I got there as late as I could. Everybody does. Good music was floating out of the corners of the H-deck rec room. A couple of adults were welcoming kids as they came in the door. The adults were basically good people, warm and understanding and always willing to talk to you. Everybody knows they’re part-time “adolescent specialists”—you can look it up in the Can work chart—but that’s okay, because that’s what they’re honestly interested in. It’s no fake. “Good evening. Matt,” Mr. Neugyen murmured to me. “I believe the correct theme for tonight is a quiet, reflective time.” He gestured to the rec room. “We are all saddened by the passing of Ishi. But to reaffirm our—”
“Yeah, you’re right,” I said, mostly to cut him off.
Dr. Matonin turned to me. “I know it has affected you greatly.” she said.
I scuffed one shoe into the other. “Uh huh.” They were only trying to help, and they were right, but I didn’t want to talk about it. “Uh, I think I’ll get something to drink.” I said, and moved off with a kind of phony smile.
It was just like every other Social. A knot of boys was talking, occasionally letting out a bark of laughter. The girls sat around low toadstool-shaped tables, the kind you can knock a drink off of with your knee if you’re not careful. They looked bored and uncomfortable. Just a few hours earlier we’d all seen them in jumpers or skinsuits or overalls. Now they had on dresses and long floaty skirts. And they’d done something to themselves. I mean, we’d been seeing the same dresses for years, redone to keep up with Earthside styles. But tonight the girls managed to look different—softer and curvier and sexier somehow. I don’t know how they did it.
I went over to the punchbowl and got a cup of the usual yellowish stuff. No alcohol in it, of course. Nothing more exotic, either. I’d never heard of anybody in the Can using any of the mild euphorics, such as cannabis or Lucogen. Those are legal on Earth, but reality-twisting isn’t allowed out here.
“Hey, got one for me?” Jenny said at my elbow.
I handed her my cup. “Oh, I didn’t see you.” I poured myself another.
“Or didn’t try to, ummmm?”
“Aw, come on.”
“Well, I wondered if there was some reason. Do you realize that you never approach a girl at these things?” She sipped her punch, holding it in two hands, and peered over the cup at me.
“Let’s be precise,” I said, “I don’t very often, okay, but not never. I…well, there’s something I don’t like about these things.”
“They’re not the greatest,” she admitted.
“Why can’t we have square dances instead?”
She shrugged. “Dr. Matonin says these are part of the, the socialization program.”
“That’s right.” Dr. Matonin said. “Socialization.” She had come over at the sound of her name. We smiled and exchanged a few pleasantries. Then I looked straight at her and said, “Look, we already know each other. Why do we have to go through these dances?”
Dr. Matonin has a motherly look and smiles a lot. It’s impossible not to like her. Her face crinkled with concern. “Social dancing is the way boys and girls learn to, ah, interact with each other.”
“We interact every day,” Jenny pointed out.
“I mean in a context that will develop and grow in later years. We want to bring you youngsters together in a way that will break down the tendency you have to avoid the other sex during adolescence.”
“But we get along fine.” I said.
“In a more sophisticated way, I mean, Matt.”
By that I guessed she meant the long ritual of dating and engagement and marriage, with a dollop of sex thrown in somewhere along the way to keep your interest up. Playing the game, Zak called it.
“Why can’t they be square dances, then?” Jenny asked. “We used to have those and they were fun.”
I nodded. I liked square dancing. It wasn’t such a hassle. You could wear anything you felt like. That usually meant the guys wore whatever they had on at the moment, and maybe half the girls did the same. The other girls came in skirts. For square dancing the skirts made sense—they were cooler. In fact, it always seemed too bad that boys couldn’t wear something like a skirt, too. I mean, to have some freedom of dress.
“I agree, they were fun.” Dr. Matonin’s face lit up. “But you young men and women are getting older and it is time to move on to other kinds of, ah, socialization processes.”
“Like this?” I waved a hand at the decorations and subdued lighting.
“Yes, indeed. This seems to us to be what is needed.”
“Needed by who?” Jenny asked.
“By the less mature among you. They do not easily make contact with the other sex. There are shy people, you know—they’re not all like you, Matt,” she said merrily.
I stared at her. She’s a tremendously bright fusion physicist, sure. But she didn’t seem to see that I felt awkward at these Socials, just like everybody else. I had a sudden moment of insight there, catching a glimpse of how other people saw me. A little jolt of unreality.
I was kind of brash and self-confident, I knew that. But underneath I had doubts and uncertainties. There were moments when I was nervous or shy or afraid to say things. But from what Dr. Matonin said, I guessed that nobody saw me clearly at those moments. They didn’t think that a kid who was good at his job and pretty fast with his mouth could have any problems. Well, I had news for them.
“But. but,” Jenny said, “there’s more social contact at anything else than here.” She gestured and we looked around. Sure enough, girls were still looking bored and guys were against one wall, muttering in subdued voices. Nobody was dancing.
“Well, it’s early yet,” Dr. Matonin said. “There’s something you older teens have got to understand, as well,” she went on seriously. “These dances are basically for the sake of the girls. They like them, even if perhaps a few of the older girls don’t.” A nod at Jenny. “They like a chance to dress up and show off. They like making their own special clothes.”
“We could wear them anywhere we wanted. Not only to dances.”
Dr. Matonin nodded slightly. “But you don’t. You see, Jenny, the Can is a very special kind of environment. We don’t dress or act the way people back on Earth do. But Mr. Neugyen and I and the others are trying to make these Socials as much as possible like the way things are on Earth. This is the way life is, Jenny. It’s not all work crews and astronomy and computers. And we had better remember that. We will all have to go back and live on Earth someday, and we will have trouble adjusting. And you will have the worst time of all, because you’ve spent almost all of your lives in the Can.”
“Ummm,” Jenny murmured in the way that meant she wasn’t convinced.
“So go ahead, get on out there,” Dr. Matonin said brightly, gently taking each of us by the elbow and steering us onto the dance floor. “And enjoy yourselves.”
I’m no smoothie, but I can negotiate a simple box step without breaking an ankle. I took Jenny in my arms and we danced through several numbers. It wasn’t bad. I liked the smell of her, a kind of rich fragrance that blotted out the rec room and the clumps of guys and the syrupy music. Jenny smiled and I held her closer and it was not bad at all. It still felt phony, but I managed to forget about that part of it.
We talked some more about what Dr. Matonin said. Jenny didn’t think any of the girls really liked the Socials, despite Dr. Matonin’s theory.