Chapter 13

A Master's Defense, the last step in attaining the masters level in the archives, was usually a dry, academic event. The presentation had a drab air of utter boredom to all but those who were responsible for giving their blessing, and even they had a glazed patina of ennui across their eyeballs. 'Usually' did not apply when one's name was Al-Taquir and the topic was "The Definitive Origins of The Tribe". Rather than the dining room in the ArchivesBuilding, the defense was to be delivered in the Council Chamber for the benefit of the clan elders. When Yakhir was told of the change of location, he flashed back to the moment on the garbage mound when he discovered the key to the Kyoto cubes and how his bowels trembled.

His Uncle Porat explained to him that evening that it was the only way to subvert the probable veto of the Archivist Atto and that he should thank his teacher, Jahmiel Kevit-Nakar, for finding a solution. Yakhir nodded sagely at the explanation, feeling like a pita that had slid off of the baking pan into the fire underneath; there was nothing profound behind his mask except for abject fear.

Adilah was more than a little frustrated with him. They were not married yet because their house had not been renovated. As was the tradition, he bought property within the two or three neighborhoods where most of the clan lived. The land came with a dilapidated house, a back wall in disrepair and a shed of dubious stability. His bonus from the caravan had paid for the property and a good chunk of the structural repair, but the roof of the house had gouged a significant hole in his savings and the house was still not livable. These were only circumstances and excuses. The truth was that he hadn't taken the time from his studies and she knew it.

To say that her anger flashed when Yakhir informed her of yet another delay is to suggest that bullets merely leave the barrel of a rifle. The woman exploded. Had she not been blocking the doorway, he would have fled into the night in fear of images that she had conjured with her sharp tongue. Afterward he sat at the kitchen table alone, drinking a bitter cup of coffee late into the night. Breakfast was a frigid affair and Yakhir ran out the door as soon as he could.

Instead of heading to the archives, he turned towards one of the larger neighborhoods and came to Azzi's new house, an old but solid structure on one of the backstreets. He knocked and Davni answered the door, inviting him in as she collected her bag for a day of work. Her stomach had a noticeable bulge that made him feel all the more inadequate. Over another cup of coffee, Yakhir poured out his troubles to his friend hoping that at least he could get a sympathetic ear.

Azzi gave him that same lazy smile that he had always had. "Is that all?" Azzi asked.

"Yeah," Yakhir replied dubiously.

"You still have coin to spend?" Azzi followed up.

Yakhir nodded without understanding. Azzi slapped the table once as if a business deal had been struck.

"You have more friends than you remember," Azzi point out. "You are the bearer of a lion pelt, which you earned. The next caravan does not leave for several weeks and your friends are looking for an odd job or two to keep them busy and in coin. I will check out your house today and stop by tonight to pick up your coin. Besides, I like taking your money!"

Mollified and relieved, Yakhir climbed the mountain path back to the Shafts and returned home in the evening. The air was still frosty and he felt like a stranger within the familiar walls, when Azzi made his entrance. Yakhir invited him to the table, forcing Adilah to sit as well even though it appeared she wanted to bite off his hand. Azzi had a hand slate with chalk scribbles all over it, which he explained as he discussed the water and drainage pipes, the new tile and a sundry of other, smaller items. With each item Adilah visibly relaxed and molded back into the chair, which gave Yakhir hope that he would be freed from the doghouse.

They discussed prices and timelines, and even Adilah added a comment here and there, adding to the flame of hope in Yakhir's breast. He pulled a bag of coin from his room and they counted out the coppers, silvers, and golds. The estimated price and the amount of coin were very close, leaving little room for error, but the tasks seemed doable. Azzi swept the coins back into the bag and made his leave.

Yakhir turned to Adilah, waiting for her response to the evening's transaction. She gave him a blank look, announced that it was her time of the month, and went to her bedroom, shutting the door firmly. Yakhir looked at the slate calendar on the wall: he had one week left to prepare.

The week passed by quickly during the day and dribbled past miserably at night. As the week went on, Adilah appeared more civil but still distant; she made no visits to Yakhir's room. He made time to stop by his new house and chat with his friends. Their bodies were tan all over from the sun but often they looked like ghosts, they were so coated in mortar and grout. He nearly fell into the trenches that ran through the front and back of the property and almost had a heart attack when he spied the deep trench in his kitchen. He swallowed his horror but remembered to leave a bottle of ouzo in his wake.

