The Midwich Cuckoos

by John Wyndham

  ‘Fascinating, don’t you think?’ beamed Zellaby. ‘Like to try them with the nail-puzzle?’

  ‘Later, perhaps,’ Janet told him. ‘Just at present I should like some tea.’ So we took him back with us to the cottage.

  ‘That box idea was a good one,’ Zellaby congratulated himself modestly, while wolfing a cucumber sandwich. ‘Simple, incontestable, and went off without a hitch, too.’

  ‘Does that mean you’ve been trying other ideas on them?’ Janet inquired.

  ‘Oh, quite a number. Some of them were a bit too complicated, though, and others not fully conclusive – besides, I hadn’t got hold of the right end of the stick to begin with.’

  ‘Are you quite sure you have now – because I’m not at all sure that I have?’ Janet told him. He looked at her.

  ‘I rather think you must have – and that Richard has, too. You don’t need to be shy of admitting it.’

  He helped himself to another sandwich, and looked inquiringly at me.

  ‘I suppose,’ I told him, ‘that you are wanting me to say that your experiment has shown that what one of the boys knows, all the boys know, though the girls do not; and vice versa. All right then, that is what it appears to show – unless there is a catch somewhere.’

  ‘My dear fellow –!’

  ‘Well, you must admit that what it appears to show is a little more than anyone is likely to be able to swallow at one gulp.’

  ‘I see. Yes. Of course, I myself arrived at it by stages,’ he nodded.

  ‘But,’ I said, ‘it is what we were intended to infer?’

  ‘Of course, my dear fellow. Could it be clearer?’ He took the linked nails from his pocket and dropped them on the table. ‘Take these, and try for yourselves – or, better still, devise your own little test, and apply it. You’ll find the inference – at least the preliminary inference – inescapable.’

  ‘To appreciate takes longer than to grasp,’ I said, ‘but let’s regard it as a hypothesis which I accept for the moment –’

  ‘Wait a minute,’ put in Janet. ‘Mr Zellaby, are you claiming that if I were to tell anything to any one of the boys, all the rest would know it?’

  ‘Certainly – provided, of course, that it was something simple enough for them to understand at this stage.’

  Janet looked highly sceptical.

  Zellaby sighed.

  ‘The old trouble,’ he said. ‘Lynch Darwin, and you show the impossibility of evolution. But, as I said, you’ve only to apply your own tests.’ He turned back to me. ‘You were allowing the hypothesis…?’ he suggested.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, ‘and you said that was the preliminary inference. What is the next one?’

  ‘I should have thought that just that one contained implications enough to capsize our social system.’

  ‘Couldn’t this be something like – I mean, a more developed form of the sort of sympathetic understanding that’s sometimes found between twins?’ Janet asked.

  Zellaby shook his head.

  ‘I think not – or else it has developed far enough to have acquired new features. Besides, we don’t have here one single group en rapport; we have two separate groups of rapport, apparently without cross-connexions. Now, if that is so, and we have seen that it is, a question that immediately presents itself is this: to what extent is any of these Children an individual? Each is physically an individual, as we can see – but is he so in other ways? If he is sharing consciousness with the rest of the group, instead of having to communicate with others with difficulty, as we do, can he be said to have a mind of his own, a separate personality as we understand it? I don’t see that he can. It seems perfectly clear that if A, B, and C share a common consciousness, then what A expresses is also what B and C are thinking, and that way action taken by B in particular circumstances is exactly that which would be taken by A and C in those circumstances – subject only to modifications arising from physical differences between them, which may, in fact, be considerable in so far as conduct is very susceptible to conditions of the glands, and other factors in the physical individual.

  ‘In other words if I ask a question to any of these boys I shall get exactly the same answer from whichever I choose to ask: if I ask him to perform an action, I shall get more or less the same result, but it is likely to be more successful with some who happen to have better physical coordination than others – though, in point of fact, with such close similarity as there is among the Children the variation will be small.

