by John Wyndham
'Jerome Skinner,' he repeated, not very hopefully. 'Very well, I'll see if I can find out anything about him.'
We all conferred that night, but inconclusively. Michael put it:
'Well, if you and Rosalind are quite satisfied that there's been nothing to start suspicion in your district, then I don't see that it can be traceable to anybody but that man in the forest.' He used a thought-shape rather than bothering to spell out 'Jerome Skinner' in letter-forms. 'If he is the source, then he must have put his suspicions before the inspector in this district who will have handed it on as a routine report to the inspector in yours. That'll mean that several people are wondering about it already, and there'll be questions going on here about Sally and Katherine. The devil of it is that everybody's more suspicious than usual because of these rumours of large-scale trouble from the Fringes. I'll see if I can find out anything tomorrow, and let you know.'
'But what's the best thing for us to do?' Rosalind put in.
'Nothing at the moment,' Michael advised. 'If we are right about the source, then you are in two groups; Sally and Katherine in one, you, David, and Petra in the other; and the other three of us aren't involved at all. Don't do anything unusual, or you may cause them to pounce, on suspicion. If it does come to an inquiry we ought to be able to bluff it out by acting simple, as we decided. But Petra's the weak spot; she's too young to understand. If they start on her and trick her and trap her, it might end up in sterilization and the Fringes for all of us....
'That makes her the key-point. They must not get hold of her. It's possible that there's no suspicion attached to her — but she was there, so she's liable to be suspected. If there's any sign of interest in her it'll be better to cut your losses and get her away — if they do start on her they'll have it out of her somehow.
'Very likely it'll all blow over, but just in case it does get sticky, David will have to be responsible. It'll be your job, David, to see that she isn't taken for questioning — at any cost. If you have to kill someone to prevent it, then you must. They'd not think twice about killing us if they had the excuse. Don't forget, if they move at all, they'll be doing it to exterminate us — by the slow method, if not by the fast.
'If the worst comes to the worst, and you can't save Petra, it would be kinder to kill her than let her go to sterilization and banishment to the Fringes — a lot more merciful for a child. You understand? Do the rest of you agree?'
Their agreements came in.
When I thought of little Petra, mutilated and thrust naked into Fringes country, to perish or survive as it should chance, I agreed, too.
'Very well,' Michael went on. 'Just to be on the safe side, then, it might be best if the four of you and Petra were to make your arrangements to run for it at a moment's notice, if it becomes necessary.'
He went on explaining in more detail.
It is difficult to see what other course we could have taken. An overt move by any of us would at once have brought trouble on the rest. Our misfortune lay in our receiving the information regarding the inquiries when we did, and not two or three days earlier. . . .
12
The discussion, and Michael's advice, made the threat of discovery seem both more real and more imminent than it had been when I talked to Uncle Axel earlier in the evening. Somehow it brought it home to me that one day we should find ourselves faced by the real thing — the alarm which wasn't simply going to work up and blow over, leaving us much as before. Michael, I knew, had been increasingly anxious during the last year or so, as if he had a feeling that time was running out, and now I caught some of that sensation, too. I even went as far as making some preparations before I went to bed that night — at least, I put a bow and a couple of dozen arrows handy, and found a sack into which I put several loaves and a cheese. And I decided that next day I would make up a pack of spare clothes and boots and other things that would be useful, and hide it in some dry, convenient place outside. Then we should need some clothing for Petra, and a bundle of blankets, and something to hold drinking water, and it would not do to forget a tinder-box....
I was still listing the desirable equipment in my mind when I fell asleep. . . .
No more than three hours or so can have passed before I was wakened by the click of my latch. There was no moon, but there was starlight enough to show a small, white night-gowned figure by the door.
'David,' she said. 'Rosalind —'
But she did not need to tell me. Rosalind had already broken in, urgently.
'David,' she was telling me, 'we must get away at once — just as soon as you can. They've taken Sally and Katherine —'
Michael crowded in on her.
'Hurry up, both of you, while there's time. It was a deliberate surprise. If they do know much about us, they'll have tried to time it to send a party for you, too — before you could I be warned. They were at Sally's and Katherine's almost simultaneously just over ten minutes ago. Get moving, quick!'
'Meet you below the mill. Hurry,' Rosalind added.
I told Petra in words:
'Get dressed as fast as you can. Overalls. And be very quiet.'
Very likely she had not understood the thought-shapes in detail, but she had caught their urgency. She simply nodded, and slipped back into the dark passage.
I pulled on my clothes, and rolled the bed blankets into a bundle. I groped about in the shadows till I found the bow and arrows and the bag of food, and made for the door.
Petra was almost dressed already. I grabbed some clothes from her cupboard and rolled them in the blankets.
'Don't put on your shoes yet,' I whispered. 'Carry them, and come tiptoe, like a cat.'
Outside in the yard I put down the bundle and the sack while we both got our shoes on. Petra started to speak, but I put my finger to my lips, and gave her the thought-shape of Sheba, the black mare. She nodded, and we tiptoed across the yard. I just had the stable door open when I caught a distant sound, and paused to listen.
