the new Nines gravitate towards their waiting bicycles, each one admiring his or her nametag. He saw the Tens stroking their new shortened hair, the females shaking their heads to feel the unaccustomed lightness without the heavy braids they had worn so long.
“I heard about a guy who was absolutely certain he was going to be assigned Engineer,” Asher muttered as they ate, “and instead they gave him Sanitation Labourer. He went out the next day, jumped into the river, swam across, and joined the next community he came to. Nobody ever saw him again.”
Jonas laughed. “Somebody made that story up, Ash,” he said. “My father said he heard that story when he was a Twelve.”
But Asher wasn’t reassured. He was eyeing the river where it was visible behind the Auditorium. “I can’t even swim very well,” he said. “My swimming instructor said that I don’t have the right boyishness or something.”
“Buoyancy,” Jonas corrected him.
“Whatever. I don’t have it. I sink.”
“Anyway,” Jonas pointed out, “have you ever once known of anyone – I mean really known for sure, Asher, not just heard a story about it – who joined another community?”
“No,” Asher admitted reluctantly. “But you can. It says so in the rules. If you don’t fit in, you can apply for Elsewhere and be released. My mother says that once, about ten years ago, someone applied and was gone the next day.” Then he chuckled. “She told me that because I was driving her crazy. She threatened to apply for Elsewhere.”
“She was joking.”
“I know. But it was true, what she said, that someone did that once. She said that it was really true. Here today and gone tomorrow. Never seen again. Not even a Ceremony of Release.”
Jonas shrugged. It didn’t worry him. How could someone not fit in? The community was so meticulously ordered, the choices so carefully made.
Even the Matching of Spouses was given such weighty consideration that sometimes an adult who applied to receive a spouse waited months or even years before a Match was approved and announced. All of the factors – disposition, energy level, intelligence and interests – had to correspond and to interact perfectly. Jonas’s mother, for example, had higher intelligence than his father; but his father had a calmer disposition. They balanced each other. Their Match, which like all Matches had been monitored by the Committee of Elders for three years before they could apply for children, had always been a successful one.
Like the Matching of Spouses and the Naming and Placement of newchildren, the Assignments were scrupulously thought through by the Committee of Elders.
He was certain that his Assignment, whatever it was to be, and Asher’s too, would be the right one for them. He only wished that the midday break would conclude, that the audience would re-enter the Auditorium, and the suspense would end.
As if in answer to his unspoken wish, the signal came and the crowd began to move towards the doors.
NOW JONAS’S GROUP had taken a new place in the Auditorium, trading with the new Elevens, so that they sat in the very front, immediately before the stage.
They were arranged by their original numbers, the numbers they had been given at birth. The numbers were rarely used after the Naming. But each child knew his number, of course. Sometimes parents used them in irritation at a child’s misbehaviour, indicating that mischief made one unworthy of a name. Jonas always chuckled when he heard a parent, exasperated, call sharply to a whining toddler, “That’s enough, Twenty-three!”
Jonas was Nineteen. He had been the nineteenth newchild born his year. It had meant that at his Naming, he had already been standing and bright-eyed, soon to walk and talk. It had given him a slight advantage the first year or two, a little more maturity than many of his groupmates who had been born in the later months of that year. But it evened out, as it always did, by Three.
After Three, the children progressed at much the same level, though by their first number one could always tell who was a few months older than others in his group. Technically, Jonas’s full number was Eleven-nineteen, since there were other Nineteens, of course, in each age group. And today, now that the new Elevens had been advanced this morning, there were two Eleven-nineteens. At the midday break he had exchanged smiles with the new one, a shy female named Harriet.
But the duplication was only for these few hours. Very soon he would not be an Eleven but a Twelve, and age would no longer matter. He would be an adult, like his parents, though a new one and untrained still.
Asher was Four, and sat now in the row ahead of Jonas. He would receive his Assignment fourth.
Fiona, Eighteen, was on his left; on his other side sat Twenty, a male named Pierre whom Jonas didn’t like much. Pierre was very serious, not much fun, and a worrier and tattletale, too. “Have you checked the rules, Jonas?” Pierre was always whispering solemnly. “I’m not sure that’s within the rules.” Usually it was some foolish thing that no one cared about – opening his tunic if it was a day with a breeze; taking a brief try on a friend’s bicycle, just to experience the different feel of it.
The initial speech at the Ceremony of Twelve was made by the Chief Elder, the leader of the community who was elected every ten years. The speech was much the same each year: recollection of the time of childhood and the period of preparation, the coming responsibilities of adult life, the profound importance of Assignment, the seriousness of training to come.
Then the Chief Elder moved ahead in her speech.
“This is the time,” she began, looking directly at them, “when we acknowledge differences. You Elevens have spent all your years till now learning to fit in, to standardise your behaviour, to curb any impulse that might set you apart from the group.
“But today we honour your differences. They have determined your futures.”
She began to describe this year’s group and its variety of personalities, though she singled no one out by name. She mentioned that there was one who had singular skills at caretaking, another who loved newchildren, one with unusual scientific aptitude, and a fourth for whom physical labour was an obvious pleasure. Jonas shifted in his seat, trying to recognise each reference as one of his groupmates. The caretaking skills were no doubt those of Fiona, on his left; he remembered noticing the tenderness with which she had bathed the Old. Probably the one with scientific aptitude was Benjamin, the male who had devised new, important equipment for the Rehabilitation Centre.
He heard nothing that he recognised as himself, Jonas.
Finally the Chief Elder paid tribute to the hard work of her committee, which had performed the observations so meticulously all year. The Committee of Elders stood and was acknowledged by applause. Jonas noticed Asher yawn slightly, covering his mouth politely with his hand.
Then, at last, the Chief Elder called number One to the stage, and the Assignments began.
Each announcement was lengthy, accompanied by a speech directed at the new Twelve. Jonas tried to pay attention as One, smiling happily, received her Assignment as Fish Hatchery Attendant along with words of praise for her childhood spent doing many volunteer hours there, and her obvious interest in the important process of providing nourishment for the community.
Number One – her name was Madeline – returned, finally, amidst applause, to her seat, wearing the new badge that designated her Fish Hatchery Attendant. Jonas was certainly glad that that Assignment was taken; he wouldn’t have wanted it. But he gave Madeline a smile of congratulation.
When Two, a female named Inger, received her Assignment as Birthmother, Jonas remembered that his mother had called it a job without honour. But he thought