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

2

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 not already in research, you may apply for educational leave and work on a project of some sort. That’s what my mother keeps herself busy with.

I followed Mr. Quince to the room I was scheduled to be in first hour. I wasn’t anxious to be there at all, and I was half-scared and half-belligerent with no way of knowing which part would dominate at any given moment. When we arrived, there was a lot of sudden moving around. When the people unsorted themselves, I saw there were four kids in the room, two boys and two girls.

Mr. Quince said, “What’s going on here?”

Nobody said anything — nobody ever does to a supervisor if they can avoid it.

He said, “You, Dentremont. What are you up- to?”

The boy was red-headed and even smaller than I, with very prominent ears. He looked very young, though he couldn’t have been since he was in the same class as I.

He said, “Nothing, sir.”

After a moment of sharp gazing around, Mr. Quince accepted that and unbent sufficiently to introduce me. He didn’t introduce anybody else, apparently assuming I could catch on to the names soon enough on my own. The buzzer for the first hour sounded then and he said, “All right. Let’s set to work.”

When he left, the red-headed boy went behind one of the teaching machines and busied himself in tightening down the back plate.

The girl nearest me said, “One of these days Mr. Quince is going to catch you, Jimmy, and then there really will be trouble.”

“I’m just curious,” Jimmy said.

Everybody more or less ignored me, probably no more knowing how to take me than I knew how to take them. They did watch me and I have no doubt they took their first opportunity to tell everyone their idea of what that new girl from the Fourth Level was like. It was soon clear to me that they eyed us as suspiciously as we on the Fourth Level regarded them, with the added note that in our case it was justified while in theirs it was not. I took no pleasure in having girls look at me and then put their heads together and whisper and giggle and if I had been a little more sure of myself I would have challenged them. As it was, I just dug into my work and pretended I didn’t notice.

After first hour, three of the kids left. Jimmy Dentremont stayed where he was, and since my schedule card called for me to stay here second hour, I didn’t move, either. He looked closer at me than I could like. I didn’t know quite what to say. But then people had been staring and prying and even prodding from the moment we arrived in Geo Quad.

Our furniture had been moved over on Saturday morning — the pieces we wanted to keep — and Daddy and I came up on Saturday afternoon bringing everything else that we owned. I had four cartons full of boxes, clothes, and my personal things. I also had a pennywhistle that I’d salvaged. It was about eight inches long and had brass ends and finger holes. It turned up when we were going through our things, in some old box of Daddy’s, and he had put it on his “to throw” pile, from which I immediately rescued it. Sometimes I don’t understand my father at all.

The cartons went in my new room, which was larger than my old one. Larger, plus having more book shelves, which pleased me because I like my books out where I can use them, not piled away for lack of space.

I stood looking at the cartons, and not having the courage to attack them immediately, I began experimenting to see what sounds I could get out of the pennywhistle. Three minutes — that was the time we had in peace before the door rang.

First it was our neighbors. They crowded in and said, Oh, Mr. Havero, it’s such a thrill to have you here on our corridor, we hope you love it here as much as we do, and some of us men get together once in awhile, you know, for a little evening, keep it in mind, and oh, so that’s your daughter, she’s sweet, she’s adorable, Mr. Havero, I mean that, I really do, and you know Havero, there are some things I’ve been meaning to talk over with our rep on the Council, but now that you’re here, well, I might as well say it right to you, go right to the top, so to speak…

After that came the sightseers and the favor askers. A lot of favor askers. I could tell them from the neighbors because they tried to butter me up, as well as Daddy. The neighbors just buttered up Daddy.

I don’t know why it is, but in a case like this, the very people you’d enjoy meeting are the ones who have the good taste to stay home and not bother you. I think it may be an unsolvable problem.

Within minutes, Daddy retreated to his office and the people took over our living room while they waited to talk to him. The new apartment had two wings with the living room in between like the meat in a sandwich. One wing had three bedrooms, a bath and a kitchendining room. The other had a study for Daddy and an office. Adjoining the office on the far side was another smaller, empty apartment. Eventually, this was supposed to be a waiting room, but it wasn’t ready yet and so the people were camping themselves inside our house.

I watched the people for awhile, and then I pushed my way through the crowd and went into the bedroom wing. I called up Mary Carpentier from there.

