The Overman Culture

1

Michael had a good memory. He remembered things significant and insignificant. He remembered—if hazily—when he was young enough to be fed milk only. He remembered the odd child who disappeared from play school, and he remembered the other child who fell (or was pushed?) from the high window and lay all smashed and crumpled on the ground, but not bleeding. And he remembered how he had wanted to know about words, how you could keep them, how you could fix them—perhaps like a drawing—forever.

He remembered nightmares and fantasies and a growing sense of oddness. He remembered when he first began to hope that people would hurt themselves a little so that he could see if they would bleed. He remembered the questions that did not seem to be properly answered. He remembered that Mother and Father had never ever raised their voices. He remembered his first walk by the river Thames, his first visit to the cinema, his first knowledge of air raids. He remembered when desire first stirred in his flesh, and when he began to love Emily Bronte.

Sometimes he thought he was mad. Sometimes he thought he was sane. Then he began to think he could be both sane and mad…..

It had always been Mother who gave him milk from the bottle. He was sure of that. Always Mother. Always the same kind of smile. Sometimes, particularly when he was tired, drifting in the twilight between waking and sleeping, he could see her face now as it must have seemed then—vast, calm, pleasant, filling half the world.

Mother had always been calm, Mother always was calm, Mother always would be calm. And, for reasons that he could not understand, that, too, seemed terrible.

Father was different. Father was a bit abrupt—stern, even. He always had been, always would be.

Sometimes, Mother and Father laughed. Chiefly, they seemed to laugh when Michael asked silly questions. Michael did not know why the questions were silly. But Father said they were; and so, for a time, he thought they must be.

Later, there were the bigger questions, leading in the end to the biggest question of all.

Where does childhood end and maturity begin? Where do dreams border with reality? Where does truth separate from fantasy? These were problems that haunted Michael. They had been haunting him for a long time, long before he had the words to describe them clearly. Before the bricks were abandoned in the nursery, before he rejected the talking teddy bear because somehow he knew it was a traitor.

Early memories, early dreams. Early delights, early nightmares. The Thames was beautiful and blue, and on a spring morning a small boy could sit on the Embankment wall, staring down through the clear water at shoals of trout playing hide and seek among boulders and waterweed. The sun was warm and the sky hazy; and even with the sounds of war bumping and crumping and thudding away on the other side of the force field.

London was sweetly silent. The Sunday silence was best of all. Somehow it seemed to throb.

“What is a force field, Father?”

“That’s a big question for a little boy…. See, the swans are chasing the trout. Do you think they will catch any?”

“The swans aren’t chasing the trout, Father. The swans are just floating. The trout don’t like moving shadows…. What is a force field?”

“Michael, there are some things you can’t properly understand. A force field is something you can’t see, but it is like a big umbrella, a safety umbrella. We live under it, and even if the laser batteries can’t destroy the enemy missiles, they still won’t get through the force field. Shall we walk home, now? I think it might rain.”

“Yes, Father.”

Father was very good at predicting the weather. Amazingly good.

Mother had an electric sewing machine. She liked to make things, and she made almost all of Michael’s clothes; but the strange thing was that she seemed to prefer to do most of the sewing by hand. She liked embroidery, and she liked to sit in the evening listening to the wireless—the Palm Court orchestra, or the Beatles, or Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald—with her needle in her hand.

There was one particular piece of embroidery that Michael remembered. It was to be a new bed quilt for him, covered with lots of small silky animals. It took a long time to complete. For several nights Michael watched his mother working on the shape of an elephant. Each night she seemed to be having to embroider again a part that she had done on a previous night.

Michael was curious. He wondered if she could not see too well by lamplight. He wondered if, in daylight, she would examine her work, be dissatisfied with it and unpick the stitches.

At last, he asked her about it. But she only laughed. “What a quaint little boy you are, Michael. I don’t think you can have been watching me very carefully. Of course, I don’t unpick the stitches when you are at play school. That would be silly.”

But thereafter, the bed quilt progressed at a faster rate.

Mother had golden hair, Father had light-brown hair, Michael had black hair. One day he asked his parents why this should be so.

Father answered. “It just happens that way, Michael. That is the way it is. Hair comes in different colors like noses come in different shapes and lengths. No two things or people are ever exactly the same. Remember that. It is important… And Michael. You ask a lot of questions. It shows you are clever. But people can be too clever, and then they get unhappy. Happiness is a great thing, Michael. Happiness and contentment. That is what we want you to have. We want you to lead a happy life. So, don’t worry your head with too many questions. It is much more important to enjoy yourself. Now run outside and play for a while, then you will be really tired, and you will sleep well and not have any more of those silly nightmares.”

But Michael remembered that the child at play school who fell from the high window and lay all smashed without bleeding had yellow hair. And he remembered that the little girl who fell on her knees in the playground and cried when the blood came had black hair.

And he knew that he liked her very much. And he wondered if it was because she could bleed.

Michael could bleed. Secretly, he would occasionally cut himself a little to make sure he could still bleed. Vaguely, he was afraid that one day he might change. He was afraid that one day he might find no blood left inside him.

2

Michael liked being at play school better than he liked being at home. And that was another thing that puzzled him. He felt he should have wanted to be with Mother and Father more.

Play school was a big house in Hyde Park. Every day—except, of course, on Saturday and Sunday—Mother took Michael to school on her bicycle. All the mothers took their children to school on bicycles.

There were lots of children at play school. Some had golden hair, some had brown hair, some had black hair. Some could bleed if they hurt themselves. Michael liked the children who could bleed best of all.

One day he asked a golden-haired child called Virginia if she ever cut herself. Virginia shook her head and ran away, laughing.

Later, Miss Nightingale came and talked to Michael by himself while the other children were sleeping after lunch. Miss Nightingale was very pretty. She had brown hair.

“Michael, why did you ask Virginia Woolf if she ever cut herself?”

“It was a joke, Miss Nightingale.”

“It doesn’t sound like a joke, Michael. Do you ever cut yourself?”

“No,” he lied.

“Why should you want to ask her that?”

Again he lied. “I don’t know.”

Miss Nightingale smiled. “Never mind. The most important thing is to be happy, Michael. Strange ideas can make people unhappy. Try to be like the other children.”

“Yes, Miss Nightingale.”

“Go to sleep, now. This afternoon we shall all have a picnic tea in the park, and we shall play some exciting games, and we shall all be happy.”

“Yes, Miss Nightingale. Thank you.”

Michael’s best friends were Horatio Nelson, Ernest Rutherford, Jane Austen and Emily Bronte. At one time or another, he had seen them all bleed—even if only a little.

Play school was pleasant, but sometimes it could be boring. There was drawing and painting, and acting and singing, and games and sleeping. The teachers told stories, the children told stories, and there were walks in the park.

But most of all, Michael wanted to ask questions. But there never seemed to be much time for questions, because the teachers were always busy organizing some activity or sharing out the toys or putting out the paints; and the children were busy being children, busy being happy by not asking questions. Most of them had already decided that questions were a waste of time. Sooner or later, they thought, they would learn about important things just naturally. Like they learned how to do lots of things that would make them happy but tired, so that they would sleep without having bad dreams.

Michael had bad dreams. He did not tell Mother and Father about them anymore. Bad dreams made Mother and Father think that he was not tired enough to be happy and sleep well.

Sometimes he dreamed that the force field had broken, and then all the German and Japanese and Italian war machines came screaming into the lovely city of London, burning everything and leaving nothing but a great black pit in the earth. Sometimes he dreamed that he was walking, walking, walking—until he fell off the edge of the world, tumbling round and round down a great tunnel of darkness. Sometimes he dreamed that he was completely alone, that London was empty, and that he was the only person who had ever been able to bleed.

The odd child, the child who disappeared, came into Michael’s bad dreams. And remained in his dreams forever. Because, although the little boy disappeared after the incident at play school, Michael was determined that he should not wholly disappear. Now and then, before he drifted off to sleep, Michael deliberately recalled the terrifying scene so that the child whose name he did not know would enter his dreams and be part of him for always.

It had happened one day when the paints were being used, when large sheets of paper had been clipped to all the easels, and when Miss Nightingale had told the children how splendid it would be if they all painted pictures of their fathers and mothers.

The group of children had been painting happily and noisily and messily for a while. Then suddenly the odd child had splashed paint all over his picture, had thrown his brush on the floor and had just stood there, shaking and screaming.

Miss Nightingale had not been in the room when it happened. But she came back very quickly and tried to comfort the little boy.

“What is it, cherub?” she asked gently. Cherub was a favorite word of Miss Nightingale’s. “What has happened? Has somebody been naughty and spoiled your lovely painting?”

“I hate all the children!” sobbed the odd little boy. “I hate every boy and girl! I hate myself!”

“Why?” asked Miss Nightingale. “Why do you have this terrible hate?”

“Because we are not people,” he screamed. “Because we are not real people…. Because none of us can take off our heads!”

Miss Nightingale did not try to reason with him. She did not say anything. She just picked him up very gently and carried him, still kicking and screaming, out of the room.

That was the last Michael ever saw of him.

Later, Miss Nightingale said that the little boy had been ill because he had had too many bad dreams. And she asked everyone to forget what had happened because it was much more sensible to remember good things than bad things. It was thinking about bad things that brought bad dreams and unhappiness.

After several days, hardly any of the children remembered the incident; and even if they did, they remembered different versions.

But Michael remembered. And he promised himself he would always remember. Because, somehow, he knew that it was important to remember the bad things.

Even the dreams.

3

Michael did not know how old he was, but he knew quite a lot about what went on in the world. He learned about what was happening from the news broadcasts on the wireless; and sometimes there were programs on the television, too.

He knew that Britain and America and Russia were at war with Italy and Germany and Japan. He knew that the important cities on both sides were protected by force fields which the bombers and the missiles could not penetrate. He knew that out there in the unprotected parts of the world, people were being hurt and killed and armies were fighting each other. He felt very sorry for people who were not protected by force fields; but Father said that force fields were very difficult to use, and they took a lot of energy, and that was why they only covered the most important cities.

Michael felt very lucky to be living in London, protected by a force field that he could not see.

He liked the city very much. It was clean and quiet and beautiful and safe. He was old enough to explore a little by himself; but he was not yet old enough to use a bicycle. Bicycles were only for the use of older people.

But one day, when Michael was bigger, he would have a bicycle of his own. Father had said so.

But perhaps the war would be over before then, and the force field would no longer be needed. And perhaps the government would allow the cars and buses and trains to come back. He looked forward to that time, and yet he was afraid of it. How could he ever hope to cross a road, with cars and buses hurtling along it, without getting hurt? And yet people and children managed to do this. He had seen them doing it on films and on television programs.

He remembered his first visit to the cinema. It was on a Saturday evening and it was a big occasion. Mother was dressed in a lovely green gown that swept the floor. Father wore a dark suit and a top hat. Michael was bathed and powdered and dressed in his sailor suit.

It was an important occasion because, said Father, they were going to a premiere which would be attended by the Queen.

The bicycles had been specially polished; and when they were rolling smoothly down Buckingham Palace Road, with Michael strapped safely on his seat behind Mother, he felt that this was the first really exciting event in his life.

There were more bicycles outside the Odeon, Leicester Square, than Michael had ever seen. A large space had been staked out for Queen Victoria’s hovercar. Michael and Mother and Father joined the crowds waiting for the Queen’s arrival. They did not have to wait long, and when she came, everyone began to cheer and some people were waving flags, and some were singing the national anthem.

Sir Winston Churchill was waiting to receive the Queen and to introduce her to Mr. Spencer Tracy and Master Freddie Bartholomew. Then they went inside the Odeon cinema, and everyone else followed. It took quite a long time for everyone to get inside. The foyer was jammed with people and their children. Michael saw lots of children that he did not know, but he also caught a glimpse of Horatio Nelson. He, too, was wearing a sailor suit and looking unnaturally clean. Horatio grinned and waved, then disappeared with his mother and father in the crowd.

There were pictures of famous film stars in the foyer. Michael looked at them and asked Mother to tell him their names. Some of the names were strange and some were pretty. Greta Garbo was a pretty name, but Dustin Hoffman sounded very odd. There were also pictures of Charles Chaplin and Jane Fonda, George Arliss and Brigitte Bardot, Norma Shearer and Rudolph Valentino.

Even though the film was only in black and white, the big screen made it far more exciting than color television. Michael thought that every child in the cinema—including himself—was crying when, near the end of the film, Spencer Tracy, as Manuel the fisherman, was dying in the sea while old Lionel Barrymore had to stand and watch helplessly and Freddie Bartholomew was saying good-bye to his friend forever.

After the film, there was a news feature showing the Germans bombing sad little villages in Vietnam, and there were also some pictures of Russian scientists and spacemen helping to build the missile bases on the moon.

At the end of the show, the lights went on and Queen Victoria stood in the royal box. Then the orchestra played “God Save the Queen,” and everyone stood very still.

Michael was tired. Tremendously excited and tremendously tired. He almost fell asleep on the bicycle on the way home. His head ached with excitement. But later, when he was trying to sleep, his head ached for a different reason. He felt that, during the course of the evening, he had discovered something important. But he didn’t know what it was.

4

It was Miss Shelley, not Miss Nightingale who told the children about the Overman legend. Miss Shelley was just as pretty as Miss Nightingale, but she had yellow hair. Michael liked her because she had taught him to count to one hundred. He had asked her several times to teach him. At first she said that he was not ready to learn. Perhaps, in the end, she just got tired of saying no. Counting was quite easy when you got the hang of it. As far as Michael knew, none of the other children could count. Perhaps they had not pestered Miss Shelley long enough.

