by John Wyndham
An investigation, though on more general lines, was also the theme of Dr Willers third report which was in the form of a protest that wound up:
‘In the first place, I do not see why M.I. is concerned in this at all: in the second, that it should be, apparently, an exclusive concern of theirs is outrageous.
‘It is disgracefully wrong. Somebody should be making a thorough study of these children – I am keeping notes, of course, but they are only an ordinary G.P.’s observations. There ought to be a team of experts on the job. I kept quiet before the births because I thought, and still think, that it was better for everyone, and for the mothers in particular, but now that need is over.
‘One has got used to the idea of military interference with science in a number of fields – a lot of it totally unnecessary – but this is really preposterous! It is nothing less than a scandal that such a phenomenon as this should continue to be hushed up so that it is going practically unobserved.
‘If it is not simply a piece of obstructionism, it is still a scandal. It must be possible for something to be done, within the provisions of the Official Secrets Act, if necessary. A wonderful opportunity for the study of comparative development is simply being thrown away.
‘Think of all the trouble that has been taken to observe mere quins and quads, and then look at the material for study that we have here. Sixty-one similars – so similar that most of their ostensible mothers cannot tell them apart. (They will deny that, but it is true.) Think of the work that should be taking place on the comparative effects of environment, conditioning, association, diet, and all the rest of it. What is going on here is a burning of books before they have been written. Something must be done about it before more chances are lost.’
All these representations resulted in a prompt visit from Bernard, and an afternoon of rather acrimonious discussion. The discussion broke up only partly mollified by his promises to stir the Ministry of Health into swift, practical action.
∗
After the others had left, he said:
‘Now that official interest in Midwich is bound to become more overt, it might be very useful – and, indeed, might help to avoid awkwardness later on – if we could enlist Zellaby’s sympathy. Do you think you could arrange for me to meet him?’
I rang up Zellaby who agreed at once, so after dinner I took Bernard up to Kyle Manor, and left him there to talk. He returned to our cottage about a couple of hours later, looking thoughtful.
‘Well,’ asked Janet, ‘and what do you make of the sage of Midwich?’
Bernard shook his head, and looked at me.
‘He’s got me wondering,’ he said. ‘Most of your reports have been excellent, Richard, but I doubt whether you got him quite right. Oh, there is a lot of chatter which sounds like hot air, I know, but what you gave me was too much of the manner, and too little of the matter.’
‘I’m sorry if I misled you,’ I admitted. ‘The trouble about Zellaby is that his matter is frequently elusive, and often allusive. Not much that he says is reportable fact; he is given to mentioning things en passant, and by the time you’ve thought it over you don’t know whether he followed them up with serious deductions, or was simply playing with hypotheses – nor, for that matter, are you at all sure how much he implied, and how much you inferred. It makes things difficult.’
Bernard nodded, understandingly.
‘I appreciate that now. I’ve just had some of it. He spent quite ten minutes towards the end telling me that it is only recently that he has come to wonder whether civilization is not, biologically speaking, a form of decadence. From that he went on to wonder whether the gap between homo sapiens and the rest was not too wide; with the suggestion that it might have been better for our development had we had to contend with the conditions of some other sapient, or at least semi-sapient, species. I’m sure he wasn’t being altogether irrelevant – but I’m hanged if I can really pin down the relevance. One thing seems pretty clear though; erratic as he seems, he doesn’t miss a lot.… Incidentally, he is strong on the same line as the doctor concerning expert observation – particularly on this “compulsion”, but in his case for the opposite reason: he doesn’t consider it hysterical, and is anxious to know what it is.
‘By the way, you seem to have missed one trick – did you know his daughter tried to take her baby for a drive in her car the other day?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘what do you mean, “tried”?’
‘Just that after about six miles she had to give up, and come back again. He doesn’t like it. As he put it: for a child to be tied to its mother’s apron strings is bad, but for a mother to be tied to a baby’s apron strings is serious. He feels it is time he took some steps about it.’
CHAPTER 14
Matters Arising
FOR various reasons almost three weeks went by before Alan Hughes was free to come for a week-end visit, so that Zellaby’s expressed intention of taking steps had to be postponed until then.
By this time the disinclination of the Children (now beginning to acquire an implied capital C, to distinguish them from other children) to be removed from the immediate neighbourhood had become a phenomenon generally recognized in the village. It was a nuisance, since it involved finding someone to look after the baby when its mother went to Trayne, or elsewhere, but not regarded with any great seriousness – more, indeed, as a foible; just another inconvenience added to the inconveniences inevitable with babies, anyway.
Zellaby took a less casual view of it, but waited until the Sunday afternoon before putting the matter to his son-in-law. Reasonably certain, then, of a spell without interruption he led Alan to deck-chairs under the cedar tree on the lawn where they would not be overheard. Once they were seated he came to the point with quite unusual directness.
‘What I want to say, my boy, is this: I’d feel happier if you can get Ferrelyn away from here. And the sooner, I think, the better.’
Alan looked at him with an expression of surprise which became changed into a slight frown.
‘I should have thought it fairly clear that there is nothing I want more than to have her with me.’