“Hello, Mia,” she said. “Seeing you on the vid like this, you might still be home.”

“I am still home,” I said. “I haven’t moved yet.”

“Oh,” she said, and her face fell. She must have had her heart set on a call from a distance.

“I was just fooling,” I said. “I have moved.”

That brightened -her up again and we talked for awhile. I told her about all the people who were squatting in our living room, and we got giggling like madmen about all the imaginary errands we made up for them to have come about. We also swore again that we would be true-blue friends forever and ever.

When I was done, I went out in the hall just in time to see a heavy-set man coming out of my bedroom. I knew I’d never seen him before.

“What are you doing in there?” I asked.

Before he answered, he stuck his head into the next room for a moment to take a good look around in there. Then he said, “I’m just poking around, same as you.”

“I’m not poking around,” I said quietly. “I live here.”

He realized then that he’d made a mistake. He didn’t say anything. He just turned red and pushed by me hastily. And that’s the way things had been ever since.

Now, Jimmy Dentremont, looking closely at my face, asked, “What happened to your eye?”

I don’t believe in answering leading questions if I can avoid them, but even beyond that I had no intention of telling anybody what had happened to my eye.

“How old are you?” I asked in an even voice.

“Why?”

“If you’re as young as I think you are, you have no business asking me anything. Children should be seen and not heard.”

“Well, I’m older than you are,” he said. “I was born November 8, 2185.”

If he was telling the truth, then he was right by three weeks to the day.

“How do you know how old I am?” I asked.

“I asked about it when I found you were moving here,” he said quite openly.

See what I mean? Staring and prying.

The buzzer in the schoolroom sounded to signal the start of the second hour.

“Is this First Room?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Jimmy Dentremont said. “They don’t tell you that.”

Well, I knew they didn’t. They don’t want anybody feeling bad about what level he’s studying at — or feeling too good, either — but since it’s simply a matter of comparing notes, everybody knows just exactly what level his room is.

Jimmy Dentremont was simply being contrary. So far we had been feeling each other out, and I had no idea of how to take him or even whether or not we could get along. I thought not.

Mr. Quince called me in again after lunch, raised his eyebrows once more at my black eye — I had the feeling that he didn’t approve of it — and informed me that he had a change to make in my schedule.

“Mr. Mbele,” he said, handing me an address.

“Excuse me,” I said.

“Mr. Mbele is your tutor now. Not Mr. Wickersham as I told you this morning. I assume everything else I told you this morning will apply. Show up at two o’clock on Wednesday and please remember what I said about being late. I don’t want the students in my charge being late. A bad reputation always gets back and I’m the -one who has to think up explanations.”

“Can you tell me why I’m being switched?” I asked.

Mr. Quince raised his eyebrows. With acerbity, he said, “That doesn’t seem to be any of my business. I was informed of the change, and I am informing you. You may believe that it wasn’t my idea. I’m going to have to alter two assignments now, and I do not deliberately make work for myself. So don’t expect any answers from me. I don’t have any.”

It seemed like an odd business to me — switching me from one tutor to another before we’d even had a chance to inflict scars on one another. Almost frivolous.

In spite of myself, I was glad to meet Jimmy Dentre… mont on Wednesday afternoon. I was having trouble finding Mr. Mbele’s apartment and he helped me find my way.

“That’s where I’m going, as a matter of fact,” he said. Standing there in the hall with a slip with the address in his hand, he seemed almost friendly, perhaps- because there weren’t any other kids around.

So far, I hadn’t won any friends in Geo Quad, and by being quick-tongued had made one or two enemies, so I didn’t object to somebody being pleasant.

“Is Mr. Mbele your tutor, too?”

“Well, only since yesterday. I called Mr. Wickersham to find out why I was being switched around, and he’d only just been told about it by Mr. Quince, himself.”

“You didn’t ask to be switched?”

“No.”

“That does seem funny,” I said.

Mr. Mbele opened his door to our ring. “Hello,” he said, and smiled. “I thought you two would be showing up about now.”

He was white-haired and old — certainly well over a hundred — but tall and straight for his age. His face was dark and lined, with a broad nose and white eyebrows like dashes.

