by John Wyndham
The day wore on. Nothing more came to us from Michael or the rest. In spite of what had happened it seemed better to stay where we were than to move by daylight with the risk of being seen. So we waited.
Then, in the afternoon, something did come, suddenly.
It was not a thought-shape; it had no real form; it was sheer distress, like a cry of agony. Petra gasped, and threw herself whimpering into Rosalind's arms. The impact was so sharp that it hurt. Rosalind and I stared at one another, wide-eyed. My hands shook. Yet the shock was so formless that we could not tell which of the others it came from.
Then there was a jumble of pain and shame, overridden with hopeless desolation, and, among it, characteristic glimpses of forms that we knew without doubt were Katherine's. Rosalind put her hand on mine and held it tightly. We endured, while the sharpness dimmed, and the pressure ebbed away.
Presently came Sally, brokenly, in waves of love and sympathy to Katherine, then, in anguish, to the rest of us.
'They've broken Katherine. They've broken her. . . Oh, Katherine, dear . . . you mustn't blame her, any of you. Please, please don't blame her. They're torturing her. It might have been any of us. She's all clouded now. She can't hear us . . . Oh, Katherine, darling . . .' Her thoughts dissolved into shapeless distress.
Then there was Michael, unsteadily at first, but hardening into as rigid a form as I had ever received:
'It is war. Some day I'll kill them for what they've done to Katherine.'
After that there was nothing for an hour or more. We did our rather unconvincing best to soothe and reassure Petra. She understood little of what had passed between us, but she had caught the intensity and that had been enough to frighten her.
Then there was Sally again; dully, miserably, forcing herself to it:
'Katherine has admitted it; confessed. I have confirmed it. They would have forced me to it, too, in the end. I —' she hesitated, wavering. 'I couldn't face it. Not the hot irons; not for nothing, when she had told them. I couldn't. . . Forgive me, all of you . . . forgive us both . . .'She broke off again.
Michael came in unsteadily, anxiously, too.
'Sally, dear, of course we're not blaming you — either of you. We understand. But we must know what you've told them. How much do they know?'
'About thought-shapes — and David and Rosalind. They were nearly sure about them, but they wanted it confirmed.'
'Petra, too?'
'Yes... Oh, oh, oh...!'There was an unshaped surge of remorse. 'We had to — poor little Petra — but they knew, really. It was the only reason that David and Rosalind would have taken her with them. No lie would cover it.'
'Anyone else?'
'No. We've told them that there isn't anyone else. I think they believe it. They are still asking questions. Trying to understand more about it. They want to know how we make thought-shapes, and what the range is. I'm telling them lies. Not more than five miles, I'm saying, and pretending it's not at all easy to understand thought-shapes even that far away. . . . Katherine's barely conscious. She can't send to you. But they keep on asking us both questions, on and on.... If you could see what they've done to her. . . . Oh, Katherine, darling.... Her feet, Michael — oh, her poor, poor feet. . . .'
Sally's patterns clouded in anguish, and then faded away.
Nobody else came in. I think we were all too deeply hurt and shocked. Words have to be chosen, and then interpreted; but thought-shapes you feel, inside you. . . .
The sun was low and we were beginning to pack up when Michael made contact again.
'Listen to me,' he told us. 'They're taking this very seriously indeed. They're badly alarmed over us. Usually if a Deviation gets clear of a district they let him go. Nobody can settle anywhere without proofs of identity, or a very thorough examination by the local inspector, so he's pretty well bound to end up in the Fringes, anyway. But what's got them so agitated about us is that nothing shows. We've been living among them for nearly twenty years and they didn't suspect it. We could pass for normal anywhere. So a proclamation has been posted describing the three of you and officially classifying you as deviants. That means that you are non-human and therefore not entitled to any of the rights or protections of human society. Anyone who assists you in any way is committing a criminal act; and anyone concealing knowledge of your whereabouts is also liable to punishment.
