Just here George happened to click off his sweeper; I heard him sing again somewhere in the distance:
"Mister Tiger he roar, Mister Lion he shout —
But it's WESCAC'll EAT you if you don't watch out."
And now I thought I understood how he had come to his present pass, and what was the debt I owed him. I had turned in the direction of his voice; now I looked to Max, and saw my confirmation in the twist of his mouth.
"The dumbwaiter you were stuck in, Billy: it used to be a booklift, but then we used it to send Diet-tapes down to WESCAC. There was only half a dozen people allowed to operate it from upstairs, to feed in secret stuff about the Nikolayans and to read out WESCAC's defense orders — I mean people like the Joint Chairmen of Military Science, and the WESCAC Director, and the Vice-Chancellor for Riot Research. Whoever it was put you in there, he wanted you dead, because that dumbwaiter went where no human student would ever dare go — right down into WESCAC's Belly! This was after the Diet fight, when WESCAC was set to EAT anybody that even came near its Riot-storage. I don't know who your parents are, but I bet WESCAC does: you must have got the same Prenatal Aptitude-Tests that all New Tammany babies get, because when George opened the Belly door and fetched you out, there was this official PAT-card hung around your neck — the only thing you had on. No name was on it, and no IQ; just in the place where it usually says what a kid should major in, WESCAC had printed the words Pass All Fail All…"
"By George!" I exclaimed.
Max gestured with his open palms. "By George it didn't mean a thing, or by me either when I saw it. It don't make sense how one student could pass everything and flunk everything too. But if it meant you were going to do one or the other, like be a cum laude Graduate or flunk out altogether, there were plenty students like that in the old days, and nobody put them out to die on account of it."
The only likely hypothesis, he declared, was that my birth had been a threat of embarrassment to someone high in the administrative hierarchy of the College, who had chosen to commit an extraordinary infanticide in order to be rid of me. The scheme was feasible enough: I would be found dead by some other high official within a few days (assuming they were not all in on the plot): because of the delicate involvement of WESCAC there would be no publicity, lest the Administration be embarrassed or a valuable scientist lost; the Campus Security Police would make a secret investigation, which could be thwarted by any professor-general or vice-chancellor; the findings, if any, would be submitted to the Attorney-Dean, who if he weren't involved in the thing himself would anyhow not prosecute without the Chancellor's consent. What Max regarded as even more significant, however, was that there had been apparently no investigation at all, on the one hand, nor on the other any attempt by the culprit to follow through with his crime. It could be no secret to the guilty party that I had been spirited out of the dumbwaiter, though he might well not suspect I was still alive: poor George having heard my cries and been partially EATen by WESCAC for entering its Belly to rescue me, he was able afterwards neither to keep his brave deed secret nor to give a lucid account of it. That he was not made a hero of or even pensioned off, but quietly dismissed, argued that my enemy knew the deed was out — how must he have suffered then not to know further what George had done with me! Or if he did know me to be alive and in Max Spielman's hands (no friend then of the powers-that-were), and yet permitted George and me both to go on living, one of two oilier things must have been the case: Did he rather risk exposure by the mad book-sweep or the "crazy old Moishian" — as Max's foes called him — than repeat and compound his felony? Was it that the perpetrator of the deed, like Snow White's forestry-major, was not its instigator, but had only followed orders that he was glad to see miscarry, and had dared not then report or affirm the miscarriage? Or could it be, as Max himself chose to think, that while some influential personage or personages wanted me dead, some other of comparable influence did not, so that, the attempt having failed and come to light, my secret enemies were prevented by my secret friends from finishing the job — perhaps even from knowing it was unfinished? It was no coincidence, Max argued, that prior to my discovery he'd been a mere helper about the goat-barn, which was scheduled to be razed and the herd disposed of to make room for more poultry-pens; then not a month after he'd received me from George these plans had been changed without explanation: the Senior Goatherd was given a vice-chairmanship in Animal Husbandry, and Max had been allowed, almost unofficially, to manage the barn and herd until the Rexford administration took office and dignified his position with titles and a modest research-budget.
"So you see, Bill, you got a momma and a poppa someplace; anyhow you did once. And it's not any poor scrub-girl, that her boyfriend got her in trouble and she tried to keep it secret; it's like you were found in a rare-book vault, you know, that nobody but an old grand chancellor and his viziers had got the keys to."
A dismaying thing occurred to me. "Then Billy Bocksfuss might not even be my right name!"
Max patted my leg — which owing to the hard oak tabletop had gone numb to pain and love-pats alike. "It was the right name for you when I got you, boy, but it's not your real one, the way you mean. You were an orphan of the storm, like me, that the student race made their goats. Your poor leg and foot were bunged up so by the tape-cans I didn't think you'd ever walk, even if nobody stole you away or killed you in the play-pound. And when I saw what a fine little buck you were growing to be on Mary Appenzeller's milk, I said, 'Well Mary, that's some billy we got ourselves, nein? And it shouldn't surprise me he'll sprout two horns to go with that hoof of his…' "
Now he grasped hard my senseless limb. "Ach, Billy, I tell you, I loved you so from the time I saw you, and hated so much what us humans had done, if I'd had one wish it would have been you was a Ziegenbock for real! I wanted you to grow a thick fleece and big horns like Brickett Ranunculus, and be fierce and gentle the way he is, and so strong, and calm, and beautiful… you never would have to hate anybody!"
Thus it had come to pass (he concluded with the same rue that had commenced this history and got lost in its unfolding) he named me Billy Bocksfuss, and swearing George Herrold as best he could to silence, nursed me secretly for a year, after which he gave out that he'd found me one morning with the other kids in the play-pound and meant to raise me as his son. Among his apprehensions had been that the tabloids would make a campus sensation of the story, not a few of whose features recalled such legends as the founding of Remus College; but they had inexplicably buried the report in their back pages or ignored it altogether. Just as mysteriously, the Nursery School's Department of Student Welfare from Infancy to Age Six, whose chairman was a famously meddlesome lady, had made but a token inspection of my circumstances; the officials had asked Max politely to fill out a few forms legalizing my wardship and subsequently ignored us. With an uneasy kind of relief, then, Max had found himself free, to all appearances, to make a choice more difficult than the original "adoption":