John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

Bray patted his shoulder and bade him think well of my recommendation concerning the P.P.P. directorship, among the virtues of accepting which would be the opportunity to re-employ his former receptionist. Then he turned to me.

"Shall we go down into the Belly, classmate?"

Rank as was his reek, even in my tolerant nostrils, I asked his pardon with as much humility as was compatible with dignity.

"As you know, Dr. Bray," I said, "I used to believe you were a flunkèd impostor. I don't think you're flunkèd any longer."

"But I may yet be an impostor?" he inquired, I think lightly. "No matter. Is it true you no longer regard yourself as a Grand Tutor? You could make a public statement to that effect, you know, and not go through the Belly. I say this purely from concern for your safety; I have no grudge against you."

I believed him. For one thing, he had no further cause to regard me as a rival, either to his office or to Anastasia's favors, which I would not seek. But some lingering pride forbade me to do quite as he suggested. He might not be what he claimed to be, I told him, but he was not simply an impostor, as I'd formerly maintained; there was something more to him, I could not say what. And while it was true that I no longer regarded myself as a Grand Tutor, I was not blind to the possibility that this opinion, like others I'd held, was erroneous, or that in my heart of hearts I might be holding it alongside the conviction that Failure is Passage.

"Ah," he said. "To the Belly, then, by all means!"

I then explained that while I had no fear of WESCAC's EATing me — which it well might do — I would not acknowledge its right to examine me, or anyone else's save my own, for reasons that I'd readily set forth to him, but did not regard as the affair of the popular press. To the chagrin therefore of the reporters (some of whom intimated openly that they would "get even" with me) we made our way to the main lobby of Tower Hall, where, as on that fateful night some terms before, a crowd was collecting in the flickerish light, their anxiety nourished by alarums and rumors. Them too Bray urged to wait at the Belly-exit; he and I then took the special lift to WESCAC's Mouth — a lift guarded now by a squad of ROTC cadets in riot-uniform on account of the general emergency.

"What were you saying?" Bray inquired, utterly composed, and pressed the single, recessed button. We went down the dark shaft. During the descent, and in the red-lit antechamber, I described for him my day's Assignment-work and my present intentions, in a neutral voice, neither asking approval nor inviting argument. I reviewed the conditions of Max, Leonid, Croaker, Stoker, Peter Greene, Ira Hector, Chancellor Rexford, Dr. Eierkopf, Dr. Sear, and Anastasia, my new advice to them and the reasoning behind it, and my confidence that, being all now confirmed in their failings, they were Candidates for Passage.

"I see," said Bray. "Shall we present our credentials now?"

That was another thing, I declared: it was as inconsistent with the Answer to let WESCAC pass upon my credentials as to take my Assignment or the Finals on its terms. My ID-card was blank, virtually, and the faint GEORGE that a careful eye might discern yet upon it would serve, in my estimation, as well to identify Father and Examiner as Self: I was not born George; I was not born anything; I had invented myself as I'd elected my name, and it was to myself I'd present my card (already "properly signed") when I had passed by the Finals.

"Passed them by, you say?"

"I'm going to flunk WESCAC," I said. "Where's the plug? I'll pull it."

Bray very likely smiled as he went to the scanning console among the tape-racks. "Don't be silly, George; there isn't any plug. You'd have to cut the Power Lines, or short-circuit them. But do you really think it's worthwhile to take WESCAC so seriously? It's only a symbol."

This assertion I might have quarreled with: had Mother been impregnated by a symbol? Was it a symbol that had EATen the Amaterasus and G. Herrold, and would in all likelihood soon EAT me, if not the entire University? That incorporated in its circuitry all the dreams and definitions that tricked studentdom into believing in its own existence, and in the reality of its flunkage? Some symbol! But Bray clicked his tongue (and sundry buttons on the console) and forestalled these objections by reminding me that, the lift having automatically reascended, there was no way out of the Mouth except through the Belly, and no way into the Belly, as far as he knew, save by WESCAC's admittance, upon inspection of our credentials. "Why not put your card in the slot?" he suggested. "That doesn't commit you to anything, especially since you've eradicated the signatures. It's as good a way as any to challenge the computer, if you take that so seriously. Mine's already in."

I'd not seen him insert it; no matter; I deliberately jammed my card into the slot, upside down and backwards with reference to its spring-term presentation.

"It seems quite reasonable to me," Bray said, pulling the side-lever, "that the nature of the card doesn't influence the opening of the port, but determines what happens afterwards. If we were Nikolayan agents, for example, I imagine the port would still open, but then we'd be EATen. Don't you agree?"

I was too sobered by the dilation of the iris-shuttered port, like a great black pupil, to reply. I tried to think of My Ladyship, as appropriate to what might be my last moments on campus — but my mind and heart were blank as my ID-card; if Anastasia's image appeared there at all, I regarded it without emotion. Nothing happened. Bray handed me my card, which had been returned into the console-cup in lieu of reply-cards, I presumed, we having made no inquiries. He pointed out as I pursed it that the exit-port was likewise impregnable; I had, alas, no choice but to reply to WESCAC's questions — always assuming I was not EATen before they were posed. Naturally I was free to make deliberately "false" replies, to demonstrate either my contempt for the examiner or my conviction that Failure is Passage; he supposed too I might choose to push no buttons at all. He could not but imagine, however, that in that event I would remain in the Belly forever.

If I felt chagrin at this hitch in my plans, or suspected Bray of tricking me after all into changing them, or wondered how he himself would leave the Belly, if I chose not to — I can't recall it. Neither did I care, as before, whether he came with me or escaped by some secret means, without examination. I stepped through the port and flung myself down the entrance-tube into the warm black chamber, its spongy surfaces athrob. Bray tumbled after and against me at once, identified by his foetor, but we spoke no more. I slicked my way to the little display-screen, already phosphorescent with the inquiry ARE YOU MALE OR FEMALE. They would be, then, the same questions as before. I considered answering Yes, as I had last spring, on the ground that all those previous responses, like their maker, had perforce been wrong, and Failure is Passage. But on second thought I decided to reply more strictly in terms of my new point of view, itself an implicit denial of WESCAC's authority and the presuppositions of its terminology. Therefore I found and pressed the left-hand button — the No, if Bray's earlier instructions were correct, and my memory of them was accurate, and the button-box had not been reversed or otherwise altered in the interim — for what were male and female if not the most invidious of the false polarities into which undergraduate reason was wont to sunder Truth?

I think Bray sighed, or else the chamber-lining squished when I stepped to answer.