The Chrysalids Read online

  When her ankle was quite recovered she was able to show me the favourite corners of her territory.

  One day I took her over our side of the big bank to see the steam-engine. There wasn't another steam-engine within a hundred miles, and we were very proud of it. Corky, who looked after it, was not about, but the doors at the end of its shed were open, letting out the sound of a rhythmic groaning, creaking, and puffing. We ventured on to the threshold and peered into the gloom inside. It was fascinating to watch the big timbers moving up and down with wheezing noises while up in the shadows of the roof a huge cross-beam rocked slowly backwards and forwards, with a pause at the end of each tilt as though it were summoning up energy for the next effort. Fascinating — but, after a time, monotonous.

  Ten minutes of it were enough, and we withdrew to climb to the top of the wood-pile beside the shed. We sat there with the whole heap quivering beneath us as the engine chugged ponderously on.

  'My Uncle Axel says the Old People must have had much better engines than this,' I told her.

  'My father says that if one-quarter of the things they say about the Old People are true, they must have been magicians: not real people, at all,' Sophie countered.

  'But they were wonderful,' I insisted.

  'Too wonderful to be true, he says,' she told me.

  'Doesn't he think they were able to fly, like people say?' I asked.

  'No. That's silly. If they could've, we'd be able to.'

  'But there are lots of things they could do that we are learning to do again,' I protested.

  'Not flying.' She shook her head. 'Things can either fly, or they can't, and we can't,' she said.

  I thought of telling her about my dream of the city and the things flying over it, but after all, a dream isn't much evidence of anything, so I let it pass. Presently we climbed down, leaving the engine to its panting and creaking, and made our way over to her home.

  John Wender, her father, was back from one of his trips. A sound of hammering came from the outside shed where he was stretching skins on frames, and the whole place smelt of his operations. Sophie rushed to him and flung her arms round his neck. He straightened up, holding her against him with one arm.

  'Hullo, Chicky,' he said.

  He greeted me more gravely. We had an unspoken understanding that we were on a man to man basis. It had always been like that. When he first saw me he had looked at me in a way that had scared me and made me afraid to speak in his presence. Gradually, however, that had changed. We became friends. He showed me and told me a lot of interesting things — all the same I would look up sometimes to find him watching me uneasily.

  And no wonder. Only some years later could I appreciate how badly troubled he must have been when he came home to find Sophie had sprained her ankle, and that it had been David Strorm, the son of Joseph Strorm, of all people, who had seen her foot. He must, I think, have been greatly tempted by the thought that a dead boy could break no promise. . . . Perhaps Mrs. Wender saved me. . . .

  But I think he could have been reassured had he known of an incident at my home about a month after I met Sophie.

  I had run a splinter into my hand and when I pulled it out it bled a lot. I went to the kitchen with it only to find everybody too busy getting supper to be bothered with me, so I rummaged a strip out of the rag-drawer for myself. I tried clumsily for a minute or two to tie it, then my mother noticed. She made tchk-tchk noises of disapproval and insisted on it being washed. Then she wound the strip on neatly, grumbling that of course I had to go and do it just when she was busy. I said I was sorry, and added:

  'I could have managed it all right by myself if I'd had another hand.'

  My voice must have carried, for silence fell on the whole room like a clap.

  My mother froze. I looked round the room at the sudden quiet. Mary, standing with a pie in her hands, two of the farm men waiting for their meal, my father about to take his seat at the head of the table, and the others; they were all staring at me. I caught my father's expression just as it was turning from amazement to anger. Alarmed, but uncomprehending, I watched his mouth tighten, his jaw come forward, his brows press together over his still incredulous eyes. He demanded:

  'What was that you said, boy?'

  I knew the tone. I tried to think in a desperate hurry how I had offended this time. I stumbled and stuttered.

  'I — I said I couldn't manage to tie this for myself,' I told him.

  His eyes had become less incredulous, more accusing.

  'And you wished you had a third hand!'

