Judith Merril - The Year's Greatest Science Fiction & Fantasy 6

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.

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.