The Chrysalids

by John Wyndham

  We were wrong. Somehow she brought her parents round to the idea, and the engagement was formally recognized. At that point we became alarmed. Abruptly, we were forced to consider some of the implications, and, young as we were, we could see enough of them to make us anxious. It was Michael who put it to Anne first.

  'You can't, Anne. For your own sake you mustn't,' he told her. 'It'd be like tying yourself for life to a cripple. Do think, Anne, do really think what it is going to mean.'

  She came back at him angrily.

  'I'm not a fool. Of course I've thought. I've thought more than you have. I'm a woman — I've a right to marry and have children. There are three of you and five of us. Are you saying that two of us must never marry? Never have any lives or homes of our own? If not, then two of us have got to marry norms. I'm in love with Alan, and I intend to marry him. You ought to be grateful. It'll help to simplify things for the rest of you.'

  "That doesn't follow,' Michael argued. 'We can't be the only ones. There must be others like us — beyond our range, somewhere. If we wait a little —'

  'Why should I wait? It might be for years, or for always. I've got Alan — and you want me to waste years waiting for someone who may never come — or whom I may hate if he does. You want me to give up Alan, and risk being cheated of everything. Well, I don't intend to. I didn't ask to be the way we are; but I've as much right to get what I can out of life as anyone else. It isn't going to be easy: but do you think I'd find it easier going on like this year after year? It can't be easy for any of us, but it isn't going to make it any better if two of us have to give up all hope of love and affection. Three of us can marry three of you. What is going to happen to the other two then — the two who'll be on the outside? They won't be in any group. Do you mean they ought to be cheated out of everything?

  'It's you who haven't thought, Michael — or any of you. I know what I intend to do: the rest of you don't know what you intend to do because you're none of you in love — except David and Rosalind — and so you've none of you faced it.'

  That was partially true as far as it went — but, if we had not faced all the problems before they arose, we were well aware of those that were constantly with us, and of those the main one was the need of dissembling, of leading all the time a suffocating half-life with our families. One of the things we looked forward to most was relief some day from that burden, and though we'd few positive ideas how it could be achieved, we could all realize that marriage to a norm would become intolerable in a very short while. Our position in our present homes was bad enough; to have to go on living intimately with some one who had no thought-shapes would be impossible. For one thing, any of us would still have more in common with the rest and be closer to them than to the norm that he or she had married. It could not be anything but a sham of a marriage when the two were separated by something wider than a different language, which had always been hidden by the one from the other. It would be misery, perpetual lack of confidence, and insecurity; there'd be the prospect of a lifetime's guarding against slips — and we knew well enough already that occasional slips were inevitable.

  Other people seem so dim, so half-perceived, compared with those whom one knows through their thought-shapes; and I don't suppose 'normals', who can never share their thoughts, can understand how we are so much more a part of one another. What comprehension can they have of 'thinking-together' so that two minds are able to do what one could not? And we don't have to flounder among the shortcomings of words; it is difficult for us to falsify or pretend a thought even if we want to; on the other hand, it is almost impossible for us to misunderstand one another. What, then, could there be for any of us tied closely to a half-dumb 'normal' who can never at best make more than a clever guess at anyone else's feelings or thoughts? Nothing but prolonged unhappiness and frustration — with, sooner or later, a fatal slip; or else an accumulation of small slips gradually fostering suspicion. . . .

  Anne had seen this just as well as the rest of us, but now she pretended to ignore it. She began to defy her difference by refusing to respond to us, though whether she shut her mind off altogether, or continued to listen without taking part we could not tell. We suspected the former as being more in character, but, being unsure, we were not even able to discuss among ourselves what course, if any, we ought to take. Possibly there was no active course. I myself could think of none. Rosalind; too, was at a loss.

  Rosalind had grown into a tall, slim young woman, now. She was handsome, with a face you could not help watching; she was attractive, too, in the way she moved and carried herself. Several of the younger men had felt the attraction, and gravitated towards her. She was civil to them, but no more. She was competent, decisive, self-reliant; perhaps she intimidated them, for before long they drifted their attentions elsewhere. She would not be entangled with any of them. Very likely it was for that reason that she was more shocked than any of us by what Anne proposed to do.

  We used to meet, discreetly and not dangerously often. No one but the others, I think, ever suspected anything between us. We had to make love in a snatched, unhappy way when we did meet, wondering miserably whether there would ever be a time when we should not have to hide ourselves. And somehow the business of Anne made us more wretched still. Marriage to a norm, even the kindest and best of them, was unthinkable for both of us.

  The only other person I could turn to for advice was Uncle Axel. He knew, as did everyone else, about the forthcoming marriage, but it was news to him that Anne was one of us, and he received it lugubriously. After he had turned it over in his mind, he shook his head.

  'No. It won't do, Davie. You're right there. I've been seeing these last five or six years how it wouldn't do — but I've just been hoping that maybe it'd never come to it. I reckon you're all up against a wall, or you'd not be telling me now?'

