“Beyond my lifetime of preparation,” said Rigg.
“That goes without saying,” said the botanist.
“I’m curious about the standard of judgment that you’ll use. Do I have to have the same level of knowledge as you? Aren’t there younger scholars who know less than you do, who are still scholars?”
“We are much less interested in the quantity or even the quality of your knowledge,” said the botanist, “than we are in the quality and quickness of your mind.”
“And are there no slow scholars among you?”
“Many are slow to remember the things that most people consider to be essentials of life,” said the botanist, “but all are quick enough to reason, to recognize illogic and error and unlikelihood. And in case you’re wondering, the test has already begun, and I’m not sure I like the cautious way you are trying to influence the ground rules in advance.”
“You leap to the conclusion that my goal is to influence them rather than merely discover them,” said Rigg.
“Discovering the rules will do you no good,” said the botanist, “because you will either think like a scholar or not, and if you don’t, it will be because you can’t, and if you can’t, no advance information will help you.”
“Fair enough,” said Rigg. “One point against me.”
“We are not keeping score,” said the botanist. “We are forming an impression.”
“Then I will stop trying to control things and surrender to your questioning.”
“Even with that statement you are trying to explain yourself, when silence would have been wiser.”
Rigg kept his silence.
The scholars went into the most comfortable parlor. Rigg sat on a backless stool in the next room, where he could not see any of them, but could hear anything they said loudly.
Rigg also noticed that two of the spies-in-the-walls were there to watch him and his examiners.
The questions began innocuously enough. They were so easy, in fact, that Rigg kept trying to find overcomplicated answers, fearing some kind of trick or trap. Until the botanist sighed and said, “If you keep answering like this we’ll never finish before some of us—including, probably, me—have died of old age. We aren’t trying to trick you, we’re trying get to know you. If a question seems simple, it is simple.”
“Oh,” said Rigg.
Now things moved very quickly. Often he could answer in a few words. They checked his general knowledge of history, botany, zoology, grammar, languages, physics, astronomy, chemistry, anatomy, and engineering. They asked him nothing about music or any of the arts; they steered clear of any history that involved the glorious Revolution or any events since.
Rigg confessed ignorance more frequently the farther they went. He stayed right with the zoologists—he had spent most of his life tracking, trapping, skinning, dissecting, cooking, and eating the fauna of the highlands to the south, and he enjoyed answering those questions in greater detail than was probably necessary. He enjoyed showing off.
But even in the areas where he didn’t have anywhere near as much experience, he held his own. Father had quizzed him constantly, and Rigg responded to these examiners exactly as he would have responded to Father, though with less flippancy. When he didn’t know the answer, he would say so; when he had a guess, he would identify it as speculation and explain why he thought it might be so.
He soon realized that they were actually more interested in his guesses than in his knowledge. Once they knew he had a deep and wide knowledge of the vertebrates, they left zoology alone; whatever he knew little about, but still made guesses, they would pursue sharply. Always they brought him to a point where he had to say, “I just don’t know enough about it to make any kind of answer.”
“Where would you look, then?” the physicist finally asked. “Where within the library?”
“I don’t know,” said Rigg.
“If you don’t know where to look for the answer, then what good will the library do you?” the physicist demanded.
Rigg allowed his voice to reveal a little impatience. “I’m from upriver. I’ve never been in a library in my life. That’s why I want to be allowed to study in the Great Library here—so I can begin to find out where I would look for answers to questions like these.”
“There was a library in O,” said the botanist. “Why didn’t you go there to pursue your studies?”
“I was not planning to be a scholar then,” said Rigg. “I was still following what I thought was my father’s plan—that is, the man I thought was my father. By the time I got here, I realized either my father had no plan, or his plan simply didn’t work. So now I can choose for myself what I want to do. Only I don’t have enough information to make an intelligent decision about anything. So I thought I might attempt to add to what my father taught me, since his teachings were obviously incomplete.”
“All teachings are incomplete,” said the historian impatiently.
“And yet a wise man tries to add to his knowledge before making crucial decisions,” said Rigg.
“What sorts of decisions are you hoping to make?” asked the botanist.
“I don’t know enough to know what I need to know in order to decide what I need to decide,” said Rigg.
Rigg could sense that one of the scholars in the next room had stood up and was now pacing. Her voice was old-sounding. “There might be those who think your position here—as a member of the discredited royal family—”
Several of the other scholars got up, and one started toward her.
“I’m not speaking treason, I’m saying what everyone in this room knows, so sit down and let’s see how he answers!”
Rigg tried to remember who the speaker was, but finally concluded it was someone who had not spoken before.
“As I was saying, there might be those who think that it doesn’t matter in the slightest what you decide about anything. For the rest of your life, other people will decide everything that matters, including whether you live or die.”
She sat back down. Again there were murmurs of protest, but Rigg spoke loudly to cut them off. “I’m not afraid to face the situation I’m in. I’m quite aware that my power to decide is limited right now, and might be ended completely at any time. There have already been two attempts on my life since I was arrested—two that I know of, that is. In both cases, I managed to be alert enough to stay alive, but how long can I keep that up? One of you will have to write about that after the answer is known.”
There were a few nervous chuckles.
“But there’s always the chance that I might not die young. How will I occupy the long years of a very limited kind of life? My choice is to pursue scholarship. To do that I need to find out what I’m good at. To do that I need to have access to the library. Eventually I may be able to contribute to the sum of human knowledge. If I don’t, then at least I will have had an interesting life. A larger life than is possible in this house, with so few books.”
More murmuring, and then someone started to speak. Rigg didn’t even let him get a whole word out. “Please! Learned doctors and philosophers like you certainly have enough answers from me to make your decision. Let me ask you a question.”
“We are not here to be examined,” said the botanist stiffly. “And you do not decide when the—”
“Of course you’re here to be examined,” said Rigg. “All of you have carefully phrased your questions so as to impress each other with your profundity. I know you’ve impressed me. So I want to ask you alclass="underline" What do you expect of a child my age? I am all potential, without accomplishments. If I were your student, would you find me promising? Would you trust me with a book in my hands? Is mine a mind worth teaching? My father thought so, because he spent every waking moment doing it, and then testing me on it—including the very kinds of tests that you’ve been putting me through here, taking me beyond the boundaries of my education, seeing what I could figure out for myself. He died without telling me whether I was meeting his standards or not. He never said or implied that I had learned enough about anything. But he also never stopped teaching me. Was my father right? Am I worth teaching? And if I’m not, why in the world have you spent all these hours pressing me further? Is there some great wisdom to be gained by calibrating exactly how worthless a mind I have?”