The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 6

MINE OWN WAYS by Richard McKenna

Two years ago I had the pleasure of reprinting in this collection Richard McKenna’s first published story, “Casey Agonistes.” “Mac” was 44 when he sold “Casey.” Since then, he has established himself as a science-fantasy writer, made use of his first two careers (cowboy and sailor) in numerous stories and articles in the men’s adventure magazines, sold a story to The Saturday Evening Post, and is now at work on a novel derived from his own experiences while based at the Navy’s China Station.

Walter Cordice was plump and aging and he liked a quiet life. On what he’d thought was the last day of his last field job before retirement to New Zealand, he looked at his wife in the spy screen and was dismayed.

Life had not been at all quiet while he and Leo Brumm and Jim Andries had been building the hyperspace relay on Planet Robadur—they had their wives along and they’d had to live and work hidden under solid rock high on a high mountain. That was because the Robadurians were asymbolic and vulnerable to culture shock, and the Institute of Man, which had jurisdiction over hominid planets, forbade all contact with the natives. Even after they’d built her the lodge in a nearby peak, Martha was bored. Cordice had been glad when he and Andries had gone into Tau rapport with the communications relay unit.

That had been two months of peaceful isolation during which the unit’s Tau circuits copied certain neutral patterns in the men to make itself half sentient and capable of electronic telepathy. It was good and quiet. Now they were finished, ready to seal the station and take their pre-taped escape capsule back to Earth; only anthropologists from the Institute of Man would ever visit Robadur again.

And Walter Cordice stood in the wrecked lodge and the picture on the illicit spy screen belted him with dismay.

Robadurians were not symbol users. They simply couldn’t have raided the lodge. But the screen showed Martha and Willa Brumm and Allie Andries sitting bound to stakes at a forest edge. Martha’s blue dress and tight red curls were unruffled. She sat with her stumpy legs extended primly together and her hard, plump pout said she was grimly not believing what she saw either.

Near a stream, across a green meadow starred yellow with flowers, naked and bearded Robadurians dug a pit with sharp sticks. Others piled dry branches. They were tall fellows, lump-muscled under sparse fur, with low foreheads and muzzle jaws. One, in a devil mask of twigs and feathers, seemed an overseer. Beside Martha, pert, dark little Allie Andries cried quietly. Willa was straining her white arms against the cords. They knew they were in trouble, all right.

Cordice turned from the screen, avoiding the eyes of Leo Brumm and Jim Andries. In their tan coveralls against the silver and scarlet decor they seemed as out of place as the dead Robadurian youth at their feet. Leo’s chubby, pleasant face looked stricken. Jim Andries scowled. He was a big, loose-jointed man with bold angular features and black hair. They were young and junior and Cordice knew they were mutely demanding his decision.

Decision. He wouldn’t retire at stat-8 now, he’d be lucky to keep stat-7. But he’d just come out of rapport and so far he was clear and the law was clear too, very clear: you minimized culture shock at whatever cost to yourself. But abandon Martha? He looked down at the Robadurian youth. The smooth ivory skin was free of blue hair except on the crushed skull. He felt his face burn.

“Our wives bathed him and shaved him and made him a pet?” His voice shook slightly. “Leo ... Leo ...”

“My fault, sir. I built ‘em the spy screen and went to rescue the boy,” Leo said. “I didn’t want to disturb you and Jim in rapport.” He was a chunky, blond young man and he was quite pale now. “They—well, I take all the blame, sir.”

“The Institute of Man will fix blame,” Cordice said.

My fault, he thought. For bringing Martha against my better judgment. But Leo’s violation of the spy-screen ethic did lead directly to illicit contact and—this mess! Leo was young, they’d be lenient with him. All right, his fault. Cordice made his voice crisp.

“We minimize,” he said. “Slag the lodge, get over and seal up the station, capsule home to Earth and report this.”

Jim really scowled. “I love my wife, Cordice, whatever you think of yours,” he said. “I’m getting Allie out of there if I have to culture shock those blue apes to death with a flame jet.”

“You’ll do what I say, Andries! You and your wife signed a pledge and a waiver, remember?” Cordice tried to stare him down. “The law says she’s not worth risking the extinction of a whole species that may someday become human.”

“Damn the law, she’s worth it to me!” Jim said. “Cordice, those blue apes are human now. How else could they raid up here, kill this boy, carry off the women?” He spat. “We’ll drop you to seal the station, keep your hands clean. Leo and I’ll get the women.”

