'There could be more,' he said dryly.
We both laughed.
8
All societies are evil, sorrowful, and inequitable, and always will be. Therefore, if you wish to help the world, you must first learn to live in it and then teach others the same.
The fields and gardens outside the school were sodden with the late fall rain, and all the students' boots rested on the spooled rack under the convective heater. The smooth, dark paving stones of Hybra, beyond the waist-high stone walls that surrounded the gardens and lawns and playing fields, shimmered with a reflective coat of rain. I looked down from the dais at the fifteen students - nine girls and six boys - seated on their pillows on the polished gold of the wooden floor, their lap desk stands set aside after their concrete mathematics lessons. The hint of dried apples and lavender perfumed the heavy air.
With a slow, deep breath, I looked at the book, although I knew the phrases by heart after eight years.
'Knowledge begets power.
'Power begets force.
'Force is applied from ignorance.'
With a smile of habit, I looked at the blond youth on the end. 'Sergol? Would you finish it?'
'Knowledge leads to ignorance.' He frowned, and his thin lips turned down.
'You wonder how knowledge begets ignorance?' I nodded at the redhead beside him. 'Wryan?'
'The twofold path,' Wryan said confidently. 'The total of knowledge is greater than the ability of any individual to assimilate. Because an individual does not comprehend what he or she does not know, the selection of knowledge by an individual is based on the knowledge possessed. The greater the knowledge possessed, the less likely the individual to discover ignorance. The less the knowledge possessed by the individual, the more likely ignorance is to be revealed. Thus, greater knowledge leads to greater influence by ignorance, and greater ignorance to greater influence by knowledge.' Wryan bestowed a smile on Sergol.
Sirena - the girl to the left of Wryan - concealed a wince.
Sergol fidgeted on his pillow as the wind splashed fat raindrops on the clear permaglass of the high windows, and as the indirect breeze wafted through the room, bringing the faint scent of winter fern and pushing out the lavender.
'You doubt that all knowledge conceals greater ignorance?' I asked. Questions would not have been appropriate for older students, at the collegium in Mettersfel or in the Hall of Dzin in Henvor, but by questions must masters draw out the misconceptions of the young before they blossom into the knowledge-based power that is in truth ignorance.
'Enlighten my ignorance, Master Tyndel.' Sergol bowed his head, keeping his eyes properly downcast.
'You do not believe that knowledge conceals ignorance,' I said mildly. There was no use in anger; it would only have bewildered him and weakened me. To those who seek knowledge, one piece of knowledge by itself is not enough, Sergol. As the Abbo Sanhedran said, "Of making great knowledge there is no end, and much study, and the knowledge therefrom is a weariness of the flesh and a deadening of the spirit." And we know what happened to the ancients, do we not?'
From the end of the second row, Fyonia bobbed her head vigorously.
Keeping my distaste for such unseemly enthusiasm from my lips, I inclined my head to the stocky daughter of Hybra's most senior truffler, refraining from touching my beard, finally beginning to show some gray, some visible indication of age and wisdom.
'The ancients wrested the secrets from the depths of the earth and from the hearts of the stars, and with those secrets they banished sickness, death, and all forms of discomfort. And sickness, death, and discomfort gathered together and created the demons, and the demons destroyed the ancients.' Fyonia paused, then added conversationally, 'Most of them, but not all, or we wouldn't be here.'
The three bright faces in the back row were blank, as those new to the school always were when the subject first arose.
'The dangers of knowledge are threefold.' I nodded to Katya.
'There is the danger of not learning; the danger of learning too much; and the danger of not understanding,' she answered.
'But it is not like that, Master Tyndel.' Sergol's words tumbled out. 'The big trout like the black worms. I put a black worm on the hook. I catch a trout. One piece of knowledge ... one trout. I know that there is much I do not understand, but how can that one bit of knowledge lead to ignorance and evil?'
It was a fair question. That I had to admit to myself because I had asked it, years back. Yet I had been older than Sergol, years older, though my words had doubtless been more polished.
'Now, Sergol, you seek one trout. What happens when you are older? When you must provide your share of food for the town?' I shrugged. 'You understand, but not all people do. And the ancients did not. So, they found ways to put many hooks on their lines, and ways to make their lines strong enough to hold many fish. In time, there were not enough fish. Then they grew the fish in ponds, but the ponds changed the land, and soon there were not enough birds to kill the insects, and many people sickened. Then the ancients killed the insects, and more of the birds died, and many small animals. To feed the people, and there were many people in the ancient times, their knowledge-seekers planted corn and maize and rice everywhere, and in many places the ground was too dry and blew away, and in others it was too wet, and the crops rotted. And people died. So many people died that there were not the numbers to count them.' I paused.
Sergol was trying hard not to shake his head.
'That was when the ancients harnessed the powers of the demons, and the demons turned wastes and chaff and bark from fallen trees into food, good food, and for a time, all was well. For a time.' I smiled and waited.
'But... that was better than people starving, was it not? People were not meant to starve, were they, Master Tyndel?' asked Sergol.
'Nor were fishes or birds. Too much of any good ceases to be good. All of you in the front row. Write me an essay for tomorrow on the excess of good.' I offered a frown, not entirely for theatrical effect. 'Now ... out with your physical science assignments.'
I wheeled the projection screen into place and waited, ignoring the slumped shoulders and the not-quite-hidden glares at Sergol, who still smiled brightly.
Physical science was straightforward enough, since we were dealing with the basics of material structure and chemistry, and not questions of Dzin. After science came language and rhetoric.
At the end of the day, after sweeping the floor, mopping it, polishing it with the cloth buffer, and setting up for the morning, I adjusted my hat and stepped out of the school into the rain that was more than a drizzle but less than the downpour that had pelted the roof tiles earlier in the afternoon.
The faint whine of a cart rose over the whisper of the rain and the light breeze. I watched as it lurched slightly - usually the sign of a fuel cell close to the end of its life - and several of the large pumpkins and squash in the carry bin rolled, but the driver did not turn, and I could not make out who it might have been through the rain.
I walked on, my waterproof and hat more than enough protection against the fast-falling drops, still wondering about the questions Sergol had asked. Scarcely questions from a truffler's and fisherman's family, and certainly the first so well posed in years. Yet Sergol had been blissfully unaware of the impact of his questions, even as the others in the first row had not. Fyonia and Wryan - they had understood, as had even some of those in the back, who had not heard my words before. So why had Sergol not understood?
'The unexpected only means that which you have not expected.' That was what my old tutor Manwarr would have said, and he would have been right.