sat down in the living room, and though there wasn’t much doubt as to who was who among 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 low 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