Rite of Passage

by Alexei Panshin

  Then he turned to us and said, “My name is Fosnight. I’m in charge of coordinating all Trial and pre-Trial programs, and that includes survival classes. There are, at present, six classes in training, counting this one, meeting in various areas of the Third Level. This class is scheduled to meet regularly from now on, here at Gate 5, on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons at 12:30. Third Class is here on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. If the meeting times conflict with school, tutorial sessions, or anything else, you’ll have to find a way out. Reschedule, perhaps—the other, of course, not this—or skip one or the other. That is strictly up to you to settle. It is strictly up to you whether or not you decide to attend, but I can guarantee that almost anyone will find his chances of coming back from Trial alive infinitely improved if he attends Survival Class regularly. Your group is somewhat smaller than the usual one, so you should do very well. You are also lucky to have Mr. Marechal here as your instructor—he’s one of our six best chief instructors.” He smiled at his little joke.

  Mr. Fosnight’s manner was brisk and businesslike, as though he were checking his mental items off. Now he turned to Marechal and handed him the whistle. “Whistle,” he said. He handed him the list. “List.” Then he turned back to us standing in a bunch in front. “Any questions?”

  He’d struck us so hard and fast that we just looked blankly up at him. Nobody said anything.

  “Good,” he said. “Goodbye.” And he walked off as though the last item on his list were settled quite satisfactorily, and another tedious but necessary little task were out of the way.

  Mr. Marechal looked at the whistle in his hand, and then after Fosnight as he walked to the shuttle station. He didn’t look as though he liked whistles. Then he stuck the whistle in his pocket. He folded the list and put that away, too. When he was finished, he looked up and looked us over slowly, perhaps taking our measure. We looked back up at him, taking a good look at the man who was going to have us in charge for a year and a half. It wasn’t a case of taking his measure, since the child’s side of an adult-child relationship is pretty ordinarily to assume that the adult knows what he is about. If he doesn’t and the child finds out, then things go to pot, but to start with he generally has the benefit of the doubt. I will admit that Mr. Marechal was not an overwhelming figure at first sight.

  He said, “Well, Mr. Fosnight forgot something he usually says, so I’ll say it for him if I can remember more or less how it goes. There’s an anthropological name for Trial. They call it a rite of passage. It’s a formal way of passing from one stage of your life to another. All societies have them. The important thing to remember is that it makes being an adult a meaningful sort of thing, because adulthood has been earned when you come back from Trial. That makes Trial worth concentrating on.”

  He stopped then and looked off to his right. Everybody looked that way. Mr. Fosnight was coming back toward us. Mr. Marechal looked at him and said questioningly, “Rites of passage?”

  “Yes.”

  “Never mind. I just finished going over it for you.”

  “Oh,” Mr. Fosnight said. “Thanks, then.” He turned around and went back toward the shuttle station.

  He was so dogged about the whole thing that the moment he was out of sight, everybody started laughing. Mr. Marechal let it go on for a moment and then he said, “That’s enough. I just want to say a couple of things for myself now. Me and the people who’ll be coming in to show you things are going to be doing our best to get you through Trial. If you pay attention, you shouldn’t have any trouble. Okay? Now the first thing I’m going to do is assign you horses and show you the first thing about riding.”

  Mr. Marechal was a slow-speaking sort of person, and didn’t have a complete command of grammar, but he did have the sort of personal authority that makes people listen. Without consulting the list in his pocket, he called off people’s names and names of horses. I got stuck with something called Nincompoop. That got laughs. Jimmy’s horse was Pet—the final t is written but not pronounced since it comes from the French. Venie Morlock got a horse named Slats. When Rachel Yung was assigned her horse, we moved over to the corral, where Mr. Marechal perched up on the top rail.

  “These horses are yours from here on out,” he said. “Don’t get sentimental about them. They’re just a way to get from one place to another the same as a heli-pac, and you’ll be getting practice with both. But you’ll have to take care of both, too, and that means especially the horse you have. A horse is an animal and that means he’ll break down easier than a machine if he isn’t taken care of. You damned well better take care of them.”

