John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

An expert driver, she would thread us out of the traffic-jam and away from the scene. But I directed her to take me to the Chancellor, whom Stoker, springing from his vehicle, had found shrill speech enough to mock.

"Wife-beater!" I heard him jeer, among other things. The Chancellor's white-helmeted escorts drew polished pistols, and two or three professor-generals came running from the Belly-port, which I noticed had reclosed. Rexford, though he reddened at the taunt, seemed in control of himself again, and showed little sign of last evening's debauch: his eyes were bright, if slightly bloodshot; his hair was groomed but for the one unruly lock, his face clean-shaved, his light coat pressed and spotless. His wife, though her left cheekbone was something moused, seemed not displeased to contradict with her presence the reports of their separation; she glared at Stoker angrily, as if he were responsible for her husband's truancy as well as for the present embarrassment. The Chancellor himself, though he frowned at the disorder, seemed not alarmed, and vetoed the request of his professor-generals to have Stoker shot.

"Put him in irons, then," one of them ordered the Chancellor's escorts. "We'll get him for disorderly conduct and conspiracy to overthrow."

"No no," Rexford said. "I'll let him go on to the Powerhouse."

Stoker beamed contemptuously. "That's my brother!"

The professor-generals, who, it was rumored, had been talking anyhow of impeaching the Chancellor on charges of conduct unbecoming a Commander-in-Chief, exchanged meaning looks, which Rexford obviously saw and was as amused by as was Stoker, if for different reasons.

"He'll be allowed to pass outside Main Gate between the Powerhouse and Main Detention," he said — addressing the p.-g.'s but observing Stoker. "If he sets foot on Great Mall again, arrest him. If he enters Tower Hall or the Light House, shoot him."

Stoker laughed as if in mocking triumph, but his effect was diminished by the tear-tracks still on his face. He thrust out his hand. "Put her there, Brother!"

At that moment the Chancellor remarked our presence, Anastasia having drawn us near at my insistence. He flashed us a quick smile before returning to deal with Stoker; his wife stared dangerously at My Ladyship, who lowered her head. Calmly, almost respectfully, Rexford pushed away the proffered hand, wiping his own afterwards on a white linen handkerchief. Good-humoredly he scoffed, "Brother indeed! Go back where you belong."

The professor-generals brightened. "You deny he's your brother, Mr. Chancellor? Once and for all?"

Rexford coolly reminded them that professor-generals did not address their Commander-in-Chief as if he were a miscreant recruit. Then he added with a wink: "Do I look like the rascal's brother?"

Stoker flung back his head and laughed, again as if meaning to mock; but I thought I detected wet streaks among the dry. Catching sight then of us, he bellowed, "Wah! Wow!" leaped back upon his motor, and throttled off. The professor-generals took counsel with one another; one of them I saw slip a Light Up With Lucky button out of his pocket and repin it on his tunic, above the riot-ribbons. Stoker's men having left to try to overtake him, the white-helmeted escorts realigned their positions, discreetly raced their engines, and made ready to proceed. But the Chancellor had turned to me, with a kind of bright hesitation, as if certain of his desire but not of protocol. I dismounted and stepped towards him, whereupon with a grin he sprang from the Chancellory sidecar and met me halfway.

"Glad to see you without the rope," he said, and expressed his regret that my former keeper had chosen not to take advantage of the recent general amnesty, as his freedom would have been its one happy consequence. "The way the varsity situation is," he confided sadly, "and the way I've carried on the last few months, I don't dare stay his execution now; I'd have a mutiny in the Military Science Department. But I love that old man. It's things like this that make you wish you weren't the flunkèd Chancellor."

I listened attentively, studying his bright eyes. His admiration for Max was entirely sincere, and his regret for the Shafting; but that he wished not to be Chancellor, his whole presence denied.

"How is it you're not angry with me for the trouble I've caused, Mr. Rexford?"

"Who says I'm not?" His smile was shrewd. "I think I see what you were trying to teach me. But I guess Commencement isn't for administrators." In painful sobriety after his debauch, he said, he had resolved to abandon his yen for Graduation and merely "do his flunkèd best" for his alma mater, by his own lights, however benighted. To this end he had reopened secret economic dealings with Ira Hector, much as he deplored that necessity, and made covert overtures to new negotiations with the Student-Unionists. The Power Lines would in all likelihood be restored to their "original" locations, and the Boundary Dispute, he hoped, resumed on its former terms without too great loss to West Campus because of his recent vacillation. Having learned, thanks to me, that Classmate X was the defector Chementinski, he supposed he would put that knowledge to use less passèd than I would approve of: blackmailing the Nikolayans back to the conference-table. "It's all very well for proph-profs to be above these things," he said amiably; "but the man with the power can't always keep his hands as clean as he'd like to." Folding his handkerchief neatly as he spoke, he caught sight of the Stoker-smudge on it and laughed.

"What about the Power-Line guards?" I asked carefully. Stepping back into the sidecar, he declared he'd given orders that all special head- and neck-gear be made optional for them, if not discarded altogether.

"If they look down, they fall," he said cheerfully; "if they don't look down, they fall too. They'll have to learn to see without looking!"

My heart rejoiced. But I administered a final test by greeting his wife (who regarded me chillily) and expressing my regret for the accidental injury to her cheek. Her face flashed anger, as for an instant did the Chancellor's.

"For a man to strike his wife is a flunkèd thing," he declared firmly. "We don't live in the Dark Semesters any more. And we're not Furnace-Room mechanics."

"I should say not," Mrs. Rexford snapped. "And I'll tell you something else, Mr. Giles, while we're on the subject: my husband might be the Chancellor, but — "

She stopped with a look of fright, for Rexford had suddenly raised his hand. In fact he only signaled the advance-guard to proceed, but even Anastasia gasped, and Mrs. Rexford never finished her sentence.

Her husband grinned. "See you on Founder's Hill this afternoon, Mr. Giles."

I reached to touch his temples, declaring him a Candidate for Passage and Commencement. But he shook his head and cordially declined. For one thing, he said, the gesture might be looked upon by his political enemies as some sort of bribe, or at least an endorsement of my authenticity, a matter too controversial for him to take a public stand on unless he had to; for another — his grin was melancholy — he reminded me that as Chancellor his first allegiance was to the College, whose best interests he would pursue at whatever cost — enlightenedly, he hoped, and in the final service of all the Free Campus, even all studentdom. But if circumstances forced the choice ("Which Founder forfend!") between repudiating me and breaching the vows of his office, he would consent even to my Shafting, as he had to Max's. That Remusian vice-administrator of the Moishian quads in terms gone by, who had winked at Enos Enoch's lynching, was to Rexford's mind a tragic figure, unjustly maligned by simplistic Enochists unaware of the responsibilities of power.