John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"But that's lunacy, of course," he finished dryly. "I'll do nothing of the sort. If she and X won't debate these things with me, reasonably and openly — that's that. I'll sit here and wait for the EAT-whistle."

"Assuming there's power enough to blow it," I reminded him. "And somebody worried enough to pull the cord."

He laughed a little sheepishly. "There's plenty of power. The trick is to get it to Great Mall without dealing with Stoker. Nothing to lose our heads about, I suppose…"

"But it is!" I asserted. "All these things are, sir! Stoker is your brother! And I'm no Grand Tutor! I was completely wrong before!"

The Chancellor frowned and glanced towards the door. "Calm down, now…"

"No! That's just what you shouldn't do!" I strode about the office, gesturing with my stick. "There isn't really any boundary between East and West Campuses: all students are classmates! This nonsense about Informationalism and Student-Unionism — "

"Look here, now, Mr. Giles; I insist you calm yourself." Rexford fiddled nervously with a combination paperweight-flashlight on his desk, clicking the switch on and off. It didn't light. "Maybe from the Founder's viewpoint the Power Line is artificial and unreal, but we're not the Founder. Remarks like those may be harmless in the classroom, but out on the campus things aren't so simple."

"Exactly!" I agreed. "That's why it was a mistake to be absolutely reasonable, and the rest."

"I admit it's not easy. All the same-"

"That's the Answer!" I cried. "East and West, temperate and intemperate — - they're all the same!"

"Mr. Giles," the Chancellor protested, consulting his wrist-watch. "I'm the chief executive of a busy college, and much as I'd like to reason these things out with you — "

"There isn't time!" I finished for him. "And besides, you don't feel like being reasonable! That's splendid!"

He saw nothing very splendid about it, Rexford declared; but as he did not after all order me out, I explained to him briefly what I took to be the essence of my former error, and how I'd come to understand that East and West Campuses, goat and Grand Tutor, even Passage and Failure, were inseparable and ultimately indistinguishable.

"You talk like The Living Sakhyan," the Chancellor scoffed. "Be reasonable now: what do you propose?"

My first proposal, I told him, was to cease being reasonable — as if there were a floodlit Boundary between Reason and Unreason! Did his stubborn insistence upon reason at any price not prove the fallacy of such distinctions?

"So we should surrender to the Nikolayans?"

"Not surrender," I said, "embrace."

"Nonsense."

"Right!" I cried again. "Embrace nonsense! Be moderate when you feel like it! Don't always be reasonable with your wife! Make the guards look down so they can see what thin air they're standing on, just like Entelechus! Go hug your brother!"

"Hug my brother!" Rexford blushed hotly — but not, I thought, in anger.

"You know as well as I do that he is your brother. Go have a drink with him! And next time you see Anastasia — "

"He's not actually my brother," the Chancellor put in hastily. "Some kind of half-brother or foster-brother, I think…"

"What's the difference? Embrace him!" It occurred to me that the difference, in Rexford's mind, might be between adultery with a blood-brother's wife and adultery with an adopted brother's wife, and so I didn't press the indistinction further. Nor did I itemize the ways in which I'd have him repudiate my former Tutelage and assert its contrary. He was, I saw, strongly tempted by Stoker's presence just outside the gate, and by despair, which flooded in on him almost visibly once I'd got through his equilibrium. Therefore I contented myself with advising that the "Open Book" be shut forthwith, and that an amnesty be declared for everyone detained under its reforms.

It was the Chancellor now who strode about, shaking his head. "This is crazy!" He stopped and grinned; the famous forelock fell. "I know: it's supposed to be crazy. All the same — " He laughed aloud at this additional irony, throwing back his head and flashing his fine teeth. "Wouldn't that make them sit up, though, if I went out there and called Maury Brother! Or told X to bring his Line as close as he wants!"

Unsettled by the tempting outrageousness of that idea, he flung open the curtains of a double glass door leading from the office onto a terrace, and squinted and chuckled in the glare. Beyond the low wall of the terrace was the driveway-gate where Stoker lingered with some of his sooty crew and a few reporters.

"One thing at a time," I cautioned. He caught me up brightly: who was being the prudent one now? But delighted as I was by his respiriting, I felt obliged to warn him that there were photographers about.

His blue eyes twinkled. "What difference does that make? Anyway their pictures haven't been turning out lately. No flashgun batteries." But he grew grave for just a moment at the terrace door. "You say you're not the Grand Tutor, George; but I understand you really are the GILES." I shrugged. "That's what WESCAC says." He smiled again. "I'm not as crazy as you might wish. But I take you seriously, and I think I see your point: it's worth risking some kind of long-shot to change my luck and brighten up my image a little. It had better not fail, though." Before one could say "Failure is Passage" he stepped outside, topcoatless in the winter air, and vaulted lightly over the terrace wall. I saw the reporters rap one another's arms as he strode up, brisk as a sophomore track man, and Stoker scowl at the wrought-iron gate. Aides burst into the office, looked about in wonder, and thrust past me without a word. Then, shedding their topcoats and rumpling their hair, they vaulted after him. What the Chancellor said I couldn't hear from the terrace, but he grabbed Stoker's hand through the gate and pumped it vigorously. Once only he seemed to wince, then flashbulbs popped after all — the Powerhouse-Director had no doubt been horsetrading — then he grinned his grin, flung open the gate, and clapped an arm about Stoker's leathern shoulder. Reporters and cameramen tumbled and called; microphones appeared; Stoker glowered and shook his fist at a Telerama-boom. But Lucky Rexford laughed, would not un-hug him, and saying something into the microphones, pointed first to Stoker's black forelock and then to his own sand-white one. His hand was sooty.

More than content, I went back into the entrance-hall; rather than disturb the reunion I would walk the few kilometers to the Infirmary, where I hoped to find Dr. Sear and perhaps Anastasia as well. There was a bustle on the wide central staircase: Mrs. Rexford, crisp and elegant, came down with a gaggle of scribbling ladies and a phalanx of suitcase-bearing young men. Coolly she moved in their van, a slim-legged, doe-eyed, soft-mouthed beauty, with the high-strung grace of careful breeding — truly a Hedda among lady girls (though deficient of udder). She regarded me and my detention-suit with brief disdain while one of her female companions informed her that her husband was at the front gate, and that the press wanted to photograph them together before she left on her vacation-trip. She glanced somewhat petulantly towards a fellow in her retinue, who, though dressed like a chancellor's aide, had not gone with the others; I thought I saw him nod.

"All right," she said, daintily vexed. I considered warning her of Mr. Rexford's changed attitude — but her cool and powdered elegance I found not approachable. I felt ungroomed, less washed even than I was, a stinkish bill-buck: and though a moment later I put by that feeling with some annoy, I let her go uncautioned, a-whisper in the gray-suit fellow's ear, and left the Light House by a different path. Crossing Great Mall I heard lady-shrieks and other commotion behind me, and was tempted to run with the others to the Light-House gate, to see what was happening. But already my faint shadow fell east of north; the hour was later than I'd supposed, and work remained to do.