John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"As I think I said earlier, I don't have any brothers myself. But it was a competition I meant — sibling rivalry, if you like!" He smiled. Admiration for his reasonableness filled the room. "If we're all brothers, then we're all rivals, aren't we? And so surrender would mean submission, obviously. I don't think we New Tammanians are the submissive type."

His words were of course applauded, but I pressed on despite the antagonism I felt in the hall.

"What's wrong with submitting to your brother?"

He stayed with a little gesture the guards who approached me, and joked that to heckle administrators was an honorable sport in a democratic college. Then briskly he declared, in response to my question, that I was carrying the analogy too far. "Submission — to some kinds of brothers, if not all — means annihilation, at least in the Boundary Dispute; and annihilation isn't my idea of University Brotherhood. You're the fellow who brought Mr. Croaker back to Dr. Eierkopf, aren't you? A thing we're all grateful to you for, by the way. Well then, you've seen the famous relationship between them. Would it be brotherly of Dr. Eierkopf to let Croaker eat him up?"

The point was merrily applauded: Croaker and Eierkopf were proverbial figures on the campus. "Seriously," Rexford went on, "I'm quite aware that Enos Enoch teaches us to love our opponent and give him our gown if he snatches our cap. But Enochist submission assumes a Commencing hereafter — otherwise it would just be suicide, which the Enochists say is flunking!" He happened to be an Enochist himself, he said, though perhaps not in perfect standing, and so he subscribed, as a personal principle, to the teachings of the New Syllabus. But he could not in good conscience impose his private conviction on the whole College; he had no intention of embracing an alleged Brother whose declared intent was to destroy him.

It occurred to me to ask him then whether the case was that one struggled to control one's brother because he was dedicated to one's destruction, or that he was thus dedicated because one struggled to control him; my own wrestle with Croaker in George's Gorge seemed in some way pertinent to the question. But the Chancellor had had enough of interrogation; an aide whispered to him, he nodded assent, someone called as if on signal, "Thank you, Mr. Chancellor," and amid general applause he yielded the rostrum with a grin to the man who'd first introduced him.

"We'll turn the meeting over to WESCAC now," this man said. "As I understand the new procedure, all regular matriculees will go on with their scheduling, and Candidates for Graduation — if there are any! — will proceed to the Grateway Exit to be congratulated by Chancellor Rexford and get their Assignment from the Grand Tutor."

He nodded then to someone in a balcony behind us; there was a sharp click and a whine which I'd come to recognize as of loudspeakers warming. A mechanically inflected voice, more neutral than Bray's, said crisply: "Hear this: all holders of ID-cards please exit through the side doors and enroll in the regular curricula. No one with an ID-card is a Candidate for Graduation."

I thrilled. There was general amusement and much headshaking. "I swan!" cried Peter Greene. "Can't matriculate without and can't Graduate with!" Among the forelocked fellows near the rostrum the consternation appeared more grave. As WESCAC repeated its announcement I thought I heard one say, "Don't tell me the flunking thing's not haywire…" but that idea was so surprising I could not be sure I'd heard correctly. At the exit behind them, which I took to be the Grateway, Lucius Rexford was deep in conference with other aides, who, it seemed to me, glanced pensively from time to time in my direction. All except myself moved a-murmur towards the side doors. Then every light in the Assembly-hall suddenly went out.

"Durn them Student-Unionists!" I heard Greene exclaim. "Chess-game my foot!" Others soberly agreed that the power-failure might be due to another Nikolayan provocation at the East-West border; my own first thought, recalling the Furnace Room, was that the whole Power Plant had finally exploded. But a ringing laugh from the back of the hall — which I recognized as Stoker's — changed some people's minds.

"That's going too far!" I heard one say.

"He's getting even for that speech."

I had been ready to go onstage to the Grateway when the lights went out; now I could see nothing. But a host of little clickings all about the hall reminded me that my pocket-torch was not empty. I pressed its switch, and a beam of light aimed past the rostrum. Someone enviously said, "Lucky!" Stoker laughed again. I climbed onstage, went directly to where the Chancellor waited with his party, and offered my hand to be shaken. Guards seized me.

"He's okay," an aide said.

"The flunk he is," said another.

"Spielman's kid, isn't it?"

"So?"

They spoke virtually at once: things were balled up altogether; the newspapers mustn't get wind of it, or there'd be the Dunce to pay; first Bray, then Spielman, then the Turnstile mess, now this; what the flunk next?

"Tell Bray to make a statement," Rexford ordered. " No panic, everything's in order, that sort of thing. Somebody find out if my flunking brother has anything to do with this. Let's get back to the Chancellory."

"Take that guy's light," someone told someone else.

I clicked it off before anyone could take it. "Beg pardon, Mr. Chancellor — "

"Turn it on!" Rexford said sharply.

I did so, bidding him please not to take it, as I needed it to get through Scrapegoat Grate.

"See here," said the youthful Chancellor, coming close to the light. He put his hand straightforwardly on my shoulder. "Are you working for the Nikolayans? Or for Maurice Stoker?"

"He is your brother, then?"

"Never mind! This is a college crisis."

I swore by the Founder I was working for no one but studentdom and had no intention save the Grand-Tutorial one of passing the Finals and discovering the way to Commencement Gate, for myself and my classmates.

"Another nut," somebody said.

But the Chancellor himself, after turning my light-beam on me for a moment, said, "He might be okay." He asked what name I went by, where I'd got the batteries from, and how I happened not to have an ID-card. As I answered, briefly and frankly, the lights came on again, just enough to see by.

"Now listen carefully, George," said the Chancellor, his manner friendly but concerned: "We're not sure what's going on with WESCAC lately — maybe nothing to worry about, maybe something serious. But we don't want anyone to start blowing the EAT-whistle about it, you understand? I want you to cooperate with us, for the good of the College."

No need to tell him that my loyalty lay not with any college but with general studentdom. Clearly accustomed to making important decisions in a hurry, he declared his confidence in me and told me some surprising things in an even tone: The Power Line controversy was more critical than was generally supposed, and West Campus's position in the border negotiations was weakened by recent odd behavior on WESCAC's part. Whether Bray was in fact a Grand Tutor, Rexford said he had no idea, though all the rational-skeptic in him resisted such a notion. But for some time past WESCAC had in truth been reading out equivocal predictions of some such happening as Bray's advent in the Amphitheater; and the computer's affirmation of Bray's descent into its Belly was an indisputable fact. Happily, the man seemed eager to assist the Administration. He'd already Certified Rexford himself, and alarming as was his connection with Stoker, for example, he apparently had none but benevolent motives. It had been decided in the interest of NTC to acknowledge him officially (that is, to acknowledge WESCAC's acknowledgment of him) and give him Cabinet status; some professor-generals worried that WESCAC's AIM might no longer be protecting its Belly from intruders as formerly — but who wanted to test it? — while others feared Bray might "pull some pacifist trick," Grand Tutor or not. Most, though, had been reassured by his pledge to render unto Remus that which was Remus's, and unto the Founder etc.