John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"Why don't I go see Bray in the Grateway Exit?" Mrs. Sear asked him. "He might intercede for George with Rexford. He could even register him himself, I'll bet."

"You want to see Stacey again," Dr. Sear teased. But they obviously enjoyed planning my strategy together.

"And you can hardly wait to see George's insides," she retorted. Then they both laughed and agreed that the idea was a good one. To my objection that Bray was a false Tutor from whom I wanted no assistance even if he wished to provide it (which struck me as unlikely), Dr. Sear answered, "False or not, he's in a strong position and he's awfully acute, and it's part of his stance to affirm people who deny him. Last night at Stoker's I told him that I'd never pass the Finals because I know too much to answer simple questions, and the rascal Certified me with a line from the Founder's Scroll: Be ye nothing ignorant, saith the Founder. Then I told him very frankly that I had no morals at all in sexual matters, and he quoted Enos Enoch: Who knoweth not Truth's backside, how shall he pass? Awfully clever chap!"

As he spoke, Mrs. Sear left by a back door on her errand. "Poor thing," he said after her, "she really is a simple Home-Ec. type at heart, and I suppose she's on her way to the Asylum from living with me. But flunk it all, George, it's a big University! How can we understand anything without trying everything? When Harold Bray compared me last night to Gynander, he understood me better than Hed does after fifteen years of marriage."

To turn the subject from my rival I asked, "Do you mean the blind man in the play?" And he answered, "Very clever, George," with a kind of dry sigh, though I'd meant no irony. He proceeded then to examine and to X ray me, and his interest in the childhood injury to my legs gave me occasion to inquire about the GILES-files, whose bearing on the question of Anastasia's paternity I briefly described.

"Why, that's interesting!" he exclaimed. Indeed (as I'd rather hoped) the little mystery so intrigued him that he gave over his heavy-breathed inspection of my sigmoid colon. "I didn't dream they were still quarreling over that old businessl Even Stacey's never mentioned it."

The fact was, he declared, he could say confidently that neither Max nor Eblis Eierkopf was lying; he would have been glad to verify their innocence from the GILES-flles if only it had occurred to anyone to ask, or to him that the dispute had never been settled.

"All of us who worked under Spielman had half a dozen specialties, you know — he inspired us that way — and I'd already moved on from genetics to psychiatry and anatomy before the Cum Laude scandal broke. I never did have any use for that project; put it out of mind as soon as we'd programmed the GILES, and haven't really thought of it since. GILES indeed!"

His objections to the Cum Laude Project had been theoretical and practical, rather than moral: he'd thought Eierkopf's sampling inherently biased by the fact that androgynous Grand Tutors like Gynander were by definition sterile, and anyhow he doubted WESCAC's ability to manufacture and employ a GILES even when they'd supplied it with the seminal factors called for in the program. He confessed however to having been titillated by the prospect, and had gone so far as to volunteer Hedwig as receiver of the GILES, on condition he be allowed to watch — an offer vetoed by WESCAC.

"In any case I remember the results with Max and Eblis when we collected all the samples, because it seemed to me they proved my point: two utter geniuses, whatever else you might think of them, but Spielman was sterile from his accident, and Eierkopf was so impotent he couldn't even give me a specimen. So if there really was a GILES, as Eblis claims, and if Virginia Hector really received it, as you say she claims, then it didn't work. Much as I love dear Stacey, she's no Grand Tutor. I'll put her straight about Max."

I had it in mind then to ask whether he knew anything of my own discovery in the tapelift. But our conversation was interrupted by the guards outside the door, who called in to ask whether all was well, and should they fetch me to Main Detention or the Infirmary.

Dr. Sear frowned at the door-latch. "Just a moment, please." As we wondered what to do, his wife slipped quietly in from the rear exit.

"Should I go out that way?" I whispered.

Dr, Sear shook his head. "Is Bray with us?" he asked Mrs. Sear. "Don't pound so!" he called to the patrolmen.

Mrs. Sear's expression was doubtful. "Bray says he won't tolerate pretenders…"

"I won't either!" I declared.

"Stacey's doing all she can," Mrs. Sear went on. "But Bray says it's Scrapegoat Grate and WESCAC's Belly or out."

"Oh dear," her husband sighed. But I insisted that those terms, while I did not acknowledge Bray's authority to make them, were no more than my own intention, and that in fact — I meant to demand that Mr. Bray accompany me into the Belly, for I had no faith whatever in his claim to have been there. We should see then who got EATen and who did not.

Dr. Sear shook his head, but had no time to argue.

"Let's have him now, Doc," the guards called, more sternly. "We got assembly-duty."

Then the doctor's face brightened, and he undid the latch. "Certainly, gentlemen." The guards came in, looked first at the fluoroscope screen, then at Mrs. Sear, and only finally at me.

"Mr. George forgives your misunderstanding," Dr. Sear said smoothly, "but it really would be pleasanter all around if you apologized." I was, he declared, no Gate-crasher at all, but the man of the hour, the first in modern history who legitimately had passed the Trial-by-Turnstile!

"Legitimately?" Jake asked.

"Of course legitimately." It was an unhappy symptom of studentdom's malaise, he said, that Heroes were arrested for disturbing the peace; however, he believed I harbored no grudge, and would overlook the insult if they'd take me at once to the Assembly-Before-the-Grate. I listened astonished, but had presence enough of mind to keep a neutral expression.

"He's already sent word to Maurice Stoker that you're not to be punished," Mrs. Sear put in. "If I'd had my way you'd be locked up yourselves, the way you barged in here."

The pair had been looking skeptical, though clearly impressed. But when I assured Mrs. Sear that they'd only been being overzealous in performance of their duties, Jake scowled and nodded, and the other removed his cap.

"Come along," I told them. "I want a seat near the Chancellor."

"The Grand Tutor says He'll meet you at the Grateway Exit after the address," Mrs. Sear said. "Kennard's going there now with your Clean Bill of Health."

"That won't be necessary."

"No bother at all," said Dr. Sear. "I'm very honored to have met a potential Candidate for the Real Thing. Which reminds me — " He took from a nearby desk drawer a small round mirror mounted on a spring-clip. "It's customary to give a little gift on matriculation-day; something to represent what we wish for the new Candidate. Will you take this?"

I thanked him politely and inquired whether I was correct in believing it to be a mirror.

"Yes. May I clip it on your stick? One side's concave and the other convex, but that's neither here nor there." As he clipped the mirror down near the point of my stick, his manner grew serious. "As you know, George, I think that Knowledge of the University, no matter what it costs, is the only Commencement we can hope for. Even if the price is flunking, which it is. When you look at this mirror I hope you'll remember that there's always another way of seeing things: that's the beginning of wisdom."

I thanked him again, quite touched, and sighted down the stick-shaft to try my new token. All I saw, actually, was the magnified reflection of my eye — perhaps because one of Dr. Eierkopf's lenses was loose on its pivot and swung into my line of vision — but I understood the point.