World’s End
Book One of The Seed Mother
Chapter Seventeen: A Community and a Nation Evolve
The third year passed into the fourth without incident. That fourth spring, largely due to the organizing efforts of the Brothers bolstered by the Crafters’ Society, the isolated trading parties had now become an organized group of traders and artisans who had made for themselves a near-circular route that would travel to every settlement that would have them during the warm season. Every spring thereafter would see the crafters and artisans plying their trades and gathering the news at festivals held all along their circuit, joining the caravan near their home places and dropping out when they had come full circle.
In that same year, applicants to join and be trained by the Brothers began coming from other territories. The mapmaking and map-revising Brothers were also receiving requests for a more detailed set of maps of as much of the island nation as had yet been explored and documented.
One faction, however, opted out of joining the larger community, saying they had no interest in joining with others for anything other than the most unavoidable contact. They were the fundamentalist communities of the southwest, who were now calling themselves “The Religious” and had named their territory Gloriland. As language became fluid over time, words and meanings evolved, and outside the group the name the isolationists called themselves began to change, first becoming “the Religes” and then just “Lidges.” Whatever they were called, they remained aloof from the inter-territorial socializing. They did not invite the trade circle to make a stop in their territory.
In the course of their wanderings toward Gloriland, however, many of those who ended up there had taken with them a number of sheep, goats, and other livestock, and once they’d found out about the trade route, they had sent some of their folk to join the caravan, bearing cured cheeses, leather goods, and woven articles from scarves to sturdy winter clothing. They were shy and reticent, kept mostly to themselves, and offered quality merchandise, and so they were welcomed by the towns and the other traders. Unlike those other communities, though, they held no festivals of their own, they did not welcome outsiders and discouraged travel by strangers into their home country. They permitted the annual visits of the Brothers only grudgingly.
The intense season of winter storms had been decreasing in severity with each cycle of the seasons, but they continued to bring travel to a virtual halt from mid-November to March, making the seasons when travel was possible busier every year with trade and communications between all the other communities in the new territories. Glen had asserted that once trade routes were established and made safe, the entire economy could grow and flourish. And he was right. It did.
Even so, given the distances and the modes of transportation available, as the settlements increased the frequency of their seasonal contacts with others, those disparate communities were making use of the solitary winter months to further their distinct crafts and develop a unique character within their own cultures, so that as they grew closer in some ways, they grew farther apart in others.
Poplar Bluff, for example, now on the island’s east coast, had become a community of crafters and artisans, especially after the discovery that the earth shocks had opened up a sizable new vein of potter’s quality clay. Over time the export of dinnerware and other functional pottery became that settlement’s primary source of income, with masonry goods from floor tiles to brickwork a close second. A seaport was established, plans were being made to enclose an area where the submerged land was flat and the sea shallow for the manufacture of salt. And everyone finally stopped using the old name and it became just Popular.
Once people began to recover from the initial shock of the Change, people and communities across Ozarkia began to examine the potential for other industries to serve a growing population, and to assess how to promote a more civilized society in general. Education was a prominent concern island-wide, since schools and colleges throughout the area had all suffered from some physical destruction as well as the loss of much of their faculty and staff.
As the certainty grew that help would not be coming from any outside entity in the near future if at all, the preservation and passing on of knowledge became a grave consideration. Mumbros was one of many territories addressing the issue, and toward the end of the summer before, Moira and the Brothers had worked to identify all the scholars and teachers who survived. Over that winter they made plans for an all-island meeting to discuss developing a single, national educational system. More important was the need to settle on what might be the shape of that education and how existing knowledge could be preserved and enhanced. The meeting was to take place in late spring of year four, at a location to be determined.
A major problem to be solved and which was recognized in every territory almost at once, was that much of the education that had been taught previous to the Change was no longer pertinent to the state of things in present time – or for the foreseeable future. Whatever changes might befall them in the future, it was a certainty that it would not be changing back to what once was.Therefore, what had been American History, World History, and World Geography had become a study of the annals of an ancient world. Technology, too, had been reduced to an analysis of what might still be possible, given the shortage of replacements for dying or doomed electronics. New sources of raw materials existed only in dreams. Newly proposed courses would mostly be related to researching, investigating and mapping the new demographics of this vastly diminished nation. In the sciences, emphasis would be put on locating and mining former landfills and other salvage sites for materials and processes that had once been commonplace but were now precious, if they existed at all.
Using a courier service maintained by the Brothers, whose members took time away from winter training to provide security and vital communications, over the winter the scholars were able to select a meeting place and organize an agenda. After some territorial wrangling, they chose a suitable town near to a central point of the island, one which had an existing university branch and a library housed in structures that had suffered but not fallen. The town, which was more or less intact, had once had a longer name but was now referred to as The Plains. The people there had worked hard to regain basic services and had already restored most of the main campus facilities. That community offered itself as a place to restart a program of higher education and to make their programs available to other communities. Early in summer they had sent word that students from every region were welcome to journey there in the coming fall, to arrive ahead of the winter winds, and plan to spend the winter term on site. Due to the mayhem just passed there was no shortage of vacant housing that could be made available, they said. Students could work out their tuition by assisting in the rebuilding and rehabbing efforts. In fact, as Moira observed, The Plains would probably be on the short list when the new nation chose a site for its national capitol.
