"So if anybody can mimic a Grand Tutor, it's Bray," Dr. Eierkopf concluded. "No telling what he's got up his sleeve; the curious thing is that he's posing without disguise. He's using one of the names he's known by instead of making up a new one, and the face is the same face he used as a psychotherapist." In consequence, it was already being suggested by some news commentators that this time he wasn't posing at all; that his former impostures had been in the nature of preparatory omens, or deliberate challenges to faith, as who should say, "I dare you to believe in me!" That thousands were ready to accept the challenge was evident: what Eierkopf was interested in seeing was how many actual Passages Bray could effect; how he would comport himself as an accepted Grand Tutor, especially in the matter of descending into WESCAC; how WESCAC itself would appraise him — as inevitably it must, if it had not already; and what would occur when the time came for him to meet that end described in the GILES profile as the fate of all Grand Tutors…
"The Enochists say that a man can teach the Syllabi effectively even though he's flunkèd himself," he declared. "If everybody believes Bray's the Grand Tutor, and he goes into WESCAC's Belly and Commences the student body, does it make any difference whether he's the real thing?"
"Absolutely!" I cried. "All the difference on campus! I'm the Grand Tutor, whether anybody believes it or not!" Even as I protested, my throat smarted at the thought of Peter Green's apostasy, and Dr. Sear's (though I knew they'd only been being agreeable from the beginning), and particularly Anastasia's, since I'd come to regard her as my first protégée. Croaker himself had forsaken me, to squat by the night-glass against his master's further orders.
"I don't feel well at all," I said.
"Do you want a woman?" Dr. Eierkopf asked at once. "I'll have Croaker bring up a Dairy Science co-ed."
I declined the offer.
"An aspirin, then? Or a sandwich? I'll have to ask you to eat it in the bathroom, though."
These too I declined, observing that perhaps it was sleep after all that I needed most, next to Max's counsel.
"Whatever you please," said Eierkopf. "Croaker fixes you a cot, and we see to it you're up in time to register. I really am grateful to you for bringing him home, I suppose."
I closed my eyes for a moment. "You're welcome, sir."
"You know…" He dandled his head on the other side, and his magnified eyes rolled merrily. "I almost wish you were the GILES, George — may I call you George? And you call me Eblis, if you like…" He sighed briefly, whereupon as if commanded Croaker came and set him on his shoulders. Eierkopf seemed quite at home there, but I was surprised to see what looked like tears shining behind his spectacles.
"You see? He's always getting things mixed up, like my eggs a while ago. Nothing ever gets done just the way I intended. But what can I do? And I cramp his style, too, I'm sure…"
Forgetting then the subject — his wish that I were the true GILES — not to mention the proposal of an end to conversation, he launched into a recounting of the nature and history of his connection with Croaker, which I attended with what imperfect wakefulness and patience I had left.
"I'd just been brought to New Tammany," he began, resting his little chin on Croaker's skull — a white spheroid perched on a great black pedestal. "They had just begun to use WESCAC to pair up roommates, and refugee research-people were handled just as students were in the regular dormitories. Verstehst? You'll see tomorrow morning…"
At matriculation-time, he continued, everyone's attributes had been coded onto cards, which then were matched automatically on the basis of complementation — a homely farm-girl with a chic young piece from Great Mall, and so forth. This was before the days of Prenatal Aptitude Testing, and Eierkopf allowed that it wasn't in itself a bad system.
"But show me the programme without hitches, Goat-Boy!" He had come to this campus with bad eyesight and false teeth, he declared; was never robust; could hardly stand on his legs (they were stronger then) — all this was duly punched into his card, he'd signed the loyalty-oath, got his clearance-papers, watched WESCAC's card-sorters riffle and click. Going then to the lodging assigned him he found there not the clear-eyed practical, gemütlich young engineer he'd rather expected (himself being subject to sick headaches and "too busy in the head" to bother with housekeeping), but Croaker, the famous Athlete — All-Campus candidate in football he was then, before they named him Frumentius's delegate to the University Council for his own protection.
"Imagine, Goat-Boy! A mindless brute that ate raw hamburger at the Coach's order, wore nothing but a loin-cloth, picked his nose, took what he pleased, urinated in the shower-bath, danced and farted, rolled his eyes, bared his teeth, and had his way with a parade of co-eds!"
Often and often, he said, when he'd had equations to think through or wanted only to rest his mind, he would come home to discover Croaker at his business with one of the girls — perhaps a cheerleader, with crimson letter on the breast of her pullover. Naturally Croaker never troubled to draw the blinds, and in those days the spectacle gave Eierkopf headaches: from his perch on the outside stairway he was obliged, so he complained, to watch the pair at their rut: how the little pink beast feigned displeasure, even threatened alarum; how her ape-of-the-woods merely croaked, and naked himself already, had at garter and hook, put her in a trice to the fearsome roger — whereat, coy no more, she'd whoop.
"And the worst was, we had to share the same bed!" Hard enough to relax, he said, in the odors of perfume and sweat; more than once, when sleep at last had granted respite from all thought he would be roused by Croaker's heavy arm flung over him; caught up in prurient dreamings the Frumentian mistook him for the prey, and must either be waked (no easy task) or his hug suffered till the dream was done.