Giles Goat Boy (48 page)
“Why,” Sear asserted good-humoredly, “he’s necessarily somewhat mad, my dear boy. Enos Enoch, Anchisides—all those hero and Grand-Tutor chaps. Charmingly mad, I grant you. Magnificently mad, if you like. But mad.”
I was the more put out by this remark in view of my infant circumstances and G. Herrold’s state after rescuing me from the tapelift. But fifteen folk in white cotton wrappers, high boots, and masks had filed onto the stage below, and since I scarcely knew how to reply in any case, I turned to them my troubled attention. They carried leafy branches in their hands and sat now here and there upon three long steps in the forepart of the stage.
“Please don’t be offended,” Sear whispered. “Who wouldn’t choose to be mad like Enos Enoch instead of sane like Dr. Spielman and me? Besides, there’s another kind of hero that we didn’t mention: the tragic kind.” I was not consoled. To Max he added, “They never got their due in the Cum Laude Project, either, when Eierkopf had us all working on that flunkèd GILES. But if you ask me, the only sane heroes are the tragic heroes.” He nodded his elegant thin head towards the stage, where now a man taller than the others, with a greatly pained expression on his mask, had stepped forth from a central door in the background to approach the seated gathering.
“There’s the best example of all,” Dr. Sear whispered to me; “that’s Taliped Decanus.”
.
Taliped’s my name: the famous Dean of Cadmus College. You’re the
ad hoc
team (department-heads and vice-administrators) whom I named last year as evaluators of our academic posture. Maybe you knew these things already. Notice I’ve come to you in person: that’s because I itch to find out what, if anything, is on your mind, and why you’re camping on the Deanery stoop. You, there: you’re head of the Speech and Forensics Group and closest to retirement; speak without fear or rhetoric: What on Campus brings you here?
“A modern translation,” Max remarked. “I hate it.” But Dr. Sear declared that idiomatic translation of the classics was much in fashion in the College, and that while he agreed that the modernization could go too far, he approved of the general principle. I observed that the line-ends seemed to rhyme, more or less, in pairs.
“Heroic couplets,” Dr. Sear explained. “Nothing modern about
them
.”
“Ah.”
Now an old chap, not unlike Max in appearance, with white beard and wrapper, spoke for the assemblage:
| COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: | Ahem. I am most proud, Dean Taliped and honored colleagues, to have been the head of this, my last committee, whose report and urgent recommendations— |
| TALIPED: | Make it short; I’ve little time: appointments, letters, lunch with six assistant deans, and then a bunch of meetings until five. Get to the facts . |
| COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: | [Aside] Respect for his elders is what this fellow lacks . [ TO TALIPED ] I mean to, Mister Dean. The facts are here in our report: complete, unvarnished, clear— |
| TALIPED: | [Aside] And laced with purple passages, I’ll bet. Of all the speech-professors that I’ve met, here in Cadmus and back where I used to teach, not one could make a clear, unvarnished speech . [to COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN ] No need to read it: summarize what’s in it |
| COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: | [Aside] We waste two weeks; he can’t spare a minute . [ TO TALIPED ] Very well, sir; I’II forego analysis of our problems, and of certain fallacies inherent in some proposals for relief—though it’s quite worth hearing. Also, to be brief, I’ll skip our truly moving peroration and read you these last pages of summation, done in a post-Philippic courtroom style … |
| TALIPED: | Let’s skip that too, okay? I swear that I’ll be just as moved to hear in a word what’s what . |
| COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: | In a word, sir: Cadmus College has gone to pot . |
| TALIPED: | To pot, you say? |
| COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: | Quite utterly to pot . Shall I say more? |
| TALIPED: | I know you will. But not in post-Philippics. Lay it on the line . |
| COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: | [Reads from last page of report] Item: our fruits are dying on the vine— |
| TALIPED: | So’s the Department of Plant Pathology . |
| COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: | Agronomy reports that there will be another field-crop failure—rusts and blight . Item: Dairy Research declares we might lose half our stock to hoof-and-mouth disease … |
I clutched Max’s arm. “That’s terrible!”
