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

by Edited By Judith Merril

  “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.

  <>

  * * * *

  OLD HUNDREDTH

  by Brian W. Aldiss

  In November, last year, the oldest British science-fiction magazine celebrated its 100th issue with an Imposing array of stories contributed almost entirely by members of the group of young writers which has grown up around New Worlds and its sister magazine. Science Fantasy, under the editorial guidance of editor-agent-publisher-reviewer E. J. Cornell.

  Some of the group now closely associated with the Nova publications were active in s-f before the emergence of New Worlds, and have been widely published in this country. These include such names as John Wyndham, J. T. Mcintosh, and John Christopher. Others have become familiar to American readers in the last few years, partly at least through Cornell’s energetic efforts to effect a mutual exchange of material. John Brunner, Kenneth Bulmer, and John Rackham are among these; as are Brian Aldiss, E. C. Tubb, and J. G. Ballard—all of whom appeared in earlier editions of this anthology when they were little or not at all known in this country. There are at least a half dozen more whose names-—I hope—we will be seeing more of here before long: writers of sustained quality, with ideas that are often fresher and more stimulating than most of what currently appears on the home scene. (Colin Kapp, , John Kippax, Philip E. High, Robert Presslie, James White, Clifford C. Reed ... for instance.)

  “Old Hundredth” was written specifically for the anniversary issue of NW—a story of the remote future when “We” are all “Others,” and all “Others” are “We.”

  * * * *

  The road climbed dustily down between trees as symmetrical as umbrellas. Its length was punctuated at one point by a musicolumn standing on the sandy verge. From a distance, the column was only a faint stain in the air. As sentient creatures neared it, their psyches activated it, it drew on their vitalities, and then it could be heard as well as seen. Their presence made it flower into pleasant noise, instrumental or chant.

  All this region was called Ghinomon, for nobody lived here anymore, not even the odd hermit Impure. It was given over to grass and the weight of time. Only a few wild goats activated the musicolumn nowadays, or a scampering vole wrung a brief chord from it in passing.

  When old Dandi Lashadusa came riding down that dusty road on her baluchitherium, the column began to intone. It was just an indigo trace on the air, hardly visible, for it repre­sented only a bonded pattern of music locked into the fabric of that particular area of space. It was also a transubstantiospatial shrine, the eternal part of a being that had de-materialized itself into music.

  The baluchitherium whinnied, lowered its head, and sneezed on to the gritty road.

  ‘Gently, Lass,’ Dandi told her mare, savouring the growth of the chords that increased in volume as she approached. Her long nose twitched with pleasure as if she could feel the melody along her olfactory nerves.

  Obediently, the baluchitherium slowed, turning aside to crop fern, although it kept an eye on the indigo stain. It liked things to have being or not to have being; these half-and-half objects disturbed it, though they could not impair its immense appetite.

  Dandi climbed down her ladder on to the ground, glad to feel the ancient dust under her feet. She smoothed her hair and stretched as she listened to the music.

  She spoke aloud to her mentor, half the world away, but he was not listening. His mind closed to her thoughts, he mut­tered an obscure exposition that darkened what it sought to clarify.


  ‘. . . useless to deny that it is well-nigh impossible to improve anything, however faulty, that has so much tradition behind it. And the origins of your bit of metricism are indeed embedded in such a fearful antiquity that we must needs-----’

  ‘Tush, Mentor, come out of your black box and forget your hatred of my “metricism” a moment,’ Dandi Lashadusa said, cutting her thought into his. ‘Listen to the bit of “metricism” I’ve found here, look at where I have come to, let your argu­ment rest.’

  She turned her eyes about, scanning the tawny rocks near at hand, the brown line of the road, the distant black and white magnificence of ancient Oldorajo’s town, doing this all for him, tiresome old fellow. Her mentor was blind, never left his cell in Peterbroe to go farther than the sandy courtyard, hadn’t physically left that green cathedral pile for over a cen­tury. Womanlike, she thought he needed change. Soul, how he rambled on! Even now, he was managing to ignore her and refute her.