  One of the kids raised his hand. “Yes, Herskovitz?”

  Herskovitz was a little surprised to be tagged quite that easily. “If horses are that lousy, why do we have to go to the trouble of learning how to ride them? That’s what I want to know.”

  Even more slowly than usual, Mr. Marechal said, “Well, I could give you reasons, I suppose, but what it all boils down to is that you have to pass a test. The test goes by certain rules and one of those rules is that you have to be able to ride a horse. But don’t let it bother you too much, son. You may find that you like horses after a while.”

  He swung over the fence and landed inside. “Now I’m going to show you the first thing about riding. The first thing about riding is getting a saddle on your animal.”

  One of the boys said, “Excuse me, but I already know how to ride. Do I have to stick around for this?”

  Mr. Marechal said, “No, you don’t, Farmer. You can skip anything you want to. Only one thing, though. Before you walk out on anything, you’d best be mighty sure you know every blessed thing I’m going to show, ’cause if it’s something you walked out on I’ll be damned if I’ll do it again for you. If you can’t help missing I might be generous—if I’m in the right mood. If you fall behind of your own doing, you’ll have to catch up on your own, too.”

  Farmer said that in that case he thought he’d stick around today just to see how things went.

  Mr. Marechal caught up one of the three horses in the corral, the red roan mare, and put a bridle on her, showing us what he was doing as he did it. Then he put on the blanket and the double-cinch saddle. He took them off, and then he showed us again from the beginning. When he was done, he said, “All right. Now you people will have to try it. Go collect your tack and lead out your horses.”

  There was a scramble then to find and get acquainted with your horse, locate your gear, and get both into a position where the second might be strapped onto the first. Nincompoop turned out to be brown—what they call a chestnut—and not terribly large. He was more of a pony than a horse, a pony being less than fifty-six inches high at the shoulder. It seemed to be an arbitrary cutoff point. His size pleased me, since a larger animal would probably have intimidated me more than this one did. As it was, I hardly had time to be intimidated, just time to get in line with everybody else, our animals more or less in a row with gear on the left side. Mr. Marechal stood out in front and told us what to do.

  The first time went badly. I got everything where I thought it should go, but when I stood back, the saddle didn’t stay in place. It seemed to be in place for a moment and I looked up feeling pleased, but when I looked back, it was tipped. It seemed to be on tightly, but it was tipped.

  I figured I’d better try again. I undid the cinch, the strap that goes under the belly of the horse to tie the saddle on, straightened the saddle, and restrapped it.

  Mr. Marechal was walking down the line inspecting and offering advice. He got to me as I was hauling the cinch tight.

  “Let me show you something,” he said. He walked up to Nincompoop, lifted his knee, and rammed him a hard one in the belly. The horse gave a whoof of expelled air, and he yanked the cinch tight. The horse looked at him reproachfully as he notched it.

  “This one will swell up on you every time if you let him,” he said. “You’ve got to let him know you’re sharper than he is.”


  We spent about an hour with saddling and unsaddling before we quit for the day. On the way home, I asked Jimmy what he thought. We were sharing our shuttle car with half-a-dozen others from our group.

  “I like Marechal,” he said. “I think he’s going to be okay.”

  One of the girls said, “He doesn’t seem to stand still for any nonsense. I like that. It means we won’t waste any of our time.”

  The Farmer boy was in our car. He was the one who already knew how to ride. “My time was wasted,” he said. “He didn’t go over anything I didn’t know already today. That’s what I call nonsense.”

  “It may be nonsense for you,” Jimmy said, “but most of the rest of us learned something. If you know everything already, don’t come. Just like he said.”

  The boy shrugged. “Maybe I won’t.”

  On the cross-level shuttle to Geo Quad, I said to Jimmy, “I was a little disappointed, myself.”

  “With Marechal?”

  “No. With the whole afternoon. I expected something more.”

  “Well, what exactly?”

  I shot him a look. “You always like to pin me down, don’t you?”

  He shrugged. “I just like to know what you mean, or if you mean anything.”

