Rite of Passage

by Alexei Panshin

  The small one was school. As I’ve said, the only kids who are supposed to know how you stand are the others at the same level in each subject, people just like you. In practice, though, everybody has a pretty good idea of just where everybody else is and those at the top and bottom are expected to blush accordingly. I’ve never been able to blush on command, and, as a newcomer, it was all the harder for me because of it. It is not good to start by being singled out.

  The big reason, on the other hand, was completely my fault. When we moved, I knew I wasn’t going to like Geo Quad, and it mattered not at all what anybody there thought of me. By the time it sank through to me that I was really and truly stuck in Geo Quad and that I’d better step a little more lightly, my heel marks were already plain to see on more than one face.

  As it turned out, my position and my conduct interacted to bring me trouble. This is how things go wrong—and this is just a sample:

  At the beginning of the week, the whole school went down to the Third Level on an educational jaunt. The afternoon was really more in the nature of a holiday because we older ones had seen the rows of broad-leaf plants they raise for carbon dioxide/oxygen exchange more than once before. At the end of the day we were coming back home to Geo Quad by shuttle and to pass the time some of us girls were playing a hand game. I was included because I was there and they needed everybody present to make a good game of it.

  The game goes like this: Everybody has three numbers to remember. At a signal, everybody claps their hands on their knees, claps their hands, then the person starting the game calls a number. Knees, hands, then the person whose number was called calls someone else’s number. Knees, hands, number. Knees, hands, number. It goes on, the speed of the beat picking up, until somebody claps wrong or misses when one of her numbers is called. When that happens, everybody gets licks with stiffened fingers on her wrist.

  The game is simple enough. It’s just that when the pace picks up, it’s easy to make a mistake. We girls stood in a group in the aisle, one or two lucky ones sitting down, near the front of the shuttle car.

  We started out—clap, clap, “Twelve,” said the girl starting.

  Clap on knees, clap together, “Seven.”

  Clap, clap, “Seventeen.”

  Clap, clap, “Six.” Six was one of my numbers.

  I clapped hands on knees, hands together, and “Twenty,” I said.

  Clap, clap. “Two.”

  Clap, clap, “—.”

  Somebody missed.

  It was a plump eleven-year-old named Zena Andrus. She kept missing and kept suffering for it. There were seven of us girls playing and she had missed five or six times. When you’ve had licks taken on your wrist thirty or thirty-five times, you’re likely to have a pretty sore wrist. Zena had both a sore wrist and the idea that she was being persecuted.

  “You call me too often,” she said as we lined up to rap. “It’s not fair!”

  She was so whiney about it that we stopped calling her number almost entirely—just often enough that she didn’t get the idea that she was being excluded. I went along with this, though I didn’t agree. I may be wrong but I don’t see any point in playing a game with anybody who isn’t just as ready to face losing as to face winning. It’s not a game if there’s no risk.

  A moment later when somebody else lost I noticed that Zena was right up there in line and happy to have the chance to do a little damage of her own.

  We seven weren’t the whole class, of course. Some were talking, some were reading. Jimmy Dentremont and another boy were playing chess, some were just sitting, and three or four boys were chasing each other up and down the aisles. Mr. Marberry, who was in charge of us for the afternoon said, “Sit down until we get to Geo Quad,” to them in a resigned voice every time they started to get too loud or to make too much of a nuisance of themselves. Mr. Marberry is one of those people who talk and talk and talk, and never follow through, so they weren’t paying too much attention to him.

  As we reached the last station before Geo Quad, somebody noticed and we decided to play just one last round. Since we were so close to home, the boys were out of their seats and starting up the aisle past us to be first out of the shuttle. They were bouncing around, swatting one another, and when they got up by us and saw what we were playing they began to try to distract us so that we would make mistakes and suffer for it. We did our best to ignore them.

  One of the boys, Thorin Luomela, was paying close attention to our numbers so he could distract the right person when that number was called again. By chance, the first number he heard repeated was one of mine.

  “Fourteen.”

  Thorin waited until the right moment and smacked me across the behind. He put plenty of sting into it, too. I said, “Fifteen,” and clouted him back. I brought my hand back hard and set him back on his heels. In those days I was small and hard and I could hit. For a moment I thought he might do something about it, but then his resolve wilted.

  “What did you do that for?” he asked. “I was only fooling.”

  I turned back to the game. “Fifteen” happened to be Zena Andrus and she had missed as usual, so we started to take licks.

  When I stepped up for my turn, Zena glared at me as though I had deliberately caused her to miss and was personally to blame for her sore wrist. I hadn’t intended to hit her hard at all because she was so completely hapless, but that look of hers just made me mad, it was so chock-full of malice. I took a tight grip on her arm, stiffened the first two fingers of my left hand, and whacked her across the reddened area of her wrist hard as I could. It hurt my fingers.

  The shuttle was just coming to a stop then, and I turned away from Zena and said, “Well, here we are,” ignoring her whimper of self-pity as she nursed her wrist.

  We were free to go our own way after the shuttle dropped us at Geo Quad, so I started for home, but Zena caught up with me before I’d gone very far.

