We sailed slowly and carefully towards our target, the Garcia-17 archipelago, a bleak wilderness of asteroids and islands with no civilization and no known natural resources, several days from any trade routes. Like hundreds of other locations in Wildspace, there was no reason for any sensible person to go there. But here I was, preparing to face the unknown hazards of an ecosystem charted by elf scouts decades earlier, with an untested crew of civilians and weaker adventurers, because it might contain the right type of turnip.
Our mission seemed insane at first, but after talking with Gladys and thinking about Martin's plans for the League, I had realized why it was actually brilliant. Martin Cooper, the great and powerful wizard that made a special study of people and their cultures, was working to turn the League from a simple set of nonaggression treaties and trade deals into an actual multiracial civilization. In order to do that, he needed to create safe spaces where people of all races could meet and bond, and one of those places was a restaurant in Boomport. He was designing the restaurant's food so that all the people in the League, no matter what their biology was, could safely eat it. This was a hard problem, and it would require a lot of exotic ingredients. Like wildspace turnips.
Gladys was the one who understood the chemistry of this, but I was the one who understood Martin's long-term mission and appreciated the social value of bonding over food. If our mission was a success, then Martin's plan would be one step closer to working. The people of the League would be brought closer together, one meal at a time. And if my personal mission was a success, then I would be the one who helped him make it work. We would create a great civilization together, as husband and wife, and our story would echo down the centuries.
I cheered myself up by imagining that the land ahead of us would one day be tamed and civilized by people from the League. In a hundred years, there might be a farming village here, with people living their lives, making their stories of carving a home from the wild frontier. And if I was very lucky, one of them might remember me as a founding mother of her civilization, a person who was there at the beginning and helped make it all happen.
But before that, we all had to focus on not being eaten by whatever beast lurked among the floating space rocks. We were all on high alert, even Mary, whose instincts would have been to admire the 'natural beauty' of this horrible storyless place until something ate her. I started barking out orders, not because anyone needed to be told their jobs again, but because the magic of my bardic voice would keep everyone focused, confident, and better at their tasks.
We were approaching in a quiet careful way, avoiding any unnecessary sounds, lights, or smells, in hopes of detecting any predators or other wildlife before we were detected. But we were openly flying our colors, and not being overly stealthy, because we would not want to get mistaken for raiders or pirates by any new outpost or prospector's camp that might have sprung up somehow. Anyone affiliated with the League should have registered their presence, but there are a lot of people in Freespace that are not part of the League or do not fill out its paperwork, and most of them will be peaceful if you avoid startling or antagonizing them.
But as expected, there was no sapient life. Just a food chain that consisted mainly of goats and owlbears.
Good tactics rarely make good stories. If you end up in a desperate and dramatic fight for your life on a mission like this, it means that you are an incompetent fool. Our campaign of owlbear extermination was designed to be careful and methodical, conserving our resources and generating no real risk or drama or suspense. We mostly succeeded in this goal.
Our tactics were always the same: one 'lone' person baited it to attack, focusing entirely on defense. An initial surprise volley of five shots or spells from the hidden crew surprised it as it swept in, and then we peppered it with more attacks as soon as we could.
We killed four on the first day, with Gladys taking a few hits and me using a couple spells to heal her, as expected. On the second day, Gladys was the bait for the first two, and after she got hit twice, we switched up, with Sofonisba being the bait. Then we killed three more without her getting hit.
With the ninth kill, we had sailed the entire archipelago. Gladys and Sofonisba were confident, based on the terrain and hunting territories, that we had gotten them all, but I had us circle around more to be sure. After a few hours with no attacks or sightings, we docked the ship near a grassy clearing. Unlike our first landing back on the centipede island, there were no sudden gusts of wind and the docking went smoothly.
In addition to furs and steaks and trophies like fangs and claws, the nine owlbears we killed yielded seven usable gallbladders, two of which were exceptional enough to make a Keoghtom's Ointment. This was a very good haul. Amateur adventurers usually think that the only way to get rich is to go into dungeons to try to find gold and ancient artifacts, but professionals hunt magical creatures for body parts and make their own magic items. If we returned now and sold the ointment and healing potions we would make from the gallbladders, then the sale proceeds plus the island-clearing and scouting bonus from Space Command would more than cover all voyage costs, including the depreciation of the ship, and give us a decent profit for very little risk. Not bad for a maiden voyage with a new crew where we spent most of the time learning how to fly the ship and work as a team.