'In effect, it makes you outlaws. Anyone may shoot you on sight without penalty. There is a small reward if your deaths are reported and confirmed; but there is a very much larger reward for you if you are taken alive.'
There was a pause while we took that in.
'I don't understand,' said Rosalind. 'If we were to promise to go away and stay away–?'
'They're afraid of us. They want to capture you and learn more about us — that's why there's the large reward. It isn't just a question of the true image — though that's the way they're making it appear. What they've seen is that we could be a real danger to them. Imagine if there were a lot more of us than there are, able to think together and plan and co-ordinate without all their machinery of words and messages: we could outwit them all the time. They find that a very unpleasant thought; so we are to be stamped out before there can be any more of us. They see it as a matter of survival — and they may be right, you know.'
'Are they going to kill Sally and Katherine?'
That was an incautious question which slipped from Rosalind. We waited for a response from either of the two girls. There was none. We could not tell what that meant; they might simply have closed their minds again, or be sleeping from exhaustion, or perhaps dead already. . . . Michael thought not.
'There's little reason for that when they have them safely in their hands: it would very likely raise a lot of ill-feeling. To declare a new-born baby as non-human on physical defects is one thing: but this is a lot more delicate. It isn't going to be easy for people who have known them for years to accept the non-human verdict at all. If they were to be killed, it would make a lot of people feel uneasy and uncertain about the authorities — much the same way as a retrospective law does.'
'But we can be killed quite safely?' Rosalind commented, with some bitterness.
'You aren't already captives, and you aren't among people who know you. To strangers you are just non-humans on the run.'
There was not much one could say to that. Michael asked:
'Which way are you travelling tonight?'
'Still south-west,' I told him. 'We had thought of trying to find some place to stop in Wild Country, but now that any hunter is licensed to shoot us, we shall have to go on into the Fringes, I think.'
'That'd be best. If you can find a place to hide-up there for a bit we'll see if we can't fake your deaths. I'll try to think of some way. Tomorrow I shall be with a search-party that's going south-east. I'll let you know what it's doing. Meanwhile, if you run into anyone, make sure that you shoot first.'
On that we broke off. Rosalind finished packing up, and we arranged the gear to make the panniers more comfortable than they had been the previous night. Then we climbed up, I on the left again, Petra and Rosalind together in the right-hand basket this time. Rosalind reached back to give a thump on the huge flank, and we moved ponderously forward once more. Petra, who had been unusually subdued during the packing-up, burst into tears, and radiated distress.
She did not, it emerged from her snuffles, want to go to the Fringes, her mind was sorely troubled by thoughts of Old Maggie, and Hairy Jack and his family, and the other ominous nursery-threat characters said to lurk in those regions.
It would have been easier to pacify her had we not ourselves suffered from quite a residue of childhood apprehensions, or had we been able to advance some real idea of the region to set against its morbid reputation. As it was, we, like most people, knew too little of it to be convincing, and had to go on suffering her distress again. Admittedly it was less intense than it had been on former occasions, and experience did now enable us to put up more
of a barrier against it; nevertheless, the effect was wearing. Fully half an hour passed before Rosalind succeeded in soothing away the obliterating hullabaloo. When she had, the others came in anxiously; Michael inquiring, with irritation:
'What was it this time?'
We explained.
Michael dropped his irritability, and turned his attention to Petra herself. He began telling her in slow, clear thought-forms how the Fringes weren't really the bogey place that people pretended. Most of the men and women who lived there were just unfortunate and unhappy. They had been taken away from their homes, often when they were babies, or some of them who were older had had to run away from their homes, simply because they didn't look like other people, and they had to live in the Fringes because there was nowhere else people would leave them alone. Some of them did look very queer and funny indeed, but they couldn't help that. It was a thing to be sorry, not frightened, about. If we had happened to have extra fingers or ears by mistake we should have been sent to the Fringes — although we should be just the same people inside as we were now. What people looked like didn't really matter a great deal, one could soon get used to it, and —
But at about this stage Petra interrupted him.