Cordice dropped his eyes. Damn his insolence! Still... Leo could testify Andries forced it... he’d still be clear....

“I’ll go along, to ensure minimizing,” he said. “Under protest—Leo, you’re witness to that. But slag this lodge right now!”

Minutes later Leo hovered the flyer outside while Cordice played the flame jet on the rock face. Rock steamed, spilled away, fused and sank into a bubbling, smoking cavity. Under it the dead youth, with his smooth, muscular limbs, was only a smear of carbon. Cordice felt better.

Half an hour later, lower on the same mountain, Leo hovered the flyer above the meadow. The Robadurians all ran wildly into the forest and Jim didn’t need to use the flame jet. Leo grounded and the men piled out and Cordice felt his stomach relax. They ran toward the women. Allie Andries was smiling but Martha was shouting something from an angry face. As he stooped to untie Martha the blue horde came back out of the forest. They came yelling and leaping and slashing with wet, leafy branches and the sharp smell....

Cordice came out of it sick with the awareness that he was tied to a stake like an animal and that it was his life, not his career, he had to save now. He feigned sleep and peered from eye-corners. Martha looked haggard and angry and he dreaded facing her. He couldn’t see the others, except Allie Andries and she was smiling faintly—at Jim, no doubt.

Those two kids must escape, Cordice thought.

He must have been unconscious quite a while because sunset flamed in red and gold down-valley and the pit looked finished. It was elliptical, perhaps thirty feet long and three deep. Robadurians were still mounding black earth along the sides and others were piling brush into a circumscribed thicket, roughly triangular. They chattered, but Cordice knew it was only a mood-sharing noise. That was what made it so horrible. They were asymbolic, without speech and prior to good and evil, a natural force like falling water. He couldn’t threaten, bribe or even plead. Despite his snub nose and full lips he could present an impressive face—at home on Earth. But not to such as these.

Beside the pit, the devil masker stood like a tall sentry. Abruptly he turned and strode toward Cordice, trailing his wooden spear. Cordice tensed and felt a scream shape itself in him. Then the devil towered lean and muscular-above him. He had no little finger on his spear hand. Keen gray eyes peered down through feathers and twigs.

“Cordice, you fool, why did you bring the women?” the devil asked in fluent English. “Now all your lives are forfeit.”

The scream collapsed in a grateful gasp. With speech Cordice felt armed again, almost free. But Martha spoke first. “Men need women to inspire them and give them courage!” she said. “Walto! Tell him who you are! Make him let us go!”

Walto meant she was angry. In affection she called him Wally Toes. But as usual she was right. He firmed his jowls and turned a cool stat-7 stare on the devil mask.

“Look here, if you know our speech you must know we never land on a hominid planet,” he said pleasantly. “There are plenty of other planets. For technical reasons we had to do a job here. It’s done. We have stores and tools to leave behind.” He laughed easily. ‘Take them and let us go. You’ll never see another of us.”

The devil shook his head. “It’s not what we might see, it’s what your women have already seen,” he said. “They know a holy secret and the god Robadur demands your deaths.”

Cordice paled but spoke smoothly. “I and Andries have been out of touch with the others for two months. I don’t know any secret. While we were isolated Brumm built the women a spy screen and rescued that boy—”

“Who was forfeit to Robadur. Robadur eats his children.”

“Arthur was being tortured when he broke free and ran,” Martha said. “I saw you there!”

“On your strictly unethical spy screen.”

“Why not? You’re only brute animals with your things hanging out!”

The devil pressed his spear to her throat. “Shut up or I’ll spear you now!” he said. Martha’s eyes blazed defiance.

“No! Quiet, Martha!” Cordice choked. His front collapsed. “Brumm did it all. Kill him and let us go!” He twisted in his bonds.

Leo spoke from behind. “Yes, I did it. Take me and let them go.” His voice was high and shaky too.

“No! Oh please, no!” That was Willa, sobbing.

“Stop that!” Jim Andries roared. “All of us or none! Listen, you behind the feathers, I know your secret. You’re a renegade playing god among the asymbolics. But we’re here on clearance from the Institute of Man and they’ll come looking for us. Your game’s up. Let us go and you’ll only be charged with causing culture shock.”

