permission to take time off through the seventh would involve some major administrative headaches. "All twelve days," he said. "I'll make sure of it."
Taberah said, "Then what I would most like for my song is to go out and wrestle."
Clancy bolted out of his chair and had Taberah in a fireman's carry before anyone else knew what was going on; Taberah was out of Clancy's grip and bolting out the door before Clancy knew what was going on. It wasn't until later that Aed wondered how he could run with healing, stitched lacerations in his foot; soon they were all outside, a crazy, happy, moving, squirming bundle of arms and legs with grass stains on its shirts. And Taberah was happy, happy as he could ever remember being.
It was only a few minutes before they were all sitting and panting; Taberah did not understand why they wanted to rest so soon, or why they didn't give him more resistance in the fray, but he basked in the afterglow. The memory of that moment would be a treasure to him as long as he walked the paths of the earth.
Nathella said, "We need to give him some of Clancy's old clothes so he's decent, and then take him to one of the old-fashioned clothing stores -- he won't be able to try stuff on online. Clancy, would you come with to help him with the clothing?"
They arrived at the store, and Nathella said, "Here we are, to get some clothing. You can take anything in the store."
Taberah looked, and bright colors caught his eye. He went over and started to stare at a rack of shirts.
"Not there," Nathella said. "Those are children's clothing."
Taberah thought it strange that there should be special clothing for children, but said, "I am a child. You're a child. Clancy's a child. Want children's clothing."
Nathella, who had felt almost guilty about her age since her thirtieth birthday, said, "That's sweet, honey, but I am not a child. Neither are you. And Clancy's not really a child any more."
("Thanks, Mom!")
("Shut up, dear.")
Taberah looked puzzled. "Are you not born of a woman?" he asked.
Nathella said, "Uh, of course I -- ooh, I see. Taberah, we use the word 'child' to mean someone who's younger than Clancy, and 'adult' to mean someone who's older than Clancy. Clancy's -- in between."
("Thanks, Mom!")
("Shut up, dear.")
Nathella continued. "And children wear different clothing than adults."
Taberah said, "Why?"
"Because children are different from adults."
"Why?"
"Have you seen a tadpole?"
"Yes."
"Have you seen a frog?"
"Yes."
"Do you know that tadpoles turn into frogs?"
"Yes."
"But tadpoles and frogs are different, right?"
"Yes."
"Children and adults are different in the same way, right?"
"How?"
Nathella did not reply to the question. Clancy, in a particularly mischievous mood, would be able to ask a series of questions like that while keeping a perfectly straight face, and he often managed to catch his father. But she could sense a complete honesty in Taberah's questions; they were as honest as a child's. And as unending. She was beginning to realize that he did not perceive anything approaching a sharp demarcation between childhood and adulthood. "Come over to this section. I want you to pick out a shirt from one of these racks, and a pair of pants from one of these racks."
By the second or third try, Taberah had picked out clothing that would fit him; it seemed a bit loud to her, but she did not want to argue with that. He went into a fitting room, and, with Clancy's help, put the pants on properly and the shirt on backwards. He came out, and said, "I like it. Let's pay for it."
Nathella said, "Hold on, Taberah. I want to pick up a week's worth of clothing."
Taberah said, "This clothing will last for a week, more."
Nathella said, "I want to buy you enough clothing so that you can wear different clothing each day and not have to wear the same clothing for a week."
Taberah's jaw dropped. He had a vague realization that the others' clothing looked different over time, and he knew that some of the people of his home town were wealthy enough to have two sets of clothing -- one for summer and one for winter. He had not, in his greediest dreams, ever wanted to wear different clothing each day. He asked, "Why?"
The trio arrived at home, carrying a large bagful of clothing. Aed asked, "Hi, guys! How was the shopping?"
Clancy asked, "Would somebody stop the room, please? I'd like to get off."
Taberah asked Aed, "What is your trade?"
Aed recalled a moment in graduate school where one of his colleagues had said, "I envy people in nuclear physics. They can tell other people what they do for a living." He said, "I teach -- do you know logic?"
Taberah said, "Yes."
Aed asked, "Have you done geometry?"
Taberah said, "Yes."
Aed said, "What I do is like geometry and logic; logic and geometry are examples of it."
Taberah said, "Give me an example."
Aed thought of the three rules of a metric space, then thought how little those rules illuminated what he was thinking -- as little as a list of chess rules gave any obvious feel for deep strategy. Aed had learned long ago that it was possible to understand the rules of a game completely without having the foggiest idea what its strategy was like -- human understanding never included instant sight into logical depths, any more than good eyes enabled you to see infinite detail despite distance and twilight! In the classroom at the university, Aed would have to bow to custom and labor over the basic rules, but Taberah was not a student at school, and -- "I am studying collections of objects where you can tell how far apart two objects are."
"Like geometry!" Taberah said."
"Yes, but it includes many things that do not have the structure of a space. Like words. 'Man' is close to 'woman', farther from 'dog', farther from 'tree', and farther still from 'rock', and very far from words like 'move'.
Taberah said, "Yes! That's how to cheat on Turing test!"
Aed winced and said, "Uh, how?"
Taberah paced the room in thought. "Can computers record conversations?"
"There are many, many conversations on record. I can download a collection of them now, if you wish."