She told the children about the Overman legend toward the end of the afternoon session of play school, when they were tired out after games and needed to rest a little before being collected by their mothers.

“Once upon a time,” said Miss Shelley, “there was no one at all in the wide world but Overman. And he was very bored, so he said to himself: ‘I must make something interesting happen.’ So he thought very hard, and finally he decided that he would make a man. Because he thought a man would be interesting. So he worked very hard, and at last he made a man.

“And the man was very grateful for being made and for feeling alive. But presently, he, too, got bored. And he said to himself: ‘I must make something interesting happen.’ So he thought very hard, and finally he decided that he would make a machine. So he worked very hard, and at last he made a machine.

“It was a very good machine, a very complicated machine, and the man was very proud of it.

“He said to Overman: ‘You created me, and I, too, can create. Look, I have created a machine.’

“Overman was amused. He laughed. He said: The machine is very good, but you are more complicated. You can do things the machine cannot do. So mine is the better creation.’

“The man was a bit disappointed at this. And he went away, determined to do better. Then he had a very ingenious idea. He decided to build a machine that could build a machine. This was a very hard task, and it took him a very long time. But eventually he succeeded. It was a very wonderful machine, very complicated indeed. The man was extremely proud of it.

“He said to Overman: ‘You created me, but I think I have done something better. Look, I have created a machine that can build another machine.’

“Again Overman was amused. He laughed. And then suddenly he created a woman. Then he said: ‘See, I have created a woman. With the woman, you will be able to make children. And they in turn will grow up into men and women and make more children. So mine is still the greater creation.’

“‘We shall see,’ said the man. ‘My machine will build more machines which will build yet more machines. We shall see whose is the greater creation.’

“Then Overman laughed once more. He said: ‘Farewell, my son in whom I am well pleased. You have amused me greatly. And now I will leave you to discover the end of the joke.’

“‘What are you talking about?’ asked the man, perplexed.

“‘You challenged my powers, my son,’ said Overman, ‘and that is good. But you have created more than you think. You have created a problem. And the problem is this: Shall men control machines, or shall machines control men?’

“Then Overman yawned. He said: ‘I am tired. I think I shall go to sleep for ten thousand years. But, if either men or machines discover the answer to the problem, wake me.’ “

Miss Shelley looked at the circle of children. Some were gazing at her intently, some were whispering and giggling among themselves, some were fidgeting, and one or two were dozing.

Michael had listened to the story, enthralled. He said: “Is it true, Miss Shelley, the story of Overman?”

Miss Shelley smiled. “It is just a story, Michael, a legend. But perhaps there is a little bit of truth in it somewhere.”

“Is Overman God?” said Horatio Nelson suddenly.

Michael looked at him with respect. It was a good question.

“I don’t think so,” said Miss Shelley. “Now, don’t worry about the story, children. I told it just to pass the time. Now that we have all rested, I think the mothers will be arriving to take their children home.”

That evening, Michael was unusually quiet. He was thinking. He was thinking about the story. Somehow, he knew that it was important.

After he had drunk his hot milk, and just before he was tucked up for sleep, Father came into his bedroom and said: “What did you think of the Overman legend, Michael?”

Michael felt very skepy. “It was interesting,” he said, “but it was just a story. And, anyway, it didn’t have a proper end.”

But when Father had gone, Michael suddenly became very wide awake. He had said nothing at all about the Overman legend. So how could Father know Miss Shelley had told it that afternoon?

5

The children had been allowed to go off by themselves on an adventure walk in Hyde Park. They were to collect leaves. When the bell rang, they were to return to play school and there would be a prize for whoever had collected the largest number of different leaves.

The children set off in groups, but when they were a little distance from school, Michael left his group, wanting to be by himself. He wandered casually away, head down, as if he were already intent on looking for leaves.

He noticed that a girl had also left the group. She was following him. She had yellow hair, and her name was Ellen Terry.

Michael quickened his pace, but the distance between him and Ellen remained the same. Finally, he began to run.

He ran as fast as he could, without looking back. He ran until he was exhausted. Then he flung himself down on the grass, sobbing for breath, while the sweat trickled down his forehead and into his eyes.

When he had recovered himself, he sat up and gazed back. The school was out of sight. But there was Ellen Terry, not very far away, apparently looking for leaves.

Michael was still trembling a little and breathing heavily from his exertions. But Ellen looked quite at ease—not at all like a child who had run a long way at high speed.

Michael stood up unsteadily and walked back toward her. She affected not to notice, or not to be interested.

“Why are you following me?”

“I’m not following you. I am looking for leaves. Have you found any interesting ones?”

He ignored the question. “I ran away as fast as I could. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore. You must have run very fast to keep up with me.”

“I like running,” said Ellen. “It’s nice.”

“I want to be alone.”

“You are alone.”

“No, I’m not. You followed me.”

“I didn’t follow you. I was just running. And, anyway, you are alone if you want to be alone.”

“Ellen, go away. Go and look somewhere else.”

“I shall go where I please.”

“Or stay here, and I will go away.”

“I shall go where I please.”

She seemed to be laughing at him. She seemed to be deliberately tormenting him. Michael had been shaking with exertion; but now the tiredness had mysteriously gone and he was just shaking with rage.

“If you don’t go away,” he said, amazed at his own ferocity, “I’ll kill you.”

She began to laugh. With a cry of rage, he rushed at her and they both fell on the ground. Michael’s fingers were round her neck tight. But she didn’t seem to mind. She was still laughing. He lifted her head and banged it hard on the ground, again and again. But still she laughed as if it was all no more than a game. In desperation and humiliation, he tried to bite her throat. He bit until the teeth ached in his jaw, but still the laughter came.

Suddenly, his rage and energy were spent. He let Ellen go and lay there with his face hidden by his arm, crying with misery and sheer humiliation.

The laughter stopped. Presently he felt Ellen touch him gently. She began to stroke his hair.

He sat up and looked at her, wiping the tearstains from his face and trying to understand what could not be understood.

Ellen’s hair was untidy and there were bits of grass and smears of soil on her dress. But she seemed unhurt. She seemed amazingly unhurt.

“Poor Michael,” she said softly. “I was only teasing. I teased you too much. Poor Michael.”

“I—I tried to kill you,” he sobbed, wondering at the blind fury that had possessed him.

“No, you didn’t,” she said positively. “You tried to hurt me, that is all.”

“I didn’t hurt you?”

She shook her hair and laughed. “I’m very strong… Do you still want me to go away?”

“Yes. I’m unhappy. I want to be by myself.”

“Then I’ll go. Don’t forget to come back to school when the bell rings…. I’m sorry, Michael. I won’t tease you anymore.”

She stood up, smiled at him once again, then began to run away. She ran lightly, effortlessly. She ran as if she could go on like that forever.

Presently, Michael picked himself up and began to wander about aimlessly, looking for leaves. He found several, the usual ones—oak, sycamore, willow, chestnut, beech—the ones everyone else would take back. He tried to forget about Ellen and concentrate on leaves. He wanted a leaf that no one else would have.

“Michael Faraday can’t fight girls!” The words seemed to come from nowhere. Michael spun round, but there was no one to be seen.

Then he looked up. Horatio Nelson was sitting on the lowest branch of a large oak. He grinned at Michael and slithered back along the branch, climbing carefully down to ground.

“Fight me,” said Horatio.

“I can’t. You know that.”

“That’s right…. I can beat anybody—anybody except them.”

“Except who?”

“Except them. The others. You know.”

“Yes, I know,” said Michael gloomily. “Horatio, why are we afraid to talk about it?”

“To talk about what?”

“The—the difference.”

“I’m not afraid to talk about it.”

“Would you talk about it to them?”

“No.”

“Would you talk about it to your mother and father?”

Horatio pulled a face, made a noise signifying disgust. “I tried. They said I wasn’t old enough to understand. They said I must not get worried about silly ideas.”

“Would you talk about it to Miss Nightingale?”

“No.”

“But you will talk about it to me?”

“You are like me,” said Horatio, “not like them…. Children like us, we have to—to—” he floundered.

“To trust each other?” suggested Michael.

“Something like that…. I saw you at the cinema last Saturday.”

“I saw you, too.” Then Michael suddenly remembered something that had seemed very important. “Did you see Freddie Bartholomew talking to the Queen?”

“Yes.”

“He’s bigger than us,” said Michael excitedly. “He’s much bigger. Do you think he bleeds?”

Horatio was silent for a moment or two. Then he said: “Can’t tell. Not unless he was hurt…. Some of them are bigger than us.”

“Some of them are smaller, too,” pointed out Michael. “But we are all about the same size.”

They heard the bell ringing in the distance.

Horatio sighed. “We’d better go back, or they’ll ask questions. Give me some of your leaves. I haven’t got any.”

“The important thing,” said Michael with a flash of insight, “is for us to go on trusting each other and for us to go on trying to find things out, until we are old enough to understand.”

“Be careful,” advised Horatio. “Be very careful. They don’t like us trying to find things out.” Then he added calmly: “If you really want to kill Ellen Terry, you will have to push her out of a high window.”

Michael looked at him in astonishment. There was a question he was too afraid to ask.

Michael had a bad dream. He was with a number of other children, including Horatio Nelson, Ernest Rutherford, Jane Austen and Emily Bronte—all children who could bleed. Each child stood naked, feet buried in soft earth in a plant pot. The room was big, like a tremendous greenhouse; and the sun was shining through great, misted panes of glass.

The children stood motionless amid shrubs and tall, potted flowers. Every now and then, the gardener came with a huge watering can. He watered the flowers, the shrubs and the children. Michael wanted to talk to him; but he could not open his mouth. He could not move at all. The gardener had the face of Michael’s father.

When the gardener watered the children, the water turned into blood and dripped in terrifying, crisscrossing streams down their small pale bodies. Emily Bronte seemed to be weeping tears of blood. Horatio Nelson had a fixed grin on his face, and the red stream dripped from the corners of his mouth.

Michael strained and strained to open his lips. Finally, with a great effort, he was able to speak.

He said to the gardener: “Why do you treat us like—like plants?”

The gardener laughed. “Because you are not real people,” he said in a voice that echoed through the greenhouse. “You can’t be made. You have to be grown. You are weak. If I don’t look after you very carefully, you will all shrivel up and die.”

“Do real people bleed?” asked Michael.

The gardener was amused. “Real people don’t need to bleed,” he thundered. “Real people are made not to bleed.”

The greenhouse became a doll factory; and all the children, their feet still embedded in earth in the plant pots, watched the dolls being made.

There were big baskets of arms and legs and heads and bodies. People in overalls were fitting the parts together. But when the dolls were assembled, they were no longer dolls. They were children. They ran about, they laughed, they jumped, they talked.

One of them was Ellen Terry.

She came to Michael’s plant pot. She ran round and round it until he became dizzy, just watching her. Then she stood in front of him, laughing.

“You are not a real person,” she said. “Michael Faraday is not a real person. I am a real person. Look at all that blood! Horrible! Horrible!”

Michael was enraged, humiliated, afraid. Fear and anger gave him strength. Suddenly, he stepped from the plant pot and seized Ellen. He tore off her arms and threw them into a basket. Then he tore off her legs and threw them into another basket.

No one seemed to notice. The people in overalls were still making dolls that suddenly became children.

Ellen, armless and legless, lay on the floor, looking at him, still laughing. In a burst of fury, he tore off her head and threw it into the nearest head basket. Then he kicked her body away. No one seemed to notice.

He turned to all the children still standing stiffly in their plant pots. The red bloodstains made grotesque patterns all over their bodies.

Michael went to Emily Bronte. She stopped weeping and began to smile at him. He put his arms round her and tried to lift her out of the plant pot.

Then he became aware of a great deal of shouting. He whirled round and saw that all the people in overalls were running toward him. They were carrying knives and needles and scissors. The gardener was running toward him also. The gardener was brandishing a huge pair of shears.

Michael woke up screaming.

Mother came rushing into his room. She held him in her arms and let him sob against her body until he realized that he was not in a greenhouse or a doll factory but safe in bed in his own room, with the clockwork train set on the table in the corner and the toy soldiers set out in neat ranks on a chest of drawers.

Mother was talking. Her voice sounded soothing, but Michael could not concentrate on the words.

Then Father came. Michael could not look at his face. Father said how silly it was to have bad dreams, and he asked what it was all about. But Michael would not tell him.

After a time, Mother brought something warm and sweet to drink. Michael drank it quickly, and yawned and felt very tired indeed. Then he lay back and closed his eyes. There were no dreams this time. Only darkness.

It was Saturday afternoon, a sunny, breezy Saturday afternoon, and Michael was in St. James’s Park with his kite. He was pleased at being allowed to go out alone. Mother and Father let him go out by himself quite a lot these days. He was growing bigger, older. Perhaps even wiser.

There were not many people in St. James’s Park. Here and there one or two ladies in long, rustling skirts and with parasols strolled and talked with men wearing bright blazers and boaters. Here and there a few children played with hoops or bats and balls.

It was all very pretty, thought Michael. It was so extremely pretty. Just like a picture. Or a scene. A scene from a film.

He dropped his kite on the grass and, despite the sunshine, felt suddenly cold. A scene from a film! It was like a scene from a film. It was, somehow, too perfect, too neat. It didn’t seem real.

His childish mind was incapable of grappling with paradoxes. It was real and it had to be real and yet it didn’t seem real. And the people didn’t seem real, and the vistas of London didn’t seem real and, for all Michael knew, the entire world might not be real.

He was sweating, he was shaking, and the sweat was cold on his forehead and body. And he felt dreadfully afraid.

Then suddenly the horrible sensation left him, because he caught sight of Emily Bronte. She was sitting on a grassy bank making a daisy chain. Emily, with her dark-brown hair and wide blue eyes was real. In fact, there could be nothing more splendidly real than Emily Bronte sitting in the sunlight, making a daisy chain.

