Giles Goat Boy (113 page)

“I guess I don’t, George, now that I know. But,
ugh!
”

“I have to drive him out of the Belly now,” I said, “and sooner or later off the campus. Part of my work. But I don’t have any feeling about him, one way or the other.”

She sniffed and shivered. “Me neither. But, George …”

“Yes?”

Again she hugged and wailed. “I love You!” Then at once she drew away. “What are we going to
do?
”

I begged her pardon. Three hours and eight minutes previously, when so much had suddenly come clear in George’s Gorge, I’d seen—as it were in the general light—that marriage was not for such as I, nor any amorous relationship; the bonds of desire, the ties of wife, mistress, children, like every other bond, I would cast off, eschew, abjure—eradicate, if necessary, like the names on my ID-card. And adultery, in particular, I perceived—given the student situation and the fabric of campus life—was flunkèd in the Founder’s eyes, so to speak, at least for His Grand Tutors. Of these things I no longer held opinions; I knew them to be the case, as I’d been given in that instant to know much else. Yet in all this clarity—which so surely had lit my way back to Great Mall and up to the Belfry,
and would beyond, from Tock to Tick, where presently I must go—one shadow remained. I detected it most plainly in the pupils of Anastasia’s eyes, and inferred therefore that what it shrouded was myself.

“You must love your husband,” I earnestly advised her. “Stoker’s in critical shape just now. He’s actually jealous.”

“I’m a complete failure!” Anastasia cried, and repeated what she’d told me earlier on, and which her Living-Room debauchery had confirmed for her: she still felt compassion for the student body’s needs and a particular obligation to please her husband (for whom she had discovered in herself that day, for the first time, a kind of affection, when she’d seen his distress in the Living Room); moreover, she craved with all her heart to practice my instructions, as she believed absolutely in my Grand-Tutorhood. But she had failed, she wept;
was
failed, because what her deliberate promiscuities and self-servicings had taught her was that she was
in love—
an entirely novel experience! And the object of her passion was myself.

I fretted. “Anastasia …”

“I don’t care about anything,” she said quietly. “I don’t care what Maurice thinks, or You think, or even the Founder thinks. I know I’m flunked, and I don’t even care.” She’d come to the Belfry, she declared, against her husband’s express prohibition (the first such of their marriage), knowing she might have to submit to Bray and then letting him do his will upon her even when she saw the horror of it, all in the conviction that I would appear—as indeed I had, though I’d not decided to until three hours and fifteen minutes past (the clock chimed as she spoke), and had even supposed in the Treatment Room that we’d see each other no more. Thus was her faith vindicated. What she wanted now, and was resolved upon with the same formidable confidence, was to engender and bear a child by me—an idea obviously planted by Mother—and to this end she was prepared to flunk herself forever with the prerequisite adultery. If I refused (and she would not “assert herself,” she said; no more of that; I must come to
her
), she meant to go down in the Belly with me and there expire.

“I know You don’t love
me
,” she concluded. “I guess You can’t, and still be a Grand Tutor. But I love You.”

Her manner was the more disturbing for its perfect calm. I was touched with wonder and, at first, a really dispassionate curiosity. My nature and function, it seemed to me, I understood (since eight o’clock) quite clearly and disinterestedly. Certain misconceptions and imperfect notions had fallen from me, like blindfolds from the eyes or handcuffs
from the wrists; I
knew
now I was meant for Grand-Tutorhood, and saw my way, work, and fate with sure indifference—as, for instance, that I would drive out Harold Bray, but with neither rancor nor relish, only as part of my larger Assignment. A knife cuts; a fish swims; a Grand Tutor, among other things, drives from the campus such as Bray. There was no glamour to the work, nor any longer to the term:
Grand Tutor, WESCAC, fountain-pen—
all names of neutral instrumentalities. Thus also even
Bray, impostor, troll:
as he himself had once suggested, albeit guilefully, it was his
function
to be driven out; on the Founder’s transcript, so to speak, his A and mine would be of equal value.

“Anastasia,” I began again, and would have told her of these things—that the fact of my Grand-Tutorhood, for example, in itself made me no more
lovable
than the fact of assistant-professorship, say; and that for pointing the way to Commencement Gate, as surely I would do, studentdom owed my person no more love than one owed an Amphitheater-usher, for instance, or museum-guide, who also merely discharged their functions. To be sure, a certain kind of love for studentdom was prerequisite to my work—but so was a love of plants to the horticulturalist’s, whose crop was nowise obliged thereby to reciprocation. Love me? I didn’t love myself!

But I got no further than her name, at sound whereof she opened to me her fine clear eyes. They gave back my image, luminous, and another shadow disappeared—the last but one.

