The Midwich Cuckoos

by John Wyndham

  ‘But not, I take it, in Gizhinsk?’ put in Zellaby.

  Bernard looked at him with a small twitch to the corner of his mouth.

  ‘You don’t miss much, do you, Zellaby ? You’re right – not in Gizhinsk. The Dayout there took place a week before the Midwich one. We had the report of it three or four days later. It worried the Russians quite a lot. That was at least some consolation to us when it happened here; we knew that they couldn’t have been responsible. They, presumably, in due course found out about Midwich, and were also relieved. Meanwhile, our agent kept an eye on Gizhinsk, and in due course reported the curious fact that every woman there was simultaneously pregnant. We were a little slow in appreciating any significance in that – it sounded like useless, if peculiar, tittle-tattle – but presently we discovered the state of affairs in Midwich, and began to take more interest. Once the babies were born the situation was easier for the Russians than for us; they practically sealed off Gizhinsk – a place about twice the size of Midwich – and our information from there virtually ceased. We could not exactly seal off Midwich, so we had to work differently, and, in the circumstances, I don’t think we did too badly.’

  Zellaby nodded. ‘I see. The War Office view being that it did not know quite what we had here, or what the Russians had there. But if it should turn out that the Russians had a flock of potential geniuses, it would be useful for us to have a similar flock to put up against them?’

  ‘More or less that. It was quite quickly clear that they were something unusual.’

  ‘I ought to have seen that,’ said Zellaby. He shook his head sadly. ‘It simply never crossed my mind that we in Midwich were not unique. It does, however, now cross my mind that something must have happened to cause you to admit it. I don’t quite see why the events here should justify that, so it probably happened somewhere else, say in Gizhinsk? Has there been a new development there that our Children are likely to display shortly?’

  Bernard put his knife and fork neatly together on his plate, regarded them for a moment, and then looked up.

  ‘The Far-East Army,’ he said slowly, ‘has recently been equipped with a new medium-type atomic cannon, believed to have a range of between fifty and sixty miles. Last week they carried out the first live tests with it. The town of Gizhinsk no longer exists….’

  We stared at him. With a horrified expression, Angela leant forward.

  ‘You mean – everybody there?’ she said incredulously.

  Bernard nodded. ‘Everybody. The entire place. No one there could have been warned without the Children getting to know of it. Besides, the way it was done it could be officially attributed to an error in calculation – or, possibly to sabotage.’

  He paused again.

  ‘Officially,’ he repeated, ‘and for home and general consumption. We have, however, received a carefully channelled observation from Russian sources. It is rather guarded on details and particulars, but there is no doubt that it refers to Gizhinsk, and was probably released simultaneously with the action taken there. It doesn’t refer directly to Midwich, either, but what it does do, is to put out a most forcefully expressed warning. After a description which fits the Children exactly, it speaks of them as groups which present not just a national danger, wherever they exist, but a racial danger of a most urgent kind. It calls upon all governments everywhere to “neutralize” any such known groups with the least possible delay. It does this most emphatically, with almost a note of panic, at times. It insists, over and over again, even with a touch of pleading, that this should be done swiftly, not just for the sake of nations, or of continents, but because these Children are a threat to the whole human race.’

  Zellaby went on tracing the damask pattern on the table cloth for some time before he looked up. Then he said:

  ‘And M.I.’s reaction to this ? To wonder what fast one the Russians were trying to pull this time, I suppose?’ And he returned to doodling on the damask.

  ‘Most of us, yes – some of us, no,’ admitted Bernard.

  Presently Zellaby looked up again.

  ‘They dealt with Gizhinsk last week, you say. Which day?’

  ‘Tuesday, the second of July,’ Bernard told him.

  Zellaby nodded several times, slowly.

  ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘But how, I wonder, did ours know… ?’

  ∗

  Soon after luncheon, Bernard announced that he was going up to The Grange again.

  ‘I didn’t have a chance to talk to Torrance while Sir John was there – and after that, well, we both needed a bit of a break.’

  ‘I suppose you can’t give us any idea of what you intend to do about the Children?’ Angela asked.

  He shook his head. ‘If I had any ideas I suppose they’d have to be official secrets. As it is, I’m going to see whether Torrance, from his knowledge of them, can make any suggestions. I hope to be back in an hour or so,’ he added, as he left us.

  Emerging from the front door, he made automatically towards his car, and then as he reached for the handle, changed his mind. A little exercise, he decided, would freshen him up, and he set off briskly down the drive, on foot.

  Just outside the gate a small lady in a blue tweed suit looked at him, hesitated, and then advanced to meet him. Her face went a little pink, but she pushed resolutely on. Bernard raised his hat.

  ‘You won’t know me. I am Miss Lamb, but of course we all know who you are, Colonel Westcott.’

  Bernard acknowledged the introduction with a small bow, wondering how much ‘we all’ (which presumably comprehended the whole of Midwich) knew about him, and for how long they had known it. He asked what he could do for her.

  ‘It’s about the Children, Colonel. What is going to be done?’

  He told her, honestly enough, that no decision had yet been made. She listened, her eyes intently on his face, her gloved hands clasped together.

