The Midwich Cuckoos

Chapter 16. Now We Are Nine

During the next few years, such visits home as we managed were brief and hurried, spent entirely in dashing from one lot of relatives to another, with interludes to improve business contacts. I never went anywhere near Midwich, nor indeed thought much about it. But, in the eighth summer after we had left, I managed a six-week spell, and at the end of the first week I ran into Bernard Wescott one day, in Piccadilly.

We went to the In and Out for a drink. In the course of a chat I asked him about Midwich. I think I expected to hear that the whole thing had fizzled out, for on the few occasions I had recalled the place lately, it and its inhabitants had the improbability of a tale once realistic, but now thoroughly unconvincing. I was more than half-ready to hear that the Children no longer trailed clouds of anything unconventional, that, as so often with suspected genius, expectations had never flowered, and that, for all their beginnings and indications, they had become an ordinary gang of village children, with only their looks to distinguish them.

Bernard considered for a moment, then he said:

'As it happens, I have to go down there tomorrow. Would you care to come for the run, renew old acquaintance, and so on?'

Janet had gone north to stay with an old school friend for a week leaving me on my own, with nothing particular to do.

'So you do still keep an eye on the place? Yes, I'd like to come and have a few words with them. Zellaby's still alive and well?'

'Oh, yes. He's that rather dry-stick type that seems set to go on for ever, unchanged.'

'The last time I saw him – apart from our farewell – he was off on a weird tack about composite personality,' I recalled. 'An old spellbinder. He manages to make the most exotic conceptions sound feasible while he's talking. Something about Adam and Eve, I remember.'

'You won't find much difference,' Bernard told me, but did not pursue that line. Instead, he went on: 'My own business there is a bit morbid I'm afraid – an inquest, but that needn't interfere with you.'

'One of the Children?' I asked.

'No,' he shook his head. 'A motor accident to a local boy called Pawle.'

'Pawle,' I repeated. 'Oh, yes, I remember. They've a farm a bit outside, nearer to Oppley.'

'That's it. Dacre Farm. Tragic business.'

It seemed intrusive to ask what interest he could have in the inquest, so I let him switch the conversation to my Canadian experiences.

The next morning, with a fine summer's day already well begun, we set off soon after breakfast. In the car he apparently felt at liberty to talk more freely than he had at the club.

'You'll find a few changes in Midwich,' he warned me. 'Your old cottage is now occupied by a couple called Welton – he etches, and his wife throws pots. I can't remember who is in Crimm's place at the moment – there's been quite a succession of people since the Freemans. But what's going to surprise you most is The Grange. The board outside has been repainted; it now reads: "Midwich Grange – Special School – Ministry of Education." '

'Oh? The Children?' I asked.

'Exactly.' He nodded. 'Zellaby's "exotic conception" was a lot less exotic than it seemed. In fact, it was a bull – to the great discomfiture of the Freemans. It showed them up so thoroughly that they had to clear out to hide their faces.'

'You mean his Adam and Eve stuff?' I said incredulously.

'Not that exactly. I meant the two mental groups. It was soon proved that there was this rapport – everything supported that – and it continued. At just over two years old one of the boys learnt to read simple words -'

'At two!' I exclaimed.

'Quite the equivalent of any other child's four,' he reminded me. 'And the next day it was found that any of the boys could read them. From then on, the progress was amazing. It was weeks later before one of the girls learnt to read, but when she did, all the rest of them could, too. Later on, one boy learnt to ride a bicycle; right away any of them could do it competently, first shot. Mrs Brinkman taught her girl to swim; all the rest of the girls were immediately able to swim; but the boys could not until one of them got the trick of it, then the rest could. Oh, from the moment Zellaby pointed it out, there was no doubt about it. The thing there has been – and still is – a whole series of rows about, on all levels, is his deduction that each group represents an individual. Not many people will wear that one. A form of thought transmission, possibly; a high degree of mutual sensitivity, perhaps; a number of units with a form of communication not yet clearly understood, feasible; but a single unit informing physically independent parts, no. There's precious little support for that.'

I was not greatly surprised to hear it, but he was going on:

'Anyway, the arguments are chiefly academic. The point is that, however it happens, they do have this rapport within the groups. Well, sending them to any ordinary school was obviously out of the question – there'd be tales about them all over the place in a few days if they'd just turned up at Oppley or Stouch schools. So that brought in the Ministry of Education, as well as the Ministry of Health, with the result that The Grange was opened up as a kind of school-cum-welfare-centre-cum-social-observatory for them.

'That has worked better than we expected. Even when you were here it was pretty obvious they were going to be a problem later on. They have a different sense of community – their pattern is not, and cannot by their nature, be the same as ours. Their ties to one another are far more important to them than any feeling for ordinary homes. Some of the homes resented them pretty much, too – they can't really become one of the family, they're too different; they were little good as company for the true children of the family, and the difficulties looked like growing. Somebody at The Grange had the idea of starting dormitories there for them. There was no pressure, no persuasion – they could just move in if they wanted to, and a dozen or more did, quite soon. Then others gradually joined them. It was rather as if they were beginning to learn that they could not have a great deal in common with the rest of the village, and so gravitated naturally towards a group of their own kind.'

'An odd arrangement. What did the village people think of it?' I asked.

'There was disapproval from some, of course – more from convention than conviction, really. A lot of them were relieved to lose a responsibility that had rather scared them, though they didn't feel it proper to admit it. A few were genuinely fond of them, still are, and have found it distressing. But in general they have just accepted. Nobody really tried to stop any of them shifting to The Grange, of course – it wouldn't have been any use. Where the mothers feel affectionately for them the Children keep on good terms, and are in and out of the houses as they like. Some others of the Children have made a complete break.'

'It sounds the queerest set-up I ever heard of,' I said.

Bernard smiled.

'Well, if you'll throw your mind back you'll recall that it had a somewhat queer beginning,' he reminded me.

'What do they do at The Grange?' I asked.

'Primarily it is a school, as it says. They have teaching and welfare staff, as well as social psychologists, and so on. They also have quite eminent teachers visiting and giving short courses in various subjects. At first they used to hold classes like an ordinary school, until it occurred to somebody that that wasn't necessary. So now any lesson is attended by one boy and one girl, and all the rest know what those two have been taught. And it doesn't have to be one lesson at a time, either. Teach six couples different subjects simultaneously, and they somehow sort it out so that it works the same way.'

'But, good heavens, they must be mopping up knowledge like blotting-paper, at that rate.'

'They are indeed. It seems to give some of the teachers a touch of jitters.'

'And yet you still manage to keep their existence quiet?'

'On the popular level, yes. There is still an understanding with the Press – and, anyway, the story hasn't nearly the possibilities now that it would have had in the early stages, from their point of view. As for the surrounding district, that has involved a certain amount of undercover work. The local reputation of Midwich was never very high – an ingenuous neighbourhood is perhaps the kindest way of putting it. Well, with a little helping-on, we've got it still lower. It is now regarded by the neighbouring villages, so Zellaby assures me, as a kind of mental home without bars. Everybody there, it is known, was affected by the Dayout; particularly the Children, who are spoken of as "daytouched" – an almost exact synonym of "moonstruck" – and are retarded to such an extent that a humane government has found it necessary to provide a special school for them. Oh, yes, we've got it pretty well established as a local deficiency area. It is in the same class of toleration as a dotty relative. There is occasional gossip; but it is accepted as an unfortunate affliction, and not a matter to be advertised to the outside world. Even protestations occasionally made by some of the Midwich people are not taken seriously, for, after all, the whole village had the same experience, so that all must be, in greater or lesser degree, "daytouched".'

'It must,' I said, 'have involved quite a deal of engineering and maintenance. What I never understood, and still don't understand, is why you were, and apparently are, so concerned to keep the matter quiet. Security at the time of the Dayout is understandable – something made an unauthorized landing; that was a Service concern. But now...? All this trouble to keep the Children hidden away still. This queer arrangement at The Grange. A special school like that couldn't be run for a few pounds a year.'

'You don't think that the Welfare State should show so much concern for its responsibilities?' he suggested.

'Come off it, Bernard,' I told him.

But he did not. Though he went on talking of the Children, and the state of affairs in Midwich, he continued to avoid any answer to the question I had raised.

We lunched early at Trayne, and ran into Midwich a little after two. I found the place looking utterly unchanged. It might have been a week that had passed instead of eight years since I last saw it. Already there was quite a crowd waiting on the Green, outside the Hall where the inquest was to be held.

'It looks,' Bernard said as he parked the car, 'it looks as if you had better postpone your calls until later. Practically the whole place seems to be here.'

'Will it take long, do you think?' I inquired.

'Should be purely formal – I hope. Probably all over in half an hour.'

'Are you giving evidence?' I asked, wondering why, if it were to be so formal, he should bother to come all the way from London for it.

'No. Just keeping an eye on things,' he said.

I decided that he had been right about postponing my calls, and followed him into the hall. As the place filled up, and I watched familiar figures trooping in and finding seats, there could be no doubt that almost every mobile person in the place had chosen to attend. I did not quite understand why. Young Jim Pawle, the casualty, would be known to them all, of course, but that did not seem quite to account for it, and certainly did not account for the feeling of tension which inescapably pervaded the hall. I could not, after a few minutes, believe that the proceedings were going to be as formal as Bernard had predicted. I had a sense of waiting for an outburst of some kind from someone in the crowd.

But none came. The proceedings were formal, and brief, too. It was all over inside half an hour.

I noticed Zellaby slip out quickly as the meeting closed. We found him standing by the steps outside watching us emerge. He greeted me as if we had last met a couple of days ago, and then said:

'How do you come into this? I thought you were in India.'

'Canada,' I said. 'It's accidental.' And explained that Bernard had brought me down.

Zellaby turned to look at Bernard.

'Satisfied?' he asked.

Bernard shrugged slightly. 'What else?' he asked.

At that moment a boy and a girl passed us, and walked up the road among the dispersing crowd. I had only time for a glimpse of their faces, and stared after them in astonishment.

'Surely, they can't be -?' I began.

'They are,' Zellaby said. 'Didn't you see their eyes?'

'But it's preposterous! Why, they're only nine years old!'

'By the calendar,' Zellaby agreed.

I gazed after them as they strode along.

'But it's – it's unbelievable!'

'The unbelievable is, as you will recall, rather more prone to realization in Midwich than in some other places,' Zellaby observed. 'The improbable we can now assimilate at once; the incredible takes a little longer, but we have learnt to achieve it. Didn't the Colonel warn you?'

'In a way,' I admitted. 'But those two! They look fully sixteen or seventeen.'

'Physically, I am assured, they are.'

I kept my eyes on them, still unwilling to accept it.

'If you are in no hurry, come up to the house and have tea,' Zellaby suggested.

Bernard, after a glance at me, offered the use of his car.

'All right,' said Zellaby, 'but take it carefully, after what you've just heard.'

'I'm not a dangerous driver,' said Bernard.

'Nor was young Pawle – he was a good driver, too,' replied Zellaby.

A little way up the drive we came in sight of Kyle Manor at rest in the afternoon sun. I said:

'The first time I saw it it was looking just like this. I remember thinking that when I got a little closer I should hear it purring, and that's been the way I've seen it ever since.'

Zellaby nodded.

'When I saw it first it seemed to me a good place to end one's days in tranquillity – but now the tranquillity is, I think, questionable.'

I let that go. We ran past the front of the house, and parked round the side by the stables. Zellaby led the way to the veranda, and waved us to cushioned cane chairs.

'Angela's out at the moment, but she promised to be back for tea,' he said.

He leant back, gazing across the lawn for some moments. The nine years since the Midwich Dayout had treated him not unkindly. The fine silver hair was still as thick, and still as lucent in the August sunshine. The wrinkles about his eyes were just a little more numerous, perhaps; the face very slightly thinner, the lines on it faintly deeper, but if his lanky figure had become any sparser, it could not have been by a matter of more than four or five pounds.

Presently he turned to Bernard.

'So you're satisfied. You think it will end there?'

'I hope so. Nothing could be undone. The wise course was to accept the verdict, and they did,' Bernard told him.

'H'm,' said Zellaby. He turned to me. 'What, as a detached observer, did you think of our little charade this afternoon?'

'I don't – oh, the inquest, you mean. There seemed to be a bit of an atmosphere, but the proceedings appeared to me to be in good enough order. The boy was driving carelessly. He hit a pedestrian. Then, very foolishly, he got the wind up, and tried to make a getaway. He was accelerating too fast to take the corner by the church, and as a result he piled up against the wall. Are you suggesting that "accidental death" doesn't cover it – one might call it misadventure, but it comes to the same thing.'

'There was misadventure all right,' Zellaby said, 'but it scarcely comes to the same thing, and it occurred slightly before the fact. Let me tell you what happened – I've only been able to give the Colonel a brief account yet...'

Zellaby had been returning, by way of the Oppley road, from his usual afternoon stroll. As he neared the turn to Hickham Lane four of the Children emerged from it, and turned towards the village, walking strung out in a line ahead of him.

They were three of the boys, and a girl. Zellaby studied them with an interest that had never lessened. The boys were so closely alike that he could not have identified them if he had tried, but he did not try; for some time he had regarded it as a waste of effort. Most of the village – except for a few of the women who seemed genuinely to be seldom in doubt – shared his inability to distinguish between them, and the Children were accustomed to it.

As always, he marvelled that they could have crammed so much development into so short a time. That alone set them right apart as a different species – it was not simply a matter of maturing early; it was development at almost twice normal speed. Perhaps they were a little light in structure compared with normal children of the same apparent age and height, but it was lightness of type, without the least suggestion of weediness, or overgrowth.

As always, too, he found himself wishing he could know them better, and learn more of them. It was not for lack of trying that he had made so little headway. He had tried, patiently and persistently, ever since they were small. They accepted him as much as they accepted anyone, and he, for his part, probably understood them quite as well as, if not better than, any of their mentors at The Grange. Superficially they were friendly with him – which they were not with many – they were willing to talk with him, and to listen, to be amused, and to learn; but it never went further than the superficial, and he had a feeling that it never would. Always, quite close under the surface, there was a barrier. What he saw and heard from them was their adaptation to their circumstances; their true selves and real nature lay beneath the barrier. Such understanding as passed between himself and them was curiously partial and impersonal; it lacked the dimension of feeling and sympathy. Their real lives seemed to be lived in a world of their own, as shut off from the main current as those of any Amazonian tribe with its utterly different standards and ethics. They were interested, they learnt, but one had the feeling that they were simply collecting knowledge – somewhat, perhaps, as a juggler acquires a useful skill which, however he may excel with it, has no influence whatever upon him, as a person. Zellaby wondered if anyone would get closer to them. The people up at The Grange were an unforthcoming lot, but, from what he had been able to discover, even the most assiduous had been held back by the same barrier.

Watching the Children walking ahead, talking between themselves, he suddenly found himself thinking of Ferrelyn. She did not come home as much as he could have wished, nowadays; the sight of the Children still disturbed her, so he did not try to persuade her; he made the best he could of the knowledge that she was happy at home with her own two boys.

It was odd to think that if Ferrelyn's Dayout boy had survived he would probably be no more able now to distinguish him from those walking ahead, than he was to distinguish them from one another – rather humiliating, too, for it seemed to bracket one with Miss Ogle, only she got round the difficulty by taking it for granted that any of the boys she chanced to meet was her son – and, curiously, none of them ever disillusioned her.