'Horses,' whispered Petra.
Horses it was. Several sets of hoofs and, faintly, the tinkle of bits.
There was no time to find the saddle and bridle for Sheba. We brought her out on the halter, and mounted from the block. With all I was carrying there was no room for Petra in front of me. She got up behind, and hung on round my waist.
Quietly we slipped out of the yard by the far end and started down the path to the river-bank while the hoof-beats on the upper track drew close to the house.
'Are you away?' I asked Rosalind, and let her know what was happening with us.
'I was away ten minutes ago. I had everything ready,' she told me reprovingly. 'We've all been trying our damnedest to reach you. It was lucky Petra happened to wake up.'
Petra caught her own thought-shape, and broke in excitedly to know what was happening. It was like a fountain of sparks.
'Gently, darling. Much more gently,' protested Rosalind. 'We'll tell you all about it soon.' She paused a moment to get over the blinding effect.
'Sally—? Katherine—?' she inquired.
They responded together.
'We're being taken to the Inspector's. We're all innocent and bewildered. Is that best?'
Michael and Rosalind agreed that it was.
'We think,' Sally went on, 'that we ought to shut our minds to you. It will make it easier for us to act as normals if we really don't know what is happening. So don't try to reach us, any of you.'
'Very well — but we shall be open for you,' Rosalind agreed. She diverted her thoughts to me. 'Come along, David. There are lights up at the farm now.'
'It's all right. We're coming,' I told her. 'It's going to take them some time in the dark to find which way we went, anyhow.'
'They'll know by the stable-warmth that you can't have got far yet,' she pointed out.
I looked back. Up by the house I could see a light in a window, and a lantern swinging in someone's hand. The sound of a man's voice calling came to us faintly. We had reached the river
-bank now, and it was safe to urge Sheba to a trot. We kept that up for half a mile until we came to the ford, and then for another quarter-mile until we were approaching the mill. It seemed prudent to walk her past there in case anyone were awake. Beyond the wall we heard a dog on the chain, but it did not bark. Presently I caught Rosalind's feeling of relief, coming from somewhere a little ahead.
We trotted again, and a few moments later I noticed a movement under the trees of the track. I turned the mare that way, and found Rosalind waiting for us — and not only Rosalind, but her father's pair of great-horses. The massive creatures towered above us, both saddled with large pannier baskets. Rosalind was standing in one of the baskets, her bow, strung and ready to hand, laid across it.
I rode up close beneath her while she leaned out to see what I had brought.
'Hand me the blankets,' she directed, reaching down. 'What's in the sack?'
I told her.
'Do you mean to say that's all you've brought?' she said disapprovingly.
'There was some hurry,' I pointed out.
She arranged the blankets to pad the saddle-board between the panniers. I hoisted Petra until she could reach Rosalind's hands. With a heave from both of us she scrambled up and perched herself on the blankets.
'We'd better keep together,' Rosalind directed. 'I've left room for you in the other pannier. You can shoot left-handed from there.' She flipped over a kind of miniature rope-ladder so that it hung down the great-horse's left shoulder.
I slid off Sheba's back, turned her head for home, and gave her a smack on the flank to start her off, then I scrambled up awkwardly to the other pannier. The moment my foot was clear of the mounting-rings Rosalind pulled them up and hitched them. She gave the reins a shake, and before I was well settled in the pannier we were off, with the second great-horse following on a lead.
We trotted awhile, and then left the track for a stream. Where that was joined by another we branched off up the lesser. We left that and picked our way across boggy ground to another stream. We held on along the bed of that for perhaps half a mile or more and then turned off on to another stretch of uneven, marshy ground which soon became firmer until presently the hoofs were clinking among stones. We slowed still more while the horses picked a winding way amid rocks. I realized that Rosalind had put in some careful planning to hide our tracks. I must have projected the thought unwittingly, for she came in, somewhat coldly:
'It's a pity you didn't do a little more thinking and a little less sleeping.'
'I made a start,' I protested. 'I was going to get everything fixed up today. It didn't seem all that urgent.'
'And so when I tried to consult you about it, there you were, swinishly asleep. My mother and I spent two solid hours packing up these panniers and getting the saddles slung up ready for an emergency, while all you did was go on sleeping.'
'Your mother?' I asked, startled. 'Does she know?'
'She's sort of half-known, guessed something, for some time now. I don't know how much she's guessed — she never spoke about it at all. I think she felt that as long as she didn't have to admit it in words it might be all right. When I told her this evening that I thought it very likely I'd have to go, she cried — but she wasn't really surprised; she didn't try to argue, or dissuade me. I had a sort of feeling that she'd already resolved at the back of her mind that she'd have to help me one day, when the time came, and she did.'
I thought that over. I could not imagine my own mother doing such a thing for Petra's sake. And yet she had cried after my Aunt Harriet had been sent away. And Aunt Harriet had been more than ready to break the Purity Laws. So had Sophie's mother. It made one wonder how many mothers there might be who were turning a blind eye towards matters that did not actually infringe the Definition of the True Image — and perhaps to things that did infringe it, if the inspector could be dodged. ... I wondered, too, whether my mother would, in secret, be glad or sorry that I had taken Petra away....
