The Midwich Cuckoos

by John Wyndham

  The Intelligence Major emerged from silence.

  ‘Bombs, I think,’ he said reflectively. ‘Fragmentation, perhaps.’

  ‘Bombs?’ asked the Group Captain, with raised brows.

  ‘Wouldn’t do any harm to have some handy. Never know what these Ivans are up to. Might be a good idea to have a wham at it, anyway. Stop it getting away. Knock it out so that we can have a proper look at it.’

  ‘Bit drastic at this stage,’ suggested the Chief Constable. ‘I mean, wouldn’t it be better to take it intact, if possible.’

  ‘Probably,’ agreed the Major, ‘but meanwhile we are just allowing it to go on doing whatever it came to do, while it holds us off with this whatever-it-is.’

  ‘I don’t see what it could have come to do in Midwich,’ another officer put in, ‘therefore I imagine that it forcelanded, and is using this screen to prevent interference while it makes repairs.’

  ‘There’s The Grange….’ someone said tentatively.

  ‘In either case, the sooner we get authority to disable it further, the better,’ said the Major. ‘It had no business over our territory, anyway. Real point is, of course, that it mustn’t get away. Much too interesting. Apart from the thing itself, that screen effect could be very useful indeed. I shall recommend taking any action necessary to secure it; intact if possible; but damaged if necessary.’

  There was considerable discussion, but it came to little since almost everyone present seemed to hold no more than a watching and reporting brief. The only decisions I can recall were that parachute flares would be dropped every hour for observation purposes, and that the helicopter would attempt to get more informative photographs in the morning; beyond that nothing definite had been achieved when the conference broke up.

  I did not see why I had been taken along there at all – or, for the matter of that, why Bernard had been there, for he had made not a single contribution to the conference. As we drove back I asked:

  ‘Is it out of order for me to inquire where you come into this?’

  ‘Not altogether. I have a professional interest.’

  ‘The Grange?’ I suggested.

  ‘Yes. The Grange comes within my scope, and naturally anything untoward in its neighbourhood interests us. This, one might call very untoward, don’t you think?’

  ‘Us’ I had already gathered from his self-introduction before the conference, could be either Military Intelligence in general, or his particular department of it.

  ‘I thought,’ I said, ‘that the Special Branch looked after that kind of thing.’

  ‘There are various angles,’ he said, vaguely, and changed the subject.

  We managed to get him a room at The Eagle, and the three of us dined together. I had hoped that after dinner he might make good his promise to ‘explain later’, but though we talked of a number of things, including Midwich, he was clearly avoiding any more mention of his professional interest in it. But for all that it was a good evening that left me wondering how one can be so careless as to let some people drift out of one’s life.

  Twice in the course of the evening I rang up the Trayne police to inquire whether there had been any change in the Midwich situation, and both times they reported that it was quite unaltered. After the second, we decided it was no good waiting up, and after a final round we retired.

  ‘A nice man,’ said Janet, as our door closed. ‘I was afraid it might be old-warriors-together which is so boring for wives, but he didn’t let it be a bit like that. Why did he take you along this afternoon?’

  ‘That’s what’s puzzling me,’ I confessed. ‘He seemed to have second thoughts and become more reserved altogether once we actually got close to it.’

  ‘It really is very queer,’ Janet said, as if the whole thing had just struck her afresh. ‘Didn’t he have anything at all to say about what it is?’

  ‘Neither he, nor any of the rest of them,’ I assured her. ‘About the one thing they’ve learnt is what we could tell them – that you don’t know when it hits you, and there’s no sign afterwards that it did.’

  ‘And that at least is encouraging. Let’s hope that no one in the village comes to any more harm than we did,’ she said.

  ∗

  While we were still sleeping, on the morning of the 28th, a met. officer gave it as his opinion that ground mist in Midwich would clear early, and a crew of two boarded a helicopter. A wire cage containing a pair of lively but perplexed ferrets was handed in after them. Presently the machine took off, and whimmered noisily upwards.

