The Midwich Cuckoos
by
JOHN WYNDHAM


Part One

Chapter I

No Entry to Midwich

One of the luckiest accidents in my wife's life is that she happened to
marry a man who was born on the 26th of September.  But for that, we
should both of us undoubtedly have been at home in Midwich on the night
of the 26th 27th, with consequences which, I have never ceased to be
thankful, she was spared.

Because it was my birthday, however, and also to some extent because I
had the day before received and signed a contract with an American
publisher, we set off on the morning of the 26th for London, and a mild
celebration.  Very pleasant, too.  A few satisfactory calls, lobster
and Chablis at Wheeler's, Ustinov's latest extravaganza, a little
supper, and so back to the hotel where Janet enjoyed the bathroom with
that fascination which other people's plumbing always arouses in her.

Next morning, a leisurely departure on the way back to Midwich.  A
pause in Trayne, which is our nearest shopping town, for a few
groceries; then on along the main road, through the village of Stouch,
then the right-hand turn on to the secondary road for But, no.  Half
the road is blocked by a pole from which dangles a notice "ROAD
CLOSED', and in the gap beside it stands a policeman who holds up his
hand ..... So I stop.  The policeman advances to the offside of the
car, I recognize him as a man from Trayne.  "Sorry, sir, but the road
is closed."  "You mean I'll have to go round by the Oppley Road?" 
"Fraid that's closed, too, sir."  "But '

There is the sound of a horn behind.

"F you wouldn't mind backing off a bit to the left, sir."

Rather bewildered, I do as he asks, and past us and past him goes an
army three-ton lorry with khaki-clad youths leaning over the sides.
"Revolution in Midwich?"  I inquire.  "Manoeuvres," he tells me.  "The
road's impassable."  "Not both roads surely?  We live in Midwich, you
know, Constable."  "I know, sir.  But there's no way there just now. 
"F I was you, sir, I'd go back to Trayne till we get it clear.  Can't
have parking here, 'cause of getting things through."

Janet opens the door on her side and picks up her shopping-bag.  "I'll
walk on, and you come along when the road's clear," she tells me.

The constable hesitates.  Then he lowers his voice.  "Seein' as you
live there, ma'am, I'll tell you but it's confidential like.  "Tisn't
no use tryin', ma'am.  Nobody can't get into Midwich, an' that's a
fact."

We stare at him.  "But why on earth not?"  says Janet.  "That's just
what they're tryin' to find out, ma'am.  Now, if you was to go to the
Eagle in Trayne, I'll see you're informed as soon as the road's
clear."

Janet and I looked at one another.  "Well," she said to the constable,
'it seems very queer, but if you're quite sure we can't get through
...."  "I am that, ma'am.  It's orders, too.  We'll let you know, as
soon as maybe."

If one wanted to make a fuss, it was no good making it with him; the
man was only doing his duty, and as amiably as possible.  "Very well,"
I agreed.  "Gaylord's my name, Richard Gaylord.  I'll tell the Eagle to
take a message for me in case I'm not there when it comes."

I backed the car further until we were on the main road, and, taking
his word for it that the other Midwich road was similarly closed,
turned back the way we had come.  Once we were the other side of Stouch
village I pulled off the road into a field gateway.  "This," I said,
'has a very odd smell about it.  Shall we cut across the fields, and
see what's going on?"  "That policeman's manner was sort of queer, too.
Let's," Janet agreed, opening her door.

*

What made it the more odd was that Midwich was, almost notoriously, a
place where things did not happen.

Janet and I had lived there just over a year then, and found this to be
almost its leading feature.  Indeed, had there been posts at the
entrances to the village bearing a red triangle and below them a
notice:

MIDWICH

DO NOT

DISTURB

they would have seemed not inappropriate.  And why Midwich should have
been singled out in preference to any one of a thousand other villages
for the curious event of the 26th of September seems likely to remain a
mystery for ever.

For consider the simple ordinariness of the place.

Midwich lies roughly eight miles west-north-west of Trayne.  The main
road westward out of Trayne runs through the neighbouring villages of
Stouch and Oppley, from each of which secondary roads lead to Midwich.
The village itself is therefore at the apex of a road triangle which
has Oppley and Stouch at its lower corners; its only other highway
being a lane which rolls in a Chestertonian fashion some five miles to
reach Hickham which is three miles north.

At the heart of Midwich is a triangular Green ornamented by five fine
elms and a white-railed pond.  The war memorial stands in the church
ward corner of the Green, and spaced out round the sides are the church
itself, the vicarage, the inn, the smithy, the post office, Mrs. Welt's
shop, and a number of cottages.  Altogether, the village comprises some
sixty cottages and small houses, a village hall, Kyle Manor, and The
Grange.

The church is mostly perp.  and dec."  but with a Norman west doorway
and font.  The vicarage is Georgian; The Grange Victorian; Kyle Manor
has Tudor roots with numerous later graftings.  The cottages show most
of the styles which have existed between the two Elizabeths, but even
more recent than the two latest County Council cottages are the
utilitarian wings that were added to The Grange when the Ministry took
it over for Research.