The devil grounded his spear and cocked his head. Robadurians around the pit stood up to watch. Martha shrilled into the hush. “My own brother is with the Institute of Man!”

“I told you shut up!” The devil slapped her with his spear butt. “I know your brother. Tom Brennan would kill you himself, to keep the secret.”

“What secret, Featherface? That you’re a god?” Jim asked.

“The secret that man created himself and what man has done, .man can do,” the devil said. “I’m not Robadur, An-dries, but I’m sealed to him from the Institute of Man. The Institute will cover for your deaths. It’s done the same on hundreds of other hominid planets, to keep the secret.”

“Roland Krebs! Rollo! You struck a lady—”

Like a snake striking, the spear leaped to her throat. She strained her head back and said, “Ah... ah... ah...” her face suddenly white and her eyes unbelieving.

“Don’t hurt her!” Cordice screamed. “We’ll swear to forget, if you let us go!”

The devil withdrew his spear and laughed. “Swear on what, Cordice? Your honor? Your soul?” He spat. “What man has done, man can undo. You’re the living proof!”

“We’ll swear by Robadur,” Cordice pleaded.

The devil looked off into the sunset. “You know, you might. You just might,” he said thoughtfully. “We seal a class of boys to Light Robadur tonight; you could go with them.” He turned back. “You’re the leader, Andries. What about it?”

“What’s it amount to?” Jim asked.

“It’s a ritual that turns animals into humans,” the devil said. “There are certain ordeals to eliminate the animals. If you’re really men you’ll be all right.”

“What about the women?” Jim’s voice was edgy.

“They have no souls. Robadur will hold you to account for them.”

“You have great faith in Robadur,” Jim said.

“Not faith, Andries, a scientist’s knowledge as hard as your own,” the devil said. “If you put a Robadurian into a barbering machine he wouldn’t need faith to get a haircut. Well, a living ritual is a kind of psychic machine. You’ll see.”

“All right, we agree,” Jim said. “But we’ll want our wives unhurt. Understand that, Featherface?”

The devil didn’t answer. He shouted and natives swarmed around the stakes. Hands untied Cordice and jerked him erect and his heart was pounding so hard he felt dizzy.

“Don’t let them hurt you, Wally Toes!”

Fleetingly in Martha’s shattered face he saw the ghost of the girl he had married thirty years ago. She had a touch of the living beauty that lighted the face Allie Andries turned on Jim. Cordice said good-by to the ghost, numb with fear.

Cordice slogged up the dark ravine like a wounded bull. He knew the priests chasing him would spear him like the hunted animal he was unless he reached sanctuary by a sacred pool somewhere ahead. Long since Jim and Leo and the terrified Robadurian youths had gone ahead of him. Stones cut his feet and thorns ripped his skin. Leo and Jim were to blame and they were young and they’d live. He was innocent and he was old and he’d die. Not fair. Let them die too. His lungs flamed with agony and at the base of a steep cascade his knees gave way.

Die here. Not fair. He heard the priests coming and his back muscles crawled with terror. Die fighting. He scrabbled in the water for a stone. Face to the spears. He cringed lower.

Jim and Leo came back down the cascade and helped him up it. “Find your guts, Cordice!” Jim said. They jerked him along, panting and swearing, until the ravine widened to make a still pool under a towering rock crowned red with the last of sunset. Twenty-odd Robadurian youths huddled whimpering on a stony slope at left. Then priests came roaring and after that Cordice took it in flashes.

He had a guardian devil, a monstrous priest with clay in white bars across his chest. White Bar and others drove him up the slope, threw him spreadeagled on his back, and staked down his wrists and ankles with wisps of grass. They placed a pebble on his chest. He tried to remember that these were symbolic restraints and that White Bar would kill him if he broke the grass or dislodged the pebble. Downslope a native boy screamed and broke his bonds and priests smashed his skull. Cordice shuddered and lay very quiet. But when they pushed the thorn in front of his left Achilles tendon he gasped and drew up his leg. The pebble tumbled off and White Bar’s club crashed down beside his head and he died.

He woke aching and cold under starlight and knew he had only fainted. White Bar sat shadowy beside him on an outcrop, club across hairy knees. Downslope the native boys sang a quavering tone song without formed words. They were mood-sharing, expressing sorrow and fearful wonder. I could almost sing with them, Cordice thought. The pebble was on his chest again and he could feel the grass at his wrists and ankles. A stone dug into his back and he shifted position very carefully so as not to disturb the symbols. Nearby but not in view Jim and Leo began to talk in low voices.