Presently, the quartet in front rounded a corner and passed out of his sight. He had just reached the corner himself when a car overtook him, and he had, therefore, a clear view of all that followed.

The car, a small, open two-seater, was not travelling fast, but it happened that just round the corner, and shielded from sight by it, the Children had stopped. They appeared, still strung out across the road, to be debating which way they should go.

The car's driver did his best. He pulled hard over to the right in an attempt to avoid them, and all but succeeded. Another two inches, and he would have missed them entirely. But he could not make the extra inches. The tip of his left wing caught the outermost boy on the hip, and flung him across the road against the fence of a cottage garden.

There was a moment of tableau which remained quite static in Zellaby's mind. The boy against the fence, the three other Children frozen where they stood, the young man in the car in the act of straightening his wheels again, still braking.

Whether the car actually came to a stop Zellaby could never be sure; if it did it was for the barest instant, then the engine roared.

The car sprang forward. The driver changed up, and put his foot down again, keeping straight ahead. He made no attempt whatever to take the corner to the left. The car was still accelerating when it hit the churchyard wall. It smashed to smithereens, and hurled the driver headlong against the wall.

People shouted, and the few who were near started running towards the wreckage. Zellaby did not move. He stood half-stunned as he watched the yellow flames leap out, and the black smoke start upwards. Then, with a stiff-seeming movement, he turned to look at the Children. They, too, were staring at the wreck, a similar tense expression on each face. He had only a glimpse of it before it passed off, and the three of them turned to the boy who lay by the fence, groaning.

Zellaby became aware that he was trembling. He walked on a few yards, unsteadily, until he reached a seat by the edge of the Green. There he sat down and leant back, pale in the face, feeling ill.

The rest of this incident reached me not from Zellaby himself, but from Mrs Williams, of The Scythe and Stone, somewhat later on:

'I heard the car go tearing by, then a loud bang, and I looked out of the window and saw people running,' she said. 'Then I noticed Mr Zellaby go to the bench on the Green, walking very unsteadily. He sat down, and leaned back, but then his head fell forward, like he might be passing out. So I ran across the road to him, and when I got to him I found he was passed out, very near. Not quite, though. He managed to say something about "pills" and "pocket" in a sort of funny whisper. I found them in his pocket. It said two, on the bottle, but he was looking that bad I gave him four.

'Nobody else was taking any notice. They'd all gone up where the accident was. Well, the pills did him good, and after about five minutes I helped him into the house, and let him lay on the couch in the bar-parlour. He said he'd be all right there, just resting a bit, so I went to ask about the car.

'When I came back, his face wasn't so grey any more, but he was still lying like he was tired right out.

' "Sorry to be a nuisance, Mrs Williams. Rather a shock," he said.

' "I'd better get the doctor to you, Mr Zellaby," I said. But he shook his head.

' "No. Don't do that. I'll be all right in a few minutes," he told me.

' "I think you'd better see him," I said. "Fair put the wind up me, you did."

' "I'm sorry about that," he said. And then after a bit of a pause he went on: "Mrs Williams, I'm sure you can keep a secret?"

' "As well as the next, I reckon," I told him.

' "Well, I'd be very grateful if you'd not mention this – lapse of mine to anyone."

' "I don't know," I said. "To my way of thinking you ought to see the doctor."

'He shook his head at that.

' "I've seen a number of doctors, Mrs Williams, expensive and important ones. But one just can't help growing old, you see, and as one does, the machinery begins to wear out, that's all."

' "Oh, Mr Zellaby, sir -" I began.

' "Don't distress yourself, Mrs Williams. I'm still quite tough in a lot of ways, so it may not come for some little time yet. But, in the meantime, I think it is rather important that one should not trouble the people one loves any more than can be helped, don't you think? It is an unkindness to cause them useless distress, I'm sure you'll agree?"

' "Well, yes, sir, if you're sure that there's nothing -?"

' "I am. Quite sure. I am already in your debt, Mrs Williams, but you will have done me no service unless I can rely on you not to mention it. Can I?"

' "Very well. If that's the way you want it, Mr Zellaby," I told him.

' "Thank you, Mrs Williams. Thank you very much," he said.

'Then, after a bit, I asked him:

' "You saw it all happen, then, sir? Enough to give anyone a shock, it must've been."

' "Yes," he said. "I saw it – but I didn't see who it was in the car."

' "Young Jim Pawle," I told him, "from Dacre Farm."

'He shook his head.

' "I remember him – nice lad."

' "Yes, sir. A good boy, Jim. Not one of the wild ones. Can't think how he'd come to be driving mad in the village. Not like him at all."

'Then there was quite a pause till he said in a funny sort of voice:

' "Before that, he hit one of the Children – one of the boys. Not badly, I think, but he knocked him across the road."

' "One of the Children -" I said. Then I suddenly saw what he was meaning. "Oh no, sir! My God, they couldn't've -" but then I stopped again, because of the way he was looking at me.

' "Other people saw it, too," he told me. "Healthier – or, possibly less shockable people – Perhaps I myself should have found it less upsetting if, at some previous stage of my quite long life, I had already had the experience of witnessing deliberate murder..." '

The account that Zellaby himself gave us, however, ended at the point where he had sat shakily down on the bench. When he finished, I looked from him to Bernard. There was no lead at all in Bernard's expression, so I said:

'You're suggesting that the Children did it – that they made him drive into that wall?'

'I'm not suggesting,' said Zellaby with a regretful shake of his head, 'I'm stating. They did it, just as surely as they made their mothers bring them back here.'

'But the witnesses – the ones who gave evidence...?'

'They're perfectly well aware of what happened. They only had to say what they actually saw .'

'But if they know it's as you claim -?'

'Well, what then? What would you have said if you had known, and happened to be called as a witness? In an affair such as this there has to be a verdict acceptable to authority – acceptable, that means, to our well-known figment, the reasonable man. Suppose that they had somehow managed to get a verdict that the boy was willed to kill himself – do you imagine that would stand? Of course it wouldn't. There'd have to be a second inquest, called to bring in a "reasonable" verdict, which would be the verdict we now have, so why should the witnesses run the risk of being thought unreliable, or superstitious, for nothing?

'If you want evidence that they would be, take a look at your own attitude now. You know that I have some little reputation through my books, and you know me personally, but how much is that worth against the thought-habits of the "reasonable man"? So little that when I tell you what actually occurred, your immediate reaction is to try to find ways in which what appeared to me to have occurred could not in actual fact have done so. You really ought to have more sense, my dear fellow. After all you were here when those Children forced their mothers to come back.'

'That wasn't quite on a level with what you are telling me now,' I objected.

'No? Would you care to explain the essential difference between being forced into the distasteful, and being forced into the fatal? Come, come, my dear fellow, since you've been away you have lost touch with improbability. You've been blunted by rationality. Here, the unorthodox is to be found on one's doorstep almost every morning.'

I took an opportunity to lead away from the topic of the inquest.

'To an extent which has caused Willers to abandon his championship of hysteria?' I asked.

'He abandoned that some little time before he died,' Zellaby replied.

I was taken aback. I had meant to ask Bernard about the doctor, but the intention had been mislaid in our talk.

'I'd no idea he was dead. He wasn't much over fifty, was he? How did it happen?'

'He took an overdose of some barbiturate drug.'

'He – you don't mean -? But Willers wasn't that sort...'

'I agree,' said Zellaby. 'The official verdict was that "the balance of his mind was disturbed". A kindly meant phrase, no doubt, but not explanatory. Indeed, one can think of minds so steady that disturbance would be a positive benefit. The truth is, of course, that nobody had the least idea why he did it. Certainly not poor Mrs Willers. But it had to suffice.' He paused, and then added: 'It was not until I realized what the verdict on young Pawle would have to be that I began to wonder about that on Willers.'

'Surely you don't really think that?' I said.

'I don't know. You yourself said Willers was not that sort. Now it has suddenly been revealed that we live much more precariously here than we had thought. That is a shock.

'One has, you see, to realize that, though it was the Pawle boy who came round the corner at that fatal moment, it might as easily have been Angela, or anyone else... It suddenly becomes clear that she, or I, or any of us, may accidentally do something to harm or anger the Children at any moment... There's no blame attached to that poor boy. He tried his very best to avoid hitting any of them, but he couldn't – And in a flare of anger and revenge they killed him for it.

'So one is faced with a decision. For myself – well, this is by far the most interesting thing that has ever come my way. I want very much to see how it goes. But Angela is still quite a young woman, and Michael is still dependent on her, too... We have sent him away already. I am wondering whether I should try to persuade her to go, too. I don't want to do it until I must, but I can't quite decide whether the moment has arrived.

'These last few years have been like living on the slopes of an active volcano. Reason tells one that a force is building up inside, and that sooner or later there must be an eruption. But time passes, with no more than an occasional tremor, so that one begins to tell oneself that the eruption which appeared inevitable may, perhaps, not come after all. One becomes uncertain. I ask myself – is this business of the Pawle boy just a bigger tremor, or is it the first sign of the eruption? – and I do not know.

'One was more acutely aware of the presence of danger years ago, and made plans which came to seem unnecessary; now one is abruptly reminded of it, but is this where it changes to an active danger which justifies the breaking up of my home, or is it still only potential?'

He was obviously, and very genuinely, worried, nor was there any trace of scepticism in Bernard's manner. I felt impelled to say, apologetically:

'I suppose I have let the whole business of the Dayout fade in my mind – it needs a bit of adjustment when one's brought up against it once more. That's the subconscious for you – trying to pass off the uncomfortable by telling me that the peculiarities would diminish as the Children grew older.'

'We all tried to think that,' said Zellaby. 'We used to show one another evidence that it was happening – but it wasn't.'

'But you're still no nearer to knowing how it is done – the compulsion, I mean?'

'No. It seems just to amount to asking how any personality dominates another. We all know individuals who seem to dominate any assembly they attend; it would appear that the Children have this quality greatly developed by cooperation, and can direct it as they wish. But that tells us nothing about how it is done.'

Angela Zellaby, looking very little changed since I had last seen her, emerged from the house on to the veranda a few minutes later. She was so clearly preoccupied that her attention was only brought to bear on us with a visible effort, and after a brief lobbing back and forth of civilities it showed signs of wavering again. A touch of awkwardness was relieved by the arrival of the tea tray. Zellaby bestirred himself to prevent the situation congealing.

'Richard and the Colonel were at the inquest, too,' he said. 'It was the expected verdict, of course. I suppose you've heard?'

Angela nodded. 'Yes, I was at Dacre Farm, with Mrs Pawle. Mr Pawle brought the news. The poor woman's quite beside herself. She adored Jim. It was difficult to keep her from going to the inquest herself. She wanted to go there and denounce the Children – make a public accusation. Mr Leebody and I managed between us to persuade her not to, and that she'd only get herself and her family into a lot of trouble, and do no good to anybody. So we stayed to keep her company while it was on.'

'The other Pawle boy, David, was there,' Zellaby told her. 'He looked as if he were on the point of coming out with it more than once, but his father stopped him.'

'Now I'm wondering whether it wouldn't have been better if someone had, after all,' Angela said. 'It ought to come out. It will have to some time. It isn't just a matter of a dog, or a bull, any more.'

'A dog and a bull. I've not heard of them,' I put in.

'The dog bit one of them on the hand; a minute or two later it dashed in front of a tractor, and was killed. The bull chased a party of them; then it suddenly turned aside, charged through two fences, and got itself drowned in the mill pond,' Zellaby explained, with unusual economy.

'But this,' said Angela, 'is murder.'

'Oh, I don't say they meant it that way. Very likely they were frightened and angry, and it was their way of hitting out blindly when one of them was hurt. But it was murder, all the same. The whole village knows it, and now everybody can see that they are going to get away with it. We simply can't afford to let it rest there. They don't even show any sign of compunction. None at all. That's what frightens me most. They just did it, and that's that. And now, after this afternoon, they know that, as far as they are concerned, murder carries no penalty. What is going to happen to anyone who seriously opposes them later on?'

Zellaby sipped his tea thoughtfully.

'You know, my dear, while it's proper for us to be concerned, the responsibility for a remedy isn't ours. If it ever was, and that is highly questionable, the authorities took it away from us a long time ago. Here's the Colonel representing some of them – for heaven knows what reason. And The Grange staff cannot be ignorant of what all the village knows. They will have made their report, so, in spite of the verdict, the authorities are aware of the true state of affairs – though just what they will be able to do about it, within the law and hampered by "the reasonable man", I'm bothered if I know. We must wait and see how they move.

'Above all, my dear, I do implore you most seriously not to do anything that will bring you into conflict with the Children.'

'I shan't, dear,' Angela shook her head. 'I've a cowardly respect for them.'

'The dove is not a coward to fear the hawk; it is simply wise,' said Zellaby, and proceeded to steer the conversation on to more general lines.

My intention had been to look in on the Leebodys and one or two others, but by the time we got up to leave it was clear that, unless we were going to be back in London much later than we had intended, any further calls would have to be postponed until another visit.

I did not know how Bernard felt when we had made our farewells and were running down the drive – he had, in fact, talked very little since we had reached the village, and revealed scarcely anything of his own views – but, for my part, I had a pleasantly relaxing sensation of being on my way back to the normal world. Midwich values gave a feeling of having only a finger-tip touch with reality. One had a sense of being several stages in the rear. While I was back at the difficulties of reconciling myself to the Children's existence, and boggling at what I was told of them, the Zellabys had long ago left all that behind. For them, the improbable element had become submerged. They accepted the Children, and that, for good or ill, they were on their hands; their anxieties now were of a social nature over whether such a modus vivendi as had been contrived was going to collapse. The sense of uneasiness which I had caught from the tension in the Village Hall had been with me ever since.

Nor, I think, was Bernard unaffected by it. I had the impression that he drove with more than usual caution through the village and past the scene of the Pawle boy's accident. He began to increase his speed a little as we rounded the corner on to the Oppley Road, and then we caught sight of four figures approaching. Even at a distance they were unmistakably a quartet of the Children. On an impulse I said:

'Will you pull up, Bernard? I'd like the chance of a better look at them.'

He slowed again, and we came to a stop almost at the foot of Hickham Lane.

The Children came on towards us. There was a touch of institutionalism in their dress – the boys in blue cotton shirts and grey flannel trousers, the girls in short, pleated grey skirts and pale yellow shirts. So far I had only set eyes on the pair outside the Hall, and seen little of them but a glimpse of their faces, and then their backs.

As they approached I found the likeness between them even greater than I had expected. All four had the same browned complexions. The curious lucency of the skin that had been noticeable in them as babies had been greatly subdued by the sunburn, yet enough trace of it remained to attract one's notice. They shared the same dark-golden hair, straight, narrow noses, and rather small mouths. The way the eyes were set was perhaps more responsible than anything for a suggestion of 'foreigners', but it was an abstract foreignness, not calling to mind any particular race, or region. I could not see anything to distinguish one boy from the other; and, indeed, I doubted whether, had it not been for the cut of the hair, I could have told the boys' faces from the girls', with certainty.

Soon I was able to see the eyes themselves. I had forgotten how striking they were in the babies, and remembered them as yellow. But they were more than that: they had a quality of glowing gold. Strange indeed, but, if one could disregard the strangeness, with a singular beauty. They looked like living, semi-precious stones.

