John Wyndham – The Chrysalids

‘What’s your name, boy?’ he asked.

‘David,’ I told him. ‘David Strorm.’

He nodded, as if that were satisfactory.

‘ The man at the door, with his arm in a sling, that would be your father, Joseph Strorm?’

‘Yes,’ I told him.

Again he nodded. He looked round the house and the out­buildings.

‘ This place, then, would be Waknuk?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ I said again.

I don’t know whether he would have asked more, for at that point somebody told me to clear off. A little later they all re­mounted, and soon they moved away, the spidery man with his arms tied together once more. I watched them ride off in the Kentak direction, glad to see them go. My first encounter with someone from the Fringes had not, after all, been exciting; but it had been unpleasantly disturbing.

I heard later that both the captured Fringes men managed to escape that same night. I can’t remember who told me, but I am perfectly certain it was not my father. I never once heard him refer to that day, and I never had the courage to ask him about it. …

Then scarcely, it seemed, had we settled down after the in­vasion and got the men back to catching up with the farm work, than my father was in the middle of a new row with my half-uncle, Angus Morton.

Differences of temperament and outlook had kept them in­termittently at war with one another for years. My father had been heard to sum up his opinion by declaring that if Angus had any principles they were of such infinite width as to be a menace to the rectitude of the neighbourhood; to which Angus was reputed to have replied that Joseph Strorm was a flinty-souled pedant, and bigoted well beyond reason. It was not, therefore, difficult for a row to blow up, and the latest one occurred over Angus’ acquisition of a pair of great-horses.

Rumours of great-horses had reached our district though none had been seen there. My father was already uneasy in his mind at what he had heard of them, nor was the fact that Angus was the importer of them a commendation; conse­quently, it may have been with some prejudice that he went to inspect them.

His doubts were confirmed at once. The moment he set eyes on the huge creatures standing twenty-six hands at the shoulder, he knew they were wrong. He turned his back on them with disgust, and went straight to the inspector’s house with a demand that they should be destroyed as Offences.

‘You’re out of order this time,’ the inspector told him cheer­fully, glad that for once his position was incontestable.’ They’re Government-approved, so they are beyond my jurisdiction, anyway.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ my father told him. ‘God never made horses the size of these. The Government can’t have approved them.’

‘But they have,’ said the inspector. ‘What’s more,’ he added with satisfaction, ‘Angus tells me that knowing the neighbour­hood so well he has got attested pedigrees for them.’

‘Any government that could pass creatures like that is cor­rupt and immoral,’ my father announced.

‘Possibly,’ admitted the inspector, ‘but it’s still the Govern­ment.’

My father glared at him.

‘It’s easy to see why some people would approve them,’ he said. ‘ One of those brutes could do the work of two, maybe three, ordinary horses – and for less than double the feed of one. There’s a good profit there, a good incentive to get them passed – but that doesn’t mean that they’re right. I say a horse like that is not one of God’s creatures – and if it isn’t His, then it’s an Offence, and should be destroyed as such.’

‘The official approval states that the breed was produced simply by mating for size, in the normal way. And I’d defy you to find any characteristic that’s identifiably wrong with them, anyway,’ the inspector told him.

‘ Somebody would say that when he saw how profitable they could be. There’s a word for that kind of thinking,’ my father replied.

The inspector shrugged.

‘It does not follow that they are right,’ my father persisted. ‘A horse that size is not right – you know that unofficially, as well as I do, and there’s no getting away from it. Once we allow things that we know are not right, there’s no telling where it will end. A god-fearing community doesn’t have to deny its faith just because there’s been pressure brought to bear in a government licensing office. There are plenty of us here who know how God intended his creatures to be, even if the Government doesn’t.’

The inspector smiled. ‘As with the Dakers’ cat?’ he sug­gested.

My father glared at him again. The affair of the Dakers’ cat rankled.

About a year previously it had somehow come to his know­ledge that Ben Dakers’ wife housed a tailless cat. He investi­gated, and when he had collected evidence that it had not simply lost its tail in some way, but had never possessed one, he condemned it, and, in his capacity as a magistrate, ordered the inspector to make out a warrant for its destruction as an Offence. The inspector had done so, with reluctance, whereupon Dakers promptly entered an appeal. Such shilly-shallying in an obvious case outraged my father’s principles, and he personally attended to the demise of the Dakers’ cat while the matter was still sub judice. His position, when a notification subsequently arrived stating that there was a recognized breed of tailless cats with a well-authenticated history, was awkward, and somewhat expensive. It had been with very bad grace that he had chosen to make a public apology rather than resign his magistracy.

‘This,’ he told the inspector sharply, ‘is an altogether more important affair.’

‘Listen,’ said the inspector patiently. ‘The type is approved. This particular pair has confirmatory sanction. If that’s not good enough for you, go ahead and shoot them yourself – and see what happens to you.’

‘It is your moral duty to issue an order against these so-called horses,’ my father insisted.

The inspector was suddenly tired of it.

‘ It’s part of my official duty to protect them from harm by fools and bigots,’ he snapped.

My father did not actually hit the inspector, but it must have been a near thing. He went on boiling with rage for several days and the next Sunday we were treated to a searing address on the toleration of Mutants which sullied the Purity of our community. He called for a general boycott of the owner of the Offences, speculated upon immorality in high places, hinted that some there might be expected to have a fellow-feeling for Mutants, and wound up with a peroration in which a certain official was scathed as an unprincipled hireling of unprin­cipled masters and the local representative of the Forces of Evil.

Though the inspector had no such convenient pulpit for reply, certain trenchant remarks of his on persecution, con­tempt of authority, bigotry, religious mania, the law of slander, and the probable effects of direct action in opposition to Government sanction achieved a wide circulation.

It was very likely the last point that kept my father from doing more than talk. He had had plenty of trouble over the Dakers’ cat which was of no value at all: but the great-horses were costly creatures; besides, Angus would not be one to waive any possible penalty. . . .

So there was a degree of frustration about that made home a good place to get away from as much as possible.

Now that the countryside had settled down again and was not full of unexpected people, Sophie’s parents would let her go out on rambles once more, and I slipped away over there when I could get away unnoticed.

Sophie couldn’t go to school, of course. She would have been found out very quickly, even with a false certificate; and her parents, though they taught her to read and write, did not have any books, so that it wasn’t much good to her. That was why we talked – at least I talked – a lot on our expeditions, trying to tell her what I was learning from my own reading books.

The world, I was able to tell her, was generally thought to be a pretty big place, and probably round. The civilized part of it – of which Waknuk was only a small district – was called Labrador. This was thought to be the Old People’s name for it, though that was not very certain. Round most of Labrador there was a great deal of water called the sea, which was im­portant on account of fish. Nobody that I knew, except Uncle Axel, had actually seen this sea because it was a long way off, but if you were to go three hundred miles or so east, north, or north-west you would come to it sooner or later. But south-west or south, you wouldn’t; you’d get to the Fringes and then the Badlands, which would kill you.

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