The existence of Midwich has never been convincingly accounted for.  It
was not in a strategic position to hold a market, not even across a
pack way of any importance.  It appears, at some unknown time, simply
to have occurred; the Domesday survey notes it as a hamlet, and it has
continued as little more, for the railway age ignored it, as had the
coach roads, and even the navigation canals.

So far as is known, it rests upon no desirable minerals: no official
eye ever saw it as a likely site for an aerodrome, or a bombing-range,
or a battle school; only the Ministry intruded, and the reconditioning
of The Grange had little effect upon the village life.  Midwich has or
rather, had lived and drowsed upon its good soil in Arcadian un
distinction for a thousand years; and there seemed, until the late
evening of the 26th of September, no reason why it should not so to do
for the next millennium, too.

This must not be taken, however, to mean that Midwich is altogether
without history.  It has had its moments.  In 1931 it was the centre of
an untraced outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease.  And in 1916 an
off-course Zeppelin unloaded a bomb which fell in a ploughed field and
fortunately failed to explode.  And before that it hit the headlines
well, anyway, the broad sheets when Black Ned, a second-class
highwayman, was shot on the steps of The Scythe and Stone Inn by Sweet
Polly Parker, and although this gesture of reproof appears to have been
of a more personal than social nature, she was, nevertheless, much
lauded for it in the ballads of 1768.

Then, too, there was the sensational closure of the nearby St.  Accius'
Abbey, and the redistribution of the brethren for reasons which have
been a subject of intermittent local speculation ever since it took
place, in 1493.

Other events include the stabling of Cromwell's horses in the church,
and a visit by William Wordsworth, who was inspired by the Abbey ruins
to the production of one of his more routine commendatory sonnets.

With these exceptions, however, recorded time seems to have flowed over
Midwich without a ripple.

Nor would the inhabitants save, perhaps, some of the youthful in their
brief pre-marital restlessness have it otherwise.  Indeed, but for the
Vicar and his wife, the Zellabys at Kyle Manor, the doctor, the
district-nurse, ourselves, and, of course, the Researchers, they had
most of them lived there for numerous generations in a placid
continuity which had become a right.

During the day of the 26th of September there seems to have been no
trace of a foreshadow.  Possibly Mrs.  Brant, the blacksmith's wife,
did feel a trace of uneasiness at the sight of nine magpies in one
field, as she afterwards claimed; and Miss Ogle, the postmistress, may
have been perturbed on the previous night by a dream of singularly
large vampire bats; but, if so, it is unfortunate that Mrs.  Brant's
omens and Miss Ogle's dreams should have been so frequent as to nullify
their alarm value.  No other evidence has been produced to suggest that
on that Monday, until late in the evening, Midwich was anything but
normal.  Just, in fact, as it had appeared to be when Janet and I set
off for London.  And yet, on Tuesday the 27th ..... *

We locked the car, climbed the gate, and started over the field of
stubble keeping well in to the hedge.  At the end of that we came to
another field of stubble and bore leftwards across it, slightly uphill.
It was a big field with a good hedge on the far side, and we had to go
further left to find a gate we could climb.  Half-way across the
pasture beyond brought us to the top of the rise, and we were able to
look out across Midwich not that much of it was visible for trees, but
we could see a couple of wisps of greyish smoke lazily rising, and the
church spire sticking up by the elms.  Also, in the middle of the next
field I could see four or five cows lying down, apparently asleep.

I am not a countryman, I only live there, but I remember thinking
rather far back in my mind that there was something not quite right
about that.  Cows folded up, chewing cud, yes, commonly enough; but
cows lying down fast asleep, well, no.  But it did not do more at the
time than give me a vague feeling of something out of true.  We went
on.

We climbed the fence of the field where the cows were and started
across that, too.

A voice hallo oed at us, away on the left.  I looked round and made out
a khaki-clad figure in the middle of the next field.  He was calling
something unintelligible, but the way he was waving his stick was
without doubt a sign for us to go back.  I stopped.  "Oh, come on,
Richard.  He's miles away," said Janet impatiently, and began to run on
ahead.

I still hesitated, looking at the figure who was now waving his stick
more energetically than ever, and shouting more loudly, though no more
intelligibly.  I decided to follow Janet.  She had perhaps twenty yards
start of me by now, and then, just as I started off, she staggered,
collapsed without a sound, and lay quite still ..... I stopped dead.
That was involuntary.  If she had gone down with a twisted ankle, or
had simply tripped I should have run on, to her.  But this was so
sudden and so complete that for a moment I thought, idiotically, that
she had been shot.

The stop was only momentary.  Then I went on again.

Dimly I was aware of the man away on the left still shouting, but I did
not bother about him.  I hurried towards her ..... But I did not reach
her.

I went out so completely that I never even saw the ground come up to
hit me ..... Chapter 2

All Quiet in Midwich.

As I said, all was normal in Midwich on the 26th.  I have looked into
the matter extensively, and can tell you where practically everyone
was, and what they were doing that evening.

The Scythe and Stone, for instance, was entertaining its regulars in
their usual numbers.  Some of the younger villagers had gone to the
pictures in Trayne mostly the same ones who had gone there the previous
Monday.  In the post office Miss Ogle was knitting beside her
switchboard, and finding, as usual, that real life conversation was
more interesting than the wireless.  Mr.  Tapper, who used to be a
jobbing gardener before he won something fabulous in a football pool,
was in a bad temper with his prized colour-television set which.  had
gone on the blink again in its red circuit, and was abusing it in
language that had already driven his wife to bed.  Lights still burnt
in one or two of the new laboratories shouldered on to The Grange, but
there was nothing unusual in that; it was common for one or two
Researchers to conduct their mysterious pursuits late into the night.