Damn them, Cordice thought. They’ll live and I’ll die. I’m dying now. Why suffer pain and indignity and die anyway? I’ll just sit up and let White Bar end it for me. But first—

“Leo,” he said.

“Mr. Cordice! Thank heaven! We thought—how do you feel, sir?”

“Bad. Leo—wanted to say—a fine job here. Your name’s in for stat-3. Wanted to say—this all my fault. Sorry.

“No, sir,” Leo said. “You were in rapport, how could you—”

“Before that. When I let Martha come and so couldn’t make you juniors leave your wives behind.” Cordice paused. “I owe— Martha made me, in a way, Leo.”

Her pride, he thought. Her finer feelings. Her instant certainty of rightness that bolstered his own moral indecision. So she ruled him.

“I know,” Leo said. “Willa’s proud and ambitious for me, too.”

Martha worked on Willa, Cordice thought. Hinted she could help Leo’s career. So she got her spy screen. Well, he had been grading Leo much higher than Jim. Martha didn’t like Allie’s and Jim’s attitude.

“I’m going to die, boys,” Cordice said. “Will you forgive me?”

“No,” Jim said. “You’re woman-whipped to a helpless nothing, Cordice. Forgive yourself, if you can.”

“Look here, Andries, I’ll remember that,” Cordice said.

“I’m taking Allie to a frontier planet,” Jim said. “We’ll never see a hairless slug like you again.”

Leo murmured a protest. I’ll live just to get even with Andries, Cordice thought. Damn his insolence! His heel throbbed and the stone still gouged his short ribs. He shifted carefully and it felt better. He hummed the native boys’ song deep in his throat and that helped too. He began to doze. If I live I’ll grow my body hair again, he thought. At least the pubic hair.

Jim’s voice woke him: Cordice! Lie quiet, now! He opened his eyes to hairy legs all around him and toothed beast faces in torchlight roaring a song and White Bar with club poised trembling-ready and no little finger on his right hand. The song roared over Cordice like thunder and sparks like tongues of fire rained down to sear his body. He whimpered and twitched but did not dislodge the stone on his chest. The party moved on. Downslope a boy screamed and club thuds silenced him. And again, and Cordice felt sorry for the boys.

“Damn it all, that really hurt!” Jim said.

“This was the ordeal that boy Arthur failed, only he got away,” Leo said. “Mrs. Cordice kept him on the screen until I could rescue him.”

“How’d he act?” Jim asked.

“Trusted me, right off. Willa said he was very affectionate and they taught him all kinds of tricks. But never speech— he got wild when they tried to make him talk, Willa told me.

I’m affectionate. I know all kinds of tricks, Cordice thought. Downslope the torches went out and the priests were singing with the boys. White Bar, seated again beside Cordice on the outcrop, sang softly too. It was a new song of formed words and it disturbed Cordice. Then he heard footsteps behind his head and Jim spoke harshly.

“Hello, Featherface, we’re still around,” Jim said. “Mrs. Cordice called you a name. Krebs, wasn’t it? Just who in hell are you?”

“Roland Krebs. I’m an anthropologist,” the devil’s voice said. “I almost married Martha once, but she began calling me Rollio just in time.”

That guy? Cordice opened his mouth, then closed it. Damn him. He’d pretend a faint, try not to hear.

“You can’t share the next phase of the ritual and it’s your great loss,” Krebs said. “Now each boy is learning the name that he will claim for his own in the last phase, if he survives. The men have a crude language and the boys long ago picked up the words like parrots. Now, as they sing with the priests, the words come alive in them.”

“How do you mean?” Jim asked.

“Just that. The words assort together and for the first time mean. That’s the Robadurian creation myth they’re singing.” Krebs lowered his voice. “They’re not here now like you are, Andries. They’re present in the immediacy of all their senses at the primal creation of their human world.”

“Our loss? Yes... our great loss.” Jim sounded bemused.

“Yes. For a long time words have been only a sickness in our kind,” Krebs said. “But ideas can still assort and mean. Take this thought: we’ve found hominids on thousands of planets, but none more than barely entered on the symbol-using stage. Paleontology proves native hominids have been stuck on the threshold of evolving human minds for as long as two hundred million years. But on Earth our own symbol-using minds evolved in about three hundred thousand years.”

