Giles Goat Boy (84 page)

“Come in, please? Oh, it’s you, dear.”

I closed my eyes; her voice had still the querulous resolve in it that had fetched me in kiddish fury once at the fence, and soothed my adolescent stormings in the hemlock. Anastasia greeted her with a cheeriness perhaps exaggerated by the situation, declaring that she had a few daughterly matters to discuss, and that it had anyhow been too long since they’d last chatted.

“Oh. Well. Yes. Well. All this commotion lately …” Lady Creamhair clucked and fussed, not incordially, but as if permanently rattled. She seemed indeed in less possession of her faculties than formerly, and with rue I wondered how much hurt my ignorant assault might have done her. The two women exchanged commonplaces for a while—rather formally it seemed to me, for a mother and daughter, but at least with none of the ill-will that had rejected Anastasia in her childhood. Then presently, with apologies for “bringing up a sore subject,” Anastasia declared that the recent appearance in New Tammany of two claimants to the title of Grand Tutor had revived many people’s curiosity about the old Cum Laude Project and brought up again the unhappy matters of the “Hector scandal” and her illegitimate paternity—

“That’s nobody’s business,” I heard Virginia Hector say firmly. From the sound I guessed that Anastasia went to embrace her then and declared affectionately that indeed it
wasn’t
the business of anyone outside the family; but that she herself, of age now and a married woman, was surely entitled to the whole truth of her begetting.

“You
know
I’ve always loved you, Mother, and you
must
know it doesn’t matter to me what the truth
is
; I just want to get it straight! One person comes along and says Dr. Eierkopf’s my father—”

“Ha,” Miss Hector said scornfully.

“—then another person says it’s Dr. Spielman—”

The import of her “Hmp” at mention of this name I could not assess, though I listened closely.

“And you’ve said different things at different times yourself,” Anastasia went on. “Even that I’m not your daughter …” Her voice grew less steady.

“Oh, now,” Virginia Hector said. Anastasia repeated that her affection for her mother could not be diminished by the facts, whatever they were—at least she began to repeat some such sentiment, but was overtaken midway by tears.

“Now, now, now …” So like was that voice to the one that had gentled my two-score weepings in terms gone by, I could have wept again at sound of it. I yearned to burst in and beg my Lady Creamhair’s pardon; must press my forehead to the frosted door-glass to calm me. Some minutes the ladies wept together. Then there was a snap of purses and blow of noses upon tissues, after which Virginia Hector said: “I have much to be forgiven, dear, Founder knows … No, no, don’t be so kind; you’ve every right to hate me for the way I behaved when you were little. I flunk myself a hundred times over just to remember it, and when I
think
of you married to that beast …”

The thought brought more tears, as well it might, despite Anastasia’s reassurances that none but herself was accountable for her choice of husbands. Happily, Miss Hector seemed unaware of the details of her daughter’s life, before as well as after marriage, understanding only in a general way that it was less than serene and respectable. She was able therefore to recompose herself sooner than she doubtless would have had she known the hard particulars of Anastasia’s history.

“I was
awfully
upset, you know,” she went on presently, referring to the period of her daughter’s infancy. “You can’t
imagine
how it is to know that nobody will ever believe the truth, no matter what. Not even you. Not even now …”

Anastasia vowed she would, if only her mother would produce it; and so, after a number of unconvincèd hums and clucks, Virginia Hector said clearly, almost wryly: “The truth is, I have never in my life … 
gone all the way
with a man. Not once, to this day.”

If I was slower to come to incredulity than Anastasia (whom I heard make an instant noise of dismay), it was not because I misinterpreted the phrase “gone all the way,” but rather because my origin, my experiences, and my knowledge of Anastasia’s past, for example, prevented me from grasping at once that by “never with a man” Miss Hector meant “never with a male of any species.”

“When I learned I was pregnant, I blamed it on Max Spielman,” she went on to say, “because I knew nobody would believe the truth, and I thought Dr. Spielman might love me enough to take the blame and marry me, even though he’d think it was another man’s child. But he didn’t, and that was that.”

How I longed to tell her immediately the truth of Max’s love and honor, so great that it was just her refusal to admit infidelity that had kept him from wedding her! But Anastasia—with a kind of tired incuriosity
now, as if she knew in advance what the reply would be—asked then who
was
her father.