  I nodded. 'She wouldn't listen to us,' I told him. 'Now she's gone further. She won't respond at all. She says that's over. She never wanted to be different from normals, now she wants to be as like them as she can. It was the first real row we've ever had. She ended up by telling us she hated all of us, and the very idea of us — at least, that's what she tried to tell us, but it's not actually that. It's really that she wants Alan so badly that she's determined not to let anything stop her from having him. I — I never knew before that anybody could want anybody else quite like that. She's so fierce and blind about it that she simply doesn't care what may happen later. I don't see what we can do.'

  'You don't think that perhaps she can make herself live like a norm — cut out the other altogether? It'd be too difficult?' Uncle Axel asked.

  'We've thought about that, of course,' I told him. 'She can refuse to respond. She's doing that now, like somebody refusing to talk — but to go on with it.... It'd be like taking a vow of silence for the rest of her life. I mean, she can't just make herself forget, and become a norm. We can't believe that's possible. Michael told her it'd be like pretending to have only one arm because the person one wants to marry has only one arm. It wouldn't be any good — and you couldn't keep it up, either.'

  Uncle Axel pondered for a bit.

  'You're convinced she's crazy about this Alan — quite beyond reason, I mean?' he asked.

  'She's not like herself at all. She doesn't think properly any more,' I told him.' Before she stopped responding her thought-shapes were all queer with it.'

  Uncle Axel shook his head disapprovingly again. 'Women like to think they're in love when they want to marry; they feel it's a justification which helps their self-respect,' he observed. 'No harm in that; most of them are going to need all the illusions they can keep up, anyway. But a woman who is in love is a different proposition. She lives in a world where all the old perspectives have altered. She is blinkered, single-purposed, undependable in other matters. She will sacrifice anything, including herself, to one loyalty. For her, that is quite logical; for everyone else it looks not quite sane; socially it is dangerous. And when there is also a f
eeling of guilt to be overcome, and, maybe, expiated, it is quite certainly dangerous for someone —'He broke off and reflected in silence awhile. Then he added, 'It is too dangerous, Davie. Remorse . . . abnegation ... self-sacrifice ... the desire for purification — all pressing upon her. The sense of burden, the need for help, for someone to share the burden.... Sooner or later, I'm afraid, Davie. Sooner or later ...'

  I thought so, too.

  'But what can we do?' I repeated, miserably.

  He turned steady, serious eyes on me.

  'How much are you justified in doing? One of you is set on a course which is going to endanger the lives of all eight. Not altogether knowingly, perhaps, but none the less seriously, for all that. Even if she does intend to be loyal to you, she is deliberately risking you all for her own ends — just a few words in her sleep would be enough. Does she have a moral right to create a constant threat hanging over seven heads just because she wants to live with this man?'

  I hesitated. 'Well, if you put it like that —'I began.

  'I do put it like that. Has she that right?'

  'We've done our best to dissuade her,' I evaded, inadequately.

  'And failed. So now what? Are you just going to sit down under it, not knowing what day she may crack, and give you all away?'

  'I don't know,' was all I could tell him.

  'Listen,' said Uncle Axel. 'I knew a man once who was one of a party who were adrift in a boat after their ship had burnt. They'd not much food and very little water. One of them drank sea water and went mad. He tried to wreck the boat so that they'd all drown together. He was a menace to all of them. In the end they had to throw him overboard — with the result that the other three had just enough food and water to last until they reached land. If they hadn't done it he'd have died, anyway — and the rest of them, too, most likely.'

  I shook my head. 'No,' I said decisively, 'we couldn't do that.'

  He went on looking at me steadily.

  'This isn't a nice cosy world for anyone — especially not for anyone that's different,' he said. 'Maybe you're not the kind to survive it, after all.'

  'It isn't just that,' I told him. 'If it were Alan you were talking about, if it would help to throw him overboard, we'd do it. But it's Anne you're meaning, and we can't do it — not because she's a girl, it'd be the same with any of us; we just couldn't do it. We're all too close together. I'm much closer to her and the others than' I am to my own sisters. It's difficult to explain —' I broke off, trying to think of a way of showing him what we meant to one another. There didn't seem to be any clear way of putting it into words. I could only tell him, not very effectively.

  'It wouldn't be just murder, Uncle Axel. It'd be something worse, as well; like violating part of ourselves for ever. ... We couldn't do it....'

  'The alternative is the sword over your heads,' he said.

  'I know,' I agreed unhappily. 'But that isn't the way. A sword inside us would be worse.'

  I could not even discuss that solution with the others for fear that Anne might catch our thoughts; but I knew with certainty what their verdict on it would be. I knew that Uncle Axel had proposed the only practical solution; and I knew, too, its impossibility meant recognizing that nothing could be done.

  Anne now transmitted nothing whatever, we caught no trace of her, but whether she had the strength of will not to receive we were still uncertain. From Rachel, her sister, we learnt that she would listen only to words, and was doing her best to pretend to herself that she was a norm in every way, but that could not give us enough confidence for us to exchange our thoughts with freedom.