Gladys started the work of brewing up the healing items. Mabellyne cooked the prime steaks from from the last couple of owlbears we had killed. This time, there was no drama or difficulty with the cooking. Gladys ran a couple quick tests to make sure that the meat was safe, and then Mabellyne just made a fire, inspected the steaks to make sure nothing had penetrated the muscle, cooked them medium-rare in a big cast-iron skillet, and forked the rare hunks of meat directly onto a serving platter.
While the meal was cooking, I inspected the ship and everyone else set up camp and a perimeter. Then we took the time for a well-deserved meal, all together, in the ship's wardroom.
The meat was tough and gamey, of course, because owlbears don't have any spare fat for marbling, and use all their muscles, but it was simple comfort food nonetheless.
The dinner conversation ended up taking a strange turn. For some reason, Mary didn't feel like talking about the owlbear fights, possibly because her part was just firing a crossbow out of portholes. Instead, we all started talking about other fights and adventures we had been in, but then, Mary had to ask us about why we were after Martin. In her mind, we were apparently too good for him, or something.
Talking about our personal desires was bad enough, but then somehow the conversation turned to cultural taboos. Always a rocky topic in mixed company. I must admit that I did not handle myself well. I had dropped my guard, probably because I was a bit tired after so much fighting and switching shifts. I decided to excuse myself, used up more of my magic power to heal Gladys completely, and then started a long rest on the ship while the rest of the crew explored the island on their broomsticks.
After about two days of near-constant sleeping and trance-like story-chanting, I awoke to the smell of roasting goat. Even though I had consumed over a dozen pounds of increasingly-stale owlbear steaks before and during my trance, my stomach grumbled at me to tell me that it would really like a different variety of red meat. My brain knew that Sofonisba's insect-and-legume cooking gave me all the nutrition that I needed, but my stomach insisted that something was missing.
After I dressed and came up to the deck, I saw that they had turned the grassy meadow into a base camp. There was, of course, a fire pit with a whole goat roasting on a spit. There were also two tents and a clothesline with undergarments of various kinds drying out. Provisions and chalk-marked slates with maps and notes were scattered about.
There were three more dead goats lying on the ground. Gladys and Mary were busy butchering them and cutting off strips of lean meat. It was obvious that they were going to make jerky. Mabellyne and the elves were nowhere to be seen.
Mary heard me as I stepped onto the gangplank and walked onto the island. "Oh! Good morning, Captain! How are you doing?"
"I am fully rested and recovered. What happened while I was out?"
"Everyone is just fine, we are doing great!"
I looked at Gladys.
"No hostiles or sapients contacted, no accidents. No major storms expected. Approximately 17% of archipelago scouted, no turnips found. Healing herbs obtained, healing potions and Ointments successfully brewed. Yielded three normal potions, two greater potions. Sof and I each have an ointment and a greater potion, the other three a normal potion. Laundry done for the week. I will need long rest soon, others are good. They are scouting, we are cooking. Spit goat's outer flesh medium rare."
I looked at the position of the sun and saw that it was about 7. "It is still third shift. Tsinta and Mabellyne should be asleep."
"They got early start. Been moving things around a bit to cover for you, but everyone well rested."
"Thank you. I relieve you of the watch and all duties, you may rest."
"After we get the jerky started."
I used my knife to cut the tendons of one of the goat's legs, and then ripped it off and started to devour it while patrolling the perimeter of camp.
"So, what is the story behind these goats? Did they blunder into the camp?"
Gladys answered, "Killing them whenever we see them. Calculate that we have a moral obligation to cull fifty to eighty percent of the archipelago's goat population."
I blinked. This was not what I wanted to deal with before I had finished my breakfast. "What?"
"Ecosystem in balance, then we killed all apex predators. Unless we reduce goat population, they will eat enough to strip islands clean, trigger full system collapse."
"I thought that a new population of wildspace predators would soon wander in to replace the owlbears."
"Given landmass density in this region of space, could take months for first predator to arrive, years after that for predator population to grow enough to stabilize. Must kill enough goats so population not exceed carrying capacity before that."
"So why did we not kill rabbits on the centipede islands?"
"There were foxes. Centipedes eating those too, things still basically in balance."
"But nothing else on these islands eats goats?"
"Right."
"So are we going to make jerky out of an entire archipelago worth of goats?"
"No, shoving most of them in direction of nearby islands or moons, trying to attract predators. Probably going to jerky a few dozen."
"So the elves and Mabellyne all agreed to this."
"Yes."
Mary spoke up. "We all agreed to it I was the one who questioned it the most but after I double-checked her math myself and saw that it was right I agreed."
I looked at the girl. "How do you know that kind of math?"
