CHAD OLIVER

He's a big wide-shouldered Texas-tall man who smiles often, is hard on himself and gentle with others. He enjoys the direct verbal challenge of a college classroom, and students respond to his wit, his natural ease, the unquestioned knowledge behind what he tells them.

In science fiction, though it sometimes discomforts him to recall the fact, he began as a rabid fan, a prolific letter-writer of awesome intensity. In the old days, when almost every science fiction magazine had a letter column, Oliver filled them. He raved, criticized, congratulated authors, rated stories, inserted puns, bemoaned cover illustrations. Yet his boyish enthusiasm was tempered with sound story judgment; his wild wit was leavened with serious suggestions as to the improvement of the genre. He was a buff, an aficionado, a True Believer.

It was inevitable, therefore, that when Chad Oliver began to write professionally his efforts were science-fictional, combining his study of anthropology with his basic sympathy for and awareness of the human condition. Chad was, then, that rare and welcome fellow, the practical dreamer; his fiction was rooted in hard science, but the tendrils of his creative imagination thrust out to the stars.

He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1928—and grew up digging jazz and football and pulp magazines. He soon became a Texan, and now it is difficult to think of him as anything else. His family lived in Crystal City, and Chad learned to ride, acquired a lasting

109

110

Chad Oliver

affection for the vast lands, the winds and skies, prairies and canyons of this sprawling state. He has become an expert in the history of the Plains Indian, and some of his best work utilizes this expansive historical background: stories in Argosy and Saturday Evening Post —and a splendidly realized novel, The Wolf Is My Brother.

He was twenty-two when he sold his first story, "The Boy Next Door," to Anthony Boucher, then editing Fantasy and Science Fiction.* Martha Foley cited it that season for her "Distinctive Short Stories in American Magazines," a signal honor for a beginning writer.

Boucher wrote of him, "Oliver is a prime contender for the Heinlein-Clarke front rank of genuine science fiction, in which the science is as accurately absorbing as the fiction is richly human."

Chad's offbeat humor and a broad sense of the absurd often thread his work; during an informal radio interview he was asked, quite seriously, where he'd met his wife. Chad politely replied, "In the science lab at college. I was going to the cabinet to obtain some rare bone specimens. I pulled out a big drawer and there she was."

I met him in 1953, when he was in California studying for his Ph.D. in anthropology at U.C.L.A. (He had already earned B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Texas.) Forry Ackerman was then agenting Chad's science fiction work, as he was mine. I was still a year away from my first sale and eager to learn the secrets of professional science fiction. I found, in Chad's stories, a natural warmth which intrigued me. The man himself matched it, and his wife, Beje (or BJ—for Betty Jane) was equally delightful. We all became close friends.

The Olivers eventually rented a small, rustic wooden cabin perched high on a dirt ledge in the Bel Air Hills—and the regular group who gathered there included the Charles Beaumonts and the Richard Mathe-

* As the index shows, two other stories appeared first in Super Science due to Boucher's inability to schedule the story before June of 1951.

The Marginal Man

111

sons. Even then, as I recall, Chad was busily mapping out a trip to British East Africa to study the lives of the Kamba, the third largest native tribe in Kenya. Armed with a smattering of Swahili and a dozen inoculations against assorted fevers, he and Beje arrived there in 1961, beginning a productive year in the rugged Hemingway brush country.

I have an Oliver letter sent from Africa, in which he stated, "In many areas the Kamba still carry bows and poisoned arrows which are used to protect them from the raids of the Masai, who live on the great flat plains to the southwest. . . . Elephants are considered the most dangerous animals over here, since they frequently smash in the windshields of cars and drag the luckless occupants out to stamp on them. I was in the Land Rover, fighting the dirt road, when I cleared a hairpin turn to encounter a big bull elephant surrounded by yelling Kambas who were trying to puncture his hide from a distance with their poisoned arrows. The elephant charged my Rover, but I managed to get around him and continue on to Mbooni. . . . There was nothing left but the bones when I came back down the road that evening. . . . The Kamba are a hungry people."

And later Chad wrote, "We have settled down to an easy routine, the monotony broken occasionally by such minor incidents as BJ being charged by a two-ton rhino ... by one of our crew suffering an attack of maggots in his back . . . and the morning at breakfast when a newborn bat dropped out of the rafters into our porridge. . . . Then it began to rain: seventeen inches in the first three days. The rain lasted through November —more than it had rained in one hundred years in Kenya! Bridges were washed away; all the dirt roads became seas of mud. Our water supply failed, and we drank from the sky. Food had to be dropped in by plane—but we're drying out now, and the work goes on."

The result of that year's study: a Kamba monograph and an African novel which Chad is still polishing. He's back in Texas now, as Professor Oliver, teaching an-

112

Chad Oliver

thropology at the University of Texas, having recently bought an eight-acre spread with "the regular assortment of horses and pigs."

Chad once conducted his own weekly hour-long disc jockey show out of KHFI in Austin, devoted to jazz classics. (He plays drums and piano.) Football, poker, pipe-smoking, Colorado trout fishing and his daughter Kim are all Oliver passions, along with the poetry of A. E. Housman—which has inspired some of his best stories.

He's been in two dozen anthologies, including many "Bests," and his science fiction novel, Shadows in the Sun, was cited by The New York Times as tops in its field for that year.

Anthropology continues to fascinate him, and he has said of it, "The human mind is a time machine that can carry us backward or forward at will. . . . The average anthropologist, in his study of groups and cultures, moves back in time. If he writes science fiction, he may also move forward, into an imagined future, using man's history as a base. Anthropology is a young science, as sciences go, but it is a very important one, for if we are to survive in a world of atomic energy and warring nations we must learn to know one another. That's what anthropology is all about—the study of man as a physical and cultural animal."

In his powerful, beautifully structured novella, "The Marginal Man," we share an interstellar adventure on an alien world in a typical Oliver blend of science and imagination. Here is a story which examines "the relation between technological man and primitive man, and the ultimate definition of civilization."

THE MARGINAL MAN

Chad Oliver

I

The small gray metallic sphere drifted down through the night sky of Pollux V twenty-nine light-years from Earth. The eerie pinkish glow of the two moons glinted softly on the floating sphere against its backdrop of silver stars. Already, invisibly far out in space, the ion drive of the mother ship from Earth's CAS fleet had flared into life again, carrying the great ship back into the lonely darkness between the worlds.

The sphere was alone.

It dropped gently through the atmosphere on its antigravs toward the dark surface of the planet below. It made no sound, drifting through the strange moonlight as insubstantially as a ghost from some forgotten world. It hovered above the branches of a stand of trees for a moment, shifted course slightly, and settled in a field of grass and shrubs. It barely disturbed the grass at first and then, as the antigravs shut off, it crushed into the ground with its true weight.

A circular port slid open and two men stepped out. The light from inside the sphere beamed through the port and mixed with the rose of the moonlight. The two men were clearly visible and made no effort to conceal themselves.

Even physically, the two men were a contrast and their first actions on the unknown world merely underlined the differences between them. Arthur Canady, tall and lean and dour, leaned back against the side of the sphere and lit his pipe with hardly a glance at the new

113

:-----------------

114                                                  Chad Oliver

world around him. Frank Landis scurried around like a newly released puppy, his stocky body scuttling back and forth between dimly glimpsed rocks and shrubs and night-blooming flowers, his sandy hair like a feverish halo over his open, eager face.

"Look at this, Art," he said, retrieving a delicate white flower that looked like an orchid. "How about that? Isn't it something?"

Arthur Canady puffed on his pipe solemnly. "I knew a man once who ate flowers," he said.

"Why'd he do that?" Frank asked, falling into the trap as usual.                                                            *

"To get to the other side," Arthur Canady explained patiently.

Frank Landis looked at him blankly. "Sometimes I just don't get you, Art."

"I'm not always contagious, I guess."

"I mean, what the hell. Here we are, the first civilized men ever to set foot on a new world—it's an historic moment—and you're not even interested."

"I wouldn't say that," Canady said, uncoiling himself from the side of the sphere. "It's just that botany is a little out of my line. For instance, unless you're too set on making a little speech about the Mission from Earth and the Great Terran Father, I suspect that there's something important going on over there right now that we ought to see." He pointed toward the west.

Frank looked and saw nothing. "What's over there?"

"Among other things, if our survey map is accurate, there's a good-sized stream. On the banks of that stream, the natives have a camp—a big one. And they're having a ceremony of some sort."

"What makes you think so?"

"See that glow over there, through those trees? Unless you happen to believe in a horde of giant lightning bugs, that means a series of large fires. And if you'll turn up your hearing aid a bit you can hear what sounds like a chant of some kind. Tired hunters aren't very apt to be just practicing their harmony around the old campfire, so I assume there is some type

The Marginal Man                                     115

of ceremony going on. And I think we ought to be there."

"Now?" Frank asked.

"Why not?"

Frank stared at his companion. He had never worked with Canady before and knew him only by his reputation. Dammit, no matter how good an anthropologist he might be, the man wasn't comfortable.

"You're not afraid of a few hundred natives, are you?" Canady asked, smiling.

"Of course not! I'm sure you know what you're doing. It's just that—well, we just got here—seems like rushing it a bit.. ."

Canady tapped his pipe out against his boot, carefully smothering the hot ashes with dirt. He had rather suspected that Frank, for all his too-frequent sermons about his love for primitive peoples, preferred to deal with natives from a position of massive strength. Well, he had a point there and this was no time to start a silly argument. "Don't worry, Frank. We'll wait until tomorrow and run through the customary contact routines. I'm just going to sneak over there and have a look through the glasses. You can stay here if you like."

He got his glasses out of the sphere, locating them under Frank's demonstration steam engine, and stuck a pistol in his belt. Then, without another word, he struck off to the west toward the sound of the chanting. He would really have preferred to go alone, to savor this new world without the bubble-bath of Frank's somewhat shrill enthusiasms, but he hadn't gone fifty yards before Frank panted up behind him and fell into step.

