Rite of Passage

by Alexei Panshin

  In other respects, Joe was much more competent. He’d been regarded as quite a comer in his branch of physics. His death had been the result of a grotesque and totally unnecessary accident not of his own making. He had not been discovered immediately, and when he was it was too late to revive him. His death had apparently bothered my mother greatly.

  Now that I knew, I didn’t know what to do about it. Finally, in a quiet moment, I approached Daddy and as impersonally as I could I asked him about it.

  He looked puzzled. “You know all about Joe,” he said. “You haven’t asked about him in a long time, but I’ve told you twenty times.”

  I said, “I didn’t even know he existed until a week ago.”

  “Mia,” he said seriously, “when you were three you used to beg for stories about Joe.”

  “Well, I don’t remember now,” I said. “Will you tell me?”

  So Daddy told me about my brother. He even said that we were a lot alike in looks and personality.

  I didn’t talk to Mother because I didn’t know what I could say about it. I cannot really talk to her. The only person besides Daddy that I talked to was Jimmy and he made a comment that was perceptive, whether or not it was accurate. He said that maybe I hadn’t remembered because I hadn’t wanted to, at least until now, and that “finding” the record of my brother wasn’t as much of an accident as I thought. To tell you the truth, that got me mad at first, and it was my getting mad that later made me think that there might have been some truth to it. The cost was that Jimmy and I didn’t speak for two days.

  Thinking in psychological terms got me to thinking about my mother, about her keeping me at arm’s length, and about her becoming unhappy when I was nice to her. I finally came to the conclusion that maybe it wasn’t me, Mia, the individual, that bothered her, but just me, the physical fact, and I proceeded on that basis. I can’t say that I liked her any better, but we did manage to deal together more pleasantly after that.

  Something else changed that winter—what I thought I wanted from life. It came as a direct result of the papers on ethics that Jimmy and I did.

  We met in Mr. Mbele’s apartment and talked about our conclusions over the usual refreshments provided by Mrs. Mbele. She was a very comfortable person to have around. Very nice. It was our regular Friday night meeting.

  My paper was a direct discussion and comparison of half-a-dozen ethical systems, concentrating on what seemed to me to be their flaws. I finished by saying that it struck me that all the ethical systems I was discussing were after the fact. That is, that people act as they are disposed to, but they like to feel afterward that they were right and so they invent systems that approve of their dispositions. This was to say that while I found things like “So act as to treat humanity, whether in your person or in that of another, in every case as an end and not as a means merely,” quite attractive principles, I hadn’t run onto any system that exactly fitted my disposition.

  In his discussion, Jimmy took another tack entirely. Instead of criticizing ethical systems, he attempted to formulate one. It was humanistic, not completely unlike some of the others that I had considered. Jimmy started by saying that true humanity was an achievement, not an automatic inheritance. There were things that you could pick at in what he had to say, but his system did have one advantage and that was that he spoke in terms of a general attitude toward living rather than in terms of exact principles. It is too easy to find exceptions to principles.

  As I listened, I became increasingly bothered, not by he was saying, which fit Jimmy’s disposition quite closely, but by the sort of paper he was giving. I was the one who was supposed to be intending to be a synthesist, assembling castles from mortar and bricks, only that wasn’t what I had done. It came to me then that I had never done it—making pins or building cabins, putting things together, none of this was really in my line, and I should have seen it long since.

  I am not a builder, I thought. I am not a tinkerer. It was a moment of pure, unheralded revelation.

  When Jimmy was done, Mr. Mbele said, “Let’s have a discussion. What comments occur to you? Mia?”

  “All right,” I said. I turned to Jimmy. “Why do you want to be an ordinologist?”

  He shrugged. “Why do you want to be a synthesist?”

  I shook my head. “I’m serious. I want an answer.”

  “I don’t see the point. What does this have to do with ethics or what we’ve just said?”

  “Nothing to do with ethics,” I said. “It has a lot to do with your paper. You didn’t listen to yourself.”

  “Do you mind explaining yourself a little more fully?” Mr. Mbele said. “I’m not sure I follow you.”

  “After a while,” I said, “I wasn’t listening to Jimmy’s points. I got thinking about what sort of paper he had put together and about what sort of paper I’d put together. We had our own choice. It just struck me that if Jimmy really wanted to be an ordinologist, he would have written a paper like mine, a critical paper. And if I were really cut out to be a synthesist, I would have written a paper like Jimmy’s, a creative paper. But neither of us did.”

  “I see,” Mr. Mbele said. “As a matter of fact, I think you’re right.”

  Jimmy said, “But I want to be an ordinologist.”

  “That’s just because of your grandfather,” I said.

  Mr. Mbele agreed with me almost immediately, but Jimmy had had his aims too long set on ordinology to change his mind easily. It took some time before the sense of it got through to him, but then he doesn’t have a critical mind, and that, of course, was the point. I just made it clear that I now intended to be an ordinologist, and Mr. Mbele accepted that. It was easier for me to change, because when I had thought of the future, I had thought of synthesis, but with parentheses and a question mark after. This change of direction was right for me, and now when I thought of ordinology there was no question of any kind in my mind, particularly when Mr. Mbele told me that I had the equipment to make a success at it.

