I thought back. The Chipping direction certainly fitted, and it was just the kind of accident that would account for a sudden unexplained stop. Without any ill-will to the unknown Walter I hoped and thought that was the explanation.
Uncle Axel backtracked a bit.
“There’s no reason at all why anyone should find out. There’s nothing to show—they can only know if you let them. Learn to watch yourself, Davie, and they’ll never find out.”
“What did they do to Sophie?” I asked once more. But again he refused to be drawn on that. He went on:
“Remember what I told you. They think they are the true image, but they can’t know for sure. And even if the Old People were the same kind as I am and they are, what of it? Where are they and their wonderful world now?”
“ ‘God sent Tribulation upon them,’ ” I quoted.
“Sure, sure. It’s easy enough to say, but not so easy to understand, especially when you’ve seen a bit of the world, and what it has meant Tribulation wasn’t just tempests, hurricanes, floods, and fires like the things they had in the Bible. It was like all of them together, and something a lot worse, too. It made the Black Coasts, and the ruins that glow there at night, and the Badlands. Maybe there’s a precedent for that in Sodom and Gomorrah, but what I don’t understand is the queer things it did to what was left.”
“Except in Labrador,” I suggested.
“Not except in Labrador, but less in Labrador and Newf than any other place,” he corrected me. “What can it have been—this terrible thing that must have happened? And why? I can almost understand that God, made angry, might destroy all living things, or the world itself; but I don’t understand this instability; these monsters—it makes no sense.”
I did not see his real difficulty. After all, God, being omnipotent, could cause anything He liked. I tried to explain this to Uncle Axel, but he shook his head.
“We’ve got to believe that God is sane, Davie boy. We’d be lost indeed if we didn’t do that. But whatever happened out there”—he waved his hand round the horizon at large—“what happened there was not sane, not sane at all. It was something vast, yet something beneath the wisdom of God. So what was it? What can it have been?”
“But Tribulation—” I began.
Uncle Axol moved impatiently. “A word,” he said, “a rusted mirror, reflecting nothing. It’d do the preachers good to see it for themselves. They’d not understand, but they might begin to think. They might begin to ask themselves: ‘What are we doing? What are we preaching? What were the Old People really like? What was it they did to bring this frightful disaster down upon themselves and all the world?’ And after a bit they might begin to say: ‘Are we right? Tribulation has made the world a different place; can we ever hope to build in it the kind of world the Old People lost? Should we try to? What would be gained if we were to build it up again so exactly that it culminated in another Tribulation?’ For it is clear, boy, that however wonderful the Old People were, they were not too wonderful to make mistakes, and nobody knows, or is ever likely to know, where they were wise and where they were mistaken.”
Much of what he was saying went right over my head, but I thought I caught its gist. I said:
“But, Uncle, if we don’t try to be like the Old People and rebuild the things that have been lost, what can we do?”
“Well, we might try being ourselves, and build for the world that is, instead of for one that’s gone,” he suggested.
“I don’t think I understand,” I told him. “You mean not bother about the True Line or the True Image? Not mind about Deviations?”
“Not quite that,” he said, and then looked sidelong at me. “You heard some heresy from your aunt; well, here’s a bit more, from your uncle. What do you think it is that makes a man a man?”
I started on the Definition. He cut me off after five words.
“It is not!” he said. “A wax figure could have all that, and he’d still be a wax figure, wouldn’t he?”
I supposed he would.
“Well, then, what makes a man a man is something inside him.”
“A soul?” I suggested.
“No,” he said, “souls are just counters for churches to collect, all the same value, like nails. No, what makes man man is mind; it’s not a thing, it’s a quality, and minds aren’t all the same value; they’re better or worse, and the better they are, the more they mean. See where we’re going?”
“No,” I admitted.
“It’s this way, Davie. I reckon the church people are more or less right about most deviations—only not for the reasons they say. They’re right because most deviations aren’t any good. Say they did allow a deviation to live like us, what’d be the good of it? Would a dozen arms and legs, or a couple of heads, or eyes like telescopes give him any more of the quality that makes him a man? They would not. Man got his physical shape—the true image, they call it—before he even knew he was man at all. Like a lot of the animals he was physically pretty nearly as good as he needed to be; but he had this new quality, mind. That was the only thing he could usefully develop. It’s the only way open to him now—new qualities of mind.” Uncle Axel paused reflectively. “There was a doctor on my second ship who talked that way, and the more I got to thinking it over, the more I reckoned it was the way that made sense. Now, as I see it, some way or another you and Rosalind and the others have got a new quality of mind. To pray God to take it away is wrong. It’s like asking him to strike you blind, or make you deaf. I know what you’re up against, Davie, but there isn’t any easy way out. You have to come to terms with it. You’ll have to face it and decide that, since that’s the way things are with you, what is the best use you can make of it and still keep yourselves safe?”
That evening I told the others about Walter, we were sorry about his accident; nevertheless, it was a relief to all of them to know that it had been simply an accident. One odd thing I discovered was that he was probably some kind of distant relation; my grandmother’s name had been Brent.