‘Of course it is, my dear fellow. One could not fail to realize that. But at the moment I am concerned with something more important than interfering in your private affairs; I am not thinking of what either of you wants, or would like, so much as what needs to be done – for Ferrelyn’s sake, not for yours.’
‘She wants to come away. She set out to come once,’ Alan reminded him.
‘I know. But she tried to take the baby with her: it brought her back, just as it brought her here before, and just, it appears, as it will if she tries again. Therefore you must take her away without the baby. If you can persuade her to that, we can arrange to have it excellently looked after here. The indications are that if it is not actually with her it will not – probably cannot – exert any influence stronger than that of natural affection.’
‘But according to Willers –’
‘Willers is making a loud blustering noise to prevent himself from being frightened. He’s refusing to see what he doesn’t want to see. I don’t suppose it matters very much what casuistries he uses to comfort himself, as long as they don’t take in the rest of us.’
‘You mean that this hysteria he talks about isn’t the real reason for Ferrelyn and the rest coming back here?’
‘Well, what is hysteria? A functional disorder of the nervous system. Naturally there has been considerable strain upon the nervous systems of many of them, but the trouble with Willers is that he stops before he ought to begin. Instead of facing it, and honestly inquiring why the reaction should take this particular form, he hides in a smoke-screen of generalities about a long period of sustained anxiety, and so on. I don’t blame the man. He’s had enough for the time being; he’s tired out, and he deserves a rest. But that doesn’t mean we must let him obscure the facts, which is what he is trying to do. For instance, even if he has observed it, he has not admi
tted that none of this “hysteria” has ever been known to manifest itself without one of the babies being present.’
‘Is that so?’ Alan asked, surprised.
‘Without exception. This sense of compulsion occurs only in the vicinity of one of the babies. Separate the baby from the mother – or perhaps one should say remove the mother from the neighbourhood of any of the babies – and the compulsion at once begins to lessen, and gradually dies away. It takes longer to fade in some than in others, but that is what happens.’
‘But I don’t see – I mean, how is it done?’
‘I’ve no idea. There could, one supposes, be an element akin to hypnotism, perhaps, but, whatever the mechanism, I am perfectly satisfied that it is exerted wilfully and with purpose by the child. One would instance the case of Miss Lamb: when it was physically impossible for her to comply, the compulsion was promptly switched to Miss Latterly, who had previously felt none of it, with the result that the baby had its way, and got back here, as did the rest.
‘And since they got back, no one has managed to take one of them more than six miles from Midwich.
‘Hysteria, says Willers. One woman starts it, the rest subconsciously accept it, and so exhibit the same symptoms. But if the baby is parked with a neighbour here the mother is able to go to Trayne, or anywhere else she wants to, without any hindrance. That, according to Willers, is simply because her subconscious hasn’t been led to expect anything to happen when she is on her own, so it doesn’t.
‘But my point is this: Ferrelyn cannot take the baby; but if she makes up her mind to go, and leave it here, there’s nothing to stop her. Your job is to help to make up her mind for her.’
Alan considered.
‘Sort of put out an ultimatum – make her choose between baby and me? That’s a bit tough and – er – fundamental, isn’t it?’ he suggested.
‘My dear fellow, the baby’s put the ultimatum already. What you have to do is to clarify the situation. The only possible compromise would be for you to surrender to the baby’s challenge, and come to live here, too.’
‘Which I couldn’t, anyway.’
‘Very well, then. Ferrelyn has been dodging the issue for some weeks now, but sooner or later she must face it. Your job is first to make her recognize the hurdle, and then help her over it.’
Alan said slowly:
‘It’s quite a thing to ask, though, isn’t it?’
‘Isn’t the other quite a thing to ask of a man – when it isn’t his baby?’
‘H’m,’ Alan remarked. Zellaby went on:
‘And it isn’t really her baby, either, or I’d not be talking quite like this. Ferrelyn and the rest are the victims of an imposition: they have been cheated into an utterly false position. Some kind of elaborate confidence trick has made them into what the veterinary fellows call host-mothers; a relationship more intimate than that of the foster-mother, but similar in kind. This baby has absolutely nothing to do with either of you – except that, by some process not yet explained, she was placed in a situation which forced her to nourish it. So far is it from belonging to either of you that it doesn’t correspond to any known racial classification. Even Willers has to admit that.
‘But if the type is unknown, the phenomenon is not – our ancestors, who did not have Willers’ blind faith in the articles of science – had a word for it: they called such beings changelings. None of this business would have seemed as strange to them as it does to us because they had only to suffer religious dogmatism, which was not so dogmatic as scientific dogmatism.
‘The idea of the changeling, therefore, far from being novel, is both old and so widely distributed that it is unlikely to have arisen, or to have persisted, without cause, and occasional support. True, one has not encountered the idea of it taking place on such a scale as this, but quantity does not, in this case, affect the quality of the event; it simply confirms it. All these sixty-one golden-eyed children we have here are intruders, changelings: they are cuckoo-children.
