Rite of Passage

Since I was now thirteen, Trial was less than a year away, but somehow I wasn’t quite as awed by the thought as I once had been. It no longer seemed as deadly a thing as it once had — though I did know that far from everyone returned. Survival Class gave me an amazing amount of confidence. For one thing, it made what we had to face more of a known quantity, and the unknown, unnameable, might-be-anything is always more frightening than the known. Trial was beginning to look more and more like thirty days amongst the Mudeaters — soonest begun, soonest done — and not much more, though there were some moments when I was surer of this than others. The moments when I wasn’t quite so sure that Trial would be a waltz usually came after one of the afternoons we spent watching various white-fanged this-and-thats come charging efficiently across the projection screen to slice down some galumping creature three times their size, wham! But Survival Class also taught us to deal with completely strange things. Many didn’t seem to have very much to do with Trial, either. Dancing, needlepoint, parachuting. The thing is that once you’ve discovered that you can do a lot of strange and demanding things, and sometimes even do them well, then coping with the unknown doesn’t seem quite as hard. When they ask you to raise a log cabin, you don’t object that you never expect the opportunity to come up during Trial. You do it. You learn that you can do it. And you even learn one or two things that might come in handy.

In December, forty-two kids who were exactly a year older than we were, were scattered across the Western Hemisphere of New Dalmatia. They were dropped one at a time with horses and packs and no clear idea of where they were or what planet they were on, then got waved goodbye to. Also in December, about one week later, thirty-one of us kids went on a three-day field trip with Mr. Marechal and an assistant named Pizarro, also to New Dalmatia. The differences, of course, were that we knew where we were going, what we would find there, how long we were going to stay, and a few other nonessentials like that.

Four horses were taken, large draft animals. All of us kids came down to the scout bay with good shoes on our feet, heavy clothing, and back packs. We’d been issued these when we started Survival Class. I’d outgrown my shoes, however, and been issued new pairs, and I was almost ready to ask for a larger set of clothes. As we went on board, I saw Mr. Pizarro and Mr. Marechal counting us off. They weren’t too obvious about it because there was that set idea of the voluntary nature of Survival Class and they make a point of not checking up. Still, they wanted to know how many they were taking — somebody would be bound to say something if they came back a half-dozen short.

Mr. Pizarro was our pilot. When everybody was aboard — everybody meaning all thirty-one of us, nobody missing; I happen to know that Robert Briney got out of bed with a cracked rib (his horse kicked him) to come along — they raised the ramp and took off. There was some nervous talking and joke telling. Mr. Marechal was even tolerant enough not to tell everybody to be quiet.

I picked a chair against the partition that separated the walk-around from the bull-pen where we were sitting. I’ve never been at my best in groups like that — where there are only a few people that I know well I talk, but where there are crowds I fade into the background. Besides, I had something to do. Att and Jimmy did come over, though.

“What are you writing?” Att asked.

I put down my notebook. “Ethics notes,” I said. “I’m organizing my ideas for a paper Jimmy and I have to do for Mr. Mbele.”

Jimmy asked, “How are you doing it?”

I took his hand and ran a finger across the back of it. “I’m not asking you that. You’ll see when I’m done.”

Big Att sat down then and said, “What sort of thing does it have to be?”

Jimmy mussed my hair lightly and said, “No one particular thing. It has to be on the subject of ethics.”

I ducked my head away from Jimmy’s hand and said, “You seem nervous, Aft.”

“A little, I guess,” he said. “I’ve never been down on a planet. I don’t see how you can be so calm and just sit here and write.”

“Scribble,” Jimmy said.

“It’s not so new for me,” I said. “I’ve been down before.”

“Her dad takes her when he goes,” Jimmy said.

After a few more minutes, Jimmy and Att broke out a pocket chess set and began to play and I turned back to my notes. I finished off utilitarianism before we landed.

Ethics is the branch of philosophy that concerns itself with conduct, questions of good and evil, right and wrong. Almost every ethical system — and there are a great many of them, because even people who supposedly belong to the same school don’t agree a good share of the time and have to be considered separately — can be looked at as a description and as a prescription. Is this what people actually do? Is this what people ought to do?