by John Wyndham
Sometimes when the people are friendly you can't understand a thing they're trying to say and they can't understand you, but more often if you listen a bit you'll find out that a lot of their words are like our own but pronounced differently. And you find out some strange, disturbing things. They all have pretty much the same legends of the Old People as we have — how they could fly, how they used to build cities that floated on the sea, how any one of them could speak to any other, even hundreds of miles away, and so on. But what's more worrying is that most of them — whether they have seven fingers, or four arms, or hair all over, or six breasts, or whatever it is that's wrong with them — think that their type is the true pattern of the Old People, and anything different is a Deviation.
That seems silly at first, but when you find more and more kinds just as convinced of it as we are ourselves — well, you begin to wonder a bit. You start asking yourself: well, what real evidence have we got about the true image? You find that the Bible doesn't say anything to contradict the people of that time being like us, but on the other hand it doesn't give any definition of Man, either. No, the definition comes from Nicholson's Repentances — and he admits that he was writing some generations after Tribulation came, so you find yourself wondering whether he knew he was in the true image, or whether he only thought he was. . . .
Uncle Axel had a lot more to say about Southern parts than I can remember, and it was all very interesting in its way, but it didn't tell me what I wanted to know. At last I asked him point-blank.
'Uncle Axel, are there any cities there?'
'Cities?' he repeated. 'Well, here and there you'll find a town, of a kind. As big as Kentak, maybe, but built differently.'
'No,' I told him. 'I mean big places.' I described the city in my dream, but without telling him it was a dream.
He looked at me oddly. 'No, I never heard of any place like that,' he told me.
'Farther on, perhaps. Farther than you went?' I suggested.
He shook his head. 'You can't go farther on. The sea gets full of weed. Masses of weed with stems like cables. A ship can't make her way through it, and it's trouble enough to get clear of it once you get in it at all.'
'Oh,' I said. 'You're quite sure there's no city?'
'Sure,' he said. 'We'd have heard of it by this time if there was.'
I was disappointed. It sounded as if running away to the South, even if I could find a ship to take me, would be little better than running away to the Fringes. For a time I had hoped, but now I had to go back to the idea that the city I dreamt of must be one of the Old People's cities after all.
Uncle Axel went on talking about the doubts of the true image that his voyage had given him. He laboured it rather a lot, and after a while he broke off to ask me directly:
'You understand, don't you, Davie, why I've been telling you all this?'
I was not sure that I did. Moreover, I was reluctant to admit the flaw in the tidy, familiar orthodoxy I had been taught. I recalled a phrase which I had heard a number of times.
'You lost your faith?' I inquired.
Uncle Axel snorted, and pulled a face.
'Preacher-words!' he said, and thought for a moment. 'I'm telling you,' he went on, 'that a lot of people saying that a thing is so, doesn't prove it is so. I'm telling you that nobody, nobody really knows what is the true image. They all think they know — just as we think we know, but, for all we can prove, the Old People themselves may not have been the true image.' He turned, and looked long and steadily at me again.
'So,' he said, 'how am I, and how is anyone to be sure that this "difference" that you and Rosalind have does not make you something nearer to the true image than other people are? Perhaps the Old People were the image: very well then, one of the things they say about them is that they could talk to one another over long distances. Now we can't do that — but you and Rosalind can. Just think that over, Davie. You two may be nearer to the image than we are,'
I hesitated for perhaps a minute, and then took a decision.
'It isn't just Rosalind and me, Uncle Axel,' I told him. 'There are others, too.'
He was startled. He stared at me.
'Others?' he repeated. 'Who are they? How many?'
I shook my head.
'I don't know who they are — not names, I mean. Names don't have any thinking-shapes, so we've never bothered. You just know who's thinking, like you know who's talking. I only found out who Rosalind was by accident.'
He went on looking at me seriously, uneasily.
'How many of you?' he repeated.
'Eight,' I told him. 'There were nine, but one of them stopped about a month ago. That's what I wanted to ask you, Uncle Axel, do you think somebody found out —? He just stopped suddenly. We've been wondering if anybody knows. . . . You see, if they found out about him —' I let him draw the inference himself.
Presently he shook his head.
'I don't think so. We should be pretty sure to have heard of it. Perhaps he's gone away, did he live near here?'
'I think so — I don't know really,' I said, 'but I'm sure he'd have told us if he was going away.'
'He'd have told you if he thought anybody had found out, too, wouldn't he?' he suggested. 'It looks to me more as if it'd be an accident of some kind, being quite sudden like that. You'd like me to try to find out?'
'Yes, please. It's made some of us afraid,' I explained.
'Very well.' He nodded. 'I'll see if I can. It was a boy, you say. Not very far from here, probably. About a month ago. Any more?'
I told him what I could, which was very little. It was a relief to know that he would try to find out what had happened. Now that a month had gone by without a similar thing happening to any of the rest of us we were less anxious than we had been, but still far from easy.
Before we parted he returned to his earlier advice to remember that no one could be certain of the true image.
