Sometimes when I had completed a stint of work, they’d let some time go by, then send me back to spend another cluster doing the same thing, so I ended up back at the agricultural center, helping with records a couple of times, and at the theater, doing all kinds of things. On the fifth level, I attended lectures on the confederation and the member races, the egg-differentiated Credons, the swamp-living Oumfuz, the fearsome Xankatikitiki and many others. When I got up to the sixth level, there were sessions I don’t remember very well. They gave me juice to drink that made me dizzy, and then asked strange questions that made my head ache. Then there were other times when my body felt certain ways, and they measured what it wanted and what it needed. Some of that was embarrassing, for I could feel myself wanting and unwanting.
We are not supposed to want a specific role in life. Opinions of that kind are not considered useful. We are selected to live as what we are, body and mind. The whole process of selection is centered upon determining what each of us really is. One of the strangest things I have encountered on your world, dear Benita, is that many of your people have no idea who they really are but many ridiculous ideas about what they are expected to be, plus many religious convictions about what they should be, although nobody is! One should not want to be anything but what one is, because it creates unhappiness. If one cannot dance, one should not be a dancer. If one cannot paint, one should not be an artist. It defies good sense. One should not be sexual if one cannot enjoy both the process and the product, and if there is no place for the product, one should stop being sexual. One should want to do what one can do most easily and most happily.
Often I was allowed to go home for evening gathering, and afterwards I sometimes went down to the river. There was a patch of short grass there with a play-swing to hang babies on, and a bench for others. My nootch used to hang me there in the evenings, while she rested on the bench with a glass or two of viber. It was a good place to sit and think about things. So, this one night I had just settled myself in the swing when my nootch came down the path and sat on the bench, looking at me.
“Well?” ke asked.
“Well what, Nootch?”
“How does someone think it’s going?”
I laughed. “One hasn’t a clue.”
“What has someone liked the most?” ke said firmly. “Tell someone!”
“Most? The time in the theater, one supposes. One felt more useful there than anywhere else. And one likes the thought of acting.”
“Ah,” ke hummed between ker teeth. “And what has someone liked the least?”
“Cleaning the laboratories. One learned a lot, though. Just by listening. And of course, one asks questions.”
“One day someone will question oneself into trouble,” ke said darkly, frowning at me. “Ta, Chiddy, one has such hopes for someone.”
This was not something a nootch should say. Hoping was like wanting. Inappropriate! “Nootch-isi,” I said, “hei!”
Ke wiped ker ducts. “All right, all right. Someone shouldn’t have said it. But still. Remember this, Chiddy. Someone will have learned to be wise when someone knows how to keep someone’s mouth parts fastened.”
That upset me more than anything that had happened with the selectors because it upset the equilibrium I’d managed to hold on to that far. We’re not allowed to choose or want, but of course, we all do! Nootch-isi’s leakings washed all my resolve away, and there I was, choosing! Wanting! Or not wanting! I did not want to be an inceptor. I did not want to be a receptor. I did not want . . . oh, certainly did not want to be a nootch. One may love one’s nootch, but one can see how difficult it is to be a good one! Of the hundred or so other things one was allowed to be, there were only a few my soul leaned toward. I would not mind greatly being a worker, a campes, or a craftsman, a finis. I would not mind greatly being a proffe, a doctor or engineer. The one thing I wanted not to be was an athyco. Not that I’d ever met one, just that everyone said the life of an athyco was the hardest life one could have.