Rite of Passage

by Alexei Panshin

  “Oh, sure.”

  “Let’s plan to go then. Helen? You work with Attila. You be his lookout and make sure he doesn’t get caught fooling around here and ruin everything.”

  Then he turned to the other three of us. “All right, let’s go see about getting the suits.”

  Helen said, “But can’t I go? I don’t want to miss out.”

  It was interesting—of the six of us, Jimmy was the next-to-smallest and yet he dominated the group when he wanted to. There is something to the idea of natural leadership ability.

  Jimmy said, “We have to have somebody be lookout. Besides, you’ll be here when we go outside. The only thing you’re going to miss is swiping the suits.”

  To get to Salvage, our next stop, we cut through Engineers. That saved us a long trip around. The four of us must have made considerable noise because as we were passing down the main hall of offices, an elderly woman popped out of one of them behind us.

  “Hold on there!” she said.

  We turned around. She was elderly—short, squarely built, white-haired, and obviously well over a hundred, perhaps even as old as Mr. Mbele. She also looked thoroughly sour.

  “Well, what is it you’re doing here, making all this noise? Perhaps you don’t realize it, but there is important work being done here.”

  Uneasily Jimmy said that we were just passing through on our way to Salvage and that we meant no harm.

  “This is not a public highway,” she said. “If you have no business in Engineers, you shouldn’t be here. You children have no sense of fitness. Why are you going to Salvage?”

  Jimmy and I were standing just behind Venie and Riggy, and her question was addressed to Jimmy.

  “It’s a school assignment,” Jimmy said.

  “That’s right,” I chimed in.

  Her glance shifted to the other two of us. “What about you?”

  Instead of saying the obvious thing, Riggy said, “We’re with them.”

  “All right,” the old lady snapped. “You first two go on but don’t come through here again. The other two of you go on home.”

  Venie and Riggy looked helplessly at us, but then they turned and went reluctantly the other way. The old lady really had no right to chase them out, but she was so fierce and unarguable-with that we just couldn’t say a thing. Jimmy and I scooted on our way before she could add anything more, and she watched until both sets of us had definitely done as she said. Some people get a feeling of power from being unpleasant.

  Most of all, Salvage smelled interesting. Salvage and Repair are really little enclaves almost surrounded by the much larger Engineers. There are offices and large machines and large projects a-building in Engineers. Salvage and Repair are just the tail end of the dog, without the personnel, resources, or neatness of Engineers. Salvage was a crowded room, full of aisles and racks and benches and tables all in a pleasing state of disarray. It looked like the sort of place that you could poke around in for weeks or even months and always turn up something new and interesting. And hanging over it all was the most intriguing and unidentifiable odor I’d come upon. The smell alone was enough to make you want to spend your spare time here.

  We peeked cautiously in. There were a couple of technicians working and moving around.

  “Come on,” Jimmy said. “I know they have suits here somewhere, probably locked away. We’ll have to poke around.”

  We looked around as inconspicuously as possible, Jimmy taking one aisle and me taking the next. I was lost in a pile of broken toys when Jimmy grabbed at my elbow. I jumped.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve found them. They’re two rows over and they’re not locked away or anything. They’re just in a rack.”

  “How do you know they’re safe to use?” I said. I nudged a broken doll with my toe. “If they’re like that, we might as well forget it.”

  “These aren’t in for repair,” Jimmy said. “These are the ones they’d use themselves if they had to go outside. They’ve got seals on from after the last time they were used. The important thing is how we’re going to sneak them out. Uh-oh, watch out.”

  I turned to look. Just down the aisle a pleasant-looking technician was coming toward us. He was a short youngish man with mouse-colored hair.

  “Well, what can I do for you kids?” he asked.

  “I’m Mia Havero,” I said. “This is Jimmy Dentremont.”

  “Hello,” he said. “My name is Mitchell.” And waited with eyebrows raised.

  I reached into my pocket and took out a couple of folded sheets of paper. Uncertainly I said, “I don’t know if you can help us. Maybe this isn’t the right place.”

  Jimmy stayed silent, watching my lead.

