Rite of Passage

by Alexei Panshin

  When we reached Tintera, George began dropping us. We swung over the sea from the morning side and then dropped low over gray-green forested hills. George spotted a clear area and swung down to it. When we came to a stop, he lowered the ramp.

  “Okay,” he said over the speaker. “First one out.”

  The order in leaving the scoutship is purely personal. As long as somebody goes, they don’t care who it is. Jimmy had all his gear together before we set down. As soon as the ramp was lowered, he signaled to Mr. Pizarro that he was going, and led his horse down the ramp. It was what you would expect Jimmy to do. Mr. Pizarro checked him off, and in a minute we were airborne again.

  I began to check my gear out then, making sure I had everything. I’d checked it all before and I had no way to replace anything missing, but I couldn’t help myself.

  At the next landing, I said to Mr. Pizarro, “I’ll go now,” cutting out Venie, who sat down again. I grabbed Ninc’s reins. I didn’t lash my gear on, but just slung it over the saddle, and then walked down the ramp with Ninc. It had nothing to do with Jimmy. I just wanted to go. I didn’t want to wait any longer.

  I waved at George to show him I was clear, and that I was going, and he waved back as he lifted the ramp. Then the scout rose impersonally away as I held Ninc tightly to keep him from doing something foolish. In just a moment it was gone. Its gray-blue color was almost the color of the overcast sky, so I was never sure when I saw it last.

  It left me there, the Compleat Young Girl, Hell on Wheels. I could build one-fifteenth of a log cabin, kill one-thirty-first of a tiger, kiss, do needlepoint, pass through an obstacle course, and come pretty close (in theory) to killing somebody with my bare hands. What did I have to worry about?

  I lived through that first day—the first of my thirty. It was cool, so the very first thing I did was put on my colored coat. Then I slung Ninc’s saddlebags, strapped my bedroll on, and swung aboard. I didn’t push things, but just rode easily through the forest making a list of priorities in my mind, the things I had to do and the order I should do them in. My list ran like this:

  The first thing was to stay alive. Find food beyond the little supply I had. Any shelter better than a bubble tent—locate, or if necessary, build.

  Second—look over the territory. See what the scenery and people looked like.

  Third—see some of the other kids if things should happen to go that way. I hadn’t been dropped a great distance from Jimmy, after all, and Venie or somebody wouldn’t be terribly far the other way.

  The gravity of Tintera was a shade on the light side, which I didn’t mind at all. It is better, after all, to be light on your feet than to be heavy. Or worse—to have a horse with sore feet. The country under the forest top was rugged. There were times when I had to get off and walk, picking my way through the trees or around a rock formation.

  I stopped fairly early in the day. Being alone and lonely, feeling a little set at odds by the change from warm, comfortable Geo Quad to this cold, gray forested world, I was ready to make a fire, eat, and go to bed at a time I would have found unreasonably early at home.

  I located a little hollow with a spring and set up my bubble tent there. I finished eating by the time dark fell and went into the tent, but I didn’t turn on the light. Even in the shelter I felt unaccountably cold, something like the way I had felt in the week after I got my general protection shot. I ached all over. If it weren’t the wrong time of the month, I would have thought I was having my period. If it weren’t so unlikely, I would have thought I was sick. But I wasn’t having my period and I wasn’t sick—I was just miserable.

  I huddled and I cried, curled up in my bedroll. I hated this wretched planet, I was mad at Jimmy for letting me be alone like this, and I wasn’t any too happy with myself. I hadn’t expected Trial to be like this. So lonely, so strange. As I’d been riding during the afternoon, I had scared up some large animals. They were ungainly things with knobby knees and square, lumpy heads. When they noticed Ninc and me, they threw up their heads and stared at us. They had the kind of horns that sprout—antlers. After a moment, they bolted in a wobble-legged gallop that carried them crashing into the brush and then out of sight. They knew an outsider when they saw one, and I knew I didn’t belong. I didn’t get to sleep easily.

  The sun was up in the morning. The morning was cold, but the day was brighter. As I moved around and as the sun rose higher, it became almost warm, the heat of the sun and the cold of the breeze balancing each other.

  I wasn’t feeling much better, but I did keep busy and that took my mind off my troubles. I was recognizing a disadvantage to being a turtle that I hadn’t previously reckoned on. It gave me far too much time to appreciate the awfulness of planets in general and the specific failings of this particular place, not to mention the misery of being alone and deserted. I couldn’t stand that. I had to be a tiger to occupy my mind, if for no other reason.

  So I packed up early in the morning, and I started Ninc in a great widening circle, the most efficient sort of search pattern. The country continued to be rough. If I had been following the line of the land, it wouldn’t have been so bad, but trying to go in a spiral was difficult. There were any number of times that I had to get off Ninc and lead him.

  At one of these times, a small animal came bounding across my path. I’d seen other small ground animals and gliders in the trees once or twice, but never this close. I pulled my gun the instant I saw it. My first shot with the sonic pistol missed, the sighting beam slapping left, because Ninc chose that moment to toss his silly brown head. I shot again and dropped it this time. A sonic pistol is a nice short-range weapon.