"This is really something," Frank exclaimed. "I feel like Robinson Crusoe!"

Canady toyed with a vision of a suitable desert island but held his tongue. His long legs covered the ground with an easy, effortless stride. He felt rather than saw the lovely moons in the star-sprinkled sky, felt the alien wind in his lungs, felt the strange and

116

Chad Oliver

wonderful sounds and smells and impressions that tugged oddly at his heart.

He entered the darkness beneath the trees, silent as a shadow, and slipped toward the orange glow of the firelight. The chanting was closer now; it had a weird and haunting atonality to it, a subtle rhythm that was hard to catch—

Canady quickened his steps, all thoughts of Frank forgotten. There was a sadness in him, and a nameless hunger.

Twenty-nine light-years from the planet Earth it had begun again.

Hidden in a clump of thorny bushes on a low hill overlooking the stream-cut valley, Arthur Canady held the glasses to his eyes and stared down upon a scene of wild magnificence, a scene that filled him with wonder and the sense of a life beyond his knowledge, a life glimpsed far away, a life he could never enter.

It was something that the survey charts and the planted microphones had not prepared him for. He was a man who was seldom surprised but he was surprised now. It was the difference between a faded photograph and the reality, the difference between a set of statistics and the miracle of human beings. All the expected culture elements were there, but the intensity of the thing was astonishing. And there was something more . . .

The stream coursed through the moonlit valley, pink and silver beneath the moons. Tremendous fires blazed along the river banks, hissing and crackling with the rich juices of fresh sap, shooting spectacular showers of sparks high into the air. The orange glow of the flames bathed the rows of tepee-like skin tents in lambent, living light.

There must have been close to a thousand men and women camped by the river, which was an amazing number of people for a hunting culture. Every last person was taking part in the ceremony: dancing, preparing food, singing. They were a tall, robust people; they moved proudly with their heads held high. They

The Marginal Man                                     117

were dressed in a wild and barbaric splendor: fur robes and feathers and intricately painted designs on their graceful bodies.

The chanting was continuous. It was a joyful, happy kind of music, serving as a chorus behind the whirling forms of the dancers. Most primitive music, Canady had always felt, was just that: primitive and incredibly monotonous. But this was something else: a lively, complex wave of counterpoint and rhythm that set a man's blood racing in his veins. And the dancing was no mere shuffling of feet in a circle; it was abandoned and yet controlled, graceful as a ballet but with a rough sexuality to it that was strangely innocent, strangely pure.

The happiness and the joy were tangible things; you could feel them in the air. It was a time of rejoicing, a time of release, a time of thanksgiving. And yet there was a dark undercurrent to it, a shadow that moved in and out among the firelit dancers like a whisper of remorse. . . .

In the precise center of the camp one fire blazed higher than all the others. A constant stream of men fed fresh wood to it, tossing mighty logs into the flames. It was a hot, roaring fire, a pivot around which all else revolved. It drew the eye like a magnet.

The two men from Earth lay silent, watching. Both of them knew that they had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and they took full advantage of it. Tomorrow their work would begin, the work that would spell the end of the life they were watching, but for now it was only something to see, something to remember when the old days were gone.

The dancing and the chanting continued. It went on for hours, rising in intensity all the time. The dances grew wilder, the chanting rose to a climax that was almost unendurable. The fires blazed and the moons arced across the night sky, shaming the distant light of the stars.

When it happened, it happened with a startling abruptness.

The chanting stopped, as though cut off with a

118

Chad Oliver

switch. The dancers stopped in mid-step. The natives moved into a silent circle around the central fire. A hush fell over the night, a hush of expectancy. . . .

One man stepped out from the others, framed in the leaping flames. He was naked, free of ornament of any kind. He raised his right hand and then his left. He bowed to the four directions. He looked up, out into the night and the moons and the stars. His face was radiant with a supreme peace.

Calmly, without hesitation, he walked into the roaring fire.

He climbed up the searing logs, his hair already aflame. He lay down on his back on a bed of fire. He did not move. He did not cry out. His body disappeared in a mass of flame, even the bones lost in the red-hot coals that fed the fire.

The fire blazed higher, crackling and hissing.

It was done.

The natives turned silently and filed back to their tents by twos and threes. No one looked back at the funeral pyre. Within minutes there was not a human being to be seen anywhere. The stream wound through the valley, ghding smoothly in the fading light. The fires blazed for a remarkably short time, then died away into glowing coals. The great fire that had eaten a fife was the last to go, flaring and sparking as though reluctant to give up its moment of splendor, but it finally faded and collapsed into a pile of smoking embers.

The night stole in again, covering the tents with darkness.

The two men from Earth eased themselves out of the concealing bushes and walked back under the stars to their waiting sphere. Even Frank had nothing to say.

Canady felt the strange world around him, felt it as a palpable presence, and was filled with an excitement that had no name. He felt that he stood on the edge of marvels, of wonders that dwelt in an abyss of dreams.

One thing he knew: this was no ordinary hunting culture, no matter what the survey charts showed.

He slept badly, impatient for the morning sun.

The Marginal Man                                     119

II

The sun was a red glory in the sky and by its harsh light the world of Pollux V lost much of its ethereal quality and resolved itself into a matter-of-fact land of rolling plains, distant mountains, and stands of tall trees that followed the river valleys. After a breakfast of concentrated coffee and powdered eggs, Canady found it difficult to recapture his mood of the night before. What he had seen had been unprecedented, but perhaps he had attached too much importance to it.

Still, it was odd. The man who had walked into the flames had seemed to do so of his own free will; he had not been forced. He had not been a sacrifice in the usual sense of the word, and in any event human sacrifices were normally a luxury restricted to higher types of culture with larger populations. The man had wanted to go into those flames. Why? And why had his death been the occasion for such rejoicing on the part of the rest of the people? There had certainly been more than one band present; people must have come in from miles around to share in the festivities. . . .

Canady shook his head. It was folly to speculate on such things until you knew enough about the culture to make sense of them. He put the incident from his mind and settled into routine.

And routine it was. The first contact between Earth and a primitive culture was always a dramatic event but the procedure was cut and dried. The scientists of Earth's Cultural Aid Service had worked out a plan for every known type of culture and all the field men had to do was to follow the proper plan in simple ABC fashion. AH the plans, based on centuries of experience on Earth and on the nearer planetary systems, were designed to do two basic things: show the people that the newcomers were friendly, and show them that they were too powerful to be attacked. It was a neat ex-

120                                                  Chad Oliver

ample of the age-old technique of putting a big smile on your face and carrying a sharp knife in your toga.

While Frank set up his equipment in the sphere, Canady took a high-powered rifle and set out across the plains toward a small herd of grazing animals. The animals (called yedoma in the local native dialect) were large beasts that looked like the American moose, save that the horns on the males were short and stubby affairs like those of domestic cattle. The economic life of the natives—as best the CAS could gather from photographic and microphonic survey—was based on the herds of yedoma that roamed the plains; yedoma meat, fresh or dried, was the food staple, yedoma skins were used for tents and clothing, yedoma sinew was used for thread. It was a neat parallel to the reliance of the ancient Plains Indians upon the buffalo, and it offered an exceptionally easy situation for cultural manipulation.

Canady kept the wind in his face and it was a simple matter to get close enough to the herd for a shot. The animals had had no experience with a weapon that killed at long range and were aware of no danger. Canady dropped a yedoma calf with one shot and could easily have killed half the herd if there had been any point in it. He dragged the calf back to the sphere and lifted it inside.

They were ready.

Frank Landis took the controls and lifted the sphere into the morning sky with the effortless ease of a man to whom all things mechanical were second nature. There was little sensation of movement within the sphere as it floated over the plain toward the native camp.

Canady sat quietly, smoking his pipe. It was crowded inside the sphere, crowded with portable steam engines and sacks of seeds and repeating firearms and that greatest of all invasion threats, crates of sewing machines. He thought of the wild and free scene the night before, the tents and the fires and the dancing, and he thought of it as a way of life already gone, destroyed by the bland deadliness of sacks of seeds and

The Marginal Man

121

crates of sewing machines. The old regret saddened him, and he was unable to comfort himself by the neat-sounding official phrases that cloaked the operation of the Cultural Aid Service.

In theory, they were helping the natives. The fact that the natives had asked for no help was not mentioned. The speeches at the United Nations were fairly dripping with high-sounding phrases about underdeveloped areas, primitive misery, and the moral obligation of the strong to help the weak. There was much oratory about starving children and the glorious benefits of civilization.

Behind the scenes, oddly enough, much of the talk was along the same lines. All men wear cultural blinkers which condition them to curiously inevitable chains of reasoning. Given certain premises, certain conclusions follow as certainly as fish swallow worms. The goals and aspirations of a man's own culture just naturally seem right for all other cultures as well, and surely you are doing the other fellow a service by passing on the joys that you yourself have known. . . .

And then, of course, there was the fact that primitive areas make poor markets for an industrial civilization. The development of the ion drive had made trade commercially sound, and Earth's factories were not geared to mass-produce arrow points. If you want to sell a man a tri-di set, it helps to have electricity first. If you want to sell a man a tractor, it is nice if agriculture has already been invented. If you're thinking in terms of consumers, a large and prosperous population is better than a small and poverty-stricken one.

The human mind is infinitely capable of rationalization; it can justify anything from crusades to slavery on the basis of Good, Pure, and Noble Motives.

Canady had never considered himself a romantic man. He was a product of his culture and he had to live in it. He had found a job that interested him, a job that offered good pay and prestige, and he did his job honestly. But he had never been able to convince himself that he was a knight in shining armor by reciting a string of platitudes. He was too wise a man to

122

Chad Oliver

believe that he could change the universe by a one-man fight against injustice, so he simply did what men have always done—he did the best he could to ease some of the pain along the way.