“Does mind evolve?” Jim asked softly.

“Brain evolves, like fins change to feet,” Krebs said. “The hominids can’t evolve a central nervous system adequate for symbols. But on Earth, in no time at all, something worked a structural change in one animal’s central nervous system greater than the gross, outward change from reptile to mammal.”

“I’m an engineer,” Jim said. “The zoologists know what worked it.”

“Zoologists always felt natural selection couldn’t have worked it so fast,” Krebs said. “What we’ve learned on the hominid planets proves it can’t. Natural selection might take half a billion years. Our fathers took a short cut.”

“All right,” Jim said. “All right. Our fathers were their own selective factor, in rituals like this one. They were animals and they bred themselves into men. Is that what you want me to say?”

“I want you to feel a little of what the boys feel now,” Krebs said. “Yes. Our fathers invented ritual as an artificial extension of instinct. They invented a ritual to detect and conserve all mutations in a human direction and eliminate regressions toward the animal norm. They devised ordeals in which normal animal-instinctive behavior meant death and only those able to sin against instinct could survive to be human and father the next generation.” His voice shook slightly. “Think on that, Andries! Human and animal brothers born of the same mother and the animals killed at puberty when they failed certain ordeals only human minds could bear.”

“Yes. Our secret. Our real secret.” Jim’s voice shook too. “Cain killing Abel through ten thousand generations. That created me.”

Cordice shivered and the rock gouged his short ribs.

“Dark Robadur’s sin is Light Robadur’s grace and the two are one,” Krebs said. “You know, the Institute has made a science of myth. Dark Robadur is the species personality, instinct personified. Light Robadur is the human potential of these people. He binds Dark Robadur with symbols and coerces him with ritual. He does it in love, to make his people human.”

“In love and fear and pain and death,” Jim said.

“In pain and death. Those who died tonight were animals. Those who die tomorrow will be failed humans who know they die,” Krebs said. “But hear their song.”

“I hear it. I know how they feel and thank you for that, Krebs,” Jim said. “And it’s only the boys?”

“Yes. The girls will get half their chromosomes from their fathers. They will get all the effect of the selection except that portion on the peculiarly male Y-chromosome,” Krebs said. “They will remain without guilt, sealed to Dark Robadur. It will make a psychic difference.”

“Ah. And you Institute people start these rituals on the hominid planets, make them self-continuing, like kindling a fire already laid,” Jim said slowly. “Culture shock is a lie.”

“It’s no lie, but it does make a useful smoke screen.”

“Ah. Krebs, thank you. Krebs—” Jim lowered his voice and Cordice strained to hear. “—would you say Light Robadur might be a transhuman potential?”

“I hope he may go on to become so,” Krebs said. “Now you know the full measure of our treason. And now I’ll leave you.”

His footsteps died away. Leo spoke for the first time.

“Jim, I’m scared. I don’t like this. Is this ritual going to make us transhuman? What does that mean?”

“We can’t know. Would you ask an ape what human means?” Jim said. “Our fathers bred themselves through a difference in kind. Then they stopped, but they didn’t have to. I hope one of these hominid planets will breed on through the human to another difference in kind.” He laughed. “That possibility is the secret we have to keep.”

“I don’t like it. I don’t want to be transhuman,” Leo said, “Mr. Cordice! Mr. Cordice, what do you think?”

Cordice didn’t answer. Why let that damned Andries insult him again? Besides, he didn’t know what to think.

“He’s fainted or dead, poor fat old bastard,” Jim said. “Leo, all this ritual is doing to you is forcing you to prove your human manhood, just like the boys have to. We have our manhood now only by accident of fertilization.”

“I don’t like it,” Leo said. “That transhuman stuff. It’s ... immoral.”

“It’s a hundred thousand years away yet,” Jim said. “But I like it. What I don’t like is to think that the history of galactic life is going to head up and halt forever in the likes of old Wally Toes there.”

“He’s not so bad,” Leo said. “I hope he’s still alive.”

I am, God damn you both! Cordice thought. They stopped talking.

Downslope the priest voices faded and the boys sang their worded Creation song alone. White Bar went away. The sky paled above the great rock and bright planets climbed to view. Cordice felt feverish. He lapsed into a half-dream.