After that, it seemed wiser for us to find out one another’s names in order to prevent such an uncertainty occurring again.
There were now eight of us in all—well, when I say that I mean that there were eight who could talk in thought-shapes. There were some others who sometimes sent traces, but so weak and so limited that they did not count. They were like someone who is not quite blind, but is scarcely able to see more than to know whether it is day or night. The occasional thought-shapes we caught from them were involuntary and too fuzzy and damped to make sense.
The other six were: Michael, who lived about three miles to the north; Sally and Katherine whose homes were on neighboring farms two miles further on, and therefore across the border of the adjoining district; Mark, almost nine miles to the northwest; and Anne and Deborah, a pair of sisters living on a big farm only a mile and a half to the west. Anne, then something over thirteen, was the eldest, Walter Brent had been the youngest by six months.
Knowing who we were was our second stage in gaining confidence. It somehow increased a comforting feeling of mutual support. Gradually I found that the texts and warnings on the walls against Mutants stood out at me less vividly. They toned down and merged once more into the general background. It was not that memories of Aunt Harriet and of Sophie were dulled; it was rather that they did not jump so frighteningly and so often into my mind.
Also, I was soon helped by having a great many new things to think about.
Our schooling, as I have said, was sketchy; mostly writing, reading from a few simple books and the Bible and Repentances, which were not at all simple or easy to understand, and a little elementary figuring. It was not much equipment. Certainly it was far too little to satisfy Michael’s parents, so they sent him to a school over in Kentak. There, he began to learn a lot of things our old ladies had never thought of. It was natural for him to want the rest of us to know about them, too. At first he was not very clear and the distance being so much more tha
n we were used to give us all trouble. But, presently, after a few weeks’ practice, it became much sharper and better, and he was able to hand on to the rest of us pretty nearly everything he was being taught—even some of the things he did not understand properly himself became clearer when we all thought about them, so that we were able to help him a little, too. And it pleased us to know that he was almost always at the top of his class.
It was a great satisfaction to learn and know more, it helped to ease one over a lot of puzzling matters, and I began to understand many of the things Uncle Axel talked about much better; nevertheless, it brought too, the first taste of complications from which we would never again be free. Quite quickly it became difficult always to remember how much one was supposed to know. It called for conscious restraint to remain silent in the face of simple errors, to listen patiently to silly arguments based on misconceptions, to do a job in the customary way when one knew there was a better way.
There were bad moments, of course: the careless remark that raised some eyebrows, the note of impatience toward those one should respect, the incautious suggestion. But the missteps were few, for the sense of danger now lay closer to the surface in all of us. Somehow, through caution, luck, and quick recoveries we managed to escape direct suspicion and live our two diverging lives for the next six years without the sense of peril becoming sharp.
Until, in fact, the day when we discovered that the eight of us had suddenly become nine.
CHAPTER NINE
It was a funny thing about my little sister, Petra. She seemed so normal. We never suspected, not one of us. She was a happy child, and pretty from infancy, with her close golden curls. I can still see her as a brightly dressed little thing constantly dashing hither and thither at a staggering run, clasping an atrociously crosseyed doll whom she loved with uncritical passion. A toy-like creature herself, prone as any other child to bumps, tears, chuckles, solemn moments, and a very sweet trust. I loved her. Everybody, even my father, conspired to spoil her, with an endearing lack of success. Not even a wandering thought of difference crossed my mind concerning her until her sixth year. Then, abruptly, it happened.
We were harvesting. Up in the twelve-acre there were six men mowing in echelon. I had just given up my scythe to another man, and was helping with the stooking by way of a breather when, without any warning I was struck. I had never known anything like it. One moment I was contentedly, unhurriedly binding and propping up sheaves; the next, it was as if something had hit me physically, inside my head. Very likely I actually staggered under it. Then there was pain, a demand pulling like a fishhook embedded in my mind. There was no question whether or not I should go; I was obeying in a daze. I dropped the sheaf I was holding, and pelted off across the field, past a blur of amazed faces. I kept on running, I did not know why, except that it was urgent; across half the twelve-acre, into the lane, over the fence, down the slope of the East Pasture toward the river.
Pounding across the slope on a slant, I could see the field that ran down to the far side of the river, one of Angus Morton’s fields, crossed by a path that led to the footbridge, and on the path was Rosalind, running like the wind.
I kept on, down to the bank, along past the footbridge, downstream toward the deeper pools. I had no uncertainty, I kept right on to the brink of the second pool, and went into a dive without a check, I came up quite close to Petra. She was in the deep water against the steep bank, holding on to a little bush. It was bent over and down, and the roots were on the point of pulling free. A couple of strokes took me near enough to catch her under the arms.
The compulsion ebbed suddenly and faded away. I towed her to an easier landing-place. When I found bottom and could stand up I saw Rosalind’s startled face peering anxiously at me over the bushes.
“Who is it?” she asked, in real words, and a shaky voice. She put her hand on her forehead. “Who was able to do that?” I told her,
“Petra?” she repeated, staring incredulously.
