John Wyndham - The Midwich Cuckoos

'Very well,' Alan said. 'It does give me a handle to start with. Where is she?'

'I left her on the veranda.'

The Zellabys watched him cross the lawn and disappear round a comer of the house. Gordon Zellaby lifted an eyebrow at his wife.

'Not very difficult, I think,' Angela said. 'Naturally she's longing to be with him. The obstacle is her sense of obligation. The conflict is doing her harm, wearing her out.'

'How much affection does she really have for the baby?'

'It's hard to say. There is so much social and traditional pressure on a woman in these things. One's self-defensive instinct is to conform to the approved pattern. Personal honesty takes time to assert itself – if it is ever allowed to.'

'Not with Ferrelyn, surely?' Zellaby looked hurt.

'Oh, it will with her, I'm sure. But she hasn't got there yet. It's a bit much to face, you know. She's had all the inconvenience and discomfort of bearing the baby, as much as if it were her own – and now, after all that, she has to re-adjust to the biological fact that it is not, that she is only what you call a "host-mother" to it. That must take a lot of doing.'

She paused, looking thoughtfully across the lawn. 'I now say a little prayer of thanksgiving every night,' she added. 'I don't know where it goes to, but I just want it to be known somewhere how grateful I am.'

Zellaby reached out, and took her hand. After some minutes, he observed:

'I wonder if a sillier and more ignorant catachresis than "Mother Nature" was ever perpetrated? It is because Nature is ruthless, hideous, and cruel beyond belief that it was necessary to invent civilization. One thinks of wild animals as savage, but the fiercest of them begins to look almost domesticated when one considers the viciousness required of a survivor in the sea; as for the insects, their lives are sustained only by intricate processes of fantastic horror. There is no conception more fallacious than the sense of cosiness implied by "Mother Nature". Each species must strive to survive, and that it will do, by every means in its power, however foul – unless the instinct to survive is weakened by conflict with another instinct.'

Angela seized the pause to put in, with a touch of impatience:

'I've no doubt you are gradually working round to something, Gordon.'

'Yes,' Zellaby owned. 'I am working round again to cuckoos. Cuckoos are very determined survivors. So determined that there is really only one thing to be done with them once one's nest is infested. I am, as you know, a humane man; I think I may even say a kindly man, by disposition.'

'You may, Gordon.'

'As a further disadvantage, I am a civilized man. For these reasons I shall not be able to bring myself to approve of what ought to be done. Nor, even when we perceive its advisability, will the rest of us. So, like the poor hen-thrush we shall feed and nurture the monster, and betray our own species...

'Odd, don't you think? We could drown a litter of kittens that is no sort of threat to us – but these creatures we shall carefully rear.'

Angela sat motionless for some moments. Then she turned her head and looked at him, long and steadily.

'You mean that – about what ought to be done, don't you, Gordon?'

'I do, my dear.'

'It isn't like you.'

'As I pointed out. But then, it is a situation I have never been in before. It has occurred to me that "live and let live" is a piece of patronage which can only be afforded by the consciously secure. I now find, when I feel – as I never expected to feel – my situation at the summit of creation to be threatened, that I don't like it a bit.'

'But, Gordon, dear, surely this is all a little exaggerated. After all, a few unusual babies...'

'Who can at will produce a neurotic condition in mature women – and don't forget Harriman, too – in order to enforce their wishes.'

'It may wear off as they get older. One has heard sometimes of odd understanding, a kind of psychic sympathy...'

'In isolated cases, perhaps. But in sixty-one inter-connected cases! No, there's no tender sympathy with these, and they trail no clouds of glory, either. They are the most practical, sensible, self-contained babies anyone ever saw – they are also quite the smuggest, and no wonder – they can get anything they want. Just at present they are still at a stage where they do not want very much, but later on – well, we shall see...'

'Dr Willers says -' his wife began, but Zellaby cut her short impatiently.

'Willers rose to the occasion magnificently – so well that it's not surprising that he's addled himself into behaving like a damned ostrich now. His faith in hysteria has become practically pathological. I hope his holiday will do him good.'

'But, Gordon, he does at least try to explain it.'

'My dear, I am a patient man, but don't try me too far. Willers has never tried to explain any of it. He has accepted certain facts when they became inescapable; the rest he has attempted to explain away – which is quite different.'

'But there must be an explanation.'

'Of course.'

'Then what do you think it is?'

'We shall have to wait until the children are old enough to give us some evidence.'

'But you do have some ideas?'

'Nothing very cheering, I'm afraid.'

'But what?'

Zellaby shook his head. 'I'm not ready,' he said again. 'But as you are a discreet woman I will put a question to you. It is this: If you were wishful to challenge the supremacy of a society that was fairly stable, and quite well weaponed, what would you do? Would you meet it on its own terms by launching a probably costly, and certainly destructive, assault? Or, if time were of no great importance, would you prefer to employ a version of a more subtle tactic? Would you, in fact, try somehow to introduce a fifth column, to attack it from within?'

The next few months saw a number of changes in Midwich.

Dr Willers handed over his practice to the care of a locum, the young man who had helped him during the crisis, and, accompanied by Mrs Willers, went off, in a state of mingled exhaustion and disgust with authority, on a holiday that was said to be taking him round the world.

In November we had an epidemic of influenza which carried off three elderly villagers, and also three of the Children. One of them was Ferrelyn's boy. She was sent for, and came hurrying home at once, but arrived too late to see him alive. The others were two of the girls.

Well before that, however, there had been the sensational evacuation of The Grange. A fine bit of service organization: the researchers first heard about it on the Monday, the vans arrived on Wednesday, and by the weekend the house and the expensive new laboratories stood blank-windowed and empty, leaving the villagers with the feeling that they had seen a piece of pantomime magic, for Mr Crimm and his staff had gone, too, and all that was left were four of the golden-eyed babies for whom foster-parents had to be found.

A week later a desiccated-looking couple called Freeman moved into the cottage vacated by Mr Crimm. Freeman introduced himself as a medical man specializing in social psychology, and his wife, too, it appeared, was a doctor of medicine. We were led to understand, in a cautious way, that their purpose was to study the development of the Children on behalf of an unspecified official body. This, after their own fashion, they presumably did, for they were continually lurking and peering about the village, often insinuating themselves into the cottages, and not infrequently to be found on one of the seats on the Green, pondering weightily and watchfully. They had an aggressive discretion which verged upon the conspiratorial, and tactics which, within a week of their arrival, caused them to be generally resented and referred to as the Noseys. Doggedness, however, was another of their characteristics, and they persisted in the face of discouragement until they gained the kind of acceptance accorded to the inevitable.