6
FROM birth to puberty you were an infant. From puberty to Dobermann’s age, a junior. For ten years after that you went to school, learning the things you had neither the need nor the right to know before.
And then you were Of Age.
Being Of Age meant much, much more than voting, Ross found out. For one thing, it meant freedom to marry— after the enforced sexlessness of the junior years and the directed breeding via artificial insemination of the Scholars. It meant a healthy head start on seniority, which carried with it all offices and all power.
It meant freedom.
As a bare beginning, it meant the freedom to command any number of juniors or scholars. On Ross’s last punitive day in the dye vats, a happy ancient commandeered the entire staff to help set shrubs in his front lawn—a good dozen acres of careful landscaping it was, and the prettiest sight Ross had seen on this ugly planet.
When they got back to the dye vats, the yellow and blue had boiled over, and broken strands of yarn had fouled all the bobbins. Dobermann raged—at the juniors.
But then Dobermann’s raging came to an end forever. It was the night before Holiday, and there was a pretty ceremony as he packed his kit and got ready to turn Junior Unit
Twenty-three over to his successor. Everyone was scrubbed, and though a certain amount of license hi regard to neatness was allowed between dinner and lights out, each bunk was made and carefully smoothed free of wrinkles. After half an hour of fidgety waiting, Dobermann called— needlessly—for attention, and the minister came in with his ancient retinue.
The rich mechanical voice boomed out from his breastplate: “Junior Dobermann, today you are a man!”
Dobermann stood with his head bowed, silent and content. Junior Unit Twenty-Three chanted antiphonally: “Good-by, Junior Dobermann!”
The retinue took three steps forward, and the minister boomed, “Beauty comes with age. Age is beauty!”
And the chorus: “Old heads are wisest!” Ross, standing as straight as any of them, faked the words with his lips and tongue, and wondered how many repetitions had drilled those sentiments into Junior Unit Twenty-Three.
There were five more chants, and five responses, and then the minister and his court of four were standing next to Dobermann. Breathing heavily from his exertions, the minister reached behind him and took a book from the hands of the nearest of his retinue. He said, panting, “Scholar Dobermann, in the Book lies the words of the Fathers. Read them and learn.”
The chorus cried thrice, “The Word of the Fathers Is Law.” And then the minister touched Dobermann’s hand, and in solemn silence, left.
As soon as the elders had gone, the juniors flocked around Dobermann to wish him well. There was excited laughter in the congratulations, and a touch of apprehension too: Dobermann, with all his faults, was a known quantity, and the members of Junior Unit Twenty-Three were beginning to look a little fearfully at the short, redheaded youth who, from the next day on, would be Dobermann’s successor.
Ross promised himself: He can be good or bad, a blessing or a problem. But he won’t be my problem. I’m getting out of here tomorrow!
Holiday.
“Oh, it’s fun,” Helena told him enthusiastically. “First you get up early to get the voting out of the way——”
“Voting?”
“Sure. Don’t they vote where you come from? I thought everybody voted. That’s democracy, like we have it here.”
He sardonically quoted one of the omnipresent wall signs: “THE HAPPINESS OF THE MAJORITY MEANS THE HAPPINESS OF THE MINORITY,” He had often wondered what, if anything, it meant. But Helena solemnly nodded.
They were whispering from their adjoining cots by dim, false dawn filtering through the windows on Holiday morning. They were not the only whisperers. Things were relaxing already.
“Ross,” Helena said.
“Yes?”
“I thought maybe you might not know. On Holiday if you, ah, want to do that again you don’t have to wait until I fahit. Ah, of course you don’t do it right out in the open.” Overcome by her own daring she buried her head under the coarse blanket.