  'No, father. I only said if I had another hand...'

  '. . . you would be able to tie it. If that was not a wish, what was it?'

  'I only meant if,' I protested. I was alarmed, and too confused to explain that I had only happened to use one way of expressing a difficulty which might have been put in several ways. I was aware that the rest had stopped gaping at me, and were now looking apprehensively at my father. His expression was grim.

  'You — my own son — were calling upon the Devil to give you another hand!' he accused me.

  'But I wasn't. I only —'

  'Be quiet, boy. Everyone in this room heard you. You'll certainly make it no better by lying.'

  'But —'

  'Were you, or were you not, expressing dissatisfaction with the form of the body God gave you — the form in His own image?'

  'I just said if I—'

  'You blasphemed, boy. You found fault with the Norm. Everybody here heard you. What have you to say to that? You know what the Norm is?'

  I gave up protesting. I knew well enough that my father in his present mood would not try to understand. I muttered, parrot-like:

  '"The Norm is the Image of God".'

  'You do know — and yet, knowing this, you deliberately wished yourself a Mutant. That is a terrible thing, an outrageous thing. You, my son, committing blasphemy, and before his parents!' In his sternest pulpit voice, he added:

  'What is a Mutant?'

  '"A thing accursed in the sight of God and man", 'I mumbled.

  'And that is what you wished to be! What have you to say?'

  With a heart-sunk certainty that it would be useless to say anything, I kept my lips shut and my eyes lowered.

  'Down on your knees!' he commanded. 'Kneel and pray!'

  The others all knelt, too. My father's voice rose:

  'Lord, we have sinned in omission. We beg Thy forgiveness that we have not better instructed this child in Thy laws...' The prayer seemed to go booming on for a long time. After the 'Amen' there was a pause, until my father said:

  'Now go to your room, and pray. Pray, you wretched boy for a forgiveness you do not deserve, but which God, in His mercy, may yet grant you. I will come to you later.'

  In the night, when the anguish which had followed my father's visit was somewhat abated, I lay awake, puzzling. I had had no idea of wishing for a third hand, but even if I had . . .? If it was such a terrible thing just to think of having three hands, what would happen if one really had them — or anything else wrong; such as, for instance, an extra toe —?

  And when at last I fell asleep I had a dream. We were all gathered in the yard, just as we had been at the last Purification. Then it had been a little hairless calf that stood waiting, blinking stupidly at the knife in my father's hand; this time it was a little girl, Sophie, standing barefooted and trying uselessly to hide the whole long row of toes that everyone could see on each foot. We all stood looking at her, and waiting. Presently she started to run from one person to another, imploring them to help her, but none of them moved, and none of their faces had any expression. My father started to walk towards her, the knife shining in his hand. Sophie grew frantic; she flitted from one unmoving person to another, tears running down her face. My father, stern, implacable, kept on coming nearer; still no one would move to help her. My father came closer still, with long arms outspread to prevent her bolting as he cornered her.

  He caught h
er, and dragged her back to the middle of the yard. The sun's edge began to show above the horizon, and everyone started to sing a hymn. My father held Sophie with one arm just as he had held the struggling calf. He raised his other hand high, and as he swept it down the knife flashed in the light of the rising sun, just as it had flashed when he cut the calf's throat....

  If John and Mary Wender had been there when I woke up struggling and crying, and then lay in the dark trying to convince myself that the terrible picture was nothing more than a dream, they would, I think, have felt quite a lot easier in their minds.

  4

  This was a time when I passed out of a placid period into one where things kept on happening. There wasn't much reason about it; that is to say, only a few of the things were connected with one another: it was more as if an active cycle had set in, just as a spell of different weather might come along.

  My meeting with Sophie was, I suppose, the first incident; the next was that Uncle Axel found out about me and my half-cousin, Rosalind Morton. He — and it was lucky it was he, and no one else — happened to come upon me when I was talking to her.