But although all was so normal, even the most ordinary-seeming day is
special for someone.  For instance, it was, as I have said, my
birthday, so it happened that our cottage was closed and dark.  And up
at Kyle Manor it happened, also, to be the day when Miss Ferrelyn
Zellaby put it to Mr.  Alan (temporarily Second-Lieutenant) Hughes
that, in practice, it takes more than two to make an engagement; that
it would be a friendly gesture to tell her father about it.

Alan, after some hesitation and demur, allowed himself to be persuaded
into Gordon Zellaby's study to make him acquainted with the
situation.

He found the master of Kyle Manor spread comfortably about a large
armchair, his eyes closed, and his elegantly white head leaning against
the chair's right wing, so that at first sight he appeared to have been
lulled to sleep by the excellently reproduced music that pervaded the
room.  Without speaking, or opening his eyes, however, he dispelled
this impression by waving his left hand at another easy chair and then
putting his finger to his lips for silence.

Alan tiptoed to the indicated chair, and sat down.  There then followed
an interlude during which all the phrases that he had summoned to the
tip of his tongue drained back somewhere beyond its root, and for the
next ten minutes or so he occupied himself by a survey of the room.

One wall was covered from floor to ceiling by books which broke off
only to allow the door by which he had entered.  More books, in lower
bookcases, ran round most of the room, halting in places to accommodate
the french windows, the chimney-piece, where flickered a pleasant
though not quite necessary fire, and the record player.  One of the
several glass-fronted cases was devoted to the Zellaby Works in various
editions and languages, with room on the bottom shelf for a few more.

Above this case hung a sketch in red chalk of a handsome young man who
could, after some forty years, still be seen in Gordon Zellaby.  On
another case a vigorous bronze recorded the impression he had made on
Epstein some twenty-five years later.  A few signed portraits of other
notable persons hung here and there on the walls.  The space above and
about the fireplace was reserved for more domestic mementoes.  Along
with portraits of Gordon Zellaby's father, mother, brother, and two
sisters, hung likenesses of Ferrelyn, and her mother (Mrs.  Zellaby
Number 1).

A portrait of Angela, the present Mrs.  Gordon Zellaby, stood upon the
centre piece and focus of the room, the large, leather-topped desk
where the Works were written.

Reminder of the Works caused Alan to wonder whether his timing might
not have been more propitious, for a new Work was in process of
gestation.  This was made manifest by a certain distrait ness in Mr.
Zellaby at present.  "It always happens when he's brewing," Ferrelyn
had explained.  "Part of him seems to get lost.  He goes off on long
walks and can't make out where he is and rings up to be brought home,
and so on.  It's a bit trying while it lasts, but it gets all right
again once he eventually starts to write the book.  While it's on, we
just have to be firm with him, and see he has his meals, and all
that."

The room in general, with its comfortable chairs, convenient lights,
and thick carpet, struck Alan as a practical result of its owner's
views on the balanced life.  He recalled that in While We Last, the
only one of the Works he had read as yet, Zellaby had treated ascetism
and overindulgence as similar evidences of maladjustment.  It had been
an interesting, but, he thought, gloomy book; the author had not seemed
to him to give proper weight to the fact that the new generation was
more dynamic, and rather more clear-sighted than those that had
preceded it .... At last the music tied itself up with a neat bow, and
ceased.  Zellaby stopped the machine by a switch on the arm of his
chair, opened his eyes, and regarded Alan.  "I hope you don't mind," he
apologized.  "One feels that once Bach has started his pattern he
should be allowed to finish it.  Besides," he added, glancing at the
playing-cabinet, 'we still lack a code for dealing with these
innovations.  Is the art of the musician less worthy of respect simply
because he is not present in person?  What is the gracious thing?  For
me to defer to you, for you to defer to me, or for both of us to defer
to genius even genius at second-hand?  Nobody can tell us.  We shall
never know.  "We don't seem to be good at integrating novelties with
our social lives, do we?  The world of the etiquette book fell to
pieces at the end of the last century, and there has been no code of
manners to tell us how to deal with anything invented since.  Not even
rules for an individualist to break, which is itself another blow at
freedom. Rather a pity, don't you think?"  "Er, yes," said Alan.  "I er
' "Though, mind you," Mr.  Zellaby continued, 'it is a trifle demode
even to perceive the existence of the problem.  The true fruit of this
century has little interest in coming to living-terms with innovations;
it just greedily grabs them all as they come along.  Only when it
encounters something really big does it become aware of a social
problem at all, and then, rather than make concessions, it yammers for
the impossibly easy way out, un invention suppression as in the matter
of The Bomb."  "Er yes, I suppose so.  What I '

Mr.  Zellaby perceived a lack of fervour in the response.  "When one is
young," he said understandingly, 'the unconventional, the unregulated,
hand-to-mouth way of life has a romantic aspect.  But such, you must
agree, are not the lines on which to run a complex world.  Luckily, we
in the West still retain the skeleton of our ethics, but there are
signs that the old bones are finding the weight of new knowledge
difficult to carry with confidence, don't you think?"