‘Now, the important thing about the cuckoo is not how the egg got into the nest, nor why that nest was chosen; the real matter for concern comes after it has been hatched – what, in fact, it will attempt to do next. And that, whatever it may be, will be motivated by its instinct for survival, an instinct characterized chiefly by utter ruthlessness.’
Alan pondered a little.
‘You really think you’ve got a sound analogy there?’ he asked, uneasily.
‘I’m perfectly certain of it,’ Zellaby asserted.
The two of them fell silent for some little time, Zellaby lying back in his chair with his hands behind his head, Alan staring unseeingly across the lawn. At length:
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I suppose most of us have been hoping that once the babies arrived things would straighten out. I admit that it doesn’t look like it now. But what are you expecting to happen?’
‘I’m just being expectant, not specific – except that I don’t think it will be anything pleasant,’ Zellaby replied. ‘The cuckoo survives because it is tough and single-purposed. That is why I hope you will take Ferrelyn away – and keep her away.
‘Nothing satisfactory can come of this, at best. Do your utmost to make her forget this changeling in order that she may have a normal life. It will be difficult at first, no doubt, but not so hard if she has a child that is really her own.’
Alan rubbed the furrows on his forehead.
‘It is difficult,’ he said. ‘In spite of the way it happened, she does have a maternal feeling for it – a well, a sort of physical affection, and a sense of obligation, you know.’
‘But of course. That’s how it works. That’s why the poor hen works herself to death feeding the greedy cuckoo-chick. It’s a form of confidence-trick, as I told you – the callous exploitation of a natural proclivity. The existence of such a proclivity is important to the continuation of a species, but, after all, in a civilized society we cannot afford to give way to all the natural urges, can we? In this case, Ferrelyn must simply refuse to be blackmailed through her better instincts.’
‘If,’ said Alan slowly, ‘if Angela’s child had turned out to be one of them, what would you have done?’
‘I should have done what I am advising you to do for Ferrelyn. Taken her away. I should also have cut off our connexion with Midwich by selling this house, fond as we both are of it. I may have to do that yet, even though she is not directly involved. It depends how the situation develops. One waits to see. The potentialities are unknown, but I don’t care for the logical implications. Therefore the sooner Ferrelyn is out of it, the happier I shall be. I don’t propose to say anything about it to her myself. For one thing it is a matter for you to settle between you; for another, there is the risk that by crystallizing a not very clear misgiving I might do the wrong thing – make it appear as a challenge to be met, for instance. You have a positive alternative to offer. However, if it is difficult, and you need something to tip the balance, Angela and I will back you up quite fully.’
Alan nodded slowly.
‘I hope that won’t be necessary – I don’t think it will be. We both know really that we can’t just go on like this. Now you’ve given me a push, we’ll get it settled.’
They continued to sit, in silent contemplation. Alan was aware of some relief that his fragmentary feelings and suspicions had been collected for him into a form which warranted action. He was also considerably impressed, for he could recall no previous conversation with his father-in-law in which Zellaby, spurning one tempting diversion after another, had held so stoutly to his course. Moreover, the speculations which could arise were interesting and numerous. He was on the point of raising one or two of them himself when he was checked by the sight of Angela crossing the lawn towards them.
She sat down in the chair on the other side of her husband, and demanded a cigarette. Zellaby gave her one and held out the match. He watched her take the first few puffs.
‘Trouble?’ he inquired.
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br /> ‘I’m not quite sure. I’ve just had Margaret Haxby on the telephone. She’s gone.’
Zellaby lifted his eyebrows.
‘You mean, cleared out?’
‘Yes. She was speaking from London.’
‘Oh,’ said Zellaby, and lapsed into thought. Alan asked who Margaret Haxby was.
‘Oh, I’m sorry. You probably don’t know her. She’s one of Mr Crimm’s young ladies – or was. One of the brightest of them, I understand. Academically Dr Margaret Haxby – Ph.D., London.’
‘One of the – er – afflicted?’ Alan inquired.
‘Yes. And one of the most resentful,’ Angela said. ‘Now she’s made up her mind to beat it, and gone – leaving Midwich holding the baby. Literally.’
‘But where do you come in, my dear?’ Zellaby inquired.
‘Oh, she just decided I was a reliable subject for official notification. She said she’d have rung Mr Crimm, but he’s away today. She wanted to arrange about the baby.’
‘Where is it now?’
‘Where she was staying. In the older Mrs Dorry’s cottage.’
‘And she’s just walked out on it?’
‘That’s it. Mrs Dorry doesn’t know yet. I’ll have to go and tell her.’
‘This could be awkward,’ Zellaby said. ‘I can see a pretty panic starting up among the other women who’ve taken these girls in. They’ll all be throwing them out overnight before they get left in the cart, too. Can’t we stall? Give Crimm time to get back and do something? After all, his girls aren’t a village responsibility – not primarily, anyway. Besides, she might change her mind.’
Angela shook her head.
‘Not this one, I think. She’s not done it on the spur of the moment. She’s been over it pretty carefully, in fact. Her line is: She never asked to come to Midwich, she was simply posted here. If they’d posted her to a yellow-fever area they’d be responsible for the consequences; well, they posted her here, and through no fault of her own she caught this instead; now it’s up to them to deal with it.’