John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"G. Herrold, pass him!"

Bray clicked sympathetically. "Afraid I never met the chap."

On card number five, in reply to a question Bray had put about Anastasia's relation to the GILES, WESCAC disclaimed any knowledge one way or the other of multiple or serial impregnations of Virginia Hector; but on the sixth it confirmed Dr. Eierkopf's earlier hypothesis that no female sibling, even a twin, could be the GILES, either also or instead; that possibility was precluded by both the Cum Laude program and the fact that twins of different sexes are not genetically identical.

"That's enough," I declared. "Open the Belly."

"One more," Bray said, and handed me a card which WESCAC produced without his pulling the lever. As if he knew its message already (though he'd not apparently read it), he added, "Most important of all, eh?"

The card made three plain statements: that the GILES was a true Grand Tutor in posse; that WESCAC could discern Him upon scanning, and had done so already; that any other person who entered the Belly would be EATen at once. Even as I read this terse pronouncement the small door opened — a round port with a lap-leaved shutter that enlarged octagonally like a camera's. The chamber beyond was entirely dark. To forestall any trickery I snatched Bray's cape — stiffer and slipperier than it looked to be — and declared we would go in together.

"Why not? I should tell you the examining procedure in advance, though, since you're sure I'm about to be EATen." We would be scanned, he said, the instant we stepped through the port, and Electroencephalic Amplification and Transmission should ensue, if it was called for, either immediately or after I'd replied to one preliminary question and three main questions which would appear successively on a small central display-screen. Each was to be answered simply yes or no by pressing either the right or left button respectively of a two-button box suspended over the screen.

"Just a formality, I think," he said. "If you're able to take the Finals at all it's because you're a Grand Tutor already — which means you can't fail them, wouldn't you say?"

For reply I drew him grimly portwards, sure he'd resist at last: but he came to it readily as I. Together we stepped through and slid or tumbled down a short inclined tunnel to land feet-first in a padded chamber. There was an instant snap above and behind us. I started involuntarily, stuck out an arm to keep my balance, and found that the floor and walls of the chamber were lined with a warm, damp, spongy material (humidified and heated, I later learned, to preserve the tapes). Moreover, the room had the feel of an irregular hollow sphere, at least where I stood; it was difficult to maintain balance on its springy floor, which also pulsed and rumbled slightly as though adjacent to great machinery. Was Bray's brain EATen, then, I wondered, or was it only the port and scanners that had snapped? I neither felt nor heard him, and the room was black but for a small horizontal bar glowing some meters away, which I took to be the face of the display-screen. No matter: though I exulted at the recognition that I was unharmed — indeed, relief made me feel strangely at home in that fearful place, as if I were nestled at Mary Appenzeller's flank — I lost no time confirming my rival's fate, but went at once to the lambent bar. No longer than my index finger, and as wide, it floated green and fuzzy as though in mid-chamber — projected there, I assumed, by some optical means. I could only suppose it to be the preliminary question; and surely enough, through the lenses on my stick it resolved into five words:

ARE YOU MALE OR FEMALE

Curious inquiry! Had it not been established already that the GILES could not be female? But as I felt for the answer-button-box I realized that the question was more cunning than superfluous; I pressed the right-hand button. At once a different, longer question shimmered in my glass:

HAVE YOU COMPLETED YOUR ASSIGNMENT

AT ONCE, IN NO TIME

Reluctantly I answered no, thinking that I had after all been at work since dawn, and though my achievement was by no means inconsiderable, I had yet to get certain signatures on my ID-card and determine to what authorities it should be presented. Yet even as I pressed the left-hand button I thought better of it and pressed its mate by way of correction: Founder knew I'd done more than any normal undergraduate human could have hoped to, and what remained was obviously un-doable until I'd passed the Finals, whereof the question itself was part. Trusting that my hasty change of answers had been understood and accepted — since I remained unEATen — I addressed myself to resolving the next item on the screen:

GILES, SON OF WESCAC

At once, and in perfect confidence, I answered yes — - or rather, affirmed what my father was declaring.

DO YOU WISH TO PASS

Triumphantly at this query too I pressed the right-hand button, for though I knew it to be held in certain quads that he who seeks Commencement Gate has perforce not found it, nor can the while he seeks, three instant and simultaneous counter-considerations overbalanced that one: first, it appeared that the Finals were designed for a series of affirmative responses — and aptly, for what could be more affirmative than Commencement? Second (and thus), those same aforementioned esoterics held that he is passed who knows himself passed, and so my yes was in fact a declaration of achievement more than an acknowledgment of desire. Finally, alerted by the curious sense of the preliminary question (whose function, I saw now, was just that alerting), I was not blind to the double meaning of this last one; and comfortable as the Belly oddly was, I did indeed wish to pass now through its exit and calm the anxious student body.

Lo, as if to confirm that third significance, when I pressed yes the bar disappeared, a new rumbling commenced round about, and the floor-walls seemed to pulse in slow waves towards the far end of the chamber. I saw a flicker there, heard a cry of many voices, and understood that the exit-port must be enlarging in the manner of the entry. I scrambled for it on hands and knees, assisted by the undulations; the crowd had seen the portal opening and pressed now nearer with flaming torches, by whose light I saw rise up before me, just inside the exit, the foe I had thought EATen!

Choked with dismay I cried, "Flunk you!"

"And Pass you, sir!" Bray exclaimed, as though joyously. "Pass you to the end of terms! Take these, Grand Tutor of the Western Campus, and go to the head of your class!"

He pressed into my hand what turned out to be my ID-card and Assignment-list.

"You admit you're a fraud!" I challenged him. Outside, the crowd commenced to chant again: "Give us the Goat! All the way with Bray!" Knees to knees now on the floor, facing each other across the exit, we shouldered against the outward-pressing waves. "How come you're not EATen?"

"I'm not a fraud, sir!" he said happily, and even wiped an eye. "Oh, pass you, pass you!" He owed his preservation, he declared, to the fact of WESCAC's having chosen him, some time past, for the work now all but accomplished: the role of proph-prof, foil, and routed antigiles. As John the Bursar had been necessary to declare Enos Enoch's matriculation and administer to him the rites of enrollment, so he Bray had been appointed not only to Certify my passage of the Finals (which he had done, he said, on the documents now in my hand), but to pretend to Grand-Tutorhood himself, in order that I might drive him out at last from Great Mall in proof of my authenticity. "I don't believe you," I said.

"You never did, pass your heart!" He would have embraced me, but I drew back. "You weren't supposed to — until now, of course." He went on: "Every one of my Certifications is false, and by failing all the people I pass, you prove your own passèdness. WESCAC spared me from EATing so that you could turn me over to the crowd — either now or after you've presented your ID-card to Reginald Hector. Then (you don't mind my suggesting this, do you, sir? Your father's suggestion, actually) the Grand-Tutorial thing to do would be to stop the lynching and merely expel me from the College forever." He motioned towards the porthole. "Shall we get on with it?"