Alan drew breath.  Recollections of previous entanglements in the web
of Zellaby discourse forced him to the direct solution.  "Actually,
sir, it was on quite another matter I wanted to see you," he said.

When Zellaby noticed the interruptions of his audible reflections he
was accustomed to take them in mild good part.  He now postponed
further contemplation of the ethical skeleton to inquire: "But of
course, my dear fellow.  By all means.  What is it?"  "It's that well,
it's about Ferrelyn, sir."  "Ferrelyn?  Oh yes.  I'm afraid she's gone
up to London for a couple of days to see her mother.  She'll be back
tomorrow."  "Er it was today she came back, Mr.  Zellaby."  "Really?"
exclaimed Zellaby.  He thought it over.  "Yes, you're quite right.  She
was here for dinner.  You both were," he said triumphantly.  "Yes,"
said Alan, and holding his chance with determination, he ploughed ahead
with his news, unhappily conscious that not one stone of his prepared
phrases remained upon another, but getting through it somehow.

Zellaby listened patiently until Alan finally stumbled to a conclusion
with: "So I do hope, sir, that you will have no objection to our
becoming officially engaged," and at that his eyes widened slightly.
"My dear fellow, you overestimate my position.  Ferrelyn is a sensible
girl, and I have no doubt whatever that by this time she and her mother
know all about you, and have, together, reached a well-considered
decision."  "But I've never even met Mrs.  Holder," Alan objected.  "If
you had, you would have a better grasp of the situation.  Jane is a
great organizer," Mr.  Zellaby told him, regarding one of the pictures
on the mantel with benevolence.  He got up.  "Well, now, you have
performed your part very creditably; so I, too, must behave as Ferrelyn
considers proper.  Would you care to assemble the company while I fetch
the bottle?"

A few minutes, with his wife, his daughter, and his prospective
son-in-law grouped about him, he lifted his glass.  "Let us now drink,"
announced Zellaby, 'to the adjunction of fond spirits.  It is true that
the institution of marriage as it is proclaimed by Church and state
displays a depressingly mechanistic attitude of mind towards
partnership one not unlike, in fact, that of Noah.  The human spirit,
however, is tough, and it quite often happens that love is able to
survive this coarse, institutional thumbing.  Let us hope, therefore '
"Daddy," Ferrelyn broke in, 'it's after ten, and Alan has to get back
to camp in time, or he'll be cashiered, or something.  All you really
have to say is "long life and happiness to you both"."  "Oh," said Mr.
Zellaby.  "Are you sure that's enough?  It seems very brief.  However,
if you think it suitable, then I say it, my dear.  Most wholeheartedly
I say it."

He did.

Alan set down his empty glass.  "I'm afraid what Ferrelyn said was
right, sir.  I shall have to leave now," he said.

Zellaby nodded sympathetically.  "It must be a trying time for you. 
How much longer will they keep you?"

Alan said he hoped to be free of the army in about three months.
Zellaby nodded again.  "I expect the experience will turn out to have
value.  Sometimes I regret the lack of it myself.  Too young for one
war, tethered to a desk in the Ministry of Information in the next.
Something more active would have been preferable.  Well, good night, my
dear fellow.  It's He broke off, struck by a sudden thought.  "Dear me,
I know we all call you Alan, but I don't believe I know your other
name.  Perhaps we ought to have that in order."

Alan told him, and they shook hands again.

As he emerged into the hall with Ferrelyn he noticed the clock.  "I
say, I'll have to step on it.  See you tomorrow, darling.  Six o'clock.
Good night, my sweet."

They kissed fervently but briefly in the doorway, and he broke away
down the steps, bounding towards the small red car parked on the drive.
The engine started and roared.  He gave a final wave, and, with a spurt
of gravel from the rear wheels, dashed away.

Ferrelyn watched the rear lights dwindle and vanish.  She stood
listening until the erstwhile roar became a distant hum, and then
closed the front door.  On her way back to the study she noticed that
the hall clock now showed ten-fifteen.

Still, then, at ten-fifteen nothing in Midwich was abnormal.

With the departure of Alan's car peace was able to settle down again
over a community which was, by and large, engaged in winding up an
uneventful day in expectation of a no less uneventful morrow.

Many cottage windows still threw yellow beams into the mild evening
where they glistered in the dampness of an earlier shower.  The
occasional surges of voices and laughter which swept the place were not
local; they originated with a well-handled studio-audience miles away
and several days ago, and formed merely a background against which most
of the village was preparing for bed.  Many of the very old and very
young had gone there already, and wives were now filling their own
hot-water bottles.

The last customers to be persuaded out of The Scythe and Stone had
lingered for a few minutes to get their night-eyes and gone their ways,
and by ten-fifteen all but one Alfred Wait and a certain Harry
Crankhart, who were still engaged in argument about fertilizers, had
reached their homes.

Only one event of the day still impended the passage of the bus that
would be bringing the more dashing spirits back from their evening in
Trayne.  With that over, Midwich could finally settle down for the
night.

