"Jonas was identified as a possible Receiver many years ago. We have observed him meticulously. There were no dreams of uncertainty.
"He has shown all of the qualities that a Receiver must have."
With her hand still firmly on his shoulder, the Chief Elder listed the qualities.
"Intelligence." she said. "We are all aware that Jonas has been a top student throughout his school days.
"Integrity" she said next. "Jonas has, like all of us, committed minor transgressions." She smiled at him. "We expect that. We hoped, also, that he would present himself promptly for chastisement, and he has always done so.
"Courage," she went on. "Only one of us here today has ever undergone the rigorous training required of a Receiver. He, of course, is the most important member of the Committee: the current Receiver. It was he who reminded us, again and again, of the courage required.
"Jonas," she said, turning to him, but speaking in a voice that the entire community could hear, "the training required of you involves pain. Physical pain."
He felt fear flutter within him.
"You have never experienced that. Yes, you have scraped your knees in falls from your bicycle. Yes, you crushed your finger in a door last year."
Jonas nodded, agreeing, as he recalled the incident, and its accompanying misery.
"But you will be faced, now," she explained gently, "with pain of a magnitude that none of us here can comprehend because it is beyond our experience. The Receiver himself was not able to describe it, only to remind us that you would be faced with it, that you would need immense courage. We cannot prepare you for that.
"But we feel certain that you are brave," she said to him.
He did not feel brave at all. Not now.
"The fourth essential attribute," the Chief Elder said, "is wisdom. Jonas has not yet acquired that. The acquisition of wisdom will come through his training.
"We are convinced that Jonas has the ability to acquire wisdom. That is what we looked for.
"Finally, The Receiver must have one more quality, and it is one which I can only name, but not describe. I do not understand it. You members of the community will not understand it, either. Perhaps Jonas will, because the current Receiver has told us that Jonas already has this quality. He calls it the Capacity to See Beyond."
The Chief Elder looked at Jonas with a question in her eyes. The audience watched him, too. They were silent.
For a moment he froze, consumed with despair. He didn't have it, the whatever-she-had-said. He didn't know what it was. Now was the moment when he would have to confess, to say, "No, I don't. I can't," and throw himself on their mercy, ask their forgiveness, to explain that he had been wrongly chosen, that he was not the right one at all.
But when he looked out across the crowd, the sea of faces, the thing happened again. The thing that had happened with the apple.
They changed.
He blinked, and it was gone. His shoulders straightened slightly. Briefly he felt a tiny sliver of sureness for the first time.
She was still watching him. They all were.
"I think it's true," he told the Chief Elder and the community. "I don't understand it yet. I don't know what it is. But sometimes I see something. And maybe it's beyond."
She took her arm from his shoulders.
"Jonas," she said, speaking not to him alone but to the entire community of which he was a part, "you will be trained to be our next Receiver of Memory. We thank you for your childhood."
Then she turned and left the stage, left him there alone, standing and facing the crowd, which began spontaneously the collective murmur of his name.
"Jonas." It was a whisper at first: hushed, barely audible. "Jonas. Jonas."
Then louder, faster. "JONAS. JONAS. JONAS."
With the chant, Jonas knew, the community was accepting him and his new role, giving him life, the way they had given it to the newchild Caleb. His heart swelled with gratitude and pride.
But at the same time he was filled with fear. He did not know what his selection meant. He did not know what he was to become.
Or what would become of him.
9
Now, for the first time in his twelve years of life, Jonas felt separate, different. He remembered what the Chief Elder had said: that his training would be alone and apart.
But his training had not yet begun and already, upon leaving the Auditorium, he felt the apartness. Holding the folder she had given him, he made his way through the throng, looking for his family unit and for Asher. People moved aside for him. They watched him. He thought he could hear whispers.
"Ash!" he called, spotting his friend near the rows of bicycles. "Ride back with me?"
"Sure." Asher smiled, his usual smile, friendly and familiar. But Jonas felt a moment of hesitation from his friend, an uncertainty.
"Congratulations," Asher said.
"You too," Jonas replied. "It was really funny, when she told about the smacks. You got more applause than almost anybody else."
The other new Twelves clustered nearby, placing their folders carefully into the carrying containers on the backs of the bikes. In each dwelling tonight they would be studying the instructions for the beginning of their training. Each night for years the children had memorized the required lessons for school, often yawning with boredom. Tonight they would all begin eagerly to memorize the rules for their adult Assignments.
"Congratulations, Asher!" someone called. Then that hesitation again. "You too, Jonas!"
Asher and Jonas responded with congratulations to their groupmates. Jonas saw his parents watching him from the place where their own bicycles were waiting. Lily had already been strapped into her sear.
He waved. They waved back, smiling, but he noticed that Lily was watching him solemnly, her thumb in her mouth.
He rode directly to his dwelling, exchanging only small jokes and unimportant remarks with Asher.
"See you in the morning, Recreation Director!" he called, dismounting by his door as Asher continued on.
"Right! See you!" Asher called back. Once again, there was just a moment when things weren't quite the same, weren't quite as they had always been through the long friendship. Perhaps he had imagined it. Things couldn't change, with Asher.
The evening meal was quieter than usual. Lily chattered about her plans for volunteer work; she would begin, she said, at the Nurturing Center, since she was already an expert at feeding Gabriel.