  “Well, Mr. Smarty, what I meant is that it all seemed so businesslike and ordinary. There’s got to be a better word . . . undramatic.”

  “Well, they say Sixth Class is likely to be pretty dull. In three months or so when we’ve got some of the basic stuff down, it should be more exciting.”

  We rode silently for a minute while I thought it over. Then I said, “I don’t think so. I’ll bet things stay the same whether we’re Sixth Class, Fourth Class, or whatever. It’ll be all the same, businesslike.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” Jimmy asked.

  “Nothing. I just don’t believe in adventure anymore.”

  “When did you decide that?”

  “Just now.”

  “Because today wasn’t exciting. No—‘dramatic.’ Wasn’t going down to Grainau an adventure? How about that?”

  “You think being pushed into a big pool of foul-tasting water is an adventure?” I asked scornfully. “Have you ever had an adventure?”

  “I guess not. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  Jimmy shook his head. “I don’t know what’s the matter with you. You must be in a bad mood. You were talking about bets—I bet if I try I can work up a legitimate, real adventure.”

  “How?” I challenged.

  He shook his red head doggedly. “All right. I don’t know now. All I’m betting is that I can find one.”

  “Okay,” I said. “It’s a bet.”

  * * *

  There is a certain amount of organization to a Ship’s Assembly, as with most mass gatherings—it takes somebody to be there to see that everything is in order, that there are chairs, tables, microphones, and all that. Mostly, this can be just anybody who gets saddled with the job, but the final decisions devolve on the man who chairs the Assembly, meaning Daddy. I think, too, that he was interested that things go smoothly in this first Assembly after he became Ship’s Chairman.

  The night the Assembly was to meet to consider the case of Alicia MacReady, Daddy finished dinner early and left for the Second Level. Zena Andrus came over to eat with me that night. I had found that in the right circumstances I could like her. She had a tendency to whine at times, but that’s not the worst fault in the world. And she did have courage.

  As we were finishing dinner, but before dessert, there was a signal at the door. It was Mr. Tubman.

  “You said to be here at 6:30,” he said apologetically, seeing that we were not finished as yet.

  “That’s quite all right, Henry,” Daddy said. “I think I’m about finished. You know where the dessert is, Mia. Clean things up and dispose of the dishes when you’re finished.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that,” I said.

  “I know,” he said. “It just isn’t so long since I did have to and I still have the habit.”

  Dessert was a parfait. While we were eating it after Daddy had left, Zena said, “What is this Assembly thing about, anyway? Mum and Daddy are going but they didn’t talk about it.”

  I said, “Everybody’s been talking about it. I would have thought you’d know.”

  “Well, I don’t,” she said. “I don’t pay much attention to things like Assemblies, and I bet you never did either before your dad became Ship’s Chairman.”

  Well, I hadn’t, but I hadn’t been completely unaware of them, either. So I explained what I knew of things to her.

  “It doesn’t seem like very much,” Zena said. “They could always get rid of the baby. She couldn’t have gotten away with having it, anyway. It seems like a big fuss over not very much at all.”

  “It’s the principle of the thing,” I said.

  Zena shrugged, and went back to her parfait. It was her second. Things always seemed to be much simpler for her than they were for me.

  “Must you make that noise?” asked Zena, after we had adjourned from the table. She was sitting on the floor of my bedroom systematically taking one of my dolls apart. As it happened, this one was meant to be taken apart, carefully of course since it was old and worn. The doll was originally Russian and had been in the family since before we’d left Earth. It was wooden and came apart. Inside was a smaller doll which came apart. Altogether, there were a total of twelve dolls nested one inside the next. It’s the sort of thing you can spend a lot of time with.

  I was sitting cross-legged on my bed and playing on the pennywhistle I had discovered a couple of months before. I was playing a very simple little tune, mainly because I couldn’t finger fast enough for anything more complicated. Still, it didn’t sound half bad to me.

  I said, “ ‘The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for . . .’ ” I shut my eyes trying to remember. “ ‘. . . for treasons, stratagems,’ and something-or-other.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It’s a quotation. From Shakespeare.”

