John Wyndham - The Chrysalids

Anne had seen this just as well as the rest of us, but now she pretended to ignore it. She began to defy her difference by refusing to respond to us, though whether she shut her mind off altogether, or continued to listen without taking part we could not tell. We suspected the former as being more in character, but, being unsure, we were not even able to discuss among ourselves what course, if any, we ought to take. Possibly there was no active course. I myself could think of none. Rosalind; too, was at a loss.

Rosalind had grown into a tall, slim young woman, now. She was handsome, with a face you could not help watching; she was attractive, too, in the way she moved and carried herself. Several of the younger men had felt the attraction, and gravitated towards her. She was civil to them, but no more. She was competent, decisive, self-reliant; perhaps she intimidated them, for before long they drifted their attentions elsewhere. She would not be entangled with any of them. Very likely it was for that reason that she was more shocked than any of us by what Anne proposed to do.

We used to meet, discreetly and not dangerously often. No one but the others, I think, ever suspected anything between us. We had to make love in a snatched, unhappy way when we did meet, wondering miserably whether there would ever be a time when we should not have to hide ourselves. And somehow the business of Anne made us more wretched still. Marriage to a norm, even the kindest and best of them, was unthinkable for both of us.

The only other person I could turn to for advice was Uncle Axel. He knew, as did everyone else, about the forthcoming marriage, but it was news to him that Anne was one of us, and he received it lugubriously. After he had turned it over in his mind, he shook his head.

‘No. It won’t do, Davie. You’re right there. I’ve been seeing these last five or six years how it wouldn’t do — but I’ve just been hoping that maybe it’d never come to it. I reckon you’re all up against a wall, or you’d not be telling me now?’

I nodded. ‘She wouldn’t listen to us,’ I told him. ‘Now she’s gone further. She won’t respond at all. She says that’s over. She never wanted to be different from normals, now she wants to be as like them as she can. It was the first real row we’ve ever had. She ended up by telling us she hated all of us, and the very idea of us — at least, that’s what she tried to tell us, but it’s not actually that. It’s really that she wants Alan so badly that she’s determined not to let anything stop her from having him. I — I never knew before that anybody could want anybody else quite like that. She’s so fierce and blind about it that she simply doesn’t care what may happen later. I don’t see what we can do.’

‘You don’t think that perhaps she can make herself live like a norm — cut out the other altogether? It’d be too difficult?’ Uncle Axel asked.

‘We’ve thought about that, of course,’ I told him. ‘She can refuse to respond. She’s doing that now, like somebody refusing to talk — but to go on with it…. It’d be like taking a vow of silence for the rest of her life. I mean, she can’t just make herself forget, and become a norm. We can’t believe that’s possible. Michael told her it’d be like pretending to have only one arm because the person one wants to marry has only one arm. It wouldn’t be any good — and you couldn’t keep it up, either.’

Uncle Axel pondered for a bit.

‘You’re convinced she’s crazy about this Alan — quite beyond reason, I mean?’ he asked.

‘She’s not like herself at all. She doesn’t think properly any more,’ I told him.’ Before she stopped responding her thought-shapes were all queer with it.’

Uncle Axel shook his head disapprovingly again. ‘Women like to think they’re in love when they want to marry; they feel it’s a justification which helps their self-respect,’ he observed. ‘No harm in that; most of them are going to need all the illusions they can keep up, anyway. But a woman who is in love is a different proposition. She lives in a world where all the old perspectives have altered. She is blinkered, single-purposed, undependable in other matters. She will sacrifice anything, including herself, to one loyalty. For her, that is quite logical; for everyone else it looks not quite sane; socially it is dangerous. And when there is also a feeling of guilt to be overcome, and, maybe, expiated, it is quite certainly dangerous for someone—’ He broke off and reflected in silence awhile. Then he added, ‘It is too dangerous, Davie. Remorse… abnegation… self-sacrifice… the desire for purification — all pressing upon her. The sense of burden, the need for help, for someone to share the burden…. Sooner or later, I’m afraid, Davie. Sooner or later…’

I thought so, too.

‘But what can we do?’ I repeated, miserably.

He turned steady, serious eyes on me.

‘How much are you justified in doing? One of you is set on a course which is going to endanger the lives of all eight. Not altogether knowingly, perhaps, but none the less seriously, for all that. Even if she does intend to be loyal to you, she is deliberately risking you all for her own ends — just a few words in her sleep would be enough. Does she have a moral right to create a constant threat hanging over seven heads just because she wants to live with this man?’

I hesitated. ‘Well, if you put it like that—’ I began.

‘I do put it like that. Has she that right?’

‘We’ve done our best to dissuade her,’ I evaded, inadequately.

‘And failed. So now what? Are you just going to sit down under it, not knowing what day she may crack, and give you all away?’

‘I don’t know,’ was all I could tell him.

‘Listen,’ said Uncle Axel. ‘I knew a man once who was one of a party who were adrift in a boat after their ship had burnt. They’d not much food and very little water. One of them drank sea water and went mad. He tried to wreck the boat so that they’d all drown together. He was a menace to all of them. In the end they had to throw him overboard — with the result that the other three had just enough food and water to last until they reached land. If they hadn’t done it he’d have died, anyway — and the rest of them, too, most likely.’

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said decisively, ‘we couldn’t do that.’

He went on looking at me steadily.

‘This isn’t a nice cosy world for anyone — especially not for anyone that’s different,’ he said. ‘Maybe you’re not the kind to survive it, after all.’

‘It isn’t just that,’ I told him. ‘If it were Alan you were talking about, if it would help to throw him overboard, we’d do it. But it’s Anne you’re meaning, and we can’t do it — not because she’s a girl, it’d be the same with any of us; we just couldn’t do it. We’re all too close together. I’m much closer to her and the others than’ I am to my own sisters. It’s difficult to explain—’ I broke off, trying to think of a way of showing him what we meant to one another. There didn’t seem to be any clear way of putting it into words. I could only tell him, not very effectively.

‘It wouldn’t be just murder, Uncle Axel. It’d be something worse, as well; like violating part of ourselves for ever…. We couldn’t do it….’

‘The alternative is the sword over your heads,’ he said.

‘I know,’ I agreed unhappily. ‘But that isn’t the way. A sword inside us would be worse.’

I could not even discuss that solution with the others for fear that Anne might catch our thoughts; but I knew with certainty what their verdict on it would be. I knew that Uncle Axel had proposed the only practical solution; and I knew, too, its impossibility meant recognizing that nothing could be done.