  ‘But my point is this: it will not be an individual who answers me, or performs what I ask, it will be an item of the group. And in that alone lie plenty of further questions, and implications.’

  Janet was frowning. ‘I still don’t quite –’

  ‘Let me put it differently,’ said Zellaby. ‘What we have seemed to have here is fifty-eight little individual entities. But appearances have been deceptive, and we find that what we actually have are two entities only – a boy, and a girl: though the boy has thirty component parts each with the physical structure and appearance of individual boys; and the girl has twenty-eight component parts.’

  There was a pause. Presently:

  ‘I find that rather hard to take,’ said Janet, with careful understatement.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ agreed Zellaby. ‘So did I.’

  ‘Look here,’ I said, after a further pause. ‘You are putting this forward as a serious proposition? I mean, it isn’t just a dramatic manner of speaking?’

  ‘I am stating a fact – having shown you the evidence first.’

  I shook my head. ‘All you showed us was that they are able to communicate in some way that I don’t understand. To proceed from that to your theory of non-individualism is too much of a jump.’

  ‘Oh that piece of evidence alone, perhaps so. But you must remember that, though this is the first you have seen, I have already conducted a number of tests, and not one of them has contradicted the idea of what I prefer to call collective-individualism. Moreover, it is not as strange, per se, as it appears at first sight. It is quite a well established evolutionary dodge for getting round a shortcoming. A number of forms that appear at first sight to be individuals turn out to be colonies – and many forms cannot survive at all unless they create colonies which operate as individuals. Admittedly the best examples are among the lower forms, but there’s no reason why it should be confined to them. Many of the insects come pretty near it. The laws of physics prevent them increasing in size, so they contrive greater efficiency by acting as a group. We ourselves combine in groups consciously, instead of by instinct, for the same purposes. Very well, why shouldn’t nature produce a more efficient version of the method by which we clumsily contrive to overcome our own weakness? Another case of nature copying art, perhaps?

  ‘After all, we are up against the barriers to further development, and we have been for some time – unless we are to stagnate we must find some way of getting round them. G. B. S. proposed, you will remember, that the first step should be to extend the term of human life to three hundred years. That might be one way – and no doubt the extension of individual life would have a strong appeal to so determined an individualist – but there are others, and, though this is not perhaps a line of evolution one would expect to find among the higher animals, it is obviously not impracticable – though, of course, that is by no means to say that it is bound to be successful.’

  A quick glance at Janet’s expression showed me that she had dropped out. When she has decided that someone is talking nonsense she makes a quick decision to waste no more effort upon it, and pulls down an impervious mental curtain. I went on pondering, looking out of the window.

  ‘I feel, I think,’ I said presently, ‘rather like a chameleon placed on a colour it can’t quite manage. If I have followed you, you are saying that in each of these two groups the minds are in some way – well – pooled. Would that imply that the boys have, collectively, a normal brain-power multiplied by thirty, and the girls have
it multiplied by twenty-eight?’

  ‘I think not,’ said Zellaby, quite seriously, ‘and it certainly does not mean normal abilities to the power of thirty, thank heaven – that would be beyond any comprehension. It does appear to mean multiplication of intelligence in some degree, but at their present stage I don’t see how that can be estimated – if it ever could be. That may portend tremendous things. But what seems to me of more immediate importance is the degree of will-power that has been produced – the potentialities of that strike me as very serious indeed. One has no idea how these compulsions are exerted, but I fancy that if it can be explored we might find that when a certain degree of will is, so as to speak, concentrated in one vessel a Hegelian change takes place – that is, that in more than a critical quantity it begins to display a new quality. In this case, a power of direct imposition.

  ‘That, however, I frankly admit is speculative – and I can now foresee a devil of a lot to speculate about and investigate.’

  ‘The whole thing sounds incredibly complicated to me – if you are right.’

  ‘In detail, in the mechanics, yes,’ Zellaby admitted, ‘but in principle, I think, not nearly so much as would appear at first sight. After all, you would agree that the essential quality of man is the embodiment of a spirit?’

