John Wyndham - The Chrysalids

He was sympathetic and kindly enough, but he was on a mission. He put his questions in a friendly way. Munching one of the sweets himself, he asked me:

‘How long have you known that Wender child — what is her name, by the way?’

I told him, there was no harm in that now.

‘How long have you known that Sophie deviates?’

I didn’t see that telling the truth could make things much worse.

‘Quite a long time,’ I admitted.

‘And how long would that be?’

‘About six months, I think,’ I told him.

He raised his eyebrows, and then looked serious.

‘That’s bad, you know,’ he said, ‘It’s what we call abetting a concealment. You must have known that was wrong, didn’t you?’

I dropped my gaze. I wriggled uncomfortably under his straight look, and then stopped because it made my back twinge.

‘It sort of didn’t seem like the things they say in church,’ I tried to explain.’ Besides, they were awfully little toes.’

The inspector took another sweet and pushed the bag back to me.

’”… and each foot shall have five toes,”’ he quoted. ‘You remember that?’

‘Yes,’ I admitted, unhappily.

‘Well, every part of the definition is as important as any other; and if a child doesn’t come within it, then it isn’t human, and that means it doesn’t have a soul. It is not in the image of God, it is an imitation, and in the imitations there is always some mistake. Only God produces perfection, so although deviations may look like us in many ways, they cannot be really human. They are something quite different.’

I thought that over.

‘But Sophie isn’t really different — not in any other way,’ I told him.

‘You’ll find it easier to understand when you are older, but you do know the definition, and you must have realized Sophie deviated. Why didn’t you tell your father, or me, about her?’

I explained about my dream of my father treating Sophie as he did one of the farm Offences. The inspector looked at me thoughtfully for some seconds, then he nodded:

‘I see,’ he said. ‘But Blasphemies are not treated the same way as Offences.’

‘What happens to them?’ I asked.

He evaded that. He went on:

‘You know, it’s really my duty to include your name in my report. However, as your father has already taken action, I may be able to leave it out. All the same, it is a very serious matter. The Devil sends Deviations among us to weaken us and tempt us away from Purity. Sometimes he is clever enough to make a nearly-perfect imitation, so we have always to be on the look-out for the mistake he has made, however small, and when we see one it must be reported at once. You’ll remember that in future, won’t you?’

I avoided his eye. The inspector was the inspector, and an important person; all the same I could not believe that the Devil sent Sophie. I found it hard to see how the very small toe on each foot could make much difference either.

‘Sophie’s my friend,’ I said. ‘My best friend.’

The inspector kept on looking at me, then he shook his head and sighed.

‘Loyalty is a great virtue, but there is such a thing as misplaced loyalty. One day you will understand the importance of a greater loyalty. The Purity of the Race—’ He broke off as the door opened. My father came in.

‘They got them — all three of them,’ he said to the inspector, and gave a look of disgust at me.

The inspector got up promptly, and they went out together. I stared at the closed door. The misery of self-reproach struck me so that I shook all over. I could hear myself whimpering as the tears rolled down my cheeks. I tried to stop it, but I couldn’t. My hurt back was forgotten. The anguish my father’s news had caused me was far more painful than that. My chest was so tight with it that it was choking me.

Presently the door opened again. I kept my face to the wall. Steps crossed the room. A hand rested on my shoulder. The inspector’s voice said:

‘It wasn’t that, old man. You had nothing to do with it. A patrol picked them up, quite by chance, twenty miles away.’

A couple of days later I said to Uncle Axel:

‘I’m going to run away.’

He paused in his work, and gazed thoughtfully at his saw.

‘I’d not do that,’ he advised. ‘It doesn’t usually work very well. Besides,’ he added after a pause, ‘where would you run to?’

‘That’s what I wanted to ask you,’ I explained.

He shook his head. ‘Whatever district you’re in they want to see your Normalcy Certificate,’ he told me. ‘Then they know who you are and where you’re from.’

‘Not in the Fringes,’ I suggested.

He stared at me. ‘Man alive, you’d not want to go to the Fringes. Why, they’ve got nothing there — not even enough food. Most of them are half starving, that’s why they make the raids. No, you’d spend all the time there just trying to keep alive, and lucky if you did.’

‘But there must be some other places,’ I said. ‘Only if you can find a ship that’ll take you — and even then—’ He shook his head again. ‘In my experience,’ he told me, ‘if you run away from a thing just because you don’t like it, you don’t like what you find either. Now, running to a thing, that’s a different matter, but what would you want to run to? Take it from me, it’s a lot better here than it is most places. No, I’m against it, Davie. In a few years’ time when you’re a man and can look after yourself it may be different. I reckon it’d be better to stick it out till then, anyway; much better than have them just catch you and bring you back.’

There was something in that. I was beginning to learn the meaning of the word ‘humiliation’, and did not want any more of it at present. But from what he said the question of where to go would not be easily solved even then. It looked as if it would be advisable to learn what one could of the world outside Labrador, in preparation. I asked him what it was like. ‘Godless,’ he told me. ‘Very godless indeed.’ It was the sort of uninformative answer my father would have given. I was disappointed to have it from Uncle Axel, and told him so. He grinned.

‘All right, Davie boy, that’s fair enough. So long as you’ll not chatter, I’ll tell you something about it.’

‘You mean it’s secret?’ I asked, puzzled.

‘Not quite that,’ he said. ‘But when people are used to believing a thing is such-and-such a way, and the preachers want them to believe that that’s the way it is; it’s trouble you get, not thanks, for upsetting their ideas. Sailors soon found that out in Rigo, so mostly they only talk about it now to other sailors. If the rest of the people want to think it’s nearly all Badlands outside, they let them; it doesn’t alter the way it really is, but it does make for peace and quiet.’

‘My book says it’s all Badlands, or bad Fringes country,’ I told him.

‘There are other books that don’t, but you’ll not see them about much — not even in Rigo, let alone in the backwoods here,’ he said. ‘And, mind you, it doesn’t do to believe everything every sailor says either — and you’re often not sure whether any couple of them are talking about the same place or not, even when they think they are. But when you’ve seen some of it, you begin to understand that the world’s a much queerer place than it looks from Waknuk. So you’ll keep it to yourself?’

I assured him I would.

‘All right. Well, it’s this way—’ he began.

To reach the rest of the world (my Uncle Axel explained) you start by sailing down river from Rigo until you get to the sea. They say that it’s no good sailing on straight ahead, to the east, that is, because either the sea goes on for ever, or else it comes to an end suddenly, and you sail over the edge. Nobody knows for sure.