  And after Jimmy got used to the idea, he finally changed his direction, too. Because, after all, he was creative.

  I said, “You’re the one who is always thinking up crazy things for us to do. I’m the one who should be thinking why they won’t work.”

  “All right,” Jimmy said. “You be the ordinologist and I’ll be the synthesist.”

  I kissed his cheek. “Good. Then we can still be partners.”

  My change in direction may have been part of growing up. Nearly everything was, or so it seemed these days. I certainly didn’t lack for signs of change. One came while Helen Pak and I were down in the Ship’s Store looking for clothes.

  There is a constant problem of stimulation in living in the Ship—if life were too easy, we would all become vegetables. The response has been to make some things more difficult than they might be. This means that shopping is something you do in person and not by vid.

  Helen and I were in the Ship’s Store not because our clothes had worn out, but because we’d outgrown them. I’d been growing steadily for the last year, but I hadn’t caught up with anybody because they had all been growing, too. I was now having to wear a bra, which was something new and uncomfortable, and my taste in clothes had developed beyond light shirts, shorts, and sandals. That was partly Helen’s doing. She had a good eye for clothes and she insisted I make more of myself than I had been.

  “You’re pretty enough,” she said, “but who’s going to know it the way you dress?”

  For myself, I didn’t care—I would just as soon have lived naturally—and I had no great desire to overwhelm the world. However, there were a few people I wanted to be attractive to, so I put myself in Helen’s hands, and by God I did come out looking better. Among other things, she got me to wearing pink, which went well with my black hair, and which I wouldn’t have chosen myself. It all came as a pleasant surprise.

  Helen said, “It’s a matter of emphasizing your best points.” She was quite modest about it, but she ha
d reason to be proud. Even Daddy noticed, and Jimmy did, too. No compliments, of course, from Jimmy, though I did get them from Daddy.

  We were down in the Ship’s Store, picking things out, trying them on, piling things up, giggling, rejecting, posing, approving, and disapproving. I even found something for Helen that she looked good in—that blonde hair and those oriental eyes. She generally knows what looks good on her—it was pleasant to find something for her that she liked.

  We were thumbing through racks when I saw somebody I knew and I said, “Just a second.” I waved.

  It was Zena Andrus, who wasn’t quite as plump as she once had been. She was looking quite excited and apparently trying to find someone. She saw me wave and she came over.

  “Hi, Mia,” she said. “Have you seen my mother?”

  “No,” I said. “Is something the matter?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “It’s nothing bad. I just got my notice. I start Survival Class next week.”

  “Oh, that’s fine,” I said.

  After she’d gone off after her mother again, Helen and I looked at each other. Time does pass. It was only yesterday.

  Chapter 13

  THE CULMINATION OF SURVIVAL CLASS CAME when we were Class One and went on a tiger hunt on the Third Level. It, like so much else, was designed to give us confidence in ourselves. There is nothing like hunting a tiger almost barehanded to give you a feeling of real confidence in yourself. If you manage to survive the experience.

  Come to think about it, though, we did manage to survive, so maybe there was a point to it.

  By that time going down to the Third Level with packs was a commonplace. Jimmy and I went down from Geo Quad in the shuttle. I was not in the best of spirits because I never am before something like that, and I was playing somewhat morosely on the pennywhistle.

  Jimmy said, “You’re not going to bring that along, are you?”

  “Why not?”

  “I have to admit that you play fairly well now, but if you play like that you’re just going to depress everybody.”

  I said, “I’ve got Campfire Entertainment tonight.” That was something we had instituted after our second expedition in order to liven camping evenings.

  “You’re not going to play the pennywhistle, are you?”

  “No,” I said. “I was going to tell a story. You almost make me change my mind, though.”

  “Are you afraid?” He wasn’t talking about the Campfire Entertainment.

  “I can’t say I relish the thought of throwing rocks at a tiger,” I said, “but I guess I’ll get used to it. How about you?”

  “I’m always scared beforehand,” Jimmy said. “That’s why I like to talk or play chess.”

  We got off at familiar Gate 5 and joined everybody else in getting our heli-pacs. Mr. Marechal was there with a couple of dogs, and he was being assisted again by Mr. Pizarro, who had grown a red beard to go along with his brushy moustache. They were loading the dogs and food into a carrier. Before we left, Mr. Marechal lined us up and looked us over.

  “You understand,” he said, “that nobody has to come along.”

  We all nodded, but nobody made a move to leave.

  “Do you have your knives?”

  “Yes,” we said. That was it, the only weapons we had.

  “I want you to understand that at least one of you is going to get hurt, maybe killed. You’re going to chase down a tiger, which is about as mean and rough an animal as you’re liable to meet anywhere you get dropped on Trial. On Trial, I hope you’ll have the sense to avoid anything like that. This time, though, we’re going to pick one out, track it down, and kill it by hand. You can do it because you’re rougher and meaner than it is—at least as a group. I can guarantee you that some one of you is going to get hurt, but when you’re done, that tiger’s going to be dead. You’ll be surprised to find how satisfying you’re going to find that. All right?”