  Mr. Mitchell said, “Well, we’ll see. What is it that you’ve got?”

  I showed him the sketches, Jimmy’s and mine, that I’d taken from the table in Lev Quad, and explained how our names were involved.

  “These are just rough,” I said. “What we wanted to do was draw them a little better and then work up pins to wear with these as designs.”

  “Hmm,” Mr. Mitchell said. “Yes. I don’t see why not. It may not fall strictly in our province, but it seems a worthwhile idea. I think I can help you. How does ceramic jewelry sound?”

  “Great,” Jimmy said. “Could we come down on a Saturday morning?”

  Mr. Mitchell said, “There’s usually only one technician on duty on Saturdays, but I suppose . . .”

  I said, “Could we make it a week from tomorrow? We have this big soccer game in the quad tomorrow and we really ought to be there.”

  “Oh, sure,” Mr. Mitchell said. “I’ll even arrange to have the duty a week from tomorrow and help you myself.”

  After we had thanked him and walked away, Jimmy said, “You certainly can lie. How did you think that one up?”

  “Which?”

  “About the soccer game.”

  “I didn’t make that up,” I said. “I was supposed to tell you. The kids want to play soccer tomorrow.”

  “Oh,” Jimmy said. “Maybe you aren’t such a good liar, then.”

  Chapter 10

  THE SCORE IN THE SOCCER GAME in Roth Quad was 5 to 3. Attila and Venie and I were on the losing side.

  During the next week we set our plans. With some practice, Attila had that door so well trained that it would practically pop open when he told it to, at least according to Helen. Att looked pleased and didn’t deny it. We had borrowing the suits set up pretty well, too. Jimmy sketched the location of the suits for Venie and Riggy.

  “There’ll be just one technician working on Saturday,” Jimmy said, “and he’ll be busy helping Mia and me. All you two have to do is sneak easy. As soon as we can, we’ll join you in the airlock room.”

  I had some spare time and Jimmy didn’t, so I took Venie and Riggy down to Salvage for a quick scout around. Mr. Mitchell was in the back, but I made sure we didn’t attract his attention. We were in, I pointed to the suits, and we were out again in no more than twenty seconds. On our way back, though, the same old woman stopped us in Engineers and lectured us again. She had her desk placed so that she could see everybody who passed in the hall—and, I guess, come out to exterminate anyone who she thought had no business being there. Her name, displayed on her desk, was Keithley. She more than awed me. She scared me. As soon as she turned away, we three scooted.

  “You’d better not come this way when you have the suits,” I said. “Think what would happen if she caught you.”

  Riggy paled and shook his head.

  “She shouldn’t have stopped us,” Venie said. “We weren’t making any noise this time.” She agreed to make a detour when they had the suits, however.

  Things aren’t always fair, I guess.

  Actually, the old lady wasn’t the only thing I was afraid of. I didn’t really like the idea of going outside the Ship, and the more I thought about it the less I liked it. The Ship goes faster than the speed of light (the old Einstein barrier) by becoming discont
inuous (the Kaufmann-Chambers Discontinuity Equations). I know the thought of standing on the outside of the Ship and looking at the inside of nothing excited Jimmy, but it did not excite me. It seems to be my nature to have second thoughts, and they came to me all through the week. Since it was far too late to back out without looking foolish, I didn’t tell any of the others, but I began to regret ever having mentioned the word adventure.

  Perhaps the answer is that if you’re going to do something impulsive, you should do it the way Riggy does. Act while the impulse is clear and fresh and don’t allow any time for second thought.

  * * *

  “Who won that soccer game of yours?” Mr. Mitchell said as he led the way through the maze of unrepaired, half-repaired, and repaired whatnot in Salvage.

  “Jimmy’s side did,” I said. “Mine lost. We really appreciate your helping us like this.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing at all,” he said. “Here we are. This is the kiln where we bake the finished pieces. Copper—that’s for the base. Then an enamel and a surface painting on that. We can try it a couple of times until it comes out right.”

