“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.