Lily looked up, her eyes wide. ‘The Ceremony of Twelve,’ she whispered in an awed voice. Even the smallest children – Lily’s age and younger – knew that it lay in the future for each of them.
‘I’m glad you told us of your feelings,’ Father said.
‘Lily,’ Mother said, beckoning to the little girl. ‘Go on now and get into your nightclothes. Father and I are going to stay here and talk to Jonas for a while.’
Lily sighed, but obediently she got down from her chair. ‘Privately?’ she asked.
Mother nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘This talk will be a private one with Jonas.’
Jonas watched as his father poured a fresh cup of coffee. He waited.
‘You know,’ his father finally said, ‘every December was exciting to me when I was young. And it has been for you and Lily, too, I’m sure. Each December brings such changes.’
Jonas nodded. He could remember the Decembers back to when he had become, well, probably a Four. The earlier ones were lost to him. But he observed them each year, and he remembered Lily’s earliest Decembers. He remembered when his family received Lily, the day she was named, the day that she had become a One.
The Ceremony for the Ones was always noisy and fun. Each December, all the newchildren born in the previous year turned One. One at a time – there were always fifty in each year’s group, if none had been released – they had been brought to the stage by the Nurturers who had cared for them since birth. Some were already walking, wobbly on their unsteady legs; others were no more than a few days old, wrapped in blankets, held by their Nurturers.
‘I enjoy the Naming,’ Jonas said.
His mother agreed, smiling. ‘The year we got Lily, we knew, of course, that we’d receive our female, because we’d made our application and been approved. But I’d been wondering and wondering what her name would be.’
‘I could have sneaked a look at the list prior to the ceremony,’ Father confided. ‘The committee always makes the list in advance, and it’s right there in the office at the Nurturing Centre.
‘As a matter of fact,’ he went on, ‘I feel a little guilty about this. But I did go in this afternoon and looked to see if this year’s Naming list had been made yet. It was right there in the office, and I looked up number Thirty-six – that’s the little guy I’ve been concerned about – because it occurred to me that it might enhance his nurturing if I could call him by a name. Just privately, of course, when no one else is around.’
‘Did you find it?’ Jonas asked. He was fascinated. It didn’t seem a terribly important rule, but the fact that his father had broken a rule at all awed him. He glanced at his mother, the one responsible for adherence to the rules, and was relieved that she was smiling.
His father nodded. ‘His name – if he makes it to the Naming without being released, of course – is to be Gabriel. So I whisper that to him when I feed him every four hours, and during exercise and playtime. If no one can hear me.
‘I call him Gabe, actually,’ he said, and grinned.
‘Gabe.’ Jonas tried it out. A good name, he decided.
Though Jonas had only become a Five the year that they acquired Lily and learned her name, he remembered the excitement, the conversations at home, wondering about her: how she would look, who she would be, how she would fit into their established family unit. He remembered climbing the steps to the stage with his parents, his father by his side that year instead of with the Nurturers, since it was the year that he would be given a newchild of his own.
He remembered his mother taking the newchild, his sister, into her arms, while the document was read to the assembled family units. ‘Newchild Twenty-three,’ the Namer had read. ‘Lily.’
He remembered his father’s look of delight, and that his father had whispered, ‘She’s one of my favourites. I was hoping for her to be the one.’ The crowd had clapped and Jonas had grinned. He liked his sister’s name. Lily, barely awake, had waved her small fist. Then they had stepped down to make room for the next family unit.
‘When I was an Eleven,’ his father said now, ‘as you are, Jonas, I was very impatient, waiting for the Ceremony of Twelve. It’s a long two days. I remember that I enjoyed the Ones, as I always do, but that I didn’t pay much attention to the other ceremonies, except for my sister’s. She became a Nine that year, and got her bicycle. I’d been teaching her to ride mine, even though technically I wasn’t supposed to.’
Jonas laughed. It was one of the few rules that was not taken very seriously and was almost always broken. The children all received their bicycles at Nine; they were not allowed to ride bicycles before then. But almost always, the older brothers and sisters had secretly taught the younger ones. Jonas had been thinking already about teaching Lily.
There was talk about changing the rule and giving the bicycles at an earlier age. A committee was studying the idea. When something went to a committee for study, the people always joked about it. They said that the committee members would become Elders by the time the rule change was made.
Rules were very hard to change. Sometimes, if it was a very important rule – unlike the one governing the age for bicycles – it would have to go, eventually, to The Receiver for a decision. The Receiver was the most important Elder. Jonas had never even seen him, that he knew of; someone in a position of such importance lived and worked alone. But the committee would never bother The Receiver with a question about bicycles; they would simply fret and argue about it themselves for years, until the citizens forgot that it had ever gone to them for study.
His father continued. ‘So I watched and cheered when my sister, Katya, became a Nine and removed her hair ribbons and got her bicycle. Then I didn’t pay much attention to the Tens and Elevens. And finally, at the end of the second day, which seemed to go on forever, it was my turn. It was the Ceremony of Twelve.’
Jonas shivered. He pictured his father, who must have been a shy and quiet boy, for he was a shy and quiet man, seated with his group, waiting to be called to the stage. The Ceremony of Twelve was the last of the Ceremonies. The most important.
‘I remember how proud my parents looked – and my sister, too; even though she wanted to be out riding the bicycle publicly, she stopped fidgeting and was very still and attentive when my turn came.
‘But to be honest, Jonas,’ his father said, ‘for me there was not the element of suspense that there is with your Ceremony. Because I was already fairly certain of what my Assignment was to be.’
Jonas was surprised. There was no way, really, to know in advance. It was a secret selection, made by the leaders of the community, the Committee of Elders, who took the responsibility so seriously that there were never even any jokes made about Assignments.
His mother seemed surprised, too. ‘How could you have known?’ she asked.
His father smiled his gentle smile. ‘Well, it was clear to me – and my parents later confessed that it had been obvious to them, too – what my aptitude was. I had always loved the newchildren more than anything. When my friends in my age group were holding bicycle races, or building toy vehicles or bridges with their construction sets, or—’
‘All the things I do with my friends,’ Jonas pointed out, and his mother nodded in agreement.
‘I