"Well, first find out how to measure the distance between two words," Taberah said.
Aed nodded. The artificial intelligence literature had found a way to map the distance between words by measuring frequencies of words occurring before and after them in a histogram.
"Then have something that will look through conversations, matching up by words and grammar, and return the closest match!"
Aed looked at Taberah hard, and then said, "Son, how'd you like to learn how to program?"
Aed led Taberah into the computer, and then left him; Aed's avatar soon appeared nearby. "Put your hand on that picture on the wall," Aed said, and when Taberah reached out, he was in a large room, with alien artifacts on the walls and shelves.
Aed flew through the room, touching partially assembled objects; they vanished, leaving an open space to work in. "The first thing to do," he said, "is to make a Turing test room. Touch that bin over there."
Taberah touched it; it grew to fill half the room, and then its sides vanished. "See that red thing? Take it out of the bin, and then touch the button on the bottom of the bin; it will shrink back to its normal size. That is a room object; say 'Options.' See that popup menu? That's the thing that looks like a sheet of paper. Turn on the one that says 'Maximum occupants'; set the number to three. Then press the 'recording' button. I'll come back and record messages for the three users; the first user is the tester, and the second and third users are trying to convince the tester that they're human. Initially they'll both be human; later, one will be an avatar for our program. Pick up a dialogue slate; say, 'Record: Which user do you think is human? Now touch choice one, and say: Contestant one. Choice two: Contestant two. Choice three: Can't tell.' Ok; expand the room, and place the dialogue levitating in the center, in front of the tester's door. Wait, put three doors on for the user to enter. Oh, that looks funny because you have a bug. You have the buttons switched. You should --"
After the room was completed, Aed summoned the chancellor of the university and asked him to make an announcement of a Turing game. He recorded the announcement, and, after the chancellor disappeared, said, "This will give us some time to work out the artificial intelligence decoy. If you give me a moment, I will find the metric for words..."
It took Aed and Taberah a long time to get to sleep that night; it took them a long time to stop tinkering, but even after that, they were filled with an excitement of discovery, of uncertainty, asking, "Could this be? Have we really discovered what we think?" Their excitement was raised in the morning when Nathella said, "Why don't we go downtown this evening for a Tridentine mass? Taberah, it's in Latin; I think you'll enjoy it."
Taberah was not sure why the Kinsellas went to mass every week; it had not been any special holiday, so far as he could tell, and he could never get out of them a straight answer as to why they went to mass when there was no particular reason to do so. But now he was in such high spirits that he wanted to go.
Nathella walked in to the massive church. It was plain, and all was still. As the liturgy began, the stillness was not broken; the majestic Latin spoken by those up front only augmented the silence. Each step was majestic; she lost herself in its familiar details.
After the service, she put her hand on Taberah's shoulder, and asked him, "So, whatchya think?"
Taberah's eyes were misty. He closed them, then opened them, saying, "I don't understand. I did not see the guest of honor. Was he a theologian?"
Nathella said, "What?"
"Was the guest of honor a theologian?"
Nathella reminded himself that Taberah sometimes approached matters strangely. "I would rather think of him as God who told stories. What do you think?"
Taberah said, "Not Jesus, the person the -- now I remember the word -- funeral is being held for. Was he a theologian?"
Nathella withdrew, slightly surprised. She said, "Why do you think this was a funeral?"
Taberah said, "It was so mournful. People were silent; they did not say anything, and the person up front was impossible to hear. There weren't any changing songs. And I didn't hear any instrument music, no organ. And this church had its walls stripped -- no statues, no color in windows. Does this building have anything besides funerals?"
Nathella accepted that Taberah's perception of the Latin mass was very different from her own. No, that wasn't quite right. He wasn't responding to the Latin, per se; it was something else that accompanied the Latin. It -- she decided to stop musing and respond to him. "At home we have a machine that can make organ music; would you like to come home?"
At home, they sat down on a sofa and set the computer to play music. Taberah listened to the sound, the familiar sound of an organ -- no, it was not; it had range and voices and a perfection of sound such as he had never heard, and such speed! Then it unfolded, into two voices, three, four. Taberah felt dizzy with the complexity, or more accurately, giddy, drunk; he heard wheels within wheels within wheels within wheels. It was alien in many ways; most of all, he felt that he had never encountered such a mind. He never knew that such music existed. When the moment wound down after several pieces, he said, "I awe," and then, "Who was that?"
Nathella smiled and said, "That was Bach."
"May I speak with Mr. Bach? I would very much like to meet him."
"Honey, Bach has been dead for almost three hundred years."
At this, Taberah was surprised. "If Bach is dead, how did he play that?"
"Bach wrote his music down, then someone else played it on an organ, then the computer kept and transported the sounds so we could hear them."
"How can a rock transport sounds?"
"Aed, would you explain that?"
As Aed explained, Nathella observed Taberah. He no longer seemed so completely homesick; his face bore the excitement of discovery. Taberah was adapting to his new land.
"And all they were doing," Nathella said to Aed, "is endlessly debating 'How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?'!"
"That's the best question," Taberah said. "That's a very good question."
"What?" Nathella and Aed said together.
"'How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?' is a good question."
"Why?" Nathella said.
