This he spoke to each one who made obeisance to him, and each one responded: “Show me the path!”
The procession shuffled on, and formed ranks beyond the bier. And when the last one made his obeisance, the three eldest-born from the Dead One’s body came forward. They lifted the vine-woven sling which cradled the Dead One. Flanked by Shokk-elorrisch on one side and the shaman on the other—all of them chanting: “You are all of us; your eyes saw the path; your hand fed us; your pelt warmed our bodies. We are grateful; we honor you; we sanctify the memory of you; we give you back to yourself!”
Chanting this, their tread matched to the chant, they advanced to the edge of the cliff. There they stopped, and the cadenced rhythm of their chant broke with the cry, “We cast you out!” and they hurled the Dead One into the foaming sea. And the sons of the Dead One and the shaman turned to Shokk-elorrisch. They made obeisance to him, and they said: “Show us the path!”
But Shokk-elorrisch did not answer, nor did he show them any sign that he heard. Standing at the cliff edge, the wind rippling his pelt and the waves crashing on rocks far below, he faced out to sea and made obeisance to the Olympians who lived on the round mountain, there on the island that rose from the horizon—the Olympians, who never had to migrate in search of new hunting ground, and who watched from the boulder that floated like a cloud in the wind—who watched but took no part in the things they witnessed.
And he wondered, even as he made obeisance to them, why they kept themselves aloof, and what was the source of their powers, and whether his people, too, could achieve those powers—to become the equals of those strange and enigmatic beings.
And he wondered, too, would they teach him? Would they teach him if he went to that mountain—out there in the ocean? Would they permit him to learn the secret of their powers?
He wondered how to cross those tattered waves—how to climb that shore and ascend to the crest of that mountain.
Thinking thus, Shokk-elorrisch knew what his path would be. And the path of his people.
Toward greatness. Toward the mastery of Nature.
Toward glory.
HEMINGWAY IN SPACE
by Kingsley Amis
Last year I took occasion to do considerable sniping at some sins of omission, and a few commissions, in Kingsley Amis’s critical book on science fiction, “New Maps of Hell.” When my first fine fury began to die down, it occurred to me that my fire might better have been aimed at the general literary reviewers (who took the Amis dicta as a sort of newstyle Holy Writ) than at the author, who never claimed infallibility for himself.
One of Mr. Amis’s sharpest criticisms of science fantasy in general was the lack of good humorous writing in the field. From the examples he cited, and those he did not, I suspect we do not always laugh at the same jokes. Not always: at least one exception (and probably several more) appeared in the series of parodies published in Punch last year, when that venerable institution of humor announced it had ordered “SF stories in the manner of Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope ...” etc.
Mr. Amis’s expertise as a critic of s-f was assigned him by reviewers who did not know the science-fantasy field, but did know, and respect (with cause), the author’s reputation as a leading “Angry Young Man” novelist and essayist. His expertise as a writer—in this case a superb parodist—is not the property of the reviewers, but very much his own.
The woman watched him and he made another sweep. There was nothing again but he knew one of them was around. It got so you always knew. After twenty years it got so you always knew when one of them was around.
“Anything?”
“Not yet.”
“I thought you could tell just where to find these things, she said. “I thought we hired you because you could take us straight to one of these things. I thought that was why we hired you.”
“Easy now, Martha,” the young fellow said. “Nobody can find xeeb where there aren’t any xeeb, not even Mr. Hardacre. We’ll come across one any minute now.”
She moved away from the three of them at the instrument panel and her thighs were arrogant under the tight space jeans. You bitch, Philip Hardacre thought suddenly. You goddam, bored, boring, senseless bitch. He felt sorry for the young fellow. He was a pretty nice fellow and here he was married to this goddam senseless bitch and it looked like he was too afraid of her to tell her to get the hell out although you knew he wanted to.
“I feel him near,” the old Martian said, turning the bigger and more grizzled of his two heads toward Philip Hardacre. “We shall see him soon now.”
The woman leaned against the ship’s side and stared out the port. “I can’t think why you have to go hunting these monstrosities. Two days it’s been since we left and we could have been in Venusport all that while instead of cooped up in this steel jalopy a couple of light years from civilization. What’s so good about getting a xeeb even if you do get one? What does it prove, getting a xeeb?”
“The xeeb is the largest life-form in this part of the galaxy.” The young fellow was a school professor or something like that and you could tell it from the way he spoke. “More than that its the only sentient creature living out here in free space and it’s ferocious, it’s been known to take on a scout ship. It’s the toughest damn thing there is. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“That’s part of it,” Philip Hardacre said. There was that although there was much more, the freedom out there and the stars against the black and the men small in their suits and afraid and yet not afraid and even the xeeb small in the vastness and the cool joy if the xeeb was a good one.
“He comes,” the old Martian said in his whistling tones, his smaller head bent toward the screen. “See, lady.”
“I don’t want to see,” she said, turning her back. It was a deadly insult under the ancient Martian code of honor and she knew it and Philip Hardacre knew she knew it and there was hate in his throat but there was no time now for hate.
He got up from the panel. There was no doubt about it. An amateur could have taken the blip for an asteroid or another ship but after twenty years you knew immediately. “Suit up,” he said. “Spaceside in three minutes.”
He helped the young fellow with the helmet and what he had been dreading happened, the Martian had taken out his own suit and was stiffly putting his rear pair of legs into it. He went over to him and put his hand between the two necks in the traditional gesture of appeal. “This is not your hunt, Ghlmu,” he said in the archiac Martian courtly tongue.
“I am still strong and he is big and he comes fast.”
“I know it, but this is not your hunt. Old ones are hunted more than they hunt.”
“All my eyes are straight and all my hands are tight.”
“But they are slow and they must be quick. Once they were quick but now they are slow.”
“Har-dasha, it is thy comrade who asks thee.”
“My blood is yours as in all the years, it is only my thought that must seem cruel, old one. I will hunt without you.”
“Hunt well, Har-dasha, then! I await you always,” the old creature said, using the ritual formula of acquiescence.
“Are we going to shoot this goddam whale or not?” The woman’s voice was shrill. “Or are you and that thing going on whistling at each other all night?”
He turned on her savagely. “You’re out of this. You’re staying right here where you belong. Put that blaster back on the rack and take off that space-suit and start making food. We’ll be back in half an hour.”