John Barth - Giles Goat-Boy

"They smell goat!" Stoker laughed.

I sat back in my place, stirred by the strange sights; wished Max were in less glum spirits; marveled at the rolling door. Anastasia's solemn eyes were on me. I grinned, perhaps wildly, and rubbed my hand over where I'd bitten her.

"Didn't hurt, did it?" My attention was straining to assimilate the cavernous chamber we rolled into, hewn from the rock, dim-lit, and lined with pipes and large machinery. I scarcely caught her reply, delivered as it was almost in a whisper and with her eyes closed.

"Founder help me!"

"How's that?" I leaned closer.

She half-opened her eyes. "Is it possible? I don't even dare imagine …"

"What: that I'm the Grand Tutor? Of course I am." All else I ignored now except her troubled eyes. "If I weren't, I wouldn't have said I was."

"But how can a Grand Tutor… bite ? I don't understand it!"

I turned up my palms. "Me either. But I think there's more than one road to Commencement Gate."

She put her hand on my forearm. "Shouldn't you be gentle and meek? And suffering? You're very physical, George…"

"Sure I'm physical. Listen, Anastasia — " It was interesting to use her name. "Do you want to Graduate or not?"

"I do!" Her eyes filled with emotion. "I'm so ashamed of all the things that've happened to me. More than anything in this campus I wish I could find out what the Answer is!"

"So do I, and I intend to. Then I'll Tutor, and on Commencement Day the wise will pass and the ignorant flunk. Don't you believe that?"

The effort gave her visible pain. "I want to…"

I touched my lips gravely to her brow. "When you do, you'll be my first Tutee, Anastasia. And the first Tutee will be the first Graduate. I swear it."

I might have added, just fully appreciating it myself, that Max had not pre-empted that distinction; much as he needed, wanted, and endeavored to believe in me, he had yet truly to manage it. But the motors roared so now in the confines of the room, speech became impossible. For just that reason, perhaps, as Anastasia's eyes considered my strange words, impulsively I said, "I rather love you, you know."

Midway into the declaration the engines once more quit together, as on some signal — though why that one and no other should be so efficiently responded to, I cannot say — with the result that my latter words stood clear. Anastasia put her hand on my fleece and glanced towards Stoker, as did I. Had he heard me through the din? I wasn't sure I cared; I myself could not have said what my words meant! But I was not easy at the way he beamed and whistled when the motorcycles parked now and their riders dismounted. A little crisply, as I helped Anastasia from the sidecar, I said, "You understand what I mean: the way Max loved all of us in the herd, because he was our keeper. A Grand Tutor loves the whole student body."

"Belly and all, hey?" Stoker cried. He caught us each by the arm. "Let's take a look around the Plant before we join the party."

But Anastasia shook her head. There was dull irritation in her face and voice now. "I want to go to bed, Maurice."

"Bed! We've got a Grand Tutor on our hands! How often does that happen?"

"Please," I told him, "I hate to be a bother…"

"No bother!"

"Maurice — " Anastasia covered her eyes. "Croaker hurt me. Please let me go now."

Her husband sighed. "Oh, all right. I'll send Sear up to have a look at you." But at her insistence that she had no need of doctors or medicines, only of rest, he shrugged and dismissed her with a cheerful smack on the posteriors. My heart was clutched with confusion.

"See how willful she is?" Stoker appealed. "And they say I mistreat her! Tell you what, George; you run along with her, cheer her up a bit. We can tour the Plant later."

He spoke with his usual breezy authority and even gave me a little push after her, who was approaching a small door in the farther wall.

" Verboten !" Max cried from behind me. The word — I hadn't heard it for years — halted me like a tether. Max too had stepped from his sidecar, and glared at me, his face drained. Heads spun around; the language of the order was apparently not unfamiliar to certain of the guards, in particular those with the dogs.

"Founder help her, George! She's in his power, and we got to choose!"

I heard Stoker sigh beside me.

"One girl or the whole student body!" Max cried. "If they won't take me in your place, I'm going to walk out of here until they stop me." He turned his furious eyes on the officer near him, the long-faced one, who watched impassively. "Don't give them another minute, Georgie. Come with me; this is a flunkèd place."

I was divided as on that day when the shophar had summoned from the barn while Lady Creamhair lingered in the hemlock-grove. Max took a final look at G. Herrold's body, murmured something in his beard, and spat at the officer's feet — a thing I'd never have supposed him capable of. He turned and started for the great iron door, which was grinding shut. The guards who made to seize him were checked by a slight sign from the officer, who also with his hand bade the sentries halt the door where it was. Max paused in the narrow opening and looked back to me. His voice was terrible. "Grand Tutor or goat!"

Stoker grinned; the guards stood by. The dogs growled through a small hum of machinery. Anastasia I saw had opened the small door and stepped into what I presently learned was a lift. I moved towards her, meaning to call, "Come with us!" But at my move she closed the door. Stoker signaled, and I turned, blanching, round: alas, Max had mistaken my step for a choice and gone; that door too shut.

Stoker clapped me on the shoulder. "Flunk 'em both, hey? Good for you! I'll send a man after Max to see he's all right. Splendid old fool, that Max — stubborn as a jackass! Convinced I'm the Dean o' Flunks! I love to tease him about the Moishians and the Bonifacists; he believes anything…" Interrupting himself, he gave orders to his lieutenant to change out of uniform, overtake Max in an unmarked vehicle, and transport him to some hostelry of the College. The man saluted with a click of bootheels; Stoker led me towards the door behind which Anastasia had vanished.

"Come on, I'll show you the Plant. Come on!" He laughed at my reluctance. "Max'll be all right, and you'll see Stacey later. She's upset now because of what you said, but she'll get over it. Quite a girl, isn't she?"

"She's — very nice." I allowed myself to be led with him.

"Can't say no to a soul! Oh, here, you're probably thirsty…" He pressed the flask on me. "Take those dogs of ours, for instance: we got them from a kennel on the Siegfrieder campus, where they'd been trained to bite anything without blond hair and blue eyes. Let me go near, they'd take an arm off; but for Stacey they'll roll over like pups, to get their bellies scratched. I mean the male ones, of course: can't do a thing with the bitches; they're jealous as the Faculty Women's Club. Attaboy, George."

The liquor was a welcome thing. One of Stoker's aides pushed a button beside the lift-door, and we stood about waiting for it to open.

"No, really, she's amazing, that woman." Stoker's eyes sparkled, and he spoke behind his hand in a mock whisper. "These Siegfrieders, you know — can't beat 'em for cleverness. They'd trained these dogs to hump the Moishian co-eds in their extermination campuses. Ask your friend Eierkopf about it — didn't I hear Max mention him? He'll tell you it was all for the sake of science; but you know those Siegfrieders, what sports they are. I asked one of their officers once what would happen if a Moishian girl should whelp a litter by a purebred Siegfrieder watchdog: wouldn't that mongrelize the class? And he said, 'Vunce dot hoppens ve is condomps on der dogs puttink, same like ourselfs.' He even showed me his orders from Der Oberbefehlshaber-Professor: Blausiegelen for enlistees, Superblausiegelen for officers. Some science! Here, I'll have one too."