by Lois Lowry
Page 9
Asher and Jonas responded with congratulations to their groupmates. Jonas saw his parents watching him from the place where their own bicycles were waiting. Lily had already been strapped into her sear.
He waved. They waved back, smiling, but he noticed that Lily was watching him solemnly, her thumb in her mouth.
He rode directly to his dwelling, exchanging only small jokes and unimportant remarks with Asher.
"See you in the morning, Recreation Director!" he called, dismounting by his door as Asher continued on.
"Right! See you!" Asher called back. Once again, there was just a moment when things werent quite the same, werent quite as they had always been through the long friendship. Perhaps he had imagined it. Things couldnt change, with Asher.
The evening meal was quieter than usual. Lily chattered about her plans for volunteer work; she would begin, she said, at the Nurturing Center, since she was already an expert at feeding Gabriel.
"I know," she added quickly, when her father gave her a warning glance, "I wont mention his name. I know Im not supposed to know his name.
"I cant wait for tomorrow to come," she said happily.
Jonas sighed uneasily. "I can," he muttered.
"Youve been greatly honored," his mother said. "Your father and I are very proud. "
"Its the most important job in the community," Father said.
"But just the other night, you said that the job of making Assignments was the most important!"
Mother nodded. "This is different. Its not a job, really. I never thought, never expected—" She paused. "Theres only one Receiver. "
"But the Chief Elder said that they had made a selection before, and that it failed. What was she talking about?"
Both of his parents hesitated. Finally his father described the previous selection. "It was very much as it was today, Jonas—the same suspense, as one Eleven had been passed over when the Assignments were given. Then the announcement, when they singled out the one—"
Jonas interrupted. "What was his name?"
His mother replied, "Her, not his. It was a female. But we are never to speak the name, or to use it again for a newchild. "
Jonas was shocked. A name designated Not-to-Be-Spoken indicated the highest degree of disgrace.
"What happened to her?" he asked nervously.
But his parents looked blank. "We dont know," his father said uncomfortably. "We never saw her again. "
A silence fell over the room. They looked at each other. Finally his mother, rising from the table, said, "Youve been greatly honored, Jonas. Greatly honored. "
Alone in his sleepingroom, prepared for bed, Jonas opened his folder at last. Some of the other Twelves, he had noticed, had been given folders thick with printed pages. He imagined Benjamin, the scientific male in his group, beginning to read pages of rules and instructions with relish. He pictured Fiona smiling her gentle smile as she bent over the lists of duties and methods that she would be required to learn in the days to come.
But his own folder was startlingly close to empty. Inside there was only a single printed sheet. He read it twice.
JONAS
RECEIVER OF MEMORY
1. Go immediately at the end of school hours each day to the Annex entrance behind the House of the Old and present yourself to the attendant.
2. Go immediately to your dwelling at the conclusion of Training Hours each day.
3. From this moment you are exempted from rules governing rudeness. You may ask any question of any citizen and you will receive answers.
4. Do not discuss your training with any other member of the community, including parents and Elders.
5. From this moment you are prohibited from dream-telling.
6. Except for illness or injury unrelated to your training, do not apply for any medication.
7. You are not permitted to apply for release.
8. You may lie.
Jonas was stunned. What would happen to his friendships? His mindless hours playing ball, or riding his bike along the river? Those had been happy and vital times for him. Were they to be completely taken from him, now? The simple logistic instructions—where to go, and when—were expected. Every Twelve had to be told, of course, where and how and when to report for training. But he was a little dismayed that his schedule left no time, apparently, for recreation.
The exemption from rudeness startled him. Reading it again, however, he realized that it didnt compel him to be rude; it simply allowed him the option. He was quite certain he would never take advantage of it. He was so completely, so thoroughly accustomed to courtesy within the community that the thought of asking another citizen an intimate question, of calling someones attention to an area of awkwardness, was unnerving.
The prohibition of dream-telling, he thought, would not be a real problem. He dreamed so rarely that the dream-telling did not come easily to him anyway, and he was glad to be excused from it. He wondered briefly, though, how to deal with it at the morning meal. What if he did dream—should he simply tell his family unit, as he did so often, anyway, that he hadnt? That would be a lie. Still, the final rule said . . . well, he wasnt quite ready to think about the final rule on the page.
The restriction of medication unnerved him. Medication was always available to citizens, even to children, through their parents. When he had crushed his finger in the door, he had quickly, gasping into the speaker, notified his mother; she had hastily requisitioned relief-of-pain medication which had promptly been delivered to his dwelling. Almost instantly the excruciating pain in his hand had diminished to the throb which was, now, all he could recall of the experience.