In the Vicarage, at ten-fifteen, Miss Polly Rushton was thinking that
if only she had gone to bed half an hour ago she could be enjoying the
book that now lay neglected on her knees, and how much pleas anter that
would be than listening to the present contest between her uncle and
aunt.  For, on one side of the room Uncle Hubert, the Reverend Hubert
Leebody, was attempting to listen to a Third Programme disquisition on
the Pre-Sophoclean Conception of the Oedipus Complex, while, on the
other, Aunt Dora was telephoning.  Mr.  Leebody, determined that
scholarship should not be submerged by piffle, had already made two
advances in volume, and still had forty-five degrees of knob turning in
reserve.  He could not be blamed for failing to guess that what was
striking him as a particularly nugatory exchange of feminine concerns
could turn out to be of importance.  No one else would have guessed it,
either.

The call was from South Kensington, London, where a Mrs.  Cluey was
seeking the support of her lifelong friend Mrs.  Leebody.  By
ten-sixteen she had reached the kernel of the matter.  "Now, tell me,
Dora and, mind, I do want your honest opinion on this: do you think
that in Kathy's case it should be white satin, or white brocade?"

Mrs.  Leebody stalled.  Clearly this was a matter where the word
'honest' was relative, and it was inconsiderate of Mrs.  Cluey, to say
the least, to phrase her question with no perceptible bias.  Probably
satin, thought Mrs.  Leebody, but she hesitated to risk the friendship
of years on a guess.  She tried for a lead.  "Of course, for a very
young bride but then one wouldn't call Kathy such a very young bride,
perhaps ...."  "Not very young," agreed Mrs.  Cluey, and waited.

Mrs.  Leebody drat ted her friend's importunity, and also her husband's
wireless programme which made thinking and finesse difficult.  "Well,"
she said at last, 'both can look charming, of course, but for Kathy I
really think '

At which point her voice abruptly stopped .... Far away in South
Kensington Mrs.  Cluey joggled the rest impatiently, and looked at her
watch.  Presently she pressed the bar down for a moment, and then
dialled O. "I wish to make a complaint," she said.  "I have just been
cut off in the middle of a most important conversation."

The exchange told her it would try to reconnect her.  A few minutes
later it confessed failure.  "Most inefficient," said Mrs.  Cluey.  "I
shall put in a written complaint.  I refuse to pay for a minute more
than we had indeed, I really don't see why I should pay for that, in
the circumstances.  We were cut off at ten-seventeen exactly."

The man at the exchange responded with formal tact, and made a note of
the time, for reference 22.17 hrs 26th Sept .... Chapter 3

Midwich Rests

From ten-seventeen that night, information about Midwich becomes
episodic.  Its telephones remained dead.  The bus that should have
passed through it failed to reach Stouch, and a truck that went to look
for the bus did not return.  A notification from the RAF was received
in Trayne of some unidentified flying object, not, repeat not, a
service machine, detected by radar in the Midwich area, possibly making
a forced landing.  Someone in Oppley reported a house on fire in
Midwich, with, apparently, nothing being done about it.  The Trayne
fire appliance turned out and thereafter failed to make any reports.
The Trayne police despatched a car to find out what had happened to the
fire-engine, and that, too, vanished into silence.  Oppley reported a
second fire, and still, seemingly, nothing being done, Constable Gobby,
in Stouch, was rung up, and sent off on his bicycle to Midwich; and no
more was heard of him, either .... *

The dawn of the 27th was an affair of slatternly rags soaking in a
dishwater sky, with a grey light weakly filtering through.
Nevertheless, in Oppley and in Stouch cocks crowed, and other birds
welcomed it more melodiously.  In Midwich, however, no birds sang.

In Oppley and Stouch, too, as in other places, hands were soon reaching
out to silence alarm clocks, but in Midwich the clocks rattled on till
they ran down.

In other villages sleepy-eyed men left their cottages and encountered
their work-mates with sleepy good mornings; in Midwich no one
encountered anyone.

For Midwich lay entranced .... While the rest of the world began to
fill the day with clamour, Midwich slept on .... Its men and women, its
horses, cows, and sheep; its pigs, its poultry, its larks, moles, and
mice all lay still.  There was a pocket of silence in Midwich, broken
only by the frouing of the leaves, the chiming of the church clock, and
the gurgle of the Opple as it slid over the weir beside the mill ....
And while the dawn was still a poor, weak thing an olive-green van,
with the words "Post Office Telephones' just discernible upon it, set
out from Trayne with the object of putting the rest of the world into
touch with Midwich again.

In Stouch it paused at the village call box to inquire whether Midwich
had yet shown any signs of life.  Midwich had not; it was still as
deeply incommunicado as it had been since 22.17 hrs.  The van restarted
and rattled on through the uncertainly gathering daylight.  "Cor!" 
said the lineman to his driver companion.  "Cor!  That there Miss Ogle
ain't 'alf goin' to cop 'erself a basinful of "Er Majesty's displeasure
over this little lot."  "I don't get it," complained the driver.  "F
you'd asked me I'd of said the old girl was always listenin' when there
was anyone on the blower, day or night.  Jest goes to show," he added,
vaguely.

A little out of Stouch, the van swung sharply to the right, and bounced
along the by-road to Midwich for half a mile or so.  Then it rounded a
corner to encounter a situation which called for all the driver's
presence of mind.

