| Behold the Man |
| 1 | Anybody who has read The Passover Plot will see what is going on here quickly enough. This story won the Nebula award in its category. It deals with a man who travels through Time in search of the Christ. He is, in a very strange way, successful in his quest. On first reading, if you're of the Christian persuasion, this story may seem blasphemous and irreverent. Well, maybe it is. Maybe the author is an icono- clast. |
| 2 | Say that. Then again, maybe you're an atheist, and a sophisticated one, and you might say that the author is kick- ing a dead dog. Say that. Christian or atheist, though, if these be your initial reactions, consider the story a bit more closely. it may just be that both reactions are wrong. Michael Moorcock is a wondrous man, twice the size of any of us, with a beard like Father Time and the ability to practically kill himself for that which he loves and believes in. |
| 3 | He edits the British periodical New Worlds, which has been the vehicle for some very fine tellings since he took it over. He is a good editor, and a man who would literally give you his shirt, if you were to stop him on the street and demonstrate that you really needed it. He is a professional human being. What more can I say? Plenty. I've met Michael Moorcock a couple times, and because of this I know what I am saying when I say that there are very few people who could spend an afternoon with him and not come away liking him. |
| 4 | Read his story very carefully, please. BEHOLD THE MAN Michael Moorcock He has no material power as the god-emperors had; he has only a following of desert people and fishermen. They tell him he is a god; he believes them. The followers of Alex- r;s Nebula Award, Best Novella 1967 ander said: "He is unconquerable, therefore he is a god.' The followers of this man do not think at all; he was theil act of spontaneous creation. |
| 5 | Now he leads them, this mad- man called Jesus of Nazareth. And he spoke, saying unto them: Yeah verily I was Kari Glogauer and now I am Jesus the Messiah, the Christ. And it was so. The time machine was a sphere full of milky fluid in which the traveler floated, enclosed in a rubber suit, breathing through a mask attached to a hose leading to the wall of the machine. The sphere cracked as it landed and the fluid spilled into the dust and was soaked up. |
| 6 | Instinctively, Glogauer curled himself into a ball as the level of the liquid fell and he sank to the yielding plastic of the sphere's inner lining. The instruments, cryptographic, unconventional, were still and silent. The sphere shifted and rolled as the last of the liquid dripped from the great gash in its side. Momentarily, Glogauer's eyes opened and closed, then his mouth stretched in a kind of yawn and his tongue fluttered and he uttered a groan that turned into a ululation. |
| 7 | He heard himself. The Voice of Tongues, he thought. The language of the unconscious. But he could not guess what he was saying. His body became numb and he shivered. His passage through time had not been easy and even the thick fluid had not wholly protected him, though it had doubtless saved his life. Some ribs were certainly broken. Painfully, he straight- ened his arms and legs and began to crawl over the slippery plastic towards the crack in the machine. |
| 8 | He could see harsh sunlight, a sky like shimmering steel. He pulled himself half- way through the crack, closing his eyes as the full strength of the sunlight struck then). He lost consciousness. Christmas term, 1949. He was nine years old, born two. years after his father had reached England from Austria. The other children were screaming with laughter in the gravel of the playground. The game had begun earnestly enough and somewhat nervously Karl had joined in in the same spirit. |
| 9 | Now he was crying. "Let me down! Please, Mervyn, stop it!" They had tied him with his arms spreadeagled against the wire-netting of the playground fence. It bulged outwards under his weight and one of the posts threatened to come loose. Mervyn Williams, the boy who had proposed the game, began, to shake the post so that Karl was swung heavily back and forth on the netting. "Stop it!" He saw that his cries only encouraged them and he clenched his teeth, becoming silent. |
| 10 | He slumped, pretending unconsciousness; the school ties they had used as bonds cut into his wrists. He heard the children's voices drop. "Is he all right?" Molly Turner was whispering. "He's only kidding." Williams replied uncertainly. He felt them untying him, their fingers fumbling with the knots. Deliberately, he sagged, then fell to his knees, grazing them on the gravel, and dropped face down to the ground. |
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