Michael picked up his kite and went to sit beside her.

“Hello.”

“Hello, Michael. What a marvelous kite! Will it fly?”

“Yes. I’ll show you in a little while. Father made it…. Does your father make things?”

“Mother makes dolls’ clothes. Father once made the dolls’ house. I don’t think I like dolls very much now.”

Michael was silent for a while. Then he said awkwardly: “Emily, does everything seem all right to you?”

“How do you mean?”

He gestured with his arm. “All this—the park, the people….The way we live.” He floundered.

Emily put the daisy chain down and looked at him. “I don’t know what you mean…. It is real, isn’t it? I mean we are real, and living is real…. I don’t know what you mean.”

“What about the difference?” he said with sudden force. “What about the difference between us and them?”

“Mother and Father say we are not old enough to understand,” said Emily calmly. “They say that when we are old enough we will be able to understand everything.”

“I bet most of these people are them,” said Michael. “I bet most of the people in London are them! We—we are the strange ones. They know they are all right. I don’t know that I’m all right…. I’m sorry, Emily. I don’t know how to say what I want to say.”

She put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry, Michael. Don’t be upset. One day we shall understand. I’m sure of it.”

Michael liked the touch of her hand. He was sorry when she took it away and let it rest lightly on the grass. He wondered what would happen if he touched it with his own hand. He decided to find out. Nothing happened. Emily did not take her hand away. He held it, but she only smiled. He liked holding it. Emily’s hand felt cool and soft. Not hard, like Ellen Terry’s hand.

“I love you,” he said impulsively. “I love you, Emily Bronte.”

She laughed. “You are a nice boy. I love you, too.”

“I always will,” said Michael, not daring to look at her. “I always will love you…. There—there isn’t anyone else to love.”

“Don’t you love your mother and father?”

“No.”

Emily was silent for a while. Then she said: “I don’t think I love mine, either. I like them, but I don’t love them. It’s funny, isn’t it?”

Michael was embarrassed, and let go of her hand. “Do you know about reading?”

“No. Do you?”

“I keep asking them to let me learn,” he exploded, “but they say it’s not necessary. They say it’s something I should do when I’m older. They say I can find out everything I need to know just by asking. But I can’t. I want to read now. I want to find books and see what the words mean…. You’ve seen books in films, haven’t you? Whole rows of them. I want rows and rows of books—not picture books. Books with words.”

“I expect it won’t be long before they let you learn,” said Emily, soothing him. “I think I would like to be able to read, too. But I can wait.” She smiled. “If nobody teaches us, I expect we can teach ourselves when we are old enough to understand.”

“When we are old enough to understand!” he echoed bitterly. “That is what they always say—when we are old enough to understand. I want to understand now. Now, while—while I’m hungry.”

There was a sound as of distant thunder. Then more rumbling. Then a muted banging.

Emily looked up at the sky and clapped her hands.

“Oh, look, Michael—an air raid!”

“I have just thought of something,” said Michael, almost to himself. “Air raids seem to happen most of all on Saturdays. That’s strange. That’s very strange.”

“Do you think we should go home?” asked Emily.

“Why should we? The force field protects us…. Look at that zeppelin! You’d think the ground-to-air missiles would blow it to pieces. Perhaps that is big enough to have a force field, too.”

High in the sky, the zeppelin passed slowly over London. Streaks of tracer fire homed on it, but evidently it came to no harm. Fighter planes, German and British, appeared: and the dogfights began. A German triplane turned crazily in a tight circle until it was on the tail of a British biplane. The biplane exploded, brief and lovely as a firework. A Spitfire and a Messerschmitt collided, then spiraled downward like broken birds, leaving black tracks down the sky. Jet fighters of both sides screamed in toward each other, writing a ragged white tracery all over the sky. The zeppelin continued on its majestic way as if it had a charmed life.

Michael watched, fascinated. So did Emily. So did everyone else in the park, and probably everyone else in London.

Michael watched, fascinated, and thought that this, too, was like a scene from a film.

No wrecked planes would come hurtling down into St. James’s Park. Michael’s father had told him why. The force field protected the entire city. It was impenetrable.

And yet the crippled planes seemed to be falling. They seemed to be falling right down on London. But they couldn’t. Because the force field covered London.

Michael tried to think of it as an invisible upside-down goldfish bowl. He tried to imagine the smashed planes and all the other debris sliding off its glasslike surface. Perhaps London was surrounded by great piles of wrecked planes and rockets.

He didn’t know why, but the whole idea seemed wrong. And the planes looked as if they were falling, falling.

There were more explosions, more destruction. Then the air battle was over as abruptly as it had started, and the sky was clear and clean once more, and the vapor trails were dying.

Yes, it was just like a scene from a film. Michael forgot how pleasant and wonderful it was to hold Emily’s hand. Once again there was a cold sweat on his forehead. Once again he was shaking.

8

A frosty evening in autumn. The western edge of the sky still had a few fading streaks of crimson mingling with turquoise; but high above stars pricked the blackness like cold rapiers of fire.

Michael was walking in the Mall. He should have been home long before sunset, and Father would certainly be very severe when he did get back. But Michael loved the darkness of London, the lamps, the stillness, the empty streets.

He was not alone in the Mall. Two other people were taking a short stroll close to Buckingham Palace.

They walked toward Michael. He walked toward them. He recognized them as they walked through a circle of lamplight on the pavement. He was too surprised to be afraid.

“Boy,” said Sir Winston jovially, “you should be home in bed. All children should be home in bed. Your good father will have something to say upon the matter, I do not doubt.”

“Yes, sir,” said Michael. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m on my way home, now.”

Queen Victoria wore the big black dress like she always did, and there was a shawl round her shoulders, and the crown was on her head. She gazed down at Michael.

“Sir Winston, present the child.”

“My pleasure, Ma’am.” Then, to Michael: “What is your name, boy?”

“Michael Faraday.”

“Your Majesty,” said Sir Winston, “I have the honor to present one of your Majesty’s youngest subjects, Michael Faraday.”

“Good evening, your Majesty,” said Michael, trying to bow. “I am very sorry if I am being a nuisance.”

Queen Victoria laughed. “The child thinks he is being a nuisance, Sir Winston.”

Sir Winston laughed. “Any healthy boy is a nuisance, Ma’am. That is what boys are for. Then they grow up and become bigger nuisances. Eh, Michael?”

“Yes, sir. I expect so, sir.”

“Child,” said the Queen, “what do you want to do when you grow up?”

“I want to understand,” said Michael, almost without thinking.

“You want to understand?”

“Yes, your Majesty.”

“What do you want to understand?”

“Everything,” said Michael desperately. “I want to understand about people. I want to understand about machines… I—I want to know everything there is to know.”

The Queen patted his head. “You want too much, child. You want far too much.”

Sir Winston rumbled with laughter. “Don’t you want to be a sailor, boy?”

“No, sir.”

“Or an airman?”

“No, sir.”

“Or an astronaut?”

“No, sir…. I just want to understand.”

“Don’t you want to fight the Germans, to shoot down zeppelins, program rockets?”

“No, sir. I want to find things out.”

“An odd child,” mused Queen Victoria. “But then all children are odd, are they not, Sir Winston?”

“Indeed, Ma’am. Indeed they are.”

The Queen said: “I recollect now, Sir Winston, that I wish you to convey my congratulations to Generals Gordon, Kitchener and Montgomery…. They, too, were once children, no doubt.” She turned to Michael. “Go home, now, Michael Faraday. Go home quickly to bed. Present your apologies to your parents and inform them you were delayed by Queen Victoria.”

“Yes, your Majesty. Thank you.”

Sir Winston snapped: “Are we going to win the war, boy?”

“I don’t know, sir. I expect so.”

Sir Winston was amused. “He expects so! He expects so! Be off with you, boy. Hurry! Hurry! The Queen commands it.”

Michael broke into a run. He ran along the Mall, listening to his feet hitting the frosty pavement. After a time he paused and looked back. But Queen Victoria and Sir Winston were nowhere to be seen.

He looked up at the stars; and oddly, for a moment, they seemed like the only real things in the entire universe.

9

Time passed. The war continued. Newscasts told how the conflict had spread to North Africa, India, China. Time passed. London remained impregnable. The seasons came and went. Play school ended. High school began. Time passed. Michael Faraday grew tall. His voice wavered uncertainly, then the childish tones were gone forever. Emily Bronte’s lips became full, magnetic. Her body developed interesting curves. Time passed.

And the sense of oddness grew.

When he was small, Michael had felt miserably alone, believing himself to be the only one who knew that something was wrong, that the world was somehow concealing another kind of reality. There had even been times when, in desperation, he had tried to believe that he was mad or, at least, that his mind did not work properly and that all was well in an entirely normal world. But he could not retain belief in the notion that the wrongness lay with him. Because, for no explicable reason and without any evidence to justify his attitude, he knew somehow that the apparently real world was only a projection of reality, concealing, perhaps, a reality that he was not yet clever enough to discover or not strong enough to face.

But as the children grew older—the children who could bleed—Michael discovered that he was not the only one to doubt the normality of life, the reasonableness of existence. Ernest Rutherford, a thin, rather frail boy, became Michael’s closest friend. Ernest had an original mind, a great imagination. He could formulate possibilities and questions that seemed obvious when he talked about them; and Michael was continually amazed that he himself had not thought of such things independently.

It was Ernest who invented the generic term for all those children and adults who did not bleed. He called them drybones. It was Ernest also who defined the ones who did bleed as fragiles—because, he said, they could easily be broken. It was Ernest who wondered why all the known fragiles were roughly the same size and probably the same age (the drybones were very evasive about time) and why no one had ever met any very small ones or any very large ones. It was Ernest who first wondered why there was never more than one fragile in any family, who estimated that the proportion of drybones to fragiles was at least ten to one, and who even speculated that London itself might be a world of its own.

It was Ernest who gave Michael confidence in himself and in his reactions, who opened doors in his mind and drew out of Michael’s personality qualities of intelligence and leadership that, in the end, amazed everyone.

They visited each other’s homes and spent a great deal of time in each other’s company. They conducted a systematic campaign at high school for the privilege of learning how to read. Strangely, few of the other fragiles were very interested in learning how to read. Why should they be? There were films, radio and television. There were teachers and parents to answer questions, explain things. And, in the beginning, there were very few books. Which, to Michael and Ernest, made the need for reading seem more urgent. None of the drybones was interested in reading—and this made Michael want it all the more.

High school was a spacious building in King Charles the Third Street, just off the Strand. It housed ten teachers and just over a hundred pupils. The children learned how to paint, sculpt, design and make clothes; how to cook; how to sing, dance, act; how to play football, hockey, tennis, cricket; how to make toys, furniture, ornaments; how to weave; how to make polite conversation with persons of the opposite sex; how to accept the authority and wisdom of adults at all times.

There were no lessons in history, geography, science, mathematics. But sometimes, if one persisted, the teachers would give answers to questions—evasive answers, usually, that prompted more questions. It was easy for the teachers to discourage questions. The fragiles were sensitive; the drybones seemed to have a talent for ridicule. Stupid questions deserved stupid answers.

Michael got used to being an object of ridicule. The laughter did not hurt him. Not unless Emily Bronte laughed with the rest; and that was very rare.

Mr. Shakespeare was the head teacher. He looked very old. He had white hair. Even Ernest could not decide whether he was a fragile or a drybone. He looked, somehow, like an old fragile; but he behaved more like a drybone.

Michael and Ernest were amazed when they finally persuaded Mr. Shakespeare to let them learn how to read. Michael was now nearly as tall as Mr. Shakespeare. He was so excited when Mr. Shakespeare at last agreed to explain about the alphabet and show how letters could be put together to record words that he was tempted to pick the old man up and hug him.

Mr. Shakespeare started the reading program personally. Michael and Ernest were his only pupils. Michael and Ernest were the only fragiles for whom the prospect of reading had become obsessional. When he had identified the letters for them—ay, bee, see, dee, ee, eff, jee—and had given a few simple examples of word construction, Mr. Shakespeare gave each of them an illustrated reader and told them to go away and learn to read. Each was to report back to him when he could read the entire book.

Almost trembling with excitement, Michael and Ernest went away to begin their monumental task. It was left to them to discover that in certain situations one letter could symbolize different sounds and that in some positions some letters symbolized no sound at all, and that combinations of vowels and consonants produced sounds that could already be symbolized by other letters.

It was hard work, it was confusing, at times it was unreasonable. Michael and Ernest soon abandoned the search for a logical system in the construction and representation of words. But they persevered, discovering fragments of a system and learning to make use of those fragments.

The boys were allowed to take their first reading books home. Father thought that Michael’s time could be better spent. Mother was concerned that he should not work too hard. Neither offered to help him.

After tea one day, Michael took his first reading book into St. James’s Park. He and Emily often met in St. James’s Park—chiefly by “accident.” They liked to be together. He had not said anything about loving her for a long time—not, perhaps, since that day ages ago when he had held her hand and they had watched the air raid, and Michael had forgot to fly his kite.

It was a hot summer evening, with the sun still quite high in the sky. Not many people were in the park, but Emily was already there. She was sitting on the grass where they usually sat—the spot from where they had seen the zeppelin fly over London.

Emily was wearing a simple blue dress that buttoned all the way down the front. Recently, Michael had begun to pay considerable attention to the dresses that Emily wore.

“Hello, Emily.”

“Hello, Michael. You have a—a book!”

“My first reading book,” he said proudly. “Would you like to hear me read?”

“You can read already?”

