Giles Goat Boy (114 page)

“Pass you, Mother!” I kissed her hands and joined them to Anastasia’s, who had come to the port. “Pass you both, in the name of the Founder,
summa cum laude!
”

Mother fluttered, and in her soft madness mixed a Maxim: “First served, first come.”

Now sirens growled and motorcycles crowded up. Computer-scientists, professor-generals, and Light-House aides, alarmed by signs of trouble in the Belly, swarmed about; student-demonstrators chanted, I could not hear what, “Give us the Goat,” I supposed; a disorderly motorcade roared
around from Great Mall and paused at the confusion. Commending Mother to Anastasia’s care, I girdled my ragged fleece with the amulet-of-Freddie and issued forth. Shouts went up: it was indeed “Give us the Goat” that certain bearded chaps and longhaired lasses cried—but not in anger. They were no more than half a dozen, fraction of a remnant of a minority, and clouted even by their sandaled classmates as they cheered; but their signs, I wept with gratitude to see, read A
WAY WITH
B
RAY
! Their elders beset me at once with questions, threats, and mock. If I had ruined WESCAC, the military-scientists warned, I could expect a traitor’s fate …

“I made a short circuit,” I admitted calmly, drawing strength from my half a dozen. “But I don’t think WESCAC’s damaged.” I actually hoped not, I added for my classmates’ benefit; for although it stood between Failure and Passage, WESCAC therefore partook of both, served both, and was in itself true emblem of neither. I had been wrong, I said, to think it Troll. Black cap and gown of naked Truth, it screened from the general eye what only the few, Truth’s lovers and tutees, might look on bare and not be blinded.

The six took frownish notes, shaking their heads; the rest hooted me down. How to speak the unspeakable? I said no more. One forelocked aide winked at a stern professor-general, tapped his temple, and said, “Probably EATen, like the old lady.”

I sighed and contented myself with a suggestion they could understand: that they unplug WESCAC’s Output from its Input, to restore the normal circuit. Exchanging glances of surmise, they hurried off. I looked about then for my usual lynchers, and was surprised to see none in evidence, until I observed that the approaching motorcade was led by Stoker, and that Max was in his sidecar: the mass of studentdom had gone to Founder’s Hill, I realized grimly, to watch the Shafting. It was against capital punishment, among other things, that the sheep-skinned band had assembled to demonstrate, all but the faction protesting protest. Stoker skidded up and snarled at Anastasia; his crew piled up their rowdy vehicles behind him.

“Get in here, woman! I’m taking you home!”

Demurely she refused; she would stay with me, whether I wished her to or not. She apologized for having forsaken her wifely vows and tried to explain that while she sympathized with Stoker and was even beginning in a way to love him, she had a higher obligation as a Grand Tutee; a higher love, not in conflict with her marriage, she declared, but transcending
it; a passèd Assignment from the Founder, scarcely dreamed of even by myself, to the fulfillment whereof she was now utterly dedicate …

“Hogwash!” Stoker raged. All this while I’d been contemplating Max, who, wizeneder than ever, sat oblivious to the fuss. But at Stoker’s oath, unfamiliar to me, I started, for it put a notion into my head, or rather disclosed to me in an instant one that had grown unnoticed there almost to ripeness. In half a second I was studying Max again (who also studied me), ignoring Stoker’s jealous oaths and the general furor; but it was as if the Founder had seen to it he would cry Hogwash on that occasion rather than Horse-manure or Sheep-shit (other of his pet ejaculations), just in order to inspire me with a plan.

Max held out a thin hand. “Bye-bye, Georgie.”

How to tell him that I grasped now, among much else, the hub of his Cyclology; that I had completed my Assignment, passed the Finals, and come through to bonafide Grand-Tutorship? There was no need: he saw what I’d seen and had become; from his eyes, hid deep behind their brows like an owl’s in snowy brake, understanding glowed. I gripped his hand. “You don’t
have
to die this afternoon, Max. I’ve got a secret: Leonid’s key. I can take you right out of this.” I studied his face as I spoke. He touched the amulet-of-Freddie. The true scapegoatery, I reminded him, was not to die for studentdom’s sake, but to take their failings upon oneself and live. “You misunderstood the amulet-of-Freddie.”

“Ach,”
he said, “not only that. You know why I been an all-round genius, George?” He smiled. “Because I never knew my real major. But I found out now what my life’s-work is.”

I asked what.

