The Midwich Cuckoos

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  They dropped me off at Kyle Manor, and I used Zellaby’s phone to call the police. When I put the receiver down I found him at my elbow with a glass in his hand.

  ‘You look as if you could do with it,’ he said.

  ‘I could,’ I agreed. ‘Very unexpected. Very messy.’

  ‘Just how did it occur?’ he inquired.

  I gave him an account of our rather narrow angle on the affair. Twenty minutes later Bernard returned, able to tell more of it.

  ‘The Pawle brothers were apparently very much attached,’ he began. Zellaby nodded agreement. ‘Well, it seems that the younger one, David, found the inquest the last straw, and decided that if nobody else was going to see justice done over his brother, he’d do it himself.

  ‘This girl Elsa – his girl – called at Dacre Farm just as he was leaving. When she saw him carrying the gun she guessed what was happening, and tried to stop him. He wouldn’t listen, and to get rid of her he locked her in a shed, and then went off.

  ‘It took her a bit of time to break out, but she judged he would be making for The Grange, and followed across the fields. When she got to the field she thought she’d made a mistake because she didn’t see him at first. Possibly he was lying down to take cover. Anyway, she doesn’t seem to have spotted him until after the first shot. When she did, he was standing up, with the gun still pointed into the lane. Then while she was running towards him he reversed the gun, and put his thumb on the trigger….’

  Zellaby remained silently thoughtful for some moments, then he said:

  ‘It’ll be a clear enough case from the police view. David considers the Children to be responsible for his brother’s death, kills one of them in revenge and then, to escape the penalty, commits suicide. Obviously unbalanced. What else could a “reasonable man” think?’

  ‘I may have been a bit sceptical before,’ I admitted, ‘but I’m not now. The way that boy looked at us! I believe that for a moment he thought one of us had done it – fired that shot, I mean – just for an instant, until he saw it was impossible. The sensation was indescribable, but it was frightening for the moment it lasted. Did you feel that, too?’ I added, to Bernard.

  He nodded. ‘A queer, weak, and watery feeling,’ he agreed. ‘Very bleak.’

  ‘It was just –’ I broke off, suddenly remembering. ‘My God, I was so taken up with other business I forgot to tell the police anything about the wounded boy. Ought we to call an ambulance for The Grange?’

  Zellaby shook his head.

  ‘They’ve got a doctor of their own on the staff there,’ he told us.

  He reflected in silence for fully a minute, then he sighed, and shook his head. ‘I don’t much like this development, Colonel. I don’t like it at all. Am I mistaken, do you think, in seeing here the very pattern of the way a blood feud starts… ?’

  CHAPTER 17

  Midwich Protests

  DINNER at Kyle Manor was postponed to allow Bernard and me to make our statements to the police, and by the time that was over I was feeling the need of it. I was grateful, too, for the Zellabys’ offer to put both of us up for the night. The shooting had caused Bernard to change his mind about returning to London; he had decided to be on hand, if not in Midwich itself, then no further away than Trayne, leaving me with the alternative of keeping him company, or making a slow journey by railway. Moreover, I had a feeling that my sceptical attitude towards Zellaby in the afternoon had verged upon the discourteous, and I was not sorry for the chance to make amends.

  I sipped my sherry, feeling a little ashamed.

  ‘You cannot,’ I told myself, ‘you cannot protest or argue these Children and their qualities out of existence. And since they do exist, there must be some explanation of that existence. None of your accepted views explain it. Therefore, that explanation is going to be found, however uncomfortable it may be for you, in views that you do not at present accept. Whatever it is, it is going to arouse your prejudices. Just remember that, and clout your instinctive prejudices with it when they bob up.’

  At dinner, however, I had no need to be vigilant for clouting. The Zellabys, feeling no doubt that we had passed through disquietment enough for the present, took pains to keep the conversation on subjects unrelated to Midwich and its troubles. Bernard remained somewhat abstracted, but I appreciated the effort, and ended the meal listening to Zellaby discoursing on the wave-motion of form and style, and the desirability of intermittent periods of social rigidity for the purpose of curbing the subversive energies of a new generation, in a far more equable frame of mind than I had started it.

