“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.
‘. . . for consider, Lashadusa woman, nobody can be found to father it. Nobody wrought or thought it, phrases of it merely came together. Even the old nations of men could not own it. None of them knew who composed it. An element here from a Spanish pavan, an influence here of a French psalm tune, a flavour here of early English carol, a savour there of later German chorals. Nor are the faults of your bit of metricism confined to bastardy...’
‘Stay in your black box then, if you won’t see or listen,’ Dandi said. She could not get into his mind; it was the Mentor’s privilege to lodge in her mind, and in the minds of those few other wards he had, scattered round Earth. Only the mentors had the power of being in another’s mind—which made them rather tiring on occasions like this, when they would not get out of it. For over seventy years, Dandi’s mentor had been persuading her to die into a dirge of his choosing (and composing). Let her die, yes, let her transubstantiospatialize herself a thousand times! His quarrel was not with her decision but her taste, which he considered execrable.