Mutt Read online

  2

  Il Collegio Classico

  The sound of his shoes against the floor of the collegio's corridor turned heads. Emery ran faster, ignoring the harassed expressions that followed him. A jagged pang pierced his side. He was going to be late. Emery cursed his negligence. Finally he reached the door of the classroom; he staggered to a halt and almost tripped over himself. The door was already closed, and the maestro had begun his lecture. Damnit.

  Breathing heavily, Emery fumbled with an impassive doorknob and entered the lecture hall. “…you will hear me say throughout the term that—” the maestro turned to address the interruption, smiling brightly when he saw its source. “Thank you for joining us today, sir Esposti. Please,” he said through a thick Chukwu accent, “take a seat.”

  The ten other students were seated on crimson floor cushions arranged in a half-circle facing the maestro. Emery crossed the classroom and took a seat. This was his second term with Maestro Oburumu; the instructor had been his Gateway tutor when Emery had entered the collegio in the spring. This term's course was on…Emery found himself too flustered to remember the subject. Well, he said to himself, I'll figure it out at some point in the lecture.

  “Where was I?” M. Oburumu asked. He pondered his question for a moment and seemed about to find its answer when another late student stumbled into the room, looking even more embarrassed. At least Emery had the fortune of knowing the instructor. “Well,” M. Oburumu said, “Now that everyone is here, I suppose I'll give another introduction. Welcome to Introductory History of Rittenhouse. I am a Chukwu of the Ibo clan. My people are from a nation called Nigeria. I love Jehovah God, I love my family, and I love to teach.” M. Oburumu was just as Emery remembered him from last term: his head was shaven, his smile was perpetual, and he visibly displayed the Unity necklace that indicated his citizenship rather than tucking beneath his shirt like most people did.

  A mousy-looking Farsi boy raised a hand. “I don't know if it's an appropriate question,” he said shyly, “but why do the Chukwu divide their circle into clans? None of the other circles have a similar division.”

  “A very good question, sir…?”

  “Bhatt,” the boy replied quickly. “Amir Bhatt.”

  M. Oburumu grinned. “A very good question, sir Bhatt. And while I'll give you a much more thorough answer in our section on circle formation later in this term, suffice for now to say that it is of paramount importance to remember one's history—” his eyes scanned the twelve students in the room “—which is why I hope you all are here.”

  Emery smiled inwardly. M. Oburumu was among the most punishing maestros at the school, and those who fell short of his very high standards would be begging their parents within the week to permit their withdraw from the class. A request, of course, that the esteemed sirs and madams would not grant, for none of them wanted their child to be the one who failed at the rigorous collegio. Emery let his wild dark curls fall down the side of his face, concealing an eye so he could observe his classmates' expressions unnoticed. A Vorteil girl, beautiful as a glacier, seemed to catch his eye and glared back. Carla, he thought her name was. Or Chelsea. Emery was horrible with names. He remembered that her uncle was someone important.

  “Another key focus of this course that sir Bhatt so astutely brings to our attention,” the maestro continued, “is that Rittenhouse's four circles are, of course, social constructions, amalgamations of innumerable races that existed before extinction. At one point in time, there was more cultural and ethnic variation between the various groups that now comprise the Farsi people than there is between the Farsi and, say, the Roccetti today.” He motioned to Amir and then to Emery for emphasis. “Today, these two circles coexist peaceably in Rittenhouse. But before extinction, individual factions of what is now the Farsi race waged war upon each other. Of course, we Chukwu embrace peace and the principals of Unity as much as anyone in Rittenhouse, but we also like to take pride in our traditions.” He turned to the boy who had come in after Emery. “What clan are you, sir?”

  The boy's accent was thicker than the maestro's; he murmured something unintelligible. “In Modern, please,” Carla or Chelsea muttered impatiently. The boy spoke more loudly: “Tikar.”

  The instructor grinned. “Cameroon, then. Cameroon was a great nation, almost as great as Nigeria. That is the joy of knowing one's heritage.” Emery found himself smiling again. M. Oburumu liked to toy with his students, but he was a good man, a passionate man.

  The maestro's smile continued to shine. “I believe,” he announced, “that I now remember what I was saying before the interruptions. I was speaking on the trouble of discerning Rittenhouse's pre-extinction history with any certainty. 'Extinction' itself is something of a misnomer; whatever caused it, the human species ultimately survived. But nations, cultures, perhaps entire races have been lost to history. You will hear me say throughout the term that there are numerous obstacles to our knowledge of the world before extinction or the causes of the catastrophe that we believe reduced the global population to one ten-thousandth of its previous number. Can anyone name one of these obstacles?”