We went on by the erratic route that Rosalind had picked to hide the trail. There were more stony places and more streams until finally we urged the horses up a steep bank and into the woods. Before long, we encountered a track-way running south-west. We did not care to risk the spoor of the great-horses there, and so kept along parallel with it until the sky began to show grey. Then we turned deeper into the woods until we found a glade which offered grass for the horses. There we hobbled them and let them graze.
After we had made a meal of bread and cheese Rosalind said:
'Since you slept so well earlier on, you'd better take first watch.'
She and Petra settled themselves comfortably in blankets, and soon dropped off.
I sat with my strung bow across my knees, and half a dozen arrows stuck handy in the ground beside me. There was nothing to be heard but the birds, occasionally a small animal moving, and the steady munchings of the great-horses. The sun rose into the thinner branches and began to give more warmth. Every now and then I got up and prowled silently round the fringe of the glade, with an arrow ready nocked on the string. I found nothing, but it helped to keep me awake. After a couple of hours of it Michael came through:
'Where are you now?' he inquired.
I explained as well as I could.
'Where are you heading?' he wanted to know.
'South-west,' I told him. 'We thought we'd move by night and lie-up by day.'
He approved of that, but:
'The devil of it is that with this Fringes scare there'll be a lot of patrols about. I don't know that Rosalind was wise to take those great-horses - if they're seen at all, word will go round like wildfire, even a hoof-mark will be enough.'
'Ordinary horses have the speed of them for short bursts,' I acknowledged, 'but they can't touch them for stamina.'
'You may need that. Frankly, David, you're going to need your wits, too. There's hell to pay over this. They must have found out much more about you than we ever guessed, though they aren't on to Mark or Rachel or me yet. But it's got them very worried indeed. They're going to send posses after you. My idea is to volunteer for one of them right away. I'm going to plant a report of your having been seen making south-east. When that peters out, we'll have Mark start up another to take them north-west.
'If anyone does see you, stop him getting away with the news, at all costs. But don't shoot. There's an order going out not to use guns except when necessary, and as signals — all gunshots to be investigated.'
'That's all right. We haven't a gun,' I told him.
'So much the better. You can't be tempted to use one — but they think you have.'
I had deliberately decided against taking a gun, partly on account of the noise, but mostly because they are slow to reload, heavy to carry, and useless if you run out of powder. Arrows haven't the range, but they are silent, and you can get a dozen and more of them off while a man is recharging a gun.
Mark came in:
'I heard that. I'll have a north-west rumour ready for when it's needed.'
'Good. But don't loose it till I tell you. Rosalind's asleep now, I suppose? Tell her to get into touch with me when she wakes, will you?'
I said I would, and everybody laid off projecting for a while. I went on keeping my watch for another couple of hours, and then woke Rosalind for her turn. Petra did not stir. I lay down beside her, and was asleep in a minute or two.
Perhaps I was sleeping lightly, or it may have been just coincidence that I woke up to catch an anguished thought from Rosalind.
'I've killed him, Michael. He's quite dead . . .' Then she slid off into a panicky, chaotic thought-shape.
Michael came in, steady and reassuring.
'Don't be scared, Rosalind. You had to do it. This is a war, between our kind and theirs. We didn't start it — we've just as much right to exist as they have. You mustn't be frightened, Rosalind, dear: you had to do it.'
'What's happened?' I asked, sitting up.
They ignored me, or were too much occupied to notic
e.
I looked round the glade. Petra lay, asleep still, beside me; the great-horses were cropping the grass, undisturbed. Michael came in again:
'Hide him Rosalind. Try to find a hollow, and pile leaves over him.'
A pause. Then Rosalind, her panic conquered now, but with deep distress, agreeing.
I got up, picked up my bow, and walked across the glade in the direction I knew she must be. When I reached the edge of the trees it occurred to me that I was leaving Petra unprotected, so I went no farther.
Presently Rosalind appeared among the bushes. She was walking slowly, cleaning an arrow on a handful of leaves as she came.
'What happened?' I repeated.
But she seemed to have lost control over her thought-shapes again, they were muddled and distorted by her emotions. When she got nearer she used words instead:
'It was a man. He had found the trail of the horses. I saw him following them. Michael said . . . Oh, I didn't want to do it, David, but what else could I do . . . ?'
Her eyes were full of tears. I put my arms round her, and let her cry on my shoulder. There was little I could do to comfort her. Nothing, but assure her, as Michael had, that what she had done had been absolutely necessary.
After a little time we walked slowly back. She sat down beside the still-sleeping Petra. It occurred to me to ask:
'What about his horse, Rosalind? Did that get away?'
She shook her head.
'I don't know. I suppose he must have had one, but he was following our tracks on foot when I saw him.'
I thought it better to retrace our course and find out whether he had left a horse tethered anywhere along it. I went back half a mile, but found no horse, nor was there any trace of recent hoof-marks other than those of the great-horses. When I got back, Petra was awake and chattering to Rosalind.