"I'm trying," Mrs. Sear fretted. "Come on, dears!"
"You must make yourself believe," Dr. Sear said pleasantly to Anastasia. "Matter of will, actually."
But she shook her head. "It's not right. Especially at a funeral service."
Before I could inquire what exactly was afoot, Stoker himself came up on the dais and firmly ordered his wife to go with Dr. and Mrs. Sear. She hesitated, her face distraught, and then permitted herself to be led to the bier. There were a few olés and some scattered applause — whether for her, or a newly roused Croaker, or something on the screen, I was too grieved to care.
"Now," Stoker said briskly. "You know what service means, George; I've heard you use the word yourself. Well, that's the Spring Sunrise Service going on on the Hill — you can't see the actual servicing because it's too dark. And when somebody important dies we have a Memorial Service in his honor. Life over Death, all that sort of thing. Usually private, you know, between married relatives, but since you're the Grand Tutor… Blow the whistle as soon as you're done."
With a clap on the shoulder he took me to the couch, beside which Anastasia stood and would not let Mrs. Sear unbelt her.
"It's not so, George!" she said. "There's no such custom at all, except at these parties. Believe me!"
But the swelling organ bore my doubts away. "You believe me," I said. "Nothing else matters." With my free hand I gave her sash the needed jerk; Mrs. Sear moved quickly to open the robe.
"Look, Ken!" she cried. "Oh, you little darling! I wish I were a Grand Tutor!"
As evenly as I could before the revelation I said to Anastasia, "Do you believe?"
"Hind to," Stoker directed the Sears, who having loosed her half-reluctant grip upon the robe and removed the garment entirely, to the pleasure of the assemblage, were gently pressing her upon the bier. "He's a goat-boy, remember." They turned her about — lightly, with constant caresses — until, pliant and full of doubt, she knelt on the bier's end, facing away. Only as they drew down to the cushion her head and shoulders, stroking her all the while, she wondered, "George…"
A light fell on us; the music rose, could not imaginably soar higher. Upon the screen glowed a larger image of the column, its base ringed now by torches. The crowd took the hymn up, mighty, mighty, as I leaned my stick against the bier, raised my wrap, and steadied myself with a hand upon the perfect rump that swam in my tears.
"In the name of the Founder," I declared, "and of the sun — "
"Olé!" they cried behind me.
"— and of the Grand Tutor so be it!"
Incredibly, as I mounted home, the music swelled and rose to bursting. As ever in goatdom, the service was instant: swiftly as the sunflash smiting now the Founder's Shaft I drove and was done. Anastasia squealed into the cushion, "I do believe!" and fell flat. Unmuscled at once like Brickett Ranunculus, like him overbalanced by my thrust, I tumbled back and would have fallen had I not been hoist amid a chorus of olés by Croaker, who caught me from behind and hiked me up on his shoulders. The guards sprang from the dais into the crowd; Dr. and Mrs. Sear, alarm in their faces, pulled Anastasia to her feet and then, as she could not support herself, shrank away and left her leaning against the bier, her face in her hands. I had just had time, as I pitched from the service, to snatch up my stick. Gripping Croaker with my legs I raised it to strike now — at him, perhaps, or at Stoker, the sight of whom (with my serviced Anastasia limp in his arms) suddenly enraged me — at anyone, for I was transport with grief and the aftermath of passion. But when I made to bring the weapon down it tangled in the cord, and a howling whistle — the loudest shriek I'd ever heard — drowned out organ, crowd, and orchestra. Again and again it blasted as I tried to free the stick and keep my perch on lurching Croaker. It was the same wild summons which had opened that dreadful day, and after the first few screams of it pandemonium broke out in the hall. Whether out of fear of my bellowing mount and his frantic rider, or because in their liquor they believed that an EAT-wave truly was upon them, the carousers yelled and sprang, mobbing the doorways, tripping and trampling, climbing one another in their haste. The musicians fled the bandstand and joined them, swinging their golden horns like clubs. On the Telerama, too, all was disorder: the celebrants flung away their torches and ran, sprinting down footpaths and through shrubbery, diving behind rocks, flinging themselves flat upon the ground or into bushes. The organ-music turned wild and broken, then ceased altogether, and the crowd-din grew berserker.
At last I freed my stick, and the EAT-whistle stopped. But it had blown from my head all liquor and delusion and left me stricken by my folly, aghast at how far and lightly I'd strayed from Grand-Tutorhood. Had that been, as Max had suggested, Stoker's purpose? He stood now on the loveseat-bier itself, soiling the cushions with his boots, and surveyed with a grin the general panic. Hands on his hips, he laughed at the scrambling worshipers, at the frenzied party-guests, and at me — virtually in my face, for on our separate perches we were of a height.
"Couldn't do better myself!" he cried. "Why not go to work for me?"
I might have attacked him, but Croaker was too excited by the chaos in the room to heed my orders. Stinging with self-reproach I dug my heels in, and we charged into the crowd, who now that the whistling had stopped were beginning to recover their senses. I looked with mixed feelings for Anastasia, but she and the Sears were gone; Madge however I observed belly-down on a nearby table, laid out across several platters of cold-cuts: an apple was in her unbandaged mouth, her eyes were closed, and the guards from the dais were spreading mustard on her hams. I spurred Croaker on lest he too caught sight of her. We bounded to the exit-door, which opened at our approach, and as we entered the corridor beyond, Stoker's merry voice roared out from loudspeakers on every side:
"Think it over, Goat-Boy! I'll see you again!"
And his laugh preceded and pursued us as we went, unopposed, unaccompanied, from hallway to hallway, chamber to chamber. Guards stood back with a grin; levers were pulled, lights flashed, all doors opened before us and closed behind — even the last, that great iron portal of the entrance-chamber through which we issued now as we had entered hours before, not knowing how we'd got there. The watchdogs snarled, but were held in check; Croaker snarled back, but I steered him on. We crossed the graveled apron, floodlit still and chilly in the early light, and plunged down a wooded slope, through groves of oak and dew-soaked laurel. At the foot, in a bright-misted clearing near the road, a kilometer at least from the Powerhouse, we came to ground, collapsed in fact together into the leaves, from an exhaustion I'd not guessed he shared. And though rage, remorse, and doubt burned in me like Stoker's awful fires, which no amount of tears could quench, yet weariness banked and dampered them: careless of comfort, of health, of safety (but Croaker seemed no longer a menace, having come to the dais, now I reflected on it, more probably to aid than to assault me; and as for Stoker, I saw little cause why he might pursue us, and less hope of eluding him if he should), I glanced over at my companion, already snoring, then closed my eyes, and just as I had fallen, pitched asleep.
THIRD REEL