  I led Ninc over and as I bent to pick it up, there was a loud noise of something moving in the bushes. I turned to look. The thing that stood poised there was nothing short of startling. It stood on two legs and was covered with gray-green hair. It had a square, flat animal mask for a face. I had a feeling that I had just killed its intended dinner.

  We looked at each other. Ninc snorted and started backing away. I dropped the reins and hoped Ninc wouldn’t run. I took a deep breath to quiet my pounding heart, and then I walked straight at it with my pistol in hand. I yelled, “Shoo. Get out of here,” and waved my arms. I yelled again, and after an uncertain moment, the thing shook its head and plunged away.

  I turned back and grabbed Ninc, feeling surprisingly good. I’d been thinking about my general misery, my feeling I’d just had a shot. It struck me that if I had a choice, I’d be better off without a gun than without immunization. I’ll bet more explorers on old Earth died from the galloping whatdoyoucallits than were killed by animals, accidents, and aborigines put together.

  I kept going until the light began to fade. The animal I shot turned out to be edible. It’s all a matter of luck. In the course of Survival Training I’d had occasion to eat things that were so gruey that I wonder how anybody could choke them down (the point under demonstration, of course, being that the most astounding guck will keep you alive). I’d done better than just find something that would keep me alive, so I hadn’t done badly at all. By the time I had eaten, I was thoroughly tired, and I had no trouble at all in falling asleep.

  It was the next day that I found the road. I was riding along and singing. I don’t like the idea of people who don’t sing to themselves when they’re all alone. They’re too sober for me. At least hum—anybody can do that. So I was riding and singing as I came to the crest of a hill. I looked down and through the trees I saw the road.

  I brought Ninc down the hill, losing sight of the road for a time in the trees and rocks, and then coming clear of the welter of brown and gray and green to find the road. It curved before and behind, following the roll of the land with no attempt made to cut the land for a straighter, more even way. It was a narrow dirt road with marks of wagons and horses and other tracks I couldn’t identify. There were droppings, too, that weren’t horse droppings.

  We had come in over the ocean from the wes
t and I knew we weren’t terribly far from it now. It seemed likely that one of the ends of this road was the ocean. I, of course, had no intention of going in that direction since I had already seen one ocean and counted that sufficient. My quota of oceans had been filled. It is an axiom that roads lead somewhere, so I oriented myself and headed eastward—inland.

  I came on my first travelers three hours later. I rounded a tree-lined bend, and pulled Ninc to a stop. Ahead of me on the road, going in the same direction that I was, were five men on horseback herding a bunch of the ugliest creatures alive. The creatures were making a wordless, chilling, lowing sound as they milled and plodded along.

  I looked after them, my heart suddenly fluttering. For a brief moment I wanted to turn and head back the way I had come. But I knew I had to face these locals sometime if I was going to be a tiger, and after all, they were only Mudeaters. Only Mudeaters.

  Ninc set into a walk as I kicked him. I got a better look at the creatures as we approached, and it seemed likely to me that they were brothers of the thing I had encountered in the woods the day before. They were quite inhuman. They were green and grotesque with squat bodies, knobby joints, long limbs and square heads. But they did walk on their hind legs and had paws that were prehensile—hands—and that was enough to give an impression of humanity. A caricature.

  All the men on horseback had guns in saddle boots and looked as nervous as cats with kittens. One of them had a string of packhorses on a line, and he saw me and called to another who seemed to be the leader. That one wheeled his black horse and rode back toward me.

  He was a middle-aged man, whatever middle age was here. He was a large man and he had a hard face. It was a normal enough face, but it was hard. He pulled to a halt when we reached each other, but I didn’t. I kept riding and he had to come around and follow me.

  I believe in judging people by their faces, myself. A man can’t help the face he owns, but he can help the expression he wears on it. If a man looks mean, I generally believe he is unless I have reason to change my mind. This one looked mean, and that was why I kept riding. He made me feel nervous.

  He said, “What be you doing out here, boy? Be you out of your head? There be escaped Losels in these woods.”

  I had short-cut hair and I was wearing my cloth coat against the bite in the air, but still I wondered. I wasn’t ready to dispute the point with him, though. I had no desire to linger around him. I didn’t say anything. I believe I said once that I don’t talk easily in strange company or large crowds.

  “Where be you from?” he asked.

  I pointed to the road behind us.

  “And where be you going?”

  I pointed ahead. No other way to go except cross-country. He seemed exasperated. I have that effect sometimes.

  We had caught up to the others and the animals by then, and the man said, “Maybe you’d better ride on from here with us. For protection.”

  He had an odd way of twisting his sounds, almost as though he had a mouthful of mush. It was imprecise, but I could understand him well enough. He wanted me to do something I didn’t want to.

  One of the other outriders came easing by then. I suppose they’d been watching us all the while. He called to the hard man.

  “He be awfully small, Horst. I doubt me a Losel’d even notice him at all. We mought as well throw him back again.”

  The rider looked at me. When I didn’t dissolve in obvious terror—I was frightened, but I wasn’t about to show it—he shrugged and one of the other men laughed.

