John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

What happened in fact was that the bald eye of the scanner scanned in vain, the stile moved on, and I was squeezed past the points of the standing teeth, which I cleared so narrowly that one ran into the armhole of my wrapper, another under my amulet-of-Freddie. I was inside then, but caught fast, and twisting to unhook myself managed only to catch my collar on a third tooth. No one could touch me: some laughed, others clapped hands, Peter Greene's voice behind me cried, "By George, He done it, fair and square!" and officials whom I couldn't turn to see fussed about, berating Murphy. Again the scanner dipped to face me; I smiled politely, but had no card to show. The Turnstile clicked and ground on, either to trap the next athlete or to deal with me. Girls squealed; the next row of teeth came through and pressed so hard against my back, I thought I must be sliced like Eblis Eierkopf's hard-boiled eggs. But that foreseam I had started (wrestling with Croaker in George's Gorge) now gave way with a rip from neck to hem, my knit-wool liner with it; the stile jerked on, the thong of my amulet parted, and for the second time those hides as dear to me as my own were sacrificed. Clad now in mine alone I was propelled onto Great Mall and into the arms of two sooty patrolmen who rushed up.

"Get thee hence, Dean o' Flunks!" the voice bid from the loudspeakers. "Let this man be matriculated!"

Not impossibly he referred to Harvey or some other athlete caught outside as I was caught in; I didn't look back, but seized the chance to demand imperiously of the Gatekeepers (so labeled by their armbands), "Take me to the Chancellor!"

At once they fell to disputing whether I should be fetched off to Main Detention as a gate-crasher or ushered into the Assembly Room as a matriculated student. It was agreed I could not be permitted to stand there indecently exposed, but the crowd beyond the gate grew so uproarious, especially when I turned to retrieve my watch (whose neck-chain too had caught on the Turnstile and been snapped), that the gatekeepers abandoned self-control and scuffled with each other. I saw fit to wave through Main Gate to the crowd as I undid my watch-chain, and they responded enthusiastically, whistling and sailing laurel-wreaths over the gate. Miss University stood openmouthed; when I blew her a kiss, she hid her eyes. My wrapper and amulet I regretfully abandoned as too enmeshed to salvage — indeed, they had so jammed the Turnstile that Trials were ended and both side-gates flung open for general admission, either automatically by WESCAC or upon executive order. Too soon off the goat-farm to be abashed by nakedness, I crowned myself with a wreath of laurel, took my watch and stick in hand (alone with the two small batteries, which only now I noticed I still clutched), bowed first to the crowd and then to the grappling Gatekeepers in the dust, and followed a guide-rail rightwards to the nearest door of the Gatehouse. To show my composure as another pair of Stoker's guards approached, I even took a moment to glance at the sun, now fully risen and already eclipse-bitten at its edge. Then I leaned on my stick and once again demanded, before they could speak: "Take me to the Chancellor!"

One growled, "Sure we will."

"No police brutality, Jake," the other cautioned, and said to me more pleasantly as each took an elbow: "We'll all see the Chancellor soon, bud. First we got to get some nice clothes on, don't we?"

"I'm okay," I declared. Following Max's advice I reminded them that I had done the unexampled in passing the Trial-by-Turnstile and was therefore a fully matriculated Candidate — not for any paltry Certification of Proficiency but for bonafide Graduation — who ought to be ushered at once into the Chancellor's presence.

"Sure you are," the first guard said. "Wouldn't surprise me if you was the Grand Tutor Himself. Come along nice, there won't be no brutality."

"Fact is," said the other, more cordially, "everybody comes through the Gate has got to be okayed by the Health Office before he registers. Ain't that so, Jake?"

Jake agreed it was, adding that without Dr. Sear's stamp on the Matric Card (as the ID-card was called after formal admission) not even a Harold Bray could schedule course-work in the College. At mention of that former name I consented to go with them — which was just as well, since in any case they propelled me strongly up the Gatehouse steps into a large room striped with desks and tables. Men and women working over card-files stood to nudge one another and stare as we came in.

"That'll be okay," I was saying. "I know Dr. Sear."

Jake nodded gravely. "Figured you might, son." To the onlookers he cried, "Okay, back to work, folks; this ain't any vaudyville show." And the other guard cleared our way past long tables over which hung signs — LIBERAL ARTS; ENGINEERING; BURSAR; HAVE RECEIPTS READY — to a side-room marked X rays. Hustled in without ceremony, I saw Dr. Sear himself turn angrily from a large machine on whose glass face a singular spectacle glowed: the lower torso of a transparent woman, large as life, her bones and organs darkly visible inside her. What's more, she was alive: before our eyes her phalanges toyed with something not far from her pubic symphysis, and her voice continued a rhythmic murmur for some seconds after our entry, as if she had been singing to herself.

"Get out of here!" Dr. Sear cried, hurrying towards us. "I'm examining a patient, for Founder's sake!"

The guards apologized but pled the unusual nature of the situation — no more able than I to turn their eyes from the startling screen. The hand and voice there quit now; the pelvis turned away, and from a curtained stall behind the machine emerged a woman — middle-aged, untransparent — tying a white-cotton gown about her waist.

"Crashed through the Turnstile," the guard not named Jake was explaining. "Some kind of nut. You better handle him…"

"Just wait outside!" Dr. Sear said crossly. He frowned at my nakedness as he herded them doorwards, and was too discomposed to return my greeting or even acknowledge yet that he knew me. But the woman's eyes unsquinted now, and crowing, "It's the Goat-Boy, Kennard!" she lurched in my direction. I recognized then the puff-eyed brittle face of Hedwig Sear, who had so relished mating me with Anastasia in the Living Room.

"Georgie darling!" But she stumbled into a chair-arm and thence into its seat, her legs immodestly sprawled; something seemed wrong with her balance. We looked on astonished.

"My wife's having an attack, as you see," Dr. Sear said impatiently. "My nurse isn't here today, and she was preparing herself for treatment. For pity's sake leave this chap here and wait outside!"

The guards apologized and withdrew, promising to stand by in case their help should be required. The one's expression was resolutely sober, but Jake grinned and winked as he closed the door.

"Beasts," Dr. Sear muttered. Yet his composure had quite returned. "What on campus are you up to, George? Get him a gown, Hed." Before I could explain my naked presence he pressed upon me an explanation himself, of the extraordinary scene I'd interrupted. A portable X-ray unit was set up in the Gatehouse at registration-time, he declared, to provide free tuberculosis examinations for any who wished them. Ordinarily Anastasia assisted him, but since her services had been commandeered for the morning by Harold Bray Himself, at the Grateway Exit, Hedwig had volunteered to take her place.

As he spoke, Mrs. Sear toyed with herself shamelessly, humming the while.

"Unhappily, my wife is subject to spells of uncontrolled behavior," he went on to say: "She came here this morning in the condition you see, and I was attempting to calm her by radiation-shock when you interrupted. I trust your discretion."