“Your father?” The question appeared to surprise Miss Hector; I tried to recall which word she’d accented, and couldn’t. She announced then, as one might read from a page: “Max never would, and Eblis couldn’t’ve if I’d wanted him to. It was WESCAC.”

To hear this confirmation from the lady’s own lips made me thrill; but Anastasia said disgustedly: “Oh,
Mother!
”

Miss Hector went on undaunted—indeed, unhearing: “Eblis warned me it could happen, and when they fed in the finished GILES he told me I was one of the ones WESCAC had in mind, you might say. I was in love with Max then, and as I said, I’d never
gone all the way
with anyone, though I suppose I would have with Max if he’d wanted to. Wait, let me finish …” Anastasia had made a little rustle of despair. “I’d been Miss NTC and Miss University, you know, just as you were—and, my sakes, weren’t you lovely the day they capped you! Well …”

She herself had been a vain creature, Miss Hector was afraid, as flattered by WESCAC’s election as by the student body’s in terms before; and though she wouldn’t for a
minute
consent to the sort of thing that “Eblis” hinted at, any more than
any
self-respecting girl would have, she’d found herself feeling self-conscious and a little proud whenever she walked past WESCAC’s facility in the laboratories of the Cum Laude Project—as if the computer knew it was she and would have whistled if it could. Then one fateful spring evening she’d stayed late to file some data-papers for Dr. Eierkopf at the laboratory (where she’d worked during a temporary furlough from her Library post), and being the last to leave except for the night security-guards, had crossed the hall from her office to make certain that the door to the computer-room was locked …

“It
was
, just as it should have been,” she said. “And I started to go; but then—maybe I thought I heard something peculiar, a singing-noise or something; maybe not, I don’t know. Anyhow I came back to the door, and for some reason or other I unlocked it and went inside … just to check, I suppose; or maybe some impulse … I was upset about Max’s attitude, I remember …”

Her narrative grew less coherent here, until she’d got herself inside the computer-room and closed the door behind her—for what reason, she didn’t recall or couldn’t articulate, any more than she could explain why she’d not turned the lights on, or why she’d left the doorway and approached the main console, which whirred quietly as always, day and night, and winked on every side its warm gold lights, as if in greeting.

“I thought I’d just sit in the control-chair a minute,” she said; “it was awfully peaceful in there; you’ve no
idea
. I could’ve dozed right off—maybe I did, for a second or two. But then … oh dear, it’s not easy to describe how it was!”

The task indeed was difficult, and though her voice rose with a quiet joy as she spoke, so that every word came clearly through the door (despite an increased noise, like cheering, from the crowd outside), I cannot say I followed precisely her account. She had felt a kind of warmth, it seemed—penetrating, almost electrical—that tingled through every limb and joint and relaxed her utterly, as though all the muscles in her body had melted. This sensation had come on quickly, I gathered, but so subtly that she’d not at first realized it was external, and credited it to her fatigue and the extraordinary comfort of the molded chair. Only when the panel-lights ceased to wink and began instead to pulse together in a golden ring did she associate her sensation with WESCAC; even then she failed to comprehend its significance: her first thought was to move lest the tingling be some accidental radiation. But she did not, or could not, even when the whir changed pitch and timbre, grew croonish, and a scanner swung noiselessly down before her; even when, as best I could make out, the general warmth commenced to focus, until she’d thought her lap must burn.

“It seems gradual when I tell it,” she said, “but it must have been very quick. Because just when I opened my mouth—to call for help, I guess, because I felt
fastened
, even though I guess I wasn’t—anyhow, I just had time to draw one deep breath … and it was over.”

“Over?” Anastasia echoed my own surprise; though she’d heard the story all her life, and assumed it was some unhappy delusion of her mother’s, she’d evidently not heard it till now in such detail.

“It was all over,” her mother repeated. “In no time at all. The scanner went away; the panel-lights and the humming went back to normal; I could move my arms and legs again. I’d have thought I dreamt the whole thing—just as everyone else thinks I did, if they believe I was there at all—but I still felt
tender
from the heat. You know. And when I went to get up I felt some wetness there—all of a sudden, this
wetness
. And as soon as I felt it, and moved, and felt it clear on up, I realized something had
gone all the
way—and it would have to be the GILES.”

