Minding Helen Steeply at the Hal–Stice exhibition: gatekeeper and Academy spokesman

pivotal · 11 Nov YDAU

• When: 11 November YDAU, during the Hal-vs-Stice exhibition (first set; Poutrincourt takes his bleacher seat at the break)
• What: Under orders that were "explicit and emphatic" to keep the mammoth Moment soft-profiler Helen Steeply in direct sight at all times, deLint sits beside her through the exhibition, simultaneously filling in both players' performance charts (the ones Schtitt won't ever let anyone look at) and delivering the book's fullest statement of Academy doctrine: Hal as in essence a torturer, the complete-game gestalt, Wayne's superiority — and the governing creed that the point of E.T.A. is to inculcate that it's never about being seen, because the press and the Show chew players up. He stonewalls her real objective, access to Hal, deferring the "command-decision" upward while making his own No plain — the same anti-hype gatekeeping his scathing appendix to the Admissions Manual codifies, under the standing rule that nobody talks to a glossy magazine without Schtitt or deLint sitting right there. Mid-match he hikes back on an elbow to threaten Troeltsch into regulating his broadcast-patter volume; and Poutrincourt, taking his seat, supplies the staff-side read of him as a pure functionary of his superiors' pleasure. His single largest showcase.