I could not help smiling. "Maybe the Goat-Boy will get to Chancellor Rexford, too," I suggested. Reginald Hector declared with a sniff that he'd heard disturbing rumors to just that effect, adding that back in the days of C.R. II such a dangerous subversive would have been shot, at least under his command. Nowadays it was coddle, coddle — and look at the crime-rate, and the drop-out rate, and the illegitimate birthrate, and the varsity situation!
"The Goat-Boy won't meddle any more," one of the aides said from the hallway, and reported what he'd just heard from the crowd outside: that I had left the impostor EATen in WESCAC's Belly.
"No!" Reginald Hector exclaimed happily, and slapped me on the back. "Why didn't You say so, doggone You!" I confirmed that the false Grand Tutor was no longer a menace to studentdom, and explained the object of my visit: a final endorsement of my Passage and Grand-Tutorship now that the pretender had been put down.
"Gladly, gladly! Give Your card here, sir: I'll be glad to okay it!" He fished for a pen, found he'd given his away, and borrowed one from an aide. "I knew he was a phony — GILES indeed! As if there ever was such a thing!"
I smiled and handed him my Assignment-sheet. Within the circle of its motto, I observed, Bray had written Passage is Failure — - alluding, I supposed, to those Certifications of his which I'd shown to be false. The presumption annoyed me until I remembered his dubious claim to accessoryhood back in the Belly, which I'd not had time to consider and evaluate.
"Mm-hm," the ex-Chancellor said, holding it at various distances from his eyes. Perhaps he couldn't make it out at all; in any case he only glanced at it hastily, nodding all the while. "Oh, yes, this is quite in order. Hum! I can sign it anywhere, I suppose?"
Calling his attention to the seventh and final task, I observed that no signatures on the Assignment-list itself seemed called for, only on the matriculation- (i.e., ID-) card — which too there was apparently no need for him to sign, only to inspect.
"Sure, sure," he agreed at once, as if he'd known that fact as well as his own name, but had forgot it for half a second. "Unless You want me to initial it just for form's sake…"
Inspecting the card myself as he talked, I saw that Bray had printed WESCAC in the "Father" blank and signed his own name as "Examiner." I borrowed Reginald Hector's borrowed pen, scratched through the name George I'd signed earlier, and after it, on the same line, printed GILES.
"Keep it, keep it," he said of the pen, and took the card. Instantly he reddened. "What's this?"
I offered the pen to its first owner, who, however, stepped back with a little embarrassed sign.
"Something wrong?" I asked the ex-Chancellor. "Here — initial it after my title, if you like."
"I see," he said, drawing the words out as if he'd caught on to a tease. "You examined Yourself! Why not? And You're going to call Yourself the GILES because You are the Grand Tutor." He scribbled RH at the end of the line. "Don't blame You a bit! Darned clever idea, in fact — help put an end to that Goat-Boy nonsense. There You are, sir!"
Retrieving the two documents I said, "I am the GILES, Mr. Hector."
"Of course You are!" he cried indignantly. "You've got every right to be! I was trying to tell that daughter of mine just a while ago, when Stacey brought her in all upset: she's got to get that nonsense out of her head — "
"That she's my mother?" I interrupted. "She is, Mr. Hector. I'm the real GILES, that you put in the tapelift twenty-one years ago."
"Ridiculous." He had been looking a rattled and somewhat fatuous old man; now his jaw set, and his eyes flashed in a way that must once have intimidated ranks of junior officers. In fact, the two aides withdrew at once. He was a military-scientist, he told me then curtly, not a fancy-talk politician or a philosopher with thick eyeglasses, and there were plenty of things over his head, he did not doubt: but be flunked if he didn't know a racket when he smelled one, and in his nose, so to speak, this Grand-Tutor business stank from Belly to Belfrey. What was my angle? he wanted to know. He'd gone along with Rexford and the others in recognizing my Grand-Tutorhood (which was to say, Bray's) for the same reason he'd joined the Enochist Fraternity during his campaign for the Chancellorship; because he knew it was as important for "the common herd" to believe in Commencement as it was for riot-troopers to believe in their alma mater, true or false — a consolation for and justification of their inferior rank. And he'd hoped I was merely a clever opportunist; in fact he'd rather admired my "get up and git," as he put it, and assumed I'd got what I was after: fame, influence, campus-wide respect, and a lucrative berth in the Rexford administration. But apparently I was after bigger, more dangerous game; had gone digging into great men's pasts in search of paydirt, as it were, and turning up that libelous old gossip about his daughter and the GILES, had thought to extort something from him with it…
"So lay it on the line, Dunce flunk you, or I'll break you in two!"
Despite the menace of his words and tone I saw he was alarmed — he was, for example, asking my price instead of calling a patrolman — and so I gathered he'd got the drift of his daughter's and granddaughter's recent experience in the Catalogue Room. In short, he knew the GILES was alive and about — whether in Bray's person or in George the Goat-Boy's — and had every reason to fear being brought to account for his old infanticide-attempt. I might have unmasked myself then; but a strategy occurred to me for gaining more truth from him before giving any in return. I was the GILES, I repeated, by WESCAC out of Virginia R. Hector: rescued from the tapelift by G. Herrold the booksweep, reared by Max Spielman as Billy Bocksfuss the Ag-Hill Goat-Boy, and come to Great Mall to change WESCAC's AIM and Pass All or Fail All.
"No!" he protested — but in awe now more than in denial.
"Oh yes." However, I declared, he was not to suppose I sought either wealth or fame for myself or retribution for him; I had left the barn to Pass All or Fail All, and having that same day passed all my tests and the Finals, I wanted nothing from him but a true accounting of my birth and infancy before I went forth to my larger work.
He rubbed his strong chin suspiciously. "What about that George fellow, crashed the Grate this morning?"
"An impostor," I said. "A false goat-boy."
"I heard from Maurice Stoker he was out to make trouble. Founder knows he's made plenty!"
"But not for you," I pointed out. "Anyhow, I've taken care of him."
He squinted at me afresh. "You're really Virginia's son? She was saying crazy things about that George fellow…"
My heart glowed; she had acknowledged me then, at last, after the shock of my old blind assault, and of seeing me again, had led her to deny me! My gratitude for this overcame any lingering grudge against Reginald Hector; I sat beside him on the desktop and laid a friendly hand on his shoulder.
"Mother's not well," I reminded him. "It upset her to see me again, after all these terms, and two of us claiming to be the GILES." But could he really imagine, I asked him gently, that a Grand Tutor harbored vengeance in His heart for an act that could only have been misguided?