John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"Adultery is flunkèd," I declared into her. "Also the deception of spouses." She whispered, "A-plus." "Hypocrisy, too," I said. "And yet — there's a riddle here somewhere, Anastasia; something fundamental. It's as if the Answer were right under my nose! And yet I don't quite have it…"

So cramped were our quarters, she could but murmur acknowledgment. Yet respond she did to my impassioned ruminations, vouchsafing me in wordless tongue a foretaste of ultimate Solution.

We reached bottom.

"This is just the Mouth," I said when the lift-door and my eyes opened on the familiar ruby glow. Able now to move her head, Anastasia tensed at my words and declared: "Then this is the end, I guess. But I don't mind being EATen, George…" Indeed, she slipped out before I could and gave me her hand, saying, "I love You."

Again those words! I swung my legs out of the tapelift and thoughtfully rubbed my chin. Bray was gone before me, I perceived, leaving only the faintest trace of himself behind: perhaps he lurked in the Belly proper; on the other hand he may have gone on towards Founder's Hill. No matter. All that counted was that final shadow, which, like My Ladyship's mighty night-fleck in the Gorge, appeared no larger than a man's hand, and yet enveloped the University. I, beloved! I frowned and squinted, blinked like Peter Greene. Anastasia's face was all entreaty; and yet, having said, "I love You," she would say no more: she waited with eyes closed and hand extended.

"Assert yourself, Anastasia," I ordered huskily, to test her.

In a very positive small voice she answered: "No."

I stepped to her, stirred to the marrow, and kissed her lips. Like Truth's last veils our wrappers rose: her eyes opened; I closed mine, and saw the Answer.

"Pass you!" I whispered. She nodded.

Supporting her under the buttocks with my stick, I lifted her upon me; she twined me round.

"In the purse," I said. "Bray's mask. For the scanner."

From the bag strung about my neck she withdrew and donned the mask. Then I bade her empty the purse itself of its sundry contents, invert it over my head, and draw the strings. At my direction she directed me to the entry-port.

"Wait," I said. "Do you see a control-panel nearby? Some sort of console?"

"Yes. There's a row of black buttons on it and a place marked Input. But the only jack I see says Output ."

"Put it in," I instructed. She did, and pulled the lever beside the console. There were hums and snaps. At once the port opened, and in I went. The scanner clicked: as one, we tumbled past it and slid deep into the Belly.

"Wonderful!" I cried. For though the place was lightless, and my head pursed, in Anastasia I discovered the University whole and clear. Mother of my soul, its pulse throbbed all around us; my Father's eye it was glowed near, whose loving inquiry I perceived through My Ladyship.

"It says ARE YOU MALE OR FEMALE," she whispered. We rose up joined, found the box, and joyously pushed the buttons, both together, holding them fast as we held each other.

"HAVE YOU COMPLETED YOUR ASSIGNMENT

AT ONCE, IN NO TIME"

Was it Anastasia's voice? Mother's? Mine? In the sweet place that contained me there was no East, no West, but an entire, single, seamless campus: Turnstile, Scrapegoat Grate, the Mall, the barns, the awful fires of the Powerhouse, the balmy heights of Founder's Hill — I saw them all; rank jungles of Frumentius, Nikolay's cold fastness, teeming T'ang — all one, and one with me. Here lay with there, tick clipped took, all serviced nothing; I and My Ladyship, all, were one.

"GILES, SON OF WESCAC"

Milk of studentdom; nipple inexhaustible! I was the Founder; I was WESCAC; I was not. I hung on those twin buttons; I fed myself myself.

"DO YOU WISH TO PASS"

I the passer, she the passage, we passEd together, and together cried, "Oh, wonderful!" Yes and No. In the darkness, blinding light! The end of the University! Commencement Day!

How long we lay embraced none can tell: no bells toll where we were. After the shock, the Belly was still as we: asleep, passed away. In no time at all we lay there forever.

"A-plus."

We embraced the more tightly, not to wake.

