John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

Max shook his head, adding that he'd never met Leonid's stepfather.

"Don't say!" the Nikolayan bellowed, grinning hugely, and commenced to flap his arms and pound us all upon the back. Was saving, he declared, for big surprisehood or last resortity, as the case should warrant: his stepfather was no native Nikolayan (Had we thought? Ha ha on us!), but a New Tammany Moishian whose parents had transferred out of Nikolay in the bad old days before Student-Unionism. What his original name was, no one knew except the Department of Intelligence, but as best Leonid could infer, he had worked with automatic computers in their infancy, during Campus Riot II; and subsequently, when New Tammany refused to share its electroencephalic secrets with its colleagues, he had defected to Nikolay College, liquidated his former self, and designed a counter-computer to preserve studentdom's peace of mind from aggressive Informationalism.

Max's face clouded as he listened, and my skin tingled; recalling now Classmate X's curious emotion in the U.C. building at mention of my keeper's name, I realized who he must be.

"Your old friend What's-his-name!" I exclaimed to Max. "The one that helped you EAT the Amaterasus and then defected…"

"Chementinski?" Max frowned and plucked angrily at his beard. "Ach, impossible! Chementinski had no head for politics: a smart scientist, but a silly man."

"Not silly!" Leonid shouted, and plunged to his knees before the bunk where Max lay resting.

"Silly and flunkèd, Leonid," Max insisted quietly. "If he is your stepfather, and he sent you here to take my place, so I could defect like him — pfui, that proves it!"

"Untruthery!" Leonid's protest was more distressèd than indignant. That Classmate X was indeed Max's former colleague seemed beyond dispute: no one else in East Campus had had the practical knowledge required for EASCAC's development, which Leonid knew his stepfather had directed. His later forsaking of mathematical for political science, and his formidable success in that department, was to be explained by the utter eradication of his earlier self (which might indeed have been silly and flunkèd); the successful replacement of his personal, fallible will with the Will of the Student Body, impersonal and infallible. So Leonid explained it, roaring earnestly; that one of his idols should dislike the other clearly anguished him as much as the capital sentence had, and I was surprised at the sternness with which Max refused to soften his opinion.

"What does Chementinski want me for?" he demanded. "He knows I've been out of Tower Hall all these years. I got no secrets any more; he knows that too. Why do you think he told you to get me instead of somebody useful, like Eblis Eierkopf?"

Tears streamed from Leonid's eyes. "Loveship, sir! He loves, like me! Like George! Never mind Eierkopf!"

Max shook his head. "It's not love." More gently then, but uncompromisingly, he declared that the principal difference between himself and Chementinski was that the latter, while professing to love studentdom, had always been more or less repelled by individual students; whereas Max, devoted as he was to individual people, had always regarded studentdom in general as more stupid, brutal, and vulgar than otherwise — or else a meaningless abstraction. The weakness of Max's position, as he readily admitted, was that, since EATing the Amaterasus, he was unable to sacrifice anybody to the Common Good, in which he could no longer believe; thus he was unfit for administration. "But your Chementinski, this Classmate X: he could sacrifice everybody, himself too!"

"Not!" Leonid objected; but I confirmed Max's opinion with Classmate X's own statement to that effect, made to me in the U.C. building.

"How else could he sacrifice you?" Max demanded. "A son he should kill his own self for!"

"Good of the Union! My idea! Make-up test, for past!"

Max put a hand on Leonid's shoulder and once more shook his head. Chementinski, he said sorrowfully, had ever been a most unstable fellow, driven by a succession of ideals in which he'd passionately wished to believe, and never satisfied with the genuineness of his commitment. His whole attitude during the EAT-project, Max remembered, had been a fierce self-justification: It was EAT or be EATen, wasn't it? Better a few thousand Amaterasus in ten minutes than another two years of riot! It was for the sake of peace, freedom, and culture, wasn't it? Not to mention pure science, and the deterrent against future campus riots… The effect of this constant questioning was that he'd talked himself out of his beliefs, come to regret his contribution to WESCAC (as had Max, for other reasons), and decided that only by arming both schools of thought with ultimate weaponry could peace of mind now be preserved. Hence his defection.

"What happened since, I don't know," Max concluded. "But he knew I didn't believe what he did, and it always upset him when I thought he was wrong. If Chementinski thinks we got to EAT the Amaterasus once, he can't stand it anybody smart should disagree; if he defects to East Campus, we all got to defect, so he shouldn't wonder was it flunked or passed. That's why he wants me there, Leonid; he can't convince himself he did right."

"Unselfnessness!" Leonid bawled. "He's most unvainestest there is!" He glared imploringly at me. "Talk once, George!"

"I think Max is right," I said. I told him then what I'd learned from Classmate X himself: that he had deliberately led his stepson to believe that he was not forgiven for the zoo-escapade, and could redeem himself in his stepfather's eyes only by expending himself to capture Max. I expected angry denials — would scarce have dared the information had we not been in separate cells, and was prepared, in self-defense, to force his agreement, if necessary, by reminding him that it would be vain to claim the inspiration himself. But Leonid came to the bars, cheeks wet, and asked merely: "Is it true, Goat-Boy? He didn't hate? Ever since?"

"I swear it. He only pretended. He knew you'd do anything to please him…"

"His own son!" Max snorted. "To prove his selflessness! Ach, that Chementinski!"

But Leonid cried, "Passèdhoodness!" and, indifferent to his gulling, danced a wild step about the cell, so relieved was he that his stepfather had not been angry with him after all. It was some time before Max could declare his conviction that any man who sacrificed his own son thus calculatingly, for whatever cause, was incapable not only of anger but of any emotion whatever, especially love. I might have agreed, with some reservations (for while Classmate X had revealed himself to me as far from cold-blooded with regard to his stepson, the deliberate sacrifice of him in the name of Selflessness seemed to me therefore all the more monstrously vain) — but Leonid was seized at this point with a new violent emotion.

"I love!" he shouted tearfully. "Full of selfity, me!" His problem, from what I could make of his exclamations, was that despite his best efforts he was yet a million versts from the impersonality he aspired to, and of which Classmate X was the faultless exemplar. He loved his stepfather, Max, Anastasia, me — he loved everyone he'd ever met, except a few whom he hated, and thus despaired of ever earning Classmate X's love — which of course it was but further selfishness for him to crave!

"Hopelesshood!" From the pocket of his prison-trousers he suddenly snatched a little bottle, not unlike the container of disappeared ink bestowed on me by Sakhyan's colleagues. But this was full of a realer fluid, some of which he swallowed and began at once to strangle triumphantly upon.

"Hooray! Eradicationness! Goodbye me!"

Max made feeble haste to stay him as soon as we realized what he was doing, but Leonid worked his skill upon the doorlock and deftly slipped out into the aisle, where once again he tipped the bottle to his lips. His face purpled.