Right now, as the sphere floated over the treetops, he was not unduly proud of himself. Even the argument that he was gaining valuable data for his science failed to reassure him, and it was a mark of his honesty that he did not even consider the argument that if he didn't do the job somebody else would.

Frank looked up from the controls, his blue eyes disturbed. He was not an insensitive man and many of the same thoughts had been bothering him. Frank, however, could always sell himself on the rightness of what he was doing. It was not dishonesty on his part; his brain just worked that way.

"Seems kind of a shame," he said. "I guess they like their life pretty well the way it is."

"Maybe not," Canady said, helping him out. "After all, Frank, that's an argument that might have kept us all in the caves."

"That's right." Frank's eyes brightened. "Hell, if you don't believe in progress, what can you believe in?"

Canady could think of several answers to that one but he just shrugged as though the problem were insoluble. The blind faith in progress—which normally, if you tried to pin it down to anything approaching preciseness, meant increased technological complexity —was so deeply ingrained in Earth's cultures that it had become an automatic response. Even children believed in progress. How could you not believe in progress?

"I look at it this way," Frank said slowly. "We're taking something away from them, sure. We're asking them to change their way of life on a purely voluntary basis—we're not forcing them to do anything. In return, we're offering them things they've never had before: comfort and good health and security. What's wrong with that?"

"Your insight is very comforting," Canady said without smiling. "Got the bomb ready?"

The Marginal Man

123

Frank looked at him sharply, disturbed by the juxtaposition of the two sentences. Canady, however, smoked his pipe without expression. "It's ready."

Canady studied the terrain below in the viewers. They were over a cleared area near the native camp. He checked the safety detectors. There were no people in the target area, but it was close enough so that they could get an eyeful.

"Let go the convincer," he said.

Frank tripped the switch and the bomb fell. It went off with a satisfying bang and set off a cloud of smoke out of all proportion to any damage it might have done. It was not atomic, of course. There was no need to use a block-buster when a firecracker would serve.

"Set her down," he said.

Frank jockeyed the sphere into position above the rows of skin tents and landed it in the precise center of the camp. They waited until the natives had had time to form a cautious circle around them and then they opened the port.

The two men from Earth stepped out, smiles on their faces and their right hands raised in gestures of peace.

Canady's troubled green eyes took in the whole works with one swift, experienced glance. Anthropologists who have spent long years in the field tend to be more impressed with the similarities between cultures than with their obvious differences. It is only the untrained eye that seizes upon the somewhat superficial oddities and cannot see beyond the seemingly bizarre to the deeply rooted universals that underlie all human social systems. A nomadic hunting culture has to have certain characteristics for the excellent reason that it will work in no other way. This, as Canady was well aware, is just as true twenty-nine light-years from Earth as it was in aboriginal Asia, Africa, or North America. A scientific law is binding no matter where you find it.

He saw a great deal in that one quick check. He saw not only the scene before him but saw it projected against a backdrop of facts and figures, saw it neatly

124                                                  Chad Oliver

divided up into familiar categories. Even if he had not already known a great deal about the natives from the planted microphones that had enabled him to learn the language, he could have predicted rather closely what these people would be like. Now as always in the moment of initial contact, he was on the alert for anything off-key, anything that didn't fit. It was the unexpected that could make for trouble.

At first, he saw nothing unusual.

The natives stood in a loose circle, waiting. There were fewer of them now than there had been the night before; obviously the other bands had dispersed after the ceremony. Canady estimated the crowd at about sixty-five men and women. They were a tall, healthy-looking group with that robustness of bone and muscle that comes from an outdoor life and a predominantly meat diet. The men were dressed in skin leggings and had ornate bone combs stuck into their long dark hair. The women wore a simple skin tunic, tied at the waist with beaded thongs.

Canady spotted his first oddity: none of the natives was carrying a weapon of any kind. He filed the fact away.

Canady lowered his hand. "We visit The People in peace," he said loudly in the native language. "We come among The People as friends. We come from the sky to bring honor to the Old Ones and many gifts to The People."

Precisely on cue, Frank dragged the yedoma calf out of the sphere and placed it on the ground before the natives. There was a low murmur from the people. A man stepped forward, his dark bronzed skin glistening in the sun. He was dressed exactly like the rest except that his head-comb was blue rather than white. He raised his right hand. "You are welcome among The People," he said quietly. "We thank you for your gift. Our food is your food, and our camp your camp."

It was all according to formula but Canady felt again the stirrings of uneasiness. The natives were too calm, too self-assured. Surely the bomb had had some effect. . . .

The Marginal Man                                     125

"We bring not only friendship to The People," he said. "We bring many useful gifts to make your days easier. We bring a hunting stick that kills with a sound like thunder."

Frank stepped out again with a repeating rifle in his hand. He lifted the weapon to his shoulder, took aim on a small tree, and fired six shots in rapid succession. The trunk of the tree splintered neatly and a fragment of bark fell to the ground. The staccato sound of the shots died away and there was silence.

The natives watched impassively, giving him their courteous attention. They were neither frightened nor impressed.

Canady finished his speech rather lamely. "It is our hope that this day will mark the beginning of a long friendship between The People and our own people. It is our hope that the Old Ones will look with favor upon our visit, and that we may each learn many things."

The native with the blue comb nodded. He waited to make sure that Canady had finished speaking, and then stepped forward and took his arm. He smiled, showing fine, even teeth. "Come," he said. "You must be tired and hungry after your journey through the sky. Let us eat of the yedoma and talk to one another as men."

Canady hesitated, more and more unsure of himself. The tone of the thing was completely wrong. It was not that the natives were unfriendly, but there was certainly none of the usual gods-from-the-sky business. It was almost as though The People had visitors from space every day in the week. He looked at Frank out of the corner of his eye. Frank was smiling, still playing the Great White Father role.

"Bring the rifle," he said in English.

The native turned and led the way toward his splendidly painted tent. Canady and Frank walked along behind him. The native men and women watched them with no great interest and then went about their business.

"Well, I'll be damned," Canady said.

126                                                  Chad Oliver

"This is really something," Frank whispered.

"It's something right enough," Canady agreed. "But what the devil is it?"

He followed the native into the tent, and he sensed once more that he stood on the edge of marvels, of wonders that dwelt in an abyss of dreams. . . .

The days that followed were easily the strangest of Canady's life. Psychologically, it is never a simple matter for a man to be uprooted from all that is familiar to him and set down in a way of life that is not his own. Previously, though, in his work in the Alpha Centauri system, Canady had at least been supported by the knowledge that his task was going well, that the situation was fully under control. And Dave, who had shared those years with him, had been much more of a friend than Frank Landis could ever be.

Canady had never felt so utterly alone. Even in his troubled adolescence in New Chicago he had had understanding parents who gave him an anchor in a bustling world. Later, there had been a series of women— though he had never married—and the quiet contentment of summers in the unspoiled national forests of Colorado. His interest in his work had sustained him when all else failed, and now even his confidence in his knowledge was shaken.

It was made all the more difficult by the fact that there was nothing wrong with The People that he could put his finger on. There were no signposts erected in the village that advertised BIG MYSTERY HERE. The People were friendly enough in their fashion and they were more than willing to cooperate. They did all the things that they were supposed to do. The men rode out of the camp on their camel-like mharus in hunting parties, searching for the grazing herds of yedoma which they brought down with their bows and arrows. The women cooked and worked long hours in preparing skins and gathering wild plants from the river valleys. Often, at night while the two moons sailed among the stars, stories were told around the campfires,

The Marginal Man                                     127

stories of the Old Ones and the Long Walk and the heroic deeds of the warriors of The People.

It was all very normal on the surface. But the nuances were all wrong, completely beyond Canady's understanding. The grace notes of the culture were subtly alien in a way he could not fathom. Frank was merely puzzled and a little hurt by the reception given to his bag of tricks, but Canady was deeply disturbed.

He tried to drive a wedge of understanding into the culture by falling back on the most reliable of all techniques. He began by employing the genealogical method, a safe introductory gambit for centuries. He sat down with Plavgar, the blue-combed native who seemed to have the high status of a headman. He asked him all the innocuous, surefire questions. What was the name of his wife? What had been the names of her parents? What had been the names of his parents? What were the names of their children, if any? This sort of thing was practically guaranteed to set any native off on a long chain of reminiscences about his family for generations back, and in the process the anthropologist could gain a valuable key to the various kinship connections that were so important in a primitive society. Plavgar, however, simply did not respond. He gave his wife's name, and explained that she had been obtained by raiding a neighboring band. He gave the name of his father and mother—and then proceeded to name almost everyone in the band, calling them all father and mother, and offering to introduce them to Canady. The idea of brothers and sisters appeared to puzzle him. As for generations past, he was a complete blank. Since peoples without a means of writing always made a point of remembering relatives to a really amazing degree, this was manifestly impossible.

He did get a typical culture hero story, about a man who had led an almost legendary mharu raid against the Telliomata, swiping their entire mharu herd from right under their eyes. But then Plavgar blandly offered to introduce Canady to the culture

128

Chad Oliver

hero, who could be seen at that moment calmly gnawing on a steak in front of his tepee.

Frank set up his steam engine and showed The People the work it could do. They watched the demonstration politely, as one might watch a child putting together a model airplane, and then ignored it. Frank got out his battery-powered sewing machines and played his trump card. He took the women aside and showed them how they could cut their work-day in half. The women tried it out, smiling and eager to please, and then went back to their bone needles.

