Why?
I don’t know why.
Are you a man?
What is a man? I’m a man by definition. By natural right By accident of fertilization. What else is a man?
Two billion years beat against you like surf, Walter Cordice. The twenty thousand fists of your hairy fathers thunder on you as a door. Open the way or be shattered.
I don’t know the way. I lost the way.
Through dream mists he fled his hairy fathers. But they in him preserved intact the dry wisps that bound him terribly with the tensile strength of meaning. They steadied the pebble that crushed him under the mountain-weight of symbol. All the time he knew it
By noon of the clouded day thirst was the greater agony. Cordice scarcely heard the popping noises made by the insects that fed on his crusted blood and serum. But he heard every plash and ripple of the priest-guarded water down-slope. Heard too, once and again, the death of boys whose animal thirst overpowered their precarious new bondage to the symbol. Only those who can remember what the grass wisps mean survive, Cordice thought. Poor damned kids! To be able to suffer and sin against instinct is to live and be human.
Jim’s and Leo’s voices faded in and out of his fever dreams. His back was numb now, where the rock dug into it
Rose of sunset crowned the great rock above the pool when White Bar prodded Cordice downslope with his club. Cordice limped and rubbed his back and every joint and muscle of his misused body ached and clamored for water. Jim and Leo looked well. Cordice scowled silence at their greetings. I’ll die without their damned pity, he thought. He moved apart from them into the group of native boys standing by the rock-edged pool. Their thin lips twitched and their flat nostrils flared and snuffled at the water smell. Cordice snuffled too. He saw Krebs, still masked in twigs and feathers, come through the rank of priests and talk to Jim. “You’ll all be thrown into the water, Andries. For the boys, Dark Robadur must swim the body to the bank or they drown. Light Robadur must prevent the body from drinking or they get clubbed. The two must co-act. Understand?”
Jim nodded and Krebs turned back to the priests. These kids can’t do it, Cordice thought. I can’t myself. He shook the arm of the boy beside him and looked into the frightened brown eyes. Don’t drink, he tried to say, but his throat was too gummed for speech. He smiled and nodded and pinched his lips together with his fingers. The boy smiled and pinched his own lips. Then all the boys were doing it. Cordice felt a strange feeling wash through him. It was like love. It was as if they were all his children.
Then wetness cooled his body and splashed his face. He dog paddled and bit his tongue to keep from gulping. White Bar jerked him up the bank again and behind him he heard the terrible cries and the club thuds. Tears stung his eyes.
Then he was limping and tumbling down the dark ravine. At steep places the native youths held his arms and helped him. They came through screening willows and he saw a fire near the brush-walled pit. The three women stood there. They looked all right. Cordice went with the boys toward the pit.
“Wally Toes! Don’t let them hurt you!” Martha cried.
“Shut up!” Cordice yelled. The yell tore his gummed throat.
The boys faced outward and danced in a circle around the pit. The priests danced the opposite way in a larger circle and faced inward. There was ten feet of annular space between the rings. The priests howled and flung their arms. Cordice was very tired. His heel hurt and his back felt humped. Each time they passed, White Bar howled and pointed at him. He saw Martha every time he passed the fire-lit area. A priest jumped across and pulled the boy next to Cordice into the space between the rings. Cordice had to dance on away, but he heard screams and club thuds. When he came around again he saw them toss a limp body between the dancers into the pit.
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.