  Not long after we had withdrawn to the sitting-room, however, the peculiar problems of Midwich were back with us, re-entering with a visit by Mr Leebody. The Reverend Hubert was a badly troubled man, and looking, I thought, a lot older than the passage of eight years fully warranted.

  Angela Zellaby sent for another cup and poured him some coffee. His attempts at small talk while he sipped it were valiant if erratic, but when he finally set down his empty cup, it was with an air of holding back no longer.

  ‘Something,’ he announced to us all, ‘something will have to be done.’

  Zellaby looked at him thoughtfully for a moment.

  ‘My dear Vicar,’ he reminded him gently, ‘each of us has been saying that for years.’

  ‘I mean done soon, and decisively. We’ve done our best to find a place for the Children, to preserve some kind of balance – and, considering everything, I don’t think we have done too badly – but all along it has been makeshift, impromptu, empiric, and it can’t go on like that any longer. We must have a code which includes the Children, some means by which the law can be brought to bear on them, as it does on the rest of us. If the law is seen to be incapable of ensuring that justice is done, it falls into contempt, and men feel that there is no resort and no protection but private revenge. That is what happened this afternoon, and even if we get through this crisis without serious trouble, there is bound to be another before long. It is useless for the authorities to employ the forms of law to produce verdicts which everyone knows to be false. This afternoon’s verdict was a farce; and there is no doubt in the village that the inquest on the younger Pawle will be just as much of a farce. It is absolutely necessary that steps should be taken at once to bring the Children within the control of the law before worse trouble occurs.’

  ‘We foresaw possible difficulty of the kind, you will remember,’ Zellaby reminded him. ‘We even sent a memorandum on the subject to the Colonel here. I must admit that we did not envisage any such serious matters as have occurred – but we did point out the desirability of having some means of ensuring that the Children should conform to normal social and legal rules. And what happened? You, Colonel, passed it on to higher authorities, and eventually we received a reply appreciating our concern, but assuring us that the Department concerned had every confidence in the social psychologists who had been appointed to instruct and guide the Children. In other words they saw no way in which they could exert control over them, and simply were hoping that under suitable training no critical situation would arise. – And there, I must confess, I sympathize with the Department, for I am still quite unable to see how the Children can be compelled to obey rules of any kind, if they do not choose to.’

  Mr Leebody entwined his fingers, looking miserably helpless.

  ‘But something must be done,’ he reiterated. ‘It only needed an occurrence of this kind to bring it all to a head, now I’m afraid of it boiling over any minute. It isn’t a matter of reasoning, it’s more primitive. Almost every man in the village is at The Scythe and Stone tonight. Nobody called a meeting; they’ve just gravitated there, and most of the women are fluttering round to one another’s houses, and whispering in groups. It’s the kind of excuse the men have always wanted – or it might be.’

  ‘Excuse?’ I put in. ‘I don’t quite see – ?’

  ‘Cuckoos,’ explained Zellaby. ‘You don’t think the
men have ever honestly liked these Children do you ? The fair face they’ve put on it has been mostly for their wives’ sakes. Considering the sense of outrage that must be abiding in their subconsciouses, it does them great credit – a little mitigated perhaps by one or two examples like Harriman’s which made them scared to touch the Children.

  ‘The women – most of them, at any rate – don’t feel like that. They all know well enough now that, biologically speaking, they are not even their own children, but they did have the trouble and pain of bearing them – and that, even if they resent the imposition deeply, which some of them do, still isn’t the kind of link they can just snip and forget. Then there are others who – well, take Miss Ogle, for instance. If they had horns, tails, and cloven hooves Miss Ogle, Miss Lamb, and a number of others would still dote on them. But the most one can expect of the best of the men is toleration.’