He had a sudden view of a fire-engine, half heeled over, with its
near-side wheels in the ditch, and a black saloon car which had climbed
half-way up the bank on the other side a few yards further on, with a
man and a bicycle lying half in the ditch behind it.  He pulled hard
over, attempting an S turn which would avoid both vehicles, but before
he could complete it his own van ran on to the narrow verge, bumped
along for a few more yards, then ploughed to a stop, with its side in
the hedge.

Half an hour later the first bus of the day, proceeding at a
light-hearted speed, since it never had a passenger before it picked up
the Midwich children for school in Oppley, rattled round the same
corner to jamb itself neatly into the gap between the fire-engine and
the van, and block the road completely.

On Midwich's other road that connecting it with Oppley a similar tangle
of vehicles gave at first sight the impression that the highway had,
overnight become a dump.  And on that side the mail-van was the first
vehicle to stop without becoming involved.

One of its occupants got out, and walked forward to investigate the
disorder.  He was just approaching the rear of the stationary bus when,
without any warning, he quietly folded up, and dropped to the ground.
The driver's jaw fell open, and he stared.  Then, looking beyond his
fallen companion, he saw the heads of some of the bus passengers, all
quite motionless.  He reversed hastily, turned, and made for Oppley and
the nearest telephone.

Meanwhile the similar state of affairs on the Stouch side had been
discovered by the driver of a baker's van, and twenty minutes later
almost identical action was taking place on both the approaches to
Midwich.  Ambulances swept up with something of the air of mechanized
Galahads.  Their rear doors opened.  Uniformed men emerged, fastening
their tunic buttons, and providently pinching the embers from
half-smoked cigarettes.  They surveyed the pile-ups in a knowledgeable,
confidence-inspiring way, unrolled stretchers, and prepared to
advance.

On the Oppley road the two leading bearers approached the prone postman
competently, but then, as the one in the lead drew level with the body,
he wilted, sagged, and subsided across the last casualty's legs.  The
hind bearer goggled.  Out of a babble behind him his ears picked up the
word "Gas!"  he dropped the stretcher-handles as if they had turned
hot, and stepped hastily back.

There was a pause for consultation.  Presently the ambulance driver
delivered a verdict, shaking his head.  "Not our kind of job," he said,
with the air of one recalling a useful Union decision.  "More like the
fire chaps' pigeon, I'd say."  "The army's, I reckon," said the bearer.
"Gas masks, not just smoke masks, is what's wanted here."

Chapter 4

Operation Midwich

About the time that Janet and I were approaching Trayne, Lieutenant
Alan Hughes was standing side by side with Leading-Fireman Norris on
the Oppley road.  They were watching while a fireman grappled at the
fallen ambulance-man with a long ceiling-hook.  Presently the hook
lodged, and began to haul him in.  The body was dragged across a yard
and a half of tarmac and then sat up abruptly, and swore.

It seemed to Alan that he had never heard more beautiful language.
Already, the acute anxiety with which he had arrived on the scene had
been allayed by the discovery that the victims of whatever-it-was were
quietly, but quite definitely, breathing as they lay there.  Now it was
established that one, at least, of them showed no visible ill effects
of quite ninety minutes' experience of it.  "Good," Alan said.  "If
he's all right, it looks as if the rest may be though it doesn't get us
much nearer to knowing what it is."

The next to be hooked and pulled out was the postman.  He had been
there somewhat longer than the ambulance-man, but his recovery was
every bit as spontaneous and satisfactory.  "The line seems to be quite
sharp and stationary," Alan added.  "Whoever heard of a perfectly
stationary gas and with a light wind blowing, too?  It doesn't make
sense."  "Can't be droplet stuff evaporating off the ground, either,"
said the Leading-Fireman.  "Kind of hits 'em like a hammer.  I never
heard of a droplet one like that, did you?"

Alan shook his head.  "Besides," he agreed, 'anything really volatile
would have cleared by now.  What's more, it wouldn't have vaporized
last night and caught the bus and the rest.  The bus was due in Midwich
at ten-twenty-five and I came over this bit of road myself only a few
minutes before that.  There wasn't anything wrong with it then.  In
fact, that must be the bus I met just running into Oppley."  "I wonder
how far it stretches?"  mused the Leading-Fireman.  "Must be fairly
wide, or we'd see things what were trying to come this way."

They continued to gaze in perplexity towards Midwich.  Beyond the
vehicles the road continued with a clear, innocent-looking, slightly
shining, surface to the next turn.  Just like any other road almost dry
after a shower.  NowW that the morning mist had lifted it was possible
to see the tower of Midwich church jutting above the hedges.  When one
disregarded the immediate foreground, the prospect was the very
negation of mystery.

The firemen, assisted by Alan's squad, continued to drag out the forms
within easy reach.  Their experience seemed to leave no impression on
the victims.  Each one, on coming clear, sat up alertly, and maintained
with obvious truth that he needed no help from the ambulance-men.

The next job was to clear an inverted tractor out of the way so that
the further vehicles and their occupants could be pulled clear.

