Alexei Panshin: Rite of Passage

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.

Two weeks after we moved, I came into Daddy’s study to tell him that I had dirmer ready. He was talking on the vid to Mr. Persson, another Council member.

Mr. Persson’s image sighed and said, “I know, I know. But I don’t like making an example of anybody. If she wanted another child so badly, why couldn’t she have become a dorm mother?”

“It’s a little late to convince her of that with the baby on the way,” Daddy said dryly.

“I suppose so. Still, we might abort the baby and give her a warning. Well, we can hash it all out tomorrow,” Mr. Persson said, and he signed off.

“Dinner’s ready,” I said. “What was all that about?”

Daddy said, “Oh, it’s a woman named MacReady. She’s had four children and none of them have made it through Trial. She wanted one more try and the Ship’s Eugenist said no. She went ahead anyway.”

It put a bad taste in my mouth.

“She must be crazy,” I said. “Only a crazy woman would do a thing like that. Why don’t you examine her? What are you going to do with her, anyway?”

“I’m not sure how the Council will vote,” Daddy said, “but I imagine she will be allowed to pick out a colony planet and be dropped there.”

There are two points — one is population and the. other is Trial — on which we cannot compromise at all. The Ship couldn’t survive if we did. Imagine what would happen if we allowed people to have children every time the notion occurred to them. There is a limit to the amount of food that we have space to grow. There is a limit to the amount of room that we have in which people could live. It may seem that we are not very close to these limits now, but they couldn’t last even fifty years of unlimited growth. This woman had four children, not one of which turned out well enough to survive. Four chances is enough.

What Daddy was suggesting for the woman sounded over-generous to me, and I said so.

“It’s not generosity,” Daddy said. “It’s simply that we have to have rules in the Ship in order to live at all. You play by the rules or you go elsewhere.”

“I still think you’re being too easy,” I said. It wasn’t a light matter to me at all.

Somewhat abruptly, Daddy changed the subject. He said, “Hold still there. How’s your eye today? It’s looking much better, I think. Yes, definitely better.”

When Daddy doesn’t agree with me and he doesn’t want to argue, he slips out by teasing.

I turned my head away. “My eye’s all right,” I said. It was, too, since the bruise had faded away almost completely.

At dinner, Daddy asked, “Well, after two weeks, how do you like Geo Quad? Has it turned out as badly as you thought it would?”

I shrugged, and turned my attention to my food. “It’s all right, I guess,” I mumbled.

That’s all I could say. It just wasn’t possible for me to admit that I was both unhappy and unpopular, both of which were true. There are two reasons I started off wrong in Geo Quad, one big one and one small one.

The small one was school. As I’ve said, the only kids who are supposed to know how you stand are the others at the same level in each subject, people just like you. In practice, though, everybody has a pretty good idea of just where everybody else is and those at the top and bottom are expected to blush accordingly. I’ve never been able to blush on command, and, as a newcomer, it was all the harder for me because of it. It’s not good to start by being singled out.

The big reason, on the other hand, was completely my fault. When we moved, I knew I wasn’t going to like Geo Quad, and it mattered not at all what anybody there thought of me. By the time it sank through to me that I was really and truly stuck in Geo Quad and that I’d better step a little more lightly, my heel marks were already plain to see on more than one face.

As it turned out, my position and my conduct interacted to bring me trouble. This is how things go wrong — and this is just a sample:

At the beginning of the week, the whole school went down to the Third Level on an educational jaunt. The afternoon was really more in the nature of a holiday because we older ones had seen the rows of broad-leaf plants they raise for carbon dioxide/oxygen exchange more than once before. At the end of the day we were coming back home to Geo Quad by shuttle and to pass the time some of us girls were playing a hand game. I was included because I was there and they needed everybody present to make a good game of it.

The game goes like this: Everybody has three numbers to remember. At a signal, everybody claps their hands on their knees, claps their hands, then the person starting the game calls a number. Knees, hands, then the person whose number was called calls someone else’s number. Knees, hands, number. Knees, hands, number. It goes on, the speed of the beat picking up, until somebody claps wrong or misses when one of her numbers is called. When that happens, everybody gets licks with stiffened fingers on her wrist.

The game is simple enough. It’s just that when the pace picks up, it’s easy to make a mistake. We girls stood in a group in the aisle, one or two lucky ones sitting down, near the front of the shuttle car.

We started out — clap, clap , “Twelve,” said the girl starting.

Clap on knees, clap together, “Seven.”

Clap, clap , “Seventeen.”

Clap, clap , “Six.” Six was one of my numbers.

I clapped hands on knees, hands together, and “Twenty,” I said.

Clap, clap . “Two.”

Clap, clap , “---.”

Somebody missed.