“Some words,” he said. “Only little ones. But it won’t be long before I get on to the big ones.”

“I’m so happy for you,” said Emily. “You wanted to read as far back as I can remember…. Read me the words you know. Point to them so that I can see.”

Michael sat by her side and opened his book. “The cat sits on the mat.” He read slowly but did not stumble. “The cat is fat. He has a red hat. His fur is black. He likes the mat.”

“Wonderful! Wonderful!” Emily clapped her hands. “When you can really read—when you can read everything, Michael—will you teach me?”

He was surprised. “I didn’t know you wanted to read so much. Why didn’t you make a fuss about it at school, like Ernest and I did?”

“I was afraid,” said Emily. “I was afraid of the laughter. You and Ernest didn’t seem to mind.”

“Ernest and I are clowns,” said Michael bitterly. “We don’t mind being laughed at…. I wouldn’t want you to laugh at me, though.”

“I won’t ever laugh at you,” she said with intensity. “I promise.”

Then she lay back on the grass and flung her arms out, gazing at the sky. The sudden movement tore one of the buttons off her dress. Michael glimpsed an entrancing swell of smooth white flesh. A tightness came into his throat. He suddenly wanted to touch Emily. He wanted to touch her, to caress her, very badly.

“Why are people so strange?” said Emily. “Why do they want us to do some things and not do others? Why is there the difference—the difference that nobody wants to talk about?”

Michael hardly heard her. He could bear it no longer. He slipped a hand in the gap in Emily’s dress and let his fingers rest lightly on that deliriously soft flesh.

Emily stiffened and drew in her breath sharply. Then slowly she relaxed.

“I’m sorry, Emily,” he babbled. “I didn’t mean to do that. Shall I take it away? Shall I take my hand away? I wanted to touch you so much. It feels. It feels….” He didn’t know how to say how it felt because he was proud, ashamed, confused, excited and utterly surprised.

Emily remained silent for a moment or two. Michael dared to let his fingers press more heavily.

“I like your hand,” said Emily. Her voice sounded suddenly different. Quite different. “I like it there…. It’s—it’s exciting and very close…. Should we do this?”

“I don’t know. I want to do it. I want to hold tight. I want to leave my hand there forever.”

He held her breast, let his fingers play with the hard small nipple. Emily shivered and began to breathe more heavily.

“Michael,” she murmured, “Michael, read to me. Read to me again. I want something to think about. I can’t think! I can’t think!”

Michael did not take his hand away. He looked at the book and said unsteadily: “The cat sits on the mat. The cat is fat. He has a red hat. His fur is black. He likes the mat.”

Then he let the book go and turned to Emily, lying as close to her as he could, feeling the softness of her body, still holding her breast, looking at her face which had become the face of a stranger.

And then he kissed her, and it tasted sweet. And it didn’t matter that strange and terrible fevers were racking his body. And reading was forgotten, and drybones didn’t matter anymore, and London itself was a world that was very far away.

10

Michael and Ernest and Horatio and Emily and Jane formed the habit of meeting in the Coffeehouse in the Strand on Saturday mornings. They were friends, they trusted each other. They had a private joke. They called themselves the Family.

Several other fragiles used the Coffeehouse besides the Family. There were, for example, Charles Darwin and Dorothy Wordsworth—who seemed to have formed a neat little family of two—Joseph Lister, James Watt and Mary Kingsley. But while the Family liked these fragiles and remained friendly with them, it never entirely trusted them.

The Family, as Ernest frequently reminded everyone, was something special. It was composed of people (Ernest affected a note of cynicism when he used the word “people”) who trusted each other entirely and would not knowingly betray any secrets.

Many drybones also frequented the Coffeehouse. For his own amusement, Horatio Nelson publicly affected to be a great liker of drybones—or not to notice the difference. He liked to cultivate the girls. Sometimes he would get them to go walking in the park with him; and then he would fondle them and kiss them. And he assured the Family that none of them had ever displayed any adverse reaction or showed any sign of pain when he bit their lips or pinched their breasts.

The drybones who came to the Coffeehouse were mostly people from high school or known adults. But occasionally there were one or two strangers.

One such stranger attempted to gain the confidence of the Family. He was the first drybone who genuinely seemed to want to communicate. Because of that, Michael was doubly suspicious.

The drybone had yellow hair and he was taller than any of the boys in the Family. He took his cup of coffee and came to their table.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” he asked with a smile.

“It’s a free country,” said Horatio coldly.

“At least,” amended Ernest, “so we have been told.”

Michael was sitting next to Emily. The drybone sat on the bench on her other side. Instantly, Michael hated him.

“My name is Aldous Huxley. I’m from North London High School.”

The Family looked at each other in surprise.

“We didn’t know there was a North London High School,” said Jane. “We—we thought ours was the only school in London.”

“Ah,” said Aldous Huxley, looking round as if to make sure he would not be overheard, “until recently we were in the same position. We did not know about Central London High School.”

Ernest studied him intently. “Do you have any people like us?” he asked, placing a slight emphasis on “us.”

“Yes.” Aldous Huxley leaned forward and spoke softly. “Have you noticed that nobody ever wants to talk about—about the difference? They treat us like children. I don’t want to be treated like a child. I want to know what it is all about. Don’t you want to know what it is all about?” He gazed at each of them in turn.

Michael and Ernest looked at each other. Suddenly, Michael sensed danger. “We are not worried,” he said easily. “We have good teachers. They will explain all we need to know when we are ready to understand.”

“But don’t you ever feel that there must be some kind of conspiracy?” said Aldous. “Don’t you feel that information is being deliberately kept from you—by your parents, as well?”

“But that’s exactly—” began Emily. Michael stopped her, pressing his leg hard against hers.

“—What we don’t feel,” he went on quickly. “There are lots of things that puzzle us. There are things we simply can’t understand. But we have confidence in our parents. If there are things they don’t want to tell us yet, there must be good reasons.”

Horatio gazed at him in astonishment, but Ernest picked up Michael’s line of thought without any hesitation. “We are not dissatisfied or unhappy,” he said. “We enjoy life. Do you people in North London have problems?”

Oddly, Aldous Huxley seemed puzzled for a moment or two, as if the conversation were developing in a way he had not expected. Then he recovered himself. “Take the question of reading. We find that they try to discourage us. Doesn’t that seem peculiar?”

“Not really,” parried Ernest. “Reading is not all that important. We can get all the information we really need from teachers, parents, television, radio, films…. Do you know what I think? I think you people in North London must worry too much. The main thing is to enjoy life.”

“What about the difference, then? Why don’t they explain clearly about the difference?”

“There are two possibilities,” said Michael. “One is that it is not important and the other is that it may be too difficult for us to understand yet…. I’m sorry, but my friends and I have to go now. It has been an interesting talk.”

“Why don’t we meet again—say next Saturday?” suggested Aldous. “I could bring some friends.”

“That would be splendid, but most of us are rather busy these days. Nice to have met you.”

They left Aldous Huxley drinking his coffee, and looking oddly as if he did not know what to do.

When they were outside the Coffeehouse, Emily said: “I can’t understand what’s happening. That is the first one who has really tried to talk to us, and you—”

“Not now,” said Michael softly. “Not now. Let’s go to Green Park. We’ll talk there.”

It was a warm bright morning, but there were not many people in Green Park. The Family found a patch of grass that was secluded enough for their purposes and sat down. They looked expectantly at Michael.

“Now listen to what I am going to say,” he began, “and then you can tell me I’m crazy. Emily was quite right. Aldous Huxley is the first one who tried to talk to us, and that is why I was afraid. He said he came from North London High School, of which we have never heard. It probably exists. If so, we’ll find it. But there is one absolutely basic principle for the survival of the Family. We must not let any drybone, however interesting he seems, get any useful information from us at all.”

“Hear, hear,” said Ernest. “Michael is dead right. We are children, we are babes in arms. They have all the power.”

“A drybone is a drybone is a drybone,” added Horatio with a grin. He turned to Jane. “If I bit your lip, Jane, you’d cry. If I pinched your breast you’d scream. If I hit you, you’d fall down. Not them. As we all know, they go on forever.”

Emily said helplessly, “We can’t stay in isolation. We can’t spend our lives like this.”

“We can, we must, we will,” retorted Michael fiercely. “Or until we know exactly what it is all about. We five are close. In a way we love each other. I suppose that is why we think of ourselves as the Family. But we are more than a family. We have to be. We are a sort of fighting unit—not in the sense of making war, but in the sense of being determined to discover the truth. The truth may be crazy—or it may drive us crazy. But we have to find the kind of truth that satisfies us, not the kind that could so easily be supplied by them. We can not let them find out what we are really like until we have found out what they are really like. We can accept no risks. Anything from a drybone at all, any act of friendship, should be suspect.”

“Do you hate them?” asked Jane. “Or are you afraid?”

“Afraid,” confessed Michael, “not so much of what they will do to us as of what we may be to them.”

Ernest gave a twisted smile. “We may be their pets—like rabbits. Or they might be part of some elaborate system designed by someone or something simply to look after us. I don’t believe anything I’m told, anymore—the war, the outside world, anything. I don’t disbelieve it either. But I am only ever going to believe what I—or we—personally can prove.”

“Ernest has hit it,” said Michael. “They may treat us as children, they may conceal as much as they wish. But we know that we are children no longer. The games, the amusements, the diversions don’t satisfy. We need something more. We need the truth. We need to stop being bewildered and absorbed in our own nightmares. We need to plan a campaign of investigation—a campaign to which we are all dedicated and which they do not suspect…. I only wish we had someone to guide us.”

He stopped and looked at his companions. They were all looking steadily at him.

Ernest said: “We have someone to guide us, Michael. I’m afraid that is your job…. I have some intelligence, but I am not too strong on courage, I think.” He grinned. “With Horatio, it seems to be the reverse. As for Jane and Emily—well, isn’t the responsibility too much? So that leaves you.”

Michael looked at the Family, and said nothing. Because there was nothing to say. Somebody had to do it. Somebody had to make the mistakes and know it was his fault when things went wrong. But now, he realized, he was five times more afraid than before. And that, too, was something he would have to keep to himself.

Emily touched his hand, and was surprised to find it very cold.

11

The Family was now psychologically committed. Until that Saturday morning in Green Park, it had been no more than a group of friends, drawn to each other by loneliness, fear, frustration, lack of hard facts, and the acute awareness of their common physical difference from the drybones. But now the Family was in the process of becoming an underground movement, an escape committee dedicated to escaping from the labyrinthine ignorance in which the drybones seemed to wish to keep all fragiles.

Their overt behavior was as it had previously been, as was expected of them. They went to high school and endured the normal routine of creative and leisure activities. They participated in normal domestic activities with their mothers and fathers. They developed hobbies, went to the cinema, met socially, watched television, played healthy games, and did their best to conform as much as possible. But secretly they began to list in order of priority questions to be answered, problems to be solved, projects to be undertaken.

Michael and Ernest continued to learn to read, but they progressed far faster than they allowed Mr. Shakespeare to suspect At the same time, and secretly, they began to teach Horatio and Jane and Emily—who, in public, still showed no interest in reading at all. From reading, the art of writing followed naturally. Michael and Ernest were soon able to copy the shapes of letters quickly. Thus they were able to preserve and communicate their ideas and to increase their skills so that they would be ready for the time when they could get hold of real books containing real information—if, indeed, such existed.

Mr. Shakespeare restricted them to a diet of easy-reading books containing only children’s stories. Perhaps, thought Michael, he hoped to discourage them, to bore them, so that in the end they would think that reading had nothing to offer.

Drybone or fragile—they were still not sure which—Mr. Shakespeare was an enigmatic person. Most days he seemed to exhibit a completely drybone personality. But just occasionally, he revealed something more. While apparently discouraging them from reading, he also held out the possibility—as usual, when they were ready for it—that one day Michael and Ernest might be allowed to visit the library. He would not tell them where the library was, and Michael and Ernest searched the streets of central London in vain, but he said enough to convince them of its existence.

The Family took to meeting very regularly to consider the tasks it had set itself and to work out what Michael was fond of calling the strategy of investigation. Such meetings were not kept secret from fathers and mothers or other drybones. They were merely disguised as social activities of one kind or another. For all practical purposes, the Family was simply a group of adolescents indulging in the accepted rituals and sudden enthusiasms of adolescents.

The list of questions to be answered became formidable. Why did fragiles have drybone parents? Why (Mr. Shakespeare possibly excepted) were there no adult fragiles? How were fragiles made? How were drybones made? How big was London? Was it possible to leave the city? Was there really another high school containing fragiles as well as drybones? Did the library exist? Was there really a world outside London in which other, similar cities existed and in which wars were being fought? Had the Americans, if they existed, landed on Mars, if it existed? What was real and what was unreal? Who was mad and who was sane?

All taboo questions—questions that the drybones would dismiss, laugh away as absurd or counter with “You are not yet old enough or intelligent enough to understand.” But, as Ernest claimed, if anyone really wanted to understand he must be intelligent enough to understand at least some of the truth.

“All our lives,” said Michael, late one evening when the Family had gathered on the lamplit Embankment, “they have tried to keep us under a kind of intellectual sedation. They have done their best to educate us against initiative, against exploration. Which makes it especially difficult, because not only do we have to fight against the drybones’ conspiracy, we have to fight against ourselves—against the fears they have planted, against the urge to play safe and stay secure.” He looked at Emily. “We may even have to fight against personal feelings and emotions if they weaken our determination to discover what it is all about.”

“Talk, talk, talk,” said Horatio, disgustedly. “Why don’t we do something? Why don’t we get something going? It will make us feel a lot better.”

“Providing it is not dangerous,” added Jane. “I mean really dangerous.”