Even the rifles, so demonstrably superior to the native bows and arrows, failed to have the desired effect. The natives admired Frank's shooting and that was all. This was a serious business, because the rifle was a lever that the men from Earth had relied heavily upon. Once you substituted rifles for bows in a hunting culture you had a ready-made market. Not only would the natives become so dependent on the rifles that they would in time forget how to make bows, but the introduction of the rifle would set off a chain reaction that would completely upset the balance of power between the native groups. A band with rifles was unbeatable. Then, the mere threat of taking the rifles away or withholding ammunition was all the threat you needed. . . .

Try as he might, Canady could get no information about shamans. At first, he put this down to an understandable tabu against referring to the supernatural. But the natives did not shy away from his questions: they simply assured him that they didn't have any curers or healers or medicine men. He got a lot of patient talk about the Old Ones, and that was that. He shook his head. He had never heard of a primitive culture without shamans—it was as unthinkable as a copter without an atmosphere. What did they do when they got sick?

It was not until he had been on the planet for two full months that the truth hit him in the face, the truth that should have been obvious from the first. It was so simple, so utterly out in the open, that its significance had completely escaped him. And it was so

The Marginal Man                                     129

fantastic that the very idea was automatically rejected by the mind.

It all began when Lerrie, the wife of Rownar, announced that she was pregnant.

Ill

A fever pitch of excitement ran through the camp of The People and Canady found himself caught up in it despite himself. He had lived long enough to know that true happiness was the rarest of all gifts and the natives around him were almost delirious with joy. Even the certain knowledge that he was on the verge of a tremendous scientific discovery paled to insignificance. There was a smile on every face and work was impossible. A sense of miraculous well-being permeated the very air. It was a holiday mood and Canady surrendered to it.

The People had stayed long in one place and it was time to move on. The warm summer months were fading into the chill of autumn and the yedoma herds were migrating to the south across the grassy, rolling plains. The People would have had to follow them in any case, but it was definitely the news about Lerrie that triggered their departure.

The great tents were struck and the hides were lashed to pack mharus. The tent poles were tied to the flanks of the beasts so that their tips dragged along the ground. The tips were securely lashed together, travois-fashion, to form a V-shaped platform upon which The People placed their few belongings. The men and women mounted their mharus and they were ready. Leaving home was as simple as that.

The People moved out at dawn on a cold, gray day. A light rain was falling and the yedoma robes were welcome against their shoulders. Canady, moved by an impulse he hardly understood, rode with the natives. His camel-like mharu was a spirited mount and he felt oddly at peace on the scrap of hide that served as

130

Chad Oliver

a saddle. His tall, lean body had grown hard in his months with The People and the wind-swept rain in his face was fresh and cool, the breath of life itself.

Dammit, he thought, / feel like a man again.

Frank followed along behind the tribe, piloting the sphere. He held it just above the level of the grass and its soundless presence was curiously unreal. The People ignored it and whenever Canady glanced back and saw it hovering over the plain behind him he felt a wild urge to laugh. The thing was somehow comical, for all the engineering skill that had gone into it. When compared with the magnificent vitality of the world around it the sphere became a kind of cipher, colorless and blatantly trivial. It seemed to sail along in a void, trying without success to attract attention to itself. It was a loud-shirted tourist in a forest of cool pines and it didn't matter, it was overwhelmed. . . .

A day and a night and a day The People rode. They did not seem to hurry and they dozed in their saddles and chewed on dried meat and berries as they traveled but there was a definite direction to their wandering. They crossed the windy plains and struck a trail that wound up into the foothills of a range of purple, snowcapped mountains. They rode into a sheltered canyon where a small stream trickled out of a glacial spring, a canyon where the trees were tall and dark and green. They moved through the evening shadows, pitching their tents and building great yellow fires that warmed the chill air.

Canady was sore and red-eyed from lack of sleep. The trick of dozing in the saddle looked easy enough when the natives did it, but he had discovered that the jerky gait of the mharu was anything but soothing. He decided that perhaps the rugged outdoor life was not an unalloyed joy after all and stumbled into the sphere with relief. The warm, dry bunk pulled him like a magnet and he fell into it without bothering to take off his damp, dirt-streaked clothes.

Frank, neat and clean and freshly shaven, wrinkled his nose. "You smell like a fertilizer factory, my friend," he said. "Remember, I live here too."

The Marginal Man                                     131

"Make yourself at home," Canady said. He yawned, too tired to argue. "Call me early, will you? I have a feeling that something's going to pop, and I don't want to miss it."

Frank said something else, then looked more closely at his companion and gave up. Canady was already snoring lustily. Frank smiled and managed to haul off the sleeping man's boots, which he held at arm's length and deposited outside on the ground. He gently placed a blanket over Canady's body and sat down to write up his field notes for the day.

He shook his head. Canady was a funny guy.

Outside in the night, a single voice was raised in a plaintive chant. It was a woman's voice, soft and lovely in the silence. Frank listened to it for a long time and then he too went to bed.

The woman chanted on, her voice liquid and true, and it was hard to tell whether it was a song she sang, or a prayer. ...

The next day dawned clear and cold with a thin wind whining down from the mountain snows. The sheltered valley, dark with tall fir trees, was slow to warm and the tepees of The People stood like frozen sentinels on the canyon floor.

Arthur Canady stood surveying the scene, his long legs wide apart, his work-roughened hands on his hips. There was a respectable black beard on his face and he had let his hair grow long. He shivered a little in the cold and tried to determine his next move. There was no doubt that they had failed utterly in their mission to date; the natives had shown no interest at all in the fancy gadgets they had brought from Earth. This didn't bother Canady—in fact it gave him a secret satisfaction—but what did bother him was the fact that after months with The People he was still a stranger. He felt a keen sense of not belonging, of being an outsider, He had made no friends and this had never happened to him before. The People were not hostile and they treated him with every courtesy, but they did not accept him.

132                                                  Chad Oliver

That hurt.

He walked along the line of tepees, smelling the rich odors of yedoma steaks broiling over the cook-fires. He saw Lerrie, the wife of Rownar, washing her face in the cold waters of the mountain stream. She looked up at him and smiled. She looked radiantly beautiful as though filled with an inner joy that stamped itself upon her every feature. Her eyes sparkled in the morning sunlight. She shook the water from her face and began to comb out her long black hair.

"Good morning," he said.

"It is a lovely morning, Ar-thur." It was odd to hear his name on her lips and the sound of his name took on a strange music,

"The Old Ones have been kind," he said, following the formula. "I rejoice for you."

She smiled again. "I am to be a mother," she said, as though this were the most wonderful thing in the world. "I, Lerrie, am to have a child!"

"That is good." Canady hesitated, searching for the right words, "It is your first?" he asked.

She stared at him and then laughed aloud. "My first! Surely you are joking with me? Of course it is my first. How could it be otherwise?"

"Forgive me; many of your customs are still strange to me. Lerrie, in my world it is sometimes dangerous to ask a woman how old she is. Do you mind if I ask you? How old are you, Lerrie?"

She frowned as though puzzled. "How . . . oldV

"How many seasons have you lived?"

She shook her head. "I do not know," she said simply. "We do not count such things. I am alive. That is all."

"Many seasons?" Canady persisted.

"Yes, Ar-thur. Many seasons."

"Do you remember when you were a child, Lerrie?"

She pursed her lips. "It was long ago. I remember little." Her face brightened. "I do remember the Coming of Age, when I became one of The People. I will never forget that. I was so frightened. I had heard

The Marginal Man                                     133

stories of the Long Walk, even then." She paused. "My child will be a good child, Ar-thur. He will have a good heart."

"I'm sure he will, Lerrie." He looked at the woman before him. She was hardly more than a girl. By Earthly standards she could not have been more than twenty-five years old. And yet she could not remember her childhood.

She had lived—how long?

Many seasons.

"I rejoice for you," he said again, and walked on to find Plavgar, the headman of The People. He found him sitting cross-legged in his tepee while his wife busied herself mending clothing. Canady was invited inside and seated himself on Plavgar's right, which he knew was proper etiquette for a guest. He said nothing until Plavgar's comely wife had served him a wooden bowlful of stew, which he dutifully sampled.

"Please smoke if you wish," Plavgar said. "I have noticed that it makes you more comfortable."

Canady pulled out his pipe, filled it, and lit it with a burning stick from the fire. The inside of the tepee was surprisingly roomy and spotlessly clean. The ground was covered with yedoma skins and the air smelled sweet and fresh. Canady took his time, puffing on his pipe. Plavgar sat quietly, watching him. He was a man of great dignity but except for the blue comb in his hair there was nothing about him to show his office of leader. He was still a young man in the prime of life, and yet his bearing was that of a man who had lived long and thought of many things.

"May I ask you some questions?" Canady said slowly.

Plavgar smiled. "That is your custom."

Canady flushed faintly. "I am sincere in wanting to know about The People. There are many things that I do not understand. As I stay with you longer, I find that I know less and less."

"That is the beginning of wisdom, my son." It was the first time that Plavgar had ever called him son and it pleased Canady. Of course, he himself was thirty-five,

134

Chad Oliver

older than Plavgar looked, but the term seemed fitting.

"Do I have your permission to ask you anything I wish?"

Plavgar nodded, a faint twinkle in his eyes. "We have no secrets. I will help you all I can."

Canady leaned forward. "What happens to the children of The People?" he asked.

Plavgar frowned. "What happens to them? Why, they grow up into adult members of the tribe."

"They always grow up into adult members of the tribe?"

"Almost always. When a child is born he must learn many things. He must live among The People and learn their ways. If he has a good heart, he is sent out alone to Thunder Rock, high in the mountains. There he fasts for four days and there the Old Ones send a guardian spirit to him. He sees the guardian spirit and they become one. Then he goes through the Coming of Age, and he is one of The People forever."

"And if he does not have a good heart?"

"That does not often happen, my son. If he does not have a good heart, if he does not believe in the ways of The People, then the Old Ones are sad and will not accept him. His guardian spirit does not come to Thunder Rock and he is alone. If he has no guardian spirit, it would be unthinkable for him to take part in the Coming of Age."