  It must have been a self-preserving instinct which had made us keep the thing to ourselves, for we'd no active feeling of danger - I had so little, in fact, that when Uncle Axel found me sitting behind a rick chatting apparently to myself, I made very little effort to dissemble. He may have been there a minute or more before I became aware of somebody just round the corner of my eye, and turned to see who it was.

  My Uncle Axel was a tall man, neither thin nor fat, but sturdy, and with a seasoned look to him. I used to think when I watched him at work that his weathered hands and forearms had some sort of kinship with the polished wood of the helves they used. He was standing in his customary way, with much of his weight upon the thick stick he used because his leg had been wrongly set when it was broken at sea. His bushy eyebrows, a little touched with grey, were drawn closer by a half-frown, but the lines on his tanned face were half-amused as he regarded me.

  'Well, Davie boy, and who would you be chattering away so hard to? Is it fairies, or gnomes, or only the rabbits?' he asked.

  I just shook my head. He limped closer, and sat down beside me, chewing on a stalk of grass from the rick.

  'Feeling lonely?' he inquired.

  'No,' I told him.

  He frowned a bit again. 'Wouldn't it be more fun to do your chattering with some of the other kids?' he suggested. 'More interesting than just sitting and talking to yourself?'

  I hesitated, and then because he was Uncle Axel and my best friend among the grown-ups, I said:

  'But I was.'

  'Was what?' he asked, puzzled.

  'Talking to one of them,' I told him.

  He frowned, and went on looking puzzled.

  'Who?'

  'Rosalind,' I told him.

  He paused a bit, looking at me harder.

  'H'm — I didn't see her around,' he remarked.

  'Oh, she isn't here. She's at home — at least, she's near home, in a little secret tree-house her brothers built in the spinney,' I explained. 'It's a favourite place of hers.'

  He was not able to understand what I meant at first. He kept on talking as though it were a make-believe game; but after I had tried for some time to explain he sat quiet, watching my face as I talked, and presently his expression became very serious. After I'd stopped he said nothing for a minute or two, then he asked:

  'This isn't play-stuff — it's the real truth you're telling me, Davie boy?' And he looked at me hard and steadily as he spoke.

  'Yes, Uncle Axel, of course,' I assured him.

  'And you never told anyone else — nobody at all?'

  'No. It's a secret,' I told him, and he looked relieved.

  He threw away the remains of his grass-stalk, and pulled another out of the rick. After he had thoughtfully bitten a few pieces off that and spat them out he looked directly at me again.

  'Davie,' he said, 'I want you to make me a promise.'

  'Yes, Uncle Axel?'

  'It's this,' he said, speaking very seriously. 'I want you to keep it secret. I want you to promise that you will never, never tell anyone else what you have just told me — never. It's very important: later on you'll understand better how important it is. You mustn't do anything that would even let anyone guess about it. Will you promise me that?'

  His gravity impressed me greatly. I had never known him to speak with so much intensity. It made me aware, when I gave my promise, that I was vowing something more important than I could understand. He kept his eyes on mine as I spoke, and then nodded, satisfied that I meant it. We shook hands on the agreement. Then he said:

  'It would be best if you could forget it altogether.'

  I thought that over, and then shook my head.

  'I don't think I could, Uncle Axel. Not really. I mean, it just is. It'd be like trying to forget —' I broke off, unable to express what I wanted to.

  'Like trying to forget how to talk, or how to hear, perhaps?' he suggested.

  'Rather like that — only different,' I admitted.

  He nodded, and thought again.

  'You hear the words inside your head?' he asked.

  'Well, not exactly "hear", and not exactly "see",' I told him. 'There are — well, sort of shapes — and if you use words you make them clearer so that they're easier to understand.'

  'But you don't have to use words — not say them out loud as you were doing just now?'

  'Oh, no — it just helps to make it clearer sometimes.'

  'It also helps to make things a lot more dangerous, for both of you. I want you to make another promise — that you'll never do it out loud any more.'

