He never can leave well enough alone;
he's always showing off.
TALIPED: Gee whiz!
BROTHER-IN-LAW: [TO TALIPED]
Don't groan
for pity now, you sonofabitch. You had
it coming.
TALIPED: Lay off, Uncle; I'm in sad
enough condition. Look, why not expel
me from the place?
BROTHER-IN-LAW: I'll let the Proph-prof tell
me what to do, not you. I wish I'd thrown
you out nine years ago.
TALIPED: Me too. Alone,
I'll wander up to Dean's Ravine and die
where Man and Dad first ditched me. Or I'll try,
at least…
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Do try.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: Try hard.
TALIPED: I will; and yet
I know somehow that my end won't be met
in any ordinary way. Some queer
fate lies ahead for me; if not this year,
then next — - some strange, spectacular surprise.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: Nonsense. Must you always dramatize
everything you do?
TALIPED: Grant one request,
Uncle dear…
BROTHER-IN-LAW: What now?
TALIPED: / have the best-
looking daughters and the brightest sons
on campus, right?
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: You have the corniest puns;
I'll vouch for that.
TALIPED: The boys can get along
without me, but I think it would be wrong
to leave the girls behind.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Another play
on words, and naughty, too.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: The girls will stay
with me. No use to complicate things further.
You are their dad and brother; if you were their
lover too, we'd never get things straight.
[Enter KIDS]
Make your goodbyes short; it's getting late.
TALIPED: [TO KIDS]
Poor kids! You've got a rugged row to hoe.
You won't have any boyfriends, 'cause they'll know
your daddy was your brother. Boyfriends hate
to hear such things as that about a date.
KIDS: Some big brother you turned out to be.
You're pretty sexy, though.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: I think that we
should stop right where we are.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Me too.
TALIPED: [TO COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN]
Are you
still here?
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Where else?
BROTHER-IN-LAW: Well, girls, say toodle-oo
to Taliped. It's time for him to go.
KIDS: Toodle-oo, Pops.
TALIPED: No!
BROTHER-IN-LAW: Yes.
TALIPED: No!
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Yes.
TALIPED: No!
Leaving my pretty girls behind is quite
the hardest thing on campus!
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: I was right:
He can't resist a dirty joke.
BROTHER-IN-LAW: [TO KIDS]
Get lost
now, girls.
KIDS: Okay.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: Bye-bye.
TALIPED: No, wait!
BROTHER-IN-LAW: You've bossed
us long enough, pal; I'm in charge here now.
You weren't too good at deaning anyhow.
COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: [Aside]
A good administrator's hard to find.
TALIPED: [Aside]
/ might take up proph-profflng, now I'm blind.
"That's my Grand Tutor!" Dr. Sear whispered proudly. "Poor blind Taliped and his fatal ID-card, stripped of innocence! Committed and condemned to knowledge! That's the only Graduation offered on West Campus, George — and, my dear boy, we are Westerners!"
"I beg your pardon, sir?" Stirred by the pitiful sight of Dean Taliped being led from the orchestra, and wondering too what was keeping Max, I but half-heard what he'd said.
"We have to plumb the depths of experience," he went on very seriously. "If there's such a thing as Graduation, it's not for the innocent; we've got to rid ourselves of every trace of innocence!"
"Why is that, sir?" The stage was cleared now except for the Chairman, whose committee was forming a semicircle behind him, facing the audience.
"We all flunked with the first two students in the Botanical Garden, George; we're committed to Knowledge of the Campus, and if there's any hope for us at all, it's in perfecting that knowledge. Ye would be like Founders, the Old Syllabus says, with knowledge of Truth and Falsehood. Very well, then we've got to be like Founders, even if the things we learn destroy us…"
I was not uninterested in this line of reasoning, especially since it was expounded with such uncommon intensity by the usually blasé doctor-whose eyes, however, as he spoke, flashed curiously more like Maurice Stoker's than like any founder's eyes. But now the Committee Chairman chanted the epilogue directly at us, and because of the extraordinary events that followed upon it, I wasn't able to draw my companion out further on his theory of Graduation.
"So take a look at Taliped Decanus," invited the Chairman:
The hot-shot Answer-man who nearly ran us
on the rocks. We envied Taliped
the old dean's chair and Agenora's bed;