The Chrysalids

11

The spring inspections that year were propitious. Only two fields in the whole district were on the first cleansing schedule, and neither of them belonged to my father, or to half-uncle Angus. The two previous years had been so bad that people who had hesitated during the first to dispose of stock with a tendency to produce deviational offspring had killed them off in the second, with the result that the normality-rate was high on that side, too. Moreover, the encouraging trend was maintained. It put new heart into people, they became more neighbourly and cheerful. By the end of May there were quite a lot of bets laid that the deviation figures were going to touch a record low. Even Old Jacob had to admit that divine displeasure was in abeyance for the time being. ‘Merciful, the Lord is,’ he said, with a touch of disapproval. ‘Giving ‘em one last chance. Let’s hope they mend their ways, or it’ll be bad for all of us next year. Still time for plenty to go wrong this year, for the matter of that.’

There was, however, no sign of a falling-off. The later vegetables showed nearly as high a degree of orthodoxy as the field-crops. The weather, too, looked set to give a good harvest, and the inspector spent so much of his time sitting quietly in his office that he became almost popular.

For us, as for everyone else, it looked like being a serene, if industrious, summer, and possibly it would have been so, but for Petra.

It was one day early in June that, inspired apparently by a feeling for adventure, she did two things she knew to be forbidden. First, although she was alone, she rode her pony off our own land; and, secondly, she was not content to keep to the open country, but went exploring in the woods.

The woods about Waknuk are, as I have said, considered fairly safe, but it does not do to count on that. Wild cats will seldom attack unless desperate; they prefer to run away. Nevertheless, it is unwise to go into the woods without a weapon of some kind, for it is possible for larger creatures to work their way down the necks of forest which thrust out of the Fringes, almost clear across Wild Country in some places, and then slink from one tract of woodland to another.

Petra‘s call came as suddenly and unexpectedly as before. Though it did not have the violent, compulsive panic which it had carried last time, it was intense; the degree of distress and anxiety was enough to be highly uncomfortable at the receiving end. Furthermore, the child had no control at all. She simply radiated an emotion which blotted out everything else with a great, amorphous splodge.

I tried to get through to the others to tell them I’d attend to it, but I couldn’t make contact even with Rosalind. A blotting like that is hard to describe: something like being unable to make oneself heard against a loud noise, but also something like trying to see through a fog. To make it worse, it gave no picture or hint of the cause: it was — this attempt to explain one sense in terms of others is bound to be misleading, but one might say it was something like a wordless yell of protest. Just a reflex emotion, no thought, or control: I doubted even if she knew she was doing it at all. It was instinctive…. All I could tell was that it was a distress signal, and coming from some distance away….

I ran from the forge where I was working, and got the gun — the one that always hung just inside the house door, ready charged and primed for an emergency. In a couple of minutes I had one of the horses saddled-up, and was away on it. One thing as definite about the call as its quality was its direction. Once I was out on the green lane I thumped my heels and was off at a gallop towards the West Woods.

If Petra had only let up on that overpowering distress-pattern of hers for just a few minutes — long enough for the rest of us to get in touch with one another — the consequences would have been quite different — indeed, there might have been no consequences at all. But she did not. She kept it up, like a screen, and there was nothing one could do but make for the source of it as quickly as possible.

Some of the going wasn’t good. I took a tumble at one point, and lost more time catching the horse again. Once in the woods the ground was harder, for the track was kept clear and fairly well used to save a considerable circuit. I held on along it until I realized I had overshot. The undergrowth was too thick to allow of a direct line, so I had to turn back and hunt for another track in the right direction. There was no trouble about the direction itself; not for a moment did Petra let up. At last I found a path, a narrow, frustratingly winding affair overhung by branches beneath which I had to crouch as the horse thrust its way along, but its general trend was right. At last the ground became clearer and I could choose my own way. A quarter of a mile farther on I pushed through more undergrowth and reached an open glade.