  The wild areas of the Third Level are about as unpleasant as any you’ll find on a planet. The terrain is perhaps not as rugged as you’ll find in places on planets, but the wildlife is fully as unpleasant, and that’s the major factor. On this final jaunt we were going without the bubble tents and sonic pistols that we would be allowed to carry on Trial, and we were deliberately seeking out the most dangerous animal that we have on board the Ship. Something like this is not only a preview of Trial, it brings home to you what is real and what is not, and quite designedly shows you that death is real. You may call it backhanded, but as I say, the point is to lend confidence.

  We lifted like a flock of great birds away from the Training Center toward the roof above, and then swept away. We moved across the parkland, looking down on the trees and bridle paths, and then finally across the thorn hedge wall that marked the edge of wild country. At first it did not look greatly different, but then we passed over a herd of broom-tails, our noise and shadows frightening them and sending them careening over the grassland.

  Mr. Marechal led the way and Mr. Pizarro brought up the rear with the carrier. We buzzed along in about the same relation to the roof, the ground rising and falling beneath us. With the ground in small hills covered by scrub and occasional trees, and the grassland behind us, we set down at a signal from Mr. Marechal.

  When the dogs were released from the carrier, they yapped and strained at their leads, but Mr. Pizarro simply tied them up. We put guards around immediately and then started to make camp. We had just about time to gather wood and set up fires before the great lights in the roof began to fade, the air currents to die, and the temperature to fall. The temperature didn’t fall far, but the fire was not for that—it was for cooking and for security.

  After dinner, everybody gathered around the fire, including Mr. Pizarro and Mr. Marechal, and I was privileged to give my Campfire Entertainment. For Jimmy’s sake, I forbore the pennywhistle and instead told the story that I had prepared and had intended to tell. It’s an old, old story called “The Lady of Carlisle.”

  I waited until everybody was quiet. I stood in front of the sitting people in the wavering light of the fire and began:

  This happened a long time ago in a place called Carlisle where they had wild lions. Tigers, as you know, stick to themselves, but these lions lived together in bunches and terrorized the country.

  There was a lady living in Carlisle without a bit of family who had been filled with strange ideas by her long-dead mama. She was very beautiful and courted by all the bachelors in the district, who reckoned her a great prize on account of her looks and her money. However, her mama had taught her that to be beautiful was to be special and therefore she shouldn’t throw herself away on the first, or even the second, young man who came along. She should wait instead for a man of good family, wealth, honor, and courage. “Test ’em,” her mama said.

  Now since her papa had made a fortune selling stale bread crumbs . . .

  “Oh, come on, Mia,” somebody said. “Who’d want to buy stale bread crumbs?”

  “I’ll tell you exactly, Stu,” I said. “It was to children to make trails behind them when they went into the woods so they could find their way out again.”

  Anyway, her papa had left her enough money that she could afford to sit year after year waiting for her regular Sunday afternoons and her suitors to come calling. She always disqualified them, however, if not on one ground then on another. She spent a good many years this way, sitting in her parlor getting odder and odder, and having great fun turning down suitors on Sunday afternoons. In time, there wasn’t a single eligible man in forty miles that she hadn’t said no to at least once. In fact, it finally got so that when a stranger was in town on a Sunday afternoon, the local fellows would send him out to be turned down. The town was small and this provided them with at least one consistent amusement.

  Finally, however, it happened that on one particular Sunday there were two young men drinking in town. One was a lieutenant with a plumed hat and a fancy coat with several shiny medals. The other was a sea captain w
ho had sailed around the world no less than three times, for all that he was young. Both were of quite unexceptionable families, were more than full in the pocket, were men of honor and had medals or other testimony to their courage—and both were single. They were, in point of fact, by a good margin the likeliest candidates that had ever been in Carlisle. The local fellows didn’t even try to choose between them. They simply laid the situation straight out, and both young men had drunk enough to find the idea appealing as well as a quite sensible method of settling the age-old rivalry between the Army and the Navy. So they went off to pay court.

  They found the lady at home and quite disposed to receive them. In fact, it put her in quite a flutter. And she turned out to be, even after all these years, as fine looking a woman as either of these well-traveled young men had ever seen. She, on her side, found them both to be exactly the sort of men that her mother had told her to watch and wait for, for she quizzed them quite closely. That they had both shown up on the very same day, however, gave her quite a problem to resolve, and she finally determined to settle it by her mama’s method. “I will set you both a test,” she said, “and the man that passes it will be the man I wed.”

  She had a span—which means a pair—of horses and a carriage brought around, and they all climbed in. The young bloods who had sent them in were all waiting in the yard and they followed the carriage down the road, sporting and making bets. The carriage went over the hill and down the road, and in time it came to the den of those lions that had been offending the local people, and there the fair young lady brought the horses to a stop. She’d no sooner done that than she fell rigid to the ground. They picked her up and dusted her off, but she didn’t say a word to anybody for upwards of a quarter hour. The two young fellows asked the local boys about that and they were told that it was the sort of thing she was likely to do from time to time.