John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"Not me," I said. My voice was stubborn, but I thrilled at a recognition that made deep and sudden sense of my life. Max let go my arm and demanded almost fearfully: "What's this you're saying, boy? Is it you don't see how vain this is?"

Fist to brow, awed and laughing, I shook my head. "I just now realized, Max: I've been there before ! I was practically born in WESCAC's Belly, wasn't I? So it must be I'm a Grand Tutor like Enos Enoch — or else I've been EATen already! Am I crazy, do you think?"

It seemed to me he paled at what I said. In any case, his efforts to account for this remarkable circumstance did not impress me. He admitted the extraordinariness of it — both that I had been spared my rescuer's fate and that the problematical nature of this fact had never previously quite occurred to him. But nothing was known, he pointed out, of the events that led up to my abandonment in WESCAC's tapelift, and the nature and identity of whoever put me there were equally mysterious. It could not even be said for certain whether the lift was meant to be my coffin or the Moishe's-basket of my salvation; though he Max had once been the foremost authority on WESCAC's programming, these things had taken place after his removal, when for all he knew the Menu might have been altered either by the computer itself or secretly by its new Director, Eblis Eierkopf. Neither had conclusive research been undertaken on the effects of Electroencephalic Amplification and Transmission on newborn children: while it was true that the Amaterasu infants EATen in C.R. II had not developed normally, investigators could not agree on how much of their psychic disorder was owing directly to the "EAT-waves" and how much to the general trauma of the catastrophe. Pacifists everywhere maintained that the children (now grown) were uniformly retarded to the point of idiocy, but at least one New Tammany scientist had asserted that their psychoses, while severe and organic, were of such a wide variety as possibly to include the syndromes associated with certain men of genius.

"What's more," Max argued, "the waves in the Belly must have been different from the ones we used on the Amaterasus, or G. Herrold wouldn't have what little sense he's got left. Na, Georgie — " He shook his head resolutely. "You aren't any crazy-man and you aren't any Grand Tutor! You're ambitious, is all; you got a late start and you want to do something large to show you aren't a freak. But you mustn't want to be greater than your classmates in the hero-way: that's vain and foolish — it's wicked, even. Pfui on Enos Enoch!" And he reaffirmed his conviction (the same that got him into trouble in the Senate) that Grand Tutors and Kollegiumführers were two faces of a single coin; that what studentdom needed for its preservation was neither Founders nor Deans o' Flunks but more patient researchers, more tolerant instructors, and better-educated Senate committees. "All Graduation means," he said, "is learning not to kill students in the name of studentdom. And the only Examination that matters isn't any Final; it's a plain question that you got to answer every minute: Am 1 subtracting from the total misery, or adding to it? If I'd asked myself that question soon enough, I'd never have discovered the EAT-waves."

I might mercifully have challenged him here, though we'd traversed the ground many times before: had he not developed WESCAC's weaponry someone else surely would have sooner or later, perhaps the Bonifacists or the Student-Unionists, with much greater expense of student life; had New Tammany not EATen those Amaterasus there'd have been no quick end to C.R. II, and the necessary invasion of their campus would have cost many times more lives on both sides; science, moreover, was neutral: there was no turning back from Knowledge, however Wisdom might gag — and so forth. But I was too concerned with questions of my own to ask myself that searching one of Max's.

"I knew you wouldn't like the idea," I said. "But you have to admit it's possible, isn't it? Even if there's some chance I'm not a Grand Tutor, a lot of things make it seem possible that I am. And if I am, I've got important things to do." Max's attitude vexed me afresh. "Even if it was just an outside chance, I'd be flunkèd not to take it! If I'm mistaken, it's nobody's funeral but mine. But suppose I'm not mistaken! Think how much suffering you'd be the cause of if I was a Grand Tutor and you talked me into thinking I wasn't!"

This last had a wrong ring to it, but before I could add that it was in any case impossible to change what was no mere conjecture but a certainty that deepened in me even as I spoke, Max asked, "Do you know what a Grand Tutor's life is like? I mean a real one like Enos Enoch or Maios the Lykeionian, not the story-book kind. Do you know what has to happen to them in the end? When did you ever hear of a happy hero? They always suffer — it's almost what they're for …" He gave a little snort. "But you don't care about that; all a youngster can see is how fine he'll look out there on the hilltop, and what his last words will be; never mind what they do to him! And never mind that the lessons he meant to be helpful, his students always make people miserable with, and flunk anybody that disagrees with them!"

I stood up angrily. "Flunk it all, Max! A goat's a goat and a hero's a hero! Enos Enoch couldn't help showing people how to Commence, any more than Brickett could help banging things with his horns. He wasn't trying to do any damage; he was just being what he was!" It pained me to see that Max flinched ever so slightly at my sudden movement. "Don't worry," I said, affecting sarcasm: "I'm not going to hit you."

He shrugged, but his eyes were flashing. "How do I know, if you can't help being what you are? Maybe we shouldn't blame the Bonifacists they burned up all the Moishians, okay? Well, Georgie, I could argue with you how it might be more heroic not to be a Grand Tutor even if you were born one. Or I could ask you why you're arguing at all — Brickett never did."

The same thought had occurred to me, too late not to be embarrassing. Hotly I declared, "Maybe it's because I've got to make you believe in me before I can show you how to Graduate!" But my blush spoiled the effect, and I ended with a half-resentful grin, which my tutor returned.

"One thing, you got the spirit all right." He squinted up at the sky shading his eyes. "So, it's near lunchtime already, and what have you learned?"

In a calmer if no less inflexible humor I replied that I'd learned what I was, or had at least begun to, which cardinal lesson seemed to me quite contrary to the Maxim he'd set out to teach: that self-knowledge is always bad news. Or (I teased as I helped him to his feet) we might merely add to it, "bad news for somebody ," inasmuch as the realization of my Grand-Tutorhood must prove unquestionably bad news for West-Campus trolldom.

We set out barnwards arm in arm, for the sake both of good-fellowship and of Max's legs, which lately a little sitting would put to sleep. The contest, I knew, was not done, but it was no longer hostile.

"You'll be all the hero we need without any mumbo-jumbo," my teacher said. "You got spirit and you got ambition, and you got intelligence to do fine things with. Even when you get a spiteful notion in your head, like when you tell yourself Max is jealous of you — no, don't say you weren't thinking that; it's okay, lots of heroes been just as unreasonable; it's almost a prerequisite. But I'm not jealous, my boy. I don't even envy you." He patted my arm. "My work's about done; I've made my messes; I don't envy anybody that's got them to make yet. What it comes to, there's two reasons why I want you to forget this Grand Tutor business right away: the second one is that if you believe you're something you aren't, it'll keep you from becoming what you could be…"