“Oh well,” sighed Dr. Sear, “at least the tickets didn’t cost us anything.”
| COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: | That means we’ll lack for beef and milk and cheese . |
| TALIPED: | I know what it means! |
| COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: | It means, sir, that we’ll die of malnutrition soon—or plague, if I correctly read those secret, censored portions of the epidemiologists’ report . Item: abortions, both spontaneous and not, are much more common every term; so too are such once-rare events as murder, arson, cheating, robbery, riot, rape, divorce, wife-beating. Morale is low, inflation high; vice thrives; we’re losing accreditation and our wives. Famine, stillbirth, crime, despair, the pox—fact is, sir, Cadmus College is on the rocks . |
| TALIPED: | What else is new? |
| COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: | Well, sir, to be sure, we understand that, while you’re brilliant, you’re no passèd Founder; that however keen your intellect, after all you’re just a dean—and young besides, in years if not in mind . |
| TALIPED: | [Aside] And thin-skinned, too, this windy fool will find; I’ll break his contract and revoke his pension, I swear it! |
| COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: | Mister Dean, sir — your attention? What we mean, sir, is that inasmuch as you contrived to save us from the clutch of that she-monster at our entrance-gate—who quizzed us with her riddle and then ate us when we flunked—since you alone , I say, by some device were able, on that day nine years ago, to get her off our back, you must have had some influence that we lack with the powers-that-be. I don’t think it was |
| | knowledge (I know more learned men in Cadmus College ) or wisdom, either; simply good connections. Therefore, in the subsequent elections you won the Cadmus deanship and your wife, the old Dean’s widow … |
| TALIPED: | Don’t review my life; I know the story twice as well as you . |
“I didn’t,” Greene whispered into my ear. “I’m glad the old man let us in on it.”
“Shh,”
somebody hissed behind us.
| COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: | [Aside] He tells it twice as well and often, too . [ TO TALIPED ] We hope, sir, you’ll be able to repeat that stunt; to set the College on its feet by some great deanly deed, before we’re dead. That’s what we came to tell you, Taliped . |
| TALIPED: | [Aside] Tell is right—the threat’s thinly veiled! Their point’s quite clear: that, deanwise, I’ve failed, and should resign my post . |
| | [ TO COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN ] |
| | Look here, by Neddy! You tell me nothing I don’t know already . |
“ ‘By Neddy!’ ” Sear exclaimed. “That is a bit far!”
| TALIPED: | In fact, while you’ve been sitting on your thumbs ( and on my steps ), I’ve done things. Look: here comes my brother-in-law, by sheer coincidence, this minute, whom last week I had the sense and foresight to dispatch, as assistant dean, with all expenses paid, to survey the scene first-hand, and then to pay a formal call on the Professor of Prophecy in Founder’s Hall and ask his advice, just to forestall the shout that rascal raises when I leave him out . |
| COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: | [Aside, to committee] Of all the men around, look which he picks as his assistant! Campus politics makes strange bed-partners. Now, of course, we must pretend to be impressed by and to trust this arrant ninny’s judgment—not that he has either sense or perspicacity. Connections, though, he does have, which we worship: [ TO BROTHER-IN-LAW ] Top o’ the morning to Your Brother-in-lawship! |
“Is that a proper rhyme?” I inquired at once of Dr. Sear. He promised to go into the subject with me later, but bid me heed now the important exposition being revealed down on the stage, where Taliped had greeted his brother-in-law’s timely arrival and asked him what the Professor of Prophecy had had to say.