  She said, “Your father’s being Chairman of the Ship’s Council doesn’t make any difference to me. In spite of what you think, you’re no better than anybody else.”

  I looked at her and said, “I don’t claim that I’m better than everybody else, but I don’t walk around telling everybody that I’m not, the way you do.”

  I saw immediately that I’d made a mistake. Every so often I meet somebody with whom I just can’t communicate. Sometimes it is an adult. More often it is somebody my own age. Sometimes it is somebody who thinks in a different way than I do so that the words we use don’t mean the same things to both of us. More often it is somebody like Zena who just doesn’t listen.

  What I’d said seemed obvious to me, but Zena missed the point completely. There were lots of times when I didn’t think well of myself at all, but even when I had cause to whisper mea culpa to myself under my breath, I would not concede that I was inferior to other people. I knew that I was smarter than most people, smaller than most people, clumsier than most, untalented in art (I inherited that), less pretty than most, and that I could play the pennywhistle a little bit—at least, I owned one, and most people didn’t. I was what I was. Why should I crawl, or cry, or be humble about it? I really didn’t understand.

  Zena either didn’t hear what I said the way I said it or she simply wasn’t able to understand anything that complicated.

  “That’s what I thought,” she said. “You do think you’re better than everybody else! I didn’t think you’d admit it. I’ve been saying that’s the way you are. You’re stuck up.”

  I started to protest, but she’d already turned away, as pleased as though she’d been handed a cookie. I knew it was my fault, too. Not for what I’d said, but for losing my temper and being unpleasant in the first place. You can’t stamp on people and not get hurt in return.

  It didn’t end there, though. Zena spread what she thought I’d said, plus some interpolations, plus some liberal commentary that demonstrated just how thoroughly noble she was, and how objective, all over the quad and there were kids willi
ng to listen and to believe. Why not? They didn’t know me. And I didn’t care. Geo Quad meant nothing to me.

  By the time that I realized that it did matter, I’d backed myself neatly into a corner. I had a few enemies—perhaps even more than a few—and a fair number of neutral acquaintances. I had no friends.

  * * *

  The major reason that I found it hard to think of leaving the Ship is that the Mudeaters, the Colons, are so different from us. They are peasants, farmers mostly, because that sort of person was best equipped to stay alive on a colony planet, some of which are pretty rough places. On the other hand, we people on the Ship mostly have technical training.

  We could have joined them, I suppose, when Earth was destroyed—as, in fact, it was planned that we would—but if we had it would have meant dropping the better part of five thousand years of advance. You see, you have to have time for science, and working every minute through the day just to stay alive in order to be able to do the same thing tomorrow leaves no free time at all. So we never left the Ship, and none of the other Ships were abandoned, either.

  Now when we need something from one of the colonies, we trade some of the knowledge we have preserved all these years, or some of the products science has worked out, and in exchange we get materials—what we have for what they have. It’s a trade.

  The truth is, I guess, I just find it easier to cope with things than with people. When I came to Alfing Quad, I got to know everybody. I thought I was settled for good and I set down roots. Or, you might say, I dug in my fingernails and held on for dear life. But then we came to Geo Quad and I had to face all these new people. I might not have done it very well but I could do it because they were Ship people. People-type people. But they aren’t like us on the planets.

  I really think I could have faced Earth. I think I could understand anybody who could take an asteroid roughly thirty miles by twenty by ten and turn it into a Ship. They split it into two halves, carved out forty or fifty percent of the rock in the two parts, leaving matching projections, and then put them back together again, and restuffed the interior with all the fittings needed to make a Ship. All in one year.

  To me, these people were fantastic and wonderful, and it still hurts me to think that they had to cap it all by blowing themselves to pieces. But that was Earth. Not the Mudeaters.

  On the second Sunday after we finished moving to Geo Quad, I was reading a book in my room when Daddy knocked on my door. I put the book aside when he came in.

  “Did you have any plans for next weekend, Mia?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “Why?”

  “I had an idea I thought you might like.”

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve just finished talking with the Supply Steward. We’re going to have to make a barter stop, so we’re laying by Grainau this weekend. The Council has given me the job of dealing with them. I thought you might enjoy coming along with us.”

  He ought to have known better than that. I shook my head and said, “I don’t think I want to see the Mudeaters.”

  “Don’t use that word,” Daddy said. “They may be primitive, but they’re still people. You might be surprised at what you could learn from them. The world doesn’t end with a quad. It doesn’t end with a Ship, either.”

  My heart pounding, I said, “Thank you, but I don’t think I’m interested,” and picked up my book again.

  “You might think about this,” Daddy said. “In twenty months you’re going to be alone on a planet with people like these, doing your best to live with them and stay alive. If you can’t stand to be near them now, what are you going to do then? I think you ought to be interested.”

  I shook my head, but then I suddenly couldn’t pretend to be indifferent any longer. With tears in my eyes, I said, “I am interested. But I’m scared.”

  “Is that all?”

  “What do you mean, ‘Is that all?’ ”

  Daddy said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I can see how the thought might frighten you. Most of the colony planets are pretty unpleasant places by any civilized standard. What I meant was, is that your only reason for not wanting to come along?”