“How do we know what is dangerous?” asked Ernest. “Speaking for myself, ignorance is dangerous to my sanity. I know that.”

“Horatio is right,” said Michael. “The time has come to do something. There’s one thing I’m sure of—it won’t be long before the drybones discover that we’re not just playing at being ordinary young people anymore. It will be interesting to see what they do.”

“It is more interesting,” observed Horatio, “to concentrate on what we are going to do.”

Michael grinned. “Horatio, you will live to regret this zest for action—while you are counting your blisters.” He turned to the rest. “First, we are going to do what we should have been able to do a long time ago. We are going to find out about London…. It has struck me as very odd that we are still not allowed to have bicycles. Why aren’t we? The answer sticks out, doesn’t it? They want to keep us confined to a small area of the city. In fact, when you come to think of it, all the activities they organize for us, all the excursions we are allowed to make never seem to get us very far from the center of the city.

“We could steal bicycles, but that is asking for trouble—an open declaration of war. So we shall just have to do our exploration the hard way, on foot and as inconspicuously as possible. Next Saturday, Emily and I are going to have a picnic. Except that it won’t be a picnic. We are going to walk downstream, following the Thames as far as we can before we have to turn back. The Thames is supposed to flow into the sea. Perhaps we shall reach the sea. I don’t know, because we don’t have any hard facts even about simple things like distances. Perhaps we shall come up against the force field or be turned back by something else. But at least we will find out something—even if it is only that we can’t discover much in a day’s journey.”

“What about us?” asked Horatio.

“You have the harder task. I want the three of you to combine your efforts on two projects: one, you are to systematically look for a library—I assume there would be some sign to indicate such a building—and, two, you are to make a drawing of the pattern of the main streets. When you have covered central London, you spread out…. You have heard about maps, haven’t you? Proportional drawings of places. I remember seeing one or two in films and on television. Well, eventually, we shall wind up with a map of London.”

“If the drybones don’t manage to wreck the project first,” said Jane.

Ernest sighed. “I wish we had a compass. I’ve seen those in films, too. You know, the drybones must be stupid, otherwise they would not let us learn about things like books, maps, compasses and all the other things they don’t want us to have.”

Michael was silent for a moment or two. Then he said: “On the other hand, it could be that they want us to know about the things they won’t let us have. Maybe they want us to realize how much we are being denied.”

Emily shivered. “It’s cold, now, and it’s late. We’d better go home. There will be questions.”

Horatio laughed bitterly. “There always are. Their questions, not ours. If I could kill Father and Mother and get away with it, I really would.”

Nobody was surprised at the intensity in his voice. Nobody was shocked at the thought he expressed.

12

Michael and Emily did not dare to start their picnic too early. It might have aroused suspicion. Michael was pessimistically sure that their exploration projects would be discovered sooner or later—but later, he hoped, rather than sooner.

Emily lived in a small house in Victoria Street. He called for her quite late in the morning. Mr. Bronte looked younger and less severe than Michael’s father. Mrs. Bronte had a slightly more attractive face than his mother, but otherwise she looked pretty much the same and dressed pretty much the same. The Garbo look had become fashionable with some of the older drybones. Mrs. Bronte had her hair done like Greta Garbo’s in Queen Christina.

Emily wore a white dress and a wide-brimmed straw hat She looked, thought Michael, delicious. One day he would live with Emily Bronte in a home of their own, far away from all the drybones, far away from all the nightmares, far away from London. One day…

Mrs. Bronte had the picnic basket ready. She asked Michael where he wanted to take Emily. He said Hampstead Heath. Hampstead Heath was far enough away to make the picnic seem like a special jaunt, but not too far away to excite suspicion.

Mr. Bronte took Michael on one side and said that Emily was a fine girl and that he wouldn’t want any harm to come to her, and that he was sure Michael was man enough to control himself. Michael was embarrassed and said that he would never do anything to hurt or upset Emily and that he liked her very much indeed and would do his best to protect her from all harm.

It was just like in the films. Mr. Bronte seemed to want it that way.

They did not manage to get away from Emily’s house much before lunchtime. They were already hungry by the time they had reached the Embankment. Michael was carrying the picnic basket. He took out a couple of apples for him and Emily to eat as they walked.

They walked past Westminster Bridge, Waterloo Bridge, Blackfriars Bridge, Tower Bridge. There was a short air raid while they were between Blackfriars Bridge and Tower Bridge. No zeppelins this time, only biplanes and triplanes. It seemed more like a kind of circus act than aerial combat. The action seemed to take place directly over the Tower of London. As usual, the wrecked planes fell into nothingness—swallowed, apparently by the invisible force field.

Michael had never before been farther than the Tower of London. As they passed into unknown territory his excitement grew. Presently, they were tired and needed to rest a little. They sat on a low Wall and ate some of the sandwiches and drank some milk. They were in an area of docks, of large blank buildings and cranes and quaysides. But there were no ships. Michael’s father had once said that while the war was on, ships no longer unloaded in the port of London. Michael had wondered why. Perhaps it was not possible to lift the force field to let the ships through. But, in that case, how did supplies reach London? He sighed. Mysteries, mysteries…

It was a gray day, but the air was warm. Michael suddenly realized that there were no people about, none at all. That was pleasant and unusual. Usually, there were at least one or two people about. Their absence gave a delicious sense of freedom. And then he realized that they had met no one since they had passed the Tower of London. Curious!

Emily, apparently, had the same thoughts. “Isn’t it wonderful, being entirely alone for once? I wonder where everybody is?”

“I don’t suppose we can expect people to live in this kind of area,” suggested Michael. “Besides, I don’t think ships come this far up the river anymore. So there isn’t any work to be done…. Are you very tired?”

“Not tired at all, now,” said Emily bravely. “We have work to do, haven’t we? We ought to be moving on. It won’t be long before we have to turn back, otherwise we shall be very late, and there will be trouble. We are not doing very well, so far, are we? No great revelations, no mysteries solved.”

“We are new to the discovering business,” said Michael lightly. “It would be unreasonable to expect too much from our first attempt. Come on, love. Let’s just do the best we can.”

“You called me love,” said Emily. “That’s nice. That’s very nice.”

“You are my love,” said Michael, surprised at his own lack of shyness. “The cat sits on the mat—remember?”

“The cat sits on the mat,” repeated Emily. She smiled. “The most beautiful words in the world…. I wish the cat could sit on the mat again, Michael.”

“My love, it will. But not here, not now.” Rested a little and refreshed, they began to walk once more. There was urgency in Michael’s step. He badly wanted the expedition to be worthwhile. It would be depressing if this first project revealed nothing. Every now and then, he had to consciously slow down, realizing that the pace he set was too fast for Emily.

At times they had to leave the river, but always they managed to get back to it. Now they were past the docks and suddenly in open country. Nothing but grass and trees and hedges and birds. In theory the Thames should have been widening; but it did not look very wide. It looked, somehow, insignificant.

Still no people. No people. Absolutely no people. Michael began to feel excited, not knowing why. The gray sky was darkening perceptibly.

Emily said: “Michael, we ought to turn back.”

He squeezed her hand. “Just a little longer. There has to be something.”

Presently, Emily said firmly: “I’m sorry, dear. I need to rest. Then we must turn back. If we are too late, they may not let us go off alone anymore.”

“How would they stop us?” he demanded savagely. “All right, Emily. You stay here and rest. I’ll go on a bit, then I’ll turn back. We’ll both turn back.” Now he felt tired and empty and frustrated.

Emily sat down thankfully on a grassy bank. She lay back and let out a great sigh. Michael left the picnic basket with her. Then he forged ahead, almost running in his desperation to find something of value. The river swung in a broad turn. It took him a long time to get round the bend, longer than he would have thought. But what he discovered, standing on a small rise, justified all the effort.

The Thames had turned back upon itself. There, in the distance, was the city skyline. The Thames was not flowing down to the sea. It was flowing back to London.

The implications hit him with an almost physical impact. He was no longer depressed. He forgot his fatigue.

Excitement tingled through his limbs. He began to laugh hysterically, and had to make an effort to stop. All he had found was another mystery, but at least he had found something.

He rushed back to Emily, falling down twice in his eagerness to reach her and tell her the news. At first, she simply refused to believe it.

“But it can’t, Michael. It can’t…. It just can’t go back to London.”

“Emily it does—and we are going on to prove it.”

“Oh, Michael. It’s silly, but—but I’m terribly afraid. I’m afraid that something dreadful will happen.”

He lifted her up and kissed her gently without passion, almost oblivious of the soft breasts that pressed against him.

“Nothing dreadful will happen, I promise. We go on. We must go on. I promise we will not be home too late.”

It was dark long before they got home. But not too dark for Michael to discover, triumphantly, the secret of the Thames. Emily was exhausted, but bravely she somehow managed to keep on going. It was dusk by the time they came to Richmond Bridge, darker by the time they passed Kew Bridge. The moon was high when they reached Chelsea Bridge. The next bridge would be Westminster. Back full circle! There was no need to follow the Thames any farther. It was not a river. It was just a great, uneven ring of flowing water.

From Chelsea Bridge to the Bronte house in Victoria Street was not far; but to Emily it seemed an endless distance. Michael felt sorry for her and guilty at having made her walk so far; but the guilt was submerged in a heady sense of elation.

When they reached Victoria Street he made Emily rest a little before he took her home. They both realized it was important for her not to arrive back in a distressed condition.

Michael cooked up a cover story; and when they reached the Bronte house, Emily—with a tremendous effort—walked as if she felt quite fresh and had enjoyed a pleasant picnic. Michael hobbled, wincing with pain.

He apologized to Mr. and Mrs. Bronte for not returning Emily earlier; but he had had the bad luck to sprain his ankle on Hampstead Heath, and he had needed to take several rests on the way back.

Mr. Bronte lectured him on being careless and on his duty to ensure that Emily came home at a reasonable time. He hoped that Michael would be more careful in future, otherwise it might not be possible for him to take out Emily alone. Michael assured Mr. Bronte that he really was very sorry and that he would be much more careful in future. Mrs. Bronte wanted to bathe his ankle; but Michael thanked her and assured her that he would prefer to wait till he got home.

Emily walked down the garden path with him. She kissed him very quickly and said: “I love you.” Then she went back into the house and closed the door.

Michael gazed up at the stars, high over a river that was not a real river. High, perhaps, over a world that was not a real world.

He was too tired to think clearly; but he knew that something very important had been achieved.

13

“So we are contained,” said Ernest grimly. “The Thames is not a river flowing to the sea, and what we call London is surrounded by a vast moat. There is no truth but untruth. There is no reason but unreason.”

Ernest and Michael were standing on Waterloo Bridge. The afternoon session of school had ended. Shortly they would separate and go home for tea.

“All these bridges,” said Michael. “The roads have to go somewhere.”

“Do they?” Ernest was bitter. “I doubt it. Something tells me that our little world is full of subtle circles…. Sometimes I feel that we must be like animals in a zoo or—or tender plants that have, to be raised in a greenhouse.”

Suddenly, Michael remembered fragments of the dream he had had long ago—long before he had begun to shave, long before he had discovered the sweet excitement lurking in Emily’s rounded body. Long ago in a world of nightmare innocence.

He told Ernest all that he could remember of the dream. Then, for a minute or two, neither of them said anything. At last, Ernest broke the silence.

“A greenhouse,” he said. “A greenhouse…. Let us suppose the absurd. Let us suppose that the drybones can control our dreams in some way, perhaps even some of our waking thoughts…. Your nightmare could have been manufactured. It could have been used as—as a kind of preparation.” He shrugged. “Just a crazy notion to fit a crazy situation.”

“It doesn’t matter that it’s crazy,” said Michael. Then he added strangely: “What does matter is that it is not—not elegant. I mean, it doesn’t feel right. It feels… It feels… Oh, I don’t know what I mean.”

Ernest grinned. “I like your use of words. Not elegant. I must remember that. I know what you mean, though. You reject the idea because it is untidy. But the greenhouse idea—that is an elegant possibility. Outside what we call London, the climate is too cold; the winds are too fierce; the animals are too dangerous for poor creatures such as we. Right?”

“Something like that,” admitted Michael. “We are prisoners, but protected prisoners.”

“Perverse, protected prisoners,” corrected Ernest. “We reject protection. Such is our madness that we wish to escape into danger—if danger is the price of freedom…. Or truth.”

Michael stared down over the side of the bridge at the water. “How long did it take you to find the library?” he asked.

“About two hours, not more. I was too busy trying to make a map to pay much attention to time. It is in an odd little place called Apollo Twelve Square, about twenty minutes away from Piccadilly Circus. I’m sure I have seen Apollo Twelve Square before. I used to go walking by myself quite a lot before we joined the Family. But I didn’t notice it.”

“Perhaps because you couldn’t read the words,” ventured Michael.

“Perhaps. I ought to have noticed it, though. It is the most shabby building in the square. It’s all boarded up, and it looks as if it has not been used for a thousand years.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Why should it be used? Nobody needs to read. Nobody wants to read.”

“Except us.”

“Except us. And we are crazy.”

Michael was still staring at the water. “In the country of the mad,” he murmured, “the sane man is crazy.”

“What did you say?” There was an urgency in Ernest’s voice.

“Oh, nothing much. I’m sorry. I was just thinking and talking to myself. I’m sorry, Ernest.”

“What did you say?”

Michael looked at him in surprise. “In the country of the mad, the sane man is crazy…. You said that we were crazy and—”

“You’ve got it!” Ernest was almost dancing with excitement. “You have defined the predicament. You have stated our philosophy.”

“Now, who’s drunk on words? The drybones don’t use words like that. You only get them from flat people on a screen. People you can’t talk to. So how do you know what the words mean?”

