John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"But what about sacrificing other people?" I demanded. "Suppose you decide that the College Self calls for an EATing-riot?"

Classmate X cocked his head a very little. "If every living student in the University had to be EATen in the name of studentdom," he said politely, "still the will of the Union would be done."

I protested that he couldn't possibly be serious, yet was chilled to realize that he was. "Would you push the EAT-button yourself?"

We were at the entrance to a crowded reception-chamber; many heads turned at our approach. Classmate X covered his face with his hat when photographic lamps began flashing.

"To be the agent of the general will," he asserted through the felt, "is an honor exceeded only by being its instrument. If the will of the Union is that the button be pressed, then the one thing better than being the presser is to be the button." He made a scarcely perceptible bow, presumably by way of taking leave of me, and entered the room. But I pressed after.

"That's just plain vanity!" I protested. Several large Nikolayans moved towards me when I raised my voice, but I went on. "It's as bad as Max saying he wants to be Shafted in the name of studentdom! You're not really selfless at all!"

"Max is a fool!" Classmate X said sharply — his first betrayal of any emotion. But though my taunt evidently angered him, he motioned aside the aides who scowled between us and said in a small, hard voice — still covering his face: "One's original family was murdered by the Bonifacists, except for a single son, who fled with oneself to be killed in action later in the Riot. One's second wife died this year. And so Leonid Andreich is one's sole surviving relative…" Only when he mentioned Leonid's name did I understand that by "one" he referred to himself. "One is not displeased with such a relative," he went on; "not at all displeased! One feels one could do a great deal worse indeed than to have such a son as Leonid Andreich…" He actually tapped my arm, an unprecedented display of feeling. "And yet, Classmate Goat-Boy, and yet" — his eyes shone briefly over the brim of his hat — "because it is the wish of the Student Union that a certain party be admitted to its ranks, let us say, from the Other Side, and because no one is more suited to the work of escorting this party to us than Leonid Andreich… Because of these things, Goat-Boy, and despite the likelihood that the escort will never be permitted by the Other Side to return to his alma mater and his father's house, one suggests to Leonid Andreich that he expend himself in that sacrificial work. Do you understand my meaning? One even orders him to do so, giving him to believe that so unresponsive has he proved to the discipline of selflessness, he can earn his father's esteem in no other wise. Posthumously, you might as well say! As if — " But he whipped around in mid-blurt, choking off the clause.

"As if he had to earn it!" I cried after him. "I think you love your stepson very much!" Classmate X strode away — plunged, really, still hatting his visage — and hands restrained me from following, but I called at his retreating back: "I'll bet you sent him to New Tammany so he wouldn't have to suppress his self!"

What held him in range of my mad declarations — taunts they were, as much as insights, made in despair now of ending the Boundary Dispute by reasoning with the principals — was that an agitated group not unlike ours had come across the room to meet us, at its center Chancellor Rexford. Classmate X's pate had gone quite white; Rexford's face was uncharacteristically grim. Photographic lights flashed all about us now; plainclothes guards and other officials on both sides conferred in furious whispers, pointed to me, consulted papers, shrugged their shoulders angrily. We were a large ring now, enclosing Chancellor Rexford and Classmate X, myself to one side. Neither leader seemed willing to initiate the ceremonial handshake; both turned severely to their aides. Still inspired by desperation, I asserted to Classmate X, "That kidnap-story was only a pretext; you were hoping Leonid would transfer !"

After a silent moment (during which cameramen and microphoned reporters edged into my end of the circle) everyone began shouting at the same time, and the ring became a little mob that pressed the three of us together. Chancellor Rexford, flushing red, made some expostulation in which I caught the phrases "privileged visitor," "special credentials," and "no harm done"; his tone seemed at first pacificatory, but changed when Classmate X waved his fist and shouted that there would be no Symposium; that the space between the Power Lines would be widened, the guard increased, and all communication between East and West Campuses terminated absolutely.

"You can't mean that!" Rexford said angrily, and demanded of an aide, "Can he speak for his college this way? What's the matter with him?"

I offered an explanation which both or neither of the parties may have heard: "He's identifying the College Self with his own self, instead of vice-versa. It's a flunking thing to do, by his own standards…"

"Shut that shaggy idiot up!" someone cried, and with a chorus of abuse I was hustled from the principals, who too had separated, or been separated by their respective aides. There was much excited talk of "insults," "loss of face," "torpedoed negotiations." Having got me out of reach of their leaders, no one knew what to do with me, for though their distress and indignation were evident, they had gathered I enjoyed some special status in the Chancellor's party.

"Founder help you if you're the one who upset X," snarled a forelocked fellow. "You've shot down the whole flunking Boundary Conference!"

Until that moment, distracted by my sympathy for Leonid Alexandrov and the ideological exchanges with him and his stepfather, I hadn't realized the significance of my achievement.

"By George, you're right!" I exclaimed. "I guess I've ended the Boundary Dispute!"

The aide conjectured disagreeably that it might prove the end of the University as well. Now the Chancellor's party came by, still waving hands and frantically conferring; only Lucius Rexford himself was silent, his face somewhat gray and his jaw set: the speech he was to have delivered had been canceled, the Summit Symposium indefinitely postponed, the entire business of the University Council suspended for the day. At sight of me he stopped, seemed to hesitate between denouncing me and going on his way, and at last said tersely: "New Tammany looked pretty foolish just then. It's lucky this mess looks like their doing and not ours — or yours."

"No, no, sir," I protested; "that's the only thing wrong with it. You've got to take back the initiative! This justifies all those other measures I suggested." Rexford moved on towards the entrance-lobby, walking swiftly, and I trotted as best I could beside him; his aides neither disguised their hostility nor dared restrain me.

"Do the same thing with Maurice Stoker that you did here!" I urged him. "Go the whole way, sir!"

He made no reply. I didn't venture to enter the sidecar with him uninvited — and in fact an aide sprang into the second seat, as if to forestall me — but before the door closed I called encouragement from the curb: "Light up everything! Make New Tammany an open book!" His motorcycle went off then (down the middle of the pavement, I was pleased to observe), and his party dispersed, still buzzing gravely, among the other official vehicles. As no one invited my company on the one hand, or on the other denied me the privilege of returning to Great Mall as I'd come, I found a seat alone in the last sidecar of the motorcade, and modestly dissembling my elation at having accomplished two formidable Assignment-tasks in just a few hours, I instructed my driver (an unnecessarily sarcastic fellow) to deliver me to the NTC General Infirmary.