Once the date for a meeting was selected, Moira said she would head up the attendees from Falling Spring, a contingent that included Ellen, veterinarian Haley Slocum, nurse practitioner Alice Compton, biologist Tish Beebe, and chemist Annie LeBeaux. In one of the longest town meetings yet, just before the gathering of scholars, Moira asked the people what they thought were the most important educational needs of the still evolving community. They agreed, for instance that mathematics and science should be, for the most part, untouched, as should language arts. History, social studies, political science texts, on the other hand, would have to begin anew.
“Geography is also a brand new field, as is cartography,” mused Rickard, which prompted an excited response from Glen.
“Then we must teach it as an exploratory science, a research field. As soon as we get some folks trained in the principles, we can take them out to do field work,” he said. “It’ll be great hands-on training, and we need the information. The Brothers can only do so much without solid science behind them.”
“You’ll need to find someone who has transits and such and some training in surveying if you’re going to get all the way into it,” Steven added. “But even without a surveyor you can use the measurements from those old highway maps to make new ones.”
Sonny Akinato, of the bus people, said he had such skills and had brought what he could salvage of equipment he had found as they had walked out of the devastation. He suggested that as well as standard academics, the conference should consider the need for a trade school path of study as well as the study of the abstract arts.
“Virtually all the jobs for ordinary people in the future will be in fields different from what we know now. Granted, those who remember the time before have many things to offer. What we must do now is prepare for the days and years ahead, where the knowledge and the needs will be different, and those memories, if not captured, will be gone,” he said.
The meeting produced at least half a dozen discussions among smaller groups that lasted well into the night. By the time Moira and the delegates headed toward the meeting at The Plains, they had designed most of what they hoped would become a workable and practical curriculum. But in those early morning hours before their departure, the earth again trembled and shook, an unsettling reminder that the changes had not necessarily come to an end.
* * *
The conference was both exciting and fruitful, for the most part, and by the end of the first day several matters had been settled to the satisfaction of most attendees. Depending on the coursework selected, student fees for supplies would be paid in traded labor. No tuition would be charged, other than a yearly fee to the college town from all the territories whether or not they sent students every term.
All the territories agreed on the basics except for the Southwestern colony, whose delegates announced at the start that they would be providing their own schooling and would pay no fees to the “heathens.” Their small delegation marched precipitously from the meeting after being firmly assured that aside from a survey of world religions, there would be no coursework offered based solely on either the King James Bible, which they requested, nor the Koran, which they were certain was in the plan after spotting someone who looked suspiciously as if they might be Muslim, wearing a turban and carrying a suspiciously large volume. (It was the Sikh man from the bus people, who was a mathematician. He was carrying a dictionary.).
When asked, Moira told the conference-goers that Mumbros was pitifully short of both scholars and master artisans, and that the few they had, including those at the conference, were too elderly, too unwell or too badly needed at home to be able to spend the winter months teaching at the school. However, she said, those who excelled in certain fields would be welcome to come to Mumbros should they desire advanced training or fieldwork. Of expertise in those fields they were well supplied. And they would be happy to train younger scholars to teach in their place.
The meeting adjourned with an agreement to begin classes as soon as a catalog and a faculty were assembled and to meet again the following April to review how the first term had gone. High on the agenda of that next meeting would also be a discussion on what a national government might look like and whether some form of the U.S. Constitution would serve. Everyone was in agreement that local rules governing individual territories should be put together by those who would have to put up with them.
In Mumbros that subject was already a hot topic. As early as the community’s second summer, the need for more structure than the weekly town meeting provided had become painfully obvious. A new problem arose nearly every day that needed taking up by those most suited and/or most interested in the outcome, and as often as not, too many hands and opinions only hindered resolution. So a group was formed to draw up the skeleton of a village charter with the understanding that it could be changed or added to when needed, and other groups could either volunteer or be appointed to take up specific issues as they arose and decide whether to deal with them directly or bring them before the larger group.
In most cases though, people were content to let the founders, that original group of Moira’s family and close associates, have the last word on the day-to-day issues. And Moira’s tenure as the village’s leader went unquestioned. The founders had created the village and were, after all, the most invested in keeping order and maintaining a sustainable structure. And Moira’s image still held as the last official representative of what had once been the most powerful nation on earth. The extended family met frequently over dinner to analyze those matters of governance left to their discretion, including which issues to delegate and which to keep to themselves. Glen, as head of the Brothers, reported directly to Moira, as did Ellen, Steven, Annie, Alice, and Rickard. One night at supper Ric expressed it thus:
“We’ve never pretended we want to rule over everyone. But we have the opportunity, as this community settles into sustainable ways, to guide people toward sensible, humane choices and away from zealots of any stripe. We only have the one chance to get this right, because we’re getting older every day and every season brings more young ones into the world who have no sense of a history before this time. That should be our first priority, to use our influence to guide our part of the world forward. Otherwise, what are we here for?”