"Do you know how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" Taberah asked.
"Um, I don't know. Five? Twelve? Seventeen? I have no idea." Nathella said.
Taberah looked displeased. "I don't think you understand the question. Say seventeen angels can dance on the head of a pin, but not eighteen. Why?"
Nathella said, "I don't know. That's why it's a silly question."
Taberah said, "Ok. How many people can dance on the head of a pin?"
Nathella answered, "If the pin was lying on the floor, one."
"Why not two? Why not three? Why not five?"
"Because people have bodies, and they'd bump into each other."
"Do angels have bodies?"
"No; they're spirits."
"Can angels bump into each other?"
"No; there can be as many angels in the same place as want to be, because spirit -- ooh! Two, or five, or seventeen, or an infinite number of angels can dance on the head of a pin at once, because they don't take up space the way we do."
Taberah smiled. "Is that a silly question?"
Nathella hesitated, and said, "If you are asking an abstract question, why embed it in a concrete and silly-looking facade? Why not ask it abstractly?"
Clancy burst in the door, out of breath, and said, "Hey, Mom! How many field service engineers does it take to screw in a light bulb?"
Nathella was about to say, "I'm in the middle of something, dear," when Clancy said, "Two. One to find a bulb, and one to pound it into the socket."
Nathella giggled for a moment, then her face showed confusion, which slowly turned into dawning comprehension. Clancy watched her, and said, "Et voila! It took you long enough this time, Mom!"
Nathella said, "It's not that, honey; I got the joke immediately. It was just that Taberah had asked an abstract question in a way that looked simple and silly, and I had asked why he did that, and now I realized that our light bulb jokes work the same way. The canonical 'How many morons does it take to screw in a light bulb?' 'Five. One to hold the bulb, and four to turn the ladder,' is only incidentally about ladders or even lightbulbs. It's about stupidity trying to do things in an ineffective and unproductive manner, and it provides an illustration. Wouldn't you say so, dear?"
Aed said, "I was just thinking about what impact such a presentation might have on my teaching at school. A concrete capture of an abstract idea is harder to make than an abstract decision, and much more powerful to understand. Whether I have the political strength to get away with a non-standard treatment of content is --"
Clancy cut him off. "What was the question Taberah asked? Was it something like 'How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?'"
Taberah was sitting on the lawn, resting, thinking -- when he realized that he had never explored the computer. He had gone to a couple of its rooms when Aed had led him, but he had never set out to see what there was to be seen.
That was strange. When he was little, Taberah had explored every building he was allowed in with a sense of fascination; he still remembered the wonder with which he had imagined a door opening, beams of light showing from behind. He asked Aed if he could explore the computer; Aed would have liked to accompany him, but was thinking about a problem he was researching. So Aed said, "Go ahead. Touch the picture with a gold border."
Taberah went in; he was in a gallery of pictures, and reached out for one of them. He was drawn to it
was through it.
Taberah looked around. He was in an immense labyrinth; he started to fly around, the walls shifting and changing as he walked. There were statues, and fountains, and shadows lurking; there was something strange about it that felt like home.
Taberah turned a corner, and looked around. He was in a circular room with no doors; after looking around for a moment, he saw a knob at the side of a large black disc in the middle of the floor. He reached for it, and pulled; downwards was a brick tunnel, reaching into fathoms of darkness. After thinking a moment, Taberah left the annulus and tumbled down.
It was dark, or almost dark, around him; it looked like a room with candlelight. As his senses adjusted, Taberah heard crickets chirping, and realized there was the sound of the ocean; he looked around, and saw starlight. Which reminded him -- but he would have to do that later. He started to fly about, and realized that he was in a huge forest. He came to the water's edge and dove down.
It was scary to see the water close above him; Taberah held his breath before reminding himself that he was just surrounded by moving pictures. He went in and down, in and down.
After a little while of pitch darkness, Taberah could see a faint blue light. He flew towards it, and saw color dancing. He saw thin slivers moving by twos and threes -- fishes, he thought, and then went closer and saw that the swimming creatures were mermaids and tritons. Then he recognized the light: it was a vast city of sunken stone, an alien ruins. A mermaid swam by; he reached for her hand, and then he realized that he could not touch her. He followed her around, through streets and doorways and tunnels, between walls with runes glowing blue-white. The mermaid swam off; he opened one door, and saw a decorated room which made him forget he was underwater. Then he saw a strange picture on the wall; it puzzled him. He reached for it --
"Aed!" Taberah called. "Aed! What is this?"
Aed came running, muttering under his breath, "This had better be good!"
Aed looked at the screen -- a nude female avatar was writhing in sexual ecstasy -- and, after staring a moment, turned the video off. "That's a valerie," he said. "I should think that her purpose should be obvious enough."
Aed looked at Taberah, and then realized that he had misjudged the look in Taberah's eyes. Taberah had been staring at the valerie in fascination, but not exactly lust. He had rather been staring in puzzlement, and in the same horrid fascination that he had seen on Clancy's face, looking at a car wreck. Aed began to realize that an off the cuff response was not going to work here. After collecting his thoughts, Aed said, "Well, what do you think the picture was about?"
