yourself to the attendant.2 Go immediately to your dwelling at the conclusion of Training Hours each day.
3 From this moment you are exempted from rules governing rudeness. You may ask any question of any citizen and you will receive answers.
4 Do not discuss your training with any other member of the community, including parents and Elders.
5 From this moment you are prohibited from dream-telling.
6 Except for illness or injury unrelated to your training, do not apply for any medication.
7 You are not permitted to apply for release.
8 You may lie.
Jonas was stunned. What would happen to his friendships? His mindless hours playing ball, or riding his bike along the river? Those had been happy and vital times for him. Were they to be completely taken from him, now? The simple logistic instructions – where to go, and when – were expected. Every Twelve had to be told, of course, where and how and when to report for training. But he was a little dismayed that his schedule left no time, apparently, for recreation.
The exemption from rudeness startled him. Reading it again, however, he realised that it didn’t compel him to be rude; it simply allowed him the option. He was quite certain he would never take advantage of it. He was so completely, so thoroughly accustomed to courtesy within the community that the thought of asking another citizen an intimate question, of calling someone’s attention to an area of awkwardness, was unnerving.
The prohibition of dream-telling, he thought, would not be a real problem. He dreamed so rarely that the dream-telling did not come easily to him anyway, and he was glad to be excused from it. He wondered briefly, though, how to deal with it at the morning meal. What if he did dream – should he simply tell his family unit, as he did so often, anyway, that he hadn’t? That would be a lie. Still, the final rule said … well, he wasn’t quite ready to think about the final rule on the page.
The restriction of medication unnerved him. Medication was always available to citizens, even to children, through their parents. When he had crushed his finger in the door, he had quickly, gasping into the speaker, notified his mother; she had hastily requisitioned relief-of-pain medication which had promptly been delivered to his dwelling. Almost instantly the excruciating pain in his hand had diminished to the throb which was, now, all he could recall of the experience.
Re-reading rule number 6, he realised that a crushed finger fell into the category of “unrelated to training”. So if it ever happened again – and he was quite certain it wouldn’t; he had been very careful near heavy doors since the accident! – he could still receive medication.
The pill he took now, each morning, was also unrelated to training. So he would continue to receive the pill.
But he remembered uneasily what the Chief Elder had said about the pain that would come with his training. She had called it indescribable.
Jonas swallowed hard, trying without success to imagine what such pain might be like, with no medication at all. But it was beyond his comprehension.
He felt no reaction to rule number 7 at all. It had never occurred to him that under any circumstances, ever, he might apply for release.
Finally he steeled himself to read the final rule again. He had been trained since earliest childhood, since his earliest learning of language, never to lie. It was an integral part of the learning of precise speech. Once, when he had been a Four, he had said, just prior to the midday meal at school, “I’m starving.”
Immediately he had been taken aside for a brief private lesson in language precision. He was not starving, it was pointed out. He was hungry. No one in the community was starving, had ever been starving, would ever be starving. To say “starving” was to speak a lie. An unintentioned lie, of course. But the reason for precision of language was to ensure that unintentional lies were never uttered. Did he understand that? they asked him. And he had.
He had never, within his memory, been tempted to lie. Asher did not lie. Lily did not lie. His parents did not lie. No one did. Unless …
Now Jonas had a thought that he had never had before. This new thought was frightening. What if others – adults – had, upon becoming Twelves, received in their instructions the same terrifying sentence?
What if they had all been instructed: You may lie?
His mind reeled. Now, empowered to ask questions of utmost rudeness – and promised answers – he could, conceivably (though it was almost unimaginable), ask someone, some adult, his father perhaps: “Do you lie?”
But he would have no way of knowing if the answer he received were true.
“I GO IN here, Jonas,” Fiona told him when they reached the front door of the House of the Old after parking their bicycles in the designated area.
“I don’t know why I’m nervous,” she confessed. “I’ve been here so often before.” She turned her folder over in her hands.
“Well, everything’s different now,” Jonas reminded her.
“Even the nameplates on our bikes,” Fiona laughed. During the night the nameplate of each new Twelve had been removed by the Maintenance Crew and replaced with the style that indicated citizen-in-training.
“I don’t want to be late,” she said hastily, and started up the steps. “If we finish at the same time, I’ll ride home with you.”
Jonas nodded, waved to her, and headed around the building towards the Annexe, a small wing attached to the back. He certainly didn’t want to be late for his first day of training, either.
The Annexe was very ordinary, its door unremarkable. He reached for the heavy handle, then noticed a buzzer on the wall. So he buzzed instead.
“Yes?” The voice came through a small speaker above the buzzer.
“It’s, uh, Jonas. I’m the new – I mean—”
“Come in.” A click indicated that the door had been unlatched.
The lobby was very small and contained only a desk at which a female Attendant sat working on some papers. She looked up when he entered; then, to his surprise, she stood. It was a small thing, the standing; but no one had ever stood automatically to acknowledge Jonas’s presence before.
“Welcome, Receiver of Memory,” she said respectfully.
“Oh, please,” he replied uncomfortably. “Call me Jonas.”
She smiled, pushed a button, and he heard a click that unlocked the door to her left. “You may go right on in,” she told him.
Then she seemed to notice his discomfort and to realise its origin. No doors in the community were locked, ever. None that Jonas knew of, anyway.
“The locks