I went on watching, fascinated, as they drew level with us. They took no more notice of us than to give the car a brief, unembarrassed glance, and then turned into Hickham Lane.

At close quarters I found them disturbing in a way I could not quite account for, but it became less surprising to me that a number of the village homes had been unprotestingly willing for them to go and live at The Grange.

We watched them a few yards up the lane, then Bernard reached for the starter.

A sudden explosion close by made us both jump. I jerked my head round just in time to see one of the boys collapse, and fall face down on the road. The other three Children stood petrified...

Bernard opened the door, and started to get out. The standing boy turned, and looked at us. His golden eyes were hard, and bright. I felt as if a sudden gust of confusion and weakness were sweeping through me... Then the boy's eyes left ours, and his head turned further.

From behind the hedge opposite, came the sound of a second explosion, more muffled than the first – then, and further away, a scream...

Bernard got out of the car, and I shifted across to follow him. One of the girls knelt down beside the fallen boy. As she made to touch him he groaned, and writhed where he lay. The standing boy's face was anguished. He groaned, too, as if in agony himself. The two girls began to cry.

Then, eerily down the lane, out of the trees that hid The Grange, swept a moan like a magnified echo, and, mingled with it, a threnody of young voices, weeping...

Bernard stopped. I could feel my scalp prickling, and my hair beginning to rise...

The sound came again; and ululation of many voices blended in pain, with the higher note of crying piercing through... Then the sound of feet running down the lane...

Neither of us tried to go on. For myself, I was held for the moment by sheer fright.

We stood there watching while half a dozen boys, all disconcertingly alike, came running to the fallen one, and lifted him between them. Not until they had started to carry him away did I become aware of a quite different sound of sobbing coming from behind the hedge to the left of the lane.

I clambered up the bank, and looked through the hedge there. A few yards away a girl in a summer frock was kneeling on the grass. Her hands were clenched to her face, and her whole body was shaking with her sobs.

Bernard scrambled up beside me, and together we pushed our way through the hedge. Standing up in the field now, I could see a man lying prone at the girl's knees, with the butt of a gun protruding from beneath his body.

As we stepped closer, she heard us. Her sobs stopped momentarily as she looked up with an expression of terror. Then when she saw us it faded, and she went on weeping, helplessly.

Bernard walked closer to her, and lifted her up. I looked down at the body. It was a very nasty sight indeed. I bent over it and pulled the jacket up, trying to make it hide what was left of the head. Bernard led the girl away, half supporting her.

There was a sound of voices on the road. As we neared the hedge a couple of men there looked up and saw us.

'Was that you shootin'?' one of them asked.

We shook our heads.

'There's a dead man up here,' Bernard said.

The girl beside him shivered, and whimpered.

''Oo is it?' asked the same man.

The girl said hysterically:

'It's David. They've killed him. They killed Jim; now they've killed David, too,' and choked in a fresh burst of grief.

One of the men scrambled up the bank.

'Oh, it's you, Elsa, lass,' he exclaimed.

'I tried to stop him, Joe. I tried to stop him, but he wouldn't listen,' she said through her sobs. 'I knew they'd kill him, but he wouldn't listen...' She became incoherent, and clung to Bernard, shaking violently.

'We must get her away,' I said. 'Do you know where she lives?'

'Aye,' said the man, and decisively picked the girl up, as though she were a child. He scrambled down the bank, and carried her, crying and shivering, to the car. Bernard turned to the other man.

'Will you stand by and keep anyone off till the police come?'

'Aye – It'll be young David Pawle?' the man said, climbing the bank.

'She said David. A young man,' Bernard told him.

'That'll be him – the bastards.' The man pushed through the hedge. 'Better call the coppers at Trayne, guv'nor. They got a car there.' He glanced towards the body. 'Murderin' young bastards!' he said.

They dropped me off at Kyle Manor, and I used Zellaby's phone to call the police. When I put the receiver down I found him at my elbow with a glass in his hand.

'You look as if you could do with it,' he said.

'I could,' I agreed. 'very unexpected. Very messy.'

'Just how did it occur?' he inquired.

I gave him an account of our rather narrow angle on the affair. Twenty minutes later Bernard returned, able to tell more of it.

'The Pawle brothers were apparently very much attached,' he began. Zellaby nodded agreement. 'Well, it seems that the younger one, David, found the inquest the last straw, and decided that if nobody else was going to see justice done over his brother, he'd do it himself.

'This girl Elsa – his girl – called at Dacre Farm just as he was leaving. When she saw him carrying the gun she guessed what was happening, and tried to stop him. He wouldn't listen, and to get rid of her he locked her in a shed, and then went off.

'It took her a bit of time to break out, but she judged he would be making for The Grange, and followed across the fields. When she got to the field she thought she'd made a mistake because she didn't see him at first. Possibly he was lying down to take cover. Anyway, she doesn't seem to have spotted him until after the first shot. When she did, he was standing up, with the gun still pointed into the lane. Then while she was running towards him he reversed the gun, and put his thumb on the trigger...'

Zellaby remained silently thoughtful for some moments, then he said:

'It'll be a clear enough case from the police view. David considers the Children to be responsible for his brother's death, kills one of them in revenge and then, to escape the penalty, commits suicide. Obviously unbalanced. What else could a "reasonable man" think?'

'I may have been a bit sceptical before,' I admitted, 'but I'm not now. The way that boy looked at us! I believe that for a moment he thought one of us had done it – fired that shot, I mean – just for an instant, until he saw it was impossible. The sensation was indescribable, but it was frightening for the moment it lasted. Did you feel that, too?' I added, to Bernard.

He nodded. 'A queer, weak, and watery feeling,' he agreed. 'very bleak.'

'It was just -' I broke off, suddenly remembering. 'My God, I was so taken up with other business I forgot to tell the police anything about the wounded boy. Ought we to call an ambulance for The Grange?'

Zellaby shook his head.

'They've got a doctor of their own on the staff there,' he told us.

He reflected in silence for fully a minute, then he sighed, and shook his head. 'I don't much like this development, Colonel. I don't like it at all. Am I mistaken, do you think, in seeing here the very pattern of the way a blood feud starts...?'

Chapter 17. Midwich Protests

Dinner at Kyle Manor was postponed to allow Bernard and me to make our statements to the police, and by the time that was over I was feeling the need of it. I was grateful, too, for the Zellabys' offer to put both of us up for the night. The shooting had caused Bernard to change his mind about returning to London; he had decided to be on hand, if not in Midwich itself, then no further away than Trayne, leaving me with the alternative of keeping him company, or making a slow journey by railway. Moreover, I had a feeling that my sceptical attitude towards Zellaby in the afternoon had verged upon the discourteous, and I was not sorry for the chance to make amends.

I sipped my sherry, feeling a little ashamed.

'You cannot,' I told myself, 'you cannot protest or argue these Children and their qualities out of existence. And since they do exist, there must be some explanation of that existence. None of your accepted views explain it. Therefore, that explanation is going to be found, however uncomfortable it may be for you, in views that you do not at present accept. Whatever it is, it is going to arouse your prejudices. Just remember that, and clout your instinctive prejudices with it when they bob up.'

At dinner, however, I had no need to be vigilant for clouting. The Zellabys, feeling no doubt that we had passed through disquietment enough for the present, took pains to keep the conversation on subjects unrelated to Midwich and its troubles. Bernard remained somewhat abstracted, but I appreciated the effort, and ended the meal listening to Zellaby discoursing on the wave-motion of form and style, and the desirability of intermittent periods of social rigidity for the purpose of curbing the subversive energies of a new generation, in a far more equable frame of mind than I had started it.

Not long after we had withdrawn to the sitting-room, however, the peculiar problems of Midwich were back with us, re-entering with a visit by Mr Leebody. The Reverend Hubert was a badly troubled man, and looking, I thought, a lot older than the passage of eight years fully warranted.

Angela Zellaby sent for another cup and poured him some coffee. His attempts at small talk while he sipped it were valiant if erratic, but when he finally set down his empty cup, it was with an air of holding back no longer.

'Something,' he announced to us all, 'something will have to be done.'

Zellaby looked at him thoughtfully for a moment.

'My dear Vicar,' he reminded him gently, 'each of us has been saying that for years.'

'I mean done soon , and decisively. We've done our best to find a place for the Children, to preserve some kind of balance – and, considering everything, I don't think we have done too badly – but all along it has been makeshift, impromptu, empiric, and it can't go on like that any longer. We must have a code which includes the Children, some means by which the law can be brought to bear on them, as it does on the rest of us. If the law is seen to be incapable of ensuring that justice is done, it falls into contempt, and men feel that there is no resort and no protection but private revenge. That is what happened this afternoon, and even if we get through this crisis without serious trouble, there is bound to be another before long. It is useless for the authorities to employ the forms of law to produce verdicts which everyone knows to be false. This afternoon's verdict was a farce; and there is no doubt in the village that the inquest on the younger Pawle will be just as much of a farce. It is absolutely necessary that steps should be taken at once to bring the Children within the control of the law before worse trouble occurs.'

'We foresaw possible difficulty of the kind, you will remember,' Zellaby reminded him. 'We even sent a memorandum on the subject to the Colonel here. I must admit that we did not envisage any such serious matters as have occurred – but we did point out the desirability of having some means of ensuring that the Children should conform to normal social and legal rules. And what happened? You, Colonel, passed it on to higher authorities, and eventually we received a reply appreciating our concern, but assuring us that the Department concerned had every confidence in the social psychologists who had been appointed to instruct and guide the Children. In other words they saw no way in which they could exert control over them, and simply were hoping that under suitable training no critical situation would arise. – And there, I must confess, I sympathize with the Department, for I am still quite unable to see how the Children can be compelled to obey rules of any kind, if they do not choose to.'

Mr Leebody entwined his fingers, looking miserably helpless.

'But something must be done,' he reiterated. 'It only needed an occurrence of this kind to bring it all to a head, now I'm afraid of it boiling over any minute. It isn't a matter of reasoning, it's more primitive. Almost every man in the village is at The Scythe and Stone tonight. Nobody called a meeting; they've just gravitated there, and most of the women are fluttering round to one another's houses, and whispering in groups. It's the kind of excuse the men have always wanted – or it might be.'

'Excuse?' I put in. 'I don't quite see -?'

'Cuckoos,' explained Zellaby. 'You don't think the men have ever honestly liked these Children do you? The fair face they've put on it has been mostly for their wives' sakes. Considering the sense of outrage that must be abiding in their subconsciouses, it does them great credit – a little mitigated perhaps by one or two examples like Harriman's which made them scared to touch the Children.

'The women – most of them, at any rate – don't feel like that. They all know well enough now that, biologically speaking, they are not even their own children, but they did have the trouble and pain of bearing them – and that, even if they resent the imposition deeply, which some of them do, still isn't the kind of link they can just snip and forget. Then there are others who – well, take Miss Ogle, for instance. If they had horns, tails, and cloven hooves Miss Ogle, Miss Lamb, and a number of others would still dote on them. But the most one can expect of the best of the men is toleration.'

'It has been very difficult,' added Mr Leebody. 'It cuts right across a proper family relationship. There's scarcely a man who doesn't resent their existence. We've kept on smoothing over the consequences, but that is the best we've been able to do. It's been like something always smouldering...'

'And you think this Pawle business will supply the fatal draught?' Bernard asked.

'It could do. If not, something else will,' Mr Leebody said forlornly. 'If only there were something one could do , before it's too late.'

'There isn't, my dear fellow,' Zellaby said decisively. 'I've told you that before, and it's time you began to believe me. You've done marvels of patching-up and pacifying, but there's nothing fundamental that you or any of us can do because the initiative is not ours; it lies with the Children themselves. I suppose I know them as well as anybody. I've been teaching them, and doing my best to get to know them since they were babies, and I've got practically nowhere – nor have The Grange people done any better, however pompously they may cover it up. We can't even anticipate the Children because we don't understand, on any but the broadest lines, what they want, or how they think. What's happened to that boy who was shot, by the way? His condition could have some effect on developments.'

'The rest of them wouldn't let him go. They sent the ambulance away. Dr Anderby up there is looking after him. There are quite a number of pellets to be removed, but he thinks he'll be all right,' said the Vicar.

'I hope he's right. If not, I can see us having a real feud on our hands,' said Zellaby.

'It is my impression that we already have,' Mr Leebody remarked unhappily.

'Not yet,' Zellaby maintained. 'It takes two parties to make a feud. So far the aggression has been by the village.'

'You're not going to deny that the Children murdered the two Pawle boys?'

'No, but it wasn't aggressive. I do have some experience of the Children. In the first case their action was a spontaneous hitting-back when one of them was hurt; in the second, too, it was defensive – don't forget there was a second barrel, loaded, and ready to be fired at someone. In both cases the response was over-drastic, I'll grant that, but in intent it was manslaughter, rather than murder. Both times they were the provoked, not the provokers. In fact, the one deliberate attempt at murder was by David Pawle.'

'If someone hits you with a car, and you kill him for it,' said the Vicar, 'it seems to me to be murder, and that seems to me to be provocation. And to David Pawle it was provocation. He waited for the law to administer justice, and the law failed him, so he took the matter into his own hands. Was that intended murder? – or was it intended justice?'

'The one thing it certainly was not, was justice,' Zellaby said firmly. 'It was feuding. He attempted to kill one of the Children, chosen at random, for an act they had committed collectively. What these incidents really make clear, my dear fellow, is that the laws evolved by one particular species, for the convenience of that species, are, by their nature, concerned only with the capacities of that species – against a species with different capacities they simply become inapplicable.'

The Vicar shook his head despondently.

'I don't know, Zellaby... I simply don't know... I'm in a morass. I don't even know for certain whether these Children are imputable for murder.'

Zellaby raised his eyebrows.

' "And God said," ' quoted Mr Leebody, ' "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." Very well, then, what are these Children? What are they? The image does not mean the outer image, or every statue would be man. It means the inner image, the spirit and the soul. But you have told me, and, on the evidence, I came to believe it, that the Children do not have individual spirits – that they have one man-spirit, and one woman-spirit, each far more powerful than we understand, that they share between them. What, then, are they? They cannot be what we know as man, for this inner image is on a different pattern – its likeness is to something else. They have the look of the genus homo , but not the nature. And since they are of another kind, and murder is, by definition, the killing of one of one's own kind, can the killing of one of them by us be, in fact, murder? It would appear not.

'And from that one must go further. For, since they do not come under the prohibition of murder, what is our attitude to them to be? At present, we are conceding them all the privileges of the true homo sapiens . Are we right to do this? Since they are another species, are we not fully entitled – indeed, have we not perhaps a duty? – to fight them in order to protect our own species? After all, if we were to discover dangerous wild animals in our midst our duty would be clear. I don't know... I am, as I said, in a morass...'

'You are, my dear fellow, you are indeed,' agreed Zellaby. 'Only a few minutes ago you were telling me, with some heat, that the Children had murdered both the Pawle boys. Taking that in conjunction with your later proposition, it would appear that if they kill us it is murder, but if we were to kill them it would be something else. One cannot help feeling that a jurist, lay or ecclesiastical, would find such a proposition ethically unsatisfactory.

'Nor do I altogether follow your argument concerning the "likeness". If your God is a purely terrestrial God, you are no doubt right – for in spite of one's opposition to the idea it can no longer be denied that the Children have in some way been introduced among us from "outside"; there is nowhere else they can have come from. But, as I understand it, your God is a universal God; He is God on all suns and all planets. Surely, then, He must have universal form? Would it not be a staggering vanity to imagine that He can manifest Himself only in the form that is appropriate to this particular, not very important planet?