Despite her certainty, however—which I was in better position to share than Anastasia—Miss Hector had said nothing of the marvelous incident to anyone, even when the GILES was found missing next morning and Dr. Eierkopf had pressed her closely on her evening’s work. Not until the
fact of her pregnancy was unquestionable—and unconcealable—had she confessed it in a panic to her father, the then Chancellor; and not until he insisted that an abortion be performed at once, lest the scandal bring down his administration, had she realized the extraordinary value of what she carried. She’d told Reginald Hector the truth then, and been denounced as a liar; had persisted and been accused of hysteria; and finally, with the consequences I’d heard of from their victim, had chosen to name Max as the man responsible.

“But it
wasn’t
Max, and it wasn’t Eblis, or any other human person,” she said quietly, when Anastasia voiced a discreet incredulity. “It was WESCAC. And it was the GILES, Founder pass us! Your Grandpa Reg knew it, too, in his heart—why else would he fire Eblis and end the Cum Laude Project? But he’d never admit it—even though the doctor had to dilate the hymen to examine me.”

“He
didn’t!
”

“Indeed he did,” she insisted. “If he hadn’t passed on he’d tell you himself: old Dr. Mayo. It was the baby itself that finally broke it, being born; before that it was just stretched a little—not near enough for a man, you know.”

In response to further questions from Anastasia, she affirmed what I knew already: that the birth had taken place secretly one winter night in Ira Hector’s hospital for unwed co-eds, with Ira himself presiding. And then, to my unspeakable delight, she went on to confirm what Max and I had once imagined (along with many an alternative) long before, out in the barns:

“Your Grandpa Reg was so afraid of the scandal, he didn’t know
what
to do! When I wouldn’t have an abortion, he kept changing his mind, all the time I was pregnant: one day I’d have to give it out for adoption anonymously; the next day we’d have to put it away secretly somehow; then it was no, there’d be
worse
trouble if
that
ever got out: we’d have to keep it and take the consequences, or call it Uncle Ira’s foster-child …” So mercurial was he on the subject, she said, and desperate to avoid exposure of their shame, she came to fear he might take measures to destroy the child without her knowledge …

“Grandpa
Reg?
” Anastasia cried. “I can’t
believe
he’d do such a thing!”

No more could she, Miss Hector replied, until he’d announced a few days after she gave birth his decision to do exactly that.

“I found out then it wasn’t just the scandal,” she explained. “It had to do with his own mother abandoning him and Uncle Ira, and how hard their childhood was; and
my
mother dying when I was born, you know,
and Papa afraid some fellow would
take advantage
of me, like they had his mother …” Anastasia made a sympathetic noise. “He didn’t want my child to go through what
he’d
gone through. Maybe there were other reasons, too.”

In any case she’d pled vainly with him to relent, and scarcely dared let the infant out of her sight lest it be made away with. Then, just before the Cum Laude facility was dismantled at the Chancellor’s order, a message for her had been brought to the New Tammany Lying-In by an unidentified person who said only that it had been read out on one of WESCAC’s printers.

“It was just three words,” Virginia Hector said: “
Replace the GILES!
I thought and thought, and finally I decided that since WESCAC knows everything, it must know how to solve my problem too. So the night Papa came to get the baby I told him he could have it, that I’d changed my mind—but I said he’d have to get rid of it the way I wanted him to.” Having disclosed her plan, she said—but not her motive—and convinced Reginald Hector of its expediency, she’d bundled the baby in the blanket, left the hospital, and entered Tower Hall by the Chancellor’s private door.

“Old Dr. Mayo had passed on during my pregnancy,” she said, “and in the mix-up afterwards I’d had the WESCAC-man at the hospital do the regular Prenatal Aptitude Test on the baby. He thought it hadn’t worked, because all the PAT-card said was
Pass All Fail All;
and I didn’t understand it either, but when Papa and I went into the military-science stacks in the Library—to the part where nobody’s allowed except chancellors and professor-generals?—I took the PAT-card along, in case it meant
something
. I folded it up in the baby’s blanket, so Papa wouldn’t know it was there; then I gave him the baby, and he put it in the Diet-tape lift and pressed the
Belly
-button so that WESCAC would EAT it.”