John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

I thanked him again most sincerely, quite touched by his generosity despite my reservations about his opinions, and promised to apologize, once I'd verified his impotency-claim with Dr. Sear, for accusing him in the Virginia Hector affair. Then I set my silver watch and begged his leave to go on Croaker's shoulders to the Main-Gate Turnstile. He could not so far oblige me, he begged pardon, as he needed Croaker to adjust the astronomical apparatus and perform sundry other chores before the eclipse. But the Gate was neither distant nor difficult to find, he assured me — a ten-minute trot on Croaker: at most a twenty-minute limp for me; there was ample time to get there before sunrise. He bid me auf wiedersehen and promised he'd watch on his telescreens the Trial-by-Turnstile ceremony; if I should contrive to pass through the Turnstile and Scrapegoat Grate — a feat never before managed outside of legend, and to all appearances physically impossible — my claim to Grand Tutorhood would warrant more systematic and detailed refutation; until then, I had his good wishes but by no means his credence. I smiled and shrugged my shoulders, whereat, almost crossly, Eierkopf said goodbye, turned on his stool, and peered into his night-glass. Croaker led me downstairs to set me on the right road. As the Observatory door opened automatically, Dr. Eierkopf's voice piped from a speaking-tube on the jamb.

"Listen here, Goat-Boy," he said crisply. "A bulletin just comes in that Harold Bray will enter WESCAC's Belly and change its AIM. Can you hear? But he must have something up his sleeve, because Chancellor Rexford has officially recognized him as Grand Tutor to New Tammany College, on the strength of his pledge. The Military Science Department would never allow that if he meant to disarm the EAT-system."

My heart constricted.

"You know what this means, Goat-Boy?" Eierkopf went on. "It means he's automatically in charge of Admissions to Candidacy. He'll oversee the Trial-by-Turnstile this morning. You won't succeed, my friend!"

I put my mouth to the brass tube and replied, "Keep your eyes open, and you'll see." But I felt less confident by half. The air was fresh, the sky moonless now and just lightening, the grass drenched. Croaker pointed out across the dark lawn, grunted something, tapped my stick, and squinted through thumb and forefinger as through a glass. I aimed the stick where he directed and tried several combinations of lenses, but saw nothing. Then I tried another, and darkly before my eye a distant building wobbled, around whose corner a procession of cyclists and pedestrians turned out of sight.

"That way to Main Gate? Behind that building?"

But when I looked from the lens I found Croaker gone and the door shut, both without a sound. Gooseflesh pricked my forearms; I legged off through the dew no comfortabler for knowing that a night-glass surely watched me go. Did another, less hospitable, see me coming?

A motorcycle snorted behind me, and I was hailed: Peter Greene, on our borrowed vehicle, mounted up behind its owner, who throttled down and grinned through his beard at me in the dim light.

"Told you it was a goat-boy!" Greene said triumphantly to him. "And me only one eye!"

"Flunk me for not recognizing an old friend!" Stoker laughed. He offered his hand, which I shook before recalling that I did not consider him a friend. "Pity you left so early the other night," he said easily. "Spoiled the party for Stacey. She sends her love."

"By George, that's a gal, that Stacey!" Greene cried reverently. "I swear if she ain't!"

I walked on. Stoker idled the machine alongside. "Last night was the real party," he said. "Randy-Thursday affair. Could've used your act. Oh, say — " He touched my arm; I drew away. "Too bad about Max. I'll have to prosecute, of course, but it is awkward that my man turned out to be Herman Hermann."

I clenched my teeth at this confirmation of my suspicions. "Max didn't do it."

Greene applauded. "Attaboy!" His manner — and Stoker's too, who seconded his approval of my pronouncement — said that I did admirably to stand by my friend, who however was most certainly guilty as charged.

