Ninjas, Piranhas, and Galileo
Page 11
“Where is he?” Eli asked, playing with a fountain pen.
Mr. Eden wasn’t there. It was almost time for Eli to panic. Me? I was nervous, too. Goliath Reed was slouching, relaxed in his chair, looking hugely pleased with himself.
Shohei and Tim were our insurance, still holding onto jars of grasshoppers in the Atrium Garden. They were so much alike it was funny.
“Mr. Brandenburg,” Mrs. Talmadge said, looking at him, “have you reached a decision? Will you accept the suspension or apologize to Mr. Eden?”
“Your Honor,” Eli said, standing, “I’ll —”
“Excuse me!” Mr. Eden dashed into the room and up to the bar. “Your Honor, I’d like to make a statement.”
Mrs. Talmadge smacked her gavel into her hand, then gestured with it. “If Mr. Brandenburg has no objection.”
“No objection, Your Honor,” I said.
This was it.
“Your Honor,” Mr. Eden began, “since the entire matter depends on the extent of Mr. Brandenburg’s scientific acumen, I propose, rather than the punishments that you have outlined, that he be required to repeat his experiment. Under my supervision, of course.”
Mrs. Talmadge looked at Mr. Eden, then at Eli and me, then back to Mr. Eden. Then she leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling for a moment.
Finally she spoke, focusing intently on Mr. Eden. “Something is going on here.” I suppressed a grin as Mr. Eden actually squirmed, but he didn’t let on what the something was. Finally, Mrs. Talmadge banged the gavel. “Very well,” she said. “Mr. Brandenburg, you are remanded into Mr. Eden’s custody.”
I almost cheered as Eli let out a breath. But before we could celebrate, Mr. Eden walked up to us. “This is for you,” he said, handing Eli a file folder. “I’ve delineated a procedure for conducting the experiment. Read it carefully and be prepared to discuss it in my office at seven A.M. tomorrow.” Before Mr. Eden walked off, he whispered something to Eli that I didn’t hear. Eli looked puzzled, but before I could ask him, Goliath Reed walked up.
“I’ll see you at the next court meeting,” Goliath said, then walked out.
That was it. No acknowledgment of my brilliant victory. Nothing.
I didn’t care. I didn’t have to do the Penguin dance to be a winner.
36
Back in the Garden
Shohei
Elias, Honoria, Tim, and I met up later in the Garden. Very faintly, over the splash of the fountain, Mr. Eden’s baroque music was playing again.
“You won your case,” Eli told Honoria. “Thanks.”
“Well,” she said, smiling, “I doubt that the American Bar Association would’ve approved of our tactics.”
Tim bowed and presented Honoria with her jar.
I grabbed a leaf off an avocado tree. “So could these guys really destroy this place?”
“They could,” Honoria replied, putting the jar into her backpack, “but only if there were about a million of them, and only if these were, in fact, M. devastator.”
“What!” I exclaimed.
She shrugged. “These guys are just M. confusus — the pasture grasshopper. They like ragweed. They wouldn’t eat the stuff in here.” She frowned. “Probably. I think.”
“That’s what he meant,” Elias said, looking a little pale.
“What?” Honoria asked.
“Just before he left,” Elias told her, “he said to me, ‘I know everything.’ He knows you were bluffing about the grasshoppers.”
“No way,” I said before Honoria could. But I was glad I wasn’t going to be the one redoing the experiment with Mr. Eden. We glanced at each other uneasily.
A moment later, I spotted something near Tim’s foot. Tim dived under the bench and grabbed it.
“Mouse!” he said, standing up and opening his palm.
“Must be your third mouse,” Eli said to me, looking at the white rodent. “Or should I say, Mathilda’s third mouse?”
Honoria peered close. “That’s not her.”
Then I saw another one dart across the path. And another.
We all looked around, scanning the undergrowth. We looked at each other.
“You know,” Honoria said, pulling an encyclopedia entry from memory, “the average litter for Mus musculus is twelve. The average gestation period is twenty days. The life expectancy is about two years, they can reproduce at five weeks, and they’re herbivores.”
I didn’t bother with the math. Mr. Eden would have to bring in some cats.
Soon.
Author’s Note
As Honoria noted, Elias is not the first scientist to have been tried or criticized for publishing results that challenged long-held but experimentally untested beliefs.