Taberah said, "I do not understand. She looked on her face like a woman wanting to be bounced, but she had her clothes off, and what a horrid body! Her breasts were enormous; they were ten times as large as beautiful breasts, and the rest of her body looked like a muscular boy's body, or a man's." He paused a moment, and then his face was filled with a flash of insight. "Aed! Was this valerie made for lust by a pedophile who wanted to pretend that he was looking at a woman instead of the boy's body he was looking at? He must have been trying very hard to fool himself, to have put on such huge, ugly breasts! But why make a picture to lust at in the first place?"
Aed mulled over this response, and mentally compared the valerie's body with his wife's -- and then looked into his own reactions. "Taberah," he said, "a valerie looks like that because that is what my nation thinks a beautiful woman looks like. I don't know how to explain it, but even though I try to love and honor my wife, the trend is strong to me; the valerie looks better to me."
Taberah turned green, and said, "Why? And I still don't understand why to make pictures for that purpose. Do you not think God's way of making women is beautiful?"
Aed thought for a moment and said, "Taberah, the culture we are in is sick. It is dying. This is one of many signs of its sickness."
Taberah said, "Then why not heal it?"
Aed said, "I don't know."
After taking some time to rest -- Taberah was still quite confused -- he asked Aed, "When was the day of your birth?"
Aed said, "It's really not that important."
Taberah said, "Why should a man of your age not want to tell when he was born?"
Aed said, "I'm old enough, Taberah. Why do you want to know?"
Taberah was puzzled; Aed had attained a very respectable age, and Taberah could not understand why he looked uncomfortable about it. Maybe to explore later...
"I want to go outside at night," Taberah said, "and gaze upon the stars and the crystalline spheres, and know the influence of the planets when you were born upon your life and at the present day."
Aed took a moment to parse this sentence, and said, "You want to cast my horoscope?"
"Yes."
"I thought you were a Catholic."
"I am."
"Then why do you want to cast my horoscope?"
"In order to understand you better."
"Don't you think there's something wrong with astrology?"
"What?"
"What do you think astrology is?"
"Natural philosophy, exploring the interconnected world in which we live."
"Taberah, astrology is not science. It's magic, or like magic. It belongs to the occult."
Taberah was trying to sift this apart. "Why?"
"It is divination. It does not work according to the basic laws of science. Astronomy is science; it studies how the heavens go. But it does not believe in influences, any more than looking at the entrails of a chicken will tell the future."
Taberah said, "Aed, what's the difference between science and magic?"
Aed was caught completely off guard. The disowning hostility of science to magic, The Skeptical Inquirer, the use of the word 'scientific' to mean 'rational' and 'working' and 'magic' as a pejorative metaphor for technology that did not appear to behave according to rational principles -- Taberah might as well have asked him to explain the difference between light and darkness. But his question deserved an answer; science does not include divination -- no, that would exclude weather forecasting; science provides theories and laws about how the world works -- so does magic; science is about exploring the forces of nature -- no, magic claimed to do that as well; science is reductionistic and magic holistic -- no, that was, if true, looking at the surface rather than the nature of things, and that wasn't true; it excluded psychology; science produces predictable results according to its theories that -- well, that also rules out psychology as science...
"Taberah, what can astrology tell you about a person?"
Aed listened to Taberah's explanation, and slowly stopped fighting a realization that this made more sense than what he was taught in his undergraduate psychology class, particularly behaviorism -- he felt he would be much better understood by Taberah's astrology than by a behaviorist account. Astrology at least accounted for the stuff of common sense -- emotions, tendencies, thoughts, good and bad timing -- while behaviorism reduced him to an unbelievably simplistic account of just a black box that does actions. Listening to Taberah's account sounded goofy here and there, and the idea that the influence of the stars and planets controlled matters was straight-out hogwash, but Taberah's explanation overall gave him the impression of a rational account believed by a rational mind.
Science did experiments rigorously, and its standards did not validate any claims of magic -- no, wait, the dice were loaded on that question; in Taberah's explanation, Aed saw a wisdom that just wasn't found in psychology; science did not meet the standards of interesting magic. No, that was not quite right; when did science really begin flourishing? At the same time as magic began flourishing, and often in the same people; Newton's discovery of physics was almost a vacation from his work in alchemy. The two enterprises were born out of the same desire, to control nature and gain power, and in both people would readily engage in practices that had been hitherto regarded as impious and disgusting, such as digging up and mutilating the dead. Still, there was a difference, a difference which Aed felt if he could not think. They --
Aed came to himself and said, "I can't tell you the difference between science and magic, Taberah. I can't tell you, but I do know it. You shouldn't be doing astrology. You shouldn't be doing divination. If you're not sure of whether something is science or magic, you can ask me." Aed thought about buying him a psychology text, but decided not to, at least not for the moment. The psychology text he'd read, he was beginning to realize, was parochial and in many ways backwards; of course it was written by psychologists at respected schools, but the zeitgeist was -- Taberah would encounter enough of it on its own, without having it embedded in something Aed told him to have replace his belief in astrology. Aed felt vaguely guilty about destroying a treasurehouse of lore, but let this go to the back of his mind. Once Aed had explained a simplified version of physics and astronomy, it was with some deflation that Taberah saw why Aed placed astrology among divination, but not weather forecasting.
