John Wyndham - The Chrysalids

‘What did they do to Sophie?’ I asked once more. But again he refused to be drawn on that. He went on:

‘Remember what I told you. They think they are the true image — but they can’t know for sure. And even if the Old People were the same kind as I am and they are, what of it? Oh, I know people tell tales about how wonderful they were and how wonderful their world was, and how one day we’ll get back again all the things they had. There’s a lot of nonsense mixed up in what they say about them, but even if there’s a lot of truth, too, what’s the good of trying so hard to keep in their tracks? Where are they and their wonderful world now?’

‘“God sent Tribulation upon them,”’ I quoted.

‘Sure, sure. You certainly have taken in the preacher-words, haven’t you? It’s easy enough to say — but not so easy to understand, specially when you’ve seen a bit of the world, and what it has meant. Tribulation wasn’t just tempests, hurricanes, floods and fires like the things they had in the Bible. It was like all of them together — and something a lot worse, too. It made the Black Coasts, and the ruins that glow there at night, and the Badlands. Maybe there’s a precedent for that in Sodom and Gomorrah, only this’d be kind of bigger — but what I don’t understand is the queer things it did to what was left.’

‘Except in Labrador,’ I suggested.

‘Not except in Labrador — but less in Labrador and Newf than any other place,’ he corrected me. ‘What can it have been — this terrible thing that must have happened? And why? I can almost understand that God, made angry, might destroy all living things, or the world itself; but I don’t understand this instability, this mess of deviations — it makes no sense.’

I did not see his real difficulty. After all, God, being omnipotent, could cause anything He liked. I tried to explain this to Uncle Axel, but he shook his head.

‘We’ve got to believe that God is sane, Davie boy. We’d be lost indeed if we didn’t do that. But whatever happened out there’ — he waved his hand round the horizon at large — ‘what happened there was not sane — not sane at all. It was something vast, yet something beneath the wisdom of God. So what was it? What can it have been?’

‘But Tribulation—’ I began.

Uncle Axel moved impatiently. ‘A word,’ he said, ‘a rusted mirror, reflecting nothing. It’d do the preachers good to see it for themselves. They’d not understand, but they might begin to think. They might begin to ask themselves: “What are we doing? What are we preaching? What were the Old People really like? What was it they did to bring this frightful disaster down upon themselves and all the world?” And after a bit they might begin to say: “Are we right? Tribulation has made the world a different place; can we, therefore, ever hope to build in it the kind of world the Old People lost? Should we try to? What would be gained if we were to build it up again so exactly that it culminated in another Tribulation?” For it is clear, boy, that however wonderful the Old People were, they were not too wonderful to make mistakes — and nobody knows, or is ever likely to know, where they were wise and where they were mistaken.’

Much of what he was saying went right over my head, but I thought I caught its gist. I said:

‘But, Uncle, if we don’t try to be like the Old People and rebuild the things that have been lost, what can we do?’

‘Well, we might try being ourselves, and build for the world that is, instead of for one that’s gone,’ he suggested.

‘I don’t think I understand,’ I told him. ‘You mean not bother about the True Line or the True Image? Not mind about Deviations?’

‘Not quite that,’ he said, and then looked sidelong at me. ‘You heard some heresy from your aunt; well, here’s a bit more, from your uncle. What do you think it is that makes a man a man?’

I started on the Definition. He cut me off after five words.

‘It is not !’ he said. ‘A wax figure could have all that, and he’d still be a wax figure, wouldn’t he?’

‘I suppose he would.’

‘Well, then, what makes a man a man is something inside him.’

‘A soul?’ I suggested.

‘No,’ he said, ‘souls are just counters for churches to collect, all the same value, like nails. No, what makes man man is mind; it’s not a thing, it’s a quality, and minds aren’t all the same value; they’re better or worse, and the better they are, the more they mean. See where we’re going?’

‘No,’ I admitted.

‘It’s this way, Davie, I reckon the church people are more or less right about most deviations - only not for the reasons they say. They’re right because most deviations aren’t any good. Say they did allow a deviation to live like us, what’d be the good of it? Would a dozen arms and legs, or a couple of heads, or eyes like telescopes give him any more of the quality that makes him a man? They would not. Man got his physical shape — the true image, they call it — before he even knew he was man at all. It’s what happened inside, after that, that made him human. He discovered he had what nothing else had, mind. That put him on a different level. Like a lot of the animals he was physically pretty nearly as good as he needed to be; but he had this new quality, mind, which was only in its early stages, and he developed that. That was the only thing he could usefully develop; it’s the only way open to him — to develop new qualities of mind.’ Uncle Axel paused reflectively. ‘There was a doctor on my second ship who talked that way, and the more I got to thinking it over, the more I reckoned it was the way that made sense. Now, as I see it, some way or another you and Rosalind and the others have got a new quality of mind. To pray God to take it away is wrong; it’s like asking Him to strike you blind, or make you deaf. I know what you’re up against, Davie, but funking it isn’t the way out. There isn’t an easy way out. You have to come to terms with it. You’ll have to face it and decide that, since that’s the way things are with you, what is the best use you can make of it and still keep yourselves safe?’

I did not, of course, follow him clearly through that the first time. Some of it stayed in my mind, the rest of it I reconstructed in half-memory from later talks. I began to understand better later on, particularly after Michael had gone to school.

That evening I told the others about Walter. We were sorry about his accident — nevertheless, it was a relief to all of them to know that it had been simply an accident. One odd thing I discovered was that he was probably some kind of distant relation; my grandmother’s name had been Brent.

After that, it seemed wiser for us to find out one another’s names in order to prevent such an uncertainty occurring again.

There were now eight of us in all — well, when I say that, I mean that there were eight who could talk in thought-shapes; there were some others who sometimes sent traces, but so weak and so limited that they did not count. They were like someone who is not quite blind, but is scarcely able to see more than to know whether it is day or night. The occasional thought-shapes we caught from them were involuntary and too fuzzy and damped to make sense.

The other six were Michael who lived about three miles to the north, Sally and Katherine whose homes were on neighbouring farms two miles farther on, and therefore across the border of the adjoining district, Mark, almost nine miles to the north-west, and Anne and Rachel, a pair of sisters living on a big farm only a mile and a half to the west. Anne, then something over thirteen, was the eldest; Walter Brent had been the youngest by six months.