"Alexei Panshin - Rite Of Passage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Panshin Alexei)

He took out a handkerchief and wiped my face and he finally got me calmed
down enough to find out what I was trying to tell him. It took awhile, but finally I
was finished and had stopped crying, and was only hiccupping occasionally.
“I’m truly sorry, Mia,” he said gravely. “I hadn’t really understood how things
were. I thought I was doing the best thing for you. I thought you’d be better off in a
dormitory with other children than living here alone with me.”
“No,” I said. “I want to live with you, Daddy.”
He looked thoughtful for a long moment, and then he gave a little nod and said,
“All right. I’ll call up the dorm and let them know so they won’t think you’re lost.”
Alfing Quad then became one of the two certain things in my life. You can’t count
on a dorm or a dorm mother, but a quad and a father are sure. But now Daddy
wanted us to leave one of my two sureties. And Geo Quad wasn’t even on the
Fourth Level— it was on the Fifth.
 The Ship is divided into five separate levels. First Level is mainly Technical—
Engineers, Salvage, Drive, Conversion, and so on. Second is mainly Administration.
Third has dirt and hills, real trees and grass, sand, animals and weeds— it’s where
they instruct us kids before they drop us on a planet to live or die. Fourth and Fifth
are Residential, where we all live. Of these five, the Fifth is the last. All of us kids
knew that if you lived way out on the Fifth Level you weren’t much better than a
Mudeater. If you lived on the Fifth Level you were giving up one of your claims to
being human.
I sat in my chair thinking for a long time, trying to recover myself. “You can’t be
serious about moving to the Fifth Level?” I asked, hoping Daddy might be joking—
not really hoping; more just trying to keep from facing the situation for a moment
longer.
“Certainly I am,” he said, as though it were nothing. “I had to hunt for a long time
before I found this apartment. I’ve already started getting us ready to move. You’ll
like it there, I think. I understand there’s a boy your age in the school there who’s
somewhat ahead of you. It will give you a chance to scratch for awhile instead of
coasting along with no competition the way you do here.”
I was afraid, and so I started to argue desperately, naming all the places we could
move into inside Alfing. I even cried— and I didn’t do that often anymore— but
Daddy was unshakable. Finally I dragged my sleeve across my face to dry my eyes
and folded my arms and said, “I’m not going to go.”
That wasn’t the right tack to take with Daddy. It just convinced him that I was
being stubborn, but it wasn’t stubbornness now. I was truly frightened. I was sure
that if we moved things would never be the same for me again. They couldn’t be.
But I couldn’t say that to Daddy. I couldn’t admit to him that I was afraid.
He came to the chair where I was sitting defiantly with my arms crossed and fresh
tears lurking in the corners of my eyes, and he put both of his hands on my
shoulders.
“Mia,” he said. “I realize that it isn’t easy for you, but in less than two years you
will be your own master and then you can live where you please and do as you like.
If you can’t take an unpleasant decision now, what kind of an adult will you make
then? Right now— no arguments— I am moving. You have a choice. Move with me,
or move into the dormitory here in Alfing Quad.”
I’d lived in a dormitory and I had no desire ever to go back. I did want to stay
with Daddy, but it was still a hard decision for me to make. It was a question of
which of my two certainties I wanted to give up. In the end, I made my decision.
After I wiped my eyes once again with the lower edge of my shirt, I walked slowly