"No question!" Stoker scoffed. "Herm was my aide, you know — the rascal I sent to catch up with Max the night of your visit." He'd been aware, he said, that the man was an ex-Bonifacist — no doubt others of his staff were also; he didn't know or care about their ID-cards or histories as long as they did their work — but he'd not known it was Herman Hermann himself whom he'd dispatched to "take care of" my advisor, or he'd not have risked so valuable a man. I set my lips. Stoker's declared opinion was that Hermann had overtaken Max along the road and that my advisor had recognized and killed him; whether in a spirit of revenge for the exterminated Moishians or in self-defense remained to be established.

"Could of been an argument and then a scuffle," Greene offered. "Seen it happen a dozen times, fellows get to squabbling." His tone, I noted, was deprecatory and pacific: obviously he was on cordial terms with Stoker and wished to mollify my hostility.

"Max would never fight," I said. "Not even to defend himself. I know."

Stoker chuckled. "Oh, you know, do you?" He pointed out then in an amiably serious way that he too was surprised at Max's breach of his avowed principles, though he'd assumed all along that the Moishians were as capable of flunkèdness as any other group in studentdom, given the opportunity. "But really, George, you mustn't believe I'm behind this — as I understand you told Sear and the chap at the sub-station desk." Max, he reminded me, had turned himself in after the news bulletin, and freely confessed to shooting Hermann. " 'Overcome by vengefulness,' he said he was, as soon as he realized who the man was. Most normal human thing he ever did, I told him myself! Now, of course, he's gone Moishian again — says he wants to pay his debt to studentdom, all that rot."

"They'll never convict him," Greene said stoutly. "Begging Mr. Stoker's pardon, the man's a hero if you ask me."

Stoker grinned. I vowed I would believe nothing except from Max's own lips. But the story of his surrender and confession did not strike me as being so fantastic as I could have wished; it squared uncomfortingly with his late remarks about the Bonifacists being outside the pale of charity, and about implacable, irrational varieties of flunkèdness which must be neither accommodated to nor forgiven.

"Let's run over to Main Detention and see him now," Stoker proposed.

Greene reminded him that it was getting on to Trial-by-Turnstile time; we must all make haste if he and I were not to be late for Registration and Stoker for his ceremonial role of Dean o' Flunks.

"I'll drop you off," Stoker answered him pleasantly. "But I'm sure George is more concerned with his keeper's trouble than with his own little ambitions. Especially now the Grand-Tutor thing's all settled."

The taunt stung me to reply, more heatedly than I intended, that nothing was settled by the theatrical advent of the person called Harold Bray, who, whatever his spurious official backing, was a patent fraud, as I meant to prove in due course. And I added that eager as I was to confer with Max — both on the matter of his arrest and on certain other subjects — I had his own word for it that it was imperative for me to matriculate on time. I checked my watch: Tower Clock should chime five-thirty any moment. Hobbling faster I declared my suspicion that our encounter was in fact probably not coincidental, but part of a scheme to prevent or delay my registration, and I warned Stoker not to attempt to stay me, as I did not share Max's commitment to non-violence.

"You needn't tell me!" Stoker laughed. "I've heard what you can do with that stock of yours when somebody gets in your way!" Then, as if to atone for that unhappy allusion (how he'd heard of Redfearn's Tommy's death I couldn't imagine) and at the same time to give proof of his goodwill, he bade me climb up behind Peter Greene and be transported post-haste to Main Gate. Full of suspicion, I nonetheless agreed, choosing the possibility of kidnaping over the certainty of being late if I continued on foot to a place I'd yet to locate. I straddled the rear fender and we sped off, Stoker explaining at the top of his lungs that the vehicle we rode was the same we'd found ditched the day before, and was in fact the one Herman Hermann had set out upon from the Powerhouse. He had already thanked Greene for salvaging it, he said, and now he thanked me also. I was not to worry about discarding the sidecar, removing evidence from the scene of a capital crime, and using a vehicle without license or authorization, all which misdemeanors he could charge me with if he chose to, along with imposture; he was pleased enough to have the motorcycle back, especially as it was now unmistakably linked with Max's movements just after the murder. Already he had given Greene certain modest tokens of his gratitude, which it was his desire I should share.