'Our two approaches to such a problem are bound to differ greatly, but -'

He broke off at the sound of raised voices in the hall outside, and looked questioningly at his wife. Before either could move, however, the door was abruptly thrust open, and Mrs Brant appeared on the threshold. With a perfunctory 'Scuse me' to the Zellabys, she made for Mr Leebody, and grasped his sleeve.

'Oh, sir. You must come quick,' she told him breathlessly.

'My dear Mrs Brant -' he began.

'You must come, sir,' she repeated. 'They're all going up to The Grange. They're going to burn it down. You must come and stop them.'

Mr Leebody stared at her while she continued to pull at his sleeve.

'They're starting now,' she said desperately. 'You can stop them, Vicar. You must. They want to burn the Children. Oh, hurry. Please. Please hurry!'

Mr Leebody got up. He turned to Angela Zellaby.

'I'm sorry. I think I'd better -' he began, but his apology was cut short by Mrs Brant's tugging.

'Has anyone told the police?' Zellaby inquired.

'Yes – no. I don't know. They couldn't get here in time. Oh, Vicar, please hurry !' said Mrs Brant, dragging him forcibly through the doorway.

The four of us were left looking at one another. Angela crossed the room swiftly, and closed the door.

'I'd better go and back him up, I think,' said Bernard.

'We might be able to help,' agreed Zellaby, turning, and I moved to join them.

Angela was standing resolutely with her back to the door.

'No!' she said, decisively. 'If you want to do something useful, call the police.'

'You could do that, my dear, while we go and -'

'Gordon,' she said, in a severe voice, as if reprimanding a child. 'Stop and think. Colonel Westcott, you would do more harm than good. You are identified with the Children's interest.'

We all stood in front of her surprised, and a little sheepish.

'What are you afraid of, Angela?' Zellaby asked.

'I don't know. How can I possibly tell? – Except that the Colonel might be lynched.'

'But it will be important,' protested Zellaby. 'We know what the Children can do with individuals, I want to see how they handle a crowd. If they run true to form they'll only have to will the whole crowd to turn round and go away. It will be most interesting to see whether -'

'Nonsense,' said Angela flatly, and with a firmness which made Zellaby blink. 'That is not their "form", and you know it. If it were, they'd simply have made Jim Pawle stop his car; and they'd have made David Pawle fire his second barrel into the air. But they didn't. They're never content with repulsing – they always counter-attack.'

Zellaby blinked again.

'You're right, Angela,' he said, in surprise. 'I never thought of that. The reprisal is always too drastic for the occasion.'

'It is. And however they handle a crowd, I don't want you handled with it. Nor you, Colonel,' she added, to Bernard. 'You're going to be needed to get us out of the trouble you've helped to cause. I'm glad you're here – at least there's someone on the spot who will be listened to.'

'I might observe – from a distance, perhaps,' I suggested meekly.

'If you've any sense you'll stay here out of harm's way,' Angela replied bluntly, and turned again to her husband. 'Gordon, we're wasting time. Will you ring up Trayne, and see whether anyone has told the police there, and ask for ambulances as well.'

'Ambulances! Isn't that a bit – er – premature?' Zellaby protested.

'You introduced this "true to form" consideration – but you don't seem to have considered it,' Angela replied. 'I have. I say ambulances, and if you don't, I will.'

Zellaby, with rather the air of a small boy subdued, picked up the telephone. To me he remarked:

'We don't even know – I mean, we've only Mrs Brant's word for any of it...'

'As I recall Mrs Brant, she was one of the reliable pillars,' I said.

'That's true,' he admitted. 'Well, I'd better risk it.'

When he had finished he returned the telephone thoughtfully to the rest, and regarded it for a moment. He decided to make one more attempt.

'Angela, my dear, don't you think that if one were to keep at a discreet distance...? After all, I am one of the people the Children trust, they're my friends, and -'

But Angela cut him short, with unweakened decision.

'Gordon, it's no good trying to get round me with that nonsense. You're just inquisitive. You know perfectly well that the Children have no friends.'

Chapter. 18. Interview With a Child

The Chief Constable of Winshire looked in at Kyle Manor the next morning, just at the right time for a glass of Madeira and a biscuit.

'Sorry to trouble you over this affair, Zellaby. Ghastly business – perfectly horrible. Can't make any sense of it. Nobody in your village quite on target, seems to me. Thought you might be able to put up a picture a fellow can understand.'

Angela leant forward.

'What are the real figures, Sir John? We've heard nothing officially yet.'

'Bad, I'm afraid.' He shook his head. 'One woman and three men dead. Eight men and five women in hospital. Two of the men and one woman in a pretty bad way. Several men who aren't in hospital look as if they ought to be. Regular riot by all accounts – everybody fighting everybody else. But why? That's what I can't get at. No sense out of anybody.' He turned back to Zellaby. 'Seeing that you called the police, and told them there was going to be trouble, it'd help us to know what put you on to it.'

'Well,' Zellaby began cautiously, 'it's a curious situation -'

His wife cut him short by breaking in:

'It was Mrs Brant, the blacksmith's wife,' she said, and went on to describe the vicar's departure. 'I'm sure Mr Leebody will be able to tell you more than we can. He was there, you see; we weren't.'

'He was there all right, and got home somehow, but now he's in Trayne hospital,' said the Chief Constable.

'Oh, poor Mr Leebody. Is he badly hurt?'

'I'm afraid I don't know. The doctor there tells me he's not to be disturbed for a bit. Now.' He turned back to Zellaby once more, 'you told my people that a crowd was marching on The Grange with the intention of setting fire to it. What was your source of information?'

Zellaby looked surprised.

'Why, Mrs Brant. My wife just told you.'

'Is that all! You didn't go out to see for yourself what was going on?'

'Er – no,' Zellaby admitted.

'You mean that, on the unsupported word of a woman in a semi-hysterical condition, you called out the police, in force, and told them that ambulances would be needed?'

'I insisted on it,' Angela told him, with a touch of chill. 'And I was perfectly right. They were needed.'

'But simply on this woman's word -'

'I've known Mrs Brant for years. She's a sensible woman.'

Bernard put in:

'If Mrs Zellaby had not advised us against going to see for ourselves, I'm quite sure we should now be either in hospital, or worse.'

The Chief Constable looked at us.

'I've had an exhausting night,' he said, at last. 'Perhaps I haven't got this straight. What you seem to be saying is that this Mrs Brant came here and told you that the villagers – perfectly ordinary English men and women, and good Winshire stock, were intending to march on a school full of children, their own children, too, and -'

'Not quite, Sir John. The men were going to march, and perhaps some of the women, but I think most of the women would be against it,' Angela objected.

'Very well. These men, then, ordinary, decent, country chaps, were going to set fire to a school full of children. You didn't question it. You accepted an incredible thing like that at once. You did not try to check up, or see for yourselves what was happening. You just called in the police – because Mrs Brant is a sensible woman?'

'Yes,' Angela said icily.

'Sir John,' Zellaby said, with equal coolness. 'I realize you have been busy all night, and I appreciate your official position, but I think that if this interview is to continue, it must be upon different lines.'

The Chief Constable went a little pink. His gaze dropped. Presently he massaged his forehead vigorously with a large fist. He apologized, first to Angela, and then to Zellaby. Almost pathetically he said:

'But there's nothing to get hold of. I've been asking questions for hours, and I can't make head or tail of anything. There's no sign that these people were trying to bum The Grange: they never touched it. They were simply fighting one another, men, and a few women, too – but they were doing it in The Grange grounds. Why? It wasn't just the women trying to stop the men – or, it seems, some of the men trying to stop the rest. No, it appears they all went up from the pub to The Grange together, with nobody trying to stop anybody, except the parson, whom they wouldn't listen to, and a few women who backed him up. And what was it all about? Something, apparently, to do with the children at the school – but what sort of a reason is that for a riot like this? It just doesn't make sense, any of it.' He shook his head, and ruminated a moment. 'I remember my predecessor, old Bodger, saying there was something deuced funny about Midwich. And, by God, he was right. But what is it?'

'It seems to me that the best we can do is to refer you to Colonel Westcott,' suggested Zellaby, indicating Bernard. With a slightly malicious touch, he added: 'His Department, for a reason which has continued to elude me for nine years, preserves a continuing interest in Midwich, so that he probably knows more about us than we do ourselves.'

Sir John turned his attention to Bernard.

'And what is your Department, sir?' he inquired.

At Bernard's reply his eyes bulged slightly. He looked like a man wishing to be given strength.

'Did you say Military Intelligence?' he inquired flatly.

'Yes, sir,' said Bernard.

The Chief Constable shook his head. 'I give up.' He looked back at Zellaby, with the expression of one only two or three straws from the end. 'And now Military Intelligence,' he muttered.

About the same time that the Chief Constable had arrived at Kyle Manor, one of the Children – a boy – came walking unhurriedly down the drive of The Grange. The two policemen who were chatting at the gate broke off their conversation. One of them turned and strolled to meet the boy.

'And where'll you be off to, son?' he inquired amiably enough.

The boy looked at the policeman without expression, though the curious golden eyes were alert.

'Into the village,' he said.

'Better if you didn't,' advised the policeman. 'They're not feeling too friendly there about your lot – not after last night, they're not.'

But the boy neither answered, nor checked his walk. He simply kept on. The policeman turned and walked back towards the gate. His colleague looked at him curiously.

'Lumme,' he said. 'Didn't make much of a job of that, did you? Thought the idea was to persuade 'em to keep out of harm's way.'

The first policeman looked after the boy, going on down the lane, with a puzzled expression. He shook his head.

'Funny, that,' he said uneasily. 'I don't get it. If there's another, you have a try, Bert.'

A minute or two later one of the girls appeared. She, too, was walking in a casually confident way.

'Right,' said the second policeman. 'Just a bit of advice – fatherly-like, see?'

He began to stroll towards the girl.

After perhaps four steps he turned round, and came back again. The two policemen standing side by side watched her walk past them, and into the lane. She never even glanced at them.

'What the hell -?' asked the second policeman, in a baffled voice.

'Bit off, isn't it?' said the other. 'You go to do something, and then you do something else instead. I don't reckon I like it much. Hey!' he called after the girl. 'Hey! you, missie!'

The girl did not look back. He started in pursuit, covered half a dozen yards, and then stopped dead. The girl passed out of sight, round the corner of the lane. The policeman relaxed, turned round, and came back. He was breathing rather fast, and had an uneasy look on his face.

'I definitely don't like it,' he said unhappily. 'There's something kind of funny about this place...'

The bus from Oppley, on its way to Trayne via Stouch, stopped in Midwich, opposite Mrs Welt's shop. The ten or a dozen women waiting for it allowed the two off-loading passengers to descend, and then moved forward in a ragged queue. Miss Latterly, at its head, took hold of the rail, and made to step aboard. Nothing further happened. Both her feet appeared to be glued to the ground.

'Hurry along there, please!' said the conductor.

Miss Latterly tried again; with no better success. She looked up helplessly at the conductor.

'Just you stand aside, and let 'em get on, mum. I'll give you a hand in a minute,' he advised her.

Miss Latterly, looking bewildered, took his advice. Mrs Dorry moved up to take her place, and grasped the rail. She, too, failed to get any further. The conductor reached down to take her arm and pull her up, but her foot would not lift to the step. She moved beside Miss Latterly, and they both watched the next in turn make an equally fruitless attempt to get aboard.

'What's this? Some kind of joke?' inquired the conductor. Then he saw the expression on the faces of the three. 'Sorry, ladies. No offence. But what's the trouble?'

It was Miss Latterly who, turning her attention from the fourth woman's ineffective approach to the bus, noticed one of the Children. He was sitting casually on the mounting-block opposite The Scythe and Stone, with his face turned towards them, and one leg idly swinging. She detached herself from the group by the bus, and walked towards him. She studied him carefully as she approached. Even so, it was with a touch of uncertainty she said:

'You're not Joseph, are you?'

The boy shook his head. She went on:

'I want to go to Trayne to see Miss Foresham, Joseph's mother. She was hurt last night. She's in the hospital there.'

The boy kept on looking at her. He shook his head very slightly. Tears of anger came into Miss Latterly's eyes.

'Haven't you done enough harm? You're monsters. All we want to do is to go and see our friends who've been hurt – hurt because of what you did.'

The boy said nothing. Miss Latterly took an impulsive half-step towards him, and then checked herself.

'Don't you understand? Haven't you any human feelings?' she said, in a shaking voice.

Behind her, the conductor, half-puzzled, half-jocular was saying:

'Come along now, ladies. Make up your minds. The old bus don't bite, you know. Can't wait 'ere all day.'

The group of women stood irresolute, some of them looking frightened. Mrs Dorry made one more attempt to board the bus. It was no use. Two of the women turned to glare angrily at the boy who looked back at them unmoved.

Miss Latterly turned helplessly, and began to walk away. The conductor's temper shortened.

'Well, if you're not coming, we're off. Got our times to keep, you know.'

None of the group made any move. He hit the bell decisively, and the bus moved on. The conductor gazed at them as they dwindled forlornly behind, and shook his head. As he ambled forward to exchange comments with the driver he muttered to himself the local adage:

'In Oppley they're smart, and in Stouch they're smarmy, but Midwich folk are just plain barmy.'

Polly Rushton, her uncle's invaluable right hand in the parish ever since she had fled across the unmended breach between the two families, was driving Mrs Leebody into Trayne to see the vicar. His injuries in the fracas, the hospital had telephoned reassuringly, were uncomfortable, but not serious, only a fracture of the left radius, a broken right clavicle, and a number of contusions, but he was in need of rest and quiet. He would be glad of a visit in order to make some arrangements to cover his absence.

Two hundred yards out of Midwich, however, Polly braked abruptly, and started to turn the car about.

'What have we forgotten?' inquired Mrs Leebody, in surprise.

'Nothing,' Polly told her. 'I just can't go on, that's all.'

'Can't?' repeated Mrs Leebody.

'Can't,' said Polly.

'Well, really,' said Mrs Leebody. 'I should have thought that at a time like this...'

'Aunt Dora, I said "can't", not "won't".'

'I don't understand what you're talking about,' said Mrs Leebody.

'All right,' said Polly. She drove on a few yards, and turned the car again so that it faced away from the village once more. 'Now change places, and you try,' she told her.

Unwillingly Mrs Leebody took the driving seat. She didn't care for driving, but accepted the challenge. They moved forward again, and at precisely the spot where Polly had braked, Mrs Leebody braked. There came the sound of a horn behind them, and a tradesman's van with a Trayne address on it squeezed by. They watched it vanish round the comer ahead. Mrs Leebody attempted to reach the accelerator-pedal, but her foot stopped short of it. She tried again. Her foot still could not get to it.

Polly looked round and saw one of the Children sitting half-hidden in the hedge, watching them. She looked harder at the girl, making sure which one it was.

'Judy,' Polly said, with sudden misgiving. 'Is it you doing this?'

The girl's nod was barely perceptible.

'But you mustn't,' Polly protested. 'We want to go to Trayne to see Uncle Hubert. He was hurt. He's in hospital.'

'You can't go,' the girl told her, with a faintly apologetic inflection.