  He pointed at each item and, in fact, seemed more than pleased to help us. I think part of it was the chance to help out eager kiddies, partly he liked me because I was a cute little girl, and part was the sheer joy of operating the bake oven and making the jewelry. The pins were just an excuse for me, though I did find the idea of making them intriguing and the process interesting. I am not a tinkerer, however. Jimmy and Mr. Mitchell both were. They belonged to the let’s-putter-around-and-see-what-happens school and they got on very well together.

  We started by picking the copper backing, refining our sketches, and planning the colors we wanted to use. Gradually, I became relegated to the position of observer while Jimmy took over the planning and execution of the jewelry with Mr. Mitchell serving as over-his-shoulder adviser. That was after the first try, particularly mine, turned out badly.

  The first time I ever saw Jimmy Dentremont he was tinkering, or if he wasn’t, at least that’s the way I remember it. He was good at it, too, and that combined with enthusiasm, mild mental myopia, and desire to dominate sometimes carried him away. It wasn’t the first time I’d gotten elbowed to the side by him. I didn’t care for it particularly, either. It was one of the things that made me wonder, our necessary association aside, if I really liked Jimmy.

  It wasn’t really an important enough thing to get more than slightly irritated about today, since we had larger goals in mind, but I did resent mildly being put in a position where I had to work just to see enough over Jimmy’s other shoulder to know what was going on. But, at least, having been put in the role of an observer, I did make an effort to observe and I saw more than either Jimmy or Mr. Mitchell.

  When our second tries were in the oven, I poked Jimmy and said, “Mr. Mitchell, it’s about lunchtime.”

  “Hmm?” Jimmy said, turning his attention from the oven to me. It was actually something on the early side for lunch, as Jimmy was perceptive enough to be aware. In his concentration on the job of the moment, our larger purposes had escaped him. I gave him another prod to restore his memory.

  I said, “We can go and eat and then come back to see how the pins turned out.”

  Jimmy had the good sense to nod.

  Mr. Mitchell seemed a little bewildered, mostly I think because he and Jimmy had been in rapport, working together to do the job, and now, all of a sudden, Jimmy was just dropping things and dashing off. But he said, “Oh. All right. Sure.”

  When we were in the hall on beyond, Jimmy said, “What I said last week about lies—I was wrong. Boy, did that sound weak: ‘Have to go to lunch.’ ”

  “Well, I didn’t notice you thinking up anything better,” I said, quite tartly. I was walking determinedly enough that before Jimmy saw how fast I was going I was a good bit ahead and he had to push to catch up. It’s my I-mean-business-and-I’m-more-than-just-an-ounce-irked pace.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Jimmy asked. “I didn’t mean anything.”

  “It’s not that,” I said.

  “Well, what is it?”

  “Nothing,” I said. Then, “They got the suits about half an hour ago. Venie waved at me. You two had your heads down over the table.”

  “I hope they got the smallest there were,” Jimmy said.

  Suddenly, I put my hand on his elbow and stopped. “Hold on there. We’d better go back and go around.” I gestured at the hall ahead. “I don’t want to get bawled out by that old witch again.”

  Jimmy looked at me with an impish expression. It’s the sort of expression his face, topped by red hair and set between prominent ears, is really fitted for.

  “Let’s take a chance,” he said. “Let’s just run for it, and if she comes out we won’t stop at all.”

  Maybe it was my moment to be impulsive. The hall stretched before us like a gauntlet. The door to old Mrs. Keithley’s office was open and we were far enough out of her line of sight to allow us a running start. We had to go about thirty yards beyond it, turn a corner left, and then we’d be out of sight and out of practical reach.

  “All right,” I said. Feeling like little blonde-haired Susy Dangerfield running between the lines of hostile Iroquois braves, I took off. Jimmy was right with me on my left, and we pounded along. As we passed the old lady’s office, I shot a glance right, but didn’t see her.

  Jimmy out-accelerated me, and as we made for the corner, he was a step or two ahead.

  “Hey, slow down,” I said. “She isn’t even there.”