"Pass All Fail All!" The voice, some meters off, was familiar: a cheerful lady croon. Loath to return from the farther side of Commencement Gate, I tried not to recognize it, and in that effort — alas! — came to myself. Anastasia, herself now too, moaned into my pursed ear and stirred her legs.

"Come, Billikins! Come, Bill!" Dear Founder, it was Mother: my sigh was not for passèd bliss, but for bliss past. What was she doing in that fell, Commencèd place? And — Founder — why had I to leave it? Anastasia, unmasked already herself, unpursed me, kissed my brow. Tears in my eyes, I rose up on my knees, looked over Truth's warm shoulder at the cold and flunkèd campus I must return to. Day was about to dawn: how loath I was to leave that bright, consummate, hourless night! Then my heart softened: it was Mother, leaning in through the slackened exit-port. In one hand, a peanut-butter sandwich, which she flapped at me as she crooned; in the other, a carefully folded garment. Compassion lightened hopeless duty; the campus wind was chill, but Knowledge warmed me. I knew what must be done, and that I would do it; all that would come to pass was clear, hence my tears — but now they were for studentdom, not for me.

Anastasia's eyes shone still with love; my own I think with neutral Truth, dispassionate compassion. Calm of heart, I kissed her thrice: once on the brow, in gratitude for her having been to me Truth's vessel, and declared her Passèd; once on the navel, sign of the lightless place where I had seen, become myself, issued from to my post-Graduate Assignment; once finally on the Mount of Love where I'd Commenced, and upon whose counterpart I'd one day meet my end. The Cyclological Hypothesis, Spielman's Law: at last I understood it, as Max perhaps could never, and kissed its sign.

Beyond the port now, commotion. Anastasia rubbed her belly, sighed, and said she loved me. I sighed too — but not, as she was pleased to think, in simple reciprocity, though I saw no need to disabuse her of that conviction — and went to Mother. Alas, she had been EATen in the flash, when at the final question I'd caused both buttons to be pressed: her once-cream hair was singed, her babble less lucid even than before. How she'd known to come to the Belly-exit, and how got her head in through it at the crucial moment, I was not to learn for some while. Happily, her mental estate had been already so grievous (a circumstance made much of subsequently by WESCAC's riot-researchers) that the EAT-wave hadn't been fatal: it was as if the scar-tissue, so to speak, of her former wounds, some inflicted by myself, shielded her mind from fresh assaults; already destroyed, she was invulnerable, and WESCAC's worst had but chipped like a grape-shot at the ruins. I ate the sandwich from her hand. The folded garment, it turned out, was my matriculation-fleece, left behind me in the Turnstile months before. How she came by it I cannot imagine, unless she and WESCAC maintained a secret intimacy from terms gone by. Torn as it was, I received it from her joyfully, and donning it in place of Reginald Hector's, discovered in its fold a second treasure, lost with the first: the amulet-of-Freddie!

"Pass you, Mother!" I kissed her hands and joined them to Anastasia's, who had come to the port. "Pass you both, in the name of the Founder, summa cum laude!"

Mother fluttered, and in her soft madness mixed a Maxim: "First served, first come."

Now sirens growled and motorcycles crowded up. Computer-scientists, professor-generals, and Light-House aides, alarmed by signs of trouble in the Belly, swarmed about; student-demonstrators chanted, I could not hear what, "Give us the Goat," I supposed; a disorderly motorcade roared around from Great Mall and paused at the confusion. Commending Mother to Anastasia's care, I girdled my ragged fleece with the amulet-of-Freddie and issued forth. Shouts went up: it was indeed "Give us the Goat" that certain bearded chaps and longhaired lasses cried — but not in anger. They were no more than half a dozen, fraction of a remnant of a minority, and clouted even by their sandaled classmates as they cheered; but their signs, I wept with gratitude to see, read AWAY WITH BRAY! Their elders beset me at once with questions, threats, and mock. If I had ruined WESCAC, the military-scientists warned, I could expect a traitor's fate…