'But, Judy. He has to arrange lots of things with me for the time he'll have to be away.'

The girl simply shook her head, slowly. Polly felt her temper rising. She drew breath to speak again, but Mrs Leebody cut-in, nervously:

'Don't annoy her, Polly. Wasn't last night enough of a lesson for all of us?'

Her advice went home. Polly said no more. She sat glaring at the Child in the hedge, with a muddle of frustrated emotion that brought tears of resentment to her eyes.

Mrs Leebody succeeded in finding reverse, and moved the lever into it. She tentatively put her right foot forward and found that it now reached the accelerator without any difficulty. They backed a few yards, and changed seats again. Polly drove them back to the Vicarage, in silence.

At Kyle Manor we were still having difficulty with the Chief Constable.

'But,' he protested, from under corrugated brows, 'our information supports your original statement that the villagers were marching on The Grange to bum the place.'

'So they were,' agreed Zellaby.

'But you also say, and Colonel Westcott agrees, that the children at The Grange were the real culprits – they provoked it.'

'That's true,' Bernard agreed. 'But I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about that.'

'No evidence, you mean? Well, finding evidence is our job.'

'I don't mean no evidence. I mean no imputability under the law.'

'Look,' said the Chief Constable, with conscientious patience. 'Four people have been killed – I repeat killed ; thirteen are in hospital; a number more have been badly knocked about. It is not the sort of thing we can just say "what a pity" about, and leave it at that. We have to bring the whole thing into the open, decide where responsibility lies, and draw up charges. You must see that.'

'These are very unusual Children -' Bernard began.

'I know. I know. Lot of wrong-side-of-the-blanket stuff in these parts. Old Bodger told me about that when I took over. Not quite firing on all cylinders, either – special school for them, and so on.'

Bernard repressed a sigh.

'Sir John, it's not that they are backward. The special school was opened because they are different . They are morally responsible for last night's trouble, but that isn't the same as being legally responsible. There's nothing you can charge them with.'

'Minors can be charged – or somebody responsible for them can. You're not going to tell me that a gang of nine-year-old children can somehow – though I'm blest if I can see how – promote a riot in which people get killed, and then just get away with it scot free! It's fantastic!'

'But I've pointed out several times that these Children are different . Their years have no relevance – except in so far as they are children, which may mean that they are crueller in their acts than in their intentions. The law cannot touch them – and my Department doesn't want them publicized.'

'Ridiculous,' retorted the Chief Constable. 'I've heard of those fancy schools. Children mustn't be what-do-you-call it? – frustrated. Self-expression, co-education, wholemeal bread, and all the rest of it. Damned nonsense! More frustrated by being different about things than they would be if they were normal. But if some Departments think that because a school of that kind happens to be a government-run institution the children there are in a different position as regards the law, and can be – er – uninhibited as they like – well, they'll soon learn differently.'

Zellaby and Bernard exchanged hopeless glances. Bernard decided to try once more.

'These Children, Sir John, have strong willpower – quite remarkably strong – strong enough, when they exert it, to be considered a form of duress. Now, the law has not, so far, encountered this particular form of duress; consequently, having no knowledge of it, it cannot recognize it. Since, therefore, the form of duress has no legal existence, the Children cannot in law be said to be capable of exerting it. Therefore, in the eyes of the law, the crimes attributed by popular opinion to its exercise must (a) never have taken place at all, or (b) be attributable to other persons, or means. There cannot, within the knowledge of the law, be any connexion between the Children and the crimes.'

'Except that they did 'em, or so you all tell me,' said Sir John.

'As far as the law is concerned they've done nothing at all. And, what is more, if you could find a formula to charge them under you'd not get anywhere. They would bring this duress to bear on your officers. You can neither arrest them, nor hold them, if you try to.'

'We can leave those finer points to the lawyer fellows – that's their job. All we need is enough evidence to justify a warrant,' the Chief Constable assured him.

Zellaby gazed with innocent thoughtfulness at a corner of the ceiling. Bernard had the withdrawn air of a man who might be counting ten, not too quickly. I found myself troubled by a slight cough.

'This schoolmaster fellow at The Grange – what's his name – Torrance?' the Chief Constable went on. 'Director of the place. He must hold the official responsibility for these children, if anyone does. Saw the chap last night. Struck me as evasive. Everybody round here's evasive, of course.' He studiedly met no eye. 'But he definitely wasn't helpful.'

'Dr Torrance is an eminent psychiatrist, rather than a schoolmaster,' Bernard explained. 'I think he may be in considerable doubt as to his right course in the matter until he can take advice.'

'Psychiatrist?' repeated Sir John, suspiciously. 'I thought you said this is not a place for backward children?'

'It isn't,' Bernard repeated, patiently.

'Don't see what he has to be doubtful about. Nothing doubtful about the truth, is there? That's all you've got to tell when the police make inquiries: if you don't, you're in for trouble – and so you ought to be.'

'It's not quite as simple as that,' Bernard responded. 'He may not have felt himself at liberty to disclose some aspects of his work. I think that if you will let me come along with you and see him again he might be more willing to talk – and much better able to explain the situation than I am.'

He got to his feet as he finished. The rest of us rose, too. The Chief Constable's leave-taking was gruff. There was a barely perceptible flicker to Bernard's right eye as he said au revoir to the rest of us, and escorted him out of the room.

Zellaby collapsed into an easy chair, and sighed deeply. He searched absent-mindedly for his cigarette case.

'I've not met Dr Torrance,' I said, 'but I already feel quite sorry for him.'

'Unnecessary,' said Zellaby. 'Colonel Westcott's discretion has been irritating, but passive. Torrance's has always had an aggressive quality. If he has now got to make the situation lucid enough for Sir John, it's simply poetic justice.

'But what interests me more at the moment is your Colonel Westcott's attitude. The barrier there is down quite a bit. If he could have got as far as a mutually understandable vocabulary with Sir John, I do believe he might have told us all something. I wonder why? This seems to me just the kind of situation that he has been trying so hard to avoid all along. The Midwich bag is now very nearly too small for the cat. Why, then, doesn't he appear more concerned?' He lapsed into a reverie, tattooing gently on the chair-arm.

Presently Angela reappeared. Zellaby became aware of her from the far-off. It took him a moment or two to re-establish himself in the here and now, and observe her expression.

'What's the matter, my dear?' he inquired, and added in recollection: 'I thought you were bound for Trayne hospital, with a cornucopia.'

'I started,' she said. 'Now I've come back. It seems that we're not allowed to leave the village.'

Zellaby sat up.

'That's absurd. The old fool can't put the whole place under arrest. As a JP -' he began indignantly.

'It's not Sir John. It's the Children. They're picketing all the roads, and won't let us out.'

'Are they indeed!' exclaimed Zellaby. 'That's extremely interesting. I wonder if -'

'Interesting be damned,' said his wife. 'It's very unpleasant, and quite outrageous. It's also rather alarming,' she added, 'because one can't see just what's behind it.'

Zellaby inquired how it was being done. She explained, concluding:

'And it's only us, you see – people who live in the village, I mean. They're letting other people come and go as they like.'

'But no violence?' asked Zellaby, with a touch of anxiety.

'No. You simply have to stop. Several people have appealed to the police, and they've looked into it. Hopeless, of course. The Children didn't stop them , or bother them, so naturally they can't understand what the fuss is about. The only result is that those who had merely heard that Midwich is half-witted are now sure of it.'

'They must have some reason for it – the Children, I mean,' said Zellaby.

Angela eyed him resentfully.

'I daresay, and possibly it will be of great sociological interest, but that isn't the point at the moment. What I want to know is what is to be done about it?'

'My dear,' said Zellaby soothingly. 'One appreciates your feelings, but we've known for some time now that if it should suit the Children to interfere with us we have no way of stopping them. Well, now, for some reason that I confess I do not perceive, it evidently does suit them.'

'But, Gordon, there are these people seriously hurt, in Trayne hospital. Their relatives want to visit them.'

'My dear, I don't see that there is anything you can do but find one of them, and put it to him on humane grounds. They might consider that, but it really depends on what their reason for doing it is, don't you think?'

Angela regarded her husband with a frown of dissatisfaction. She started to reply, thought better of it, and took herself off with an air of reproof. Zellaby shook his head as the door closed.

'Man's arrogance is boastful,' he observed, 'woman's is something in the fibre. We do occasionally contemplate the once lordly dinosaurs, and wonder when, and how, our little day will reach its end. But not she. Her eternity is an article of her faith. Great wars and disasters can ebb and flow, races rise and fall, empires wither with suffering and death, but these are superficialities: she, woman, is perpetual, essential; she will go on for ever. She doesn't believe in the dinosaurs: she doesn't really believe the world ever existed until she was upon it. Men may build and destroy and play with all their toys; they are uncomfortable nuisances, ephemeral conveniences, mere scamperers-about, while woman, in mystical umbilical connexion with the great tree of life itself, knows that she is indispensable. One wonders whether the female dinosaur in her day was blessed with the same comfortable certainty.'

He paused, in such obvious need of prompting that I said: 'And the relevance to the present?'

'Is that while man finds the thought of his supersession abominable, she simply finds it unthinkable. And since she cannot think it, she must regard the hypothesis as frivolous.'

It seemed to be my service again.

'If you are implying that we see something which Mrs Zellaby fails to see, I'm afraid I -'

'But, my dear fellow, if one is not blinded by a sense of indispensability, one must take it that we, like the other lords of creation before us, will one day be replaced. There are two ways in which it can happen: either through ourselves, by our self-destruction, or by the incursion of some species which we lack the equipment to subdue. Well, here we are now, face to face with a superior will and mind. And what are we able to bring against it?'

'That,' I told him, 'sounds defeatist. If, as I assume, you do mean it quite seriously, isn't it rather a large conclusion from rather a small instance?'

'Very much what my wife said to me when the instance was considerably smaller, and younger,' Zellaby admitted. 'She also went on to scout the proposition that such a remarkable thing could happen here, in a prosaic English village. In vain did I try to convince her that it would be no less remarkable wherever it should happen. She felt that it was decidedly a thing that would be less remarkable in more exotic places a – Balinese village, perhaps, or a Mexican pueblo; that it was essentially one of those sorts of things that happens to other people. Unfortunately, however, the instance has developed here – and with melancholy logic.'

'It isn't the locality that troubles me,' I said. 'It's your assumptions. More particularly, your taking it for granted that the Children can do what they like, and there's no way of stopping them.'

'It would be foolish to be quite so didactic as that. It may be possible, but it will not be easy. Physically we are poor weak creatures compared with many animals, but we overcome them because we have better brains. The only thing that can beat us is something with a still better brain. That has scarcely seemed a threat: for one thing, its occurrence appeared to be improbable, and, for another, it seemed even more improbable that we should allow it to survive to become a menace.

'Yet here it is' – another little gimmick out of Pandora's infinite evolutionary box: the contesserate mind – two mosaics, one of thirty, the other of twenty-eight, tiles. What can we, with our separate brains only in clumsily fumbling touch with one another, expect to do against thirty brains working almost as one?'

I protested that, even so, the Children could scarcely have accumulated enough knowledge in a mere nine years to oppose successfully the whole mass of human knowledge, but Zellaby shook his head.

'The government has for reasons of its own provided them with some excellent teachers, so that the sum of their knowledge should be considerable – indeed, I know it is, for I lecture to them myself sometimes, you know – that has importance, but it is not the source of the threat. One is not unaware that Francis Bacon wrote: nam et ipsa scientia potestas est – knowledge itself is power – and one must regret that so eminent a scholar should, at times, talk through his hat. The encyclopedia is crammed full of knowledge, and can do nothing with it; we all know of people who have amazing memories for facts, with no ability to use them; a computing-engine can roll out knowledge by the ream in multiplicate; but none of this knowledge is of the least use until it is informed by understanding. Knowledge is simply a kind of fuel; it needs the motor of understanding to convert it into power.

'Now, what frightens me is the thought of the power producible by an understanding working on even a small quantity of knowledge-fuel when it has an extraction-efficiency thirty times that of our own. What it may produce when the Children are mature I cannot begin to imagine.'

I frowned. As always, I was a little unsure of Zellaby.

'You are quite seriously maintaining that we have no means of preventing this group of fifty-eight Children from taking what course they choose?' I insisted.

'I am.' He nodded. 'What do you suggest we could do? You know what happened to that crowd last night; they intended to attack the Children – instead, they were induced to fight one another. Send police, and they would do the same. Send soldiers against them, and they would be induced to shoot one another.'

'Possibly,' I conceded. 'But there must be other ways of tackling them. From what you've told me, nobody knows nearly enough about them. They appear to have detached themselves emotionally from their host-mothers quite early – if, indeed, they ever had the emotions we normally expect. Most of them chose to adopt progressive segregation as soon as it was offered. As a result the village knows extremely little of them. In quite a short time most people seem scarcely to have thought of them as individuals. They found them difficult to tell apart, got into the habit of regarding them collectively so that they have tended to become two-dimensional figures with only a limited kind of reality.'

Zellaby looked appreciative of the point.

'You're perfectly right, my dear fellow. There is a lack of normal contacts and sympathies. But that is not entirely our shortcoming. I have myself kept as close to them as I can, but I am still at a distance. In spite of all my efforts I still find them, as you excellently put it, two-dimensional. And it is strongly my impression that the people at The Grange have done no better.'

"Then the question remains,' I said, 'how do we get more data?'

We contemplated that for a while until Zellaby emerged from his reverie to say:

'Has it occurred to you to wonder what your own status here is, my dear fellow? If you were thinking of leaving today it might be as well to find out whether the Children regard you as one of us, or not?'

That was an aspect that had not occurred to me, and I found it a little startling. I decided to find out.

Bernard had, it appeared, gone off in the Chief Constable's car, so I borrowed his for the test.

I found the answer a little way along the Oppley road. A very odd sensation. My hand and foot were guided to bring the car to a halt by no volition of my own. One of the girl Children was sitting by the roadside, nibbling at a stalk of grass, and looking at me without expression. I tried to put the gear in again. My hand wouldn't do it. Nor could I bring my foot on the clutch pedal. I looked at the girl, and told her that I did not live in Midwich, and wanted to get home. She simply shook her head. I tried the gear lever again, and found that the only way I could move it was into reverse.

'H'm,' said Zellaby, on my return. 'So you are an honorary villager, are you? I rather thought you might be. Just remind me to tell Angela to let the cook know, there's a good fellow.'

At the same time that Zellaby and I were talking at Kyle Manor, more talk, similar in matter but different in manner, was going on at The Grange. Dr Torrance, feeling some sanction in the presence of Colonel Westcott, had endeavoured to answer the Chief Constable's questions more explicitly than before. A stage had been reached, however, when lack of coordination between the parties could no longer be disguised, and a noticeably off-beat query caused the doctor to say, a little forlornly:

'I am afraid I cannot have made the situation quite clear to you, Sir John.'

The Chief Constable grunted impatiently.

'Everybody keeps on telling me that, and I'm not denying it; nobody round here seems to be capable of making anything clear. Everybody keeps on telling me, too – and without producing a scrap of evidence that I can understand – that these infernal children are in some way responsible for last night's affair – even you, who I am given to understand are in charge of them. I agree that I do not understand a situation in which young children are allowed to get so thoroughly out of hand that they can cause a breach of the peace amounting to a riot. I don't see why I should be expected to understand it. It is as a Constable that I wish to see one of the ringleaders, and find out what he has to say about it.'