Petra herself I did not see at first. It was her pony that caught my attention. It was lying on the far side of the glade, with its throat torn open. Working at it, ripping flesh from its haunch with such single-minded intent that it had not heard my approach, was as deviational a creature as I had seen.

The animal was a reddish-brown, dappled with both yellow and darker brown spots. Its huge pad-like feet were covered with mops of fur, matted with blood now on the forepaws, and showing long, curved claws. Fur hung from the tail, too, in a way that made it look like a huge plume. The face was round, with eyes like yellow glass. The ears were wide set and drooping, the nose almost retroussé. Two large incisors projected downwards over the lower jaw, and it was using these, as well as the claws, to tear at the pony.

I started to unsling the gun from my back. The movement caught its attention. It turned its head and crouched motionless, glaring at me, with the blood glistening on the lower half of its face. Its tail rose, and waved gently from side to side. I cocked the gun and was in the act of raising it when an arrow took the creature in the throat. It leapt, writhing into the air and landed on all fours, facing me still, with its yellow eyes glaring. My horse took fright and reared, and my gun exploded into the air, but before the creature could spring two more arrows took it, one in the hindquarters, the other in the head. It stood stock-still for a moment, and then rolled over.

Rosalind rode into the glade from my right, her bow still in her hand. Michael appeared from the other side, a fresh arrow already on his string, and his eyes fixed on the creature, making sure about it. Even though we were so close to one another, we were close to Petra, too, and she was still swamping us.

‘Where is she?’ Rosalind asked in words.

We looked round and then spotted the small figure twelve feet up a young tree. She was sitting in a fork and clinging round the trunk with both arms. Rosalind rode under the tree and told her it was safe to come down. Petra went on clinging, she seemed unable to let go, or to move. I dismounted, climbed the tree and helped her down until Rosalind could reach up and take her. Rosalind seated her astride her saddle in front of her, and tried to soothe her, but Petra was looking down at her own dead pony. Her distress was, if anything, intensified.

‘We must stop this,’ I said to Rosalind. ‘She’ll be bringing all the others here.’

Michael, assured that the creature was really dead, joined us. He looked at Petra, worriedly.

‘She’s no idea she’s doing it. It’s not intelligent; she’s sort of howling with fright inside. It’d be better for her to howl outwardly. Let’s start by getting her where she can’t see her pony.’

We moved off a little, round a screen of bushes. Michael spoke to her quietly, trying to encourage her. She did not seem to understand, and there was no weakening of her distress-pattern.

‘Perhaps if we were all to try the same thought-pattern on her simultaneously,’ I suggested. ‘Soothing- sympathizing- relaxing. Ready?’

We tried, for a full fifteen seconds. There was just a momentary check in Petra’s distress, then it crowded us down again.

‘No good,’ said Rosalind, and let up.

The three of us regarded her helplessly. The pattern was a little changed; the incisiveness of alarm had receded, but the bewilderment and distress were still overwhelming. She began to cry. Rosalind put an arm round her and held her close to her.

‘Let her have it out. It’ll relax the tension,’ said Michael.

While we were waiting for her to calm down, the thing that I had been afraid of happened. Rachel came riding out of the trees; a moment later a boy rode in from the other side. I’d never seen him until now, but I knew he must be Mark.

We had never met as a group before. It was one of the things that we had known would be unsafe. It was almost certain that the other two girls would be somewhere on the way, too, to complete a gathering that we had decided must never happen.

Hurriedly, we explained in words what had occurred. We urged them to get away and disperse as soon as possible so that they would not be seen together, Michael, too. Rosalind and I would stay with Petra and do our best to calm her.

The three of them appreciated the situation without argument. A moment later they left us, riding off in different directions.

We went on trying to comfort and soothe Petra, with little success.

Some ten minutes later the two girls, Sally and Katherine, came pushing their way through the bushes. They, too, were on horseback, and with their bows strung. We had hoped that one of the others might have met them and turned them back, but clearly they had approached by a different route.