Alan left his Sergeant and the Leading-Fireman directing the work, and
climbed over a stile.  The field-path beyond climbed a small rise, and
gave him a better view of the Midwich terrain.  He was able to see
several roofs, including those of Kyle Manor, and The Grange, also the
topmost stones of the Abbey ruins, and two drifts of grey smoke.  A
placid scene.  But a few further yards brought him to a point where he
could see four sheep lying motionless in a field.  The sight troubled
him, not because he now thought it likely that any real harm had come
to the sheep, but because it indicated that the barrier-zone was wider
than he had hoped.  He contemplated the creatures and the landscape
beyond, and noticed two cows on their sides still further away.  He
watched them for a minute or two to make sure there was no movement,
and then turned and walked thoughtfully back to the road.  "Sergeant
Decker," he called.

The sergeant came over, and saluted.  "Sergeant," said Alan, "I want
you to get hold of a canary in a cage, of course."

The sergeant blinked.  "Er a canary, sir?"  he asked, uneasily.  "Well,
I suppose a budgerigar would do as well.  There ought to be some in
Oppley.  You'd better take the jeep.  Tell the owner there'll be
compensation if necessary."  "I er ' "Cut along now, Sergeant.  I want
that bird here as soon as you can manage it."  "Very good, sir.  Er a
canary," the sergeant added, to make sure.  "Yes," said Alan.

*

I became aware that I was slithering along the ground, face down.  Very
odd.  One moment I was hurrying towards Janet, then, with no interval
at all, this .... The motion stopped.  I sat up to find myself
surrounded by a collection of people.  There was a fireman, engaged in
disentangling a murderous looking hook from my clothing.  A St.  John
Ambulance man regarding me with a professionally hopeful eye.  A very
young private carrying a pail of whitewash, another holding a map, and
an equally young corporal armed with a bird-cage on the end of a long
pole.  Also an unencumbered officer.  In addition to this somewhat
surrealistic collection there was Janet, still lying where she had
fallen.  I got to my feet just as the fireman, having freed his hook,
reached it towards her, and caught the belt of her mackintosh.  He
began to pull, and of course the belt broke, so he reached it across
her, and began to roll her towards us.  At the second time over, she
sat up, looking disarranged, and indignant.  "Feeling all right, Mr.
Gaylord?"  asked a voice beside me.

I looked round and recognized the officer as Alan Hughes whom we had
met at the Zellabys' a couple of times.  "Yes," I said.  "But what's
going on here?"

He disregarded that for the moment, and helped Janet to her feet.  Then
he turned to the corporal.  "I'd better get back to the road.  Just
carry on with this, Corporal."  "Yes, sir," said the corporal.  He
lowered his pole from the vertical, and with the cage still dangling at
its end, thrust it forward tentatively.  The bird fell off its perch,
and lay on the sanded floor of the cage.  The corporal withdrew the
cage.  The bird gave a slightly indignant tweet, and hopped back on its
perch.  One watching private stepped forward with his bucket and daubed
a little whitewash on the grass, the other made a mark on his map.  The
party then moved along a dozen yards or so, and repeated the
performance.

This time it was Janet who inquired what on earth was happening.  Alan
explained as much as he knew, and added: "There's obviously no chance
of getting into the place while this lasts.  Much your best course
would be to make for Trayne, and wait there for the all-clear."

We looked after the corporal's party, just in time to see the bird fall
off its perch once more, and then across the innocent fields to
Midwich.  After our experience there did not appear to be any useful
alternative.  Janet nodded.  So we thanked young Hughes, and presently
parted from him to make our way back to the car.

At the The Eagle Janet insisted that we should book a room for the
night, just in case and then went up to it.  I gravitated to the bar.

The place was quite unusually full for noon, and almost entirely of
strangers.  The majority of them were talking somewhat histrionically
in small groups or pairs; though a few individuals were drinking
privately and thoughtfully.  I wormed my way to the counter with some
difficulty, and as I was worming it back again, drink in hand, a voice
at my shoulder said: "Now, what on earth would you be doing in this
lot, Richard?"

The voice was familiar, and so, when I looked round, was the face,
though it took me a second or two to place it there was not only the
veil of years to be drawn aside, but a military cap had to be juggled
into the place of the present tweed.  But when this had been done, I
was delighted.  "My dear Bernard!"  I exclaimed.  "This is wonderful!
Come along out of this mob."  And I seized his arm, and towed him into
the lounge.

The sight of him made me feel young again: took me back to the beaches,
the Ardennes, the Reichswald, and the Rhine.  It was a good meeting.  I
sent the waiter for more drinks.  It took about half an hour for the
first ebullition to level out, but when it did: "You never answered my
first question," he reminded me, looking at me carefully.  "I'd no idea
you'd gone in for that sort of thing."  "What sort of thing?"  I
inquired.

He lifted his head slightly, towards the bar.  "The Press," he
explained.  "Oh, is that it!  I was wondering why the invasion."

One eyebrow descended a little.  "Well, if you're not part of it, what
are you?"  he said.  "I just live in these parts," I told him.

At that moment Janet came into the lounge, and I introduced him. 
"Janet dear, this is Bernard Westcott.  He used to be Captain Westcott
when we were together, but I know he became a Major, and now ?" 
"Colonel," admitted Bernard, and greeted her charmingly.  "I am so
glad," Janet told him.  "I've heard a lot about you.  I know one says
that, but this time it happens to be true."