  “Yes,” I said. “But it’s not the planets that scare me. It’s the people.”

  “Oh,” Daddy said. He sighed. “You know, I was afraid of something like this. One of the reasons I had for moving was that I thought you were too dependent on Alfing Quad. You were living in too small a world. The trouble is that you don’t know that there is anything real beyond the things you are familiar with at first hand. If I could take you down on Grainau and show you something new, and show you that it isn’t all that bad, I think you’d get over this fear of yours.”

  My stomach lurched with fear. “You’re not going to make me go, are you?” I asked desperately.

  “No. I won’t make you go. I won’t ever force you to do anything, Mia. I’ll tell you what, though,” he said, his manner changing abruptly. “If you come along, if you go down to Grainau with me this weekend, I promise I’ll unfreeze you. How about that?”

  I had to smile, but I shook my head.

  “Think about it,” Daddy said. “You may change your mind.”

  When he went out, I had the feeling he was disappointed, and suddenly I felt depressed and even more unhappy. It was as though having my fingers dug in, and holding on as best I could to my security, suddenly I wasn’t to be allowed it anymore, and Daddy was prying my fingers loose one-by-one. That wouldn’t have been so bad if he weren’t disappointed that I wouldn’t let go.

  So, not quite knowing why, I went back to Alfing Quad. Perhaps it was because it was the one place where I knew that they were satisfied with me as I was. I took the shuttle to the Fourth Level and then the cross-level shuttle to Alfing Quad.

  First I went to our old apartment and let myself in with the key I should have turned in and hadn’t. There wasn’t a bit of furniture there. No books, no bookshelves. I wandered through the rooms and they all seemed identical. It didn’t seem like home anymore, because all the things that had made it home were gone. It was just another empty corner of my life and I left very shortly.

  Mrs. Farmer was standing in the hall when I went out, looking at me and noting, no doubt, that I had a key that I shouldn’t have had. She and I had never cared too much for each other. She always had made it a point of honor to tell Daddy when I did something that she would never have let her Peter do, in some cases things that Daddy had told me specifically that I could do. Daddy always listened politely to her, then closed the door behind her and forgot about the whole thing. She just looked at me; she didn’t say anything.

  I went to the quad yard next, and nobody was there, so I went to the Common Room. It was odd, but I felt like a stranger here in these familiar halls, as though I ought to tiptoe and duck around corners to avoid meeting somebody who might recognize me. I felt like an intruder. That isn’t the feeling you ought to have when you go home, but somehow in the process of our moving Alfing Quad had become an uneasy place for me.

  I could hear the kids making noise in the Common Room before I even got there, and I hesitated to wind up my courage before I went in. The Common Room was not just one room, actually. It was a complex of rooms: a lounge, a library, two game rooms, study rooms, a music practice room, a music listening room, a small theater, and a snackery. The snackery was where I expected to see my friends.

  It seemed to be my day for meeting Farmers, because Peter Farmer came out as I was hesitating. He isn’t one of my favorite people and his mother keeps him on a very short leash, but I saw no reason not to be friendly.

  I said, “Hello.”

  Peter stared frankly at me, and then he said, “What are you doing back here? My mother said that she was glad you were gone because you’re such a bad example.”

  So I looked straight at him and lied. “How can you say such a thing, Peter Farmer? I just saw your mother and she was perfectly sweet. She said if I ran into you I was to tel
l you it was time to run along home.”

  “Oh, you never met my mother.”

  “Of course I did,” I said, and went into the Common Room.

  There is a firm social line drawn between kids over fourteen and kids under. As adults and citizens, they have rights that the younger ones don’t have and they are not slow to let the younger ones know it. In a place like the Common Room where both come, the older ones have their area, and the younger ones their area. Though there isn’t any real difference between them, somehow the adult area has a mystique and attraction that the younger area lacks. I went over to the corner where my friends gathered.

  Mary Carpentier was sitting at a table with Venie Morlock and two or three of the other kids, and I headed over to them.

  When she saw me, Mary said, “Well, hi, Mia. Come on and sit down. What are you doing here?”

  “I just thought I’d visit and see how you were doing,” I said, sitting down at the table. I wasn’t going to say how unhappy I was in Geo Quad—not with Venie sitting there listening to every word and ready to shout hallelujah.

  I said, “Hi” and everybody at the table said, “Hi, Mia,” back.

  Mary said, “Gee, Mia. I didn’t expect you to turn up back here. Why didn’t you call and tell me you were coming?”

  “It was sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing,” I said.

  “Well, it’s good to see you. Hey, how do you like it where you are now?”

  “It’s all right, I guess,” I said. “I’m still getting used to things. I haven’t met everybody or been everywhere yet.”

  “Hey, do you still do that crazy business of walking around in the collecting chutes over there?” one of the others asked.

  “No,” I said. “I haven’t gotten around to it, but I expect I will.”

  “Which quad did you move to, now?”

  “Geo Quad,” Mary answered for me.

  “That’s on the Fifth Level, isn’t it?” another of the kids asked.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Oh, yes,” Venie broke in. “I remember. I’ve heard of Geo Quad. That’s where all the oddballs live.”