  ‘Certainly,’ I nodded.

  ‘Well, a spirit is a living force, therefore it is not static, therefore it is something which must either evolve, or atrophy. Evolution of a spirit assumes the eventual development of a greater spirit. Suppose, then, that this greater spirit, this super spirit, is attempting to make its appearance on the scene. Where is it to dwell? The ordinary man is not constructed to contain it; the superman does not exist to house it. Might it not, then, for lack of a suitable single vehicle, inform a group – rather like an encyclopedia grown too large for one volume? I don’t know. But if it were so, then two super-spirits, residing in two groups, is no less probable.’

  He paused, looking out of the open windows, watching a bumble-bee fly from one lavender-head to another, then he added reflectively:

  ‘I have wondered about these two groups quite a lot. I have even felt that there ought to be names for these two super-spirits. One would imagine there were plenty of names to choose from, and yet I find just two, out of them all, persistently invading my mind. Somehow, I keep on thinking of – Adam – and Eve.’

  ∗

  Two or three days later I had a letter telling me that the job I had been angling for in Canada could be mine if I sailed without delay. I did, leaving Janet to clear things up, and follow me.

  When she arrived she had little more news of Midwich except on a rather one-sided feud which had broken out between the Freemans and Zellaby.

  Zellaby, it appeared, had told Bernard Westcott of his findings. An inquiry for further particulars had reached the Freemans to whom the whole idea came as a novelty, and one which they instinctively opposed. They at once instituted tests of their own, and were seen to be growing gloomier as they proceeded.

  ‘But at least I imagine they’ll stop short of Adam and Eve,’ she added. ‘Really, old Zellaby! The thing I shall never cease to be thankful for was that we happened to go to London when we did. Just fancy if I’d become the mother of a thirty-first part of an Adam, or a twenty-ninth part of an Eve. It’s been bad enough as it is, and thank goodness we’re out of it. I’ve had enough of Midwich, and I don’t care if I never hear of the place again.’

  Part Two

  CHAPTER 16

  Now We Are Nine

  DURING the next few years, such visits home as we managed were brief and hurried, spent entirely in dashing from one lot of relatives to another, with interludes to improve business contacts. I never went anywhere near Midwich, nor indeed thought much about it. But, in the eighth summer after we had left, I managed a six-week spell, and at the end of the first week I ran into Bernard Wescott one day, in Piccadilly.

  We went to the In and Out for a drink. In the course of a chat I asked him about Midwich. I think I expected to hear that the whole thing had fizzled out, for on the few occasions I had recalled the place lately, it and its inhabitants had the improbability of a tale once realistic, but now thoroughly unconvincing. I was more than half-ready to hear that the Children no longer trailed clouds of anything unconventional, that, as so often with suspected genius, expectations had never flowered, and that, for all their beginnings and indications, they had become an ordinary gang of village children, with only their looks to distinguish them.

  Bernard considered for a moment, then he said :

  ‘As it happens, I have to go down there tomorrow. Would you care to come for the run, renew old acquaintance, and so on?’

  Janet had gone north to stay with an old school friend for a week leaving me on my own, with nothing particular to do.

  ‘So you do still keep an eye on the place? Yes, I’d like to come and have a few words with them. Zellaby’s still alive and well?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He’s that rather dry-stick type that seems set to go on for ever, unchanged.’

  ‘The last time I saw him – apart from our farewell – he was off on a weird tack about composite personality,’ I recalled. ‘An old spellbinder. He manages to make the most exotic conceptions sound feasible while he’s talking. Something about Adam and Eve, I remember.’

  ‘You won’t find much difference,’ Bernard told me, but did not pursue that line. Instead, he went on: ‘My own business there is a bit morbid I’m afraid – an inquest, but that needn’t interfere with you.’

  ‘One of the Children?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ he shook his head. ‘A motor accident to a local boy called Pawle.’

  ‘Pawle,’ I repeated. ‘Oh, yes, I remember. They’ve a farm a bit outside, nearer to Oppley.’

