The rituals on the ship were a means of affirming our ties with our planet and culture and were very important to us. They were held once weekly and were the objective of preparations to say nothing of many rehearsals. All two hundred and forty-eight of us, from greatest to least, took part in the rituals in our own way. The audience was Plotar himself, who criticized us and later told of means by which we could improve our performances. There were rumors that the ritual-ceremonies were actually telecast, by remote devices, back to the home planet, but since the home planet itself engaged in massive rituals for all levels of the populace, it is doubtful that our limited shipboard efforts would attract much of an audience, and for that reason I doubt the telecasts.
The rituals, as was customary, broke into three parts: nativity, fertility, and senility; and each week a different phase was offered. Because the rituals were bound into a tight textual framework with assigned responses and improvisations, a great deal depended upon the talent of the master of the rituals; he must, through timing, pacing, costumes, direction, and musical effects keep the familiar basic trinity of rituals ever fresh and Plotar had been selected for his position—or so he told us—because, before we had been sent to the ship, he had been the most promising ritual master in his sector, his advancement blocked by three seniors who were barely older than he and thus could not step aside. His administration of the rituals aboard the ship, therefore, would determine the extent of his career and, as he told us, although the rituals were important and revivifying for us, they meant nothing less than his entire career to him and he would do anything in his power to make sure that they were performed satisfactorily. He proved, then, to be difficult and demanding although he was full of strange kindnesses and the less nimble or retentive of us would always find himself in a position less demanding or sometimes (as in the case of the cripples who ritually took roles in the nativity rite) inert. In those small ways and in many others Plotar proved his capacity as a master of rituals and the limitless future that surely would have awaited him had not ritual masters, almost as young as he, already emerged in his sector just before his own rise.
The nativity ritual had to do with that basic birth-flourish from which all mortality originates; the fertility ritual was concerned with that basic, universal conjoinment which, welded from lust and spirituality, culminated in the sounds that were the recreation-noises of the universe; the senility ritual simulated in various ways that rite of death which was as intrinsically a part of living as nativity or fertility and which completed the cycle. It was easy to see, from the way in which the rituals were performed, that our people had been, although complex and sophisticated folk, simple in basic ways, tied to the basic ironies and ceremonies of generation which they alternately awed and mimicked. Emotional effects were cunningly heightened by the use of music and it was not unusual to cast the roles in a bizarre or compelling fashion—such as having a male play the part in childbirth during the fertility ritual—in order to illuminate the many ironies which underlay even the simplest of existences.
It was possible, from these rituals, to discover a great deal of the truth about the culture which sent us on our way but not, unfortunately, enough to put all of the pieces together. Obviously there was a great taste for irony in our people and a sense of flourish as well; a certain precision, an admiration of form for its own sake, a realization that form was content and so on . . . but even at the most anguished point of the senility ritual when one hundred and twenty-four of us would feign death to heavy music while the other one hundred and twenty-four cast themselves over us weeping . . . even at that point it was impossible to see any systematization in our home culture. What were they after? What precisely did they want? What did any of this have to do with our tasks or assigned duties?
It was with questions like these that we traveled all of the dismal months to Earth and it is with questions like these that we will return. Under the law of the master of the rituals, shipboard rituals cannot be avoided under any circumstances and we presume now that if we actually escape we will have to, in our limited way, enact the rituals on shipboard. That there will be only fifteen or twenty of us will cut down somewhat on pomp but perhaps we can move somewhat deeper into meaning.
I do not know whether we will learn from these rituals if we actually conduct them—I learned nothing from all the hundred that Plotar staged for us on the way here—but I look forward to them in some dim way; they will keep us busy and keep my mind off certain more basic questions: who is my therapist? What did they want of us here? Why did nothing we told them give them any satisfaction? How can we truly believe that the information we gave led to lasting technological changes in the culture when they refuse us any reading material or other access that would prove this? What is the meaning of the enclosure? Why were blocks implanted within us so that we could withhold nothing from them and not defend ourselves? Did we actually acquire our knowledge through special background at home or, as Nala suggests, was that knowledge merely injected into us in painful ways?
It is far easier to understand a ritual than to answer questions like these, and this explains, I think, why master of the rituals is a position of honor which ranks high in the hierarchy and which maintains special prerogatives. Master of the rituals is the master of the masquerade . . . and if we knew the answers to these questions at the beginning we might never have gotten so far.
I find it strange to recapitulate ritual at this crucial instant in the narrative but on the other hand I have been wanting to set it down for a long time and it makes a nice counterpoint to all that has preceded: for every circumstance of mindless brutality or loss there is another of order and logic . . . and by reminding myself once again of those rituals which were so pleasant, absorbing, and fulfilling (in whatever limited fashion) I can momentarily take myself away from circumstances that seem absolutely uncontrollable.
We are obviously a folk to whom order is very important. For all we know, that is why with all its difficulties we have found the enclosure so tolerable and why my therapist was astounded by my actions.
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