John Wyndham - The Chrysalids

‘About eight, I’d guess. It’s been light for three hours, and we’ve fought a battle already.’

‘What happened?’ I inquired.

‘We got wind of an ambush, so we sent an outflanking party. It clashed with the reserve force that was waiting to follow up the ambush. Apparently they thought it was our main body; anyway, the result was a rout, at a cost of two or three wounded to us.’

‘So now you’re coming on?’

‘Yes. I suppose they’ll rally somewhere, but they’ve melted away now. No opposition at all.’

That was by no means as one could have wished. I explained our position, and that we certainly could not hope to emerge from the cave in daylight, unseen. On the other hand, if we stayed, and the place were to be captured, it would undoubtedly be searched, and we should be found.

‘What about Petra’s Sealand friends?’ Michael asked. ‘Can we really count on them, do you think?’

Petra‘s friend, herself, came in on that, somewhat coolly.

‘You can count on us.’

‘Your estimated time is the same? You’ve not been delayed?’ Michael asked.

‘Just the same,’ she assured us. ‘Approximately eight and a half hours from now.’ Then the slightly huffy note dropped, a tinge almost of awe coloured her thoughts.

‘This is a dreadful country indeed. We have seen Badlands before, but none of us has ever imagined anything quite so terrible as this. There are stretches, miles across, where it looks as if all the ground has been fused into black glass; there is nothing else, nothing but the glass like a frozen ocean of ink… then belts of Badlands… then another wilderness of black glass. It goes on and on… What did they do here? What can they have done to create such a frightful place?… No wonder none of us ever came this way before. It’s like going over the rim of the world, into the outskirts of hell… it must be utterly beyond hope, barred to any kind of life for ever and ever… But why? – why? – why?… There was the power of gods in the hands of children, we know: but were they mad children, all of them quite mad?… The mountains are cinders and the plains are black glass – still, after centuries!… It is so dreary… dreary… a monstrous madness… It is frightening to think that a whole race could go insane…. If we did not know that you are on the other side of it we should have turned back and fled—’

Petra cut her off, abruptly blotting everything with distress. We had not known she was awake. I don’t know what she had made of most of it, but she had clearly caught that thought of turning back. I went across to soothe her down, so that presently the Sealand woman was able to get through again and reassure her. The alarm subsided, and Petra recovered herself.

Michael came in, asking:

‘David, what about Rachel?’

I remembered his anxiety the previous night.

‘Petra, darling,’ I said, ‘we’ve got too far away now for any of us to reach Rachel. Will you ask her something?’

Petra nodded.

‘We want to know if she has heard anything of Mark since she talked to Michael.’

Petra put the question. Then she shook her head.

‘No,’ she said. ‘She hasn’t heard anything. She’s very miserable, I think. She wants to know if Michael is all right.’

‘Tell her he’s quite all right — we all are. Tell her we love her, we’re terribly sorry she’s all alone, but she must be brave — and careful. She must try not to let anyone see she’s worried.’

‘She understands. She says she’ll try.’ Petra reported. She remained thoughtful for a moment. Then she said to me, in words: ‘Rachel’s afraid. She’s crying inside. She wants Michael.’

‘Did she tell you that?’ I asked.

Petra shook her head. ‘No. It was a sort of behind-think, but I saw it.’

‘We’d better not say anything about it,’ I decided. ‘It’s not our business. A person’s behind-thinks aren’t really meant for other people, so we must just pretend not to have noticed them.’

‘All right,’ Petra agreed, equably.

I hoped it was all right. When I thought it over I wasn’t at all sure that I cared much for this business of detecting ‘behind-thinks.’ It left one a trifle uneasy, and retrospective…

Sophie woke up a few minutes later. She seemed calm, competent again, as though the last night’s storm had blown itself out. She sent us to the back of the cave and unhooked the curtain to let the daylight in. Presently she had a fire going in the hollow. The greater part of the smoke from it went out of the entrance; the rest did at least have the compensation that it helped to obscure the interior of the cave from any outside observation. She ladled measures from two or three bags into an iron pot, added some water, and put the pot on the fire.

‘Watch it,’ she instructed Rosalind, and then disappeared down the outside ladder.

Some twenty minutes later her head reappeared. She threw a couple of discs of hard bread over the sill and climbed in after them. She went to the pot, stirred it, and sniffed at the contents.

‘No trouble?’ I asked her.

‘Not about that,’ she said. ‘They found him. They think you did it. There was a search — of a sort — early this morning. It wasn’t as much of a search as it would have been with more men. But now they’ve got other things to worry about. The men who went to the fighting are coming back in twos and threes. What happened, do you know?’

I told of the ambush that had failed, and the resulting disappearance of resistance.

‘How far have they come now?’ she wanted to know.

I inquired of Michael.

‘We’re just clear of forest for the first time, and into rough country,’ he told me.

I handed it on to Sophie. She nodded. ‘Three hours, or a bit less, perhaps, to the river-bank,’ she said.

She ladled the species of porridge out of the pot into bowls. It tasted better than it looked. The bread was less palatable. She broke a disc of it with a stone, and it had to be dipped in water before one could eat it. Petra grumbled that it was not proper food like we had at home. That reminded her of something. Without any warning she launched a question:

‘Michael, is my father there?’

It took him off guard. I caught his ‘yes’ forming before he could suppress it.

I looked at Petra, hoping the implications were lost on her. Mercifully, they were. Rosalind lowered her bowl and stared into it silently.

Suspicion insulated one curiously little against the shock of knowledge. I could recall my father’s voice, doctrinaire, relentless. I knew the expression his face would be wearing, as if I had seen him when he spoke.

‘A baby — a baby which… would grow to breed, and breeding, spread pollution until all around us there would be mutants and abominations. That has happened in places where the will and faith were weak, but here it shall never happen.’

And then my Aunt Harriet:

‘I shall pray God to send charity into this hideous world….’

Poor Aunt Harriet, with her prayers as futile as her hopes….

A world in which a man could come upon such a hunt himself! What kind of a man?

Rosalind rested her hand on my arm. Sophie looked up. When she saw my face her expression changed.

‘What is it?’ she asked.

Rosalind told her. Her eyes widened with horror. She looked from me to Petra, then slowly, bemusedly, back to me again. She opened her mouth to speak, but lowered her eyes, leaving the thought unsaid. I looked at Petra, too: then at Sophie, at the rags she wore, and the cave we were in….

‘Purity…’ I said. ‘The will of the Lord. Honour thy father… Am I supposed to forgive him! Or to try to kill him?’