Re-reading rule number 6, he realized that a crushed finger fell into the category of "unrelated to training. " So if it ever happened again—and he was quite certain it wouldnt; he had been very careful near heavy doors since the accident!—he could still receive medication.
The pill he took now, each morning, was also unrelated to training. So he would continue to receive the pill.
But he remembered uneasily what the Chief Elder had said about the pain that would come with his training. She had called it indescribable.
Jonas swallowed hard, trying without success to imagine what such pain might be like, with no medication at all. But it was beyond his comprehension.
He felt no reaction to rule number 7 at all. It had never occurred to him that under any circumstances, ever, he might apply for release.
Finally he steeled himself to read the final rule again. He had been trained since earliest childhood, since his earliest learning of language, never to lie. It was an integral part of the learning of precise speech. Once, when he had been a Four, he had said, just prior to the midday meal at school, "Im starving. "
Immediately he had been taken aside for a brief private lesson in language precision. He was not starving, it was pointed out. He was hungry. No one in the community was starving, had ever been starving, would ever be starving. To say "starving" was to speak a lie. An unintentioned lie, of course. But the reason for precision of language was to ensure that unintentional lies were never uttered. Did he understand that? they asked him. And he had.
He had never, within his memory, been tempted to lie. Asher did not lie. Lily did not lie. His parents did not lie. No one did. Unless. . .
Now Jonas had a thought that he had never had before. This new thought was frightening. What if others—adults—had, upon becoming Twelves, received in their instructions the same terrifying sentence?
What if they had all been instructed: You may lie?
His mind reeled. Now, empowered to ask questions of utmost rudeness—and promised answers—he could, conceivably (though it was almost unimaginable), ask someone, some adult, his father perhaps: "Do you lie?"
But he would have no way of knowing if the answer he received were true.
10
"I go in here, Jonas," Fiona told him when they reached the
front door of the House of the Old after parking their bicycles in the designated area.
"I dont know why Im nervous," she confessed. "Ive been here so often before. " She turned her folder over in her hands.
"Well, everythings different now," Jonas reminded her.
"Even the nameplates on our bikes," Fiona laughed. During the night the nameplate of each new Twelve had been removed by the Maintenance Crew and replaced with the style that indicated citizen-in-training.
"I dont want to be late," she said hastily, and started up the steps. "If we finish at the same time, Ill ride home with you. "
Jonas nodded, waved to her, and headed around the building toward the Annex, a small wing attached to the back. He certainly didnt want to be late for his first day of training, either.
The Annex was very ordinary, its door unremarkable. He reached for the heavy handle, then noticed a buzzer on the wall. So he buzzed instead.
"Yes?" The voice came through a small speaker above the buzzer.
"Its, uh, Jonas. Im the new—I mean—"
"Come in. " A click indicated that the door had been unlatched.
The lobby was very small and contained only a desk at which a female Attendant sat working on some papers. She looked up when he entered; then, to his surprise, she stood. It was a small thing, the standing; but no one had ever stood automatically to acknowledge Jonass presence before.
"Welcome, Receiver of Memory," she said respectfully.
"Oh, please," he replied uncomfortably. "Call me Jonas. "
She smiled, pushed a button, and he heard a click that unlocked the door to her left. "You may go right on in," she told him.
Then she seemed to notice his discomfort and to realize its origin. No doors in the community were locked, ever. None that Jonas knew of, anyway.
"The locks are simply to insure The Receivers privacy because he needs concentration," she explained. "It would be difficult if citizens wandered in, looking for the Department of Bicycle Repair, or something. "
Jonas laughed, relaxing a little. The woman seemed very friendly, and it was true—in fact it was a joke throughout the community—that the Department of Bicycle Repair, an unimportant little office, was relocated so often that no one ever knew where it was.
"There is nothing dangerous here," she told him.
"But," she added, glancing at the wall clock, "he doesnt like to be kept waiting. "
Jonas hurried through the door and found himself in a comfortably furnished living area. It was not unlike his own family units dwelling. Furniture was standard throughout the community: practical, sturdy, the function of each piece clearly defined. A bed for sleeping. A table for eating. A desk for studying.
All of those things were in this spacious room, though each was slightly different from those in his own dwelling. The fabrics on the upholstered chairs and sofa were slightly thicker and more luxurious; the table legs were not straight like those at home, but slender and curved, with a small carved decoration at the foot. The bed, in an alcove at the far end of the room, was draped with a splendid cloth embroidered over its entire surface with intricate designs.
But the most conspicuous difference was the books. In his own dwelling, there were the necessary reference volumes that each household contained: a dictionary, and the thick community volume which contained descriptions of every office, factory, building, and committee. And the Book of Rules, of course.