  ‘That’s it. Dacre Farm. Tragic business.’

  It seemed intrusive to ask what interest he could have in the inquest, so I let him switch the conversation to my Canadian experiences.

  The next morning, with a fine summer’s day already well begun, we set off soon after breakfast. In the car he apparently felt at liberty to talk more freely than he had at the club.

  ‘You’ll find a few changes in Midwich,’ he warned me. ‘Your old cottage is now occupied by a couple called Welton – he etches, and his wife throws pots. I can’t remember who is in Crimm’s place at the moment – there’s been quite a succession of people since the Freemans. But what’s going to surprise you most is The Grange. The board outside has been repainted; it now reads: “Midwich Grange – Special School – Ministry of Education.” ’

  ‘Oh? The Children?’ I asked.

  ‘Exactly.’ He nodded. ‘Zellaby’s “exotic conception” was a lot less exotic than it seemed. In fact, it was a bull – to the great discomfiture of the Freemans. It showed them up so thoroughly that they had to clear out to hide their faces.’

  ‘You mean his Adam and Eve stuff?’ I said incredulously.

  ‘Not that exactly. I meant the two mental groups. It was soon proved that there was this rapport – everything supported that – and it continued. At just over two years old one of the boys learnt to read simple words –’

  ‘At two!’ I exclaimed.

  ‘Quite the equivalent of any other child’s four,’ he reminded me. ‘And the next day it was found that any of the boys could read them. From then on, the progress was amazing. It was weeks later before one of the girls learnt to read, but when she did, all the rest of them could, too. Later on, one boy learnt to ride a bicycle; right away any of them could do it competently, first shot. Mrs Brinkman taught her girl to swim; all the rest of the girls were immediately able to swim; but the boys could not until one of them got the trick of it, then the rest could. Oh, from the moment Zellaby pointed it out, there was no doubt about it. The thing there has been – and still is – a whole series of rows about, on all levels, is his deduction that each group represents an individual. Not many people will wear that one. A form of tho
ught transmission, possibly; a high degree of mutual sensitivity, perhaps; a number of units with a form of communication not yet clearly understood, feasible; but a single unit informing physically independent parts, no. There’s precious little support for that.’

  I was not greatly surprised to hear it, but he was going on:

  ‘Anyway, the arguments are chiefly academic. The point is that, however it happens, they do have this rapport within the groups. Well, sending them to any ordinary school was obviously out of the question – there’d be tales about them all over the place in a few days if they’d just turned up at Oppley or Stouch schools. So that brought in the Ministry of Education, as well as the Ministry of Health, with the result that The Grange was opened up as a kind of school-cum-welfare-centre-cum-social-observatory for them.

  ‘That has worked better than we expected. Even when you were here it was pretty obvious they were going to be a problem later on. They have a different sense of community – their pattern is not, and cannot by their nature, be the same as ours. Their ties to one another are far more important to them than any feeling for ordinary homes. Some of the homes resented them pretty much, too – they can’t really become one of the family, they’re too different; they were little good as company for the true children of the family, and the difficulties looked like growing. Somebody at The Grange had the idea of starting dormitories there for them. There was no pressure, no persuasion – they could just move in if they wanted to, and a dozen or more did, quite soon. Then others gradually joined them. It was rather as if they were beginning to learn that they could not have a great deal in common with the rest of the village, and so gravitated naturally towards a group of their own kind.’

  ‘An odd arrangement. What did the village people think of it?’ I asked.

  ‘There was disapproval from some, of course – more from convention than conviction, really. A lot of them were relieved to lose a responsibility that had rather scared them, though they didn’t feel it proper to admit it. A few were genuinely fond of them, still are, and have found it distressing. But in general they have just accepted. Nobody really tried to stop any of them shifting to The Grange, of course – it wouldn’t have been any use. Where the mothers feel affectionately for them the Children keep on good terms, and are in and out of the houses as they like. Some others of the Children have made a complete break.’