They came closer, staring incredulously at Petra. We explained all over again, in words, and advised them to go away. They were about to, in the act of turning their horses, when a large man on a bay mare thrust out of the trees in the open.

He reined in, and sat looking at us.

‘What’s going on here?’ he demanded, with suspicion in his tone.

He was a stranger to me, and I did not care for the look of him. I asked what one usually asked of strangers. Impatiently he pulled out his identity tag, with the current year’s punch-mark on it. It was established that we were neither of us outlaws.

‘What’s all this?’ he repeated.

The temptation was to tell him to mind his own damned business, but I thought it more tactful in the circumstances to be placatory. I explained that my sister’s pony had been attacked, and that we had answered her calls for help. He wasn’t willing to take that at its face value. He looked at me steadily, and then turned to regard Sally and Katherine.

‘Maybe. But what brought you two here in such a hurry?’ he asked them.

‘Naturally we came when we heard the child calling,’ Sally told him.

‘I was right behind you, and I heard no calling,’ he said.

Sally and Katherine looked at one another. Sally shrugged.

‘We did,’ she told him shortly.

It seemed about time I took a hand.

‘I’d have thought everyone for miles around would have heard it,’ I said. ‘The pony was screaming, too, poor little brute.’

I led him round the clump of bushes and showed him the savaged pony and the dead creature. He looked surprised, as if he’d not expected that evidence, but he wasn’t altogether appeased. He demanded to see Rosalind’s and Petra’s tags.

‘What’s this all about?’ I asked in my turn.

‘You didn’t know that the Fringes have got spies out?’ he said.

‘I didn’t,’ I told him. ‘Anyway, do we look like Fringes people?’

He ignored the question. ‘Well, they have. There’s an instruction to watch for them. There’s trouble working up, and the clearer you keep of the woods, the less likely you are to meet it before we all do.’

He still was not satisfied. He turned to look at the pony again, then at Sally.

‘I’d say it’s near half an hour since that pony did any screaming. How did you two manage to come straight to this spot?’

Sally’s eyes widened a little.

‘Well, this was the direction it came from, and then when we got nearer we heard the little girl screaming,’ she said simply.

‘And very good it was of you to follow it up,’ I put in. ‘You would have saved her life by doing it if we hadn’t happened to be a little nearer. It’s all over now, and luckily she wasn’t hurt. But she’s had a nasty fright and I’d better get her home. Thank you both for wanting to help.’

They took that up all right. They congratulated us on Petra’s escape, hoped she would soon get over the shock, and then rode off. The man lingered. He still seemed dissatisfied and a little puzzled. There was, however, nothing for him to take a firm hold of. Presently he gave the three of us a long, searching stare, looking as if he were about to say something more, but he changed his mind. Finally he repeated his advice to keep out of the woods, and then rode off in the wake of the other two. We watched him disappear among the trees.

‘Who is he?’ Rosalind asked, uneasily.

I could tell her that the name on his tag had been Jerome Skinner, but no more. He was a stranger to me, and our names had not seemed to mean much to him. I would have asked Sally but for the barrier that Petra was still putting up. It gave me a strange, muffled feeling to be cut off from the rest like that, and made me wonder at the strength of purpose which had enabled Anne to withdraw herself entirely for those months.

Rosalind, still with her right arm round Petra, started homewards at a walk. I collected the dead pony’s saddle and bridle, pulled the arrows out of the creature, and followed them.

They put Petra to bed when I brought her in. During the late afternoon and early evening the disturbance she was making fluctuated from time to time, but it kept up naggingly until almost nine o’clock when it diminished steeply and disappeared.

‘Thank goodness for that. She’s gone to sleep at last,’ came from one of the others.

‘Who was that man Skinner?’ Rosalind and I inquired anxiously and simultaneously.

