John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

HAVE YOU COMPLETED YOUR ASSIGNMENT

AT ONCE, IN NO TIME

Readily I answered Yes, for the triple reasons that I'd fixed Tower Clock in position, that the passage of time was anyhow a flunkèd delusion, and that, Failure being Passage, my non-completion of the Assignment, last time or this, was not ultimately differentiable from its completion. But after a moment's further reflection I pressed the other button to change my answer, for on the loftiest view of all there was no I to complete the Assignment, as distinct from an Assignment to be completed, in the timeless, seamless University — which University itself, et cetera. The same reasoning led me, not without trepidation despite my convictions, to press No at appearance of the epithet GILES SON OF WESCAC; for not only were GILES and WESCAC distinctions as spurious as son and father, but, viewed rightly (if after all through the finally false lenses of student reason), the eugenical specimen whereof I was the issue had been drawn as it were from all studentdom, whose scion therefore I was; WESCAC's role had been merely that of an inseminatory instrument, the tool of the student body. I braced myself to be EATen, and was not.

DO YOU WISH TO PASS, the computer asked finally, and ready for that basic, that ultimate question, with closed eyes and held breath I answered No, and again No, and No No No No No, as though pounding blow by blow into WESCAC's heart the stake of my refutation! The screen blinked out at the first press and snapped sparks at the others; machinery behind the walls convulsed and roared, pitching me now to the floor, now against the tight-shut exit. Bray it must have been I heard groan. Indeed it looked to be the end, for though I felt nothing as yet in the way of brain-piercing rays (which I imagined must be the pain of electroencephalic amplification), there were arcs and sparks at both ports, which now sprang open; a stench as of burning rubber filled the Belly, and its walls constricted to grip me like Bill's strait-waistcoat, only bent double. But before I could give last voice to despair, or commend to the Founder my twice-flunkèd mind, a convulsion of the acrid chamber expelled me thunderously, breech-foremost, through the port, out onto the frozen ground. A second blast put Bray beside me; then the port, instead of snapping shut, hung wide and still, quietly smoking. Co-eds squealed and clutched their escorts. The upheavel was not confined to WESCAC: every streetlight I could see behind Tower Hall was sparking, flashing over-bright and then popping out like a photographic lamp. The Telerama-crews cursed and scurried, issuing free torches to the crowd. Two of their number came forward with microphones as I picked myself up (Bray had landed on his feet), still dazed by the force of my ejection, the confusion of the scene, and the fact that I had once more, evidently, come through unEATen. There were no anthems this time; the crowd was too alarmed to sing.

Of the first reporter to reach us Bray demanded, "What's the trouble?" and was told that the East- and West-Campus Power Lines, according to sketchy reports from the scene, had either touched at some point or been moved to such proximity that an arc had flashed between them, short-circuiting at least temporarily the entire Powerhouse and causing no one knew how much damage to WESCAC and the campus generally.

"I see," Bray said, undisturbed. Light from a mobile generator now fell upon us, and while I endeavored to assess my position — what the net import was of the day's events, and what I ought to do next — he took the man's microphone and called for attention.

"Now hear this, ladies and gentlemen! Now hear this, Tutees and classmates! George Giles the Goat-Boy, by his own admission and intent, has Failed All!" An angry cry came from the crowd, but as they moved to seize me Bray bade them stay and drew me to his side, asking cordially behind his hand to borrow my stick for a brief but necessary ritual. I understood: as I had formerly declared myself passed and he me failed, now that I owned myself flunked he would pass and Certify me to the student body, even dub me Grand Tutor with a rap on the scapula — his Assignment on this campus (as he'd told me in March, when things had gone badly) and the explanation of his survival! To be sure, not all was clear; indeed I was assailed by doubts and questions; but my troubled heart surged like the torched crowd. Granted, it was for me and no one else to decide my condition, nature, and policy, when circumstances should permit reflection; yet whether in failing I had passed or in thus passing failed, official public Certification would do no violence to the paradox and might serve in that parlous hour to pacify the crowd, for whom difficult truths were best expressed in simple mottoes, simple rites. I surrendered my stick.

"Thank you," Bray said. "Please kneel." The crowd hushed; likewise my spirit, strait-waistcoated in contradictions of which, not impossibly, one tap of the stick might free me at last. I knelt.

"This is how it must be," Bray said, and smote me flat. Over me then, as I fought for breath (the blow had struck me full in the back, else my head would have been crushed), he declared through the public loudspeakers: "George Giles the Goat-Boy, cause and embodiment of all our ills: you are hereby denied admission to the student body. No probation; no reinstatement; no clemency. You shall be deported to the goat-barns at once, forever." The crowd shouted approval. Still stunned, I was snatched up. "Tomorrow morning," Bray announced to them, "I go to Founder's Hill to work certain miracles on the occasion of the scheduled Shafting, which you are all invited to witness. Now I shall retire into the Belly of WESCAC to meditate, but presently I shall come forth, ascend to the Belfry, and beget a son." He paused. "The Goat-Boy is yours."

Each of these extraordinary declarations was greeted with astonished hurrahs. At the last of them the crowd set upon me, ignoring my proper sentence, and I saw Bray no more. My jail clothes were torn off, either deliberately or in the general pull and haul. My male equipment, shrinking from the cold, was made rude fun of, and I was pummeled — about the head, in particular, by two short-skirt co-eds whose heavy sweaters bore the initials NTC, as did the megaphones they beat me with. My hair and beard were cruelly pulled by knowledgeable skeptics suspicious of disguise. As in a horrid dream I was fetched round again to the dooryard of the Old Chancellor's Mansion: already a sidecar was drawn up to the familiar streetlamp (now extinguished), from whose top the noose was rigged. Grandfather Hector shouted orders from the porch, gesturing with his crook at the Telerama-crew already established there, while his loyal receptionist (who had contrived to exchange her library-clothes for military uniform) made checks on a clipboard with a series of pencils which she drew from and returned to her hair. Whether the P.-G. was opposing or directing the lynch I could not tell. I wondered why Mother was not in her place. Stoker's guards were rowdy as ever; I saw no sign of their leader, nor any indication that they meant to thwart the mob. The monogrammed co-eds had left off clubbing me in order to lead the procession; reaching the lamp-post they wheeled about smartly, went down on one knee, and with the aid of their megaphones and practiced gestures, set the crowd to chanting, "Get the Goat! Get the Goat!" As I was lifted to the sidecar-top and prodded with my own stick, I even heard, as in the spring, a voice cry "Rape!" and the familiar consternation at the Mansion-corner. With a bitter sigh and no prompting from my captors I thrust my buckhorn into place and put my head in the noose. Why wait to see My Ladyship rogered yet again, en route to her Belfry-tryst, by a once-more-fallen Peter Greene, and hear the EAT-whistle blow, this time no doubt in earnest? An end to my tiresome history, and the University's! Once more I'd been all wrong, in what wise I was too miserable to care. What the heck anyhow!