Galileo Galilei (1564–1642; usually referred to, for some reason, by his first name) was an Italian physicist, mathematician, and astronomer who had a big mouth and a vicious pen. He’s particularly noted for experiments in mechanics and dynamics that refuted certain long-held but experimentally untested scientific beliefs, which had gone down to Renaissance Europe by way of the Greek philosopher Aristotle. (The story of Galileo dropping lead weights off the Leaning Tower of Pisa to see when they would hit the ground, unfortunately, appears to be fictional.)
Galileo was a proponent of the view that the sun, not the earth, is at the center of the solar system. Because of his publications to this effect and defiance of various church edicts, Galileo found himself condemned by the Holy Office of the Roman Catholic Church (a branch of the Inquisition) as “vehemently suspect of heresy” but — like Elias — was given the option of recanting. Unlike Elias, Galileo recanted, perhaps because in his case the penalty for heresy was excommunication and, possibly, burning at the stake. In the end, Galileo abjured his errors, and signed a document “cursing and detesting” them. Galileo was subsequently condemned to house arrest for the rest of his life, a fate Elias avoided. I think. The Roman Catholic Church, under Pope John Paul II, has since admitted its own errors regarding Galileo.
Dr. Brandenburg, Elias’s father, has a bizarre fascination with the life and works of the German composer Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), possibly because his name is the same as one of Bach’s most famous groups of compositions — the Brandenburg Concertos, named for the Margrave of Brandenburg, one of the Electors of the Holy Roman Empire. There are, perhaps coincidentally, six Brandenburg Concertos.
Because of his Bach obsession, Dr. Brandenburg gave his children Bach family names. Johann Sebastian Bach’s second wife was Anna Magdalena. He had a cousin named Johann Elias. His father was Johann Ambrosius and his uncles included a Johann Christoph and a Johann Jacob. Johann Ambrosius and Johann Christoph had a cousin Johann Michael and another cousin Johann Christoph.
To those poised to enroll at the Peshtigo School, in hopes of taking Mr. Eden’s chemistry class, don’t. The school doesn’t exist. But if it did, it would be located in Chicago on Peshtigo, between Illinois and Grand, near Lake Shore Drive and Navy Pier. Old time Chicagoans will recognize this as the site of the old Kraft Building.
To answer the question: Can you teach a piranha to eat a banana? Surprisingly, there’s no need to. Piranhas are by nature omnivores. Some species of piranha, in fact, almost exclusively eat fruits and vegetables.
However, the answer to Honoria’s true experiment, whether you can teach a piranha that he’d rather eat a banana than flesh, remains a mystery, though experts I consulted doubt it. And since piranhas are illegal in Texas, I am unable to pursue the matter on my own.
As to Elias and Shohei’s experiment, trying to determine whether playing music to plants affects their growth, the scientific results are inconclusive.
This novel could not have been written without the support,
help, and/or technical assistance of the following:
She Who Is My Wife, Cynthia, for everything
Anne Bustard, for most excellent midwifery
Kathi Appelt, for hostessing a certain
Brazos Valley and Austin SCBWI writing conference
Ginger Knowlton, my agent, and Amy Hsu, my editor,
who were undoubtedly brainy kids themselves
In my writing group:
Jerry Wermund, Betty Davis, Meredith Davis,
Jimmy Hendricks, Frances Hill
the experts at the Lincoln Park Conservatory,
Chicago, Illinois; the Wisconsin Fast Plants Project
at the University of Wisconsin, Madison; and the
John G. Shedd Aquarium, Chicago, Illinois
Teachers of Science, Math, and English:
Mr. Lewis, Mrs. Biddulph, and Mr. Mims;
and
my parents, Esther and Albert.
Greg Leitich Smith has a few things in common with Elias, Shohei, and Honoria. Like them, he grew up in Chicago and survived the science magnet school experience. Afterward, he went on to complete degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Texas at Austin, and earned a University of Michigan degree in law.
In addition, Greg drew on his own Japanese-German American background in crafting Elias’s and Shohei’s families — especially Shohei’s. Like Shohei, Greg is adopted, and they both have one brother, although Shohei’s is younger and Greg’s is older. Greg now lives with his wife, author Cynthia Leitich Smith, and their four cats in Austin, Texas.
As to his life experience with all things ninja and spymaster … he refuses to comment, on the grounds that he might incriminate himself.
www.gregleitichsmith.com