The morning of his defense arrived. To his dismay he walked alone on one of the most trying days of his life; he checked his anger but couldn't banish the disappointment from his breast. Master Jahmiel met him outside and escorted the candidate into the building and down the hallway to the Council Hall. The room, which had seemed large and empty during the closed Council meeting, was tightly packed with elders, staffs and onlookers. The masters of the archives sat up front with Archivist Atto in a seat of honor. He had arranged for one unique piece of equipment, a projector that lifted pictures off of his datapad and projected them in a 3-D picture on a convenient wall. Yakhir saw a small space, a table, and a projector for his datapad on top of it.

He took his place and looked out upon the room. Yakhir found his clan among the mass of people. He saw his Uncle Porat who nodded his head. On his left was Yakhir's mother and on his right was Adilah. He did a double-take; Adilah should have been next to his mother and not in the honored position of Porat's right hand but he had little time chew on that puzzle. Regardless of her seat, she looked small and disconcerted.

Scanning the rest of the room he suppressed a grimace at the craggy face of Arda Shaheen sitting on his stool with his clan arrayed behind him. Yakhir imagined a sluice of cold hatred emanating from that corner. His thoughts were abruptly halted as a bell was sounded with a small mallet.

As his sponsor, Master Kevit Nakar introduced the Master's Defense and its rules, which basically whittled down to "shut up and listen" and "only master archivists may challenge." The welcome speech should have been Atto's to give but Yakhir easily dismissed the slight as a pathetic gesture that reflected more on the gluttonous turd than on him. Yakhir took a final moment to collect his courage and with permission of the masters, he began.

The origins of our tribe begin with the Third World War, the world wide spasm of violence that preceded the Great Burn by at least 300 years, at least 550 years ago but maybe as many as 600 years ago; the dating of this ancient time is hazy because of confusion in our earliest sources. On the wall you will see a map of world and its great cities before the Third World War, or The Fundi War as I prefer to call it.

At this time the population of the world was calculated at approximately 12.5 billion people. Compare that to our current census of .5 million and the number seems nearly impossible. However, the fanatical devastation of the The Fundi War cut this pre-war number by over half to somewhere around 5 billion. To reach our pitiful number, one must factor in the devastation of the Great Burn.

The Fundi War was not a long, drawn out series of battles. With the weapons that they had at their disposal, the humans of that time were able to wipe out over half of the their population within one year, maybe in as few as three months. The war did not respect national boundaries or moral codes, such as avoiding the death of civilians. In this war, everyone was deemed an enemy of the other.

The green dots represent the major economic centers of the world. Most were destroyed in the The Fundi War, but they were neither the direct cause nor source of the war. These economic centers were identified by the warring parties as the source of the distress in the world at that time, but I suggest that such identification was propaganda. None of the warring parties were based in these economic centers.

The red areas now showing on the map represent the largest concentrations of the warring parties, some are close to each other and others are removed by oceans of water. The recovered materials indicate that there were three major enemies that caused the The Fundi War. I use the word "major" because the evidence makes clear that under each major grouping, there were many subgroups. There are also other groups not connected to these three major groupings mentioned, but they did not survive the conflagration intact.

The three major groups called themselves Christian, Muslim, and Hindu. They were not economic or national groupings, but religious groupings. They were religions, superstitious belief systems that believed in a god or gods.

I see many of you bristle. One of the outcomes of the war, that also became a foundational element of our tribe, is an intense distrust of anything that is god, godlike or godly. This element was found throughout the surviving populations after the Fundi War.

The word "Fundi" is a shortened form of the term "fundamentalist"; a term no longer in use today. Our language is derived from Neo-Europeno, but this term is found in the other three languages that emerge from the war. It is a derisive term, a word that connotes stupidity, rigidity, and narrow-mindedness. The word becomes the ultimate condemnation among the survivors of The Fundi War. The survivors testify that the fundamentalists caused, promoted and actively fought the The Fundi war; it was their war.

Fundamentalism in religion means "One Way" as in "there is only one way to believe and all other ways are false." A fundamentalist cannot tolerate other belief systems; that is to say, all other religions must accept the fundamentalist religion or they must disappear. A fundamentalist is always right and everyone else is always wrong, regardless of the evidence to the contrary. One might call this "institutionalized intolerance."

These three fundamental religions: Christian, Muslim, and Hindu had taken their intolerance to such an extreme that nonbelievers were reduced to images of less than human. Unless one believed correctly, one was not fully human; one was defective. Defective human beings were sent by the gods to a magical place after they died where they would suffer eternal torments. This magical place was called "Hell." Conversely, the believers, when they died, went to another magical place of earthly delights called "Heaven" or "Jennah" or "Nirvana." These terms are not exactly equal and I am being a bit broad for presentation purposes, but this idea of reward for the believer is constant.