Mary looked up from the bloody goat that she was butchering, with an annoyed and incredulous pout on her face. "Of course I know basic math. I am a princess."
As if that explained everything. Teenagers always assume that the customs of their tribe or village or court are the laws of nature. I thought back to the bits of information I had gathered about human royal families like House Hanover. It was common for the women to be household managers, in charge of running the practical affairs of the estate. So maybe Mary had been taught the basics of things like compound interest and livestock management. From what I understood, that was similar to ecosystem math.
Mary misinterpreted my thoughtful silence. "Well actually I would not have been able to do the math all on my own I do not know as much as Gladys or Mab or Sof but when they talked me through it I was able to follow along and see that their proof was sound."
Gladys interrupted. "Not proof. Estimate. Proof is when you derive theorem, estimate is when you guess fact about world."
"Oh well in that case I like estimates a lot more than proofs. Proofs are boring and pointless but estimates are useful and fun."
Gladys's ears perked up with indignation. "Proofs essential skill! Need them as foundation of math training!"
I was going to have to side with Mary on this one. "I have been running my own merchant company for over a decade without ever hiring an accountant. I have figured out profitable trade routes based on commodity price differences. I have chosen a riverboat to buy based on cargo capacity and operating costs. I have handled exchange rates, depreciation, payroll and taxes in a dozen jurisdictions. My head for numbers helped me make a small fortune for myself starting from nothing but a greatclub and a dream. And I hate proofs and was never any good at them. Math education should start with accounting and not proofs."
"But knowing tax laws useless if you move. Basic skills from proof transfer to everything."
"How many people move? How many people can even do learning transfer? Most people are worthless unless you train them carefully in the specific skill you need. It seems to me that focusing on proofs is just a way of identifying and rewarding people who have the right math instincts, instead of actually helping all your students."
Gladys stopped talking. Her ears curled inward as she thought about what I said. She was argumentative and annoying, but to her credit, she actually did argue to try to find truth. Most people just did it to win a status game and make allies.
I glanced at Mary. As always when anything interesting or dramatic or potentially embarrassing was happening around her, she was intently starting at something else, in this case the goat tenderloin she was filleting, while she listened intently to every word.
I thought about my own actions. Was that why I was arguing? I went through a self-reflection ritual from Ioun's scripture.
What would an unbiased outside observer think of your actions?
They would probably think that I was just arguing to gain status.
What evidence could you present to show that they were wrong?
I would have to demonstrate that I was trying to seek truth.
How would you do that?
By showing that I thinking about how the other person could be right.
So what would the world look like if they were right, and what evidence do you have that our world is different?
Then people who hated and failed proofs would not be able to do any useful math. I have shown otherwise.
What if they were using a different definition of 'math skills'? What things might proof-lovers be able to do that proof-haters could not?
They might be able to, without being trained in that specific problem, calculate how many goats you would need to kill to stabilize an ecosystem.
I huffed audibly, to signal partial defeat and that I had a thing to say. "Gladys, you were right about one thing."
They both looked at me.
"People who have learned to love proofs do have the ability to use math in novel ways, like calculating how many goats we needed to cull. Despite all of my accounting skills, I could not do that."
Gladys's ears perked up, then drooped. "Must admit studied that exact problem in biology class. Ego says I could have figured it out on my own, but have no evidence of this."
I nodded silently. This was uncharted social territory for me. I needed to gracefully acknowledge my victory in this particular argument, while showing her and Mary that I was actually trying to learn and not just be a bully. How could I show that I understood her point?
"I think the proof is your sailing skills. You figured out the math of wind and tacking faster than any deckhand I ever trained. I know you never had a lesson on that, so it shows what you can do when a good math brain is trained with proofs."
She waved her hand dismissively. "That just raw intelligence plus basic physics training. Nothing to do with proofs, different skill completely."
Confound it, why could she not accept a compromise graciously? And was she actually starting to argue against the position she had just taken? What was I supposed to do with that?
I thing that, in her way, she somehow sensed that I was getting frustrated and that we needed to change the topic. "Learned other useful math in biology class. Thermal microbiology as applied to food processing. Now, as long as the jerky slices are less than 0.1 centimeters thick..."
As the goblin droned on about thermal gradients and kill steps and all of the convoluted math needed to describe a 'proper' cooking process, I successfully resisted the urge to interrupt her to say to just smoke the stuff until it was completely dry and looked like jerky. I went back to patrolling the perimeter of the camp, and inspecting the tents and the mooring lines, and occupying my math brain by thinking of how the accounting statements for our expedition would change after we added several hundred pounds of mesquite-smoked goat jerky to the 'profit' column.
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