“To die,” he said, delighted by the joke. “In studentdom’s behalf, selfish or not, and even if it don’t make sense.”

“Are you a love-lover nowadays, Max?” I earnestly inquired. “Or a hate-hater, or what?”

Promptly, as if he’d expected the question, he replied: “Na, I don’t hate hate any more. But I love love more than I don’t hate hate.”

“You’re going to the Shaft?”

He nodded.

“Even though you might be playing martyr?”

He shrugged. “So I’m playing. The game’s for keeps.”

I placed my fingertips on both his temples and declared him a Candidate for Graduation.

“Ach!”
he said, hoarse with pride. “You know what’s ahead for you, Georgie? At the end of the circle?”

I smiled and gently mocked his accent. “A circle has an end?
Auf wiedersehen
, Max.”

Yet a moment he clung to my amulet. “One favor you can do me, Georgie: blow your horn when the time comes, I want to hear it on the Shaft.”

I promised I would, thrilling again at the way all chance seemed fraught with meaning and instruction. The original shophar, no longer blowable, I’d left in the Belly with Mother’s purse and all my collected tokens except the stick and watch, the rest having done their job; but its mate (old Freddie’s left) still lay, I trusted, in a certain tool-locker out in the barns, where I meant to go anyway before the Shafting.

“I’ll drive you out,” Anastasia said firmly, turning from her husband. “We’ll use one of Maurice’s cycles.” I glowed at the miracle in her words, and agreed. Unable to speak for rage, Stoker fired both pistols into the air and raced his motor. His troopers laughed at his discomfiture. I beamed at him.

“You!” he roared at me, and turning then to the demonstrating students he shouted that the Grand Tutor was Harold Bray, who even then was on Founder’s Hill preparing to do wonders at the Shafting, while I was a gross and treacherous impostor whom no committee in the College would condemn them for lynching. The half-dozen grinned appreciatively, and some of their classmates looked at me now with a new respect, which infuriated Stoker the more. As he harangued them I touched his temples from behind and declared him a Candidate for Graduation. My six were startled; even Max and Anastasia looked surprised.

“Wah!”
Stoker bellowed, too paroxysed now to speak intelligently. “Wah! Wo! Wah!” Anastasia being nearest his reach, he clouted her with his helmet, knocking her into my arms. The sight drove him wild; actual tears stood in his eyes; he seemed about to shoot the pair of us.

“Maurice,” Anastasia warned. “Don’t you dare shoot. I’m pregnant.”

“Wah! Wo!”

“I’m eight hours pregnant,” she affirmed, in utter earnest. “By the Grand Tutor.”

The troopers and students guffawed and cheered; Mother murmured, “A-plus.” I marveled at My Ladyship’s extraordinary conviction, wondering all the same whether the EAT-wave mightn’t have got to her after all. As for Stoker, this declaration on the heels of my Certifying his Candidacy made him truly berserk: he wrenched the motorcycle into gear, cursing, babbling, snarling at once, while tears coursed over his grimèd cheeks. Demonstrators sprang in all directions as he tore through; Max clutched
the sidecar-wales. The rest of the troop, still laughing, straggled after—all save one, whose vehicle Anastasia commandeered by the simple expedient of threatening to tell Stoker that he’d forced her virtue. The trooper sneered, shrugged, growled something about
Pantoffelheldentum
—but climbed up behind a smirking colleague, leaving his own motorcycle idling. Anastasia donned the helmet her spouse had swatted her with, passed Mother into the keeping of the forelocked aide (who seemed, like most of the student body, on familiar terms with My Ladyship), and bade me mount behind her, the vehicle being sidecarless.

“All’s fair that ends well,” Mother murmured to the air.

Stoker meanwhile, hurtling cornerwards, careered into a second motorcade—this one in perfect file, upon white engines—which had wheeled round from the Mall. The confusion obliged both parties to halt.

“Oh dear,” Anastasia said, and blushed. “It’s Mr. and Mrs. Rexford.”

An expert driver, she would thread us out of the traffic-jam and away from the scene. But I directed her to take me to the Chancellor, whom Stoker, springing from his vehicle, had found shrill speech enough to mock.

