"You advise me! But I see you're assuming I'll live to follow your advice. Don't think you can flatter me now into letting you go back up in the lift!"
He had gone to the inevitable console-panel beside a circular door on the far wall. "Flatter you?" he said. "My dear fellow: in the first place one can't go back up in the lift: it returns automatically and can't be summoned from down here. There's no way out except through the Belly."
"Good."
"As to flattering you, I've no such intention, I hope. Praise, now, that's another matter — but you'll see shortly what a wrong idea you have of me. I'm not what people think I am."
"No need to tell me!"
He smiled and pressed numerous buttons, as though typing out a message on the console. "But I'm not what you think I am, either."
I ordered him to stop temporizing and open the Belly-door — and wondered how I'd open it myself if he refused, for it seemed to have neither knob nor latch.
"Just what I'm doing," he said. "You'll have to put your ID-card and Assignment-list in this slot now — mine's in already, from last time."
"I'll bet it is." I foiled what I took to be his strategem by producing the card I'd got that morning from Ira Hector. But if Bray was surprised at my having one after all, he managed to conceal the fact. Moreover, he ignored my sarcasm and merely remarked that inasmuch as WESCAC's "Diet program" provided for scanning and evaluating trespassers into the Mouth-room like ourselves, he'd taken the opportunity to ask it a few questions on the matter of the GILES, which he thought I might be interested in having verified before we proceeded. I accused him once again of delaying his inevitable end; but it was satisfying nonetheless to see WESCAC affirm unequivocally (as it could not do through its other facilities, I gathered, or before I'd presented my ID-card for its inspection) that it had impregnated Virginia R. Hector twenty-two years past with the Grand-Tutorial Ideal, Laboratory Eugenical Specimen, in accordance with a program-option developed malinoctically by itself. More specifically (this information was delivered us on cards the size of an Amphitheater-ticket, dropped one after another into a cup at the bottom of the console-panel as Bray pulled a lever beside it), the impregnation had been accomplished, stroke per stroke, as Tower Clock tolled midnight on the twenty-first of March of that year. A third card affirmed that WESCAC had PATted the fetus just prior to birth, which occurred two hundred seventy-five days after conception…
"Pass All Fail All!" I could not help exclaiming.
"Naturally," Bray said, and pulled the lever again. The fourth card-bearing, like the others, the smiling likeness of Chancellor Rexford on its obverse — verified not only that the infant GILES had been received into the tapelift but that WESCAC had arranged for a Library employee to rescue the child from its Belly, at the unavoidable sacrifice of some portion of the man's mental ability.
"G. Herrold, pass him!"
Bray clicked sympathetically. "Afraid I never met the chap."
On card number five, in reply to a question Bray had put about Anastasia's relation to the GILES, WESCAC disclaimed any knowledge one way or the other of multiple or serial impregnations of Virginia Hector; but on the sixth it confirmed Dr. Eierkopf's earlier hypothesis that no female sibling, even a twin, could be the GILES, either also or instead; that possibility was precluded by both the Cum Laude program and the fact that twins of different sexes are not genetically identical.
"That's enough," I declared. "Open the Belly."
"One more," Bray said, and handed me a card which WESCAC produced without his pulling the lever. As if he knew its message already (though he'd not apparently read it), he added, "Most important of all, eh?"
The card made three plain statements: that the GILES was a true Grand Tutor in posse; that WESCAC could discern Him upon scanning, and had done so already; that any other person who entered the Belly would be EATen at once. Even as I read this terse pronouncement the small door opened — a round port with a lap-leaved shutter that enlarged octagonally like a camera's. The chamber beyond was entirely dark. To forestall any trickery I snatched Bray's cape — stiffer and slipperier than it looked to be — and declared we would go in together.
"Why not? I should tell you the examining procedure in advance, though, since you're sure I'm about to be EATen." We would be scanned, he said, the instant we stepped through the port, and Electroencephalic Amplification and Transmission should ensue, if it was called for, either immediately or after I'd replied to one preliminary question and three main questions which would appear successively on a small central display-screen. Each was to be answered simply yes or no by pressing either the right or left button respectively of a two-button box suspended over the screen.
"Just a formality, I think," he said. "If you're able to take the Finals at all it's because you're a Grand Tutor already — which means you can't fail them, wouldn't you say?"
For reply I drew him grimly portwards, sure he'd resist at last: but he came to it readily as I. Together we stepped through and slid or tumbled down a short inclined tunnel to land feet-first in a padded chamber. There was an instant snap above and behind us. I started involuntarily, stuck out an arm to keep my balance, and found that the floor and walls of the chamber were lined with a warm, damp, spongy material (humidified and heated, I later learned, to preserve the tapes). Moreover, the room had the feel of an irregular hollow sphere, at least where I stood; it was difficult to maintain balance on its springy floor, which also pulsed and rumbled slightly as though adjacent to great machinery. Was Bray's brain EATen, then, I wondered, or was it only the port and scanners that had snapped? I neither felt nor heard him, and the room was black but for a small horizontal bar glowing some meters away, which I took to be the face of the display-screen. No matter: though I exulted at the recognition that I was unharmed — indeed, relief made me feel strangely at home in that fearful place, as if I were nestled at Mary Appenzeller's flank — I lost no time confirming my rival's fate, but went at once to the lambent bar. No longer than my index finger, and as wide, it floated green and fuzzy as though in mid-chamber — projected there, I assumed, by some optical means. I could only suppose it to be the preliminary question; and surely enough, through the lenses on my stick it resolved into five words:
ARE YOU MALE OR FEMALE
Curious inquiry! Had it not been established already that the GILES could not be female? But as I felt for the answer-button-box I realized that the question was more cunning than superfluous; I pressed the right-hand button. At once a different, longer question shimmered in my glass:
HAVE YOU COMPLETED YOUR ASSIGNMENT
AT ONCE, IN NO TIME
Reluctantly I answered no, thinking that I had after all been at work since dawn, and though my achievement was by no means inconsiderable, I had yet to get certain signatures on my ID-card and determine to what authorities it should be presented. Yet even as I pressed the left-hand button I thought better of it and pressed its mate by way of correction: Founder knew I'd done more than any normal undergraduate human could have hoped to, and what remained was obviously un-doable until I'd passed the Finals, whereof the question itself was part. Trusting that my hasty change of answers had been understood and accepted — since I remained unEATen — I addressed myself to resolving the next item on the screen: