by John Barth
“How’s that?” cried the NTC official. “Have him say that again!” The consternation was equally great among the Nikolayans, who drowned out the prisoner’s voice with protests and demanded that no more be said until they’d had time to consult their superiors. Angrily they denounced Alexandrov, who blushed and apologized for speaking thoughtlessly. He sprang up from his chair, shrugging off all hands; men hurried to block windows and doorways in case he meant to flee or destroy himself—but he was merely restless, and strode now vigorously about the room, waving his arms. He ignored his classmates’ orders to say no more until their chief arrived; the New Tammanians delightedly scribbled notes.
“Forget I said about father,” he laughed. “A stupidacy in my head!”
In any case, he said, he was aware how close and crucial was the race between Nikolay College and NTC to perfect the “dreadfulship” of their respective EATing capacities; realizing also that a man with his peculiar talent for “releaseness” would be in an advantageous position in the Control Room to aid the cause of his alma mater, he had resolved to slip through the electrified screen, kidnap some eminent computer-scientist from the West-Campus side, and by spiriting him over the Power Line put the Nikolayans ahead in the EAT-race, redeem his past failings, and become an honored and respected member of the Student Union like his father.
“But!” He gave a vast sly shrug. “I come here to say goodbye to father, I see instead Rexford—I admire! A forgetness; you catch me; I’m disgrace!” He seemed altogether pleased with himself. The New Tammany officials glanced at one another.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” I told him. One official frowned and asked another who the flunk I was anyhow; some reply was whispered into his ear. Leonid Andreich, as if reminded by my words that a man in disgrace did not ordinarily cross his arms and smile, quickly clutched his hair and agreed that Classmate X, himself so perfectly disciplined, would of course despise him for his “incompetencehood” in getting himself arrested. But for a man whose desire to please his father was as obviously sincere as was Leonid’s, this profession of disgrace had a counterfeit ring. In any case his arrest was not what I’d been referring to, I told him, but his motive and intention. I conceded at the outset that Informationalism was based on a kind of flunking avarice, and that particular Informationalists like Ira Hector were to all appearances irredeemably greedy: Flunkèd are the selfish, it was written in the Founder’s Scroll, and nowise might flunked mean passed.
“Da! Da!” the Nikolayan cried happily. “Even other Grand Tutor—I don’t believe, I don’t like either!—he says too!”
Very well, then, I said (concealing my chagrin), it was agreed on both sides of the Power Line that selfishness was reprehensible. But Leonid’s behavior seemed to me selfish—in the sense of vanity more than of avarice—both in its intention and its motive. Recalling some of Max’s observations on the subject, I declared that if to be a perfect Student-Unionist meant to efface one’s personal self and identify absolutely with the “student self” or the “self of the college,” then to wish to be a perfect Student-Unionist, or even a great Nikolayan, must “flunk” the wisher in the eyes of Classmate X, for example. Leonid’s dilemma was thus not unlike mine, or any right-thinking undergraduate’s, and I spoke of it therefore with compassion: the wish to achieve perfect self-suppression, like the yen to Graduate, was finally a prideful wish and thus self-defeating; to achieve it, not only the self must be suppressed, but the selfish wish itself. Aspiration, it seemed to me, by the logic of Student-Unionism, was permissible only in the College Self …
“I like you, Goat-Boy!” Leonid shouted—fortunately, for others in the room were not pleased by my words and chiding tone, and would have terminated our conversation if Leonid hadn’t embraced me and insisted I continue.