"What happens to him?"

"He takes the Long Walk."

"You mean—he is expelled from the tribe?"

"He was never one of The People. He takes the Long Walk alone. He is alone forever or until his heart is good. A man cannot be a man until his heart is good."

Canady kept his face expressionless. His profession had taught him patience, if nothing else. It was always like this: the answers freely given that explained nothing. The guardian spirit complex was a familiar one, of course; it was the idea of a personal vision that came after fasting, a contact with the supernatural that gave a man a kind of personal phantom ally that accompanied him through life. If you were told through-

The Marginal Man                                     135

out your childhood that you would see a spirit on Thunder Rock, and if you went without eating for four days alone in the mountains, you would see a spirit right enough. Particularly if you could not gain admission into the adult status in the tribe if you did not see a spirit. Still—

"I have heard much of the Old Ones. Can you tell me about them?"

"The Old Ones lived in the world before men came," Plavgar said, as though instructing a small child. "They were mighty beings and they live still in the high places. We cannot see them in our day-to-day life, but they are always there. They show themselves to us on Thunder Rock if we have a good heart. The Old Ones watch over our people and protect us from harm. The lives of the Old Ones and those of The People are one. We live together in harmony, and each is a part of the other."

That tells me exactly nothing, Canady thought.

He tried to bring the conversation down to a more concrete level. "Why is it that I have seen no children among The People?" he asked.

Plavgar smiled. "They have all grown up, The children are The People now."

Swell

"And Lerrie?"

"The Old Ones have been kind. We rejoice for her, and we are thankful to Mewenta." Plavgar eyed him shrewdly. "You will stay with us long, my son?"

"Perhaps." The mother ship was due to pick them up twenty-two terrestrial months from now.

"Then you shall see for yourself what happens to the children of The People." Plavgar's face glowed. It seemed to be impossible for any native to refer to the coming child without a kind of inner ecstasy. "The Old Ones have been kind!"

"I rejoice with you," Canady said politely. There was a question nagging at him, something about what Plavgar had said. He tried to put his ringer on it and failed. There were so many strange things—

He stood up. "I thank you for your time, Plavgar."

136                                                  Chad Oliver

"I hope I have helped you," the headman said.

/ hope so too, Canady thought, feeling far from certain.

He took his leave and went back to the sphere to dictate the text of his conversation with Plavgar and Lerrie.

All that afternoon, while Frank was busy trying to< interest someone in his sewing machines, Canady puzzled over the data he had obtained. He felt that he had at least made some progress: he could pinpoint the areas in the culture that were causing the trouble. He could ask the right questions, and he knew that the answers were only a matter of time.

He smoked his pipe thoughtfully and as he worked he sensed a growing excitement within him. Approached solely as a puzzle, The People were more intriguing than any culture he had ever encountered. And if his hunch was right—

Looked at on a superficial level there was nothing at all extraordinary about The People. They formed a small hunting society based on the yedoma, they lived in tepees, they told stories about the Old Ones and believed in personal guardian spirits. There was nothing obviously wrong. But—

Item: None of the Earth's techniques for manipulating the culture had had the slightest effect. The culture was stable beyond belief. They not only had no interest in technology as such—they actively opposed any technological change. They wanted to keep their way of life the way it was. This was frequently the case in areas like social organization and religion, but Canady had never heard of a group that would not take to firearms and sewing machines like ducks to water. It was as though The People knew that the introduction of new technological elements would inevitably change their total way of life.

Item: Lerrie looked like a young girl. Yet she could not remember her childhood. She had no idea how old she was.. And the notion of having more than one child had struck her as being ridiculous.

The Marginal Man                                     137

Item: There were no old individuals among The People. Canady had not seen a single person who looked over thirty. Even the leaders like Plavgar were young men.

Item: There were no children among The People. At first, Canady could hardly credit this, but there could be no doubt of it now. There were no babies, no adolescent boys and girls. Lerrie's pregnancy was a great event. Her child would be the only one in the tribe. . . .

Item: There were no shamans. There were no techniques for dealing with sickness.

What did it all add up to?

Suddenly, Canady remembered the phrase of Plav-gar's that had troubled him when he first heard it. What had Plavgar said?

"We rejoice for her, and we are thankful to Mewenta:'

Mewenta? But the husband of Lerrie was named Rownar. Who was Mewenta, and what did he have to do with the coming birth of Lerrie's child?

Canady snapped his fingers. Of course! He knew who Mewenta had to be, and that meant—

He got to his feet, the blood racing in his veins. He hurried outside into the twilight shadows. He knew the question now. It was time to get an answer.

Canady soon found that it was easier to determine upon a course of action than to carry it out. He had worked over his data longer than he had thought and twilight was already deepening into night when he tried to find Plavgar for another conference.

He found him quickly enough but Plavgar was busy.

The hunters had all come in, loaded down with ye-doma meat, and smooth firm-fleshed fish had been taken from the mountain streams. The women had prepared the evening meal and built up the fires against the night. The People had gathered in knots around the fires and Canady saw at once that there was some kind of ceremony going on.

138

Chad Oliver

It was not the sort of thing that a man could interrupt gracefully. Canady stayed in the shadows and watched.

It was a curious ritual, a mixture of wild abandon and solemn, highly stylized movements that were as old as time and performed with an immemorial artistry. There was a definite rhythm to the ritual, but it was a rhythm of motion rather than of music; no instruments were used and the only sounds came from ca-denced human voices.

The women sat in groups of four around the fires. In the center of the camp, dressed in a long blue tunic, Lerrie stood on a low platform of logs. Her skin gleamed like gold in the firelight and her long black hair glistened around her shoulders. She turned slowly on the platform, facing each group of women in turn. There was a happiness in her eyes that was good to see.

The men danced in a great circle around Lerrie, their deep voices chanting a song that was old when the very mountains were young. Every few minutes one man would detach himself from the circle and visit each of the woman-fires. At each fire he would raise his bare arms and address the women in a ritual speech. He would tell of the events of his life, taking care to mention the incidents he had shared with each woman, and then give an account of his personal exploits: coups he had counted on raiding parties, his moment of contact with his guardian spirit, stories of Long Walks and Old Ones. When he had completed the circle of the fires, he would choose one woman for his ceremonial mate and take her into the trees beside the mountain stream. After a time, the two of them would come back to the fires, the woman would seat herself in her group of four, and the man would resume his place in the circle. As far as Canady could determine, the only rule was that a man could not choose his own wife.

Canady watched in silence, feeling far more than a scientific interest in the proceedings. He felt desperately

The Marginal Man                                     139

alone, desperately out of things, like a penniless child with his face pressed tight against the cold window of a toy shop. He stood in the shadows of the firelight, half in darkness and half in light, and he chewed on the stem of his pipe with a longing and bitterness that racked his soul. The stars were frozen above him, tke night was chill, and he had been long without a woman. . . .

The tireless chant continued and The People filled the darkness with their rejoicing. Only Lerrie was alone, and no man touched her. She stood smiling on the log platform, radiantly lovely with the new life that was stirring within her. Canady felt a strange kinship with her, the kinship of the outsiders, but he resented her too. She was the center of everything, and he simply did not count.

He shook his head. This was a hell of a time for self-pity.

He waited until dawn streaked the sky with gray, waited until he could sense the great red sun hovering beneath the mountain horizon. When the ceremony was over and The People were laughing and talking together in normal voices, he sought out Plavgar.

Plavgar smiled and touched his shoulder with something like pity. "Welcome, my son. I thank you for your courtesy in waiting. It has been a long night for you.'*

Canady nodded. "The longest of my life, I think. May I ask you one more question, Plavgar?"

"We have no secrets, my son."

"You told me earlier that you rejoiced for Lerrie, and that you were thankful to Mewenta. Who is Me-wenta?"

Canady tensed. He knew the answer to the question but he had to ask, had to be sure. He listened to Plav-gar's words with a thrill of confirmation.

"Mewenta was a great man of The People. On the night before you came to visit us, Ar-thur, he did a wonderful thing for The People. He walked into the fire and his spirit now lives here in the mountains.

140

Chad Oliver

Because of his deed, the Old Ones smiled. That is why Lerrie now will have a child."

Canady remembered that night. They had hidden in a clump of bushes, looking down on a scene of wild magnificence. A thousand natives had gathered around a roaring fire and the tepees had shone in the moonlight. A naked man bowed to the four directions, gave a last farewell look out into the night and the moons and the stars. His face had been supremely peaceful, the face of a man who had reached the end of a long, long journey.

He walked into the roaring flames. . . .

Mewenta.

Canady turned and walked back to the sphere. He should have been tired but nothing was further from his mind than sleep. He felt an electric excitement in his muscles, an almost supernatural clearness in his mind.

He shook Frank's shoulder.

"Frank, wake up."

Frank sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes. "What's the matter? What time is it?"

"Frank, I've got it. I know about The People now."

Frank Landis groped for a cigarette, eyeing his companion sleepily. "Know about The People? What is there to know?"

Canady laughed. "God, and we tried to impress them with sewing machines!"

Frank waited, puffing on his cigarette. "Well?"

"Frank, don't you see? We've walked right smack into the middle of the biggest discovery ever made by man. Frank, The People don't die."

"What?"

"They don't die, at least not naturally. They're immortal, Frank. They live forever."

Frank stared at him, the cigarette forgotten in his hand.

"Immortal," Canady said again.

He walked over to the port and looked out at the red splendor of the morning sun.

The Marginal Man                                     141

IV

Two hours later, while the camp slept around them and the warmth of the day inched up toward the mountain snows, the men from Earth were still at it. The sphere was blue with stale tobacco smoke and the coffee dregs had turned gummy m the cups.

"I did not say you were crazy, Arthur," Frank said. "That's not fair."

