The pin sank into his chest for a little distance, paused, came out. It probed here, probed there; finally it found a nerve in his upper arm. There, guided by the knowledge of the Sickness-Healer, it bit and clawed at the delicate area until Eric felt he would grind his teeth to powder in the effort not to cry out. His clenched fists twisted agonizingly at the ends of his arms in a paroxysm of protest, but he kept his body still. He didn’t cry out; he didn’t move away; he didn’t raise a hand to protect himself.

Sarah the Sickness-Healer stepped back and considered him. “There is no man here yet,” she said grudgingly. “But perhaps there are the beginnings of one.”

He could relax. The physical test was over. There would be another one, much later, after he had completed his Theft successfully; but that would be exclusively by men as part of his proud initiation- ceremony. Under the circumstances, he knew he would be able to go through it almost gaily.

Meanwhile, the women’s physical test was over. That was the important thing for now. In sheer reaction, his body gushed forth sweat which slid over the bloody cracks in his skin and stung viciously. He felt the water pouring down his back and forced himself not to go limp, prodded his mind into alertness.

“Did that hurt?” he was being asked by Rita, the old crone of a Record-Keeper. There was a solicitous smile on her forty-year-old face, but he knew it was a fake. A woman as old as that no longer felt sorry for anybody: she had too many aches and pains and things generally wrong with her to worry about other people’s troubles.