Later, I understood why he gave it. I realized, too, that he did not greatly care what was the true image. Whether he was wise or not in trying to forestall both the alarm and the sense of inferiority that he saw lying in wait for us when we should become better aware of ourselves and our difference, I cannot say. It might have been better to have left it awhile — on the other hand, perhaps it did something to lessen the distress of the awakening. . . .
At any rate, I decided, for the moment, not to run away from home. The practical difficulties looked formidable.
7
The arrival of my sister, Petra, came as a genuine surprise to me, and a conventional surprise to everyone else.
There had been a slight, not quite attributable, sense of expectation about the house for the previous week or two, but it remained unmentioned and unacknowledged. For me, the feeling that I was being kept unaware of something afoot was unresolved until there came a night when a baby howled. It was penetrating, unmistakable, and certainly within the house, where there had been no baby the day before. But in the morning nobody referred to the sound in the night. No one, indeed, would dream of mentioning the matter openly until the inspector should have called to issue his certificate that it was a human baby in the true image. Should it unhappily turn out to violate the image and thus be ineligible for a certificate, everyone would continue to be unaware of it, and the whole regrettable incident would be deemed not to have occurred.
As soon as it was light my father sent a stable-hand off on a horse to summon the inspector, and, pending his arrival, the whole household tried to disguise its anxiety by pretending we were just starting another ordinary day.
The pretence grew thinner as time went on, for the stable-hand, instead of bringing back the inspector forthwith, as was to be expected when a man of my father's position and influence was concerned, returned with a polite message that the inspector would certainly do his best to find time to pay a call in the course of the day.
It is very unwise for even a righteous man to quarrel with his local inspector and call him name
s in public. The inspector has too many ways of hitting back.
My father became very angry, the more so since the conventions did not allow him to admit what he was angry about. Furthermore, he was well aware that the inspector intended him to be angry. He spent the morning hanging around the house and yard, exploding with bad temper now and then over trivial matters, so that everyone crept about on tiptoe and worked very hard indeed, in order not to attract his attention.
One did not dare to announce a birth until the child had been officially examined and approved; and the longer the formal announcement was delayed, the more time the malicious had to invent reasons for the delay. A man of standing looked to having the certificate granted at the earliest possible moment. With the word 'baby' unmentionable and unhintable, we all had to go on pretending that my mother was in bed for some slight cold, or other indisposition.
My sister Mary disappeared now and then towards my mother's room, and for the rest of the time tried to hide her anxiety by loudly bossing the household girls. I felt compelled to hang about in order not to miss the announcement when it should come. My father kept on prowling.
The suspense was aggravated by everyone's knowledge that on the last two similar occasions there had been no certificate forthcoming. My father must have been well aware — and no doubt the inspector was aware of it, too — that there was plenty of silent speculation whether my father would, as the law allowed, send my mother away if this occasion should turn out to be similarly unfortunate. Meanwhile, since it would have been both impolite and undignified to go running after the inspector, there was nothing to be done but bear the suspense as best we could.
It was not until mid-afternoon that the inspector ambled up on his pony. My father pulled himself together, and went out to receive him; the effort to be even formally polite nearly strangled him. Even then the inspector was not brisk. He dismounted in a leisurely fashion, and strolled into the house, chatting about the weather. Father, red in the face, handed him over to Mary who took him along to mother's room. Then followed the worst wait of all.
Mary said afterwards that he hummed and ha'd for an unconscionable time while he examined the baby in minutest detail. At last, however, he emerged, with an expressionless face. In the little-used sitting-room he sat down at the table and fussed for a while about getting a good point on his quill. At last he took a form from his pouch, and in a slow, deliberate hand wrote that he officially found the child to be a true female human being, free from any detectable form of deviation. He regarded that thoughtfully for some moments, as though not perfectly satisfied. He let his hand hesitate before he actually dated and signed it, then he sanded it carefully, and handed it to my enraged father, still with a faint air of uncertainty. He had, of course, no real doubt in his mind, or he would have called for another opinion; my father was perfectly well aware of that, too.
At last Petra's existence could be admitted. I was formally told that I had a new sister, and presently I was taken to see her where she lay in a crib beside my mother's bed.
She looked so pink and wrinkled to me that I did not see how the inspector could have been quite sure about her. However, there was nothing obviously wrong with her, so she had got her certificate. Nobody could blame the inspector for that; she did appear to be as normal as a new-born baby ever looks....
While we were taking turns to look at her somebody started to ring the stable bell in the customary way. Everyone on the farm stopped work, and very soon we were all assembled in the kitchen for prayers of thanksgiving.
Two, or it may have been three, days after Petra was born I happened upon a piece of my family's history that I would prefer not to have known.
I was sitting quietly in the room next to my parents' bedroom where my mother still lay in bed. It was a matter of chance, and strategy, too. It was the latest place that I had found to stay hidden awhile after the midday meal until the coast was clear and I could slip away without being given an afternoon job; so far, nobody had thought of looking there for me. It was simply a matter of putting in half an hour or so. Normally the room was very convenient, though just at present its use required caution because the wattle wall between the rooms was cracked and I had to move very cautiously on tiptoe lest my mother should hear me.
On that particular day I was just thinking that I had allowed nearly enough time for people to be busy again when a two-wheeled trap drove up. As it passed the window I had a glimpse of my Aunt Harriet holding the reins.