Canady watched him and had to smile. Despite the words that tumbled from his lips, Frank obviously thought he was trapped with a lunatic—or at best with a man on the edge of sanity. And Canady was finding it very difficult to talk to Frank. Frank's eager, friendly personality and his guileless blue eyes just didn't belong in the same room with talk about immortality. It was like trying to explain to a three-year-old child that the Earth wasn't really flat but only looked that way.

"It's true, Frank. Our opinions won't change it any."

"But look." Frank nodded his head up and down solemnly, determined to explode the fallacies in the argument. "It just doesn't stand to reason. You say these natives live practically forever. OK. That means that they are maybe thousands of years old. Think what a man could learn if he lived to be a thousand years old! Dammit, he wouldn't be living like a savage. He would have developed a superior, advanced kind of culture. Isn't that true?"

Canady stoked up his pipe. He was feeling lightheaded from the long hours without sleep. But if he could just make Frank see—

"I agree. He wouldn't be living like a savage. And he would live in a very advanced type of culture."

Frank threw up his hands. "Well?"

"Well what?" Canady leaned forward. "Think a minute. Are The People really living like savages, and what the devil does that mean anyhow? Do you mean they are savages because they hunt animals for food?

142

Chad Oliver

Or because they live in tents instead of skyscrapers? Or because they use bows and arrows instead of rifles or atom bombs?"

"But their technology is simple. You can't deny that."

"I don't have to deny it. Just the same, simple isn't savage. After all, what's a technology for? How do you judge it? I would think you have to rate it by seeing what it does in terms of its own cultural context. The only real index of technological advancement is one of relative efficiency. What do you want a rifle for if you don't need one? What do you need a doctor for if you never get sick?"

"It isn't an efficient technology. You can't tell me a bow is more efficient than a rifle for a hunter. It isn't."

"It is in a special situation, and this is one of them. Look, it's obvious that for some reason these societies must be kept small. Not only that, but they must be peaceful. If they've hit a perfect balance in ecological terms with a bow and arrow, a rifle would just foul everything up. The one cardinal fact about an immortal society is that it must survive. If it doesn't, it's not immortal. And therefore anything that in the long run does not contribute to survival cannot be tolerated. Hell, you can't argue with the thing. It works,"

"All right, all right." Frank poured himself another cup of coffee. "But all that is theory, speculation. It doesn't prove that those natives live forever."

"True enough. But try this on for size: there is not a single child in this village. There is not a single elderly person. The People can hardly remember when they were young, it was so long ago, And until Mewenta chose to destroy himself, Lerrie could not have a child. When Mewenta died it was such a singular event that natives for miles around came into camp just to witness it. When Lerrie announced that she was pregnant, the whole tribe went into a delirium of joy. It can only mean one thing: this is a rigidly controlled population. No child can be born until the death of an adult makes room for a

The Marginal Man                                     143

new member of the society. It would have to work that way. If nobody dies and children keep on being born The People would breed themselves into extinction."

"I'll go along with that up to a point. I think you have demonstrated that we have a rigidly controlled population here. I admit that I've never heard of anything like it. But that still doesn't prove all this immortality stuff."

Canady sighed. He was talking to a stone wall. "Look, Frank. Why didn't The People accept those sewing machines and rifles? Why weren't they impressed with that bomb we dropped, or with this sphere for that matter? Why have we failed to make the slightest impression on them?"

"You said it yourself. If you destroy a perfect ecological adjustment. . ." Frank stopped.

"Exactly. But how do they know that? Who told them about ecological adjustments? How could they possibly know what effect a rifle will have on their culture? You started out by saying they were a bunch of savages. Now you're saying they know all about the effects of acculturation and cultural dynamics. You can't have it both ways."

Frank lapsed into silence.

"It's more than just ecology, Frank. I'm convinced that this immortality angle is part of their culture— a product of it. It isn't a mutant gland or a shot of wonder drug in the gizzard. It comes about because they live the way they do. They know that. So of course they're not going to jeopardize it by changing their culture. What's a rifle or a spaceship against the prospects of living forever? Think of it, Frank! No lying awake nights wondering if that ache in your belly is cancer. No sitting in a hospital room wondering if your wife will live until morning. No certain knowledge that you will see your father and mother buried in a hole in the ground. No waiting for your muscles to turn flabby and the saliva to drool from the corners of your mouth when you eat. No watching a friend get skinnier day by day, no watching the light go out of

144

Chad Oliver

his eyes. My God, would you trade that for a sewing machine?"

Frank shook his head. "I always read that if you lived forever you would be unhappy and bored stiff. How about that?"

Canady laughed. "Man, that is the rationalization of the ages. You can't live forever, therefore you don't want to. You can't have a steak, therefore you aren't hungry. Are The People unhappy? I'd say they're a million times happier than most men and women on Earth. And would you really fight against it if you knew you could live forever? I wouldn't! My life hasn't been any screaming ecstasy but I'll hang onto it as long as I can. And if I could live forever, if I could really do the things I love—"

How do you speak of these things to another? How do you tell of blue skies and sunlight and the laughter of love? How do you tell the joys of just being alive, of knowing that the world of winds and trees and mountain streams is yours to cherish forever? How do you tell of a love that endures for all the years, all the springs?

"Mewenta killed himself," Frank said bluntly.

"Sure, not all people are happy, and these natives are people. And perhaps a man might even sacrifice eternal life to bring joy to his fellow man, the joy of children. I have heard that when a man of The People feels restless or discontented, he sets out on a Long Walk alone. He gets close to the land to cleanse his heart. It usually works. If not, there's always the fire."

"You spoke of peace. How about all this raiding that goes on?"

"You mean counting coups?" Canady shrugged. "Sure, they go off and rustle the mharu herds. They have real knock-down fights too. But who said a culture like this has to be dull? It couldn't be dull. They don't kill each other in the fights. Have you noticed the combs the men wear in their hair? That's what they take instead of scalps. It serves the same purpose. You don't kill a guy in a football game either, but you can get plenty steamed up about it. Everything

The Marginal Man

145

in the culture is set up to avoid boredom. They alternate roles, for one thing. Every five years or so everyone switches positions. Plavgar is the headman now, but that is only one of the many parts he has played in his life. And all the ceremonies, the periods when the sex tabus are lifted—they all serve the same purpose. Dammit, The People like to have fun"

Frank lit another cigarette. "If it's true, Arthur— we've got to find out how it's done. We've got to."

Canady smiled. "Have The People ever lied to us?"

"No, I guess not."

"How do they say it's done?"

"I don't follow you."

Canady got up, stretched, and yawned. "I think you better brush up on your guardian spirits, Frank. I think you better start thinking about the Old Ones."

Frank stared. "But that's all superstition—"

"Is it? How do you know? Have you ever fasted on Thunder Rock?"

Canady turned before Frank could answer him. He peeled off his clothes and fell into his bunk. He closed his tired eyes.

And he thought—

The world of winds and trees and mountain streams yours to cherish forever . . .

V

The days flowed into weeks and the weeks became months. The People drifted south along the sheltered slopes of the blue mountain range and the cold winter snows settled on the grasslands in a blanket of white. Only the brown and black tips of the grasses showed above the rolling sea of snow and the yedoma herds turned their backs to the wind and pawed at the frozen soil with cold and bleeding hooves.

Arthur Canady lived as though in a dream. He was not himself and he felt the very foundations of the

146                                                  Chad Oliver

world he had known crumbling away beneath him. Subtly, without any clear line of transition, he found himself caught between two different ways of life. He lived in a cultural twilight, an outsider, belonging neither to the world of his past nor to the world that had suddenly opened up before him.

Ym a marginal man, he thought. Me, Arthur Can-ady, a scientist. I don't fit anywhere. Maybe I've never fit in, not really. Maybe Yve been searching all my life, never finding, never knowing what it was I sought . . .

He spent part of his time in the sphere with Frank, surrounded by the familiar gadgets he had always known, both attracted and repelled by the personality of his companion. The man was such a mixture of re-ceptiveness and bull-headedness. Like most nai've men, Frank prided himself on being utterly practical. He was tolerant and respectful of new ideas, but he could never change beyond a certain point. His personality was a finished thing; it had nowhere else to go. Canady envied him in a way, but he was unable to communicate with him except on a very superficial level.

He spent part of his time with The People, riding with them on the winter-thin rnharus, facing the wind-driven snows with Plavgar and Lerrie and Rownar. He learned to bring down the moose-like yedoma bulls with an arrow behind the left shoulder, learned to cut the blood-warm hides from the bodies with a stone knife, learned to drink the hot blood against the cold of the winter plains. He sat in the smoke-hazed tepees at night, sweating with the others around the tiny fires of yedoma chips, listening to the stories of The People.

Still, he did not belong.

The People smiled at him and seemed glad to see him, but there was a barrier he could not cross. The men were friendly without being his friends, the women cordial but invincibly remote. Canady let his hair and beard grow long and began to dress in the skin clothing of the natives. There were many times when he set out across the plains alone, eyes narrowed against the cold, and there were many nights that he looked

The Marginal Man                                     147

up at the frozen stars and wondered which one was the sun he had known on Earth. . . .

And the dark, terrible irony of the thing that was happening gnawed at his mind day and night. He would sit and smoke his pipe, staring at Frank. Didn't he know?

Canady had always been a lonely man, lonely not only for companionship but for richness and a fullness he had never found in life. His loneliness was made doubly unbearable by the vitality of the life around him. The People offered him nothing, denied him nothing. They made no overtures. They were simply there.

And life everlasting . . .

Canady abandoned all pretense of scientific investigation. He went to see Plavgar. He seated himself in the tepee on Plavgar's right, ate of the ritual food, and groped for words.

