Giles Goat Boy (32 page)

The sharp-faced lieutenant nodded. At his command (not in our tongue) two guards with fierce-appearing dogs on leash opened a small metal box near the door and did something with their hands inside it. Engines were restarted; Stoker winked at me, handed me his flask once more, and started ours. With a grind the heavy door began to slide: smoky orange light streamed from the widening crack. I had time to notice through my bedazzlement, as I sipped, only that other such doors were visible in patches of yellow glare at various heights on the rock-face, and that a double row of bluish floodlights on tall poles, with a thick white pipe between, stretched out over flat ground to leftwards—a brilliant line straight to the horizon. Then we crunched forward on the gravel towards the door, the aide’s vehicle in the lead. The guards gave way before his and Stoker’s oaths; the dogs lunged at Max, were checked with effort, and snarled at me too as we went past them.

“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.”

He took a drink from the flask, wiped his sooty face with the back of his hand, and returned the liquor to me. Then with a great belch he resumed his anecdote:

“You can imagine what a time we had training
that
little habit out of the dogs! If Stacey hadn’t helped us taper ’em off—like narcotics in the Psych Clinic, you know?—the sons-of-bitches would’ve serviced every trustee’s wife that took a tour of the Plant!” He shook his head in good-natured despair. “Then we had to taper
Stacey
off; ‘Can’t stand to hear the poor things whimper,’ she used to say. No wonder the bitches don’t like her!”

At last the lift-door opened, and I was moved with Stoker and two or three guards into the elevator—the first I’d seen. Other guards, I observed, had lifted the still-unconscious Croaker onto a large wheeled table, which now they rolled away; a second of the same kind was drawn up to the sidecar wherein G. Herrold lay.

“They shouldn’t hate her, though,” I said thoughtfully, referring to the watchdog-bitches. For obvious reasons, the story of Anastasia and the dogs did not affect me as it might an ordinary human. “Don’t they understand she was only helping their mates?”

Stoker positively hugged me. At the same moment the lift began to rise. “She was! She was, George! Oh, wait till Sear meets you! We
must
tell Lucky Rexford’s wife and all the others not to be so unreasonable: Stacey’s only trying to help their poor husbands!”

“You wife is very sweet that way,” I said firmly. “Very generous.”

“Oh my, yes!” Stoker roared. “Generous she is!”

I knew I was being baited, but the strong liquor, perhaps, made me not care. “I wonder if you really appreciate her,” I insisted. “You think she does things for flunkèd reasons—at least you pretend to think so. But she doesn’t. She didn’t want Croaker to service her this evening; she was counting on you to rescue her in time. And you
would
have, if you’d seen how she trembled; she’s not big enough for him! Yet she was willing to let it happen, to keep
us
out of danger …”

“Sheep!” Stoker’s face now was red and scowling—the first time I’d
ever seen him grinless—and his voice was rough. “She’s a sheep, and Spielman’s another! ‘
Baa, baa
, take me to the slaughterhouse!’ With their great silly lamb’s eyes! ‘Do what you want to us, we won’t bite.’ Made to be persecuted! Why don’t they
fight?
”

The elevator stopped; its door opened noiselessly onto a narrow passageway. Stoker glared at me; the others stood expressionless. I was as much roused as shaken by the outburst, and having abandoned Max, now rose to his defense.

“Max has his faults, Mr. Stoker, but he’s no coward.”

“He’s a sheep!” The voice echoed down the corridor. No one moved to leave the elevator. “A Moishian sheep! ‘Please cut my throat, sir!’ ”

“No. He’s a great goatherd and a great scientist. And the best advisor any hero ever had.”

Stoker glowered still, but his temper seemed regained. “I notice you don’t take his advice, though. Mustn’t confuse the sheep with the goats, eh?” His laugh now was easier—and still we lingered in the lift! “Advice or no advice, we bucks need our bit of nanny now and then, don’t we!”

“You’re not part goat too, are you, sir? You don’t
look
like a goat.”

“See here, George—” He stepped with me just into the hall and pointed to a closed door at its blind left end. “My wife’s bedroom is right at the end there. She’s waiting for you. Run along, now.”

Much as the notion stirred me, I shook my head. “That’s not why I stayed here. Besides, she’s angry with me for some reason.”

“Go on! That’s because you said you didn’t love her any more than you loved the other girls! Very tactless remark for a Grand Tutor! No, no, don’t apologize—” I had only been going to protest. “I know you didn’t mean to hurt the girl’s feelings. But she’s
sensitive
, you know? Among us human people, when a chap bites a girl in the belly he’s supposed to follow through. Go down there now and tell her you’re sorry, and give her an extra-good service to make up. That’s what she’s waiting for.”

I smiled. “You don’t understand …”

“I do! It’s you that doesn’t understand. The girl’s in
heat
, for pity’s sake!”

I considered his face seriously to guess whether he was joking. Human females, as I understood, had no particular rutting-season, and of course no tails to wag in the rousing manner of an amorous doe; I frankly hadn’t realized there might be other signs and sessions, as unmistakable in studentdom as was a fine-flushed vulva in our herd between the autumnal and vernal equinoxes. The notion that Anastasia was in heat threw considerable
light upon the psychology of her behavior, I had to admit, however obscure its morality remained. Nay, more, it seemed to me to render pointless both Stoker’s charge of willful concupiscence on her part and Anastasia’s pleas of self-sacrifice with charitable intent, neither of which had impressed me as quite adequate to the case. I knew myself a kid in the tangled thicket of human morals; doubtless there were complications of which I was unaware; nevertheless I’d have very much liked to ask Max just then why the phenomenon of rutting (by its nature indiscriminate) was regarded as a neutral fact, even a merit, in the stock-barns, and a likely cause of flunkage in the campus proper. Granted even that eugenical considerations (or social ones, whereof I was but dimly aware) took moral form in studentdom, so that for some intricate reason it was undesirable for a woman to bear children by any sire except her husband: on what ground did the Founder object to “coveting thy classmate’s wife” if one took the contraceptive precautions I had read of? Or to mating with desirable members of a different species (as Max with the goats and Anastasia with the watchdogs), or with partners of one’s own sex, in any of which cases reproduction was precluded? I supposed there was more to the matter—my dream of Mary V. Appenzeller came to mind, with a flash of its mysterious, unreasonable shame—but what the More was, I could by no means see.