by John Wyndham
‘Then, too, with your Government of the Right reluctantly driven to consider drastic action against us, your politicians of the Left will see a chance of party capital, and possible dismissal of the Government. They will defend our rights as a threatened minority, and children, at that. Their leaders will glow with righteousness on our behalf. They will claim, without referendum, to be representing justice, compassion, and the great heart of the people. Then it will occur to some of them that there really is a serious problem, and that if they were to force an election there would very likely be a split between the promoters of the party’s official Warm-heart policy, and the rank and file whose misgivings about us will make them a Cold-feet faction; so the display of abstract righteousness, and the plugging of well-tested, best-selling virtues will diminish.’
‘You don’t appear to think very highly of our institutions,’ Bernard put in. The girl shrugged.
‘As a securely dominant species you could afford to lose touch with reality, and amuse yourselves with abstractions,’ she replied. Then she went on: ‘While these people are wrangling, it will come home to a lot of them that the problem of dealing with a more advanced species than themselves is not going to be easy, and will become less easy with procrastination. There may be practical attempts to deal with us. But we have shown last night what is going to happen to soldiers if they are sent against us. If you send aircraft, they will crash. Very well then, you will think of artillery, as the Russians did, or of guided missiles whose electronics we cannot affect. But if you send them, you won’t be able to kill only us, you will have to kill all the people in the village as well – it would take you a long time even to contemplate such an action, and if it were carried out, what government in this country could survive such a massacre of innocents on the grounds of expediency ? Not only would the party that sanctioned it be finished for good, but, if they were successful in removing the danger, the leaders could then be safely lynched, by way of atonement and expiation.’
She stopped speaking, and the boy took up:
‘The details may vary, but something of the sort will become inevitable as the threat of our existence is more widely understood. You might easily have a curious epoch when both parties are fighting to keep out of office rather than be the one that has to take action against us.’ He paused, looking out thoughtfully across the fields for some moments, then he added:
‘Well, there it is. Neither you, nor we, have wishes that count in the matter – or should one say that we both have been given the same wish – to survive? We are all, you see, toys of the life-force. It made you numerically strong, but mentally undeveloped; it made us mentally strong, but physically weak: now it has set us at one another, to see what will happen. A cruel sport, perhaps, from both our points of view, but a very, very old one. Cruelty is as old as life itself. There is some improvement: humour and compassion are the most important of human inventions; but they are not very firmly established yet, though promising well.’ He paused, and smiled. ‘A real bit of Zellaby, that – our first teacher,’ he put in, and then went on. ‘But the life force is a great deal stronger than they are; and it won’t be denied its blood-sports.
‘However, it has seemed possible to us that the serious stage of the combat might at least be postponed. And that is what we want to talk to you about….’
CHAPTER 20
Ultimatum
‘THIS,’ Zellaby said reprovingly, to a golden-eyed girl who was sitting on the branch of a tree beside the path, ‘this is a quite uncalled-for circumscription of my movements. You know perfectly well that I always take an afternoon stroll, and that I always return for tea. Tyranny easily becomes a very bad habit. Besides, you’ve got my wife as a hostage.’
The Child appeared to think it over, and presently pushed a large bullseye into one cheek.
‘All right, Mr Zellaby,’ she said.
Zellaby advanced a foot. This time it passed unobstructedly over an invisible barrier that had stopped it before.
‘Thank you, my dear,’ he said, with a polite inclination of his head. ‘Come along, Gayford.’
We passed on into the woods, leaving the guardian of the path idly swinging her legs, and crunching her bullseye.