  He turned his head to look back as he reached the corner, and still moving at considerable speed crashed blindly into someone. Jimmy bounced off and into the wall, but didn’t fall down. I skidded to a stop at the corner and looked down. It was Mrs. Keithley, white hair and all, sitting flat on her bottom with an expression of affronted dignity on her face. She looked up at me.

  “Hello,” I said. “Nice day, isn’t it?” I stepped over her and walked at a very sedate pace down the hall.

  Jimmy was stunned momentarily, but then he made the best of things. “It was nice to see you again,” he said politely to the dear old lady, and then walked after me. I shot a glance back at her and then Jimmy caught up with me and we both broke into a run and left her looking speechlessly after us.

  When we were out of breath and out of sight, we stopped running and flung ourselves down panting on a flight of stairs. Then we started laughing, partly because it seemed terribly funny and partly from sheer relief.

  When I’d caught my breath and stopped laughing, I looked soberly at Jimmy and said, “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to take the long way around from now on.”

  “That’s a pretty obvious thing to say,” Jimmy said.

  “Well, I’m not a very brave person.”

  “Oh, I’m not blaming you. I’m going to be careful, too.”

  * * *

  When we got to the lock room, Helen was waiting in the hallway. All of us looked in both directions, and then Helen stepped up to the black door and gave a knock that was recognizably a signal and not a casual rapping by some passerby with an unaccountable desire to tap on black doors. The door swung open immediately and we all piled inside. Att, standing behind the door, gave us just time enough to get completely in and then shut the door behind us.

  The room was green-colored, small and bare. The lock door was directly opposite the door we’d come in. The suits had been hung on racks that apparently were designed to hold them.

  Jimmy looked around in satisfaction. “Ah,” he said. “Very, very good. Let’s get the suits on, Mia.”

  I looked around at Venie and Helen and Att and said, “Where’s Riggy?”

  Att said, “I couldn’t talk him out of it. He brought along an extra suit. You know how he wanted to go outside, too. Well, he went.”

  Looking very unhappy, Jimmy said, “Well, couldn’t you stop him, Venie? You could have kept him from taking an extra suit.�
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  Venie said defensively, “If you only wanted one suit between the two of you, I could have made him leave one behind. He said he had as much right to go out as you two did.”

  Att said, “You know how mad he can get. We told him it wasn’t a good idea but he wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  “Oh, well,” I said.

  Helen said, “He’s going to ‘surprise’ you.”

  “I guess so,” Jimmy said, somewhat sourly. “Well, let’s go ahead with what’s left of this adventure.”

  He was obviously quite disgruntled, but trying not to let it show. Or, perhaps, trying to let it show just enough so that he could be a good sport about it all. I’ve not been above that one myself.

  We put on the suits. They were about as similar to the old-time pressure suits described in the novels I liked to read as the Ship is to that silly sailboat I once got so sick in. (In passing, I want to say that it used to strike me as odd the way nobody in the Ship wrote novels at all; nobody had for years and years and years, so that what I read dated from before the Population Wars. Right now I’m not even sure why I liked to read them. Most of them weren’t very good by any objective standard. Escapism, maybe . . .) Anyway, our suits were an adaptation of the basic discontinuity principle that the Ship used, too. To be analogous (and thereby inaccurate), remember that old saw about reaching inside a cat, grabbing it by the tail, and turning it inside out? The discontinuity effect, as far as the Ship is concerned, grabs the universe by the tail and turns it inside out so as to get at it better. Strictly a local effect, but in the process getting from here to there becomes a relatively simple matter instead of an intensely difficult one. The discontinuity effect doesn’t work the same way in the suits—they are more of a self-contained little universe of their own. They were originally invented, my reading tells me, to fight battles—in part of a continuing effort to render individual soldiers invulnerable—and hence were light in weight, carried their own air, heat, air-conditioning, light, etc., plus being proof against just about everything from concentrated light beams to projectiles to any of the unpleasant battery of gases that had been invented. Turned out, of course, that the suits were far more useful for constructive purposes (building the Ships) than they had ever been in wartime. Militarily, of course, they were a bust—everybody on Old Earth who fought in one was long dead—but in their peaceful adaptations they were still useful and still in use, as witness.