Taberah stepped out that night, and lay on his back to look at the stars. He could not see many of them, and those badly, because of all the light. It seemed to him that something had departed from their song, but he could almost see something new. It was beautiful that the planets should revolve around the sun and not the earth; just as there were nine orders of angels -- the highest six of whom gazed continually on the glory of God, and only three of whom were sent out among men -- there corresponded nine planets, six of which were further out in the Heavens, the third of which contained life, and all of which revolved around the Light! His head went dizzy when he realized what it meant that he lived on a planet, and the sun was a star.
A representative from the Turing Society called Aed. "We hear that you have a program that is trying to pass the Turing test. I would like to administer the Turing test to your program at 2:00 PM on Tuesday, with observation. Is that acceptable to you?"
Aed's heart jumped, and he had to force himself to stand still. "Yes. I will look forward to it."
The test room was modified to support an arbitrary number of lurkers, and excitement built around the university. Quite a number of eyes were watching as the tester strode into the room. One of the contestant avatars looked like a unicorn; the other looked like a dragon. The tester managed to conceal her surprise, and said, "Good morning. How are you today?"
The unicorn said, "I am doing quite well. You?"
The dragon said, "I've had a lousy day, but it's getting better. I love playing the Turing game."
The tester said to the dragon, "Have you ever lost the game?"
The dragon said, "I've lost once, to a salesperson. I was really mad when the judge said I was a computer."
The tester repeated to the dragon, "Have you ever lost the game?"
The dragon repeated, "I've lost once, to a salesperson. I was really mad when the judge said I was a computer."
The tester asked the unicorn, "What about you? Have you ever lost the game?"
"Yes, frequently. I guess I don't sound very human."
The tester repeated her question to the unicorn. "What about you? Have you ever lost the game?"
The unicorn hesitated and said, "Um, is there a reason you're repeating the question?"
The tester did not answer. Instead, she said to the unicorn, "Tell me a bit about yourself."
The unicorn said, "Uh, I like woodworking, and I like to collect things. I've got a roomful of bottle caps, and I have one of the biggest collections of visual textures on the net. And I like fantasy."
The tester turned to the dragon and said, "What about you? How are you like?"
The dragon said, "I'm an optimist. It's too sunny out to be crabby. And I like collecting stamps."
The tester asked the dragon, "What is your philosophy of life?"
The dragon said, "My philosophy is one of many sides. There are many sides to life; there are many sides to being a person. I am many different things as the occasion merits."
The tester turned to the unicorn and asked, "What is your philosophy of life?"
The unicorn said, "Could you ask me another question? I'm kind of nervous now, and I'm having trouble thinking straight."
The tester said, "Ok. What is the one question you most fear me asking you?"
The unicorn shivered, and said, "The one you just asked?"
The conversation continued for two hours, unfolding, unfolding. It was about that time that the tester asked the unicorn, "What was your scariest childhood moment?" and the unicorn told a story about getting lost on a camping trip, and then twisting an ankle. Then the tester turned to the dragon, and said, "How about you?"
The dragon said, "Personally, I'm partial to seltzer water. And you?"
The tester pushed a button and left for the conference room Aed was in. She said, "You have quite an impressive achievement there, but you have a long distance to go before passing the Turing test. I tried to give two hours' testing to be sure, but I knew the dragon was a computer within five minutes of speaking with it. The clues that gave it away were --"
Aed cut her off and said, "Sorry, you guessed wrong."
"What?" the tester asked.
"You guessed wrong."
"Can you tell me with a straight face," she asked, "that the dragon was a human? Do I look that gullible?"
Aed gently said, "No, I'm not saying that the dragon was human. I'm saying that they were both computers. The dragon was merely an old version of the program."
The woman's jaw dropped.
Aed added, "I should also like to say that most of the ideas were my guest Taberah's; I mostly helped out. The achievement is his, not mine."
A knock sounded on the front door. "I wonder who that could be at this hour," Nathella said. "A reporter?"
She opened the door. There were several men outside, holding badges. They looked familiar, and smug; one of them said, "Officer Salisbury, Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization Services."
Nathella sank back. Aed said, "What are you doing here?"
Officer Salisbury said, "We have come to detain Taberah, before transporting him to his country of origin."
Aed thought for a moment about an English translation, and said, "What right do you have to do this?"
Salisbury said, "We are enforcing the law. If you --"
Taberah popped his head in the window and said, "What is this?"
Officer Salisbury said, "You need to come with us."
That shoots any remnants of search-and-seizure concerns, Aed thought. "Could he have a moment to gather up his possessions, at least?"
"That won't be necessary," the officer said. "We do not transport possessions beyond clothing worn. We are not a shipping service."
Aed, Nathella, Clancy, and Fiona each gave him a hug, their eyes filled with tears. Then Taberah was handcuffed and led away to a car. Nathella could see Taberah steeling himself against the ride.
In the middle of the night, the videophone rang. Aed got up, turned off the video, and said, "Yes?"
The voice on the line was unfamiliar. She said, "Hello, is this Aed Kinsella?"
Aed said, "Yes."
The woman said, "I'm calling to tell you that you and Taberah Kinsella have won the 2034 Turing Award for your joint work in artificial intelligence."
Aed blinked, and said, "I'm sorry; I think you have the wrong person."