  ‘They reckon,’ remarked the pilot, ‘that six thousand will be dead safe, so we’ll try at seven thou. for luck. If that’s okay, we’ll bring her down slowly.’

  The observer settled his gear, and occupied himself with teasing the ferrets until the pilot told him:

  ‘Right. You can lower away now, and we’ll make the trial crossing at seven.’

  The cage went through the door. The observer let three hundred feet of line unreel. The machine came round, and the pilot informed ground that he was about to make a preliminary run over Midwich. The observer lay on the floor, observing the ferrets, through glasses.

  They were doing fine at present, clambering with non-stop sinuousness all round and over one another. He took the glasses off them for a moment, and turned towards the village ahead, then:

  ‘Oy, Skipper,’ he said.

  ‘Uh?’

  ‘That thing we’re supposed to photograph, by the Abbey.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘Well, either it was a mirage, or it’s flipped off,’ said the observer.

  CHAPTER 5

  Midwich Reviviscit

  AT almost the same moment that the observer made his discovery, the picket at the Stouch-Midwich road was carrying out its routine test. The sergeant in charge threw a lump of sugar across the white line that had been drawn across the road, and watched while the dog, on its long lead, dashed after it. The dog snapped up the sugar, and crunched it.

  The sergeant regarded the dog carefully for a moment, and walked close to the line himself. He hesitated there, and then stepped across it. Nothing happened. With increasing confidence, he took a few more paces. Half a dozen rooks cawed as they passed over his head. He watched them flap steadily away over Midwich.

  ‘Hey, you there, Signals,’ he called. ‘Inform H.Q. Oppley. Affected area reduced, and believed clear. Will confirm after further tests.’

  ∗

  A few minutes earlier, in Kyle Manor, Gordon Zellaby had stirred with difficulty, and given out a sound like a half-groan. Presently he realized that he was lying on the floor; also, that the room which had been brightly lit and warm, perhaps a trifle over-warm, a moment ago, was now dark, and clammily cold.

  He shivered. He did not think he had ever felt quite so cold. It went right through so that every fibre ached with it. There was a sound in the darkness of someone else stirring. Ferrelyn’s voice said, shakily:

  ‘What’s happened…? Daddy…? Angela…? Where are you?’

  Zellaby moved an aching and reluctant jaw to say:

  ‘I’m here, nearly f-frozen. Angela, my dear…?’

  ‘Just here, Gordon,’ said her voice unsteadily, close behind him.

  He put out a hand which encountered something, but his fingers were too numbed to tell him what it was.

  There was a sound of movement across the room.

  ‘Gosh, I’m stiff! Oo-oo-ooh! Oh, dear!’ complained Ferrelyn’s voice. ‘Oo-ow-oo! I don’t believe these are my legs at all.’ She stopped moving for a moment. ‘What’s that rattling noise?’

  ‘My t-teeth, I th-think,’ said Zellaby, with an effort.

  There was more movement, followed by a stumbling sound. Then a clatter of curtain-rings, and the room was revealed in a grey light.

  Zellaby’s eyes went to the grate. He stared at it in disbelief. A moment ago he had put a new log on the fire, now there was nothing there by a few ashes. Angela, sitting up on the carpet a y
ard away from him, and Ferrelyn by the window, were both staring at the grate, too.

  ‘What on earth – ?’ began Ferrelyn.

  ‘The ch-champagne?’ suggested Zellaby.

  ‘Oh, really, Daddy…!’

  Against the protest of every joint Zellaby tried to get up. He found it too painful, and decided to stay where he was for a bit. Ferrelyn crossed unsteadily to the fireplace. She reached a hand towards it, and stood there, shivering.

  ‘I think it’s dead,’ she said.

  She tried to pick up The Times from the chair, but her fingers were too numb to hold it. She looked at it miserably, and then managed to scrumble it between her stiff hands, and stuff it into the grate. Still using both hands she succeeded in lifting some of the smaller bits of wood from the basket and dropping them on the paper.

  Frustration with the matches almost made her weep.