“Wife-beater!” I heard him jeer, among other things. The Chancellor’s white-helmeted escorts drew polished pistols, and two or three professor-generals came running from the Belly-port, which I noticed had reclosed. Rexford, though he reddened at the taunt, seemed in control of himself again, and showed little sign of last evening’s debauch: his eyes were bright, if slightly bloodshot; his hair was groomed but for the one unruly lock, his face clean-shaved, his light coat pressed and spotless. His wife, though her left cheekbone was something moused, seemed not displeased to contradict with her presence the reports of their separation; she glared at Stoker angrily, as if he were responsible for her husband’s truancy as well as for the present embarrassment. The Chancellor himself, though he frowned at the disorder, seemed not alarmed, and vetoed the request of his professor-generals to have Stoker shot.

“Put him in irons, then,” one of them ordered the Chancellor’s escorts. “We’ll get him for disorderly conduct and conspiracy to overthrow.”

“No no,” Rexford said. “I’ll let him go on to the Powerhouse.”

Stoker beamed contemptuously. “That’s my brother!”

The professor-generals, who, it was rumored, had been talking anyhow of impeaching the Chancellor on charges of conduct unbecoming a Commander-in-Chief, exchanged meaning looks, which Rexford obviously saw and was as amused by as was Stoker, if for different reasons.

“He’ll be allowed to pass outside Main Gate between the Powerhouse and Main Detention,” he said—addressing the p.-g.’s but observing Stoker. “If he sets foot on Great Mall again, arrest him. If he enters Tower Hall or the Light House, shoot him.”

Stoker laughed as if in mocking triumph, but his effect was diminished by the tear-tracks still on his face. He thrust out his hand. “Put her there, Brother!”

At that moment the Chancellor remarked our presence, Anastasia having drawn us near at my insistence. He flashed us a quick smile before returning to deal with Stoker; his wife stared dangerously at My Ladyship, who lowered her head. Calmly, almost respectfully, Rexford pushed away the proffered hand, wiping his own afterwards on a white linen handkerchief. Good-humoredly he scoffed, “Brother indeed! Go back where you belong.”

The professor-generals brightened. “You deny he’s your brother, Mr. Chancellor? Once and for all?”

Rexford coolly reminded them that professor-generals did not address their Commander-in-Chief as if he were a miscreant recruit. Then he added with a wink: “Do I
look
like the rascal’s brother?”

Stoker flung back his head and laughed, again as if meaning to mock; but I thought I detected wet streaks among the dry. Catching sight then of us, he bellowed, “Wah! Wow!” leaped back upon his motor, and throttled off. The professor-generals took counsel with one another; one of them I saw slip a
Light Up With Lucky
button out of his pocket and repin it on his tunic, above the riot-ribbons. Stoker’s men having left to try to overtake him, the white-helmeted escorts realigned their positions, discreetly raced their engines, and made ready to proceed. But the Chancellor had turned to me, with a kind of bright hesitation, as if certain of his desire but not of protocol. I dismounted and stepped towards him, whereupon with a grin he sprang from the Chancellory sidecar and met me halfway.

“Glad to see you without the rope,” he said, and expressed his regret that my former keeper had chosen not to take advantage of the recent general amnesty, as his freedom would have been its one happy consequence.
“The way the varsity situation is,” he confided sadly, “and the way I’ve carried on the last few months, I don’t dare stay his execution now; I’d have a mutiny in the Military Science Department. But I love that old man. It’s things like this that make you wish you weren’t the flunkèd Chancellor.”

I listened attentively, studying his bright eyes. His admiration for Max was entirely sincere, and his regret for the Shafting; but that he wished not to be Chancellor, his whole presence denied.

“How is it you’re not angry with me for the trouble I’ve caused, Mr. Rexford?”

“Who says I’m not?” His smile was shrewd. “I think I see what you were trying to teach me. But I guess Commencement isn’t for administrators.” In painful sobriety after his debauch, he said, he had resolved to abandon his yen for Graduation and merely “do his flunkèd best” for his alma mater, by his own lights, however benighted. To this end he had reopened secret economic dealings with Ira Hector, much as he deplored that necessity, and made covert overtures to new negotiations with the Student-Unionists. The Power Lines would in all likelihood be restored to their “original” locations, and the Boundary Dispute, he hoped, resumed on its former terms without too great loss to West Campus because of his recent vacillation. Having learned, thanks to me, that Classmate X was the defector Chementinski, he supposed he would put that knowledge to a use less passèd than I would approve of: blackmailing the Nikolayans back to the conference-table. “It’s all very well for proph-profs to be above these things,” he said amiably; “but the man with the power can’t always keep his hands as clean as he’d like to.” Folding his handkerchief neatly as he spoke, he caught sight of the Stoker-smudge on it and laughed.