I carried my little sister ashore, and laid her on the grass. She was exhausted, and only semi-conscious, but there did not seem to be anything seriously wrong with her.
Rosalind came and knelt on the grass on the other side of her. We looked down at the sopping dress and the darkened, matted curls. Then we gazed across her, at one another.
“I didn’t know,” I told her. “I’d no idea she was one of us.” Rosalind put her hands to her face, fingertips on her temples. She shook her head slightly and looked at me from disturbed eyes.
“She isn’t,” she said. “Something like us, but not one of us. None of us could command, like that. She’s something much more than we are.”
Other people came running up then; some who had followed me from the twelve-acre, some from the other side, wondering what had made Rosalind go tearing out of the house as if it were on fire. I picked Petra up to carry her home. One of the men from the field looked at me in a puzzled way:
“But how did you know?” he asked. “I didn’t hear a thing.” Rosalind turned an incredulous expression of surprise toward him.
“What! With the way she was yelling! I’d’ve thought anybody who wasn’t deaf would have heard her half-way to Kentak.”
The man shook his head doubtfully, but the fact that we had both apparently heard it seemed confirmation enough to make them all uncertain.
I said nothing. I was busy trying to fend off agitated thoughts from the others, telling them to wait until either I or Rosalind was alone and could attend to them without rousing suspicions.
That night, for the first time in years, I had a once-familiar dream, only this time when the knife gleamed high in my father’s right hand, the Deviation that struggled in his left was not a calf, it was not Sophie, either; it was Petra. I woke up sweating with fright.
The next day I tried to send thought-shapes to Petra. It seemed to me important for her to know as soon as possible that she must not give herself away. I tried hard, but I could make no contact with her. The rest tried, too, in turn, but there was no response. I wondered whether I should try to warn her in ordinary words, but Rosalind was against that.
“It must have been panic that brought it out,” she said. “If she isn’t aware of it now, she probably doesn’t even know it happened, so it might easily be an unnecessary danger to tell her about it at all. She’s only a little over six, remember. I don’t think it is fair, or safe, to burden her until it’s necessary.”
There was general agreement with Rosalind’s view. All of us knew that it is not easy to keep on watching each word all the time, even when you’ve had to practice it for years. We decided to postpone telling Petra until either some occasion made it necessary, or until she was old enough to understand more clearly what we were warning her about; in the meantime we would test occasionally to see whether we could make contact with her, otherwise the matter should rest as it stood at present.
We saw no reason then why it should not continue to stand as it did for all of us—no alternative, indeed. If we did not remain hidden, we should be finished.
In the last few years we had learned more about the people around us, and the way they felt. What had seemed five or six years ago a kind of rather disquieting game, had grown grimmer as we understood more about it. Essentially, it had not changed. Our whole consideration if we were to survive must be to keep our true selves hidden; to walk, talk and live indistinguishably from other people. We had a gift, a sense which, Michael complained bitterly, should have been a blessing, but was little better than a curse. The stupidest Norm was happier; he could feel that he belonged. We did not, and because we did not, we had no positive—we were condemned to negatives, to not revealing ourselves, to not speaking when we would, to not using what we knew, to not being found out, to a life of perpetual deception, concealment, and lying. The prospect stretching out before us chafed Michael more than it did the rest of us. His imagination took him further ahead, giving him a clearer vision of what such frustrations were going
to mean, but it was no better at suggesting an alternative than ours were. As far as I was concerned I was only just beginning to perceive the vacancy in our lives. It was my appreciation of danger that had sharpened as I grew up. It had become hardened one afternoon of the summer in the year before we dissevered Petra.
It was a bad season, that. We had lost three fields; so had Angus Morton. Altogether there had been twenty-five field-burnings in the district. There had been a higher deviation-rate among the spring births of the stock—not only our own stock, but everyone’s, and particularly among the cattle—than had been known for twenty years. There seemed to be more wildcats of various sizes prowling out of the woods by night than there had ever been before. Every week someone was before the court charged with attempted concealment of deviational crops, or the slaughter and consumption of undeclared Offenses among stock, and to cap it all there had been no less than three district alerts on account of raids in force from the Fringes. It was just after the stand-down following the last of these that I happened across Old Jacob grumbling to himself as he forked muck in the yard.
“What is it?” I asked him, pausing beside him.
He jabbed the fork into the muck and leaned one hand on the shaft. He had been an old man forking muck ever since I could remember. I couldn’t imagine that he had ever been or would be anything else. He turned to me a lined face mostly hidden in white hair and whiskers which always made me think of Elijah.
“Beans,” he said. “Now my bloody beans are wrong. First my potatoes, then my tomatoes, then my lettuce, now my beans. Never knew a year like it. The others I’ve had before, but who ever heard of beans getting tribulated?”
“Are you sure?” I said.
“Sure? ’Course I am. Think I don’t know the way a bean ought to look, at my age?”
He glared at me out of the white fuzz.
“It’s certainly a bad year,” I agreed.
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