He saw a fanned network of golden lines. Nodes thickened to become fish, lizards and men. A voice whispered: All life is a continuum in time. Son to father, the germ worldline runs back unbroken to the primordial ocean. For you life bowed to sex and death. For you it gasped sharp air with feeble lungs. For you it bore the pain of gravity in bones too weak to bear it. Ten thousand of your hairy fathers, each in his turn, won through this test of pain and terror to make you a man.

Why?

I don’t know why.

Are you a man?

What is a man? I’m a man by definition. By natural right By accident of fertilization. What else is a man?

Two billion years beat against you like surf, Walter Cordice. The twenty thousand fists of your hairy fathers thunder on you as a door. Open the way or be shattered.

I don’t know the way. I lost the way.

Through dream mists he fled his hairy fathers. But they in him preserved intact the dry wisps that bound him terribly with the tensile strength of meaning. They steadied the pebble that crushed him under the mountain-weight of symbol. All the time he knew it

By noon of the clouded day thirst was the greater agony. Cordice scarcely heard the popping noises made by the insects that fed on his crusted blood and serum. But he heard every plash and ripple of the priest-guarded water down-slope. Heard too, once and again, the death of boys whose animal thirst overpowered their precarious new bondage to the symbol. Only those who can remember what the grass wisps mean survive, Cordice thought. Poor damned kids! To be able to suffer and sin against instinct is to live and be human.

Jim’s and Leo’s voices faded in and out of his fever dreams. His back was numb now, where the rock dug into it

Rose of sunset crowned the great rock above the pool when White Bar prodded Cordice downslope with his club. Cordice limped and rubbed his back and every joint and muscle of his misused body ached and clamored for water. Jim and Leo looked well. Cordice scowled silence at their greetings. I’ll die without their damned pity, he thought. He moved apart from them into the group of native boys standing by the rock-edged pool. Their thin lips twitched and their flat nostrils flared and snuffled at the water smell. Cordice snuffled too. He saw Krebs, still masked in twigs and feathers, come through the rank of priests and talk to Jim. “You’ll all be thrown into the water, Andries. For the boys, Dark Robadur must swim the body to the bank or they drown. Light Robadur must prevent the body from drinking or they get clubbed. The two must co-act. Understand?”

Jim nodded and Krebs turned back to the priests. These kids can’t do it, Cordice thought. I can’t myself. He shook the arm of the boy beside him and looked into the frightened brown eyes. Don’t drink, he tried to say, but his throat was too gummed for speech. He smiled and nodded and pinched his lips together with his fingers. The boy smiled and pinched his own lips. Then all the boys were doing it. Cordice felt a strange feeling wash through him. It was like love. It was as if they were all his children.

Then wetness cooled his body and splashed his face. He dog paddled and bit his tongue to keep from gulping. White Bar jerked him up the bank again and behind him he heard the terrible cries and the club thuds. Tears stung his eyes.

Then he was limping and tumbling down the dark ravine. At steep places the native youths held his arms and helped him. They came through screening willows and he saw a fire near the brush-walled pit. The three women stood there. They looked all right. Cordice went with the boys toward the pit.

“Wally Toes! Don’t let them hurt you!” Martha cried.

“Shut up!” Cordice yelled. The yell tore his gummed throat.

The boys faced outward and danced in a circle around the pit. The priests danced the opposite way in a larger circle and faced inward. There was ten feet of annular space between the rings. The priests howled and flung their arms. Cordice was very tired. His heel hurt and his back felt humped. Each time they passed, White Bar howled and pointed at him. He saw Martha every time he passed the fire-lit area. A priest jumped across and pulled the boy next to Cordice into the space between the rings. Cordice had to dance on away, but he heard screams and club thuds. When he came around again he saw them toss a limp body between the dancers into the pit.

They took more boys and made them kneel and did something to them. If the boys couldn’t stand it, they killed them. Even if they did stand it, the priests threw them afterward into the pit. I’ve got to stand it, Cordice thought. If I don’t, they’ll kill me. Then White Bar howled and leaped and had him.

Threw him to his knees.

Held his right hand on a flat stone.

Pulled aside the little finger.

Bruising it off with a fist axe! Can’t STAND it!

Outrage exploded in screaming pain. Hidden strength leaped roaring to almost-action. Then his hairy fathers came and made him be quiet and he stood it. White Bar chewed through the tendons with his teeth and when the finger was off and the stump seared with an ember the priests threw Cordice into the pit.