‘A very interesting aspect of this affair is the demarcations between the individual and the collective,’ Zellaby remarked. ‘I’ve really made precious little progress in determining it. The Child’s appreciation of her sweet is indubitably individual, it could scarcely be other; but her permission for us to go on was collective, as was the influence that stopped us. And since the mind is collective, what about the sensations it receives ? Are the rest of the Children vicariously enjoying her bullseye, too? It would appear not, yet they must be aware of it, and perhaps of its flavour. A similar problem arises when I show them my films and lecture to them. In theory, if I had two of them only as my audience, all of them would share the experience – that’s the way they learn their lessons, as I told you – but in practice I always have a full house when I go up to The Grange. As far as I can understand it, when I show a film they could get it from one representative of each sex, but, presumably, in the transmission of visual sensation something is lost, for they all very much prefer to see it with their own eyes. It is difficult to get them to talk about it much, but it does appear that individual experience of a picture is more satisfactory to them as, one must suppose, is individual experience of a bullseye. It is a reflection that sets off a whole train of questions.’
‘I can believe that,’ I agreed, ‘but they are post-graduate questions. As far as I am concerned, the basic problem of their presence here at all gives me quite enough to be going on with.’
‘Oh,’ said Zellaby, ‘I don’t think there is much that’s novel about that. Our presence here at all raises the same problem.’
‘I don’t see that. We evolved here – but where did the Children come from?’
‘Aren’t you taking a theory for an established fact, my dear fellow ? It is widely supposed that we evolved here, and to support that supposition it is supposed that there once existed a creature who was the ancestor of ourselves, and of the apes – what our grandfathers used to call “the missing link”. But there has never been any satisfactory proof that such a creature existed. And the missing link, why, bless my soul, the whole proposition is riddled with missing links – if that is an acceptable metaphor. Can you see the whole diversity of races evolving from this one link ? I can’t, however hard I try. Nor, at a later stage, can I see a nomadic creature segregating the strains which would give rise to such fixed and distinctive characteristics of race. On islands it is understandable, but not on the great land-masses. At first sight, climate might have some effect – until one considers the Mongolian characteristics apparently indigenous from the equator to the North Pole. Think, too, of the innumerable intermediary types there would have to be, and then of the few poor relics we have been able to find. Think of the number of generations we should have to go back to trace the blacks, the whites, the reds, and the yellows to a common ancestor, and consider that where there should be innumerable traces of this development left by millions of evolving ancestors there is practically nothing but a great blank. Why, we know more about the age of reptiles than we do about the age of supposedly evolving man. We had a complete evolutionary tree for the horse many years ago. If it were possible to do the same for man we should have done it by now. But what do we have ? Just a few, remarkably few, isolated specimens. Nobody knows where, or if, they fit into an evolutionary picture because there is no picture – only supposition. The specimens are as unattached to us as we are to the Children….’
For half an hour or so I listened to a discourse on the erratic and unsatisfactory phylogeny of mankind, which Zellaby concluded with an apology for his inadequate coverage of a subject which was not susceptible to a condensation into half a dozen sentences, as he had attempted.
‘However,’ he added, ‘you will have gathered that the conventio
nal assumption has more lacunae than substance.’
‘But if you invalidate it, what then?’ I inquired.
‘I don’t know,’ Zellaby admitted, ‘but I do refuse to accept a bad theory simply on the grounds that there is not a better, and I take the lack of evidence that ought, if it were valid, to be plentiful, as an argument for the opposition – whatever that may be. As a result I find the occurrence of the Children scarcely more startling, objectively, than that of the various other races of mankind that have apparently popped into existence fully formed, or at least with no clear line of ancestral development.’
So dissolute a conclusion seemed unlike Zellaby. I suggested that he probably had a theory of his own.
Zellaby shook his head.
‘No,’ he admitted modestly. Then he added: ‘One has to speculate, of course. Not very satisfactorily, I’m afraid, and sometimes uncomfortably. It is, for instance, disquieting for a good rationalist, such as myself, to find himself wondering whether perhaps there is not some Outside Power arranging things here. When I look round the world, it does sometimes seem to hold a suggestion of a rather disorderly testingground. The sort of place where someone might let loose a new strain now and then, and see how it will make out in our rough and tumble. Fascinating for an inventor to watch his creations acquitting themselves, don’t you think? To discover whether this time he has produced a successful tearer-to-pieces, or just another torn-to-pieces and, too, to observe the progress of the earlier models, and see which of them have proved really competent at making life a form of hell for others.… You don’t think so ? – Ah, well, as I told you, the speculations tend to be uncomfortable.’