"The Old Ones were here before The People came," he said, thinking like a native. But his mind refused to stay on that level. He thought: Everything they have told me has been the literal truth. There are Old Ones. What are they? In the vastness of the universe, life must take many forms. Do they coexist with men, manifesting themselves only in visions? Could they have existed on Earth, serving as the basis for primitive legends? Who knows what we destroyed when we sailed into strange harbors with our ships and our diseases? We never saw our natives until we had corrupted them. "They must be powerful beings. Did they not try to defend their world?"

"Conquest is a delusion of the young, my son," Plavgar said slowly. "There is room for all. The lives of the Old Ones and the lives of The People touch in only a few places. We are equal but different. To them, as to us, harmony is the highest law of the universe. We all must live so that we blend with one another. Men and Old Ones and plants and birds and animals and sky and water—all must work together to make a world fair and good. The Old Ones have

148

Chad Oliver

given life to us. In return, we give them happiness. They can feel the warmth of our lives. They need our presence, just as we need theirs. We live together, and we are both the better for it."

Canady leaned forward. "You too once came to this world in ships?"

Plavgar smiled. "It was long ago. Yes, once we were civilized and advanced, just like yourself."

The irony of the headman's words was not lost on Canady. He brushed it aside. "Plavgar, what is the secret? What is the price a man must pay for eternal life?"

Plavgar looked at him steadily. "We do not live forever, my son. A very long time, yes, but not forever."

"But there must be a secret! What is it?"

"There is only one rule. You must learn to have a good heart"

Canady swallowed hard. "A good heart?"

"That is all. I have told you the truth. I have concealed nothing from you. We have no secrets. There is no magic pill, no gadget that will bring you what you seek. You must believe, that is all. You must have a good heart."

"But—" Canady's mind was dizzy with what Plavgar was saying. A good heart? He had learned many things in many schools, but no one had taught him this. How did a man go about getting a good heart?

"A man's heart is within himself," Plavgar said simply. "You must look around you, at the mountains and the skies, at the plants and the animals. You must look within yourself. You must feel that you are a part of all life, and respect it. You must find peace. Then you must go to Thunder Rock and fast for four days. And if you believe, if your heart is good, you will see the Old Ones. The guardian spirit will come to you. Then, my son, you will be one of The People— for always."

The yedoma-chip fire flickered brightly in the tepee. The shadows closed in around Canady, shadows and something else . . .

The Marginal Man

149

"Thank you, Plavgar," he said.

He got up and left the tepee, walking out into the cold night air. His boots crunched the snow under his feet.

All he had to do was to believe. All he had to do was to reject all he had ever known. All he had to do was to get a good heart.

Simple!

And there were other problems, other loyalties.

He walked back alone to the sphere.

When he told Frank what he was going to do, Frank hit the ceiling.

"You can't do it, Art." Frank's face was very pale. He backed away from his bearded, wild-looking companion as though Canady was a carrier of some frightful disease. "It's against the law."

"Whose law? We're a long way from Earth, my friend. I'm not a soldier. I'm a scientist."

"You're a fool! Dammit, can't you see what you're doing? You've got a wild bee in your brain and all that talk about being a scientist is so much hogwash. You're going native! You, Arthur Canady, hot-shot scientist!"

"All right. I'm going native."

"Look, Art. It's more than that. It's—it's disloyal, that's what it is. You can't just turn your back on your own people for a bunch of wild hunters."

"I can try."

Frank's anger got the better of his caution. "You act like you're so damned superior to everyone, you and your sarcasm! And look at you! What the hell is a good heart? You'll park yourself up on the mountain and starve to death waiting for some native gods to come and hand you immortality. It's crazy, Art! I won't let you do it."

Canady smiled. He stood there, tall and lean and toughened by his life on the plains. His green eyes were cold. "You can't stop me, Frank. Don't try."

"Forget about me. How about your own people, your friends? Don't you owe them something? You're al-

150

Chad Oliver

ways spouting off about ethics, but what are you doing? You're a traitor!"

Canady sighed. "You still don't see it, do you?"

"See what? There's nothing to see."

"Yes, there is something to see. You spoke of ethics. Have you ever heard a phrase about doing to others as you would have them do unto you? I suggest you think about it a little."

"What are you talking about?"

"Look, Frank. We came here from Earth with a lot of high-sounding notions about helping the natives, didn't we? What was it that we offered them, essentially? We offered them what we thought was progress for a price. We would give them technological advancements if they would simply agree to change their culture, their way of life. All they had to do was learn to live the way we do and we would give them something of what we had. Of course, we didn't put the offer to them honestly. We tried to trick them into it—all from the very highest motives, naturally. Was that ethical?"

Frank shrugged. "You tell me."

"I am telling you. If it was ethical, then you can't damn the natives for giving us a dose of our own morals. If it wasn't ethical, then it's pointless for us to prattle about right and wrong. Don't you see, Frank? They've turned the tables on us. They're offering us exactly what we offered to them. The joker is that they seem to have the superior culture, if that adjective means anything. They'll give us what they have: eternal life. And the price we have to pay is the same price we were going to charge them: all we have to do is change our culture and live the way they do. It's beautiful and neat and maybe a little frightening. But at least they were honest about it: no tricks, no high-pressure salesmanship. The choice is there. What we do with it is up to us."

"It's fantastic! You can't believe—"

"I've got to believe. That's the whole point. And don't make the mistake of underestimating these natives. They are far from helpless. They have the best

The Marginal Man                                     151

of all defenses: a good offense. They protect themselves by giving. We could destroy their culture, sure. But if we do we throw away our only chance for immortality! We need their culture. Oh, they're safe enough."

"Art, even if you believe all that stuff you still have a duty to your own people. You signed on to do a job. You can't just walk out on it."

"I'm not going to walk out on it. That's why I came back here. I'm going to write up precisely what I have discovered, leaving out nothing. There will be no secrets. I am going to tell our own people exactly what I have found. Hell, I'm giving them the secret of practically eternal life! What man ever did more for his people? If they don't believe me, that's their business. I'm giving them the chance. And I'm giving them the key that may one day unlock this culture, if they will only use it. You see, we made our big mistake in trying to impress The People with technological gadgets. They just don't care about technology. Perhaps if we had tried something else—Shakespeare, poetry, art, music—they might have listened to us. I don't know."

Frank shook his head. "You need a doctor."

Canady smiled. "Not any more, pal. And I'll tell you something else. I hope everyone does think I'm cracked. I hope they dismiss my report and toss it in the trash file. My conscience is clear. I've found what I want. All I want now is to be let alone."

"You're really going?"

Canady walked over and sat down at his desk. "I'm going to write this report. It will take a couple of days. After that, I'm going out alone."

"To get a good heart?"

"To get a good heart."

Canady assembled his notes and went to work.

Frank Landis stared at him and ran his hand through his sandy hair. Almost desperately, he picked up two battery-powered sewing machines and went out into the snow to peddle his wares.

152                                                  Chad Oliver

VI

The lakes and ponds were still frozen solid and the mountain streams were still glazed with ice. The barren black brush of the plains was still skeletal and gaunt against the drifts of silver snow and the winter winds still whined down the canyons and froze the sweat on your face into little drops and rivulets of ice.

Yet the worst was over when Arthur Canady left the sphere and the camp of The People and set out alone into the wilderness. The snow-choked blizzards and the rivers of knife-edged winds had passed. The winter was resting, holding its own, waiting for the spring thaws and the return of green to the land. The gray winter skies had turned to cloudless blue and the great red sun was warm again on his back.

You must feel that you are part of all life. . . .

It was a strange Odyssey and Canady felt that strangeness keenly. It was a quest for the intangible, a search for the unknown. Canady was a trained man and he felt competent to search for many things: success in a field he knew, material prosperity, the solution to a scientific problem. He was enough of a product of his culture to feel at home looking for gold or uranium or a prize set of horns to hang over an old-fashioned fireplace.

But a good heart?

That wasn't so easy. Where did you look? How did you go about it? His scientific training got in his way. What was a good heart? It was a phrase he would have denounced as meaningless in a seminar discussion. It was mysticism. It was something for philosophers and theologians and politicians to kick around. It was fuzzy, slippery. . . .

You must look within yourself.

He rode out across the white-coated plains, drifting with the yedoma herds that offered him meat and warm furs. He watched the tiny tracks that criss-

The Marginal Man

153

crossed over the crust of the snow. He watched the great birds that soared high in the sky on motionless, splendid wings. At night he pitched his small tent in whatever shelter he could find. He sat before his tiny fire and watched the twin moons float down the cold arc of the stars.

He rode into the far mountains, climbed the ageless rocks and stood with his head in the sky looking down upon the vastness of the land below him. He listened to the wind, rode through the whispers of the trees.

You must believe, that is all.

Perhaps he had help; he did not know. The Old Ones lived still in the high places, and perhaps they looked upon him with compassion. Canady felt a great peace growing within him, a peace he had never known in the cities of Earth. It was a hard life but he too became hard. He took a secret pleasure in the toughness of his body, in the sharpness of his eyes. He awakened with the sun, grateful for the life in his body, eager to see what the day would bring. Smiles came easily to his face and he was relaxed, free from worry.

Why had his people thrown all their energies into bigger buildings, more powerful ships, more intricate engines? Why did his people spend all of their lives grubbing at jobs they detested, their greatest joys coming from a slickly gutless mediocrity on the tri-di set? What had they mistaken for progress, what had they sacrificed to that strange god? How had it come about that pleasure had become something to snatch on the run, between business appointments, between the soggy oblivion of sleeping phis?

Progress.

Could it be that true progress might be found on a simple pathway through the trees and not on a super-freeway at all? Could it be that eternal life had always come from a kind of faith, from being close to the land and the world of living things?

// you believe, if your heart is good, you will see the Old Ones. The guardian spirit will come to you. Then, my son, you will be one of The People—for always.

154

Chad Oliver

Canady rode alone across the rolling plains and up twisting mountain trails. Winter lost its grip on the land and the streams leaped from their banks, fed by the melting snows. Patches of green came again to the lowland valleys and the first wildflowers poked up their heads toward the sun.