  ‘My fingers won’t,’ she wailed miserably.

  In her efforts she spilt the matches on the hearth. Somehow she managed to light one by rubbing the box on them. It caught another. She pushed them all closer to the paper bulging out of the grate. Presently it caught, too, and the flame blossomed up like a wonderful flower.

  Angela got up, and staggered stiffly closer. Zellaby made his approach on all fours. The wood began to crackle. They crouched towards it, greedy for warmth. The numbness in their outstretched fingers began to give way to a tingling. After a while the Zellaby spirit began to show signs of revival.

  ‘Odd,’ he remarked through teeth that still showed a tendency to chatter, ‘odd that I should have to live to my present age before appreciating the underlying soundness of fire-worship.’

  On both the Oppley and Stouch roads there was a great starting up and warming of engines. Presently two streams of ambulances, fire appliances, police cars, jeeps, and military trucks started to converge on Midwich. They met at the Green. The civilian transport pulled up, and its occupants piled out. The military trucks for the most part headed for Hickham Lane, bound for the Abbey. An exception to both categories was a small red car that turned off by itself and went bouncing up the drive of Kyle Manor to stop in grooves of gravel by the front door.

  Alan Hughes burst into the Zellaby study, pulled Ferrelyn out of the huddle by the fire, and clutched her firmly.

  ‘Darling!’ he exclaimed, still breathing hard. ‘Darling! Are you all right?’

  ‘Darling!’ responded Ferrelyn, rather as if it were an answer.

  After a considerate interval Gordon Zellaby remarked:

  ‘We, also, are all right, we believe, though bewildered. We are also somewhat chilled. Do you think – ?’

  Alan seemed to become aware of them for the first time.

  ‘The –’ he began, and then broke off as the lights came on. ‘Good-oh,’ he said. ‘Hot drinks in a jiffy.’ And departed, towing Ferrelyn after him.

  ‘ “Hot drinks in a jiffy,” ’ murmured Zellaby. ‘Such music in a simple phrase!’

  ∗

  And so, when we came down to breakfast, eight miles away, it was to be greeted with the news that Colonel Westcott had gone out a couple of hours before; and that Midwich was as near awake again as was natural to it.

  CHAPTER 6

  Midwich Settles Down

  THERE was still a police picket on the Stouch road, but as residents of Midwich we passed through promptly, to drive on through a scene which looked much as usual, and reach our cottage without further hindrance.

  We had wondered more than once what state of affairs we might find there, but there proved to have been no need for alarm. The cottage was intact, and exactly as we had left it. We went in and resettled ourselves just as we had intended to on the previous day, with no inconvenience except that the milk in the refrigerator had gone off, on account of the cut in the electricity supply. Indeed, within half an hour of returning the happenings of the previous day were beginning to seem unreal; and when we went out and talked to our neighbours we found that for those who had actually been involved the feeling of unreality was even more pronounced.

  Nor was that surprising, for, as Mr Zellaby pointed out, their knowledge of the affair was limited to an awareness that they had failed to go to bed one night and had awakened, feeling extremely cold, one morning: the rest was a matter of hearsay. One had to believe that they had during the interval missed a day, for it was improbable that the rest of the world could be collectively mistaken; but, speaking for himself, it had not even been an interesting experience, since the prime requisite of interest was, after all, consciousness. He therefore proposed to disregard the whole matter, and do his best to forget that he had been cheated out of one of the days which he found to be passing, in proper sequence, far too quickly.

  Such a dismissal turned out for a time to be surprisingly easy, for it is doubtful whether the affair – even had it not lain beneath the intimidating muzzles of the Official Secrets Act – could at this stage have made a really useful newspaper sensation. As a dish, it had a number of promising aromas, but it proved short on substance. There were, in all, eleven casualties, and something might have been made of them, but even they lacked the details to excite a blasé readership, and the stories of the survivors were woefully undramatic, for they had nothing to tell but their recollections of a cold awakening.