“Well,” I said, “you won’t agree, I suppose, but my former keeper, Dr. Spielman, used to say that what the Student-Unionists do is transfer their normal selfishness onto the College Self, which then becomes more selfish than an Informationalist college, even though the people in it may be less selfish individually …”
Whether he understood my position, to say nothing of agreeing with it, seemed doubtful; he colored at the mention of Max’s name and released me in order to pace again about the room. But I gimped beside him (most of the others were huddled in conferences against the arrival of Classmate X) and insisted he agree that the competition for supremacy between East and West Campuses was essentially a selfish competition, in which New Tammany and Nikolay Colleges each were guilty of seeking advantage over the other in every sphere and extending their hegemonies in the name of self-defense. Why else would the Nikolayans want the computer-scientist whom he had planned to abduct, or the New Tammanians not want to lose him? The colleges were all Ira Hectors …
“Goat-Boy, Goat-Boy!” Leonid groaned—in what spirit I could not quite tell. A little dismayed, I said, “I guess it’s a real problem to be a good Student-Unionist, isn’t it?” and from the doorway a voice like polished steel replied, “Not at all. A proper Student-Unionist can have no problems. Only the College may have problems.”
The newcomer I guessed at once to be Classmate X: as slight and pinched a man as Ira Hector, though less determinate of age, he had too Ira’s cold bright eyes, which glinted however more of metal than of gems. He wore an ill-cut suit of coarse material, was hairless, had much metal in his teeth, and spoke almost tonelessly. Two words he said to Leonid, in their tongue, and his stepson sprang to him. They regarded each other, Leonid clasping and unclasping his hands, Classmate X without gesture or expression. Then the older man asked a New Tammany official to explain why Classmate Alexandrov was being detained, and having listened impassively to the reply, and to his son’s tape-recorded confession, he asked Leonid (according to our interpreters) to affirm or deny the charge of intent to kidnap. Leonid affirmed it, adding ardently that his motive had been to atone for the errors of his past, and declaring that he would find a way yet to make himself worthy of membership in the Student Union and of his father’s respect.
Classmate X gave the slightest shrug of the shoulders. “The fool is yours,” he said to the chief of the New Tammany officials, and turned on his heel. Leonid leaped after him, wet-eyed, then stopped and flung himself into a chair. Two Nikolayans left the room with their superior, and after a second’s consideration I followed them into the corridor.
“Mr. X?” I called. “Mr. Classmate X, sir!” He stopped and precisely turned his leathern skull. His associates glared, even counseled him (so I gathered from their expressions) to ignore me; but he shook his head, as slightly as he had shrugged earlier, and permitted me to overtake them.
“Dr. Spielman’s protégé,” he murmured with the faintest of smiles. “No use trying to Graduate us, Classmate Goat-Boy: until everyone can pass, we won’t believe in Passage. Too bad your Dr. Spielman’s turned mid-percentile—he used to have more sense.”
His accent, I noticed, was very slight, and closer to Max’s, for example, than to any Nikolayan’s I had heard. I asked whether he knew my former keeper personally, promising to pass along his regards when next I visited his cell.
“No use in that,” he said quickly. “One knows Dr. Spielman by reputation, of course. Let’s speak no more of him.” And so we moved on down the corridor towards a reception-room where he was to confer informally with Chancellor Rexford prior to the opening of the Summit Symposium (at which, his college being currently administered by a committee instead of one man, he was temporarily empowered to deal on equal footing with the NTC Chancellor); but he returned at once to the forbidden subject, expressing his skepticism that Max had really murdered Herman Hermann and his disapproval of the deed. That Bonifacists should be exterminated he quite agreed, but not in so laissez-faire a manner, at the whim of amateur individuals; programs of liquidation, like programs of “charity,” were best left to ad hoc committees of experts like those which eliminated the counterrevolutionary elements in Nikol
ay College and directed the supply of food and “educational material” to certain famine-ridden Frumentian campuses some terms past—in both which operations, as he put it, “some of us participated.” Otherwise, private feelings of hatred or compassion were liable at least to supplant the suprapersonal spirit in which the ends of collegiate policy ought properly to be served, if they did not actually interfere with the attainment of those ends.
I was ready to assure him from habit that Max couldn’t possibly be guilty of the murder, but checked myself with the painful memory that he had confessed to the contrary, and affirmed to me his confession. So instead, with an aching throat, I briefly rehearsed my objections to the Student-Unionist doctrines of self-suppression and the insignificance of the individual student, and he heard me out impassively.