“Show me the way to the Belly, Anastasia.”

She understood, evidently, that the lobby-lifts were under guard, and that in any case we could not resummon the elevator Bray had used. My hope was that like the nameless Information-girl, she would know of a hidden stair or other seldom-used route: her “mother,” after all, had worked in Tower Hall throughout her adult life. But under this hope and conjecture was a certain knowledge, in view whereof I directed instead of asking her. She paled a little, then quietly got up. We went through the trap-door and down the ladder and stairs to the bottom landing—one level below the Circulation Room, but still a long way from the Belly. Taking my hand then, she led me through a low door into a maze of unlit bookstacks, through which she threaded as surely as if she dwelt there. More than once our way was barred by locked mesh doors, increasingly formidable, marked R
ESTRICTED
: N
O
A
DMITTANCE
—which however she opened easily with a hairpin by the light of my pocket-torch. At last we came to a cul-de-sac, in whose blind wall was a large dumbwaiter in a steel-screen shaft. A sign above it warned the few whose rank
in the College might open all those intervening doors: D
ANGER
: DIET-
TAPES ONLY
. I understood where I was, that I had been there once before. She gripped my hand.

The tapelift door was bossed with assorted keyholes and combination-dials, proof equally against hairpins and blows of stick. But when in exasperation I merely pulled, it swung open, as if unlatched from the beginning. A steel box one meter square at most, scarcely large enough for one person; however, Anastasia climbed in at once, unhesitant, and drew me after. Knees to chin and arsy-turvy—like two shoes in a box, or that East-Campus sign of which her navel had reminded me—we had not room to move a muscle; yet in some fashion I crooked the door shut with my stick, and Anastasia, using flashlight, mirror, and magnifying lens from my purse, and the curved tip of the shophar, contrived to reach through the mesh and press the red button marked
Belly
. The lift gave a jerk, shearing off many centimeters of horn-tip and further tangling My Ladyship and myself; we began a slow descent in total darkness. Yet had there shone upon us all the lights of the Power Line, I’d have been blind as Greene or Leonid, blind as Gynander; for such was my involvement with Anastasia, my eyes pressed into what had been my first sight of her (G. Herrold’s last), upon the broken bridge. Hers me likewise, and through my curly blindfold I began to see a light.

“Adultery is flunkèd,” I declared into her. “Also the deception of spouses.” She whispered, “A-plus.”

“Hypocrisy, too,” I said. “And yet—there’s a riddle here somewhere, Anastasia; something fundamental. It’s as if the Answer were right under my nose! And yet I don’t quite have it …”

So cramped were our quarters, she could but murmur acknowledgment. Yet respond she did to my impassioned ruminations, vouchsafing me in wordless tongue a foretaste of ultimate Solution.

We reached bottom.

“This is just the Mouth,” I said when the lift-door and my eyes opened on the familiar ruby glow. Able now to move her head, Anastasia tensed at my words and declared: “Then this is the end, I guess. But I don’t mind being EATen, George …” Indeed, she slipped out before I could and gave me her hand, saying, “I love You.”

Again those words! I swung my legs out of the tapelift and thoughtfully rubbed my chin. Bray was gone before me, I perceived, leaving only the faintest trace of himself behind: perhaps he lurked in the Belly proper; on the other hand he may have gone on towards Founder’s Hill. No matter. All that counted was that final shadow, which, like My Ladyship’s
mighty night-fleck in the Gorge, appeared no larger than a man’s hand, and yet enveloped the University. I, belovèd! I frowned and squinted, blinked like Peter Greene. Anastasia’s face was all entreaty; and yet, having said, “I love You,” she would say no more: she waited with eyes closed and hand extended.

“Assert yourself, Anastasia,” I ordered huskily, to test her. In a very positive small voice she answered: “No.”

I stepped to her, stirred to the marrow, and kissed her lips. Like Truth’s last veils our wrappers rose: her eyes opened; I closed mine, and saw the Answer.

“Pass you!” I whispered. She nodded.

Supporting her under the buttocks with my stick, I lifted her upon me; she twined me round.

“In the purse,” I said. “Bray’s mask. For the scanner.”

From the bag strung about my neck she withdrew and donned the mask. Then I bade her empty the purse itself of its sundry contents, invert it over my head, and draw the strings. At my direction she directed me to the entry-port.

“Wait,” I said. “Do you see a control-panel nearby? Some sort of console?”

“Yes. There’s a row of black buttons on it and a place marked
Input
. But the only jack I see says
Output
.”

“Put it in,” I instructed. She did, and pulled the lever beside the console. There were hums and snaps. At once the port opened, and in I went. The scanner clicked: as one, we tumbled past it and slid deep into the Belly.