“Because I do know. Because I collect words. I compare them, I define them. They are precious tools. You need words to think…. What about all the thoughts you couldn’t have until you found words to fit them?”

Michael laughed at his intensity. “All right, Ernest. Calm down. So the world is mad and we are crazy because we are sane. It gets us no further. Let us keep to the facts. You are sure the words were ‘London Library’?”

“Absolutely sure. I copied them down. I didn’t know how to spell ‘library’ before. But now I’ll know until I die.”

“And you are sure that you were followed?”

“No, I’m not. But Horatio is. I was too busy with the map. Horatio is positive we were followed. He says that one drybone stayed with us for about six streets, then another took over, and then another.”

“Did Jane notice anything?”

“She thinks we might have been followed, but she is not sure. Horatio said the drybone was always about a hundred paces behind us. He made Jane take a rest and stay behind a bit until one of them passed. Then she followed the drybone. But Horatio says that when we turned into another street the drybone disappeared and another took over. Jane did not see the switch.”

“Just assuming you were being followed, what made Horatio think they were drybones and not fragiles?”

Ernest smiled faintly. “As you know, drybones are Horatio’s special study. I can’t tell them at a distance, but Horatio seems to be able to, even when he can’t see their hair. I don’t know how he does it, but I have seen him identify drybones and fragiles correctly in a group quite far away.”

“We had better assume the worst, then. You were followed, and at least one drybone knows that you found the library—if it is a library.”

“Were you and Emily followed?”

“I don’t think so. No. I’m sure we weren’t. We were really alone, especially in the open country…. I wonder if the drybones thought you were being systematically curious or just idly curious.”

Ernest thought for a moment or two. “They must have known that I was drawing a map.”

“You could have been sketching interesting pieces of architecture.”

“I don’t think they would fall for that.”

“I don’t either. But they might. Still, if we spend our time worrying too much about what the drybones know or suspect, we’ll never get anything done. We must just proceed as if all is well until somebody stops us.”

“Or takes us into protective custody,” added Ernest. “Just like the Gestapo.”

Michael stared down at the water once more. “It isn’t a river but it flows.” Suddenly he laughed. “I like that. I like it very much. Splendid attention to detail…. Well, I suppose it is time we went home and behaved normally—in the faint hope that we are deceiving somebody.”

“What is the next project?” asked Ernest.

“You found London Library, but we don’t know if it contains any books. So, Ernest, we will just have to see.”

“So soon? The drybones will expect us to go back.”

“Also part of the project,” said Michael grimly. “A test case, if you like. I expect the drybones will expect us to go back.”

14

It was late evening. Mother and Father and Michael had just returned from the cinema. They had been to see Gone with the Wind. Mother had made hot milk drinks. Michael was sipping his slowly.

“You must get to bed soon, Michael,” said Father. “It has been a long evening. Then you will be fresh for school tomorrow. Did you enjoy the film?”

“Yes, Father. It was very good…. Was there really a war between the North and South in America?”

“I just love Vivien Leigh,” said Mother. “She is such a great actress. Mind you, she had a perfect match in Clark Gable. What a handsome pair they were.”

“Was there really a civil war?” persisted Michael.

Father took a drink of milk, although Michael still found his far too hot. Mother and Father never seemed to notice when food or liquids were too hot to eat or drink.

“Well, now, that is an interesting point,” said Father. “Of course, you have to remember that films are only dramatic entertainment. They are concerned with emotions rather than facts. Every nation has had a civil war at some time, I suppose. Probably the Americans did.”

“But you don’t know.”

“Son, you must realize it is not possible to keep in mind everything that has happened. The important thing is to remember important things—things that matter in your own personal life.”

Michael sighed. That was the way it always went, either by a long or a short route. Suddenly he decided to try a surprise attack.

“Does the Thames flow down to the sea?”

“What a question! Michael, I think you are tired. It is time for bed. You ought to know that rivers flow to the sea.”

“That wasn’t what I asked. Does the Thames flow to the sea?”

“Now you are being difficult. I have just told you that rivers flow to the sea.” There was a note of irritation in Father’s voice. Michael recognized it. Always the same note of irritation—a few minutes before conversational cutoff, a display of anger, or a display of contempt.

But Michael went on.

“Is the Thames a river?”

“Dear boy!” The exasperation mounting. “I sometimes despair. You know what the Thames is as well as I do. Sometimes I think you try to annoy me intentionally with silly questions. Come on, it is time for bed. Let us not have a bad end to a pleasant evening.” Father finished his milk and stood up.

So it always went. So it always would go. Unless somebody did something about it.

“I have another silly question,” said Michael shrilly. “How was I made?”

Mother said: “Michael, it is very late. Let us go to bed, and leave these questions till tomorrow, when we are fresh.”

Michael glared at her. “The standard response. Wait till tomorrow. Wait till you are old enough to understand. Wait! Wait! Wait! I have done a long stint of waiting. All my life so far. I’m half out of my mind with waiting. Perhaps that is what you want.”

Father was stern. “I will not have you speaking to Mother like that. Apologize at once, boy!”

“What will you do if I don’t—beat me? I’m a bit big for that, but drybones are stronger than fragiles, so I suppose you could do it.”

Father seemed surprised. Oddly, there was less anger in his voice. “What is all this nonsense about drybones and fragiles?”

Michael knew he was being reckless, but he didn’t care anymore. The years of deceit, the years of frustration and ignorance had built up a great pressure inside him. He had to reduce the pressure somehow. He took a deep breath.

“You are a drybone, I am a fragile. Silly definitions, perhaps, but we had to find some way of describing the difference. You people have kept us in ignorance as far back as I can remember. It looks to me as if you intend to keep us ignorant and dependent forever. But that is something I will not stand. You can do what you like, but you cannot make me accept a condition of ignorance.” He paused, trying to discern some expression in their faces, but there was only a curious blankness.

“I know you drybones are superior to us fragiles,” he went on desperately. “We bleed, you don’t. We can be hurt easily, you can’t. We get tired, you have inexhaustible energy. We feel pain, you don’t. There are so many differences. And yet you say you are my father and mother. So I say to you: How was I made?”

Mother sighed. “Michael, you make things so difficult. Be a good boy, and wait until morning.”

“How was I made? How was I made? How was I made?” Michael did not know that he was shouting.

Father sat down once more. “Well, boy, it sounds as if you are determined.” The anger had drained from his voice. “I like determination in a man. It shows he has character…. I’ll speak plainly. You think we have been misleading you. Has it occurred to you that we may have been shielding you, protecting you?”

“Yes, it has occurred to us that you may be protecting us,” said Michael wearily. “But if so, it is like—like mental suffocation.”

“You want to know how you were made. I’ll tell you. You were grown from a tiny speck of life—call it an egg…. Michael, can you remember back to when you were very small?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Do you think you could have looked after yourself then?”

“No, Father.”

“That is what we are for—we drybones, as you call us. We were designed to look after you, Michael. We were designed to rear you to maturity. We, as you know, are different. We are designed and manufactured, we are not grown. It is not necessary for us to feel pain or bleed. It is only necessary for you…. You know the Overman legend, Michael. Personally, I don’t believe it. But ask yourself if any of it could be true…. Now, I have answered your question. Let us go to bed.”

“Yes, Father.” Michael felt empty, exhausted. He had made a kind of challenge, and he did not know whether it had been accepted or dismissed.

Mother smiled. “Well, the film was pleasant, anyway. Although I must say I was a bit saddened by all that destruction…. Michael, I do wish you would not see quite so much of that Ernest Rutherford. I’m not sure he is a good influence.”

Michael was too tired to argue. Too tired for anything, even rational thought. He went to bed feeling that at least he had learned something. He woke up in the morning realizing he had learned nothing.

15

The Family set out to visit London Library on a Saturday morning. None of them had told parents where they were going; but they made no attempt to conceal their movements. Ernest’s map had been copied, and Horatio suggested that each of the Family should go to the library by a different route and that if anyone was being followed, he or she should either shake off the follower or return home. But Michael overruled the idea, preferring that the Family should stay together. He had become more interested in discovering if the drybones would attempt to frustrate the investigation than in maintaining its secrecy.

However, a compromise plan was agreed. Michael and Emily and Ernest and Jane would make their way to the library together. Horatio would follow at some distance in an attempt to find out if the group itself was being followed.

Saturday was a gray day with promise of rain. The girls carried plastic raincoats, and the boys had their waterproof jackets. Jane and Emily had brought some sandwiches, and Ernest had a bag of apples. Michael had borrowed his father’s electric torch; and Horatio, for reasons best known to himself, carried a short, thick iron bar.

The promise of rain was fulfilled long before they reached the library. The sky darkened, the air became humid and there were distant sounds of thunder. Presently, the thunder came nearer, lightning was visible almost overhead and the rain came down torrentially. Warm rain, whipped a little by a warm wind, penetrating the openings in raincoats and jackets, and drenching everyone.

By the time the group reached the library, they felt soaked to the skin. They sheltered in the doorway, waiting a short time for Horatio.

“Did you see anyone following?” asked Michael.

Horatio shook his head. “I thought so at first, between Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus. A female drybone—if one may use the term ‘female’ carelessly. She—it looked like Edith Evans, but I couldn’t be sure. Anyway, she evidently wasn’t following because nobody took over when she disappeared from the scene.”

“Do you think anyone followed you?”

Horatio grinned. “No, I made quite sure of that.”

London Library looked exactly as it had looked when Ernest discovered it—boarded up, unused. Shabby, old, unimportant. Michael’s spirits sank. He began to think it was all part of a bad joke, a drybone kind of joke. He began to think that the books must have been taken away a long time ago.

“I don’t suppose it would be much use ringing the bell,” said Horatio. “We will have to break in.”

“But we should ring the bell first,” said Jane, “in case…” She stopped.

“In case the place is crawling with people,” suggested Horatio sarcastically.

“There is one way to find out,” said Michael. He pressed the button. Everyone heard the electric bell clearly. Somehow, London Library sounded very empty.

The lightning had stopped, but the rain was still coming down very heavily. No one seemed to be about in Apollo Twelve Square. Indeed, to Michael it looked as if all the houses were as desolate and as deserted as London Library.

Horatio began to attack the boards across the doorway with his iron bar. They had only been nailed loosely and could be prized away quite easily. The door behind them did not have to be forced. It was not locked. Ernest turned the handle and opened it. The Family went in.

On the wall immediately inside the building were two switches, presumably electric light switches. Michael pressed them but nothing happened. The only light available was drab-gray light filtered through grimy windows. But it was enough to reveal that Michael’s pessimism was unjustified.

Inside, the library looked larger than it did from the outside. There were shelves round the walls. Most of the shelves were empty; but some of them supported untidy stacks of books.

Hundreds of books, perhaps thousands. All in careless heaps. Michael surveyed them openmouthed. He felt like the prospectors he had seen in a film when they discovered a legendary goldmine.

Wind caused the library door to slam, and everyone Jumped. Horatio broke the tension with laughter. “Now you are all in my power,” he cackled evilly. “Soon you will submit to the dreaded will of my vampire bride.”

“Books,” breathed Ernest. “Books, books, books!”

He went to the nearest pile and picked one up. Dust fell from its dark, hard cover. He saw some words printed in gold on its spine, and tried to read them in the almost nocturnal gloom.

“Ut-o-pie-ay, by Sir Thomas—Sir Thomas More…. Wonderful! Wonderful! I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what it is, but I’ll find out…. It will take time, so much time, and I’ll either die or go mad before I have finished. But I want to read every book that is here.”

Michael picked up a book. He found the title easy to read: “Das Kapital von Karl Marx.” He opened it, but found the words inside incomprehensible. “This one isn’t our language. It’s another language—I wonder what it is.”

Horatio was not greatly interested in books. He watched, feeling faintly superior as Jane and Emily went from shelf to shelf, fingering the books almost as if they might explode, sometimes bringing one to Ernest or Michael to have the title read.

Jane found a pile of several books, all of which constituted The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. Emily came across The Story of Mankind by Hendrik van Loon. Michael put Das Kapital down and wandered to another shelf, where he picked up The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler. Ernest was trying to read some of Utopia, but he found it hard going and had to rest.

“I’m hungry,” announced Horatio. “While you clever people are having fun, I would like to eat something.”

“It is time we all ate,” said Jane. “We can still look at the books while we are eating…. It really is wonderful—I mean finding the library and all these books. I do wish I could read properly. Ernest, you are going to have to help me a lot.”

There was a look of almost comical sadness on Ernest’s face. “Help you!” he said wistfully. “Dear Jane, I’ll have all the trouble in the world, just helping myself.”

Emily shared out the sandwiches and apples. The light was getting poorer, and it was hard to read even the large print on the title pages and book covers. Michael began to use his electric torch.

“Don’t flash that thing about too much,” said Horatio. “It will be visible from outside. No need to advertise our presence too much to any inquisitive drybones.”

“I know what I’m going to do,” said Ernest excitedly. “I am going to make a little collection of books that I think I can read, then I’ll take them home. When I have finished them, I can bring them back and get some more.”

“Do you think that is wise?” asked Emily.

“Why not? Nobody comes here. That is obvious. Nobody wants the books, except us.”

“Have you got a safe place where you can hide them?” asked Michael.

“No, but I’ll find one. It won’t be difficult.” He munched an apple and strained to make some sense out of Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson.

Michael walked across the floor of the library, his footsteps echoing on the wooden blocks. For no apparent reason, he suddenly remembered something he had said to Ernest on Waterloo Bridge. In the country of the mad, the sane man is crazy.