The woman laughed, and said, "I'm positive I've got the right person. Can you get Taberah?"
"I'm sorry; I can't; Taberah is being 'detained' by the INS."
"What? Who are the INS? Do the police know about them?"
"Yes; the INS are part of the police. They are the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization Services, and they just took Taberah. He is now en route to a jail, to have his head and his beard shaved, be stripped and put in a de-humanizing uniform, and sit in a cold cell with nothing to do while he waits for the INS to decide what country to deport him to."
The woman was silent for a moment, and said, "What country is he from?"
"I don't know. Dr. Pabst, an anthropologist I know, said that he doesn't seem to be from any culture currently existing. He has learned English, but besides that -- why?"
The woman said, "Please wait a moment; I'll get back to you."
Aed had just crawled back into the covers when the phone rang. It was a journalist. And then another. And then another. After the first dozen times trying to explain that it was Taberah's work and not his, and that Taberah had been taken by the INS, he unplugged the phone.
At four in the morning, the doorbell rang. And then rang again. And again. Aed swore, and fumbled about for Nathella's keychain -- a keychain with pepper spray. He threw on a bathrobe, and padded out to the door. "Who is it?" he shouted through the door.
"Officer Salisbury, returning Taberah to your house."
"What?"
"When we came last night, we did not realize that he held a United Nations passport. We apologize for the inconvenience."
Aed opened the door. Taberah looked weary, frightened, relieved, and very happy to be back. Aed picked him up, and held him in thanksgiving. Then he said, "Let's both of us get some shuteye; we've got a speech to write."
There was a great deal of excitement around the house; friends and colleagues from church, the university, and other places stopped by, and some of them brought meals. Aed was excited by the activity; Nathella was wearied, and climbed into bed as soon as the last party had left.
One of the things that Aed insisted was that Taberah and all of the Kinsellas would appear through avatars, and that Taberah be referred to by a pen name -- John. This was big enough news that Aed did not want strangers on the street recognizing them from a compucast or rebroadcast, nor calling them up. While Aed was in the living room explaining details of the work to his colleagues, and Nathella and Clancy were occupied with the hospitality, Fiona was occupied with Taberah. The two of them were in the computer, talking about what Taberah's avatar should look like.
The question was a bigger question than it seemed at first. The avatar should not be recognizable as him, but it should reveal him, his bearing. "It should be a mask," Fiona said. "It should be like a Halloween costume, changing yourself in such a way that you shine through."
"What's Halloween?"
"Later, Taberah. We don't have time to explore that now, although you'll see in a few months. Now, to start off with, do you want a human-looking avatar, or a fantastic avatar?"
"I -- I don't know. Could I look at some of each?"
"Fiona said, "Hmm... There is something alien about you. Would you like to see what aliens look like?"
Taberah looked at several bodies of aliens, and recoiled. "Those aren't aliens," he said. "They're humans made to look grotesque. That's not what being alien is about."
"Ok," Fiona said. "How about fantasy? Do you like fantasy?"
They looked through a faun, a centaur, a unicorn, a dragon. "How old do you want to look?" Fiona said. Taberah didn't know. "Not that knight in armor; that would only be for going out to war. Not -- there!" he said, with excitement.
"You don't want that," Fiona said. "That's a court jester. They acted like fools for other people to laugh at."
"I want that! I was a court jester once!"
Fiona wondered about Taberah's statement, but this was not time for long questions. She looked through colors, and guided Taberah towards a jester's outfit that was darker and had more muted colors. It was unmistakably a jester's outfit, but it had an air of gravity about it -- which Taberah liked. "Ok," she said. "Now what do you want to eat?"
"Roast boar," Taberah said.
"Taberah, boar is awfully expensive, and there will be a lot of people there. I --"
"Give me two swords and I will kill one!" Taberah said, grinning.
"No, Taberah. You can't do that."
"Why not?"
"To start with, there aren't any boars here. You'll have to think of something else."
"Roast pig with an apple in its mouth!"
Aed stepped in. "Taberah, would you come out for a minute? There are some people who want to see you."
Fiona said to Taberah, "We can't have pork. There will be a lot of Muslims at that dinner."
"Is this country overrun by worshippers of Mahomet? Is there no one to drive them out?"
Aed stopped in the hallway. "Taberah, a couple of things. First, Muslims are not worshippers of Mahomet, any more than Christians are worshippers of John. They believe Mahomet was the greatest prophet, but not the man-god we believe Jesus was. Second, Muslims are citizens here. They are powerful, and their power is not all to the good -- it is awfully hard to do things that Islam disapproves of, and there have been not-so-subtle manipulations against Christian evangelists speaking to Muslims, for one thing -- but they are people, citizens of this country like anyone else, and not invaders. It is sad that Christianity has let Islam take its place, but the solution is not to run them off. Third, we may have wine available at th--"
Taberah interrupted. "Spiced wine, piping hot? And cider?"
Aed said, "Spiced wine, piping hot, and cider, if you want, might be possible, but the food has to be something that Muslims may eat." Aed declined to mention the headache that would be involved in getting alcohol served...
Taberah said, "Do Muslims eat hamburgers?"
Aed threw up his hands and said, "I have guests waiting. Why don't you have filet mignon? It's the same kind of animal as hamburger, only much better."