Sally answered: ‘He’s fairly new here. My father knows him. He has a farm bordering on the woods near where you were. It was just bad luck his seeing us, and of course he wondered why we were making for the trees at a gallop.’

‘He seemed very suspicious. Why?’ asked Rosalind. ‘Does he know anything about thought-shapes? I didn’t think any of them did.’

‘He can’t make them, or receive them himself — I tried him hard,’ Sally told her.

Michael’s distinctive pattern came in, inquiring what it was all about. We explained. He commented:

‘Some of them do have an idea that something of the kind may be possible — but only very roughly of the kind — a sort of emotional transfer of mental impressions. They call it telepathy — at least, those who believe in it do. Most of them are pretty doubtful whether it exists at all.’

‘Do they think it’s deviational, those who do believe it exists, I mean?’ I asked.

‘It’s difficult to say. I don’t know that the question has ever been straightly put. But academically, there’s the point that since God is able to read men’s minds, the true image ought to be able to do so, too. It might be argued that it is a power that men have temporarily lost as a punishment, part of Tribulation — but I’d not like to risk myself on that argument in front of a tribunal.’

‘This man had the air of smelling a rat,’ Rosalind told him. ‘Has anybody else been inquisitive?’

They all gave her a ‘No‘ to that.

‘Good,’ she replied. ‘But we must be careful this doesn’t happen again. David will have to explain to Petra in words and try to teach her to use some self-control. If this distress of hers does occur, you must all of you ignore it, or, anyway, not answer it. Just leave it to David and me. If it is compulsive, like it was the first time, whoever reaches her first will have to try to make her unconscious somehow, and the moment the compulsion breaks you must turn back and cover up as best you can. We have to make sure we are not drawn together into a group again. We could easily be a lot less lucky than we were today. Does everybody understand and agree?’

Their assents came in, then presently the rest of them withdrew, leaving Rosalind and me to discuss how I could best tackle Petra.

I woke early the next morning, and the first thing I was aware of was Petra’s distress once more. But it was different in quality now; her alarm had quite subsided, but given way to a lament for the dead pony. Nor did it have anything like the intensity of the previous day.

I tried to make contact with her, and, though she did not understand, there was a perceptible check and a trace of puzzlement for some seconds. I got out of bed, and went along to her room. She was glad to have company; the distress-pattern faded a lot as we chatted. Before I left I promised to take her fishing that afternoon.

It is not at all easy to explain in words how one can make intelligible thought-shapes. All of us had first found out for ourselves; a very crude fumbling to begin with, but then more skilful when we had discovered one another and begun to learn by practice. With Petra it was different. Already, at six and a half, she had had a power of projection in a different class from ours, and quite overwhelming — but without realization, and therefore with no control whatever. I did my best to explain to her, but even at her present age of almost eight the necessity of putting it in words that were simple enough presented a difficulty. After an hour of trying to make it clear to her while we sat on the river-bank watching our floats, I still had not got anywhere much, and she was growing too bored to try to understand what I said. Another kind of approach seemed to be required.

‘Let’s play a game,’ I suggested. ‘You shut your eyes. Keep them shut tight, and pretend you’re looking down a deep, deep well. There’s nothing but dark to see. Right?’

‘Yes,’ she said, eyelids tightly clenched.

‘Good. Now, don’t think of anything at all except how dark it is and how far, far away the bottom is. Just think of that, but look at the dark. Understand that?’

‘Yes,’ she said again.

‘Now, watch,’ I told her.

I thought a rabbit for her, and made it twitch its nose. She chuckled. Well, that was one good thing: at least, it made sure that she could receive. I abolished the rabbit, and thought a puppy, then some chickens, and then a horse and cart. After a minute or two she opened her eyes, and looked bewildered.

“Where are they?’ she asked, looking round.

‘They aren’t anywhere. They were just think-things,’ I told her. ‘That’s the game. Now I’ll shut my eyes, too. We’ll both look down the well and think of nothing but how dark it is. Then it’s your turn to think a picture at the bottom of the well, so that I can see it.’