Jimmy said, “How do you do, sir.”

I didn’t say anything because I recognized him.

No name on the Ship is completely uncommon and I knew as many Mbeles as I knew Haveros. I just didn’t expect my tutor to be Joseph L. H. Mbele.

When he sat on the Ship’s Council, he and my father were generally in disagreement. Daddy led the opposition to his pet plan for miniaturized libraries to be distributed to all the colonies. The third time it was defeated, Mr. Mbele resigned.

When I was in the dorm, I once got into a namecalling, hair-yanking fight with another girl. She said that if Mr. Mbele wanted something to be passed, all he had to do was introduce a resolution against it, and then sit back. My father would immediately come out in favor of the proposal and ram it through for him.

I don’t think, this girl knew what the joke meant, and I know I didn’t, but she intended it to be slighting, and I knew she did, so I started fighting. I didn’t know Daddy very well in those days, but I was full to the brim with family loyalty.

Assigning me Mr. Mbele as a tutor seemed like another poor joke, and I wondered who had thought of it. Not Mr. Quince, certainly — it had cost him extra work and his time was precious.

“Come inside,” Mr. Mbele said. Jimmy prodded me and we moved forward. Mr. Mbele tapped the door button and the door slid shut behind us.

He motioned us toward the living room and said, “I thought today we’d simply get acquainted, arrange times that are convenient for all of us to meet, and then have something to eat. We can save our work for next time.”

We sat down in the living room, and though there wasn’t much doubt as to who was who amongst the three of us, at least in my mind, we all introduced ourselves.

“Yes, I think I’ve met both of your parents, Jimmy,” Mr. Mbele said, “and, of course, I knew your grandfather. As a matter of interest to me, what do you think you might like to specialize in eventually?”

Jimmy looked away. “I’m not positive yet.”

“Well, what are the possibilities?”

For a long moment, Jimmy didn’t speak, and then in a row and unconfident voice, he said, “I think I’d like to be an ordinologist.”

If you think of the limits of what we know as a great suite of rooms inhabited by vast numbers of incredibly busy, incredibly messy, nearsighted people, all of whom are eccentric recluses, then an ordinologist is somebody who comes in every so often to clean up. He picks up the books around the room and puts them where they belong. He straightens everything up. He throws away the junk that the recluses have kept and cherished, but for which they have no use. And then he leaves the room in condition for outsiders to visit while he’s busy cleaning up next door. He bears about the same resemblance to the middle-aged woman who checks out books in the quad library as one of our agriculturists does to a primitive Mudeater farmer, but if you stretched a point, you might call him a librarian.

A synthesist, which is what I wanted to be, is a person who comes in and admires the neatened room, and recognizes how nice a copy of a certain piece of furniture would look in the next room over and how useful it would be there, and points the fact out. Without the ordinologists, a synthesist wouldn’t be able to begin work. Of course, without the synthesists, there wouldn’t be much reason for the ordinologists to set to work in the first place, because nobody would have any use for what they do.

At no time are there very many people who are successful at either one job or the other. Ordering information and assembling odd scraps of information takes brains, memory, instinct, and luck. Not many people have all that.

“How much do you know about ordinology?” Mr. Mbele asked.

“Well, not very much at first hand,” Jimmy said. And then, with a touch of pride, “My grandfather was an ordinologist.”

“He was, indeed. And one of the best. You shouldn’t feel apologetic about trying to follow him unless you’re a complete failure, and you won’t be that,” Mr. Mbele said. “I’m not in favor of following ordinary practice simply because it’s done. If you don’t tell anybody, we’ll see if we can’t arrange to give you a detailed look at ordinology, and some basis for you to decide whether you want it or not. All right?”

It was plain that Mr. Mbele was going to be an unorthodox tutor. What he was proposing was something you don’t ordinarily have the chance to do until you’re past fourteen and back from Trial.

Jimmy grinned. “Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”

Then Mr. Mbele turned to me. “Well, how do you like living in Geo Quad?”

“I don’t think I’m going to like it,” I said.

Jimmy Dentremont shot a look at me. I don’t think he’d expected me to say that.

“What’s the matter?” asked Mr. Mbele.