  The hard man said to the others, “This boy will be riding along with us to Midland for protection.” He smiled, and the impression I had of a cat, a predatory cat was increased.

  I looked down at the plodding, unhappy creatures they were driving along. One of them looked back at me with dull, expressionless golden eyes. I felt uncomfortable to look at it.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

  What the man did then surprised me. He said, “I do think so,” and reached for the gun in his saddle boot.

  I whipped my sonic pistol out from under my coat so fast that he was caught leaning over with the rifle half out. His jaw dropped. He recognized the pistol for what it was and he had no desire to be fried.

  I said, “Ease your guns out and drop them gently to the ground.”

  They did, watching me all the while with wary expressions. When all the rifles were on the ground, I said, “All right, let’s go.”

  They didn’t want to move. They didn’t want to leave the rifles. I could see that. Horst didn’t say anything. He just watched me with narrowed eyes and made me anxious to be done and gone.

  One of the others held up a hand and in wheedling tones said, “Look here, kid . . .”

  “Shut up,” I said in as mean a voice as I could muster, and he did. It surprised me a little. I didn’t think I sounded that mean. Perhaps he just didn’t trust that crazy kid not to shoot him if he prodded too hard.

  After twenty minutes of easy riding for us and harder walking for the creatures, I said, “If you want your rifles, you can go back and get them now.”

  I dug my heels into Ninc’s sides and rode on. At the next bend I looked back and saw four of them holding the packhorses and creatures, while the last beat a dust-raising retreat down the road.

  I put this episode in the “file and hold for analysis” section of my mind and rode on, feeling good. I think I even giggled once. Sometimes I even convince myself that I’m hell on wheels.

  Chapter 15

  I WAS NINE WHEN DADDY GAVE ME a family heirloom, the painted wooden doll that my great grandmother brought from Earth, the one with eleven smaller dolls inside it. The first time I opened it, I was completely amazed, and I like to watch other people when they open it for the first time. My face must have been like that as I rode along the road.

  First there were fields. As I traveled along the road and the day wore on, the country leveled into a wide valley and the trees gave way to fields. In the fields, working under guard and supervision, were some of the green hairy creatures. That surprised me a little because the ones I’d seen earlier had seemed frightened and unhappy and certainly had given no sign of the ability to count to one, let alone do any work, even with somebody directing them. It relieved my mind a little, though. I’d thought they might be meat animals and they were too humanoid for that to seem acceptable.

  The road widened in the valley and was cut twice by smaller crossroads. I overtook more people and was passed once by a fast-stepping pair of horses and a carriage. I met wagons and horses and people on foot. I passed what seemed to be a roadside camp set between road and field. There was a wagon there and a tent with a woman hanging laundry outside. There was a well and a great empty roofless wooden structure. As I traveled, nobody questioned me. I overtook a wagon loaded heavily, covered bales in the back, driven by the oldest man I’d ever seen. He had white hair and a seamed red face. As I trotted past on Ninc he raised a rough old hand and waved.

  “Hello,” he said.

  I waved back, “Hello.” He smiled.

  Then in the afternoon, I came to the town. It was just an uncertain dot at first, but at last I came to it, one final doll. I came down the brown dirt road and rode into the town of stone and brick and wood. By the time I came out on the other side, I felt thoroughly shaken. My hands weren’t happily sweaty. They were cold and sweaty and my head was spinning.

  There was a sign at the edge of the town that said MIDLAND. The town looked handmade, cobbled together. Out of date. Out of time, really, as though nothing but the simplest machines had been heard of here.

  I passed some boys playing tag in the dirt of the street and saw that one of the buildings was a newspaper. There was a large strip of paper in the window with the word INVASION! in great letters. A man in rough clothes was standing outside puzzling the word out.

  I looked at everything as I rode through the town, but I looked most closely at the people. There were boys pla
ying, but I saw only a couple of little girls and they were walking primly with their families.

  There are a number of things that I’m not fond of, as you know. Wearing pants is one. I’d been glad to have them here because they kept my legs warm and protected, but I wouldn’t wear them except from necessity. The men and boys that I saw here were wearing pants. The women and girls weren’t. They were wearing clothes that struck my eye as odd, but flattering. However, they were as hampering as bound feet and I wouldn’t have undertaken to walk a hundred yards in them. Riding would have been a complete impossibility. I decided then that pants might be preferable to some hypothetical alternatives.

  The number of kids that I saw was overwhelming. They swarmed. They played in the street by squads and bunches. And these were just boys.

  The only girls I saw were a troop wearing uniforms and hobbling along under the eyes of a pack of guardians. Schoolgirls, I guessed.

  More than half of the people I saw were kids—far more than half. When I saw a family together, the answer hit me. There was a father, a mother, and a whole brigade of children—eight of them. The family resemblance was unmistakable.

  These people were Free Birthers! The idea struck me hard. The very first thing you learn as a child is the consequences of a Free Birth policy. We couldn’t last a generation if we bred like animals. A planet is just an oversized Ship and these people, as much as we, were the heirs of a planet destroyed by Free Birth. They ought to know better.