I played my part conscientiously and opened my mind to its most sensitive. That was a mistake. There was a flash and a glare and a general impression that I had been struck by a thunderbolt. I staggered in a mental daze, with no idea what her picture had been. The others came in, protesting bitterly. I explained what was going on.

‘Well, for heaven’s sake be careful, and don’t let her do it again. I damned near put an axe through my foot,’ came aggrievedly from Michael.

‘I’ve scalded my hand with the kettle,’ from Katherine.

‘Lull her. Soothe her down somehow,’ advised Rosalind.

‘She isn’t unsoothed. She’s perfectly tranquil. That seems to be just the way it is with her,’ I told them.

‘Maybe, but it’s a way it can’t stay,’ Michael answered. ‘She must cut it down.’

‘I know — I’m doing my best. Perhaps you’ve got some ideas on how to tackle it?’ I suggested.

‘Well, next time warn us before she tries,’ Rosalind told me.

I pulled myself together and turned my attention to Petra again.

‘You’re too rough,’ I said. ‘This time make a little think-picture; a really little one ever so far away, in soft pretty colours. Do it slowly and gently, as if you were making it out of cobwebs.’

Petra nodded, and closed her eyes again.

‘Here it comes!’ I warned the others, and waited, wishing it were the kind of thing one could take cover from.

It was not much worse than a minor explosion this time. It was dazzling, but I did manage to catch the shape of it.

‘A fish!’ I said. ‘A fish with a droopy tail.’

Petra chuckled delightedly.

‘Undoubtedly a fish,’ came from Michael. ‘You’re doing fine. All you want to do now is to cut her down to about one per cent of the power in that last one before she burns our brains out.’

‘Now you show me,’ demanded Petra, and the lesson proceeded.

The following afternoon we had another session. It was a rather violent and exhausting business, but there was progress. Petra was beginning to grasp the idea of forming thought-shapes — in a childish way, as was only to be expected — but frequently recognizable in spite of distortions. The main trouble still was to keep the strength down: when she became excited one was almost stunned by the impact. The rest complained that they could get no work done while we were at it: it was like trying to ignore sudden hammer-bangs inside one’s head. Towards the end of the lesson I told Petra:

‘Now I’m going to tell Rosalind to give you a think-picture. Just shut your eyes, like before.’

‘Where’s Rosalind?’ she asked, looking round. ‘She’s not here, but that doesn’t matter with think-pictures. Now, look at the dark and think of nothing.’

‘And you others,’ I added mentally for the benefit of the rest, ‘just lay off, will you? Keep it all clear for Rosalind, and don’t interrupt. Go ahead, Rosalind, strong and clear.’ We sat silent and receptive.

Rosalind made a pond with reeds round it. She put in several ducks, friendly, humorous-looking ducks of various colours. They swam a kind of ballet, except for one chunky, earnestly-trying duck who was always a little late and a little wrong. Petra loved it. She gurgled with enjoyment. Then, abruptly, she projected her delight; it wiped out the whole thing and dazed us all again. It was wearing for everyone, but her progress was encouraging.

In the fourth lesson she learnt the trick of clearing one’s mind without closing one’s eyes, which was quite a step. By the end of the week we were really getting on. Her thought-shapes were still crude and unstable, but they would improve with practice; her reception of simple forms was good, though as yet she could catch little of our projections to one another.

‘Too difficult to see all at once and too quick,’ she said. ‘But I can tell whether it’s you, or Rosalind, or Michael, or Sally doing it, but going so fast it gets muddled. The other ones are much more muddled, though.’

‘What other ones — Katherine and Mark?’ I asked her.

‘Oh, no. I can tell them. It’s the other other ones. The long-way-away ones,’ she said, impatiently.

I decided to take it calmly.