  “Decay of records,” Chelsea said quickly.

  The maestro nodded. “That's correct, Carla.” Emery vowed to remember her name this time. “For decades or even centuries after extinction, this region was completely uninhabited. It's worth noting that while some of New Providence's inhabitants are called natives, even they migrated here from communities hundreds of miles inland. Most pre-extinction writings were made on paper, not intended to withstand the passage of time, and we consider ourselves very fortunate when we find even fragments of writing intact. Someone else…”

  “The language barrier,” offered the Tikar student.

  “Aha. This is one of the greatest challenges we face as historians. As I'm sure you all know, the Modern spoken in Rittenhouse and throughout New Providence is a synthesis of various parts, much like the people who speak it. There are vestiges of pre-extinction English in Modern, and historians such as myself have been able to translate large parts of our recovered works. But these texts are filled with innumerable words we cannot begin to translate, because they describe things—nations, technology, social dynamics—that existed in the old world and for which we have no standard of comparison today. And the task of discerning fiction from history with these constraints is all but impossible. All we can do for now is seek out more surviving literature and try to solve these puzzles by placing them in their proper context.”

  “Has anyone ever thought about using the Yankees to translate?” a girl asked. “Some of them speak old English.”

  “You show me a Yank who can read,” Carla replied, “and I'll show you the mutt king of Rittenhouse.” The fingers of Emery's left hand drummed against the polished hardwood floor.

  “Please,” M. Oburumu said, raising his hands, “Epithets are unbefitting of your blood.” A few of the students suppressed a retort; their parents, of course, had taught them the words. “As miss Engal pointed out, there is a very low literacy rate among the natives we have encountered—and I stress that this is only the best of our knowledge. The truth is that we know very little about the various native populations; the popular stories in Rittenhouse are the most sensational, the tales of cannibalism or the rituals of the Washington Circle tribe. Most of the native groups keep to themselves, so of course they are underrepresented in the popular gossip. But I digress. There is a third limiting factor in our knowledge of the pre-extinction world, and this is perhaps the most important…anyone?”

  “Decline of existing records in the decades preceding extinction,” Emery offered.

  M. Oburumu's ever-present smile grew wider. “I hope everyone was paying attention,” he said. “We believe this to be the main reason that we have been able to discern nothing of value regarding the cause of the epidemic itself. There is a sudden and rapid decline in the quantities of recovered books over a period of roughly three decades, following which t
here are virtually no writings for several more decades preceding the disaster. Now, how do we know that this decline does not represent extinction itself? Sir Bhatt.”

  “Um…” Amir faltered for a moment before finding words. “Other artifacts. We—we've recovered technology that we think is more recent than the last writings we've found.”

  “Exactly. And the increasingly enigmatic nature of the last pre-extinction technologies leads us—”

  A struggle with the stubborn doorknob cut M. Oburumu's sentence short, and in the next moment an aide burst into the classroom carrying a square stone tablet. The maestro's eyes swept over whatever message was written on the tablet, and his countenance darkened for the first time since Emery had entered the room. A distracted hand wiped the writing from the tablet and waved the aide out of the room. “I'm very sorry,” he said to the half-circle of youth, “but I'm sure you won't be disappointed to hear that today's class is cut short. I'll see you tomorrow for—” he paused for a moment— “our discussion on post-extinction ethnic group formations. I'm sure you'll use this extra time wisely. Have a blessed week.” With that he strode briskly from the classroom.

  The students looked at each other in confusion for a moment, but none of them chose to question providence. Most rose hurriedly and left the room; Emery waited for a moment, rising slowly as the others filed out.

  The corridor wall opposite the classroom door was floor-to-ceiling glass. Emery stood before it, gazing westward past Rittenhouse's walls. Beyond the electric city, New Providence sprawled as far as he could see, a labyrinth of swamp and forest dotted by newly formed shanties and the time-worn highrises of centuries past. As those structures slowly gave way to nature's tireless advance, the towers of Rittenhouse were rising anew; even at this very moment in the collegio, parts of the ancient campus were still being restored. Emery could discern the faint tapping and tearing of construction echoing through the corridor as crews reclaimed room after room of the building, cutting through the old growth.