“I’m not speaking as a New Tammanian or an Informationalist,” I declared.
“Really.”
“Honestly. I’ve seen how selfish life in this college is, in lots of ways; and anyhow a Grand Tutor doesn’t take sides in varsity politics.”
“Ah.”
But Commencement, I insisted, was always of the individual student, never of studentdom as such—a mere abstraction, in my opinion—and so while I condemned selfishness as heartily as he, it seemed to me that its passing opposite was not the unnatural and unfeeling selflessness of the dedicated Student-Unionist, but the warm unselfishness apparent in men like Leonid Andreich Alexandrov, whom I took to be more representative of Nikolayan studentdom than was his stepfather. “I felt more sympathy for him than you did,” I charged. “Even the guards who arrested him were kinder than you!”
“Students are not important,” Classmate X replied crisply. “Studentdom is all that matters.” The Student Union embodied the general will of studentdom, he said, and Nikolay College had been appointed by history to lead the Student Union in the implementation of that will. If Leonid Andreich, or any or all of the rest of us, happened to obstruct this implementation, we must be sacrificed in its behalf. A willingness to make that sacrifice was the first condition of membership in the Union, whose will must be done; and making it the best validation of that willingness.
“But what about sacrificing other people?” I demanded. “Suppose you decide that the College Self calls for an EATing-riot?”
Classmate X cocked his head a very little. “If every living student in the University had to be EATen in the name of studentdom,” he said politely, “still the will of the Union would be done.”
I protested that he couldn’t possibly be serious, yet was chilled to realize that he was. “Would you push the EAT-button yourself?”
We were at the entrance to a crowded reception-chamber; many heads turned at our approach. Classmate X covered his face with his hat when photographic lamps began flashing.
“To be the agent of the general will,” he asserted through the felt, “is an honor exceeded only by being its instrument. If the will of the Union is that the button be pressed, then the one thing better than being the presser is to be the button.” He made a scarcely perceptible bow, presumably by way of taking leave of me, and entered the room. But I pressed after.
“That’s just plain vanity!” I protested. Several large Nikolayans moved towards me when I raised my voice, but I went on. “It’s as bad as Max saying he wants to be Shafted in the name of studentdom! You’re not really selfless at all!”
“Max is a fool!” Classmate X said sharply—his first betrayal of any emotion. But though my taunt evidently angered him, he motioned aside the aides who scowled between us and said in a small, hard voice—still covering his face: “One’s original family was murdered by the Bonifacists, except for a single son, who fled with oneself to be killed in action later in the Riot. One’s second wife died this year. And so Leonid Andreich is one’s sole surviving relative …” Only when he mentioned Leonid’s name did I understand that by “one” he referred to himself. “One is not displeased with such a relative,” he went on; “not at all displeased! One feels one could do a great deal worse indeed than to have such a son as Leonid Andreich …” He actually tapped my arm, an unprecedented display of feeling. “And yet, Classmate Goat-Boy, and yet”—his eyes shone briefly over the brim of his hat—“because it is the wish of the Student Union that a certain party be admitted to its ranks, let us say, from the Other Side, and because no one is more suited to the work of escorting this party to us than Leonid Andreich … Because of these things, Goat-Boy, and despite the likelihood that the escort will never be permitted by the Other Side to return to his alma mater and his father’s house, one suggests to Leonid Andreich that he expend himself in that sacrificial work. Do you understand my meaning? One even orders him to do so, giving him to believe that so unresponsive has he proved to the discipline of selflessness, he can earn his father’s esteem in no other wise. Posthumously, you might as well say! As if—” But he whipped around in mid-blurt, choking off the clause.
“As if he had to earn it!” I cried after him. “I think you love your stepson very much!” Classmate X strode away—plunged, really, still hatting his visage—and hands restrained me from following, but I called at his retreating back: “I’ll bet you sent him to New Tammany so he wouldn’t have to suppress his self!”