Taberah was tired after the people met. He had not realized the intense energy it takes to connect with people from another land -- he and the Kinsellas had gotten used to each other through intense contact. Nathella picked up on his fatigue faster than anyone else; she encouraged him to go to bed and get a good night's rest before the big day. Everything was in place; Aed had finally managed to convince the Turing society that he did not deserve the award, and accepted the privilege of introducing Taberah. Everyone slept lightly -- everyone but Taberah; he slept like the dead, and got up to protest the stiff clothes he wore to the banquet.
Taberah was cheered at the meat and drink; the meat reminded him of home. He was equally delighted to sit down and drink wine with Aed, and his spirits did not flag although people asked him questions that struck him as rather odd. At the end of the dinner, Taberah was pleased to have (so far as he could tell) avoided making any faux pas. He felt a sense of accomplishment, and felt at home.
The chairman of the Turing Society looked at Aed and pointed to his watch, and Aed nodded. He took a sip of water, and then climbed up the steps to the podium.
Nathella could not see that her husband was nervous, but she knew it. He had thrown out his introduction a dozen times. Neither of them were worried for Taberah, though; Aed and Taberah had worked out a speech, which Taberah memorized with remarkable facility.
"I would like to begin this introduction," Aed said, "by apologizing for giving an introduction not worthy of the occasion. I would very much like to give a traditional introduction, in which one perhaps starts by saying 'The person who is going to speak is a man who needs no introduction,' and then spends five or ten minutes detailing education, awards, and accomplishments. It would perhaps sound grander if I were to say that such an introduction was inadequate to him, but the truth is that I don't know enough about him to give an introduction of that sort. I don't know if he went to school at all; he appeared on my doorstep, became deathly ill, and has since then been turning my world upside down.
"His first surprise for me was in chess. I am rated at 1975, and when I invited him in, him looking dazed and confused, he took my chess pieces to the table (at least after I let him), and began to play his way -- at first I thought he didn't understand the game or was cheating, but then I realized he wasn't playing on a grid. He beat me five times in a row.
"Different members of our family have had conversations with him that left our heads spinning; my wife Nathella is the only one who has not had that experience, and I believe that is because of her ability to understand people. There's only been one time that I've been able to understand Taberah better than her, but I won't detail that here.
"Taberah is brilliant, and approaches life in ways that would never occur to me. Wherever he comes from, and wherever he was educated, he somehow had the intelligence to look at the problem of artificial intelligence in a way nobody else had seen it before. If I cannot vouch for his education or accomplishments, I can vouch for this one accomplishment. Taberah has worked into a special place in my heart, and not only because of his brilliance. Without further ado, here he is."
Taberah strode up to the podium; on the screen behind him, his avatar looked quizzical and dignified at the same time. "I was going to say," he began, "that my discovery has taught us nothing about human intelligence. But I began to reason, and realize that it has.
"Men have always wanted to create other men like themselves. I once wished to make an assemblage of gears that would make a mechanical human, and I saw no reason why not. If gears could make a clock, with continual motion controlled according to its construction, why could the best crafted gears not make a man? Certainly myths came of gods who had made mechanical men. So I do not find it to be at all surprising that, when people found a way to make a machine that could do arithmetic and logic, they thought they had made something that could think.
"Chess is something that is difficult for people to do. So it was thought, 'If we can only make a computer that can beat the best humans at chess, then we will have achieved intelligence.' The day has long past when a human could beat the best computer, but if that achievement has taught us anything about human intelligence, it is that humans do not play chess like a computer. Making better and better computer chess players did not make computers intelligent any more than making more and more realistic-looking statues will make them alive.
"Conversation is something humans do, so Alan Turing, a brilliant mathematician, thought, 'If we can only make a computer that can pass for human in conversation, then we will have achieved intelligence.' Now the day has come when a computer has passed for human in conversation, and if it has taught us anything about intelligence, it is that intelligence goes beyond conversation as it goes beyond chess. Those are both activities humans can do, but mimicking or even beating human performance does not a person make, any more than a collection of lifelike statues can be improved to the point of achieving life.
"I do not think that this calls for a new test to determine intelligence. I think it calls for a realization that human intelligence is too rich and too deep to reduce to a simple test. When a test has been proposed to measure intelligence, the test gains a life of its own, and suddenly people stop thinking about intelligence, and start thinking about how to pass the test. Chess playing programs became sophisticated with speed and advances that were not even approximated by efforts to understand how humans play chess, let alone how humans think.
"But this is enough. It is bad speaking to cram so much into your audience's heads that things are falling out; I have criticized enough for an award recipient. The field of artificial intelligence is a fertile area of thought which has brought many good things; even if artificial intelligence is never achieved, its failure will have enriched the soil of human endeavor. I thank you for this award and the other assistance the Turing Society has provided me, and, Aed, Nathella, Fiona, and Clancy for their help. God bless, and have a good evening." He returned to his place.
The chairman of the Turing Society stepped up to the microphone and said, "There is one more thing, Mr. Kinsella. The Turing Society has a fund, out of which to give prizes to its award recipients. The funding might buy research equipment, or a sabbatical, or perhaps access to online research libraries. Is there something we can get for you? Do you need a home?"
