Though not all of the penciled labels were meaningful to me, I was much impressed by the size and layout of the institution — much more orderly, at least on paper, than the Powerhouse. Had not other matters pressed, I'd have asked Maurice Stoker to guide me through the place and explain how the several sorts of malefactors were punished, and for what term. Specifically I wondered whether Stoker determined and administered their sentences on his own authority or as agent for the Chancellor, and fervently hoped that the latter was the case.
The inner-office door opened behind me, and a handsome dark-skinned woman came forth, tucking in her blouse.
"You all have an appointment with Mr. Stoker?"
Even as she asked — patting her hair into place the while — Stoker bellowed greetings at me from inside and emerged, also tucking his shirt-tails in. But now the secretary and Peter Greene had noticed each other, and he clutched his orange hair and cried, "Flunk my heart!"
"I beg your pardon?" the Frumentian young woman said. Stoker grinned.
"What you doing here, gal?" Greene exclaimed. "You're s'posed to be home taking care of Sally Ann!"
She donned a pair of glasses and looked questioningly at Stoker. "Should I know this gentleman? I don't understand what he's talking about."
"This is Georgina," Stoker said. "My new secretary. Georgina, Mr. George, the Goat-Boy." We exchanged polite greetings. "And Mr. Greene," Stoker added.
"That ain't her name!" Peter Greene said indignantly. "She's old O.B.G.'s daughter! You get on back to the house, doggone it; Sally Ann might need you!"
Georgina smiled and appealed to us: "He must be mistaking me for someone else…"
"Don't set there and deny you're O.B.G.'s daughter!"
"I'm sure I don't know those initials at all," she said a little impatiently. "My father's name was the same as this gentleman's."
Peter Greene would be durned if it was. "His name was O.B.G., and you know it!" To us he declared, "Him and me was thick as thieves when I was a boy — built us a raft together!"
Stoker's secretary replied that her father had been an assistant librarian until his recent death, and that that was that. Then Stoker added gaily, just as I was coming to it myself, that Georgina's maiden name had been Herrold. Having heard news of her long-lost father's death and cremation, she had sought out Stoker for more details; the conversation had turned into an interview — which our arrival had interrupted — and finding her qualifications satisfactory, Stoker had employed her on the spot. His teeth flashed in his beard. "Small campus, isn't it?"
"You gosh-durn hussy!" Greene exclaimed to Georgina, who having coolly replaced her lipstick was making room for her purse in a desk drawer. But his tone now seemed as much impressed as angered. Stoker suggested with amusement that perhaps Mr. Herrold had had two daughters — if indeed he'd been the man whom Greene called O.B.G. I myself was uncertain what to think: the woman's composure appeared more deliberate than natural, and she either was ignorant of G. Herrold's actual job or chose to exaggerate its importance; on the other hand I had small confidence in Peter Greene's eyesight, though his indignation was convincing. In any case her identity mattered little to me, much as I grieved the loss of my companion; I stated my business to Stoker, who knew it already, and proposed with a wink that Georgina and Peter Greene clear up their misunderstanding over coffee, in his inner office, while he took me down to see Max. They were both reluctant, but Stoker insisted; he would serve the coffee himself; something stronger, perhaps, if they wanted it; the guard in the corridor could take me to the Visitation Room as well as he.
"Maxie's coming on so with the 'Choose me' business, it makes me sick to hear him anyway," he said. "The old fool can't wait till we Shaft him." He summoned the hall-guard and gave him instructions, pinching Georgina as he passed behind her. She pursed her mouth; Peter Greene snickered. I went out with the guard, first offering condolence to the young woman for her bereavement, and Stoker closed the door behind us.
We passed along a balcony overlooking the exercise-court, where the Procrastinators and C-students appeared to be playing some sort of tag or chasing-game under the supervision of their guards; thence to a small empty room divided by steel screens into three parallel sections: in the first was a row of stools, on one of which I sat; the guard then entered the middle one to see that nothing except conversation passed between me and Max, whom another guard presently escorted into the third. A small bleat of pity escaped me at sight of him: thin to begin with, he had lost more weight overnight, and in the ill-fitting garb of detention looked frail as straw. Yet his face, so troubled all the previous day, was tranquil, even serene. He ignored my inquiries after his condition and commended me for having passed successfully through the Turnstile and Scrapegoat Grate. His tone was more polite than truly interested; he asked what courses I had enrolled in, as one might ask the casualest acquaintance, and when I described my encounter with Bray at the Grateway Exit and my perplexing Assignment, his mild comment was that my watch-chain had possibly short-circuited WESCAC's Assignment-Printer, for better or worse. Or possibly not.
"You sound as if you don't care!" I cried. Formerly he might have shrugged, or scolded me; now he said serenely:
"My boy, remember who I am, and why I'm here."
"You didn't do anything!" I said. "You're here because Stoker or somebody is out to get you!"
Max shook his head. Stoker was beyond doubt a flunkèd man, he said, and a flunking influence on everyone about him, myself included; yet his flunkèdness was necessary, for like the legendary Dunce he revealed to those with eyes to see the failings of their own minds and hearts — an invaluable if fatal lesson.
"You didn't kill Herman Hermann!"
But he nodded, "Ja, I did, George. In the woods that night by Founder's Hill. It was his motorcycle Croaker found."
"You couldn't kill anybody!" I insisted. "You're too passèd!"
But as the news-report had said, Max declared he was not passèd, never had been — until just a few hours previously. True, he had thought himself a charitable man and a gentle lover of studentdom, to whose welfare he had ostensibly dedicated all his works: thus he had invented the EATer, to protect men from being EATen; sheltered and raised me as a goat, lest I succumb to human failings; rejected Grand Tutors in favor of ordinary schoolteachers, believing education could lead men from their misery to a better life on campus. And he had been proud to be a member of the class least subject as he thought to hating, because most often hated.
"That's all true!" I protested. "You're a hate-hater! You're a love-lover!"
"I used to think," Max went on quietly, as if dictating a confession, "if Graduation meant anything at all, it meant relieving human suffering. Not so. Suffering is Graduation."
"Bray's been talking to you!" I charged. "Why didn't you send him away?"