  We were able, therefore, to assess our losses, dress our wounds, and generally readjust ourselves from the experience which afterwards became known as the Dayout, with a quite unexpected degree of privacy.

  Of our eleven fatalities: Mr William Trunk, a farm-hand, his wife, and their small son, had perished when their cottage burnt down. An elderly couple called Stagfield had been lost in the other house that caught fire. Another farm-hand, Herbert Flagg, had been discovered dead from exposure in close, and not easily explained, proximity to the cottage occupied by Mrs Harriman, whose husband was at work in his bakery at the time. Harry Crankhart, one of the two men whom the Oppley church-tower observers had been able to see lying in front of the Scythe and Stone had also been found dead from exposure. The other four were all elderly persons in whom neither the sulfas nor the mycetes had been able to check the progress of pneumonia.

  Mr Leebody preached a thanksgiving sermon on behalf of the rest of us at an unusually well-attended service the following Sunday, and with that, and his conduct of the last of the funerals, the dream-like quality of the whole affair became established.

  It is true that for a week or so there were a few soldiers about, and there was quite a deal of coming and going in official cars, but the centre of this interest did not lie within the village itself, and so disturbed it little. The visible focus of attention was close to the Abbey ruins where a guard was posted to protect a large dent in the ground which certainly looked as if something massive had rested there for a while. Engineers had measured this phenomenon, made sketches, and taken photographs of it. Technicians of various kinds had then tramped back and forth across it, carrying mine-detectors, geiger-counters, and other subtle gear. Then, abruptly, the military lost all interest in it, and withdrew.

  Investigations at The Grange went on a little longer, and among those occupied with them was Bernard Westcott. He dropped in to see us several times, but he told us nothing of what was going on, and we asked no details. We knew no more than the rest of the village did – that there was a security check in progress. Not until the evening of the day it was finished, and after he had announced his departure for London the following day, did he speak much of the Dayout and its consequences. Then, following a lull in conversation, he said:

  ‘I’ve got a proposition to make to you two. If you’d care to hear it.’

  ‘Let’s hear it and see,’ I told him.

  ‘Essentially it is this: we feel that it is rather important for us to keep an eye on this village for a time, and know what goes on here. We could introduce one of our own men to help keep us posted, but there are points against that. For one thing, he would have to start from scratch; and it take
s time for any stranger to work into the life of any village, and, for another, it is doubtful whether we could justify the detachment of a good man to full-time work here at present – and if he were not full-time it is equally doubtful whether he could be of much use. If, on the other hand, we could get someone reliable who already knows the place and the people to keep us posted on possible developments it would be more satisfactory all round. What do you think?’

  I considered for a moment.

  ‘Not, at first hearing, very much,’ I told him. ‘It rather depends, I suppose, what is involved.’ I glanced across at Janet. She said, somewhat coldly:

  ‘It rather sounds as if we are being invited to spy on our friends, and neighbours. I think perhaps a professional spy might suit you better.’

  ‘This,’ I backed her up, ‘is our home.’

  He nodded, rather as if that were what he had expected.

  ‘You consider yourselves a part of this community?’ he said.

  ‘We are trying to be, and, I think, beginning to be,’ I told him.

  He nodded again. ‘Good – At least, good if you feel that you have begun to have an obligation towards it. That’s what’s needed. It can well do with someone who has its welfare at heart to keep an eye on it.’

  ‘I don’t see quite why. It seems to have got along very well without for a number of centuries… or, at least, should I say that the attentions of its own inhabitants have served it well enough.’

  ‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘True enough – until now. Now, however, it needs, and is getting, some outside protection. It seems to me that the best chance of giving it that protection depends quite largely on our having adequate information on what goes on inside it.’

  ‘What sort of protection? – and from what?’

  ‘Chiefly, at present, from busybodies,’ he said. ‘My dear fellow, surely you don’t think it was an accident that the Midwich Dayout wasn’t splashed across the papers on the Dayout? Or that there wasn’t a rush of journalists of all kinds pestering the life out of everyone here th moment it lifted?’