"What a strange way of talking you have!" she said. "I can't even follow you!" Yet she seemed not displeased. "There, that should do it." She gave a pat to the finished bandage. "What about your other friend, now? If you take Croaker up where it's shallower he could bring you both over. My husband will be along shortly — he's in charge of the search-party. We can give you a lift to wherever you were going."
She had by this time so won my trust that I attributed to Max all my former suspicions. I told her straight out who I was (she caught her breath at the mention of Max's name, then explained that of course she had heard of him, and even recalled being taken by her Uncle Ira to the goat-farm as a child, to see "the little boy who thought he was a goat"), but I judged it wiser to say nothing for the present about Grand-Tutorship or WESCAC's AIM. My intention, I declared, was to matriculate in New Tammany College as soon as I could, and I thanked her for her inadvertent aid in getting me over the river. As for Max's crossing by the same means, however, I doubted his willingness to, inasmuch as he thought her a flunkèd woman bent on luring me, if not to my death, at least to a breach of my virtue. Why else had she so exposed herself on the bridge? What did she think had led G. Herrold over his head, if not those wonders I had just done praising?
As if understanding for the first time, she put her hands to her cheeks: her eyes widened, and she shook her head.
"Is that what you thought!" she cried, and put her hand on my arm to halt me. "I'm so ashamed!" It took her some moments to overcome her plain mortification. Then she said most earnestly, but scarcely able to look me in the face for embarrassment, "You mustn't think those terrible things! If I'd suspected for a moment… and Dr. Spielman, of all people…" She began again, more calmly: "My name is Anastasia Stoker (people call me Stacey) and I'm a nurse in the New Tammany Psych Clinic; that's why I knew about Croaker and Dr. Eierkopf and all. In fact it was my husband — he runs the Power Plant, and he's a very… unusual man, you'll see — he's the one who talked the Chief Psychiatrist into separating them, for their own good, or for experimental reasons or something, just to see what would happen. I guess that's why I felt responsible, in a way, when the trouble started. Those poor girls he attacked, and that dear little poodle, and we didn't know what he might do next! We knew he'd gone out towards the river, and Chancellor Rexford was especially worried because a famous Grand Tutor was on his way to the College and was supposed to be somewhere in this neighborhood — "
"So they did know ahead of time!"
"Of course: it was in all the papers. Didn't you see it?"
I explained that no newspapers were delivered to the goat-barn, and pressed her for more details, hoping thus to gauge the reception awaiting me at NTC. "Did they say what his name is, or what he looks like? What's he coming to the College for?"
"Shush," she warned merrily, "they might understand English!" She glanced back at the yellow-robed men, who of course paid no heed. "That's Him in the middle: the fat one. The others are Tutees or something. They wouldn't let the Chancellor send anybody to meet them, and they sit like that most of the time."
I pointed incredulously. "You think he's the Grand Tutor? When he wouldn't lift a finger to help you or G. Herrold?"
She wrinkled her brow at my ignorance. "Not our Grand Tutor, George! You have been in the country, haven't you? He's what they call The Living Sakhyan, from Outer T'ang College or somewhere over there. He's supposed to be descended from the original Sakhyan, and when the Student-Unionists took over His college, Chancellor Rexford invited Him here to tutor the Sakhyan refugees on West Campus. Think what the Student-Unionists would have said if Croaker had attacked Him!"
I could by no means share her alarm at this prospect, but I gathered with some satisfaction that no threat to me was implied by the newspapers she referred to, at least, and no competition of the sort I'd first imagined by the fat chap's being regarded as a species of Grand Tutor. Anastasia went on with her story:
"From what I knew about Croaker, I didn't think they'd ever be able to catch him without hurting him or getting hurt themselves, and in the meantime no telling how many girls he'd bother! Mr. Rexford was so upset at Maurice, he was talking about firing him, and I thought the best way to save the situation was to lure Croaker back somehow to Dr. Eierkopf. But Maurice (that's my husband) said the only way to do that would be to line up a lot of co-eds between the woods and Dr. Eierkopf's room — he's always saying naughty things. Anyway I knew Croaker liked me all right: every time they came by the Clinic he used to sort of purr, you know, like a friendly bear. It was so cute, and I don't believe there was anything bad in it at all, the way Maurice pretended; I'd just let him touch me or lick my hand or something, and then Dr. Eierkopf could usually move him along without any more bother…
"So I came along with the search party and got Maurice to let me come out on the bridge while they waited out of sight. I thought if Croaker was anywhere in the gorge he'd see me there and come when I called, and then maybe I could calm him down or draw him back to where the others were — they have something to put him to sleep with. Maurice said silly things the way he always does, about my knowing what would happen and actually wanting it to; but I learned a long time ago not to mind what he says. Besides, if it turned out I couldn't control Croaker, or the men didn't get there in time, it didn't seem to me it could be much worse than some other things I'd been through, and as long as it was me it wouldn't be some poor co-ed ruined for life." Her tone was matter-of-fact, but she clutched her arms across her breasts and sighed. "Which is how it turned out."
Where her husband and the others had got to she didn't know, unless mistaking G. Herrold for Croaker (as she herself had done at first) and seeing him drown, they had judged the danger past and gone to find the body. Certainly she did not believe that any man, even one so unusual as her husband, would stand idly by and see a woman assaulted — the men in yellow she expected, of course, and forgave, they being Commencèd Graduates. A trifle uncomfortably I praised her large-mindedness and courage, and she in turn thanked the Founder for my chance presence in the gorge, which if it had not spared her own awful raping after all, had at least spared her more, or worse. As she spoke, distressed by the memory, she bent her forehead to my chest (where cold water still dripped from the fleece) and I was moved to pat her hair to comfort her. Silky to the touch it was, the nape beneath finely downed! But her closeness stirred Croaker under me, and she quickly stepped back, remarking only that if she had the sodium pentathol herself I wouldn't need to keep my perch.