Robert Silverberg - At Winter's End

A voice said over her shoulder, “Poor Hresh. He’s afraid of the Going Forth, isn’t he? I don’t blame him.”

Minbain looked around. Cheysz had come up beside her, small timid Cheysz. Yesterday Minbain and Cheysz and two of the other women had worked for hours, packing chunks of meat in bags made of skin.

Cheysz said, “I’ve been thinking, Minbain. As we do all this preparing for the Going Forth. What if they’re wrong?”

“What? Who?”

“Koshmar. Thaggoran. Wrong that this really is the New Springtime.”

Minbain pulled Hresh even closer against her breast, and clapped her hands over his ears. In fury she said to Cheysz, “Have you gone crazy? You’ve been thinking ? Don’t think, Cheysz. Koshmar thinks for us.”

“Please don’t look at me like that. I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Outside. It’s dangerous out there. What if I don’t want to go? We could die in the cold. There are wild animals. Yissou only knows what we’ll find out there. I like it in the cocoon. Why must we all leave, simply because Koshmar wants us to? Minbain, I want to stay here.”

Minbain was aghast. This was profoundly subversive talk. It horrified her that Hresh was taking it all in.

“We all want to stay here,” said a deep new voice behind her. It was Kalide, Bruikkos’ mother, another of the meat-packers of yesterday: like Minbain, a woman past middle years whose mate had died and who had shifted from breeding status to that of a worker. She was perhaps the oldest woman in the cocoon. “Of course we want to stay, Cheysz. It’s warm and safe in here. But it’s our destiny to go outside. We’re the chosen ones — the People of the New Springtime.”

Cheysz swung around, glaring, and laughed harshly. Minbain had never seen such fire in her. “Easy for you to say, Kalide! You’re practically at the limit-age anyway. One way or another, you’d be outside the cocoon before long. But I—”

“Don’t talk to me like that!” Kalide snapped. “You little coward, I ought to—”

“What’s going on?” said Delim, stepping forward suddenly. She was the fourth of the packers, a sturdy woman with deep orange fur and heavy, sloping shoulders. She put herself between Cheysz and Kalide, pushing them apart. “You think you’re warriors, now? Come on. Come on. Back off. We have work to do. What is this, Minbain? Are they going to have a fight?”

Softly Minbain said, “Cheysz is a little overwrought. She said an unkind thing to Kalide. It’ll pass.”

“We’re on packing detail again today,” Delim said. “We ought to go.”

“You go,” said Minbain. “I’ll be there in a little while.”

She glowered at Cheysz and made a quick brushing gesture with her hand, urging her away. After a moment Cheysz moved off toward the animal pen, Delim and Kalide close behind her. Minbain released Hresh from her grasp. He stepped back, looking up at her.

“I want you to forget everything you just heard,” she said.

“How can I do that? You know I can’t forget anything.”

“Don’t speak about it to anyone, is what I meant. The things Cheysz said.”

“About being afraid to leave the cocoon? About wondering whether Koshmar’s wrong about the New Springtime?”

“Don’t even repeat them to me. Cheysz could be punished very severely for saying such things. She could be cast out of the People. And I know she didn’t actually mean them. She’s a very kind woman, Cheysz — very gentle, very frightened—” Minbain paused. “Are you frightened about leaving the cocoon, Hresh?”

“Me?” he said, and his voice rang with disbelief. “Of course not!”

“I didn’t think so,” Minbain said.

“Form the line there!” Koshmar called. “Shape it up! You all know your places. Take them!” She held the Wand of Coming Forth in her left hand, and an obsidian-tipped spear in her right. A brilliant yellow sash was wrapped over her right shoulder and across her breast.

Hresh felt himself beginning to shiver. At last the moment had arrived! His dream, his wish, his joy. The whole tribe stood assembled in the Place of Going Out. Torlyri, the sweet-voiced offering-woman, was turning the wheel that moved the wall, and the wall was moving.

Cool air came rushing in. The hatch was open.

Hresh stared at Koshmar. She looked strange. Her fur was puffed up so that she seemed to be twice her normal size, and her eyes had turned to little slits. Her nostrils were flaring; her hands moved urgently across her breasts, which appeared bigger than usual. Even her sexual parts were swollen as if they were hot. Koshmar was not a breeder; it was odd to see her heated up like that. Some powerful emotion must be sweeping her, Hresh thought, some excitement brought on by the arrival of the Time of Going Forth. How proud she must be that she was the one to lead the tribe out of its cocoon! How excited!

And he realized that he felt some of the same excitement himself. He looked down. His own undeveloped mating-rod was stiff and jutting. The little balls beneath it felt heavy and hard. His sensing-organ tingled.

“All right, forward, now!” Koshmar boomed. “Move along and keep your places, and sing. Sing! ”

Terror showed plainly in the eyes of many about him. Their faces were frozen with fear. Hresh looked at Cheysz and saw her trembling; but Delim had her by one arm and Kalide by the other, and they moved her along. A few of the other women looked just as frightened — Valmud, Weiawala, Sinistine — and even some of the men, even warriors like Thhrouk and Moarn, were definitely uneasy, Hresh was hard put to understand it, that dread they must be feeling as they stared into the unknown frosty wilderness that awaited them. For him the Going Forth had come none too soon. But for most of the others the departure seemed to be striking with the force of a hatchet. To step out into this vast mystery beyond the cocoon — to leave behind the only world that they and their forefathers had known throughout a span of time that seemed to take in all eternity — no, no, they were scared out of their skins, all but a handful. Hresh could see that easily. He felt contempt for their timidity and compassion for their fear, inextricably mixed in one muddled emotion.

“ Sing! ” Koshmar cried again.

A faint, straggling sound came up from a few voices, Koshmar’s, Torlyri’s, Hresh’s. The warrior Lakkamai, who was always so quiet, suddenly began to sing. Now came Harruel’s harsh heavy tuneless voice too, and Salaman’s; and then, surprisingly, that of mother Minbain, who hardly ever sang at all, and one by one the others picked it up too, uncertainly at first and then with more vigor, until at last from sixty throats at once came the Hymn of the New Springtime:

Now ends the darkness

Now shines the light.

Now comes the warm time.

Now is our hour.

Koshmar and Torlyri passed through the hatch side by side, with Thaggoran hobbling along right behind them, and then Konya, Harruel, Staip, Lakkamai, and the rest of the older males. Hresh, marching third from the end, threw his head back and bellowed the words louder than anyone:

Into the world now

Fearless and bold.

Now are we masters

Now shall we rule.

Taniane gave him a scornful look, as though his raucous singing offended her dainty ears. Haniman, that waddling plump boy, sticking close beside Taniane as he usually did, made a face at him also. Hresh stuck his tongue out at them. What did he care for Taniane’s opinion, or glassy-eyed Haniman’s? This was the great day at last. The exodus from the cocoon was finally under way; and nothing else mattered. Nothing.