‘I don’t think I know them. Who are they?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘Can’t you hear them? They’re over there, but a long, long way.’ She pointed to the south-west.

I thought that over for a few moments.

‘Are they there now?’ I asked.

‘Yes, but not much,’ she said.

I tried my best to detect anything, and failed.

‘Suppose you try to copy for me what you’re getting from them?’ I suggested.

She tried. There was something there, and with a quality in it which none of us had. It was not comprehensible and it was very blurred — possibly, I thought, because Petra was trying to relay something she could not understand herself. I could make nothing of it, and called Rosalind in, but she could do no better. Petra was evidently finding it an effort, so after a few minutes we decided to let it rest for the present.

In spite of Petra’s continued propensity to slip at any moment into what, in terms of sound, would be a deafening bellow, we all felt a proprietorial pride in her progress. There was a sense of excitement, too — rather as if we had discovered an unknown who we knew was destined to become a great singer: only it was something more important than that….

‘This,’ Michael said, ‘is going to be very interesting indeed — provided she doesn’t break us all up before she gets control of it.’

At supper, some ten days after the loss of Petra’s pony, Uncle Axel asked me to come and give him a hand with truing-up a wheel, while there was still light enough. Superficially the request was casual, but there was something in his eyes which made me agree without hesitation. I followed him out, and we went over behind the rick where we should neither be seen nor overheard. He put a straw between his teeth, and looked at me seriously.

‘You been careless, Davie boy?’ he asked.

There are plenty of ways of being careless, but only one he’d ask me about with the manner he was using.

‘I don’t think so,’ I told him.

‘One of the others, maybe?’ he suggested.

Again, I did not think so.

‘H’m,’ he grunted. ‘Then why, would you say, has Joe Darley been asking questions about you? Any idea?’

I had no idea why, and told him so. He shook his head.

‘I don’t like it, boy.’

‘Just me — or the others, as well?’ I asked.

‘You — and Rosalind Morton.’

‘Oh,’ I said, uneasily. ‘Still, if it’s only Joe Darley… Could it be he’s heard a rumour about us, and is out to do a bit of scandal-raising?’

‘Might be,’ Uncle Axel agreed, but reservedly. ‘On the other hand, Joe is a fellow that the inspector has used before now when he wants a few inquiries made on the quiet. I don’t like it.’

I did not care for it either. But he had not approached either of us directly, and I did not see where else he was going to get any incriminating information. There was, I pointed out, nothing he could pin on us that brought us within any category of the Scheduled Deviations.

Uncle Axel shook his head. ‘Those lists are inclusive, not exclusive,’ he said. ‘You can’t schedule all the million things that may happen — only the more frequent ones. There have to be test cases for new ones when they crop up. It’s part of the inspector’s job to keep watch and call an inquiry if the information he gets seems to warrant it.’

‘We’ve thought about what might happen,’ I told him. ‘If there should be any questions they’ll not be sure what they’re looking for. All we’ll have to do is act bewildered, just as a norm would be. If Joe or anybody has anything it can’t be more than suspicion, no solid evidence.’

He did not seem reassured.

‘There’s Rachel,’ he suggested. ‘She was pretty much knocked by her sister’s suicide. Do you think she—?’

‘No,’ I said confidently. ‘Quite apart from the fact that she couldn’t do it without involving herself, we should have known if she were hiding anything.’

‘Well, then, there’s young Petra,’ he said.

I stared at him.

‘How did you know about Petra?’ I asked.’ I never told you.’

He nodded in a satisfied way. ‘So she is. I reckoned so.’

‘How did you find out?’ I repeated anxiously, wondering who else might have had a similar idea. ‘Did she tell you?’

‘Oh, no, I kind of came across it.’ He paused, then he added:

‘Indirectly it came from Anne. I told you it was a bad thing to let her marry that fellow. There’s a type of woman who isn’t content until she’s made herself some man’s slave and doormat — put herself completely in his power. That’s the kind she was.’