What held him in range of my mad declarations—taunts they were, as much as insights, made in despair now of ending the Boundary Dispute by reasoning with the principals—was that an agitated group not unlike ours had come across the room to meet us, at its center Chancellor Rexford. Classmate X’s pate had gone quite white; Rexford’s face was uncharacteristically grim. Photographic lights flashed all about us now; plainclothes guards and other officials on both sides conferred in furious whispers, pointed to me, consulted papers, shrugged their shoulders angrily. We were a large ring now, enclosing Chancellor Rexford and Classmate X, myself to one side. Neither leader seemed willing to initiate the ceremonial handshake; both turned severely to their aides. Still inspired by desperation, I asserted to Classmate X, “That kidnap-story was only a pretext; you were hoping Leonid would transfer!”
After a silent moment (during which cameramen and microphoned reporters edged into my end of the circle) everyone began shouting at the same time, and the ring became a little mob that pressed the three of us together. Chancellor Rexford, flushing red, made some expostulation in which I caught the phrases “privileged visitor,” “special credentials,” and “no harm done”; his tone seemed at first pacificatory, but changed when Classmate X waved his fist and shouted that there would be no Symposium; that the space between the Power Lines would be widened, the guard increased, and all communication between East and West Campuses terminated absolutely.
“You can’t mean that!” Rexford said angrily, and demanded of an aide, “Can he speak for his college this way? What’s the matter with him?”
I offered an explanation which both or neither of the parties may have heard: “He’s identifying the College Self with his own self, instead of vice-versa. It’s a flunking thing to do, by his own standards …”
“Shut that shaggy idiot up!” someone cried, and with a chorus of abuse I was hustled from the principals, who too had separated, or been separated by their respective aides. There was much excited talk of “insults,” “loss of face,” “torpedoed negotiations.” Having got me out of reach of their leaders, no one knew what to do with me, for though their distress and indignation were evident, they had gathered I enjoyed some special status in the Chancellor’s party.
“Founder help you if you’re the one who upset X,” snarled a forelocked fellow. “You’ve shot down the whole flunking Boundary Conference!”
Until that moment, distracted by my sympathy for Leonid Alexandrov and the ideological exchanges with him and his stepfather, I hadn’t realized the significance of my achievement.
“By George, you’re right!” I exclaimed. “I guess I’ve ended the Boundary Dispute!”
The aide conjectured disagreeably that it might pr
ove the end of the University as well. Now the Chancellor’s party came by, still waving hands and frantically conferring; only Lucius Rexford himself was silent, his face somewhat gray and his jaw set: the speech he was to have delivered had been canceled, the Summit Symposium indefinitely postponed, the entire business of the University Council suspended for the day. At sight of me he stopped, seemed to hesitate between denouncing me and going on his way, and at last said tersely: “New Tammany looked pretty foolish just then. It’s lucky this mess looks like their doing and not ours—or yours.”
“No, no, sir,” I protested; “that’s the only thing wrong with it. You’ve got to take back the initiative! This justifies all those other measures I suggested.” Rexford moved on towards the entrance-lobby, walking swiftly, and I trotted as best I could beside him; his aides neither disguised their hostility nor dared restrain me.
“Do the same thing with Maurice Stoker that you did here!” I urged him. “Go the whole way, sir!”
He made no reply. I didn’t venture to enter the sidecar with him uninvited—and in fact an aide sprang into the second seat, as if to forestall me—but before the door closed I called encouragement from the curb: “Light up everything! Make New Tammany an open book!” His motorcycle went off then (down the middle of the pavement, I was pleased to observe), and his party dispersed, still buzzing gravely, among the other official vehicles. As no one invited my company on the one hand, or on the other denied me the privilege of returning to Great Mall as I’d come, I found a seat alone in the last sidecar of the motorcade, and modestly dissembling my elation at having accomplished two formidable Assignment-tasks in just a few hours, I instructed my driver (an unnecessarily sarcastic fellow) to deliver me to the NTC General Infirmary.