  ‘It has been very difficult,’ added Mr Leebody. ‘It cuts right across a proper family relationship. There’s scarcely a man who doesn’t resent their existence. We’ve kept on smoothing over the consequences, but that is the best we’ve been able to do. It’s been like something always smouldering.…’

  ‘And you think this Pawle business will supply the fatal draught?’ Bernard asked.

  ‘It could do. If not, something else will,’ Mr Leebody said forlornly. ‘If only there were something one could do, before it’s too late.’

  ‘There isn’t, my dear fellow,’ Zellaby said decisively. ‘I’ve told you that before, and it’s time you began to believe me. You’ve done marvels of patching-up and pacifying, but there’s nothing fundamental that you or any of us can do because the initiative is not ours; it lies with the Children themselves. I suppose I know them as well as anybody. I’ve been teaching them, and doing my best to get to know them since they were babies, and I’ve got practically nowhere – nor have The Grange people done any better, however pompously they may cover it up. We can’t even anticipate the Children because we don’t understand, on any but the broadest lines, what they want, or how they think. What’s happened to that boy who was shot, by the way? His condition could have some effect on developments.’

  ‘The rest of them wouldn’t let him go. They sent the ambulance away. Dr Anderby up there is looking after him. There are quite a number of pellets to be removed, but he thinks he’ll be all right,’ said the Vicar.

  ‘I hope he’s right. If not, I can see us having a real feud on our hands,’ said Zellaby.

  ‘It is my impression that we already have,’ Mr Leebody remarked unhappily.

  ‘Not yet,’ Zellaby maintained. ‘It takes two parties to make a feud. So far the aggression has been by the village.’

  ‘You’re not going to deny that the Children murdered the two Pawle boys?’

  ‘No, but it wasn’t aggressive. I do have some experience of the Children. In the first case their action was a spontaneous hitting-back when one of them was hurt; in the second, too, it was defensive – don’t forget there was a second barrel, loaded, and ready to be fired at someone. In both cases the response was over-drastic, I’ll grant that, but in intent it was manslaughter, rather than murder. Both times they were the provoked, not the provokers. In fact, the one deliberate attempt at murder was by David Pawle.’

  ‘If someone hits you with a car, and you kill him for it,’ said the Vicar, ‘it seems to me to be murder, and that seems to me to be provocation. And to David Pawle it was provocation. He waited for the law to administer justice, and the law failed him, so he took the matter into his own hands. Was that intended murder? – or was it intended justice?’

  ‘The one thing it certainly was not, was justice,’ Zellaby said firmly. ‘It was feuding. He attempted to kill one of the Children, chosen at random, for an act they had committed collectively. What these incidents really make clear, my dear fellow, is that the laws evolved by one particular species, for the convenience of that species, are, by their nature, concerned only with the capacities of that species – against a species with different capacities they simply become inapplicable.’

  The Vicar shook his head despondently.

  ‘I don’t know, Zellaby…. I simply don’t know…. I’m in a morass. I don’t even know for certain whether these Children are imputable for murder.’

  Zellaby raised his eyebrows.

  ‘ “And God said,” ’ quoted Mr Leebody, ‘ “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” Very well, then, what are these Children? What are they? The image does not mean the outer image, or every statue would be man. It means the inner image, the spirit and the soul. But you have told me, and, on the evidence, I came to believe it, that the Children do not have individual spirits – that they have one man-spirit, and one woman-spirit, each far more powerful than we understand, that they share between them. What, then, are they? They cannot be what we know as man, for this inner image is on a different pattern – its likeness is to something else. They have the look of the genus homo, but not the nature. And since they are of another kind, and murder is, by definition, the killing of one of one’s own kind, can the killing of one of them by us be, in fact, murder? It would appear not.

  ‘And from that one must go further. For, since they do not come under the prohibition of murder, what is our attitude to them to be? At present, we are conceding them all the privileges of the true homo sapiens. Are we right to do this? Since they are another species, are we not fully entitled – indeed, have we not perhaps a duty ? – to fight them in order to protect our own species? After all, if we were to discover dangerous wild animals in our midst our duty would be clear. I don’t know…. I am, as I said, in a morass….’

