by Don Hayward
give me the drudge work and to learn the daily rituals. One harmless ritual was the inspection of the ruble stone seal of the mine supposedly looking for signs of attempted entry, but in reality the entrance was impenetrable; this was just a daily routine to create work. The other daily activity would prove to be dangerous, but not even I understood that in my first ignorant year. We possessed old devices that were called a “thermo” and a “beak”. The thermo was a long slender tube of clear material called glass in the records, and the beak was a squat container of the same precious substance. Each morning at sunrise, and again in the evening, a junior Keeper would go to the stream trickling from beneath the rocky entrance. Under the watchful attention of the Maurice, he would dip a wooden pail into the flow and return to the Keeper’s hut and pour a filling amount into the beak. The Maurice would then dip the slender thermo into the water and wait for a set time. This time is measured by a chant that takes about fifty breaths.
By the word of the Maurice
We measure twice
While the stream doth flow
Even covered in ice
If the water is clear
Have no fear
Mark the numbers
Against the day of the year.
This chant is said by The Maurice and repeated back to him by the Fetcher of the Water and the Attendant of Glass. The Attendant’s duty is to protect the precious thermo and beak. No other but the Maurice is allowed to handle them. My Maurice told me that we had one spare of each, all that was left from the original supply bequeathed by Maurice Pasterczak. The chant was written down, and I used this key to unlock my understanding of Glish, and the sounds the symbols represented
I discovered that the marks and symbols etched into the thermo’s glass are called numbers. There is a silver column of liquid metal inside. The column would rise or fall when the tip was immersed into the beak of water. Two numbers were recorded beside the number that tells how many days had passed since the winter solstice. One number recorded where the silver column was before it went into the water and the other after the chanting. Since each reading of the thermo is done twice there is a little ritual, what the First Maurice called calculating, to get what he named an average. By my fifth year of study I understood we were tracking the temperature of the water, but in the beginning it was strange. All records were kept in the library. Once I knew the purpose, as I began to compare the years, I saw a gradual warming of the water since the time of the Forty-eighth Maurice. Mysteriously there is a decrease in air temperature in more recent times.
My avoiding taking part in the water ritual kept me from becoming sick. Ironically, it seems I have been spared for a worse fate. Before I became Maurice every Fetcher I knew died in suffering and pain. The two Maurice preceding me also withered away in some strange early death. By the time I was anointed the Eighty-Seventh Maurice with the deer skin jacket I understood the danger. I tried to stop the water ritual, but the clan insisted. All I could do was make sure the Fetcher did not touch the water. In my fear, cowardice perhaps, I let the Attendant do my job and insert the thermo without touching the sample. The water was returned to the pond and the instruments washed in pure rainwater. The wash water also went into the pond. I had a wattle fence constructed around the pond and the stream. No one but the Fetcher went beyond the fence. My Attendant and Fetcher are healthy but, they are no longer “my” workers, as you will learn shortly.
I tried to warn the Eighty-Sixth Maurice as soon as I understood the danger. He refused to believe. My story of nuclear material and the words of Maurice Pasterczak were too far from his mystical beliefs. The Eighty-Fourth Maurice would have believed, but he was long dead. I was only beginning to understand the process myself. Acidified mine water, dissolving concrete containers (I had no idea what concrete was) and exposed radioactive metal was too strange. Pasterczak predicted in his writing that one of the signs of failure would be an increasing temperature of the outflow. He also said there would then be other poisons in the water, and these would make people sick and perhaps kill them sooner. The man, the mystical First Maurice was indeed simply a man, left a message that chilled me. I struggled hard to understand his words. The same words were repeated at the beginning of every document he wrote.
Please forgive me and forgive our generation of selfish, arrogant, stupid people. We claim we did not know, but we knew. We claim that we cared, but we did not. We have created a horrible danger that you of the future will be living with. We are mercifully dead, but you will suffer for our crime.