I said, “There hasn’t been one moment since we arrived here in this quad that we haven’t had strangers all over the house. They don’t leave us any privacy at all. It was never like this back in Alfing Quad, believe me.”

Mr. Mbele smiled openly. “It isn’t Geo Quad that’s to blame,” he said. “This always happens when somebody becomes Chairman. The novelty will wear off in a few weeks and things will be back to normal again. Wait and see.

After a few more minutes of talk, Mrs. Mbele brought us something to eat. She was somewhat younger than her husband, though she wasn’t young. She was a large woman with a round face and light brown hair. She seemed pleasant enough.

While we ate, we decided that we would meet on Monday and Thursday afternoons and on Friday night, with the possibility of changes from week to week if something came up to interfere with that schedule.

Mr. Mbele wound up our meeting by saying, “I want to make it clear before we begin that I think your purpose is to learn and mine is to help you learn, or to make you learn, though I doubt either of you has to be made. I have very little interest in writing out progress reports on you, or sticking to form charts, or anything else that interferes with our basic purposes. If there is anything you want to learn and have the necessary background to handle, I’ll be ready to help you, whether or not it is something that formally falls among the things I’m supposed to teach you. If you don’t have the background, I’ll help you get it. In return, I want you to do something for me. It’s been many years since I was last a tutor, so I expect you to point out to me when I fail to observe some ritual that Mr. Quince holds essentiaL Fair enough?”

In spite of my basic loyalties, and contrary to them, I found myself liking Mr. Mbele and being very pleased that I had been lucky enough to be assigned to him, even though I couldn’t admit it publicly.

When we were in the halls again and on our way back home, Jimmy said suddenly, “Hold on.”

We stopped and he faced me.

“I want you to promise me one thing,” he said. “Promise not to tell anybody about my- grandfather or about me wanting to be an ordinologist.”

“That’s two things,” I said.

“Don’t joke!” he said pleadingly. “The other kids would make it hard for me if they knew I wanted to be an odd thing like that.”

“I want to be a synthesist,” I said. “I won’t say anything about you if you don’t say anything about me.”

We took it as a solemn agreement, and after that anything that was ever said in Mr. Mbele’s apartment was kept between us and never brought out in public. It was, if you like, an oasis in the general desert of childish and adult ignorance where we could safely bring out our thoughts and not have them denigrated, laughed at, or trampled upon, even when they deserved it. A place like that is precious.

Jimmy said, “You know, I’m glad now that I was switched. I think I’m going to enjoy studying under Mr. Mbele.”

Cautiously, I said, “Well, I have to admit he’s different.”

And that was about all that we ever said to anybody who ever asked us about our tutor.

I saw Daddy after he closed his office for the day. That is, he closed our living room to new people at five o’clock, and by almost eleven he’d seen the last person who was waiting.

Excitedly, I said, “Daddy, you know my new tutor is Mr. Joseph Mbele!”

“Mmm, yes, I know,” Daddy said, matter-of-factly, stacking papers on his desk and straightening up.

“You do?” I asked in surprise. I sat down in a chair next to him.

“Yes. As a matter of fact, he agreed to take you on as a personal favor to me. I asked him to do it.”

“But I thought you two were against each other,” I said. As I have said before, I don’t fully understand my father. I am not a charitable person — when I decide I’m against somebody, I’m against him. When Daddy’s against somebody, he asks him to serve as my tutor.

“Well, we do disagree on some points,” Daddy said. “I happen to think his attitude toward the colonies is very wrong. But just because a man disagrees with me doesn’t make him a villain or a fool, and I sincerely doubt that any of his attitudes will damage you in any way. They didn’t hurt me when I studied Social Philosophy under him sixty years ago.”

“Social Philosophy?” I asked.

“Yes,” Daddy said. “That’s Mr. Mbele’s major interest.” He smiled. “I wouldn’t have you study under a man who didn’t have something to teach you. I think you could stand a very healthy dose of Social Philosophy.

“Oh,” I said.

Well, there was one thing I could say for Mr. Mbele. He hadn’t done any eyebrow raising over my black eye. Neither had his wife, for that matter. I did appreciate that.

Still, I wished that Daddy had warned me beforehand. Even though I had liked Mr. Mbele, it would have saved me a few uncharitable thoughts right at the beginning.