“Naumi Rastarong,” he said by way of greeting when I entered his office, staring at nothing and pushing the papers on his desk around. Looking uncomfortable, he pushed his glasses up on his nose. “I have here a communication from the Dominion. It says that you have been selected to provide life-duty to the Dominion, and your escort will arrive on Valstat’s Day with all the paperwork your pa will have to sign.” Mr. Wyncamp chewed his lower lip and put the paper down as though it had burned him.
I didn’t notice, for my brain had gone dead at the words life-duty. No one from the town of Bright had ever been selected for life-duty, at least not in the lifetime of anyone still living there. I knew about duty, of course. In school, everyone learned that submission to the Dominion brought with it the onus of taxes paid by everyone, and short service paid by some. Being picked for short service wouldn’t have surprised me at all, for lots of young people were chosen to spend two years as child minders, cooks, builders, or crop harvesters. When somebody got selected for short service, well-wishers always said, “Two years is short stay for no more tax pay!” Two years of service did bring a ten-year exemption from taxes and interest-free loans for education, so it wasn’t that rare or fearsome.
But life-duty, that was another thing altogether. It meant forty years in the service of the Dominion itself. The things people said when they heard about life-duty were usually of the very small comfort variety: “Well, look at it this way. It’s better than dying from the pergal pox.” Which was true, but so what? Though I had no way of knowing it, most youngsters, when advised they had been chosen for life-service, did exactly as I was doing: They sat with their mouths open, too stunned to object even if there’d been anyone to object to. The notice came from Dominion Central Authority; there was no mechanism for appeal.
After a while I looked up to see Mr. Weathereye standing in the hallway, leaning on his cane. When he saw me looking at him, he beckoned. I took the letter that Mr. Wyncamp had given me and trudged out into the hall.
“Life-service?” whispered Mr. Weathereye.
I could only nod. I was trying to recite the words of the Thankfulness Pledge that we said every morning at school, the one that went, “We thank those in the service of the Dominion at the sacrifice of their own ambitions…”
“I didn’t even have any ambitions yet,” I confessed.
“I think they try to catch candidates before they have many,” opined Mr. Weathereye. “But I thought you wanted to be a warrior?”
“Well, I did, do. Mr. Wyncamp said I’m so good at battle games, it was likely I’d become a warrior. But, you know, I thought Thairy Guard is where I’d serve, at the very most.” Thairy Guard was what Mr. Weathereye called Men Minus Mission. There wasn’t much use for warriors on Thairy.
“Do you want me to help tell your pa?” asked Mr. Weathereye.
I said, “Y’know he’s not really my pa.”
“Yes, I know that.”
“…’F I go alone, he’ll think I’m making it up,” said I. “He usually does, if it’s anything out of the ordinary.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Mr. Weathereye.
Outside, we met Lady Badness, who fell in beside us without even asking what had happened, so I figured she and Mr. Weathereye had had their suspicions all along.
Pa Rastarong’s house was outside the town of Bright, a smallish place, set at the eastern feet of the Lowering Hills.
“Why’d they choose me?” I mumbled to himself.
Lady Badness said, “Some professorial type did a study, long time gone, trying to determine similarities of character among those chosen for life-service. Only thing similar among ’em all was nobody wanted to go.”
“That’s me, right enough,” said I. What was I good at? Nothing much except school and battle games. Didn’t much like team sports, though I was very quick on my feet and agile in getting up perpendicular sides of things when pursued by one or more ineradicable louts.
Mr. Weathereye had always advised that getting away from a lout was in most cases preferable to killing the lout, which I was perfectly capable of doing, because I was really very good at battle games, including the art of unarmed combat, though none of the louts knew it.
“They don’t even know I could hurt them,” I’d said.
“How would they know?” asked Mr. Weathereye. “Louts don’t study battle games, and your teachers don’t make a habit of talking about it.”
“My name has been on the battle game roll of honor in the hallway at school,” said I. “Four years running.”
“The only thing rarer than louts who think is louts who read,” said Mr. Weathereye.
“I’ll miss people,” said I. I’d always thought the people in Bright compensated for the fact my foster pa was kind of strange. The citizens of Bright considered friendliness toward children a duty, even when it wasn’t a pleasure. Amiability was part of the effort good citizens put forth to get all seven-year-olds through their dozen-years, that period beginning at literacy and culminating (when it did at all) in passing the adulthood examination and receiving a citizen’s ID. It took about twelve years to get there, starting between age five and seven, though some took more or less, and a few never reached it at all.
On entering the dozen-years, people gave up baby clothes and baby behavior. They put on the bright red tunic of students, which I had just set aside, and they behaved appropriately, or at least tried to give that appearance. It was appropriate to be willing to learn and to be respectful of elders; but
