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.”