‘I couldn’t help it, Sophie,’ I sobbed, ‘I couldn’t help it.’
6
In the evening, when I grew calmer, I found that Rosalind was trying to talk to me. Some of the others were anxiously asking what was the matter, too. I told them about Sophie. It wasn’t a secret any more now. I could feel that they were shocked. I tried to explain that a person with a deviation – a small deviation, at any rate – wasn’t the monstrosity we had been told. It did not really make any difference – not to Sophie, at any rate.
They received that very doubtfully indeed. The things we had all been taught were against their acceptance – though they knew well enough that what I was telling them must be true to me. You can’t lie when you talk with your thoughts. They wrestled with the novel idea that a Deviation might not be disgusting and evil – not very successfully. In the circumstances they could not give me much consolation, and I was not sorry when one by one they dropped out and I knew that they had fallen asleep.
I was tired out myself, but sleep was a long time coming. I lay there, picturing Sophie and her parents plodding their way southward towards the dubious safety of the Fringes, and hoping desperately that they would be far enough off now for my betrayal not to hurt them.
And then, when sleep did come, it was full of dreams. Faces and people moved restlessly through it, scenes, too. Once more there was the one where we all stood round in the yard while my father disposed of an Offence which was Sophie, and I woke up from that hearing my own voice shouting to him to stop. I was frightened to go to sleep again, but I did, and that time it was quite different. I dreamed again of the great city by the sea, with its houses and streets, and the things that flew in the sky. It was years since I had dreamed about that, but it still looked just the same, and in some quite obscure way it soothed me.
My mother looked in in the morning, but she was detached and disapproving. Mary was the one who took charge, and she decreed that there was to be no getting up that day. I was to lie on my front, and not wriggle about, so that my back would heal more quickly. I took the instruction meekly, for it was certainly more comfortable to do as she said. So I lay there and considered what preparations I should have to make for running away, once I was about again and the stiffness had worn off. It would, I decided, be much better to have a horse, and I spent most of the morning concocting a plan for stealing one and riding away to the Fringes.
The inspector looked in in the afternoon, bringing with him a bag of buttery sweets. For a moment I thought of trying to get something out of him – casually, of course – about the real nature of the Fringes: after all, as an expert on Deviation he might be expected to know more about them than anyone else. On second thoughts, however, I decided it might be unwise.
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.’