'But, Sir John, I have already explained to you that there are no ringleaders...'

'I know – I know. I heard you. Everyone is equal here, and all that all very well perhaps in theory, but you know as well as I do that in every group there are fellers that stand out, and that those are the chaps you've got to get hold of. Manage them, and you can manage the rest.' He paused expectantly.

Dr Torrance exchanged a helpless look with Colonel Westcott. Bernard gave a slight shrug, and the faintest of nods. Dr Torrance's look of unhappiness increased. He said uneasily:

'Very well, Sir John, since you make it virtually a police order I have no alternative, but I must ask you to watch your words carefully. The Children are very – er – sensitive.'

His choice of the final word was unfortunate. In his own vocabulary it had a somewhat technical meaning; in the Chief Constable's it was a word used by doting mothers about spoilt sons, and did nothing to make him feel more sympathetically disposed towards the Children. He made a vowelless sound of disapproval as Dr Torrance got up and left the room. Bernard half opened his mouth to reinforce the Doctor's warning, and then decided that it would only increase the Chief Constable's irritation, thus doing more harm than good. The cussedness of commonsense, Bernard reflected, was that, invaluable as it might be in the right soils, it could turn into a pestiferous kind of bind-weed in others. So the two waited in silence until the Doctor presently returned, bringing one of the boy-Children with him.

'This is Eric,' he said, by way of introduction. To the boy he added, 'Sir John Tenby wishes to ask you some questions. It is his duty as Chief Constable, you see, to make a report on the trouble last night.'

The boy nodded, and turned to look at Sir John. Dr Torrance resumed his seat at his desk, and watched the two of them intently, and uneasily.

The boy's regard was steady, careful, but quite neutral; it gave no trace of feeling. Sir John met it with equal steadiness. A healthy-looking boy, he thought. A bit thin – well, not exactly thin in the sense of being scraggy, slight would be a better word. It was difficult to make much of a judgement from the features; the face was good-looking, though without weakness which often accompanies male good looks; on the other hand, it did not show strength – the mouth, indeed, was a little small, though not petulant. There was not a lot to be learnt from the face as a whole. The eyes, however, were even more remarkable than he had been led to expect. He had been told of the curious golden colour of the irises, but no one had succeeded in conveying to him their striking lambency, their strange effect of being softly lit from within. For a moment it disquieted him, then he took himself in hand; reminded himself that he had some kind of freak to deal with; a boy only nine years old, yet looking every bit of sixteen, brought up, moreover, on some of these fiddle-faddling theories of self-expression, non-inhibition, and so on. He decided to treat the boy as if he were the age he looked, and constrained himself into that man-to-boy attitude that is represented by its practitioners as man-to-man.

'Serious business last night,' he observed. 'Our job to clear it up and find out what really happened – who was responsible for the trouble, and so forth. People keep on telling me that you and the others here were – now, what do you say to that?'

'No,' said the boy promptly.

The Chief Constable nodded. One would scarcely expect an immediate admission, in any case.

'What happened, exactly?' he asked.

'The village people came here to burn The Grange down,' said the boy.

'You're sure of that?'

'It was what they said, and there was no other reason to bring them here at that time,' said the boy.

'All right, we'll not go into the whys and wherefores just now. Let's take it from there. You say some of them came intending to burn the place. Then I suppose others came to stop them doing it, and the fighting started?'

'Yes,' agreed the boy, but less definitely.

'Then, in point of fact, you and your friends had nothing to do with it. You were just spectators?'

'No,' said the boy. 'We had to defend ourselves. It was necessary, or they would have burnt the house.'

'You mean you called out to some of them to stop the rest, something like that?'

'No,' the boy told him patiently. 'We made them fight one another. We could simply have sent them away, but if we had they would very likely have come back some other time. Now they will not, they understand it is better for them to leave us alone.'

The Chief Constable paused, a little nonplussed.

'You say you "made" them fight one another. How did you do that?'

'It is too difficult to explain. I don't think you could understand,' said the boy, judicially.

Sir John pinked a little.

'Nevertheless, I'd like to hear,' he said, with an air of generous restraint that was wasted.

'It wouldn't be any use,' the boy told him. He spoke simply, and without innuendo, as one stating a fact.

The Chief Constable's face became a deeper pink. Dr Torrance put in hurriedly:

'This is an extremely abstruse matter, Sir John, and one which all of us here have been trying to understand, with very little headway, for some years now. One can really get little nearer to it than to say that the Children "willed" the people in the crowd to attack one another.'

Sir John looked at him and then at the boy. He muttered, but held himself in check. Presently, after two or three deep breaths, he spoke to the boy again, but now with his tone a little ruffled.

'However it was done – and we'll have to go into that later – you are admitting that you were responsible for what happened?'

'We are responsible for defending ourselves,' the boy said.

'To the extent of four lives and thirteen serious injuries – when you could , you say, have simply sent them away.'

'They wanted to kill us,' the boy told him, indifferently.

The Chief Constable looked lengthily at him.

'I don't understand how you can have done it, but I take your word for it that you did, for the present; also your word that it was unnecessary.'

'They would have come again. It would have been necessary then,' replied the boy.

'You can't be sure of that. Your whole attitude is monstrous. Don't you feel the least compunction for these unfortunate people?'

'No,' the boy told him. 'Why should we? Yesterday afternoon one of them shot one of us. Now we must protect ourselves.'

'But not by private vengeance. The law is for your protection, and for everyone's -'

'The law did not protect Wilfred from being shot; it would not have protected us last night. The law punishes the criminal after he has been successful: it is no use to us, we intend to stay alive.'

'But you don't mind being responsible – so you tell me – for the deaths of other people.'

'Do we have to go round in circles?' asked the boy. 'I have answered your questions because we thought it better that you should understand the situation. As you apparently have not grasped it, I will put it more plainly. It is that if there is any attempt to interfere with us or molest us, by anybody, we shall defend ourselves. We have shown that we can, and we hope that that will be warning enough to prevent further trouble.'

Sir John stared at the boy speechlessly while his knuckles whitened and his face empurpled. He half rose from his chair as if he meant to attack the boy, and then sank back, thinking better of it. Some seconds passed before he could trust himself to speak. Presently, in a half-choked voice he addressed the boy who was watching him with a kind of critically detached interest.

'You damned young blackguard! You insufferable little prig! How dare you speak to me like that! Do you understand that I represent the police force of this county? If you don't, it's time you learnt it, and I'll see that you do, b'God. Talking to your elders like that, you swollen-headed little upstart! So you're not to be "molested"; you'll defend yourselves, will you! Where do you think you are? You've got a lot to learn, m'lad, a whole -'

He broke off suddenly, and sat staring at the boy.

Dr Torrance leant forward over his desk.

'Eric – ' he began in protest, but made no move to interfere.

Bernard Westcott remained carefully still in his chair, watching.

The Chief Constable's mouth went slack, his jaws fell a little, his eyes widened, and seemed to go on widening. His hair rose slightly. Sweat burst out on his forehead, at his temples, and came trickling down his face. Inarticulate gobblings came from his mouth. Tears ran down the sides of his nose. He began to tremble, but seemed unable to move. Then, after long rigid seconds, he did move. He lifted hands that fluttered, and fumbled them to his face. Behind them, he gave queer thin screams. He slid out of the chair to his knees on the floor, and fell forward. He lay there grovelling, and trembling, making high whinnying sounds as he clawed at the carpet, trying to dig himself into it. Suddenly he vomited.

The boy looked up. To Dr Torrance he said, as if answering a question:

'He is not hurt. He wanted to frighten us, so we have shown him what it means to be frightened. He'll understand better now. He will be all right when his glands are in balance again.'

Then he turned away and went out of the room, leaving the two men looking at one another.

Bernard pulled out a handkerchief, and dabbed at the sweat that stood in drops on his own forehead. Dr Torrance sat motionless, his face a sickly grey. They turned to look at the Chief Constable. Sir John was lying slackly now, seemingly unconscious, drawing long, greedy breaths, shaken occasionally by a violent tremor.

'My God!' exclaimed Bernard. He looked at Torrance again. 'And you have been here three years!'

'There's never been anything remotely like this ,' the Doctor said. 'We've suspected many possibilities, but there's never been any enmity – and, after this, thank God for that!'

'Yes, you could well do worse than that,' Bernard told him. He looked at Sir John again.

'This chap ought to be got away before he pulls round. We'd be better out of the way, too – it's the sort of situation where a man can't forgive witnesses. Send in a couple of his men to collect him. Tell them he's had an attack of some kind.'

Five minutes later they stood on the steps and watched the Chief Constable driven off, still only semi-conscious.

' "All right when his glands are in balance"!' murmured Bernard. 'They seem better at physiology than at psychology. They've broken that man, for the rest of his life.'

Chapter 19. Impasse

After a couple of strong whiskies Bernard began to lose some of the shaken look with which he had returned to Kyle Manor. When he had given us an account of the Chief Constable's disastrous interview at The Grange, he went on:

'You know, one of the few childlike things about the Children, it strikes me, is their inability to judge their own strength. Except, perhaps for the corralling of the village, everything they have done has been overdone. What might be excusable in intent they contrive to make unforgivable in practice. They wanted to scare Sir John in order to convince him that it would be unwise to interfere with them; but they did not do simply what was necessary for that; they went so much farther that they brought the poor man to a state of grovelling fear near the brink of imbecility. They induced a degree of personal degradation that was sickening, and utterly unpardonable.'

Zellaby asked, in his mild, reasonable tone:

'Are we not perhaps looking at this from too narrow an angle? You, Colonel, say "unpardonable", which assumes that they expect to be pardoned. But why should they? Do we concern ourselves whether jackals or wolves will pardon us for shooting them? We do not. We are concerned only to make them innocuous.

'In point of fact our ascendancy has been so complete that we are rarely called upon to kill wolves nowadays – in fact, most of us have quite forgotten what it means to have to fight in a personal way against another species. But, when the need arises we have no compunction in fully supporting those who slay the threat whether it is from wolves, insects, bacteria, or filterable viruses; we give no quarter, and certainly expect no pardon.

'The situation vis– -vis the Children would seem to be that we have not grasped that they represent a danger to our species, while they are in no doubt that we are a danger to theirs. And they intend to survive. We might do well to remind ourselves what that intention implies. We can watch it any day in a garden; it is a fight that goes perpetually, bitterly, lawlessly, without trace of mercy or compassion...'

His manner was quiet, but there was no doubt that his intention was pointed; and yet, somehow, as so often with Zellaby, the gap between theory and practical circumstances seemed too inadequately bridged to carry conviction.

Presently Bernard said:

'Surely this is quite a change of front by the Children. They've exerted persuasion and pressure from time to time, but, apart from a few early incidents, almost no violence. Now we have this outbreak. Can you point to the start of it, or has it been working up?'

'Decidedly,' said Zellaby. 'There was no sign whatever of anything in this category before the matter of Jimmy Pawle and his car.'

'And that was – let me see – last Wednesday, the third of July. I wonder -' he was beginning, but broke off as the gong called us to luncheon.

'My experience, hitherto, of interplanetary invasion,' said Zellaby, as he concocted his own particular taste in salad-dressing, 'has been vicarious – indeed, one might even say hypothetically vicarious, or do I mean vicariously hypothetical -?' He pondered that a moment, and resumed: 'At any rate it has been quite extensive. Yet, oddly enough, I cannot recall a single account of one that is of the least help in our present dilemma. They were, almost without exception, unpleasant; but, also, they were almost always forthright, rather than insidious.

'Take H. G. Wells' Martians, for instance. As the original exponents of the death-ray they were formidable, but their behaviour was quite conventional: they simply conducted a straightforward campaign with this weapon which outclassed anything that could be brought against it. But at least we could try to fight back, whereas in this case -'

'Not cayenne, dear,' said his wife.

'Not what?'

'Not cayenne. Hiccups,' Angela reminded him.

'So it does. Where is the sugar?'

'By your left hand, dear.'

'Oh, yes... where was I?'

'With H. G.'s Martians,' I told him.

'Of course. Well, there you have the prototype of innumerable invasions. A super-weapon which man fights valiantly with his own puny armoury until he is saved by one of several possible kinds of bell. Naturally, in America it is all rather bigger and better. Something descends, and something comes out of it. Within ten minutes, owing no doubt to the excellent communications in that country, there is a coast-to-coast panic, and all highways out of all cities are crammed, in all lanes, by the fleeing populace – except in Washington. There, by contrast, enormous crowds stretching as far as the eye can reach, stand grave and silent, white-faced but trusting, with their eyes upon the White House, while somewhere in the Catskills a hitherto ignored professor and his daughter, with their rugged young assistant strive like demented midwives to assist the birth of the dea ex laboritoria which will save the world at the last moment, minus one.

'Over here, one feels, the report of such an invasion would be received in at least some quarters with a tinge of preliminary scepticism, but we must allow the Americans to know their own people best.

'Yet, overall, what do we have? Just another war. The motivations are simplified, the armaments complicated, but the pattern is the same, and, as a result, not one of the prognostications, speculations, or extrapolations turns out to be of the least use to us when the thing actually happens. It really does seem a pity when one thinks of all the cerebration the prognosticators have spent on it, doesn't it?'

He busied himself with eating his salad.

'It is still one of my problems to know when you are to be taken literally, and when metaphorically,' I told him.

'This time you can take him literally, with assurance,' Bernard put in.

Zellaby cocked a sideways look at him.

'Just like that? Not even reflex opposition?' he inquired. 'Tell me, Colonel, how long have you accepted this invasion as a fact?'

'For about eight years,' Bernard told him. 'And you?'

'About the same time – perhaps a little before. I did not like it, I do not like it, I am probably going to like it even less. But I had to accept it. The old Holmes axiom, you know: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable , must be the truth." I had not known, however, that that was recognized in official circles. What did you decide to do about it?'

'Well, we did our best to preserve their isolation here, and to see to their education.'

'And a fine, helpful thing that turns out to have been, if I may say so. Why?'

'Just a minute,' I put in, 'I'm in between the literal and figurative again. You are both of you seriously accepting as a fact that these Children are – a kind of invaders? That they do originate somewhere outside the Earth?'

'See?' said Zellaby. 'No coast-to-coast panic. Just scepticism. I told you.'

'We are,' Bernard told me. 'It is the only hypothesis that my department has not been forced to abandon – though, of course, there are some who still won't accept it, even though we had the help of a little more evidence than Mr Zellaby did.'

'Ah!' said Zellaby, brought to sudden attention, with a forkful of greenstuff in mid-air. 'Are we getting closer to the mysterious MI interest in us?'

'There's no longer any reason now, I think, why it should not have a restricted circulation,' Bernard admitted. 'I know that in the early stages you did quite a little inquiring into our interest on your own account, Zellaby, but I don't believe you ever discovered the clue.'

'Which was?' inquired Zellaby.

'Simply that Midwich was not the only, nor even the first place to have a Dayout. Also, that during the three weeks around that time there was a marked rise in the radar detection of unidentified flying objects.'

'Well, I'm damned!' said Zellaby. 'Oh, vanity, vanity...! There are other groups of Children beside ours, then? Where?'

But Bernard was not to be hurried, he continued deliberately:

'One Dayout took place at a small township in the Northern Territory of Australia. Something apparently went badly wrong there. There were thirty-three pregnancies, but for some reason the Children all died; most of them a few hours after birth, the eldest at a week old.