In our library, somewhat damaged but readable, was a journal written by a traveler and friend of Maurice Pasterczak. The writer detailed the painful lingering death of this man, similar to the deaths of the Fetchers. Perhaps feeling, through his dying pain, he was earning our forgiveness and his own redemption.
My first confidant in all of this was Elsbeth. Our love had been strong and she was wise and patient, but she told me to be quiet, keep my knowledge to myself and not cause disruption. Elsbeth took great pride in being married to a member of the Keeper Clan. She feared losing her privilege and standing amongst the women. After birthing our two children she was not able to conceive more. This had already reduced her status. She thought I was to blame, and perhaps that was right. I had learned radiation caused men not to be able to father children. Maybe I had been exposed enough. Elsbeth’s caution and the resistance of the Maurice stilled my tongue, but when I donned the jacket it became my duty to warn the village. Although Elsbeth had searched other beds to make a child she would not disclaim me and lose the honour of being the wife of The Maurice. As my attempts to warn the people grew, so did her resentment and hostility. I gradually lost my love, my strongest ally and confidant. I should have seen my personal danger in this isolation, but I was too concerned with the greater threat.
The puzzling change in the weather finally motivated me to take bold action. It was the third year of my term as Maurice. In those three years cold drying northerly winds became relentless, giving us harsh snowless winters and summers of little rain. When rain did come it was in huge stormy downpours, but it was the latest spring deluge that made me act. For the first time the pond where the mine drainage had been safely captured overflowed sending brownish yellow water surging downstream through the little stream flowing through the village. The settlement had been safely established by the First Maurice upstream from the pond overflow, but in the past years of dryness the people had built gardens downstream in the fertile streamside soil. These gardens stretched for over two lakes distance. The poisonous flood had overwhelmed the spring planting and deposited what I knew to be a radioactive coating over all of the crops. In my mind, the gardens were dangerous and should be avoided. I dared not think of the consequences for settlements that lay downstream from the hurrying flood of death.
“Fellow Villagers,” I stood on the speaking rock, the very one where the Eighty-fourth Maurice had conducted my adoption ceremony. “We have a grave situation and are in great danger. We must change our ways, and I believe we must move Village McNeil. For sure, we must stay away from those gardens below the mine that have been flooded.”
“We have heard your stories before.” The young head of the Grower Clan strode boldly up to my perch. “You have been spreading fear for years, thinking you know more than we and the Grandmothers. Keeper,” he refused to call me Maurice, “you are full of self-importance, lifting yourself above the village, thinking you are a god. We don’t believe your silly tales. The mine and the village have been here a thousand summers and the place you keep has never been a danger.”
There was a wide spread murmur of agreement with his words. I saw that even Elsbeth shouted in his support. Worse, the Grandmothers of all clans, standing together, directed hostile looks toward me. I knew then that I had lost even before I presented the facts. Still, I had to try. Who else could read and understand the danger? My opponents were not my fellow villagers but ignorance and tradition.
“Friends,”
I tried to be positive even though they did not see me as their friend. “The Eighty-fourth Maurice selected me to learn the old knowledge. The Maurice told us that there had been a strange change to the mine water, and he was afraid. I did as he asked. I struggled to learn Glish and to understand the ancient words. My knowledge tells me of the danger. The very first Maurice, the one who was called Pasterczak, left many warnings and told of how the danger would increase around the time of the fiftieth Maurice. He said that they had buried dangerous things called nuclear waste and that their way of making it safe would fail. It has failed and the water can now kill us. You have seen the cruel end to some of the Fetchers and even the recent Maurice. The water killed them.”
“You lie! You are wrong! You speak of magic.”
Shouts, whistles and stomping sounded from the crowd. In desperation I read the humble request for forgiveness from the First Maurice. It was to no avail. One of the Grandmothers, a Shaman who led the worship of the spirits of all of the forces: the forest, the water, the air and the fire, stepped forward and began to chant, waving her spirit stick at me. Her voice was hostile and