I had only seen her some eight or nine times, for she lived fifteen miles away in the Kentak direction, but what I knew of her I liked. She was some three years younger than my mother. Superficially they were not dissimilar, and yet, in Aunt Harriet each feature had been a little softened, so that the effect of them all together was different. I used to feel when I looked at her that I was seeing my mother as she might have been — as, I thought, I would have liked her to be. She was easier to talk to, too; she did not have a somewhat damping manner of listening only to correct.
I edged over carefully on stockinged feet to the window, watched her tether the horse, pick a white bundle out of the trap, and carry it into the house. She cannot have met anyone, for a few seconds later her steps passed the door, and the latch of the next room clicked.
'Why, Harriet!' my mother's voice exclaimed in surprise, and not altogether in approval. 'So soon! You don't mean to say you've brought a tiny baby all that way!'
'I know,' said Aunt Harriet's voice, accepting the reproof in my mother's tone, 'but I had to, Emily. I had to. I heard your baby had come early, so I — oh, there she is! Oh, she's lovely, Emily. She's a lovely baby.' There was a pause. Presently she added: 'Mine's lovely, too, isn't she? Isn't she a lovely darling?'
There was a certain amount of mutual congratulation which did not interest me a lot. I didn't suppose the babies looked much different from other babies, really. My mother said:
'I am glad, my dear. Henry must be delighted.'
'Of course he is,' said Aunt Harriet, but there was something wrong about the way she said it. Even I knew that. She hurried on: 'She was born a week ago. I didn't know what to do. Then when I heard your baby had come early and was a girl, too, it was like God answering a prayer.' She paused, and then added with a casualness which somehow failed to be casual: 'You've got the certificate for her?'
'Of course.' My mother's tone was sharp, ready for offence. I knew the expression which went with the tone. When she spoke again there was a disturbing quality in her voice.
'Harriet!' she demanded sharply. 'Are you going to tell me that you have not got a certificate?'
My aunt made no reply, but I thought I caught the sound of a suppressed sob. My mother said coldly, forcibly:
'Harriet, let me see that child — properly.'
For some seconds I could hear nothing but another sob or two from my aunt. Then she said, unsteadily:
'It's such a little thing, you see. It's nothing much.'
'Nothing much!' snapped my mother. 'You have the effrontery to bring your monster into my house, and tell me it's nothing much!'
'Monster!' Aunt Harriet's voice sounded as though she had been slapped. 'Oh! Oh! Oh! ...' She broke into little moanings.
After a time my mother said:
'No wonder you didn't dare to call the inspector.'
Aunt Harriet went on crying. My mother let the sobs almost die away before she said:
'I'd like to know why you have come here, Harriet? Why did you bring it here?'
Aunt Harriet blew her nose. When she spoke it was in a dull, flat voice:
'When she came — when I saw her, I wanted to kill myself. I knew they would never approve her, although it's such a little thing. But I didn't, because I thought perhaps I could save her somehow. I love her. She's a lovely baby — except for that. She is, isn't she?'
My mother said nothing. Aunt Harriet went on:
'I didn't know how, but I hoped. I knew I could keep her for a little while be
fore they'd take her away — just the month they give you before you have to notify. I decided I must have her for that long at least.'
'And Henry? What does he say?'
'He — he said we ought to notify at once. But I wouldn't let him — I couldn't, Emily. I couldn't. Dear God, not a third time! I kept her, and prayed, and prayed, and hoped. And then when I heard your baby had come early I thought perhaps God had answered my prayers.'
'Indeed, Harriet,' said my mother coldly, 'I doubt whether that had anything to do with it. Nor,' she added pointedly, 'do I see what you mean.'
'I thought,' Aunt Harriet went on, spiritlessly now, but forcing herself to the words, 'I thought that if I could leave my baby with you, and borrow yours—'
My mother gave an incredulous gasp. Apparently words eluded her.
'It would only be for a day or two; just while I could get the certificate,' Aunt Harriet went doggedly on. 'You are my sister, Emily — my sister, and the only person in the world who can help me to keep my baby.'
She began to cry again. There was another longish pause, then my mother's voice:
'In all my life I have never heard anything so outrageous. To come here suggesting that I should enter into an immoral, a criminal conspiracy to ... I think you must be mad, Harriet. To think that I should lend—' She broke off at the sound of my father's heavy step in the passage.
'Joseph,' she told him as he entered. 'Send her away. Tell her to leave the house — and take that with her.'
'But,' said my father in a bewildered tone, 'but it's Harriet, my dear.'
My mother explained the situation, fully. There wasn't a sound from Aunt Harriet. At the end he demanded incredulously:
'Is this true? Is this why you've come here?'
Slowly, wearily, Aunt Harriet said:
'This is the third time. They'll take my baby away again like they took the others. I can't stand that - not again. Henry will turn me out, I think. He'll find another wife, who can give him proper children. There'll be nothing — nothing in the world for me — nothing. I came here hoping against hope for sympathy and help. Emily is the only person who can help me. I — I can see now how foolish I was to hope at all . . .'