‘You’re not — you don’t mean she told Alan about herself?’ I protested.

‘She did,’ he nodded. ‘She did more than that. She told him about all of you.’

I stared at him incredulously.

‘You can’t be sure of that, Uncle Axel!’

‘I am, Davie boy. Maybe she didn’t intend to. Maybe it was only herself she told him about, being the kind who can’t keep secrets in bed. And maybe he had to beat the names of the rest of you out of her, but he knew all right. He knew.’

‘But even if he did, how did you know he knew?’ I asked, with rising anxiety.

He said, reminiscently:

‘A while ago there used to be a dive down on the waterfront in Rigo. It was run by a fellow called Grouth, and very profitably, too. He had a staff of three girls and two men, and they did as he said — just as he said. If he’d liked to tell what he knew one of the men would have been strung up for mutiny on the high seas, and two of the girls for murder. I don’t know what the others had done, but he had the lot of them cold. It was as neat a set-up for blackmail as you could find. If the men got any tips he had them. He saw to it that the girls were nice to the sailors who used the place, and whatever they got out of the sailors he had, too. I used to see the way he treated them, and the expression on his face when he watched them; kind of gloating because he’d got them, and he knew it, and they knew it. He’d only got to frown, and they danced.’ Uncle Axel paused reflectively. ‘You’d never think you’d come across just that expression on a man’s face again in Waknuk church, of all places, would you? It made me feel a bit queer when I did. But there it was. It was on his face while he studied first Rosalind, then Rachel, then you, then young Petra. He wasn’t interested in anybody else. Just the four of you.’

‘You could have been mistaken — just an expression…’ I said.

‘Not that expression. Oh, no, I knew that expression, it jerked me right back to the dive in Rigo. Besides, if I wasn’t right, how do I come to know about Petra?’

‘What did you do?’

‘I came home and thought a bit about Grouth, and what a comfortable life he’d been able to lead, and about one or two other things. Then I put a new string on my bow.’

‘So it was you!’ I exclaimed.

‘It was the only thing to do, Davie. Of course, I knew Anne would reckon it was one of you that had done it. But she couldn’t denounce you without giving herself away and her sister, too. There was a risk there, but I had to take it.’

‘There certainly was a risk — and it nearly didn’t come off,’ I said, and told him about the letter that Anne had left for the inspector.

He shook his head. ‘I hadn’t reckoned she’d go as far as that, poor girl,’ he said. ‘All the same, it had to be done — and quickly. Alan wasn’t a fool. He’d see to it that he was covered. Before he actually began on you he’d have had a written deposition somewhere to be opened in the event of his death, and he’d see that you knew about it, too. It’d have been a pretty nasty situation for all of you.’

The more I considered it, the more I realized how nasty it could have been.

‘You took a big risk for us yourself, Uncle Axel,’ I told him.

He shrugged.

‘Very little risk for me against a great deal for you,’ he said.

Presently we came back to the matter in hand.

‘But these inquiries can’t have anything to do with Alan. That was weeks ago,’ I pointed out.

‘What’s more, it’s not the kind of information Alan’d share with anyone if he wanted to cash in on it,’ agreed Uncle Axel. ‘There’s one thing,’ he went on, ‘they can’t know much, or they’d have called an inquiry already, and they’ll have to be pretty damn sure of themselves before they do call one. The inspector isn’t going to put himself in a weak spot with your father if he can help it — nor with Angus Morton either, for the matter of that. But that still doesn’t get us any nearer to knowing what started it.’

I was pressed back again into thinking it must have something to do with the affair of Petra’s pony. Uncle Axel knew of its death, of course, but not much more. It would have involved telling him about Petra herself, and we had had a tacit understanding that the less he knew about us the less he would have to hide in case of trouble. However, now that he did know about Petra, I described the event more fully. It did not look to us to be a likely source, but for lack of any other lead he made a note of the man’s name.

‘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….