“Wonderful!” I cried. For though the place was lightless, and my head pursed, in Anastasia I discovered the University whole and clear. Mother of my soul, its pulse throbbed all around us; my Father’s eye it was glowed near, whose loving inquiry I perceived through My Ladyship.

“It says
ARE YOU MALE OR FEMALE
,” she whispered. We rose up joinèd, found the box, and joyously pushed the buttons, both together, holding them fast as we held each other.

“HAVE YOU COMPLETED YOUR ASSIGNMENT AT ONCE, IN NO TIME”

Was it Anastasia’s voice? Mother’s? Mine? In the sweet place that contained me there was no East, no West, but an entire, single, seamless campus: Turnstile, Scrapegoat Grate, the Mall, the barns, the awful fires of the Powerhouse, the balmy heights of Founder’s Hill—I saw them all; rank jungles of Frumentius, Nikolay’s cold fastness, teeming T’ang—all
one, and one with me.
Here
lay with
there, tick
clipped
tock, all
serviced
nothing
; I and My Ladyship, all, were one.

“GILES, SON OF WESCAC”

Milk of studentdom; nipple inexhaustible! I was the Founder; I was WESCAC; I was not. I hung on those twin buttons; I fed myself myself.

“DO YOU WISH TO PASS”

I the passer, she the passage, we passed together, and together cried, “Oh, wonderful!” Yes and No. In the darkness, blinding light! The end of the University! Commencement Day!

How long we lay embracèd none can tell: no bells toll where we were. After the shock, the Belly was still as we: asleep, passed away. In no time at all we lay there forever.

“A-plus
.”

We embraced the more tightly, not to wake.

“Pass All Fail All!”
The voice, some meters off, was familiar: a cheerful lady croon. Loath to return from the farther side of Commencement Gate, I tried not to recognize it, and in that effort—alas!—came to myself. Anastasia, herself now too, moaned into my pursèd ear and stirred her legs.

“Come, Billikins! Come, Bill!” Dear Founder, it was Mother: my sigh was not for passèd bliss, but for bliss past. What was she doing in that fell, Commencèd place? And—Founder!—why had I to leave it? Anastasia, unmasked already herself, unpursed me, kissed my brow. Tears in my eyes, I rose up on my knees, looked over Truth’s warm shoulder at the cold and flunked campus I must return to. Day was about to dawn: how loath I was to leave that bright, consummate, hourless night! Then my heart softened: it
was
Mother, leaning in through the slackened exit-port. In one hand, a peanut-butter sandwich, which she flapped at me as she crooned; in the other, a carefully folded garment. Compassion lightened hopeless duty; the campus wind was chill, but Knowledge warmed me. I knew what must be done, and that I would do it; all that would come to
pass was clear, hence my tears—but now they were for studentdom, not for me.

Anastasia’s eyes shone still with love; my own I think with neutral Truth, dispassionate compassion. Calm of heart, I kissed her thrice: once on the brow, in gratitude for her having been to me Truth’s vessel, and declared her Passèd; once on the navel, sign of the lightless place where I had seen, become myself, issued from to my post-Graduate Assignment; once finally on the Mount of Love where I’d Commenced, and upon whose counterpart I’d one day meet my end. The Cyclological Hypothesis, Spielman’s Law: at last I understood it, as Max perhaps could never, and kissed its sign.

Beyond the port now, commotion. Anastasia rubbed her belly, sighed, and said she loved me. I sighed too—but not, as she was pleased to think, in simple reciprocity, though I saw no need to disabuse her of that conviction—and went to Mother. Alas, she had been EATen in the flash, when at the final question I’d caused both buttons to be pressed: her once-cream hair was singed, her babble less lucid even than before. How she’d known to come to the Belly-exit, and how got her head in through it at the crucial moment, I was not to learn for some while. Happily, her mental estate had been already so grievous (a circumstance made much of subsequently by WESCAC’s riot-researchers) that the EAT-wave hadn’t been fatal: it was as if the scar-tissue, so to speak, of her former wounds, some inflicted by myself, shielded her mind from fresh assaults; already destroyed, she was invulnerable, and WESCAC’s worst had but chipped like grapeshot at the ruins. I ate the sandwich from her hand. The folded garment, it turned out, was my matriculation-fleece, left behind me in the Turnstile months before. How she came by it I cannot imagine, unless she and WESCAC maintained a secret intimacy from terms gone by. Torn as it was, I received it from her joyfully, and donning it in place of Reginald Hector’s, discovered in its fold a second treasure, lost with the first: the amulet-of-Freddie!