Rite of Passage

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.