Taberah said, "I have everything I need now. But if there was one thing I could have -- do you have a troubadour's lute?"
There was a moment's pause; the chairman, Dr. Bode, spoke on his cell phone for a moment and then said, "One of the members of the audience has one now, which she will lend you while another is delivered." A small woman walked up; Taberah was puzzled, as she was holding a small black bag, but otherwise empty-handed -- there was no room to conceal a lute, even a small one. She reached into the bag, and pulled out a thick black belt and two long black gloves, long enough to cover an elbow. He could see that there were was something else in the bag. She looked at him and said, "Put the belt around your waist, and the gloves on your hands."
Taberah did so, feeling some puzzlement.
"Now," she said, "play as if you were holding a lute."
Taberah looked at her, confused.
"Like this," she said, moving her hands in a strumming motion.
Taberah moved his hands, as if to play a chord -- and jolted in surprise as notes sounded. Then he moved his hands again. There were some sounds of jarring dissonance, like a piano being played by frostbitten fingers losing their numbness, and then a simple, high, pure, aching sound. It pierced by its beauty, and with the music, words, in a voice that filled the room:
Once there was a little lady,
Fair and pure and elfin bright.
Her light skin shone like burnished silver,
Blazing light throughout the night.Her soul it was a filled with music,
Her body was a filled with dance.
Her long hair was black like ravens,
All blazing was her countenance.
Taberah's otherworldly song filled an hour; in his song, he carried with him a feeling of home, a moment of Heaven, and all of the strangeness of the land about him, of his aching at no place that felt home, vanished. The music he made in his trance brought its listeners into another time, into another world; to those in the room, the song so filled their consciousness that they did not think of anything else. When the song began, the netcast of the awards ceremony was brought into focus, and the avatar who had looked slightly strange speaking about artificial intelligence now fit perfectly into place: a court jester -- and more than a jester -- holding a lute, telling a tale and weaving a song.
When it was over, even the silence was musical, because it bore the silent echoes of the music's spirit. Taberah walked back to his seat, and asked, "Can we go home?"
With that, the meeting was over.
It was the first day of classes; Aed had returned home late, to a house filled with a marvelous scent. It smelled of tomato, and basil, and bacon, and beef. Clancy said grace at Aed's invitation, and they began to pass the pasta.
Fiona looked at Taberah, and said, "Where are you from, Taberah? I don't think you've ever told me that."
Taberah said, "I am from -- Provençe, or at least half from there. My father is a merchant, and we have travelled to the ends of the world, and beyond -- but never to a place so strange as this. I am used to mountains, and seas, and strange people and barbarian tribes -- even worshippers of Mahomet --"
Aed said, "Muslims."
"-- even Muslims, but there are many things here that are strange to me."
"Like what?" Fiona said.
Taberah thought for a moment, and said, "It is hard for me to think of and harder to say in words."
Nathella said, "Can you think of it in your words in your own language? And then maybe translate?"
Taberah concentrated for a moment and said, "No, I can't. Not even in my own language. I will tell you later. After I think."
Aed said, "Don't worry too much if you can't answer. It was a friendly question, not a probe."
Taberah said, "It is a friendly question, and a probe, and a good question. That is why I want to answer it. Maybe after I research on the computer."
Fiona said, "Taberah, have you ever been to my Dad's campus? Tomorrow's a half day, and I could take you there. You might see more of the world."
Taberah said, "I would be happy to do that. But ooh! I miss home. I have never had a place that was completely home. Whether riding away hotly pursued, or haggling down the price of salt, or opening an illuminated manuscript -- I was at home for a moment, but over time not at home. Even in stealing a relic from a nearby cathedral --"
Fiona said, "You stole a relic from a cathedral?"
Taberah said, "Yes. The saint wanted to move; otherwise, he wouldn't have let his relics be moved. And I can move swiftly and silently --"
Fiona said, "Taberah, would you steal a fork from this house?"
Taberah looked surprised. "Never!"
Fiona said, "Why on earth would you be willing to steal a relic?"
Taberah had no real response to this question. He said, "If another city had a relic, and you needed it, wouldn't you assist it to your place?"
Fiona said, "I can't explain all my reasons why not, because I have to go to bed in four hours. But to start it off, that would be dishonorable."
Taberah thought, and said, "I'll have to think about that. I never met a knight who thought it dishonorable to steal a relic. Ok, I know how to explain. A relic does not belong to a living man or a place; it belongs to God and to the saint. Stealing a relic is a very different matter from stealing corn or grain. The corn really belongs to the person who has it; the relic belongs to the saint, and then to the saint's followers -- so if the people here worship a saint and want his relic more than the people where it is kept, then if the saint allows the relic to be moved, it should be moved."
Fiona said, "I can't believe this rationalizing. The bigger a sin, the more rationalizing there is, and you have rationalized an unholy theft on top of starting it in the first place!"
Nathella turned to Fiona and said, "Honey, I don't understand Taberah, but he's not rationalizing. He does not have a defensive air about him. And something tells me that he would not steal anything from this house -- nor steal anything from another place and bring it here. Right, Taberah?"
Taberah said, "Yes. I would never steal if it were dishonorable."
Clancy looked around and said, "Taberah, did y