I told him:
‘As man to man, Zellaby, not only do you talk a great deal, but you talk a great deal of nonsense, and make some of it sound like sense. It is very confusing for a listener.’
Zellaby looked hurt.
‘My dear fellow, I always talk sense. It is my primary social failing. One must distinguish between the content, and the container. Would you prefer me to talk with that monotonous dogmatic intensity which our simpler-minded brethren believe, God help them, to be a guarantee of sincerity ? Even if I should, you would still have to evaluate the content.’
‘What I want to know,’ I said firmly, ‘is whether, having disposed of human evolution, you have any serious hypothesis to put in its place?’
‘You don’t like my Inventor speculation? Nor do I, very much. But at least it has the merit of being no less improbable, and a lot more comprehensible than many religious suggestions. And when I say “Inventor”, I don’t necessarily mean an individual, of course. More probably a team. It seems to me that if a team of our own biologists and geneticists were to take a remote island for their testing-ground they would find great interest and instruction in observing their specimens there in ecological conflict. And, after all, what is a planet but an island in space? But a speculation is, as I said, far from being a theory.’
Our circuit had taken us round to the Oppley road. As we were approaching the village a figure, deep in thought, emerged from Hickham Lane, and turned to walk ahead of us. Zellaby called to him. Bernard came out of his abstraction. He stopped and waited for us to catch up.
‘You don’t look,’ remarked Zellaby, ‘as though Torrance has been helpful.’
‘I didn’t get as far as Dr Torrance,’ Bernard admitted. ‘And now there seems to be little point in troubling him. I’ve been talking with a couple of your Children.’
‘Not with a couple of them,’ Zellaby protested gently. ‘One talks with either the Composite Boy, or the Composite Girl, or with both.’
‘All right. I accept the correction. I have been talking with all the Children – at least, I think so, though I seemed to detect what one might call a strong Zellaby flavour in the conversational style of both boy and girl.’
Zellaby looked pleased.
‘Considering we are lion and lamb, our relations have usually been good. It is gratifying to have had some educational influence,’ he observed. ‘How did you get on?’
‘I don’t think “get on” quite expresses it,’ Bernard told him. ‘I was informed, lectured, and instructed. And, finally, I have been charged with bearing an ultimatum.’
‘Indeed – and to whom?’ asked Zellaby.
‘I am really not quite sure. Roughly, I think, to anyone who is in a position to supply them with air transport.’
Zellaby raised his brows. ‘Where to?’
‘They didn’t say. Somewhere, I imagine, where they will be able to live unmolested.’
He gave us a brief version of the Children’s arguments.
‘So it really amounts to this,’ he summed up. ‘In their view, their existence here constitutes a challenge to authority which cannot be evaded for long. They cannot be ignored, but any government that tries to deal with them will bring immense political trouble down on itself if it is not successful, and very little less if it is. The Children themselves have no wish to attack, or to be forced to defend themselves –’
‘Naturally,’ murmured Zellaby. ‘Their immediate concern is to survive, in order, eventually, to dominate.’
‘– therefore it is in the best interests of all parties that they should be provided with the means of removing themselves.’
‘Which would mean, game to the Children,’ Zellaby commented, and withdrew into thought.
‘It sounds risky – from their point of view, I mean. All conveniently in one aircraft,’ I suggested.
