Alexei Panshin: Rite of Passage

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.