  And in the following weeks Anne kept it up, so that one could almost believe that she had succeeded in renouncing her difference and becoming a norm. Her wedding-day arrived with nothing amiss, and she and Alan moved into the house which her father gave them on the edge of his own land. Here and there one encountered hints that she might have been unwise to marry beneath her, but otherwise there was little comment.

  During the next few months we heard scarcely anything of her. She discouraged visits from her sister as though she were anxious to cut even that last link with us. We could only hope that she was being more successful and happier than we had feared.

  One of the consequences, as far as Rosalind and I were concerned, was a more searching consideration of our own troubles. Quite when it was that we had known we were going to marry one another, neither of us has been able to remember. It was one of those things that seem ordained, in such proper accord with the law of nature and our own desires, that we felt we had always known it. The prospect coloured our thoughts even before we acknowledged it to ourselves. To me, it had never been thinkable that anything else should happen, for when two people have grown up thinking together as closely as we had, and when they are drawn even closer together by the knowledge of hostility all round them they can feel the need of one another even before they know they are in love.

  But when they do know they are in love they suddenly know, too, that there are ways in which they differ not at all from norms. . . . Also, they face the same obstacles that norms would. . . .

  The feud between our families which had first come into the open over the matter of the great-horses had now been established for years. My father and half-uncle Angus, Rosalind's father, had settled down to a regular guerilla. In their efforts to score points, each kept a hawk-like watch upon the other's land for the least Deviation or Offence, and both had been known for some time now to reward the informer who would bring news of irregularities in the other's territory.

  My father, in his determination to maintain a higher level of rectitude than Angus, had made considerable personal sacrifices. He had, for instance, in spite of his great liking for tomatoes, given up growing the unstable solonaceae family at all; we bought our tomatoes now, and our potatoes. Certain other species, too, were blacklisted as unreliable at some inconvenience and expense, and though it was a state of affairs which promoted high normality rates on both farms, it did nothing whatever to make for good neighbourliness.

  It was perfectly clear that neither side would be anything but dead-set against a union of the families.

  For both of us the situation was bound to grow more difficult. Already Rosalind's mother had attempted some matchmaking; and I had seen my mother measuring one or two girls with a calculating, though so far unsatisfied, eye.

  We were sure that, at present, neither side had an idea of anything between us. There was no more than acrid communication between the Strorms and the Mortons, and the only place where they could be found beneath the same roof was church. Rosalind and I met infrequently and very discreetly.

  For the present there was an impasse, and it looked like an impasse of indefinite duration unless we should do something to force the situation. There was a possible way, and could we have been sure that Angus' wrath would have taken the form of forcing a shotgun wedding we would have taken it; but we were by no means certain about that. Such was his opposition to all Strorms that there was, we considered, a strong likelihood that he might be prompted to use the gun another way. Moreover, we were sure that even if honour were forcibly preserved we should both of us be disowned by our families thereafter.

  We discussed and explored lengthily for some pacific way out of the dilemma, but even when half a year had passed since Anne's marriage we were no nearer reaching it.

  As for the rest of our group, we found that in that six months the first alarm had lost its edge. That is not to say that we were easy in our minds: we had never been that since we discovered ourselves, but we had had to get used to living with a degree of threat, and once the crisis over Anne had passed we got used to living with a slightly-increased degree of threat.

  Then, one Sunday at dusk, Alan was found dead in the field-path that led to his home, with an arrow through his neck.

  We had the news first from Rachel, and we listened anxiously as she tried to make contact with her sister. She used all the con
centration she could manage, but it was useless. Anne's mind remained as firmly closed against us as it had been for the last eight months. Even in distress she transmitted nothing.

  'I'm going over to see her,' Rachel told us. 'She must have someone by her.'

  We waited expectantly for an hour or more. Then Rachel came through again, very perturbed.

  'She won't see me. She won't let me into the house. She's let a neighbour in, but not me. She screamed at me to go away.'

  'She must think one of us did it,' came Michael's response. 'Did any of you do it — or know anything about it?'

  Our denials came in emphatically, one after another.

  'We've got to stop her thinking that,' Michael decided.' She mustn't go on believing it. Try to get through to her.'

  We all tried. There was no response whatever.

  'No good,' Michael admitted. 'You must get a note to her somehow, Rachel,' he added. 'Word it carefully so that she'll understand we had nothing to do with it, but so that it won't mean anything to anyone else.'

  'Very well. I'll try,' Rachel agreed doubtfully. Another hour passed, before we heard from her once more. 'It's no good. I gave the note to the woman who's there, and waited. When the woman came back she said Anne just tore it up without opening it. My mother's in there now, trying to persuade her to come home.' Michael was slow in replying to that. Then he advised:

  'We'd best be prepared. All of you make ready to run for it if necessary — but don't rouse any suspicions. Rachel, keep on trying to find out what you can, and let us know at once if anything happens.'

  I did not know what to do for the best. Petra was already in bed, and I could not rouse her without it being noticed. Besides, I was not sure that it was necessary. She certainly could not be suspected even by Anne of having had any part in the killing of Alan. It was only potentially that she could be considered one of us at all, so I made no move beyond sketching a rough plan in my mind, and trusted that I should have enough warning to get us both clear.