Conversation over dinner was lively another night, this one after a teamster attending the town meeting mentioned he had observed that training the transportation animals was both easier and harder since they had all gotten smarter. The varied reactions to his statement revealed that many people had observed changes in all the sentient beings around them, changes that defied explanation. The domesticated four-leggeds, from horses to cats, seemed to understand human language and even thoughts a great deal better than before and could even follow simple instructions. Creatures out in the wild had developed some new and often disturbing traits as well. There was, of course, the matter of the feral pigs, whose population had grown and become more ferocious as the traits of the wild Ossabows had dominated the gene pool. Even though black bears and a few cougars had survived, the pigs had become the most dangerous predators to threaten human populations. Even the village’s own jovial Tamworth swine were terrified of their wild cousins.
The Brothers had the most encounters with them on their travels throughout the territories, and had begun working to drive them away from populated areas. At the meeting, the discussion turned to a stirring up of tales about pig encounters and away from voicing any notion that perhaps some humans were also beginning to get a bit smarter, or stranger, or a bit of something that no one could quite put a finger on. The village leaders, especially the first family, were reluctant to talk about the phenomenon. They were studying it, but warily. It was obviously not happening to everyone but some were experiencing things they found very odd, and occasionally hair-raising.
Ellen observed one night over her plateful of late greens and well cured wild ham that she believed some people, just a few, were developing more acute intuitive abilities. Some had developed a high level of empathy; others could diagnose illnesses or had a heightened sense of direction. Still others seemed to be able to predict weather. With her confession, it soon turned out that everyone in the family had noticed things but no one had been sure enough of what they’d seen to mention it. Glen confessed that he was unable to get lost. “I’d been noticing that even before I came here, but I thought it was just Willie, my horse. But I’m pretty sure I have a touch of it, too.”
“Well, Moira and I weren’t sure but what we’ve been hallucinating,” Ellen admitted, “but we both seem to have developed a bit of the healing touch. And I’d almost swear the herbs are teaching me more about how to use them than I ever learned from the books, or even from experience. I know that sounds crazy, but…”
“No, it’s real. I know it is,” said Joel, interrupting. “I’ve been teaching my dog to do some neat tricks because he’s extra smart. But as soon as he catches on, it’s like pretty soon all the dogs can do it. Really. It’s very weird. What do you think is causing it?”
Moira shook her head. “I wouldn’t hazard a guess, except that we were warned from the beginning to embrace unexpected gifts and avoid unintended consequences. I’m thinking we should, for the time being, just keep quiet about this. Just watch and listen. Take notes. And we’ll come back to it once we’ve taken the pulse of the community.”
They all nodded and turned their attention back to their plates. It would be some time before the matter was discussed aloud again, although when a moment of oddness occurred, they would glance up, often as not, and see another family or community member meeting their eyes as if to say, “Did you see that? I saw it. Did you?”
Even as odd events continued to multiply, the family held the knowledge close to their chests. It was a wise choice, given that as time went on, as surely as gifts were appearing among some individuals in the community, they were less apt to be found in the larger population. And when they did show themselves in that population, those “talents” were often uncontrolled, and sometimes wild and dangerous.
After a serious fall that injured but did not break her leg, the family again urged Tish to move up the hill where she could receive better care. She refused, saying, “If I can’t live near my garden, what good does it do me to live?” So a work crew was formed, a safer and more serviceable cabin was designed, they built her a new ‘hut’ next to the old, and she was very happy – well, as happy as she got.
She lived in her newly designed quarters, puttering in her garden and guiding the occasional student for more than a decade before age and illness finally took her. By then, hemp fiber, hemp oil, bamboo and the products made from them all had become Mumbros’ largest exports other than the increasingly known true-issue seeds. Hemp-oil and its distillates fueled lamps, lubricated wheels and gears and provided for a variety of needs all over the village and beyond. Steven had gotten his shirt of cloth made from hemp and cotton. And more than a dozen of Mumbros’ brightest young scholars had mastered the knowledge of biochemistry and half of those could also call themselves by titles from herbalist to chemical engineer.
Tish was also said to have been at least partly responsible for the smooth but volatile brew cooked up by millwright and barrel-cooper Lon Brixey from the generous portion of grain that arrived from the Amish each fall. They called the product a wheat ale, and it was for this, oddly, that the two of them would be best remembered in the decades to come.
Moira valued the cranky old woman most for the store of knowledge she brought and saw her most important contribution as her ability to teach, or more like download, all her training and expertise into the upcoming generation. Through her, and with Annie, Ellen, Alice and Haley’s help, Falling Spring also became known for its advanced studies in the sciences, as it trained the professionals who traveled from over west at the University of The Plains, where a faculty of surviving academics from all over the island had gathered. Civilization and a well-educated populace were returning as the light of knowledge began to spread across the new island nation of Ozarkia.
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