'Who is the other one?' she inquired.
'What other one? What do you mean?' he asked her.
'The somebody else who's making think-pictures all mixed up with yours,' she told him.
There was a pause. I opened right out, but could not detect any thought-shapes at all. Then:
'I get nothing,' came from Michael, and Mark and Rachel, too. 'It must be —'
There was an impetuous strong sign from Petra. In words, it would have been an impatient 'Shut up!' We subsided, and waited.
I glanced over at the other pannier. Rosalind had one arm round Petra, and was looking down at her attentively. Petra herself had her eyes shut, as though all her attention were on listening. Presently she relaxed a little.
'What is it?' Rosalind asked her.
Petra opened her eyes. Her reply was puzzled, and not very clearly shaped.
'Somebody asking questions. She's a long way, a very long, long way away, I think. She says she's had my afraid-thoughts before. She wants to know who I am, and where I am. Shall I tell her?'
There was a moment's caution. Then Michael inquiring with a touch of excitement whether we approved. We did.
'All right, Petra. Go ahead and tell her,' he agreed.
'I shall have to be very loud. She's such a long way away,' Petra warned us.
It was as well she did. If she had let it rip while our minds were wide open she'd have blistered them. I closed mine and tried to concentrate my attention on the way ahead of us. It helped, but it was by no means a thorough defence. The shapes were simple, as one would expect of Petra's age, but they still reached me with a violence and brilliance which dazzled and deafened me.
There was the equivalent of 'Phew' from Michael when it let up; closely followed by the repeated equivalent of 'Shut up!' from Petra. A pause, and then another briefly-blinding interlude. When that subsided:
'Where is she?' inquired Michael.
'Over there,' Petra told him.
'For goodness sake —'
'She's pointing south-west,' I explained.
'Did you ask her the name of the place, darling?' Rosalind inquired.
'Yes, but it didn't mean anything, except that there were two parts of it and a lot of water,' Petra told her, in words and obscurely. 'She doesn't understand where I am either.'
Rosalind suggested:
'Tell her to spell it out in letter-shapes.'
'But I can't read letters,' Petra objected tearfully.
'Oh, dear, that's awkward,' Rosalind admitted. 'But at least we can send. I'll give you the letter-shapes one by one, and you can think them on to her. How about that?'
Petra agreed, doubtfully, to try.
'Good,' said Rosalind. 'Look out, everybody! Here we go again.'
She pictured an 'L'. Petra relayed it with devastating force. Rosalind followed up with an 'A' and so on, until the word was complete. Petra told us:
'She understands, but she doesn't know where Labrador is.
She says she'll try to find out. She wants to send us her letter-shapes, but I said it's no good.'
'But it is, darling. You get them from her, then you show them to us — only gently, so that we can read them.'
Presently we got the first one. It was 'Z.' We were disappointed.
'What on earth's that?' everyone inquired at once.
'She's got it back to front. It must be "S,"' Michael decided.
'It's not "S," it's "Z,"' Petra insisted tearfully.
'Never mind them. Just go on,' Rosalind told her.
The rest of the word built up.
'Well, the others are proper letters,' Michael admitted.' Sea-land — it must be —'
'Not "S"; it's "Z,"' repeated Petra, obstinately.
'But, darling, "Z" doesn't mean anything. Now, Sealand obviously means a land in the sea.'
'If that helps,' I said doubtfully. 'According to my Uncle Axel there's a lot more sea than anyone would think possible.'
At that point everything was blotted out by Petra conversing indignantly with the unknown. She finished to announce triumphantly: 'It is "Z". She says it's different from "S": like the noise a bee makes.'
'All right,' Michael told her, pacifically, 'but ask her if there is a lot of sea.'
