The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 6 - [Anthology]

by Edited By Judith Merril

  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 te
rror. 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 Robadu
r’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?”