He felt other bodies thump beside him and his hairy fathers came very near. All around him they grinned and whispered: You ARE a man. Your way is open. He felt good, sure and. peaceful and strong in a way he had never felt before. He wanted to hold the feeling and he tried not to hear Jim’s voice calling him for fear he would lose it. But he had to, so he opened his eyes and got to his feet. Leo and Jim grinned at him.

“I knew you’d make it, old timer, and I’m glad,” Jim said.

Cordice still had the feeling. He grinned and clasped bloody hands with his friends. All around the pit above their heads the piled brush crackled and leaped redly with flame.

Beyond the fire the priests began singing and Cordice could see them dancing in fantastic leaps. The living native boys struggled free of the dead ones and stood up. He counted fourteen. Smoke blew across the pit and the air was thick and suffocating. It was very hot and they all kept coughing and shifting and turning.

Outside the singing stopped and someone shouted a word. One native boy raised his arms and hunted back and forth along the pit edge. He went close and recoiled again.

“They called his name,” Jim said. “Now he has to go through the fire to claim it. Now he has to break Dark Robadur’s most holy Thou shalt not.”

Again the shout. Twice the boy stepped up and twice recoiled. His eyes rolled and he looked at Cordice without seeing him. His face was wild with animal fire-fear.

Leo was crying. “They can’t see out there. Let’s push him up,” he said.

“No,” Cordice said. He felt a Presence over the pit. It was anxious and sorrowful. It was familiar and strange and expected and very right. His hairy fathers were no part of it, but they greeted it and spoke through him.

“Robadur, Robadur, give him strength to pass,” Cordice prayed.

A third shout. The boy went up and through the flame in one great leap. Vast, world-lifting joy swirled and thundered through the Presence.

“Jim, do you feel it?” Cordice asked.

“I feel it,” Jim said. He was crying too.

The next boy tried and fell back. He stood rigid in the silence after the third shout. It was a terrible silence. His hair was singed off and his face was blackened and his lips were skinned back over strong white teeth. His eyes stared and they were not human now and they were very sad.

“I’ve got to help him,” Leo said.

Jim and Cordice held Leo back. The boy dropped suddenly to all fours. He burrowed under the dead boys who didn’t have names either. Vast sorrow infolded and dropped through the Presence. Cordice wept.

Boy after boy went through. Their feet knocked a dark gap in the flaming wall. Then the voice called Walter Cordice! Cordice went up and through the dark gap and the fire was almost gone there and it was easy.

He went directly to Martha. All her bright hardness and pout was gone and she wore the ghost face. It gleamed as softly radiant as the face of little Allie Andries, who still waited for Jim. Cordice drew Martha off into the shadows and they held each other without talking in words. They watched as the others came out and then priests used long poles to push the flaming wall into the pit. They watched the fire die down and they didn’t talk and the dancers went away and Cordice felt the Presence go away too, insensibly. But something was left.

“I love you, Martha,” he said.

They both knew he had the power to say that word and the right to have a woman.

Then another long time and when he looked up again the flyer was there. Willa and Allie stood beside it in dim firelight and Krebs was coming toward him.

“Come along, Cordice, I’ll dress that hand for you,” Krebs said.

“I’ll wait by the fire, Walter,” Martha said.

Cordice followed Krebs into the forest. His nervous strength was leaving him and his legs felt rubbery. He hurt all over and he needed water, but he still felt good. They came to where light gleamed through a hut of interlaced branches. Leo and Jim were already dressed and standing inside by a rough table and chest. Almost at once the plasti-gel soothed Cordice’s cuts and blisters. He dressed and drank sparingly from the cup of water Jim handed him.

“Well, men—” he said. They all laughed.

Krebs was pulling away the twigs and feathers of his mask. Under it he had the same prognathous face as the Robadurian priests. It wasn’t ugly at all.

“Cordice, I suppose you know they can regenerate that finger for you back on Earth,” he said. He combed three fingers through his beard. “Biofield therapists work wonders, these days.”

“I won’t bother,” Cordice said. “When do we swear our oath? I can swear now.”

“No need.” Krebs said. “You’re sealed to Robadur now. You’ll keep the secret.”

“I would have anyway,” Jim said.

Krebs nodded. “Yes, you were always a man.”

They shook hands around and said good-by. Cordice led the way to the flyer. He walked hard on his left heel to feel the pain and he knew that it is no small thing, to be a man.