‘Oh, trust them to think of that. They’ve considered quite a lot of details. There are to be several aircraft. A squad is to be put at their disposal to check the aircraft, and search for time-bombs, or any such devices. Parachutes are to be provided, some of which, picked out by themselves, are to be tested. There are quite a number of similar provisos. They’ve been quicker to grasp the full implications of the Gizhinsk business than our own people here, and they aren’t leaving much scope for sharp practice.’
‘H’m,’ I said. ‘I can’t say I envy you the job of pushing a proposition like that through the red tape. What’s their alternative?’
Bernard shook his head.
‘There isn’t one. Perhaps ultimatum wasn’t quite the right word. Demand would be better. I told the Children I could see very little hope of getting anyone to listen to me seriously. They said they would prefer to try it that way first – there’d be less trouble all round if it could be put through quietly. If I can’t put it across – and it is pretty obvious I shall not be able to by myself – then they propose that two of them shall accompany me on a second approach.
‘After seeing what their “duress” could do to the Chief Constable, it isn’t a pleasant prospect. I can see no reason why they should not apply pressure at one level after another until they reach the very top, if necessary. What’s to stop them?’
‘One has, for some time, seen this coming, as inevitably as the change of the seasons,’ Zellaby said, emerging from his reflections. ‘But I did not expect it so soon – nor do I think it would have come for years yet if the Russians had not precipitated it. I would guess it has come earlier than the Children themselves would wish, too. They know they are not ready to face it. That is why they want to get away to some place where they can reach maturity unmolested.
‘We are presented with a moral dilemma of some niceness. On the one hand, it is our duty to our race and culture to liquidate the Children, for it is clear that if we do not we shall, at best, be completely dominated by them, and their culture, whatever it may turn out to be, will extinguish ours.
‘On the other hand, it is our culture that gives us scruples about the ruthless liquidation of unarmed minorities, not to mention the practical obstacles to such a solution.
‘On the – oh dear, how difficult – on the third hand, to enable the Children to shift the problem they represent to the territory of a people even more ill equipped to deal with it is a form of evasive procrastination which lack
s any moral courage at all.
‘It makes one long for H. G.’s straightforward Martians. This would seem to be one of those unfortunate situations where no solution is morally defensible.’
Bernard and I received that in silence. Presently I felt compelled to say:
‘That sounds to me the kind of masterly summing-up that has landed philosophers in sticky situations throughout the ages.’
‘Oh, surely not,’ Zellaby protested. ‘In a quandary where every course is immoral, there still remains the ability to act for the greatest good of the greatest number. Ergo, the Children ought to be eliminated at the least possible cost, with the least possible delay. I am sorry to have to arrive at that conclusion. In nine years I have grown rather fond of them. And, in spite of what my wife says, I think I have come as near friendship with them as possible.’
He allowed another, and longer, pause, and shook his head.
‘It is the right step,’ he repeated. ‘But, of course, our authorities will not be able to bring themselves to take it – for which I am personally thankful because I can see no practical course open to them which would not involve the destruction of all of us in the village, as well.’ He stopped and looked about him at Midwich resting quietly in the afternoon sun. ‘I am getting to be an old man, and I shall not live much longer in any case, but I have a younger wife, and a young son; and I should like to think, too, that all this will go on as long as it may. No, the authorities will argue, no doubt; but if the Children want to go, they’ll go. Humanitarianism will triumph over biological duty – is that probity, would you say ? Or is it decadence? But so the evil day will be put off – for how long, I wonder… ?’
Back at Kyle Manor tea was ready, but after one cup Bernard rose, and made his farewells to the Zellabys.
‘I shan’t learn any more by staying longer,’ he said. ‘The sooner I present the Children’s demands to my incredulous superiors, the sooner we shall get things moving. I have no doubt your arguments are right, on their plane, Mr Zellaby, but I personally shall work to get the Children anywhere out of this country, and quickly. I have seen a number of unpleasant sights in my life, but none that has ever been such a clear warning as the degradation of your Chief Constable. I’ll keep you informed how it goes, of course.’