'There was another Dayout at an Eskimo settlement on Victoria Island, north of Canada. The inhabitants are cagey about what happened there, but it is believed that they were so outraged, or perhaps alarmed, at the arrival of babies so unlike their own kind that they exposed them almost at once. At any rate, none survived. And that, by the way, taken in conjunction with the time of the Midwich babies' return here, suggests that the power of duress does not develop until they are a week or two old, and that they may be truly individuals until then. Still another Dayout -'

Zellaby held up his hand.

'Let me guess. There was one behind the Iron Curtain.'

'There were two known ones behind the Curtain,' Bernard corrected him. 'One of them was in the Irkutsk region, near the border of Outer Mongolia – a very grim affair. It was assumed that the women had been lying with devils, and they perished, as well as the Children. The other was right away to the east, a place called Gizhinsk, in the mountains north-east of Okhotsk. There may have been others that we didn't hear of. It's pretty certain it happened in some places in South America and in Africa, too, but it's difficult to check. The inhabitants tend to be secretive. It's even possible that an isolated village would miss a day and not know it – in which case the babies would be even more of a puzzle. In most of the instances we do know of, the babies were regarded as freaks, and were killed, but we suspect that in some they may have been hidden away.'

'But not, I take it, in Gizhinsk?' put in Zellaby.

Bernard looked at him with a small twitch to the corner of his mouth.

'You don't miss much, do you, Zellaby? You're right – not in Gizhinsk. The Dayout there took place a week before the Midwich one. We had the report of it three or four days later. It worried the Russians quite a lot. That was at least some consolation to us when it happened here; we knew that they couldn't have been responsible. They, presumably, in due course found out about Midwich, and were also relieved. Meanwhile, our agent kept an eye on Gizhinsk, and in due course reported the curious fact that every woman there was simultaneously pregnant. We were a little slow in appreciating any significance in that – it sounded like useless, if peculiar, tittle-tattle – but presently we discovered the state of affairs in Midwich, and began to take more interest. Once the babies were born the situation was easier for the Russians than for us; they practically sealed off Gizhinsk – a place about twice the size of Midwich – and our information from there virtually ceased. We could not exactly seal off Midwich, so we had to work differently, and, in the circumstances, I don't think we did too badly.'

Zellaby nodded. 'I see. The War Office view being that it did not know quite what we had here, or what the Russians had there. But if it should turn out that the Russians had a flock of potential geniuses, it would be useful for us to have a similar flock to put up against them?'

'More or less that. It was quite quickly clear that they were something unusual.'

'I ought to have seen that,' said Zellaby. He shook his head sadly. 'It simply never crossed my mind that we in Midwich were not unique. It does, however, now cross my mind that something must have happened to cause you to admit it. I don't quite see why the events here should justify that, so it probably happened somewhere else, say in Gizhinsk? Has there been a new development there that our Children are likely to display shortly?'

Bernard put his knife and fork neatly together on his plate, regarded them for a moment, and then looked up.

'The Far– East Army,' he said slowly, 'has recently been equipped with a new medium-type atomic cannon, believed to have a range of between fifty and sixty miles. Last week they carried out the first live tests with it. The town of Gizhinsk no longer exists...'

We stared at him. With a horrified expression, Angela leant forward.

'You mean – everybody there?' she said incredulously.

Bernard nodded. 'Everybody. The entire place. No one there could have been warned without the Children getting to know of it. Besides, the way it was done it could be officially attributed to an error in calculation – or, possibly to sabotage.'

He paused again.

'Officially,' he repeated, 'and for home and general consumption. We have, however, received a carefully channelled observation from Russian sources. It is rather guarded on details and particulars, but there is no doubt that it refers to Gizhinsk, and was probably released simultaneously with the action taken there. It doesn't refer directly to Midwich, either, but what it does do, is to put out a most forcefully expressed warning. After a description which fits the Children exactly, it speaks of them as groups which present not just a national danger, wherever they exist, but a racial danger of a most urgent kind. It calls upon all governments everywhere to "neutralize" any such known groups with the least possible delay. It does this most emphatically, with almost a note of panic, at times. It insists, over and over again, even with a touch of pleading, that this should be done swiftly, not just for the sake of nations, or of continents, but because these Children are a threat to the whole human race.'

Zellaby went on tracing the damask pattern on the table cloth for some time before he looked up. Then he said:

'And MI's reaction to this? To wonder what fast one the Russians were trying to pull this time, I suppose?' And he returned to doodling on the damask.

'Most of us, yes – some of us, no,' admitted Bernard.

Presently Zellaby looked up again.

'They dealt with Gizhinsk last week, you say. Which day?'

'Tuesday, the second of July,' Bernard told him.

Zellaby nodded several times, slowly.

'Interesting,' he said. 'But how, I wonder, did ours know...?'

Soon after luncheon, Bernard announced that he was going up to The Grange again.

'I didn't have a chance to talk to Torrance while Sir John was there – and after that, well, we both needed a bit of a break.'

'I suppose you can't give us any idea of what you intend to do about the Children?' Angela asked.

He shook his head. 'If I had any ideas I suppose they'd have to be official secrets. As it is, I'm going to see whether Torrance, from his knowledge of them, can make any suggestions. I hope to be back in an hour or so,' he added, as he left us.

Emerging from the front door, he made automatically towards his car, and then as he reached for the handle, changed his mind. A little exercise, he decided, would freshen him up, and he set off briskly down the drive, on foot.

Just outside the gate a small lady in a blue tweed suit looked at him, hesitated, and then advanced to meet him. Her face went a little pink, but she pushed resolutely on. Bernard raised his hat.

'You won't know me. I am Miss Lamb, but of course we all know who you are, Colonel Westcott.'

Bernard acknowledged the introduction with a small bow, wondering how much 'we all' (which presumably comprehended the whole of Midwich) knew about him, and for how long they had known it. He asked what he could do for her.

'It's about the Children, Colonel. What is going to be done?'

He told her, honestly enough, that no decision had yet been made. She listened, her eyes intently on his face, her gloved hands clasped together.

'It won't be anything severe, will it?' she asked. 'Oh, I know last night was dreadful, but it wasn't their fault. They don't really understand yet. They're so very young you see. I know they look twice their age, but even that's not very old, is it? They didn't really mean the harm they did. They were frightened. Wouldn't any of us be frightened if a crowd came to our house wanting to burn it down? Of course we should. We should have a right to defend ourselves, and nobody could blame us. Why, if the villagers came to my house like that I should defend it with whatever I could find – perhaps an axe.'

Bernard doubted it. The picture of this small lady setting about a crowd with an axe was one that did not easily come into focus.

'It was a very drastic remedy they took,' he reminded her, gently.

'I know. But when you are young and frightened it is very easy to be more violent than you mean to be. I know when I was a child there were injustices which positively made me burn inside. If I had had the strength to do what I wanted to do it would have been dreadful, really dreadful, I assure you.'

'Unfortunately,' he pointed out, 'the Children do have that strength, and you must agree that they can't be allowed to use it.'

'No,' she said. 'But they won't when they're old enough to understand. I'm sure they won't. People are saying they must be sent away. But you won't do that, will you? They're so young. I know they're wilful, but they need us. They aren't wicked. It's just that lately they have been frightened. They weren't like this before. If they can stay here we can teach them love and gentleness, show them that people don't really mean them any harm...'

She looked up into his face, her hands pressed anxiously together, her eyes pleading, with tears not far behind them.

Bernard looked back at her unhappily, marvelling at the devotion that was able to regard six deaths and a number of serious injuries as a kind of youthful peccadillo. He could almost see in her mind the adored slight figure with golden eyes which filled all her view. She would never blame, never cease to adore, never understand... There had been just one wonderful, miraculous thing in all her life... His heart ached for Miss Lamb...

He could only explain that the decision did not lie in his hands, assure her, trying not to raise any false hopes, that what she had told him would be included in his report; and then detach himself as gently as possible to go on his way, conscious of her anxious, reproachful eyes at his back.

The village, as he passed through it, was wearing a sparse appearance and a subdued air. There must, he imagined, be strong feelings concerning the corralling measure, but the few people about, except for one or two chatting pairs, had a rather noticeable air of minding their own business. A single policeman on patrol round the Green was clearly bored with his job. Lesson One, from the Children – that there was danger in numbers – appeared to have been understood. An efficient step in dictatorship: no wonder the Russians had not cared for the look of things at Gizhinsk...

Twenty yards up Hickham Lane he came upon two of the Children. They were sitting on the roadside bank, staring upward and westward with such concentration that they did not notice his approach.

Bernard stopped, and turned his head to follow their line of sight, becoming aware at the same time of the sound of jet engines. The aircraft was easy to spot, a silver shape against the blue summer sky, approaching at about five thousand feet. Just as he found it, black dots appeared beneath it. White parachutes opened in quick succession, five of them, and began the long float down. The aircraft flew steadily on.

He glanced back at the Children just in time to see them exchange an unmistakable smile of satisfaction. He looked up again at the aircraft serenely pursuing its way, and at the five, gently sinking, white blobs behind it. His knowledge of aircraft was slight, but he was fairly certain that he was looking at a Carey light long-range bomber that normally carried a complement of five. He looked thoughtfully at the two Children again, and at the same moment they noticed him.

The three of them studied one another while the bomber droned on, right overhead now.

'That,' Bernard observed, 'was a very expensive machine. Someone is going to be very annoyed about losing it.'

'It's a warning. But they'll probably have to lose several more before they believe it,' said the boy.

'Probably. Yours is an unusual accomplishment,' he paused, still studying them. 'You don't care for the idea of aircraft flying over you, is that it?'

'Yes,' agreed the boy.

Bernard nodded. 'I can understand that. But, tell me, why do you always make your warnings so severe – why do you always carry them a stage further than necessary? Couldn't you simply have turned him back?'

'We could have made him crash,' said the girl.

'I suppose so. We must be grateful that you didn't, I'm sure. But it would have been no less effective to turn him back, wouldn't it? I don't see why you have to be so drastic.'

'It makes more of an impression. We should have to turn a lot of aircraft back before anyone would believe we were doing it. But if they lose an aircraft every time they come this way they'll take notice,' the boy told him.

'I see. The same argument applies to last night, I suppose. If you had just sent the crowd away, it would not have been warning enough,' Bernard suggested.

'Do you think it would?' asked the boy.

'It seems to me to depend on how it was done. Surely there was no need to make them fight one another, murderously? I mean, isn't it, to put it on its most practical level, politically unsound always to take that extra step that simply increases anger and hatred?'

'Fear, too,' the boy pointed out.

'Oh, you want to instil fear, do you? Why?' inquired Bernard.

'Only to make you leave us alone,' said the boy. 'It is a means; not an end.' His golden eyes were turned towards Bernard, with a steady, earnest look. 'Sooner or later, you will try to kill us. However we behave, you will want to wipe us out. Our position can be made stronger only if we take the initiative.'

The boy spoke quite calmly, but somehow the words pierced right through the front that Bernard had adopted.

In one startling flash he was hearing an adult, seeing a sixteen-year-old, knowing that it was a nine-year-old who spoke.

'For a moment,' he said later, 'it bowled me right over. I was as near panic as I have ever been. The child-adult combination seemed to be full of a terrifying significance that knocked away all the props from the right order of things... I know it seems a small thing now; but at the time it hit me like a revelation, and, by God, it frightened me... I suddenly saw them double: individually, still children; collectively, adult; talking to me on my own level...'

It took Bernard a few moments to pull himself together. As he did so, he recalled the scene with the Chief Constable which had been alarming, too, but in another, much more concrete, way, and he looked at the boy more closely.

'Are you Eric?' he asked him.

'No,' said the boy. 'Sometimes I am Joseph. But now I am all of us. You needn't be afraid of us; we want to talk to you.'

Bernard had himself under control again. He deliberately sat down on the bank beside them, and forced a reasonable tone.

'Wanting to kill you seems to me a very large assumption,' he said. 'Naturally, if you go on doing the kind of things you have been doing lately we shall hate you, and we shall take revenge – or perhaps one should say, we shall have to protect ourselves from you. But if you don't, well, we can see. Do you have such a great hatred of us ? If you don't, then surely some kind of modus vivendi can be managed...?'

He looked at the boy, still with a faint hope that he ought to have spoken more as one would to a child. The boy finally dispelled any illusion about that. He shook his head, and said:

'You're putting this on the wrong level. It isn't a matter of hates, or likes. They make no difference. Nor is it something that can be arranged by discussion. It is a biological obligation. You cannot afford not to kill us, for if you don't, you are finished...' He paused to give that weight, and then went on: 'There is a political obligation, but that takes a more immediate view, on a more conscious level. Already, some of your politicians who know about us must be wondering whether something like the Russian solution could not be managed here.'

'Oh, so you do know about them?'

'Yes, of course. As long as the Children of Gizhinsk were alive we did not need to look after ourselves, but when they died, two things happened: one was that the balance was destroyed, and the other was the realization that the Russians would not have destroyed the balance unless they were quite sure that a colony of the Children was more of a liability than a possible asset.

'The biological obligation will not be denied. The Russians fulfilled it from political motives, as, no doubt, you will try to do. The Eskimos did it by primitive instinct. But the result is the same.

'For you, however, it will be more difficult. To the Russians, once they had decided that the Children at Gizhinsk were not going to be useful, as they had hoped, the proper course was not in question. In Russia, the individual exists to serve the State; if he puts self above State, he is a traitor, and it is the duty of the community to protect itself from traitors whether they are individuals, or groups. In this case, then, biological duty and political duty coincided. And if it were inevitable that a number of innocently involved persons should perish too, well, that could not be helped; it was their duty to die, if necessary to serve the State.

'But for you, the issue is less clear. Not only has your will to survive been much more deeply submerged by convention, but you have the inconvenience here of the idea that the State exists to serve the individuals who compose it. Therefore your consciences will be troubled by the thought that we have "rights".

'Our first moment of real danger has passed. It occurred when you first heard of the Russian action against the Children. A decisive man might have arranged a quick "accident" here. It has suited you to keep us hidden away here, and it suited us to be hidden, so it might have been cunningly managed without too much trouble. Now, however, it cannot. Already, the people in Trayne hospital will have talked about us; in fact, after last night there must be talk and rumours spreading all round. The chance of making any convincing "accident" has gone. So what are you going to do to liquidate us?'

Bernard shook his head.

'Look,' he said, 'suppose we consider this thing from a more civilized standpoint – after all, this is a civilized country, and famous for its ability to find compromises. I'm not convinced by the sweeping way you assume there can be no agreement. History has shown us to be more tolerant of minorities than most.'

It was the girl who answered this time:

'This is not a civilized matter,' she said, 'it is a very primitive matter. If we exist, we shall dominate you – that is clear and inevitable. Will you agree to be superseded, and start on the way to extinction without a struggle? I do not think you are decadent enough for that. And then, politically, the question is: Can any State, however tolerant, afford to harbour an increasingly powerful minority which it has no power to control? Obviously the answer is again, no.

'So what will you do? We are very likely safe for a time while you talk about it. The more primitive of you, your masses, will let their instincts lead them – we saw the pattern in the village last night – they will want to hunt us down, and destroy us. Your more liberal, responsibly-minded, and religious people will be greatly troubled over the ethical position. Opposed to any form of drastic action at all, you will have your true idealists – and also your sham idealists: the quite large number of people who profess ideals as a form of premium for other-life insurance, and are content to lay up slavery and destitution for their descendants so long as they are enabled to produce personal copybooks of elevated views at the gate of heaven.