  ‘It won’t be anything severe, will it?’ she asked. ‘Oh, I know last night was dreadful, but it wasn’t their fault. They don’t really understand yet. They’re so very young you see. I know they look twice their age, but even that’s not very old, is it? They didn’t really mean the harm they did. They were frightened. Wouldn’t any of us be frightened if a crowd came to our house wanting to burn it down? Of course we should. We should have a right to defend ourselves, and nobody could blame us. Why, if the villagers came to my house like that I should defend it with whatever I could find – perhaps an axe.’

  Bernard doubted it. The picture of this small lady setting about a crowd with an axe was one that did not easily come into focus.

  ‘It was a very drastic remedy they took,’ he reminded her, gently.

  ‘I know. But when you are young and frightened it is very easy to be more violent than you mean to be. I know when I was a child there were injustices which positively made me burn inside. If I had had the strength to do what I wanted to do it would have been dreadful, really dreadful, I assure you.’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ he pointed out, ‘the Children do have that strength, and you must agree that they can’t be allowed to use it.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘But they won’t when they’re old enough to understand. I’m sure they won’t. People are saying they must be sent away. But you won’t do that, will you ? They’re so young. I know they’re wilful, but they need us. They aren’t wicked. It’s just that lately they have been frightened. They weren’t like this before. If they can stay here we can teach them love and gentleness, show them that people don’t really mean them any harm….’

  She looked up into his face, her hands pressed anxiously together, her eyes pleading, with tears not far behind them.

  Bernard looked back at her unhappily, marvelling at the devotion that was able to regard six deaths and a number of serious injuries as a kind of youthful peccadillo. He could almost see in her mind the adored slight figure with golden eyes which filled all her view. She would never blame, never cease to adore, never understand…. There had be
en just one wonderful, miraculous thing in all her life.… His heart ached for Miss Lamb….

  He could only explain that the decision did not lie in his hands, assure her, trying not to raise any false hopes, that what she had told him would be included in his report; and then detach himself as gently as possible to go on his way, conscious of her anxious, reproachful eyes at his back.

  The village, as he passed through it, was wearing a sparse appearance and a subdued air. There must, he imagined, be strong feelings concerning the corralling measure, but the few people about, except for one or two chatting pairs, had a rather noticeable air of minding their own business. A single policeman on patrol round the Green was clearly bored with his job. Lesson One, from the Children – that there was danger in numbers – appeared to have been understood. An efficient step in dictatorship: no wonder the Russians had not cared for the look of things at Gizhinsk….

  Twenty yards up Hickham Lane he came upon two of the Children. They were sitting on the roadside bank, staring upward and westward with such concentration that they did not notice his approach.

  Bernard stopped, and turned his head to follow their line of sight, becoming aware at the same time of the sound of jet engines. The aircraft was easy to spot, a silver shape against the blue summer sky, approaching at about five thousand feet. Just as he found it, black dots appeared beneath it. White parachutes opened in quick succession, five of them, and began the long float down. The aircraft flew steadily on.

  He glanced back at the Children just in time to see them exchange an unmistakable smile of satisfaction. He looked up again at the aircraft serenely pursuing its way, and at the five, gently sinking, white blobs behind it. His knowledge of aircraft was slight, but he was fairly certain that he was looking at a Carey light long-range bomber that normally carried a complement of five. He looked thoughtfully at the two Children again, and at the same moment they noticed him.

  The three of them studied one another while the bomber droned on, right overhead now.

  ‘That,’ Bernard observed, ‘was a very expensive machine. Someone is going to be very annoyed about losing it.’

  ‘It’s a warning. But they’ll probably have to lose several more before they believe it,’ said the boy.

  ‘Probably. Yours is an unusual accomplishment,’ he paused, still studying them. ‘You don’t care for the idea of aircraft flying over you, is that it?’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed the boy.

  Bernard nodded. ‘I can understand that. But, tell me, why do you always make your warnings so severe – why do you always carry them a stage further than necessary? Couldn’t you simply have turned him back?’

  ‘We could have made him crash,’ said the girl.

  ‘I suppose so. We must be grateful that you didn’t, I’m sure. But it would have been no less effective to turn him back, wouldn’t it? I don’t see why you have to be so drastic.’

  ‘It makes more of an impression. We should have to turn a lot of aircraft back before anyone would believe we were doing it. But if they lose an aircraft every time they come this way they’ll take notice,’ the boy told him.

  ‘I see. The same argument applies to last night, I suppose. If you had just sent the crowd away, it would not have been warning enough,’ Bernard suggested.

  ‘Do you think it would?’ asked the boy.

  ‘It seems to me to depend on how it was done. Surely there was no need to make them fight one another, murderously ? I mean, isn’t it, to put it on its most practical level, politically unsound always to take that extra step that simply increases anger and hatred?’

  ‘Fear, too,’ the boy pointed out.

  ‘Oh, you want to instil fear, do you? Why?’ inquired Bernard.

