Rite of Passage - Alexei Panshin Page 0,108

Mbele making his way down toward us. He walked up to the table and looked at Daddy and for a long moment he didn’t say anything. Daddy was putting his papers together.

Mr. Mbele said, “So we’ve returned to the days of ‘moral discipline.’ I thought all of that lay behind us.”

Daddy said, “You could have made that point, Joseph. In this case, I happen to think ‘moral discipline’—if you want to use that tired old phrase . . .”

“Euphemism.”

“All right, euphemism. I happen to think it was justified by the circumstances.”

“I know you do.”

“You could have spoken. Why didn’t you?”

Mr. Mbele smiled and shook his head. “It wouldn’t have made any difference today,” he said. “Change isn’t going to come about easily. I’m just going to have to wait for another generation.” He nodded at Jimmy. “Ask him how he voted.”

He knew Jimmy and there was no question in his mind.

Daddy said, “I don’t have to. I already know how they both voted. Mia and I have been talking about this for the past three days—arguing—and I know we don’t agree. Was it a mistake to put her in your hands?”

Mr. Mbele was surprised. He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. He said, “I doubt it was me. If it were, you’d have voted against your own motion. I think it’s the times that are changing. I hope it is.”

Then he turned and walked away.

I said to Daddy, “Jimmy is going to help me pack.”

“All right,” Daddy said. “I’ll see you later.”

I was leaving the apartment. That had been decided earlier in the week. It wasn’t merely a matter of Daddy’s and my complete inability to agree. He’d asked if it was.

I said, “No. I just think it would be better if I left. Besides, Mother will be moving back in.”

“How did you know that?”

I smiled. “I just knew she would.”

With Mother coming back, I knew it was time for me to leave. In any case, I was an adult now, and it was time for me to stop holding on to Daddy’s hand.

I wasn’t entirely candid with him, however, as I suspect he knew. We no longer saw things exactly the same way—I didn’t like what Daddy was doing—and it would have made a difference in living in the same apartment. I had changed, but it wasn’t just Mr. Mbele who had changed me. It was a lot of things—experiences and people—including Daddy himself. If he hadn’t moved us to Geo Quad, there is no doubt that I would never have voted the way I did, if I had by some miracle passed Trial.

As Jimmy and I were leaving the amphitheatre, Daddy turned and called to George. “Come along. The Council will want to talk with you before you leave.”

I said to Jimmy, “You were sitting next to George. How did he vote?”

“He voted for.”

“They’re going to send him to do it, you know.”

Jimmy nodded.

The thing that I didn’t understand was how people who are as fine and as kind as Daddy and George could vote to destroy a whole world of people. The reason that I didn’t understand was that it was only in the past few weeks that my world had grown large enough to include Mudeaters and other patent inferiors and that I had learned to feel pain at their passing. I simply did not want to see Tintera destroyed. Daddy was wrong. I had had my moral blindness and now it was gone. I could not understand my former self and I could not understand Daddy and George.

Five years have passed since then and I still don’t fully understand. There is a lesson that I learned at twelve—the world does not end at the edge of a quad. There are people outside. The world does not end on the Fourth Level. There are people elsewhere. It took me two years to learn to apply the lesson—that neither does the world end with the Ship. If you want to accept life, you have to accept the whole bloody universe. The universe is filled with people, and there is not a single solitary spear carrier among them.

I envy people like Jimmy who knew that all along and didn’t have to learn. Jimmy says he had to learn, too, and that I just never noticed, but I don’t believe him.

Daddy and George and the other sixteen thousand had no right to destroy Tintera. If you like, it is never right to kill millions of people that you don’t know personally. Intellectually I knew long ago that the ability to do something doesn’t necessarily give you the right to do it—that’s the old power philosophy, and I never liked it. We might be able to discipline Tintera, but who appointed us to the job? We were doing it anyway and there was no one to stop us, but we were wrong.

New Year’s Eve is the final night of Year End, and the biggest night of celebration of them all. There are parties in every corner of the Residential Levels, all designed to wind up the clocks for another year. I was supposed to meet Jimmy at a party being given by Helen Pak, but I didn’t show up.

George was out there somewhere in his scoutship eliminating Tintera, and I didn’t feel particularly like going to a party. Happy 2200, everyone.

I was down on the Third Level. I’d gone past Lev Quad and down to Entry Gate 5. I walked for a while in the park and then they turned on the precipitation and I ran for shelter, the familiar building in which I’d stowed my gear for a year and a half before I had graduated to a more exalted state in which I could participate in decisions to morally discipline all the bad people in the universe.

It was dark except for the light shining at the entry gate. The temperature was cool and pleasant and the rain dripped from the roof in a steady trickle. It was, as much as any I’ve ever known, a fine night to be alive. That was where Jimmy found me eventually, tunelessly humming to myself. I saw him come out of the entry gate, look around, and then run through the rain, and it struck me how much he had grown.

He sat down next to me. “I finally figured you might be here. Depressed?”

“A little.”

“Tomorrow, let’s stop in and see Mr. Mbele. He wants to see us, you know, and we have to start planning our advanced training.”

“All right,” I said. Then I said, “I wonder if Att was still alive.”

Jimmy said, “Don’t . . . dwell on it.”

“I’ll tell you something . . .” I began with vehemence.

“I know. We’ll change things.”

I nodded. “I hope it doesn’t take too long,” I said. “What will we be like if it does?” I found the thought horrifying.

Jimmy got up and said, “Come on. Let’s go home to bed.”

We splashed through the rain, running toward the light over the entry gate.

Also by Alexei Panshin

Farewell to Yesterday’s Tomorrow

An excellent companion to Alexei Panshin’s novels, Farewell to Yesterday’s Tomorrow collects twelve of his best stories, the last a novella written in collaboration with his wife, Cory. From the universe of the Nebula Award-winning Rite of Passage, where the hegemony of advanced ships over primitive worlds engenders complex moral dilemmas, to the first manned exploration of Neptune, to the interstellar quest of a fair lady and a noble beastman to find a home, these engaging fantasies turn the idea of SF as escape on its head, dramatizing how technology may give new expression to empathy and self-sacrifice but never replace them.

New Celebrations: The Adventures of Anthony Villiers

Many books have been hailed as “in the tradition of” The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Not this one. It came first. It may, however, be something of a precursor. A space-operatic comedy of manners and meditation on life, a cheerful noir thriller, New Celebrations contains the first three, and so far only, novels about the enigmatic Anthony Villiers, a young man who trails both a mysterious past and a six-foot furred toad companion whose papers are not in order. From a space-station gambling resort, to a nice camping venue in a nature reserve, to the masquerade on Delbalso where arboreal peels grunt like clockwork, Villiers tours many odd social circles of the interstellar Nashuite Empire. Hounded by want of cash, by assassins and, worse, bureaucrats, he remains polite, has fun, and makes an impression. Meet him and see.