'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 conventional 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 testing-ground. 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 lacks 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.'

He looked at me.

'Coming with me, Richard?'

I hesitated. Janet was still in Scotland, and not due back for a couple of days yet. There was nothing that needed my presence in London, and I was finding the problem of the Midwich Children far more fascinating than anything I was likely to encounter there. Angela noticed.

'Do stay if you would like to,' she said. 'I think we'd both be rather glad of some company just now.'

I judged that she meant it, and accepted.

'Anyway,' I added, to Bernard. 'We don't even know that your new courier status includes a companion. If I were to try to come with you we'd probably find that I am still under the ban.'

'Oh, yes, that ridiculous ban,' said Zellaby. 'I must talk to them seriously about that – a quite absurd panic measure on their part.'

We accompanied Bernard to the door, and watched him set off down the drive, with a wave of his hand.

'Yes. Game to the Children, I think,' Zellaby said again, as the car turned out into the road. 'And set, too... later on...?' He shrugged faintly, and shook his head.

Chapter 21. Zellaby of Macedon

'My dear,' said Zellaby, looking along the breakfast table at his wife, 'if you happen to be going into Trayne this morning, will you get one of those large jars of bullseyes?'

Angela switched her attention from the toaster to her husband.

'Darling,' she said, though without endearment, 'in the first place, if you recall yesterday, you will remember that there is no question of going to Trayne. In the second, I have no inclination to provide the Children with sweets. In the third, if this means that you are proposing to go and show them films at The Grange this evening, I strongly protest.'

'The ban,' said Zellaby, 'is raised. I pointed out to them last night that it was really rather silly and ill-considered. Their hostages cannot make a concerted flight without word reaching them, if only through Miss Lamb, or Miss Ogle. Everybody is inconvenienced to no purpose; only half, or a quarter, of the village makes as good a shield for them as the whole of it. And furthermore, that I proposed to cancel my lecture on the Aegean Islands this evening if half of them were going to be out making a nuisance of themselves on the roads and paths.'

'And they just agreed?' asked Angela.

'Of course. They're not stupid, you know. They are very susceptible to reasoned argument.'

'Well, really! After all we've been through -'

'But they are,' protested Zellaby. 'When they are jittery, or startled, they do foolish things, but don't we all? And because they are young they over-reach themselves, but don't all the young? Also, they are anxious and nervous – and shouldn't we be nervous if the threat of what happened at Gizhinsk were hanging over us?'

'Gordon,' his wife said, 'I don't understand you. The Children are responsible for the loss of six lives. They have killed these six people whom we knew well, and hurt a lot more, some of them badly. At any time the same thing may happen to any of us. Are you defending that?'

'Of course not, my dear. I am simply explaining that they can make mistakes when they are alarmed, just as we can. One day they will have to fight us for their lives; they know that, and out of nervousness they made the mistake of thinking that the time had come.'

'So now all we have to do is to say: "We're so sorry you killed six people by mistake. Let's forget all about it." '

'What else do you suggest? Would you prefer to antagonize them?' asked Zellaby.

'Of course not, but if the law can't touch them as you say it can't – though I really don't see what good the law is if it can't admit what everybody knows – but even if it can't, it doesn't mean we've got to take no notice and pretend it never happened. There are social sanctions, as well as legal ones.'

'I should' be careful, my dear. We have just been shown that the sanction of power can override both,' Zellaby told her seriously.

Angela looked at him with a puzzled expression.

'Gordon, I don't understand you,' she repeated. 'We think alike about so many things. We share the same principles, but now I seem to have lost you. We can't just ignore what has happened: it would be as bad as condoning it.'

'You and I, my dear, are using different yardsticks. You are judging by social rules, and finding crime. I am considering an elemental struggle, and finding no crime – just grim, primeval danger.' The tone in which he said the last words was so different from his usual manner that it startled both of us into staring at him. For the first time in my knowledge I saw another Zellaby – the one whose incisive hints of his existence made the Works more than they seemed – showing clearly through, and seeming younger than, the familiar, dilettante spinner of words. Then he slipped back to his usual style. 'The wise lamb does not enrage the lion,' he said. 'It placates him, plays for time, and hopes for the best. The Children like bullseyes, and will be expecting them.'

His eyes and Angela's held for some seconds. I watched the puzzlement and hurt fade out of hers, and give place to a look of trust so naked that I was embarrassed.

Zellaby turned to me.

'I'm afraid there is some business that needs my attention this morning, my dear fellow. Perhaps you would care to celebrate the lifting of our siege by escorting Angela into Trayne?'

When we got back to Kyle Manor, a little before lunchtime, I found Zellaby in a canvas chair on the bricks in front of the veranda. He did not hear me at first, and as I looked at him I was struck by the contrasts in him. At breakfast there had been a glimpse of a younger, stronger man; now he looked old and tired, older than I had ever thought him; showing, too, something of the withdrawal of age as he sat with the light wind stirring his silky white hair, and his gaze on things far, far away.

Then my foot gritted on the bricks, and he changed. The air of lassitude left him, the vacancy went out of his eyes, and the face he turned to me was the Zellaby countenance I had known for ten years.

I took a chair beside him, and set down the large bottle of bullseyes on the bricks. His eyes rested on it a moment.

'Good,' he said. 'They're very fond of those. After all, they are still children – with a small "c" – too.'

'Look,' I said, 'I don't want to be intrusive, but – well, do you think it's wise of you to go upthere this evening? After all, one can't really put the clock back. Things have changed. There is acknowledged enmity now, between them and the village, if not between them and all of us. They must suspect that there will be moves against them. Their ultimatum to Bernard isn't going to be accepted right away, if it is at all. You said they were nervous, well, they must still be nervous – and, therefore, still dangerous.'

Zellaby shook his head.

'Not to me, my dear fellow. I began to teach them before the authorities took any hand in it, and I've gone on teaching them. I wouldn't say I understand them, but I think I know them better than anyone else does. The most important thing is that they trust me...'

He lapsed into silence, leaning back in his chair, watching the poplars sway with the wind.

'Trust – ' he was beginning when Angela came out with the sherry decanter and glasses, and he broke off to ask what they were saying about us in Trayne.

At lunch he talked less than usual, and afterwards disappeared into the study. A little later I saw him setting off down the drive on his habitual afternoon walk, but as he had not invited me to join him I made myself comfortable in a deck-chair in the garden. He was back for tea – at which he warned me to eat well as dinner was replaced by a late supper on the evenings that he lectured to the Children.

Angela put in, though not very hopefully:

'Darling, don't you think -? I mean, they've seen all your films. I know you've shown them the Aegean one twice before, at least. Couldn't you put it off, and perhaps hire a film that will be new to them?'

'My dear, it's a good film; it will stand seeing more than once or twice,' Zellaby explained, a little hurt. 'Besides, I don't give the same talk every time – there's always something more to say about the Isles of Greece.'

At half past six we started loading his gear into the car. There seemed to be a great deal of it. Numerous cases containing projector, resistance, amplifier, loud-speaker, a case of films, a tape-recorder so that his words should not be lost, all of them very heavy. By the time we had the lot in, and a stand microphone on top, it began to look as if he were starting on a lengthy safari rather than an evening's talk.

Zellaby himself hovered round while we were at work, inspected, counted everything over, including the jar of bullseyes, and finally approved. He turned to Angela.

'I've asked Gayford if he'll drive me up there and help to unload the stuff,' he said. 'There's nothing to worry about.' He drew her to him, and kissed her.

'Gordon – ' she began. 'Gordon -'

Still with his left arm round her he caressed her face with his right hand, looking into her eyes. He shook his head, in gentle reproof.

'But, Gordon, I'm afraid of the Children now... Suppose they -?'

'You don't need to be anxious, my dear. I know what I'm doing,' he told her.

Then he turned and got into the car, and we drove down the drive, with Angela standing on the steps, looking after us unhappily.

It was not entirely without misgiving that I drove up to the front door of The Grange. Nothing in its appearance, however, justified alarm. It was simply a large, rather ugly Victorian house, incongruously flanked by the new, industrial-looking wings that had been built as laboratories in Mr Crimm's time. The lawn in front of it showed little sign of the battle of a couple of nights before, and though a number of the surrounding bushes had suffered, it was difficult to believe in what had actually taken place.

We had not arrived unobserved. Before I could open the car door to get out, the front door of the house was pulled violently back, and a dozen or more of the Children ran excitedly down the steps with a scattered chorus of 'Hullo, Mr Zellaby.' They had the rear doors open in a moment, and two of the boys began to hand things out for the others to carry. Two girls dashed back up the steps with the microphone, and the roller screen, another pounced with a cry of triumph on the jar of bullseyes, and hurried after them.

'Hi, there,' said Zellaby anxiously, as they came to the heavier cases, 'that's delicate stuff. Go gently with it.'

A boy grinned at him, and lifted out one of the black cases with exaggerated care to hand to another. There was nothing odd or mysterious about the Children now unless it was the suggestion of musical-comedy chorus work given by their similarity. For the first time since my return I was able to appreciate that the Children had 'a small "c", too'. Nor was there any doubt at all that Zellaby's visit was a popular event. I watched him as he stood watching them with a kindly, half-wistful smile. It was impossible to associate the Children, as I saw them now, with danger. I had a confused feeling that these could not be the Children, at all; that the theories, fears, and threats we had discussed must have to do with some other group of Children. It was hard indeed to credit them with the deliquium of the vigorous Chief Constable that had shaken Bernard so badly. All but impossible to believe that they could have issued an ultimatum which was being taken seriously enough to be carried to the highest levels.

'I hope there'll be a good attendance,' Zellaby said, in half-question.

'Oh, yes, Mr Zellaby,' one of the boys assured him. 'Everybody – except Wilfred, of course. He's in the sick-room.'

'Oh, yes. How is he?' Zellaby asked.

'His back hurts still, but they've got all the pellets out, and the doctor says he'll be quite all right,' said the boy.

My feeling of schism went on increasing. I was finding it harder every moment to believe that we had not all of us been somehow deluded by a sweeping misunderstanding about the Children, and incredible that the Zellaby who stood beside me could be the same Zellaby who had spoken that morning of 'grim, primeval danger'.

The last of the cases was lifted out of the car. I remembered that it had been in the car already when we loaded the rest. It was evidently heavy, because two of the boys carried it between them. Zellaby watched them up the steps a little anxiously, and then turned to me.

'Thank you very much for your help,' he said, as though dismissing me.

I was disappointed. This new aspect of the Children fascinated me; I had decided I would like to attend his talk, and study them when they were all relaxed, all together, and being children with a small 'c'. Zellaby caught my expression.

'I would ask you to join us,' he explained. 'But I must confess that Angela is considerably in my thoughts this evening. She is anxious, you know. She has always been uneasy about the Children, and these last few days have upset her more than she shows. She would, I think, be the better for company this evening. I was rather hoping that you, my dear fellow... It would be a great kindness...'

'But of course,' I told him. 'How inconsiderate of me not to have thought of it. Of course.' What else could one say?

He smiled, and held out his hand.

'Excellent. I am most grateful, my dear fellow. I'm sure I can rely on you.'

Then he turned to three or four of the Children who still hovered near, and beamed on them.

'They'll be getting impatient,' he remarked. 'Lead on, Priscilla.'

'I'm Helen, Mr Zellaby,' she told him.

'Ah, well. Never mind. Come along, my dear,' said Zellaby, and they went up the steps together.

I got back into the car and drove off unhurriedly. On the way through the village I noticed that The Scythe and Stone seemed to be doing well, and was tempted to pause there to find out how local feeling was running now, but, with Zellaby's request in mind, I resisted, and kept going. In the Kyle Manor drive I turned the car round and left it standing, ready to fetch him back later on, and went in.

In the main sitting-room Angela was sitting in front of the open windows, with the radio playing a Haydn quartet. She turned her head as I came in, and at the sight of her face I was glad Zellaby had asked me to come back.

'An enthusiastic welcome,' I told her, in answer to her unspoken question. 'For all I could tell they might – apart from the bewildering feeling that one was seeing multiple – have been a crowd of decent schoolchildren anywhere. I've no doubt he's right when he says they trust him.'

'Perhaps,' she allowed, 'but I don't trust them . I don't think I have, ever since the time they forced their mothers back here. I managed not to let it worry me much until they killed Jim Pawle, but ever since then I've been afraid of them. Thank goodness I packed Michael off at once... There's no telling what they might do at any time. Even Gordon admits that they are nervous and panicky. It's nonsense for us to go on staying here, with our lives at the mercy of any childish fright or temper that comes over them...

'Can you see anybody taking Colonel Westcott's "ultimatum" seriously? I can't. That means that the Children will have to do something to show that they must be listened to; they've got to convince important, hard-headed, and thick-headed people, and goodness knows how they may decide to do that. After what's happened already, I'm frightened – I really am... They just don't care what becomes of any of us...'

'It wouldn't do much good their making their demonstration here,' I tried to console her. 'They'll have to do it where it counts. Go up to London with Bernard, as they threatened. If they treat a few big-wigs there as they treated the Chief Constable -'

I broke off, interrupted by a bright flash, like lightning, and a sharp tremor that shook the house.

'What – ?' I began. But I got no further.

The blast that blew in through the open window almost carried me off my feet. The noise came, too, in a great, turbulent, shattering breaker of sound, while the house seemed to rock about us.

The overwhelming crash was followed by a clatter and tinkle of things falling, and then by an utter silence.

Without any conscious purpose I ran past Angela, huddled in her chair, through the open french windows, out on to the lawn. The sky was full of leaves torn from the trees, and still fluttering down. I turned, and looked at the house. Two great swatches of creeper had been pulled from the wall, and hung raggedly down. Every window in the west front gaped blankly back at me, without a pane of glass left. I looked the other way again, and through and above the trees there was a white and red glare. I had not a moment's doubt what it meant...

Turning again I ran back to the sitting-room, but Angela had gone, and the chair was empty... I called to her, but there was no answer...

I found her at last, in Zellaby's study. The room was littered with broken glass. One curtain had been torn from its hangings and was draped half across the sofa. A part of the Zellaby family record had been swept from the mantel-shelf and now lay shattered in the hearth. Angela herself was sitting in Zellaby's working chair, lying forward across his desk, with her head on her bare arms. She did not move nor make any sound as I came in.

The opening of the door brought a draught through the empty window-frames. It caught a piece of paper lying on the desk beside her, slid it to the edge, and sent it fluttering to the floor.

I picked it up. A letter in Zellaby's pointed handwriting. I did not need to read it. The whole thing had been clear the moment I saw the red-white glow in the direction of The Grange, and recalled in the same instant the heavy cases which I had supposed to contain his recording-machine, and other gear. Nor was the letter mine to read, but as I put it back on the desk beside the motionless Angela, I caught sight of a few lines in the middle:

'... doctor will tell you, a matter of a few weeks, or months, at best. So no bitterness, my own love.

'As to this – well, we have lived so long in a garden that we have all but forgotten the commonplaces of survival. It was said: Si fueris Romae, Romani vivito more , and quite sensibly, too. But it is a more fundamental expression of the same sentiment to say: If you want to keep alive in the jungle, you must live as the jungle does...'