Rite of Passage

Most important, though, out of the thirty-one of us in the Survival Class, there drew together a nuclear group of six. This was hardly pure friendship since some of my best friends were not in it and Venie Morlock was. It was just… the group. We drew together originally through a non-adventure. At Jimmy’s urging, I took a group of kids up to the Sixth Level and we spent the day exploring. The six of us who went were me and Venie and Jimmy, Helen Pak, Riggy Allen and Attila Szabody. Attila and Helen, and, I guess, Jimmy were my particular friends. Riggy was a good friend of Attila’s, and Helen and Riggy both saw something in Venie. That was the way the group hung together, and the trip to the Sixth Level — I guess it was something of an adventure for some of the others and it was fun for me — provided another bond. We usually saw each other for an hour or two after each Survival Class and sometimes on weekends. There were a few others who joined us from time to time, but they were just comers-and-goers.

After Survival Class one day, five of us were sitting in the snackery of the Common Room of Lev Quad on the Fifth Level. By shuttle this wasn’t really far from Entry Gate 5, and it was the most convenient central point for all of us. A few changes on the shuttle and we were all home. We didn’t know anybody in Lev Quad and we couldn’t have found our way around it very well, but still we had our place here, our regular corner, and after a little while we no longer felt so much like intruders.

The missing number was Jimmy. He’d been hurrytrig off one place and another during the past week after class, mumbling and chuckling around as though he had his little business and would be damned if he’d tell it, and in the meantime was enjoying it thoroughly.

I was doodling on a piece of paper, working out an idea I had in mind. We were sitting at the table with food and drink, but not a lot of it. We were mostly taking up table space and talking. Our regular table was this one, a red-topped affair set in a corner on the left in the under-fourteen area.

We were talking of a prospective soccer game to be played on Saturday morning in Attila’s home quad, Roth Quad on the Fourth Level, if we could raise the necessary players. I was thinking that I’d certainly come a long way from the time — not that long ago — when all that it took to page me was a simple call on my homequad speaker system. I was no longer quite the stickat-home I’d been then.

“Will Jimmy play?” Attila asked. He was the biggest amongst us, but a quiet boy for all that. He generally didn’t say a lot, but would just sit back and then from time to time come out with some comment that was completely surprising, and all the more surprising because he wasn’t the person you’d pick as likely to say anything bright or clever or knowledgeable.

“Mia can ask him,” Helen said.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll have him call you. Unless he’s too busy with this whatever-it-is of his, I think he’ll want to play. He’s a good halfback.” I turned my attention back to my scribble.

“What is that you’re doing there?” Riggy asked, and snatched it away. Riggy is somebody I have to describe as a meatball — he was hardly my favorite person in the world. He’s one of those people who have no governor, who’ll do the first thing that pops into their heads whether or not it makes a lick of sense — and then, if necessary, be heartily sorry afterwards. He wasn’t stupid, or clumsy, or incompetent — he simply had no sense of proportion at all.

“And what’s that supposed to be?” he asked, pointing at the paper. Venie and Helen on his side of the table both looked at it, too.

After several tries, I had drawn what was reasonably recognizable as a fist seen palm on, holding a long, clean arrow. I’m no artist and I’d had to keep sneaking looks at my own hand to get even a moderately accurate picture. The arrow I’d managed to draw without benefit of a model.

made a grab for it, but Riggy held it out of reach. “Uh-uh,” he said, passing it on to Venie farther down the table. She looked at it with a frown, making sure at the same time that I wasn’t able to grab it back.

I shrugged and said, “It’s a picture with a meaning, if you must know. It’s sort of a pictorial pun.”

“A rebus?” Attila suggested.

“I guess it is.”

“Let me see it,” he said, and took it from Venie.

“I don’t get it,” Venie said. “An arrow held in a hand.”

“A fist,” Riggy said. “The hand’s closed.”

Tiredly I said, “It’s my name. ‘Have arrow’ — Havero.”

“Oh, no,” Venie said. “That’s pretty poor.”

Helen said, “I don’t think it’s too bad. I think it’s a pretty clever idea.”

“’An ill-favoured thing, but mine own,’” I quoted tartly.

Venie gave me a disgusted look. “You are a show-off, aren’t you? What was that supposed to be?”

“Mia’s reading Shakespeare for her tutor,” Helen said. “That’s all. She’s been memorizing lines.”

Riggy took the doodle back and gave it another look. “You know, this is a good idea. I wonder if I could work my name out somehow.”