John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"I should be a beast of the woods?" he asked skeptically. Inspired by Stoker's earlier sarcasm, I advised him to gratify his appetites directly instead of vicariously: to go to the Powerhouse, debauch himself with Anastasia in the Living Room, or with Madge if My Ladyship happened to be engaged with Harold Bray.

"Eat meat," I said, though my own stomach heaved at the idea no less than his. "Raw meat. You might even try some prepared mustard on Madge."

"You lost your mind," Eierkopf muttered.

Only my Reason, I replied: the flunking Reason that distinguished him from Croaker, and denied that contradictories could both be passèd at the same time, in the same respect.

"Entelechus or no Entelechus," he said, "a man can't diddle except he's got a diddler, not so? You're cracked in the head!"

His objection had the tone of a complaint, as if he wished to be refuted. I stood up confidently. "You're still being logical," I said. "Anastasia will find a way. Want me to help you get your papers together?"

He waved away the offer, declaring glumly that all the dean's assistants could not restore his oölogical masterwork, so hopelessly had Croaker and the four winds scrambled it.

"Come on, then," I urged him. "Leave all this. The campus is your oyster!"

He gagged at the figure, but admitted I'd been right in calling him flunked before, when he'd thought himself passed, and he agreed to consider my strange new counsel. However, after nine months of intense meditation he was too weak to leave the Belfry just that instant. Moreover, he had scores to settle with certain blackbirds who maliciously had fed him angleworms all summer…

"Catch them and eat them!" I suggested remembering the meal once offered me by Croaker. "Bake them in a pie!"

His head shook limply. "I'm a failure, Goat-Boy."

"Failure is Passage," I said, and returned to the lift, hoping to rouse him to action. "Go find Anastasia; bite her in the belly."

But he bared his toothless gums. "Mit was? I'm a broken man, Goat-Boy."

"No, sir," I said firmly, and pushed the Down -button, "You're a chicken."

I feared the lift-guard might detain me, and indeed I found him and his fellows conferring in a worried cluster — but not about my ID-card, which I spied in the sand of an ash-tray near the lift. They appeared more anxious than threatening; I decided that my bluff had worked and might be made use of. Boldly I retrieved and pursed my card and said, "Dr. Eierkopf wants his lunch. Right away."

Neither my effrontery nor the news of Eierkopf's survival moved them much. "No use him eating," one guard said gruffly. "Way things look, we'll all be EATen before long." Alarming rumors, it appeared, were coming from the Light House every few minutes: that WESCAC was out of order; that Classmate X had declared Riot; that Lucky Rexford had taken an overdose of tranquilizers and was in a coma. Who cared whether Eierkopf was alive, or whether unauthorized persons got into the Clockworks? The subject of their conversation was not how to deal with me, but whether to perish at their posts or at home with their families.

"Stay where you are," I advised them. "I'm on my way now to end the Boundary Dispute."

"That settles it," the lift-guard said. "I'm going home." He cursed remarkably when I congratulated him for seeing that, in effect, the dispute was settled already, since it had never properly existed — but neither he nor his steadfaster colleagues prevented my leaving Tower Hall. The sun, far in the south, I guessed halfway towards its meridian, but the sky was overcast now and the Light House gray. A sheep-fleeced band of students picketed the gate, some bearing the wordless placards of Carte-blanchisme, others crossing arms, joining hands, and singing in doleful measure:

E plu- ri -bus u- u-nu-um…

Despite the stunning aptness of that sentiment, there was small spirit in their demonstration. Indeed, the whole scene was listless: Stoker's troopers slouched about, some asleep in their sidecars, some hunkered idly on the curb. Now and then one clubbed a student, but so half-heartedly I couldn't always judge whether their victims fell unconscious or merely "went limp." The few passersby who stopped to watch seemed scarcely more interested than the throngs who ambled past without a glance. Even the hecklers sounded bored: yet when languidly one called, "Hurrah for apathy," two pickets shrugged and wandered off.

My approach was greeted by three or four with pale applause and by the rest with so mild jeers I could scarcely credit that a like crowd had once lynched me. The same lassitude appeared to have infected Stoker, who lounged against the Light-House gate with Rexford's Frumentian aide. I thanked him for waiting.

"Don't flatter yourself," he said. "Ignition trouble."

The aide chuckled lazily, not at all the brisk chap I'd lunched with last time around. "At least you've got fuel in your tank; that's more than the Chief has."

I advised Stoker not to accompany me inside, as I thought it fitter his brother come out to him. He yawned and scratched his armpit.

"Forget it."

"Nobody's allowed in while X is there," the aide explained. No use, I knew, to try Laertides's trick on them. "Unless you happen to know the password," he added with a smile. "Which you don't."

I considered. "Could it be Nothing in excess?"

Stoker frowned. "What kind of talk is that?"

"How about Pass All Fail All?"

The brown man shook his head slightly, not very interested.

"E pluribus unum? Failure is Passage?"

"Those sound like flunkwords to me," Stoker said.

I searched my memory for Maxims. "Veritas vos liberabit? Gnothi seauton? Don't burn your bridges at both ends?"

"Give it up," the aide advised.

A little angrily I said, "I don't think there is any password!"

He shrugged and laid his hand on the gate-latch as a party issued from the Light-House door. "You're probably right. Run along, now."

What happened then is somewhat equivocal. I recognized a number of the exiting visitors as Nikolayan officials from the University Council — all of them, in fact, except one who covered his face with his hat, and whom I therefore took to be Classmate X. At the same time I chose to think that I'd hit upon the right response to the aide (it suited my general Answer, certainly), and that his directive and gesture with the latch were invitations to pass through. It's true he said "Stop" when I entered, and that Stoker drew and clicked his pistol, cursing when it failed to fire. But it was not unlike Stoker to frighten people thus for sport, and I was gating the aide aside somewhat roughly in my haste. In any case no one restrained me, whether because I'd chanced upon the password or because no one finally cared.

Not so Classmate X's colleagues: I saw a number of hands fly into coat-breasts as I slicked up the walk.

"Dr. Chementinski!" I called. "It's George Giles, the Goat-Boy! I have news from Leonid Andreich."

As his face was concealed I could not gauge X's reaction, but he muttered something in cold Nikolayan to his colleagues, and no weapons were drawn, though the hands stayed fast. Cameras clicked about us.

"Mistaken identity," he said to me through his hat. "These names mean nothing." But he did not press on at once. His aides immediately ringed us to keep off the journalism-majors who sought a statement about his interview with Chancellor Rexford.

"I know who you are and why you wanted your son arrested," I said.

"There are no sons in Nikolay College," he replied; "all men are brothers."

"Then you may be interested to hear that your brother Leonid took poison recently — nearly a whole bottle of eradicator."