  ‘Only to make you leave us alone,’ said the boy. ‘It is a means; not an end.’ His golden eyes were turned towards Bernard, with a steady, earnest look. ‘Sooner or later, you will try to kill us. However we behave, you will want to wipe us out. Our position can be made stronger only if we take the initiative.’

  The boy spoke quite calmly, but somehow the words pierced right through the front that Bernard had adopted.

  In one startling flash he was hearing an adult, seeing a sixteen-year-old, knowing that it was a nine-year-old who spoke.

  ‘For a moment,’ he said later, ‘it bowled me right over. I was as near panic as I have ever been. The child-adult combination seemed to be full of a terrifying significance that knocked away all the props from the right order of things…. I know it seems a small thing now; but at the time it hit me like a revelation, and, by God, it frightened me.… I suddenly saw them double: individually, still children; collectively, adult; talking to me on my own level….’

  It took Bernard a few moments to pull himself together. As he did so, he recalled the scene with the Chief Constable which had been alarming, too, but in another, much more concrete, way, and he looked at the boy more closely.

  ‘Are you Eric?’ he asked him.

  ‘No,’ said the boy. ‘Sometimes I am Joseph. But now I am all of us. You needn’t be afraid of us; we want to talk to you.’

  Bernard had himself under control again. He deliberately sat down on the bank beside them, and forced a reasonable tone.

  ‘Wanting to kill you seems to me a very large assumption,’ he said. ‘Naturally, if you go on doing the kind of things you have been doing lately we shall hate you, and we shall take revenge – or perhaps one should say, we shall have to protect ourselves from you. But if you don’t, well, we can see. Do you have such a great hatred of us? If you don’t, then surely some kind of modus vivendi can be managed… ?’

  He looked at the boy, still with a faint hope that he ought to have spoken more as one would to a child. The boy finally dispelled any illusion about that. He shook his head, and said:

  ‘You’re putting this on the wrong level. It isn’t a matter of hates, or likes. They make no difference. Nor is it something that can be arranged by discussion. It is a biological obligation. You cannot afford not to kill us, for if you don’t, you are finished….’ He paused to give that weight, and then went on: ‘There is a political obligation, but that takes a more immediate view, on a more conscious level. Already, some of your politicians who know about us must be wondering whether something like the Russian solution could not be managed here.’

  ‘Oh, so you do know about them?’

  ‘Yes, of course. As long as the Children of Gizhinsk were alive we did not need to look after ourselves, but when they died, two things happened: one was that the balance was destroyed, and the other was the realization that the Russians would not have destroyed the balance unless they were quite sure that a colony of the Children was more of a liability than a possible asset.

  ‘The biological obligation will not be denied. The Russians fulfilled it from political motives, as, no doubt, you will try to do. The Eskimos did it by primitive instinct. But the result is the same.

  ‘For you, however, it will be more difficult. To the Russians, once they had decided that the Children at Gizhinsk were not going to be useful, as they had hoped, the proper course was not in question. In Russia, the individual exists to serve the State; if he puts self above State, he is a traitor, and it is the duty of the community to protect itself from traitors whether they are individuals, or groups. In this case, then, biological duty and political duty coincided. And if it were inevitable that a number of innocently involved persons should perish too, well, that could not be helped; it was their duty to die, if necessary to serve the State.

  ‘But for you, the issue is less clear. Not only has your will to survive been much more deeply submerged by convention, but you have the inconvenience here of the idea that the State exists to serve the individuals who compose it. Therefore your consciences will be troubled by the thought that we have “rights”.

  ‘Our first moment of real danger has passed. It occurred when you first heard of the Russian action against the Children. A decisive man might have arranged
a quick “accident” here. It has suited you to keep us hidden away here, and it suited us to be hidden, so it might have been cunningly managed without too much trouble. Now, however, it cannot. Already, the people in Trayne hospital will have talked about us; in fact, after last night there must be talk and rumours spreading all round. The chance of making any convincing “accident” has gone. So what are you going to do to liquidate us?’

  Bernard shook his head.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘suppose we consider this thing from a more civilized standpoint – after all, this is a civilized country, and famous for its ability to find compromises. I’m not convinced by the sweeping way you assume there can be no agreement. History has shown us to be more tolerant of minorities than most.’

  It was the girl who answered this time:

  ‘This is not a civilized matter,’ she said, ‘it is a very primitive matter. If we exist, we shall dominate you – that is clear and inevitable. Will you agree to be superseded, and start on the way to extinction without a struggle? I do not think you are decadent enough for that. And then, politically, the question is: Can any State, however tolerant, afford to harbour an increasingly powerful minority which it has no power to control ? Obviously the answer is again, no.

  ‘So what will you do? We are very likely safe for a time while you talk about it. The more primitive of you, your masses, will let their instincts lead them – we saw the pattern in the village last night – they will want to hunt us down, and destroy us. Your more liberal, responsibly-minded, and religious people will be greatly troubled over the ethical position. Opposed to any form of drastic action at all, you will have your true idealists – and also your sham idealists: the quite large number of people who profess ideals as a form of premium for other-life insurance, and are content to lay up slavery and destitution for their descendants so long as they are enabled to produce personal copybooks of elevated views at the gate of heaven.