  ‘You are, my dear fellow, you are indeed,’ agreed Zellaby. ‘Only a few minutes ago you were telling me, with some heat, that the Children had murdered both the Pawle boys. Taking that in conjunction with your later proposition, it would appear that if they kill us it is murder, but if we were to kill them it would be something else. One cannot help feeling that a jurist, lay or ecclesiastical, would find such a proposition ethically unsatisfactory.

  ‘Nor do I altogether follow your argument concerning the “likeness”. If your God is a purely terrestrial God, you are no doubt right – for in spite of one’s opposition to the idea it can no longer be denied that the Children have in some way been introduced among us from “outside”; there is nowhere else they can have come from. But, as I understand it, your God is a universal God; He is God on all suns and all planets. Surely, then, He must have universal form? Would it not be a staggering vanity to imagine that He can manifest Himself only in the form that is appropriate to this particular, not very important planet?

  ‘Our two approaches to such a problem are bound to differ greatly, but –.’

  He broke off at the sound of raised voices in the hall outside, and looked questioningly at his wife. Before either could move, however, the door was abruptly thrust open, and Mrs Brant appeared on the threshold. With a perfunctory ‘Scuse me’ to the Zellabys, she made for Mr Leebody, and grasped his sleeve.

  ‘Oh, sir. You must come quick,’ she told him breathlessly.

  ‘My dear Mrs Brant –’ he began.

  ‘You must come, sir,’ she repeated. ‘They’re all going up to The Grange. They’re going to burn it down. You must come and stop them.’

  Mr Leebody stared at her while she continued to pull at his sleeve.

  ‘They’re starting now,’ she said desperately. ‘You can stop them, Vicar. You must. They want to burn the Children. Oh, hurry. Please. Please hurry !’

  Mr Leebody got up. He turned to Angela Zellaby.

  ‘I’m sorry. I think I’d better –’ he began, but his apology was cut short by Mrs Brant’s tugging.

  ‘Has anyone told the police?’ Zellaby inquired.

  ‘Yes – no. I don’t know. They couldn’t get here in time. Oh, Vicar, please hurry !’ said Mrs Brant, dragging him forcibly through the doorway.

  The four of us were left look
ing at one another. Angela crossed the room swiftly, and closed the door.

  ‘I’d better go and back him up, I think,’ said Bernard.

  ‘We might be able to help,’ agreed Zellaby, turning, and I moved to join them.

  Angela was standing resolutely with her back to the door. ‘No!’ she said, decisively. ‘If you want to do something useful, call the police.’

  ‘You could do that, my dear, while we go and –’

  ‘Gordon,’ she said, in a severe voice, as if reprimanding a child. ‘Stop and think. Colonel Westcott, you would do more harm than good. You are identified with the Children’s interest.’

  We all stood in front of her surprised, and a little sheepish. ‘What are you afraid of, Angela?’ Zellaby asked.

  ‘I don’t know. How can I possibly tell ? – Except that the Colonel might be lynched.’

  ‘But it will be important,’ protested Zellaby. ‘We know what the Children can do with individuals, I want to see how they handle a crowd. If they run true to form they’ll only have to will the whole crowd to turn round and go away. It will be most interesting to see whether –’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Angela flatly, and with a firmness which made Zellaby blink. ‘That is not their “form”, and you know it. If it were, they’d simply have made Jim Pawle stop his car; and they’d have made David Pawle fire his second barrel into the air. But they didn’t. They’re never content with repulsing – they always counter-attack.’

  Zellaby blinked again.

  ‘You’re right, Angela,’ he said, in surprise. ‘I never thought of that. The reprisal is always too drastic for the occasion.’

  ‘It is. And however they handle a crowd, I don’t want you handled with it. Nor you, Colonel,’ she added, to Bernard. ‘You’re going to be needed to get us out of the trouble you’ve helped to cause. I’m glad you’re here – at least there’s someone on the spot who will be listened to.’

  ‘I might observe – from a distance, perhaps,’ I suggested meekly.