  'All right, Uncle Axel,' I agreed again.

  'You'll understand when you're older how important it is,' he told me, and then he went on to insist that I should get Rosalind to make the same promises. I did not tell him anything about the others because he seemed so worried already, but I decided I'd get them to promise, too. At the end he put out his hand again, and once more we swore secrecy very solemnly.

  I put the matter to Rosalind and the others the same evening. It crystallized a feeling that was in all of us. I don't suppose that there was a single one of us who had not at some time made a slip or two and brought upon himself, or herself, an odd, suspicious look. A few of these looks had been warnings enough to each; it was such looks, not comprehended, but clear enough as signs of disapproval just below the verge of suspicion, that had kept us out of trouble. There had been no acknowledged, co-operative policy among us. It was simply as individuals that we had all taken the same self-protective, secretive course. But now, out of Uncle Axel's anxious insistence on my promise, the feeling of a threat was strengthened. It was still shapeless to us, but it was more real. Furthermore, in trying to convey Uncle Axel's seriousness to them I must have stirred up an uneasiness that was in all their minds, for there was no dissent. They made the promise willingly; eagerly, in fact, as though it was a burden they were relieved to share. It was our first act as a group; it made us a group by its formal admission of our responsibilities towards one another. It changed our lives by marking our first step in corporate self-preservation, though we understood little of that at the time. What seemed most important just then was the feeling of sharing . . .

  Then, almost on top of that personal event came another which was of general concern; an invasion in force from the Fringes.

  As usual there was no detailed plan to deal with it. As near as anyone came to organization was the appointment of headquarters in the different sectors. Upon an alarm it was the duty of all able-bodied men in the district to rally at their local headquarters, when a course of action would be decided according to the location and extent of the trouble. As a method of dealing with small raids it had proved good enough, but that was all it was intended for. As a result, when the Fringes people found leaders who could promote an organized invasion there had been no adequately organized syste
m of defence to delay them. They were able to push forward on a broad front, mopping up little bands of our militia here and there, and looting as they liked, and meeting nothing to delay them seriously until they were twenty-five miles or more into civilized parts.

  By that time we had our forces in somewhat better order, and neighbouring districts had pulled themselves together to head off a further widening, and harry the flanks. Our men were better armed, too. Quite a lot of them had guns, whereas the Fringes people had only a few that they had stolen, and depended chiefly on bows, knives, and spears. Nevertheless, the width of their advance made them difficult to deal with. They were better woodsmen and cleverer at hiding themselves than proper human beings, so that they were able to press on another fifteen miles before we could contain them and bring them to battle.

  It was exciting for a boy. With the Fringes people little more than seven miles away, our yard at Waknuk had become one of the rallying points. My father, who had had an arrow through his arm early in the campaign, was helping to organize the new volunteers into squads. For several days there was a great bustling and coming and going as men were registered and sorted, and finally rode off with a fine air of determination, and the women of the household waving handkerchiefs at them.

  When they had all departed, and our workers, too, the place seemed quite uncannily quiet for a day. Then there came a single rider, dashing back. He paused long enough to tell us that there had been a big battle and the Fringes people, with some of their leaders taken prisoner, were running away as fast as they could, then he galloped on with his good news.

  That same afternoon a small troop of horsemen came riding into the yard, with two of the captured Fringes leaders in the middle of them.

  I dropped what I was doing, and ran across to see. It was a bit disappointing at first sight. The tales about the Fringes had led me to expect creatures with two heads, or fur all over, or half a dozen arms and legs. Instead, they seemed at first glance to be just two ordinary men with beards - though unusually dirty, and with very ragged clothes. One of them was a short man with fair hair which was tufted as though he had trimmed it with a knife. But when I looked at the other I had a shock which brought me up dumbfounded, and staring at him. I was so jolted I just went on staring at him, for, put him in decent clothes, tidy up his beard, and he'd be the image of my father. . . .