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

back down to the quad yard. When I got there, both soccer games had broken up
and the whole yard was a turning kaleidoscope of colored shirts and shorts. I didn’t
see Venie Morlock anywhere in the mass of playing kids, so I asked a boy I knew if
he had seen her.
He pointed, “She’s right over there.”
 “Thank you,” I said.
I got her down. I rubbed her nose in the ground. Then I made her beg to be let
up. I got a black eye for my trouble, but it was worth it to make her remember who
was who, even if I did live on the Fifth Level now.
After that, Daddy and I moved.


Chapter Two
«^»
The people who run our schools are very conservative— that probably holds true
just about everywhere, not just on our Ship. In any case, usually once you get
assigned to a tutor you don’t change to another for years. In fact, I knew a boy in
Alfing Quad who hated his tutor and got along so badly with him that they could
both show scars, and it took him three years to change to another.
Compared to that, anything less has to seem frivolous.
Monday morning, two days after we moved, I reported to my new school
supervisor in Geo Quad. He was thin, officious, prim and exact, and his name was
Mr. Quince. He looked at me standing in front of his desk, raised his eyebrows as he
took in my black eye, finished examining me, and said, “Sit down.”
The supervisor is in charge of all the school’s administrative work— he assigns
tutors, handles class movements, programs the teaching machines, breaks up fights,
if there are any, and so on. It’s a job with only a minimum of appeal for most people
so they don’t make anybody stay with it for longer than three years.
After looking through all my papers with pursed lips, and making a painstaking
entry in a file, Mr. Quince said, “Mr. Wickersham.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, puzzled.
“Mr. Wickersham will be your tutor. He lives at Geo C/15/37. You’re to meet him
at his home at two o’clock Wednesday afternoon, and thereafter three times a week
at your mutual convenience. And please, let’s not be late on Wednesday. Now come
along and I’ll show you your room for first hour.”
School is for kids between the age of four and fifteen. After fourteen, if you
survive, they let you give up all the nonsensical parts. You simply work with a tutor
or a craft master and follow your interests toward some goal.
I was due to make a decision on that in about two years. The trouble is that
except for math and reading old novels I had a completely different set of interests
than I had had a year before, and since I didn’t really have a solid talent for math and
reading old novels isn’t much use for anything, I had to find something definite. I
didn’t really want to specialize. I wanted to be a synthesist, knowing a little about
everything and seeing enough to put the pieces together. It’s a job that had appeal
for me, but I never talked about wanting it because I suspected I wasn’t smart
enough to handle it and I wanted room to back down in if I had to.
At my moments of depression I thought I might well wind up as a dorm mother
or something equally daring.
At some point between fourteen and twenty everybody finishes his normal
training. You pick something you like and start doing it. Later, after twenty, if you’re