When he thought he was ready, Canady turned and rode high into the mountains. The warm spring wind brushed at his face and he filled his lungs with it in a kind of ecstasy. He was at peace, with himself and with the world around him. If nothing else, he had found that much.

He rode toward Thunder Rock to begin his fast.

Thunder Rock thrust its dark, wind-scarred bulk up into the sky high above the timber fine where the last stunted trees clung to their precarious holds on the face of the mountain. There was a small cave in the side of Thunder Rock, a cave that opened upon a level sheet of stone that extended to the sheer face of a black glass-smooth cliff. Standing on that shelf of stone, a man could look down on the rivers of clouds that wound around the lower peaks.

Canady had tethered his mharu far down in a mountain valley where there was plenty of grass and water. He could see the valley from Thunder Rock, and once in a while he caught a glimpse of his mount, little more than a black dot on a stamp of green far below.

He allowed himself a few swallows of icy water from a nearby snowbank and that was all. He ate nothing. In the daylight hours he stood on the shelf of rock and looked down on the world, and at night he shivered in his cave. He had his fur robes but there was no material with which to make a fire.

The air was thin and seared his lungs. His joints were sore and stiff. The days without food left him weak and giddy, and he looked down at the black dot of the mharu and wondered whether he would ever be able to climb down the mountain again. He was surprised to find that his mind lost none of its sharpness.

The Marginal Man

155

In fact, it worked with an almost preternatural clarity, as though all problems were easy and all questions could be answered. He felt as though he were running a fever and he was reminded of the sensation of heightened awareness that sometimes comes with fever dreams. And then he remembered that when the fever was gone a man would wake up and everything that had seemed so clear would vanish like bubbles on the wind. . . .

The days and nights blurred together. He lay quietly in his cave and he had never felt less alone. It gave him an eerie sensation to think that eacfy man and woman of The People had once slept where he was sleeping, walked where he was walking, thought where he was thinking. There was no visible sign that they had ever been here but he could see memories of them in every stone, in every stain of dampness, in every tongue of sunlight that licked at the cold surfaces of the rocks. He sensed a continuity of life that he had never appreciated before, a linking together of living things in an endless procession over the plains and into the wild mountain ranges.

On the fourth night, the rains came.

A sea of swollen clouds washed over the stars. For long minutes the moonlight gleamed on the edges of the clouds, setting them aflame with pink and silver light, and then the darkness was complete. There was an electric hush as the world held its breath.

Then the lightning came, jagged white forks of frozen fire that flashed down from black cloud masses and hurled themselves with livid fury at the stolid bulk of the mountains. The thunder crashed on the heels of the lightning, splitting through the skies with a tearing, ripping explosiveness that tore the very air apart.

Canady huddled in his cave, blinking at the savagery of the storm. The walls of the cave were white with the continuous flashing of the lightning, his ears roared with the brute power of the thunder.

Thunder Rock!

The rain came down in solid sheets, hissing on the ledge of stone, pouring in torrents down the cracks

156

Chad Oliver

and crevices of the mountains. The stone shelf outside the cave became a puddle, a lake, and the water washed into the cave itself, soaking his feet.

Canady stood up, his head almost touching the roof of the cave. He did not fear the storm. He ignored the water at his feet. He stared out into the raging night.

The guardian spirit will come to you.

His skin crawled. A prickling sensation ran up and down his spine. He narrowed his eyes, tried to see. The white flashes of the lightning were everywhere. The thunder beat at his ears.

He felt them. He felt them all around him. He closed his eyes. There! He could almost see them—

The Old Ones.

Mighty, powerful, old when the mountains were young. And yet friendly, respectful, equals—

Canady clenched his fists.

He whispered the hardest prayer of all: "Let me believe! Oh, let me believe!"

There was a long moment when nothing seemed to happen. Then, abruptly, the lightning and the thunder died away. The storm rolled off into the distance, muttering and grumbling to itself. There was silence except for the soft patter of the rain outside the cave.

Canady opened his eyes. There was a sinking sensation in his chest. Had he failed? Was it all for nothing?

Then he saw it.

A great bird flew out of the darkness and perched on the rain-wet shelf of rock. He looked like a hawk, an eagle. He was a mighty bird, raven-black, bold eyes glittering in his head, great wings folded at his sides. There was nothing supernatural about him. Canady could see the drops of water on his, feathers, hear the faint whistle when he breathed.

And yet—

The guardian spirit will come to you.

The eagle walked toward the cave.

Canady stepped forward to meet it.

Suddenly, the cave was alive. He saw them now, all around him, glowing like creatures of light and energy.

The Marginal Man

157

They touched him and they were warm. They seemed to have faces and they were smiling, smiling. . . .

Canady felt tears in his eyes, tears neither of happiness nor of sorrow, tears that came from an emotion too strong to be borne, too mighty to be named. He stood up straight as a man stands among his friends.

And the night was dark no longer and the stars looked down on him from a bright and peaceful sky.

vn

The small gray metallic sphere lifted from the camp of The People but now it carried one man instead of two. It gleamed dully in the light from the great red sun. It hovered high above the surface of Pollux V, looking down on a world flushed with green. It paced the planet as the world rotated on its axis.

It seemed a puny thing as it awaited the arrival of the mother ship from the CAS fleet of Earth, dwarfed by the vault of the heavens and the vast expanse of the land below it. One day it might return, but there were easier worlds for contact. And hidden in its tapes and papers and records it carried a secret no man would believe, a key that could have unlocked one of the hidden secrets of the universe.

Frank Landis sat on his bunk, surrounded by his sewing machines and rifles and model steam engines. He fingered them each in turn, his blue eyes blank and staring, thinking about the crazy man he had left behind. . ..

And the man who had been Arthur Canady came down from Thunder Rock and rode out of the mountains onto the wind-swept plains. The land was green with the promise of spring, the promise of world renewal, the promise of budding trees and fresh grasses and air so clean you could taste it.

His every sense was heightened, he was alive as he had never been alive before. His heart was a song within him. He knew that the wife of the great Me-

158

Chad Oliver

wenta would be stolen by the Telliomata to make room for him, and he knew that this was a good thing, a happy thing.

The ship was not going home. He was going home.

And when he rode into the village of The People there was a smile on every face, and there was a new tepee in the camp circle.

And Plavgar came to meet him and raised his arms in welcome.

And the Old Ones who walked at his side forever whispered to him as he rode, whispered down the winds and across the fields, whispered down from the free skies where the eagle flew, whispered to him alone—

"Welcome, brother, welcome"

A Chad Oliver SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY INDEX

BOOKS:

Mists of Dawn, John C. Winston Co., 1952 (novel). Shadows in the Sun, Ballantine Books, 1954 (novel). Another Kind, Ballantine Books, 1955 (collection). The Winds of Time, Doubleday, 1957 (novel). Unearthly Neighbors, Ballantine Books, 1960 (novel).

IN MAGAZINES: 1950

"The Land of Lost Content," Super Science Stories, November.

1951

"The Blood Star" (with Garvin Berry), Super Science Stories,

January.

"The Boy Next Door," Fantasy and Science Fiction, June.

"The Reporter," Fantastic Story Magazine, Fall.

"The Edge of Forever," Astounding Science Fiction, December.

1952

"The Subversives," Startling Stories, February.

"Lady Killer," Startling Stories, March.

"Blood's a Rover," Astounding Science Fiction, May.

"Stardust," Astounding Science Fiction, July.

"The Fires of Forever," Science Fiction Adventures, November.

"Final Exam," Fantastic, December.

1953

"Technical Adviser," Fantasy and Science Fiction, February.

"Judgment Day," Science Fiction Adventures, March.

"The Shore of Tomorrow," Startling Stories, March.

"Anachronism," Fantasy and Science Fiction, April.

"The Ant and the Eye," Astounding Science Fiction, April.

"Hardly Worth Mentioning," Fantastic, May-June.

"The Life Game," Thrilling Wonder Stories, June.

"Hands Across Space," Science Fiction Plus, August.

1954

"Let Me Live in a House," Universe Science Fiction, March.

159

«t>:+«

160                                                 Chad Oliver

"Rite of Passage," Astounding Science Fiction, April. "Of Course," Astounding Science Fiction, May. "Controlled Experiment," Orbit Science Fiction, Issue 5, November-December.

"Transformer," Fantasy and Science Fiction, November. 1955

"Field Experiment," Astounding Science Fiction, January. "Night," //, March.

"The Last Word" (with Charles Beaumont), Fantasy and Science Fiction, April.

"Artifact," Fantasy and Science Fiction, June. "Any More at Home Like You?" original for Star Science FiC" tion # 3, Ballantine.

"The Mother of Necessity," "A Star Above It," originals for Another Kind, Ballantine. 1956

"I, Claude" (with Charles Beaumont), Fantasy and Science Fiction, February.

"North Wind," Fantasy and Science Fiction, March. "The Guests of Chance" (with Charles Beaumont), Infinity, June. 1957

"Didn't He Ramble," Fantasy and Science Fiction, April. "Between the Thunder and the Sun," Fantasy and Science Fiction, May.

"The Wind Blows Free," Fantasy and Science Fiction, July. "Rewrite Man," Fantasy and Science Fiction, September. 1958

"Pilgrimage," Fantasy and Science Fiction, February. "The Space Horde," Amazing, February. "Guardian Spirit," ("The Marginal Man"), Fantasy and Science Fiction, April. 1959

"From Little Acorns," Satellite Science Fiction, February. "The One That Got Away," Fantasy and Science Fiction, May. "Transfusion," Astounding Science Fiction, June. 1965

"End of the Line," Fantasy and Science Fiction, January. "A Stick for Harry Eddington," Fantasy and Science Fiction, August. 1966 "Just Like a Man," Fantastic, July.