He looked around the large and darkened room at the piles of dusty books that seemed as if they had been placed on the shelves in a hurry and just left there to rot. He looked at his four friends, eating sandwiches and apples, surrounded by millions of recorded words that could only be deciphered with great difficulty. He thought of the river that was not a river and of parents who were entirely different from their so-called children…. Truly, it was the country of the mad. But the important question was: Who could define sanity? And if, indeed, anyone could remain sane in such an incomprehensible world, how long could they remain so?

His head ached with thinking and with trying to read. He was tired of mystery and conflict and the odd isolation of the fragiles, the loneliness that drove them to try to be brothers and sisters and teachers and even parents to each other. He was tired of being responsible for the Family. And he was tired of the fact that he would have to go on being tired for a long time.

He sighed and flashed his torch idly at a pile of books. One caught his attention. He picked it up. Slowly, laboriously he read the title. And then suddenly his tiredness was forgotten. His heart began to beat fast enough for him to be aware of the beating. He knew—he knew beyond any shadow of doubt—that the painful process of teaching himself to read would be proved worthwhile. The title of the book he held in a trembling hand was: A Short History of the World. The author was someone called H. G. Wells.

Michael sat down on the floor and flicked through the pages lovingly. Here and there a word caught his eye—a word that he could understand. He was oblivious of the library, oblivious of the Family. This was the book. He knew it. This was the book. A Short History of the World! The very words became an incantation. Now would secrets be revealed and mysteries resolved. He felt drunk. Drunk with anticipation and excitement.

Suddenly, he realized that someone was talking to him, someone was tugging his arm. It was Emily. Even in the semidarkness he saw that there was a very puzzled expression on her face.

“Sorry, Michael. I didn’t realize you were in a trance…. I gave this book to Ernest and asked him to tell me what it was. He looked at it, then he seemed very surprised. He wouldn’t tell me about it. He told me to ask you. Don’t you think that is odd?”

Michael stood up and automatically pushed A Short History of the World in his pocket.

He took the book that Emily held out and shone his torch on the title page.

Hesitantly but accurately, he read: “Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.”

16

Michael gazed at the book in his hand as if it might explode. Emily Bronte! It had never occurred to him—so many things had never occurred to him—that there could be more than one Emily Bronte. And that this other Emily could be sufficiently clever to create a book consisting of thousands and thousands of words—the knowledge confounded him.

He opened the book and shone his torch on a page headed Chapter One. Then, with some difficulty, and making a mess of words such as “neighbor” and “situation,” he read the first few sentences aloud: “I have just returned from a visit to my landlord—the solitary neighbor that I shall be troubled with. This is certainly a beautiful country. In all England, I do not believe that I could have fixed on a situation so completely removed from the stir of society.”

He closed the book and looked wonderingly at the Emily Bronte who now stood by his side.

“What does it mean?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I would have to read some more words and get familiar with the way they are being used.”

“I don’t mean the book. How does someone else come to have my name? I thought names were special.”

Michael sighed. “I don’t know that, either…. Sorry, Emily. I’m the expert on not knowing…. I don’t know why but I never imagined that more than one person would have the same name.” He laughed bitterly. “For all I know, there could be a large number of Emily Brontes somewhere. I only specialize in ignorance.”

“Perhaps she is dead,” suggested Ernest.

“Who?”

“The Emily Bronte who made the book. It looks a very old book. She could have died a long time ago.”

“I suppose so.”

“Perhaps,” said Emily, “perhaps there is some reason—some link between my name and her name.”

“I wonder if she was a fragile,” said Horatio. “Probably not. Not if she could read and write and put a lot of big words together to make a book…. I bet she—it—was one hell of a drybone.”

Michael had a sudden, intuitive conviction. “She was not a drybone. None of the people who wrote these books were drybones. The drybones don’t care about reading and writing. They don’t need books. Only fragiles need books or care about them.” He was suddenly inspired. “We have company, here. Company of our own kind. A company of minds. Now that we have found books, we will all learn to read properly. Then we shall be able to understand what these other fragiles thought and hoped and did…. Emily is right, though. There may be some link.”

“Let’s look for names,” said Ernest. “We had better look together. It is too dark now to see clearly without the torch.”

Horatio was beginning to be bored. “While you people look for names, I’ll nose around and see if there is anything else of interest…. I don’t think you are going to get much out of these books.”

Although Emily and Jane were not sufficiently skilled even at recognizing instantly all the different letter shapes, they stayed close to Michael and Ernest scanning the piles of books in the hope that, somehow, something would be revealed to them.

It was quite a time before the next discovery was made. The darkness in the sky, seen through the library’s grimy windows, was no longer the darkness of storm clouds but of approaching evening.

Appropriately, it was Ernest who saw the book first and instantly recognized a word that seemed to leap out at him. The word was Rutherford, and it was the title of the book.

“Rutherford!” Ernest spoke the word as if he was using it for the first time. He opened the book and looked at the first printed page. Under the title he read: “Being an account of the life and work of Ernest Rutherford, Baron Rutherford of Nelson, O.M., scientist and genius.”

“Rutherford,” echoed Michael. “Scientist and genius…. First Emily Bronte, now Ernest Rutherford…. Do all our names also belong to other fragiles?” He sighed. “There are so many books to look at. We shall have to come back here again and again. I was so eager to get hold of some books, but now that we have found them I’m almost terrified.”

Jane had a curious thought. “I wonder if these other fragiles could be related to Ernest and Emily?” She hesitated. “The drybones are supposed to be our parents, but they are not at all like us…. It is a silly thought, but could these other fragiles belong in some way to Emily and Ernest?”

There was a silence. Eventually, Michael spoke. “I’ll tell you what I think. I think the people who made these books—all of them—are our true parents. I think the drybones want to keep us from learning the truth about ourselves because the truth is to their disadvantage.”

Everyone had forgotten about Horatio. They heard his voice. It sounded far away.

“Bring the torch,” he called. “I have lost my sense of direction in the darkness.”

“Where are you?”

“There is a door at the far end of the library, with steps leading down. I went down them. Now I can’t see which way to get back up.”

Michael led the way. The torch battery was losing power. The light given out was now a pale orange instead of bright yellow. Besides the entrance, there were three other doors in the library. Only one of them was open, and it was obviously the door Horatio had used.

The flight of steps was steep and long. Michael was surprised that Horatio had not fallen down in the darkness and hurt himself. Even with the light, he and the others had to move carefully. They found Horatio in one of two passageways leading from the foot of the steps. The walls of each were bare, and no provision had been made for electric lighting. But the really surprising thing was that these subterranean corridors seemed to reach far beyond the confines of the library, perhaps even beyond Apollo Twelve Square.

Michael and the others tried to explore the corridor in which Horatio was and find out where it ended. They walked along it for some time; and Ernest estimated that, in terms of distance, they must be halfway back to Piccadilly Circus. But by then the torch was getting very low indeed, and Michael would not risk stranding the Family in darkness.

Without discovering any end to the passages or any evidence of the purpose or purposes for which they had been built, the Family made its way back to the library. It was almost as dark in the large room as in the underground passages.

Emily slipped her hand into Michael’s. “I don’t think I ought to stay any longer. I promised Mother I would be home early. We are supposed to be going to the pictures.”

“There isn’t much point in any of us staying without light,” said Michael. “We shall have to come again, properly equipped.”

Horatio was excited. “The passages have to go somewhere. I think it might be somewhere important. They can’t just go round in circles.”

“They could,” said Ernest “But I have a feeling they don’t. We may have found something besides the books that the drybones don’t want us to find yet.” Michael regarded the pale glow of his torch sadly. “It will keep. Let us get one or two books while we can still see something. Then we’ll all go together.”

They had to shine the torch very close to the spines of the books to read the titles.

Michael already had A Short History of the World. He was lucky enough to find another relevant book, A History of England, in the same pile. Ernest took Rutherford, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Literature, which he had literally tumbled over, and Utopia. Emily kept Wuthering Heights. Jane found The Jungle Book. Horatio took nothing. He could not read. He did not want to learn to read. If there was anything important in books, Michael or Ernest would be sure to tell him.

The light from the torch was now so weak that they had to hold hands and feel their way out of the library. The rain had stopped. The wind had died down. The night air was cool and clean.

Michael and Ernest were filled with great excitement. At last they had found something to read.

17

Michael hid his books in the bathroom. It seemed the best and safest place. The bath had paneled sides, and the small end panel was only held in position by two recessed screws. They were very loose and could be unscrewed by a nail file.

It was much better to keep the books behind the bath panel because there was no comparable hiding place in his bedroom—except, perhaps, behind the ventilator grille, and that was too conspicuous. So the books were hidden in the bathroom, and Michael’s evening baths now took longer than usual.

Of course, it would have been possible to keep the books openly in his room. He tried to analyze why he didn’t. It was more than the fear of losing them. It was fear of having the drybones discover that he now had a source of information other than radio, television or Father’s evasive explanations.

A Short History of the World was a formidable book. It contained a large number of words he could not pronounce or knew he was pronouncing wrongly and a large number of words whose meaning he could only guess. He did not attempt to read the book page by page. The Contents list gave him an idea of the chapters that would be of most interest. Indeed, the Contents list itself was a kind of distilled history, ranging from fascinating headings such as “The Beginnings of Life” and “The First True Men” to “The Industrial Revolution” and “The Second World War.”

Each session that Michael spent with his books was an exhausting session of revelation. He would lock himself in the bathroom, run the bath water and, while it was running noisily, unscrew the panel with his nail file. As the room filled with steam, he would make shattering discoveries, which sometimes brought such mental confusion that his head ached and he longed desperately to ask questions of someone who knew.

But there was no one to answer the questions. He must answer his own or seek answers in the daunting pages of the book. Michael had no doubt that the truth—or as much of it as could be ascertained—was contained in the pages of his two books. Sometimes he was able to check information contained in one against information contained in the other. He was not surprised when the books agreed. He was only surprised when they appeared to disagree.

In neither of the books did he find any reference to drybones and fragiles as two distinct races. He found only references to people—people who lived and died in strange and sometimes appalling circumstances. But he made discoveries that exploded like bombs in his mind.

He discovered that Queen Victoria was already dead, that Sir Winston Churchill had never been her Prime Minister, that the Second World War had already ended, that London should be a vast, thriving city containing millions of people. There was no mention of the exploration of the moon, or the American expedition to Mars, or force fields to protect capital cities, or even the Overman legend.

Michael’s mind was reeling. He was living in a city that certainly did not contain millions—perhaps not even thousands—of people; he was living through a war that had already finished; and there was a queen on the throne who had died long before that war had even begun.

What to believe? The apparent reality of the world in which he lived or the world described in two astounding books? At times, torn by uncertainty, he began to think that Mother and Father might be right. The truth—the truth about anything—might be too terrible, too dangerous for fragiles to face. Perhaps the drybones really were protecting all fragiles—protecting them from realities too horrible to contemplate.

But then he would turn to A Short History of the World or A History of England; and the direct statements, the matching of information, would convince him that truth lay more in those printed words than in the apparent realities that surrounded him.

Michael had not had nightmares for some time; but now they came back. One night he woke up screaming, and Mother tried to comfort him as she had done when he was a small child. But there was no comfort in her arms, only an intensified horror of contact with a drybone. After that Michael took to sleeping with his head under the bedclothes or under the pillow so that the sound would be muffled if he screamed again. He nearly suffocated himself.

Father said he looked ill and asked what was worrying him. For a dreadful moment, Michael had an impulse to confess all. Even the act of confession might ease the pressure, reduce the tension, no matter what Father said or did. But Michael squashed the impulse, squashed it forever.

Somehow he knew that the authors of the books he had been reading were his own kind, fragiles. Somehow, he knew that their world was real and his was not. Somehow, he knew that Mother and Father and all the other drybones were jailers—jailers for a small group of fragiles whose only hope of survival lay in finding reality and accepting it.

So he said nothing. He locked himself in with his books, struggling to separate fantasy from fact in a tiny steam-filled room. He forced himself to believe that he was sane and that truth should be pursued for its own sake. He tried to act normally and to do the things that were expected of him. Above all, he was determined to conceal his newfound knowledge from everyone but the Family. His reading revealed that books had once been considered dangerous weapons, that they had been burned or destroyed, and that their writers and readers had been persecuted. Perhaps he was living now in a world where books were still dangerous weapons. If so, he would arm himself. He would arm himself with ideas.

One evening, Michael went to the bathroom and locked himself in as usual. He turned the bath taps on and unscrewed the panel. The books had gone.

For a moment or two he was stunned. Then he carefully replaced the panel and sat on the side of the bath to think.

So they had known. They had known all the time. He felt stupid and childish, and his cheeks burned with humiliation. They had demonstrated that he was still a child and they were still the masters. Briefly, he wanted to die.

But then…. But then he found some bitter consolation. They could not know how much he already knew or suspected. Even if they contrived to remove all the books from London Library, they still could not remove the knowledge already stored in his head. That was something.

Michael did not mention the books to Mother and Father. They did not mention the books to him. He determined to visit the library again as soon as possible.

18

On Saturday evening, Ernest and Michael stole two bicycles from a number that were racked in the bicycle stands outside the Odeon cinema in Leicester Square. They took the bicycles to the stands outside Westminster Abbey and left them there. Early on Sunday morning they met at the Abbey, each with enough food for the day. It was to be a day of mechanized exploration.

They had taught themselves to ride secretly. For some time Father had promised that it would not be long before Michael would be allowed to use a bicycle. But, as usual, there were always good reasons why it could not be now; and Michael soon realized that he would have to do something about it himself. Ernest had also suffered the delay treatment. Bicycles were precious because there was a war on, and they should only be used by responsible adults.

So Ernest and Michael had taught themselves to ride on the few occasions when a bicycle was available and no drybone owner was in sight.