| BROTHER-IN-LAW: | You want it straight? |
| TALIPED: | Why not? |
| BROTHER-IN-LAW: | You want it here? Right now? |
| TALIPED: | There’s no choice. Despite my fear of more bad news, I’ve got my reputation to maintain—the one that Public Information invented for me ( may they all get cancers ): “The Dean who’ll go to any length for Answers.” Flunk the day they dreamed that up! But now I’m stuck with it, I guess. So, tell me how things are, and what the Proph-prof says to do about it . |
| BROTHER-IN-LAW: | Man, have I got news for you . |
| TALIPED: | You’d better have, considering your expenses . |
| BROTHER-IN-LAW: | I won’t repeat the Proph’s own words; their sense is that one man is responsible for all our miseries and travail . |
| TALIPED: | [Aside] |
| | That’s Founder’s Hall, all right: I know their rhetoric . [ TO BROTHER-IN-LAW ] |
| | Go on, sir . |
| BROTHER-IN-LAW: | One man’s doing more harm than the monster ever did to us. The Proph-prof feared we’re done for if that man’s not cashiered . |
| TALIPED: | It’s like those propheteers to pin the blame on some bloke they don’t care for! What’s his name, this poor schlemiel that’s poisoning the place? I’ll sack him if I must . |
| BROTHER-IN-LAW: | His name and face the Proph-prof couldn’t help us with . |
| TALIPED: | Some prophet! I wish the bloody faker would come off it and admit he’s in the dark as much as we are . |
| BROTHER-IN-LAW: | Now that’s no way to talk about the Seer, Taliped. He couldn’t name the dirty dog right out, and yet he made it pretty clear whom we’re to look for and expel from Cadmus College . |
| TALIPED: | Then come on and tell me who I’ve got to fire, man! Whom, I mean . |
| BROTHER-IN-LAW: | The killer of Labdakides, our dean before you took his place nine years ago . |
| TALIPED: | That was my predecessor’s name. Although he published not a word before he perished, Agenora speaks of him—his cherished wife, that I took later for my bride . |
| BROTHER-IN-LAW: | No need to tell me that . |
| TALIPED: | But how he died I never took the trouble to find out . |
| BROTHER-IN-LAW: | I noticed . |
| TALIPED: | Excellent. But if the lout who did the old man in is still around and causing all this trouble, he’ll be found, by golly, and I’ll show the wretch no pity . [ TO COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN ] I here appoint you head of a committee to find the killer of Labdakides . |
| COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: | Thanks a lot . |
| TALIPED: | The rest of you will please continue to function as committee-members . [ TO BROTHER-IN-LAW ] So how’d he die, and when? |
| BROTHER-IN-LAW: | Nine Septembers ago, I think, or ten—no, it was nine—Labdakides—a relative of mine , I might add— |
| TALIPED: | Everybody is, it seems . |
| COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: | [Aside] Not everyone: just deans and wives of deans . |
| BROTHER-IN-LAW: | In any case, the Dean had been invited to head up a symposium; this delighted him: he loved to speak in distant places, eat and drink for free, and see new faces; no matter what the subject or how rough the journey, if the fee was high enough, he’d go . |
| TALIPED: | There’s nothing strange in that; it is among a dean’s responsibilities. He set out by himself, then? Please speak faster . |
| BROTHER-IN-LAW: | Alone he wasn’t. Besides the wagonmaster he took his secretary—quite a peach, she was—his valet, P. R. man, and speech-writer. Five men and the girl, and all but one was killed . |
| TALIPED: | I guess it was the doll who got away? |
| BROTHER-IN-LAW: | I wish she had, old pal; it should have been the girl and not the valet who escaped. The way that kid could walk! |
| TALIPED: | All right, all right; forget her. Did you talk to this one chap, this valet who got away? |
| BROTHER-IN-LAW: | I did. But all the yellow wretch could say for himself was that he wished he’d never been promoted from his old job by the Dean—he’d used to be a shepherd, and he said he wished he’d never valeted instead. I guess he had no stomach for such snobbery … |
| TALIPED: | Flunk his stomach! Was it highway robbery, a crime of passion, or assassination? Why was no subsequent investigation held? This valet himself might be the crook! |
| BROTHER-IN-LAW: | I doubt it: we made it plain we’d throw the book at him for lying, if we caught him at it. He swore to us he knew no more than that it was a gang of toughs who did the deed . |
| TALIPED: | A gang of toughs? What for? |
| BROTHER-IN-LAW: | I wish that we’d had time to ask that question. But before we could, the shepherd bolted through the door and fled to the remotest Cadmus barn. We would have fetched him back, but then the darn monster-business comes along and ties us hand and foot, investigationwise. We put all other matters on the shelf till you came by. You know the rest yourself . |
| TALIPED: | So here we are, hung up again with riddles! The Proph-prof prophesies, the committee fiddles, everybody gripes, and I’m supposed to solve a murder-case that you-all closed nine years ago. That’s great! And not a shred of evidence! The shepherd’s no doubt dead by now, or else he will have clean forgotten what little he saw . [Aside] Founder flunk this rotten image they’ve laid on me: Master Sleuth: The Dean Who’ll Dare Anything for Truth! [ TO COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN AND BROTHER-IN-LAW ] Okay, okay, I’ll see what I can do to get the College off the hook and you birds off my doorstep. It’s not a bit of fun to know that on the campus there’s someone who likes to kill administrators ( not to mention pretty secretaries ). What we need’s a public show of deanly prudence. Also firmness. Summon all the students and professors here at once. By heck, I’ll find out who’s to blame or break my neck! |