Rite of Passage

Mr. Kutsov said gently, “Only God can decide a question like that. Be it slavery to use my horses to work for me? I don’t know anyone who would say so. A man be a different matter, though. The question be whether a Losel be like a horse, or like a man, and in all truth I can’t answer. Now go to sleep again and in awhile I will bring you some food.”

He left then, but in spite of my aching tiredness I didn’t fall asleep. I didn’t like it, being here. The old man was a Mudeater and that made me nervous. He was nice, being kind, and how could I stand for that? I tried to see my way around the problem and I couldn’t. My mind wouldn’t rest enough to see things clearly. At last I drifted off into a restless sleep.

Mr. Kutsov brought me some food later in the day, and helped me eat when my hands were too unsteady. His hands were wrinkled and bent.

Between mouthfuls, I said, “Why are you doing this for me?”

He said, “Have you ever heard the Parable of the Good Samaritan?”

“Yes,” I said. I’ve always read a lot.

“The point of the story be that at times good will come even from low and evil men. But there be books that say the story been changed. In the true version, the man by the road been the Samaritan, as bad a man as ever been, and the man that rescued him did good even to such a one. You may be of the Ships, but I don’t like to see children hurt. So I treat you as the Samaritan been treated.”

I didn’t know quite what to say. I’m not a bad person. I thought he ought to be able to see that. I didn’t understand how he could think so badly of us.

He added then, perhaps seeing my shock, “I be sorry. I don’t think as harshly of the Ships as most. Without the Ships we wouldn’t be here at all. That be something to remember in these bad times. So be sure that I won’t tell that you be a girl or from the Ships, and rest easy. My house be yours.”

The next day he suggested that for my own good I learn to speak so that I would not be noticed. That was sensible. My mind wasn’t as foggy now and I was starting to worry about things like finding a way to contact the Ship. To do it, I might very well have to pass as a native. And if I didn’t do it, I’d definitely have to pass as a native, damn it.

I didn’t fully understand Mr. Kutsov. I had the feeling that there was more in his mind than he was saying. Could he just be doing good to a despised Samaritan? No, there was more. For some reason he was interested in me.

We worked on my speech for a couple of hours that day. Some of the changes were fairly regular — like shifted vowel sounds and a sort of “b” sound for “p,” and saying “be” for “is” — but some of the others seemed without pattern or sense, though a linguist might disagree with me. Mr. Kutsov could only say, “I don’t know why. We just don’t say it that way, be all.”

After he said that once, I just gave up, but he coaxed me into trying again. He coaxed me, and that was the sort of thing that made me wonder what he had in mind. Why did he care?

After awhile, I began to catch on. I couldn’t tell you offhand what all the changes were-I think rhythm was a large part of it — but I did have a good ear. I suppose that there was a pattern after all, but it was one I only absorbed subconsciously. I got better after we’d worked for several days.

Mr. Kutsov said once, “Not like that. You sound as though you be talking around a mouthful of grueL” Not surprising, since that was what he was feeding me, but in any case I was only repeating what I heard.

During those hours we talked. You have to have something to correct and with no textbooks at hand it had to be normal speech. As we talked, I made mistakes and he corrected them.

In the course of our talks, I got a fuller picture of the dislike of these colonists — for some reason, Mudeaters wasn’t the word that came into my mind anymore, at least, not most of the time — for Ship people.

“It been’t a simple thing,” he said. “These be bad times. Now and again, when you decide to stop, we see you people from the Ships. You be not poor or backward like us. When we be dropped here, there been no scientists or technicians amongst us. I can understand. Why should they leave the last places where they had a chance to use and develop their knowledge for a place like this where there be no equipment, no opportunity? But what be felt here be that all the men who survived the end of Earth be the equal heirs of man’s knowledge and accomplishment. But things be not that way. So when times be good, the Ships be hated and ignored. When times be bad, people from the Ships when known be treated as you have been or worse.”

I could understand what he said, but I couldn’t really understand it.

I said, “But we don’t hurt anybody. We just live like anybody else.”

“I don’t hold you to blame,” Mr. Kutsov said slowly, “but I can’t help but to feel that you have made a mistake and that it will hurt you in the end.”