Petra came back shortly with:
'Yes. There are two parts of it, with lots of sea all round. From where she is you can see the sun shining on it for miles and miles and it's all blue—'
'In the middle of the night?' said Michael. 'She's crazy.'
'But it isn't night where she is. She showed me.' Petra said. 'It's a place with lots and lots of houses, different from Waknuk houses, and much, much bigger. And there are funny carts without horses running along the roads. And things in the air, with whizzing things on top of them —'
I was jolted to recognize the picture from the childhood dreams that I had almost forgotten. I broke in, repeating it more clearly than Petra had shown it — a fish-shaped thing, all white and shiny.
'Yes — like that,' Petra agreed.
'There's something very queer about this, altogether, 'Michael put in. 'David, how on earth did you know—?'
I cut him short.
'Let Petra get all she can now,' I suggested. 'We can sort it out later.'
So again we did our best to put up a barrier between ourselves and the apparently one-sided exchange that Petra was conducting in an excited fortissimo.
We made slow progress through the forest. We were anxious not to leave traces on the rides and tracks, so that the going was poor. As well as keeping our bows ready for use we had to be alert enough not to have them swept out of our hands, and to crouch low beneath overhanging branches. The risk of meeting men was not great, but there was the chance of encountering some hunting beast. Luckily, when we did hear one it was invariably in a hurry to get away. Possible the bulk of the great-horses was discouraging: if so, it was, at least, one advantage we could set against the distinctive spoor behind us.
The summer nights are not long in those parts. We kept on plodding until there were signs of dawn and then found another glade to rest in. There would have been too much risk in unsaddling; the heavy pack-saddles and panniers would have had to be hoisted off by a pulley on a branch, and that would deprive us of any chance of a quick getaway. We simply had to hobble the horses, as on the previous day.
While we ate our food I talked to Petra about the things her friend had shown her. The more she told me, the more excited I became. Almost everything fitted in with the dreams I had had as a small boy. It was like a sudden inspiration to know that the place must really exist; that I had not simply been dreaming of the ways of the Old People, but that it really was in being now, somewhere in the world. However, Petra was tired, so that I did not question her as much a
s I would have liked to just then, but let her and Rosalind get to sleep.
Just after sunrise Michael came through in some agitation.
'They've picked up your trail, David. That man Rosalind shot: his dog found him, and they came across the great-horse tracks. Our lot is turning back to the south-west to join in the hunt. You'd better push on. Where are you now?'
All I could tell him was that we had calculated we must be within a few miles of Wild Country by this time.
'Then get moving,' he told me. 'The longer you delay the more time they'll have to get a party ahead to cut you off.'
It sounded good advice. I woke Rosalind, and explained. Ten minutes later we were on our way again, with Petra still more than half asleep. With speed now more important than concealment we kept on the first southward track that we found and urged the horses to a ponderous trot.
The way wound somewhat with the lie of the land, but its general direction was right. We followed it for fully ten miles without trouble of any kind, but then, as we rounded a corner, we came face to face with a horseman trotting towards us barely fifty yards ahead.
13
The man cannot have had a moment's doubt who we were, for even as he saw us he dropped his reins and snatched his bow from his shoulder. Before he had a shaft on the string we had loosed at him.
The motion of the great-horse was unfamiliar, and we both shot wide. He did better. His arrow passed between us, skinning our horse's head. Again I missed, but Rosalind's second shot took his horse in the chest. It reared, almost unseating him, then turned and started to bolt away ahead of us. I sent another arrow after it, and took it in the buttock. It leapt sideways, catapulting the man into the bushes, and then sped off down the track as hard as it could go.
We passed the thrown man without checking. He cringed aside as the huge hoofs clumped by within a couple of feet of his head. At the next turn we looked back to see him sitting up, feeling his bruises. The least satisfactory part of the incident was that there was now a wounded, riderless horse spreading an alarm ahead of us.