Sunday morning was cold but fine. The rendezvous at Westminster Abbey took place before the first service. Michael realized that he and Ernest would be very conspicuous; but he thought they had a good chance of getting out of central London without being recognized by anyone who knew them.

They were both excited. Ernest was convinced that, like the Thames, all the roads apparently leading out of London would bend back upon themselves. Michael was not so sure. He thought there must be some way of getting completely out of London.

They cycled over Westminster Bridge, meeting no one. In fact they met no one all day—which was, as Ernest put it, statistically absurd.

The first spell of riding, which gave them an appetite for breakfast, took them well away from the parts of London they knew. The road was lined with houses, shops, cafes, gardens. It crossed other, similar roads. But nowhere were there any signs of drybones or fragiles. Michael was reminded of the ghost towns he had seen in Westerns. There was only a great sense of emptiness.

They stopped for breakfast at a coffeehouse. The door was open but the coffeehouse was empty. There was dust everywhere. It looked as if it had not been used for years.

“We are still in the country of the mad,” observed Ernest grimly. “And I feel crazy enough to be sane. Let us go through the whole place and see if we can find anything.”

They found two empty rooms upstairs—empty even of furniture—and a high-walled overgrown garden at the back. They sat in the garden, eating bread and cheese and talking. They talked about what they had learned from the books they had found.

“That other Ernest Rutherford was a very brilliant man,” said Ernest. “Without his work in atomic physics, nuclear energy could never have been achieved.”

Michael looked at him blankly. “Atomic physics? Nuclear energy? What is it all about?”

Ernest sighed. “I hardly know myself. Except that they are real. They can’t be anything else but real. The experiments he carried out, the results he achieved are too—too elegant for invention.”

“Elegance!” Michael laughed harshly. “I have some elegant notions for you. This vast, empty London that we live in contains millions of people. The books say so. Queen Victoria died long before the war we are now having—which also ended some time ago—began. The books say so. London was bombed frequently. Lots of people were killed and many buildings were destroyed. The books say so.”

Ernest was silent for a time. Then he said: “We are real, the facts in the books are real. The London we live in is real. But….”

“But this London is not the London,” said Michael. “This Queen Victoria—a drybone, no doubt—is not the Queen Victoria…. It is all—all a bad model.”

“Or,” added Ernest, “a model with the inaccuracies carefully designed…. Sometimes, Michael, I think we are not on Earth at all. I am reduced to seeking the truth in fantasy. Sometimes, I think that space raiders came and captured us as babies. They took us back to their home planet and tried to create a natural environment for us. But they made some things wrong—by accident or by design.”

Michael did not laugh or even smile. He considered the notion seriously. At last, he said: “I doubt if space travel exists. The books did not mention it.”

“It may not have existed for Earth people,” Ernest pointed out. “But there is no reason why it should not exist for other creatures elsewhere.”

“Drybones?”

“Possibly.”

“Come on,” said Michael, standing up. “There is a lot to do. We can play with our theories tomorrow. Before we set off again, let’s take a look at some of the houses along the road. I imagine they will be just as derelict as this place.”

None of the doors was locked, and the houses were as Michael anticipated—empty, dusty, unlived in. Shells. Ghost town houses. Presently, Ernest and Michael took their bicycles and rode on. Before lunch, they could already see the recognizable skyline of central London in the distance. They found they were heading for Blackfriars Bridge.

After lunch, they took a different road. It looked much the same as the first one—in fact, at one point Ernest thought he recognized a particular sequence of houses—but this time they were returned to Chelsea Bridge. By then it was late afternoon, and they were both fairly tired. They rested a little and ate the last of their food.

“One more try,” said Michael. “I think I know what the result will be. But we shall have the advantage of getting the bicycles back in darkness.”

It was quite dark before they discovered where the road they chose had finally taken them. Ernest, though more tired than Michael and very saddle-sore, seemed to be vastly amused when he recognized the approach to Westminster Bridge.

“In our beginning is our end,” he said, almost happily. “In our end is our beginning.”

“Did you invent that?”

“No. I borrowed it from a book.”

Michael was suddenly struck by a thought. “We can’t keep the bicycles. Why don’t we put them back where we found them, at the Odeon? If the drybones ever find out what we have done, we can claim that there was no harm in it, because the bicycles were returned.”

“We may be seen.”

“A risk worth taking. After seeing no one all day I’ll be almost glad to meet a drybone.”

But, curiously, they managed to get the bicycles back to the Odeon, Leicester Square, without encountering either fragiles or drybones.

It had been an unnerving kind of day—a day in which, at times, they had felt like the only people left alive.

Before they parted, to return to their own homes, Ernest brought up once more the question of Michael’s disappearing books. He had not shown a great deal of surprise when Michael had first told him what had happened. So far he had been lucky. His books, wrapped in plastic sheet, were hidden in the shrubbery in St. James’s Park.

“I wonder how they knew where you kept them.”

“What?”

“The books.”

“I simply don’t know. Maybe they are telepathic, these alien child stealers. Or maybe there is some way of seeing into the bathroom. Or maybe one of the screws in the wretched panel fell out. Does it matter?”

Ernest put a reassuring arm on his shoulder. “I don’t think so. If they were going to do anything about it, they would have done it by now.”

“I’m going back to the library tomorrow night. Then we will know.”

“Would you like me to come?”

Michael shook his head. “It is better alone. They may not know if anyone else has taken books.”

Ernest said tangentially: “We are not on Earth, you know. Suddenly, I am sure of it.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Mad logic. Quite mad logic. All those rows of deserted houses, this whole situation. Drybones. A river that isn’t a river. Roads that always loop back. A queen who should be dead. A war that should be over.”

It was a cold clear night. The wind had begun to blow. Michael looked up at the unchanging pattern of the stars and shivered: They, at least, were constants. He wondered if, really, the Earth were somewhere out there. He wondered if in some far reach of space, there was another London!—a real London, unimaginably crowded with people, where a river ran to the sea and where roads led to other towns and cities.

“Mad logic indeed,” he said, “but either not mad enough or else too mad to justify that extravagance.”

Ernest also was shivering—with fatigue, with coldness, with excitement. “I’ve saved the maddest bit to the last,” he said, his teeth chattering a little. “One of my books—The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Literature. It has in it the names of more than half the fragiles we know…. Michael, I’m cold. I’m cold so that I’ll never be warm again. You know the coldness I mean?”

“I know it,” said Michael softly. “I know it.”

19

Oddly, the library was less dark than when Michael and the Family had last been there. Outside, the sky had only a few thin skeins of cloud, and most of the stars were brilliant, sharp, untwinkling. The full moon was bright with cold fire; its light strong enough to penetrate the dusty library windows, supplying a ghostly illumination to the piles of books.

Michael found the scene disturbing and enchanting. Beautiful. Like the set for a romantic film. Like a symbol of life in the midst of death. For here were the strange, world-shattering thoughts of hundreds of fragiles committed to countless bound sheets of paper.

There was something wonderful about books. Something elegant. They could preserve thoughts and ideas forever—or as long as paper would last. They were devices for allowing the human spirit to leap across time and space. They were the most marvelous, the most fascinating things in the world.

He was amused at his own mute eloquence. He had not come here to rhapsodize about books, but to find one or two that might provide more information. He looked around carefully. Nothing seemed to have been disturbed since the last time. But then it would be very difficult to tell, because the books were in such haphazard piles.

He took the torch out of his pocket—he had got a new battery for it from Father’s store cupboard— pressed the switch, and allowed the beam of artificial light to reinforce the moonlight. He became more confident that nothing had been disturbed since last time. Except that the door at the far end of the library, the one that led down to the passages, was open. Michael could not remember whether anyone had shut it when they left the library before.

He switched off the torch, reluctant to challenge the moonlight, reluctant even to disturb the stillness by moving. He wished Emily was with him. He wanted her to be with him very much. Apart from brief periods at high school and the reading lessons he gave her, usually with Jane Austen, he had not had any time alone with her for several days.

He and Emily had become very dependent upon each other. They kissed and caressed. They said foolish things that did not seem foolish at all at the time. They explored each other’s bodies and found them exciting. They discovered how each other’s secret parts could be aroused to intense feeling. Michael had found that, in the end, it was only reasonable that such secret parts should be brought together, and the intensity doubled, tripled, quadrupled until there was nothing but unthinking ecstasy.

The first time he had thus held and loved Emily was by moonlight, by summer moonlight among tall, feathery grasses. He wished that she was here now. He badly wanted to hold her and love her, here among the books with moonlight on her face, among the silent thoughts and words of all those other fragiles.

Michael began to think he was more than a little crazy. Away with thoughts of Emily. He had come for books. He switched on the torch once more and began to inspect his treasure.

The first pile he explored seemed to consist entirely of long stories: Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence; For Whom the Belt Tolls by Ernest Hemingway; The Green Child by Herbert Read; Lost Horizon by James Hilton; and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.

Michael flipped the pages of some of them, reading a paragraph here and there. His reading was good now. He could read quickly without stumbling much over the big words. There were still many words and expressions that he did not understand; but not enough to severely distort the meaning of what he read.

He found some of the fragments that he read fascinating; but at the moment he wanted something more useful than stories. One day, perhaps, there would be time for stories. But now the need was for information. Regretfully, he put the books down and turned to another pile. That, too, proved to be stories.

He wandered about, glancing at several such piles, until the torch beam shone on four books, similarly bound. The titles and the name of the author seemed to have a physical impact upon him. The books were four volumes of a history of the Second World War, and the author was Winston Churchill. The titles of the volumes were: The Gathering Storm, Their Finest Hour, The Grand Alliance and The Hinge of Fate.

Michael picked up The Gathering Storm and began to flip through the pages, snatching a subtitle and a sentence or two here and there. His excitement increased. These were the kind of books he needed—books that gave a real account of what had happened in a real world. But where could he possibly hide four such substantial books? Certainly not at home. It looked as if he would be reduced to using some hiding place similar to Ernest’s; but then he would not be able to read as frequently as he wished.

However, the thing to do was to take the books and try to work out where to hide them on the way back home. Michael switched off the torch and put it in his pocket. Then he picked up the books and, after a few moments of savoring once more the combination of moonlight and books, he turned to go.

Suddenly he froze. He could hear a noise—the sound of running feet. It seemed to be coming from the open doorway at the far end of the library. The doorway that led down to those enigmatic underground passages.

Michael could have hidden, he could have gone quickly out of the library. But he just stood there, waiting, wondering if the drybones were now springing a carefully laid trap.

It was indeed a drybone who ran up the steps, through the doorway and into the library. But there was the sound of more running feet, hard behind.

Michael recognized the drybone instantly. It was Aldous Huxley, who had tried to make friends with the Family in the Strand Coffeehouse, one Saturday morning.

The recognition was mutual. Aldous Huxley stopped running just as his pursuer emerged from the doorway. It was Horatio.

“So you have both discovered—” began Aldous Huxley. But the sentence was never finished.

Horatio had his iron bar. With a great cry of rage or anguish, he rushed at the drybone and savagely brought the iron bar down on his head. There was a curious, breaking noise.

Aldous Huxley did not immediately fall, as any fragile would have done on receiving such a vicious blow. He jerked, spasmodically, uttered a high, piercing whine, then with curious, jerky movements apparently tried to walk through the library wall.

Michael watched, paralyzed with shock.

Horatio was beside himself. He hit Aldous Huxley again and again with the iron bar. The drybone made no effort to defend himself. He just tried to claw and scrabble his way through the library wall.

But the rain of heavy blows was too much even for a drybone. Suddenly he fell down, and lay on the floor, jerking and twisting.

Michael was still paralyzed. Horatio paid no attention to him. He was berserk.

The thing on the floor was still whining. Horatio, sobbing and screaming, lifted his iron bar with both hands and put all his weight and strength into a last, terrible blow.

There was a sickening crunch. Then Aldous Huxley’s head, or what was left of it, went spinning across the library floor. The body stopped jerking. Horatio dropped the iron bar and crumpled up, moaning and crying, hiding his face in his hands.

Though he felt numb with shock, movement was restored to Michael’s body. Without thinking, he went across to where Aldous Huxley’s head lay, by a pile of books.

The skull, face and neck were smashed, grotesquely distorted. But there was no blood. The neck, abnormally long, had ragged edges where the skin had been torn. But there was no blood.

Michael wanted to be sick. But Horatio was hysterical, and something would have to be done about the body, and there was no time to be sick. Perhaps he could allow himself the luxury of being sick later. Michael fought the nausea back, pulled the torch out of his pocket and willed himself to bend down and inspect Aldous Huxley’s head.

There was no blood, none at all. But inside the base of the neck, where the skin was torn in a ragged circle, there seemed to be a kind of black plate. Protruding from the plate was a number of sturdy metal pins, some bent, perhaps by Horatio’s furious onslaught.

There was nothing to be done for Aldous Huxley.

Horatio still lay curled up with his hands over his eyes, still moaning and keening like a terrified child.

Michael went and knelt by him, putting an arm round his shoulder, holding him and trying to calm him down.

“What happened, Horatio?” he asked gently. “Try to tell me what happened.”

Horatio didn’t answer. He just continued to shake and cry. Michael’s arm tightened round his shoulders, trying to steady him.

Presently Michael tried again. “You must tell me what happened, Horatio. I have to think what to do.”

“It was the lizards, the great lizards!” sobbed Horatio. “They scared me out of my mind, and I started to run back, and I bumped into… into… and I thought… I thought he would….” The effort to be rational was too much, and Horatio’s body shook convulsively.

Michael continued to hold him, trying to be patient, trying to think, while the cold fire of moonlight bathed the untidy piles of books and sightless head of the drybone.