  “If you’re talking about me,” Zena said, “I like music well enough.”

  I held up the pennywhistle. “Well, this is music.”

  “You ought to practice it in private until you can play it better.”

  I bounced up, put the pennywhistle away, then hopped over Zena on the floor to get to the vid. “It’s time for the Assembly, anyway.” I turned on the general channel of the vid.

  Zena gave a sour look. “Do we have to watch that old thing?”

  “Jimmy and I are supposed to,” I said.

  “Is that Jimmy Dentremont?”

  “Yes.”

  “You spend a lot of time with him, don’t you?”

  “We’ve got the same tutor and we’re in the same Survival Class,” I said.

  “Oh,” Zena said. She began stacking the dolls together. “Do you like him? He always seemed too full of himself to me.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He is bright. I guess I can take him or leave him alone.”

  I flopped on the floor and leaned my back against the bed. The vid showed the Assembly about ready to be called to order.

  “If the Assembly doesn’t turn out to be interesting, we can always turn it off,” I said.

  We watched the Assembly for the next two hours. It seemed that just about everybody had a firm grasp of the basic questions beforehand. It remained for spokesmen for both sides to state their cases, for questions to be put from the floor, for witnesses to be called, more questions to be put, and a final vote. Daddy, as Chairman, didn’t involve himself in the argument.

  Mr. Tubman put the case for the Ship. Another member of the Council, Mr. Persson, made the plea for the other side. Witnesses included the Ship’s Eugenist, a lawyer giving the point of law at stake, Alicia MacReady speaking in her own behalf, and a number of character witness
es who spoke for her.

  The Council and witnesses sat at a table at the base of the amphitheatre. Every adult presently aboard Ship had an assigned seat in the circle above and could speak if he so desired. Potentially the Assembly could have dragged on for hours, but it didn’t. This was Daddy’s job. He conducted the Assembly, putting witnesses through their paces briskly, cutting the garrulous off, giving both sides an equal share of time. As Ship’s Chairman, it was his job to be fair and impartial, and as nearly as I could see he was, though I did know in this case what his real opinions were. Mr. Tubman was speaking for him.

  In truth, the MacReady side had no case. All they could do was make a plea for leniency. Alicia MacReady cried when it was her turn to speak, until Daddy made her stop.

  Mr. Persson said, “Once we all agree that it was a stupid thing to do, what more is there to say? Alicia MacReady is a citizen of this Ship. She survived Trial. She has as much right to live here as anyone else. Granted that she did a foolish thing, it’s a very simple thing to abort the child. You all watched her crawl for you. There isn’t any question of this sort of thing happening again. It was a mistake made in a wild moment and heartily repented of. Can’t we say that this public humiliation is punishment enough and drop the whole matter?”

  When Mr. Tubman had his chance to speak, he said, more crisply than I was used to hearing him speak, “If nothing else, there are a few corrections I would like to make. If what Mr. Persson chooses to call ‘this public humiliation’ is a punishment, it is a self-inflicted one—discount it. Miss MacReady’s case could have been settled before the Council. Bringing it before an Assembly was her own choice. Secondly, her so-called repentance. Repentance when you are found out is much too easy—discount it. ‘A mistake made in a wild moment’? Hardly. It took more than a month of deliberate dodging of her APPs for Miss MacReady to become pregnant. That is hardly a single wild moment—discount it. Corrections aside, there is something else. There is a matter of basic principle. We are a tiny precarious island floating in a hostile sea. We have worked out ways of living that observed exactly allow us to survive and go on living. If they are not observed exactly, we cannot survive. Alicia MacReady made a choice. She chose to have a fifth child that the Ship’s Eugenist had not given her permission to have. It was a choice between the Ship and the baby. The choice made, there are certain inevitable consequences of which Alicia MacReady was aware when she made her choice. Would we be fair either to her or ourselves if we didn’t face and help her to face the consequences? We are not barbarians. We don’t propose to kill either Miss MacReady or her unborn child. What we do propose is to give her what she has elected, her baby and not the Ship. I say we should drop her on the nearest Colony planet. And good luck to her.”