Rite of Passage

“If the Assembly doesn’t turn out to be interesting we can always turn it off,” I said.

We watched the Assembly for the next two hours. It seemed that just about everybody had a firm grasp of the basic questions beforehand. It remained for spokesmen for both sides to state their cases, for questions to be put from the floor, for witnesses to be called, more questions to be put, and a final vote. Daddy, as Chairman, didn’t involve himself in the argument.

Mr. Tubman put the case for the Ship. Another member of the Council, Mr. Persson, made the plea for the other side. Witnesses included the Ship’s Eugenist, a lawyer giving the point of law at stake, Alicia MacReady speaking in her own behalf, and a number of character witnesses who spoke for her.

The Council and witnesses sat at a table at the base of the amphitheatre. Every adult presently aboard Ship had an assigned seat in the circle above and could speak if he so desired. Potentially the Assembly could have dragged on for hours, but it didn’t. This was Daddy’s job. He conducted the Assembly, putting witnesses through their paces briskly, cutting the garrulous off, giving both sides an equal share of time. As Ship’s Chairman, it was his job to be fair and impartial, and as nearly as I could see he was, though I did know in this case what his real opinions were. Mr. Tubman was speaking for him.

In truth, the MacReady side had no case. All they could do was make a plea for leniency. Alicia MacReady cried when it was her turn to speak, until Daddy made her stop.

Mr. Persson said, “Once we all agree that it was a stupid thing to do, what more is there to say? Alicia MacReady is a citizen of this Ship. She survived Trial. She has as much right to live here as anyone else. Granted that she did a foolish thing, it’s a very simple thing to abort the child. You all watched her crawl for you. There isn’t any question of this sort of thing happening again. It was a mistake made in a wild moment and heartily repented of. Can’t we say that this public humiliation is punishment enough and drop the whole matter?”

When Mr. Tubman had his chance to speak, he said, more crisply than I was used to hearing him speak, “If nothing else, there are a few corrections I would like to make. If what Mr. Persson chooses to call ‘this public humiliation’ is a punishment, it is a self-inflicted one — discount it. Miss MacReady’s case could have been settled before the Council. Bringing it before an Assembly was her own choice. Secondly, her so-called repentance. Repentance when you are found out is much too easy — discount it. ‘A mistake made in a wild moment’? Hardly. It took more than a month of deliberate dodging of her APPs for Miss MacReady to become pregnant. That is hardly a single wild moment — discount it. Corrections aside, there is something else. There is a matter of basic principle. We are a tiny precarious island floating in a hostile sea. We have worked out ways of living that observed exactly allow us to survive and go on living. If they are not observed exactly, we cannot survive. Alicia MacReady made a choice. She chose to have a fifth child that the Ship’s Eugenist had not given her permission to have. It was a choice between the Ship and the baby. The choice made, there are certain inevitable consequences of which Alicia MacReady was aware when she made her choice. Would we be fair either to her or ourselves if we didn’t face and help her to face the consequences? We are not barbarians. We don’t propose to kill either Miss MacReady or her unborn child. What we do propose is to give her what she has elected, her baby and not the Ship. I say we should drop her on the nearest Colony planet. And good luck to her.”

Which was a nice way of pronouncing a probable death sentence. But then Mr. Tubman wasn’t wrong — she had asked for it.

Soon after they held the vote. 7,923 people voted to let her stay. 18,401 voted to expel her.

Alicia MacReady fainted, the reaction of an hysteric. Mr. Persson and some of her friends gathered around. The other people began to file out of the great room, the business of the evening behind them.

I got up and switched off the vid. “How would you have voted?” I asked.

“I don’t know that much about things like this,” Zena said looking up. She’d only been half paying attention. “They don’t give her anything, a horse or weapons or a heli-pac or anything, when they put her off on a Colony planet?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, isn’t that pretty harsh?”

“It’s like Mr. Tubman said, we’ve got rules that have to be followed. If people don’t follow the rules they can’t stay here. They were doing her a favor by even letting the Assembly vote on the question.”

Zena looked sour and said, “What will your father do if he comes home and finds that you haven’t thrown out the dinner things?”

“Oh, heavens,” I said. “I’d forgotten about that.”