She invited him to lunch with us, but he said that he had business to
attend to, and was already overdue.  His tone of regret was genuine
enough for her to say: "Dinner, then?  At home, if we can get there,
but here if we are still exiled?"  "At home?"  queried Bernard.  "In
Midwich," she explained.  "It's about eight miles away."

Bernard's manner changed slightly.  "You live in Midwich?"  he
inquired, looking from her to me.  "Have you been there long?"  "About
a year now," I told him.  "We'd normally be there now, but I explained
how we came to be stranded at The Eagle.

He thought for some moments after I finished, and then seemed to come
to a decision.  He turned to Janet.  "Mrs.  Gaylord, I wonder if you
would excuse me if I were to take your husband along with me?  It's
this Midwich business that has brought me here.  I think he might be
able to help us, if he's willing."  "To find out what's happened, you
mean?"  Janet asked.  "Well let's say in connexion with it.  What do
you think?"  he added to me.  "If I can, of course.  Though I don't see
Who is us?"  I inquired.  "I'll explain as we go," he told me.  "I
really ought to have been there an hour ago.  I'd not drag him off like
this, if it weren't important, Mrs.  Gaylord.  You'll be all right on
your own here?"

Janet assured him that The Eagle was a safe place, and we rose.  "Just
one thing," he added before we left, 'don't let any of those fellows in
the bar pester you.  Get them slung out if they try.  They're all a bit
peevish since they've learnt that their editors won't be touching this
Midwich business.  Not a word to any of 'em.  Tell you more about it
later."  "Very well.  Agog, but silent.  That's me," Janet agreed as we
left.

*

HQ had been established a little back from the affected area, on the
Oppley road.  At the police-block Bernard produced a pass which earned
him a salute from the constable on duty, and we passed through without
further trouble.  A very young three-pipper sitting forlornly in a tent
brightened up at our arrival, and decided that as Colonel Latcher was
out inspecting the lines it was his duty to put us in the picture.

The caged-birds had now, it seemed, finished their job, and been
returned to their doting and reluctantly public-spirited owners. 
"We'll probably have protests from the RSPCA, as well as claims for
damages when they contract croup or something," said the Captain, 'but
here's the result."  And he produced a large-scale map showing a
perfect circle almost two miles in diameter, with Midwich Church lying
somewhat south and a little east of its centre.  "That's it," he
explained, 'and as far as we can tell it is a circle, not just a belt. 
We've got an op.  on Oppley church tower, and no movement in the area
has been observed and there are a couple of chaps lying in the road
outside the pub who haven't moved, either.  As to what it is, we're not
much further.  "We've established that it is static, invisible, odour
less non-registering on radar, non-echoing on sound, immediate in
effect on at least mammals, birds, reptiles, and insects; and
apparently has no after-effects at least, no direct effects, though
naturally the people in the bus and the others who were in it for some
time are feeling roughish from exposure.  But that's about as far as we
go.  Frankly, as to what it really is, we haven't a clue yet."

Bernard asked him a few questions which elicited little more, and then
we made our way in search of Colonel Latcher.  We found him after a
while, in company with an older man who turned out to be the Chief
Constable of Winshire.  Both of them, with some lesser lights in
attendance, were standing on a slight rise regarding the terrain. Their
grouping suggested an eighteenth-century engraving of generals watching
a battle that was not going too well, only there was no visible battle.
Bernard introduced himself and me.  The Colonel regarded him intently.
"Ah!"  he said.  "Ah yes.  You're the chap on the phone who told me
this had to be kept quiet."

Before Bernard could reply, the Chief Constable came in: "Kept quiet!
Kept quiet, indeed.  A two-mile circle of country completely blanketed
by this thing, and you'd like it kept quiet."  "That was the
instruction," said Bernard.  "The Security ' "But how the devil do they
think ?"

Colonel Latcher cut in, heading him off.  "We've done our best to put
it around as a surprise tactical exercise.  Bit thin, but it makes
something to say.  Had to say something.  Trouble is, for all we know
it may be some little trick of our own gone wrong.  So much damned
secrecy nowadays that nobody knows anything.  Don't know what the other
chap has; don't even know what you may have to use yourself.  All these
scientist fellers in back rooms ruining the profession.  Can't keep up
with what you don't know.  Soldiering'll soon be nothing but wizards
and wires."  "The news agencies are on to it already," grumbled the
Chief Constable.  "We've headed some of 'em off.  But you know what
they are.  They'll be sneaking round some way, pushing their noses into
it, and having to be pulled out.  And how are we going to keep them
quiet?"  "That, at least, needn't worry you much," Bernard told him.
"There's been a Home Office advice on this already.  Very sore they
are.  But I think it will hold.  It really depends on whether it turns
out to have enough sensation in it to make trouble worth while." 
"H'm," said the Colonel, looking out across the somnolent scene again. 
"And I suppose that depends on whether, from a newspaper view, the
sleeping beauty would be a sensation, or a bore."

*

Quite an assortment of people kept on turning up in the course of the
next hour or two, all apparently representing the interests of various
departments, civil and military.  A larger tent was erected beside the
Oppley road, and in it a conference was called for 16.30.  Colonel
Latcher led off with a review of the situation.  It did not take long.
Just as he was concluding it a Group Captain arrived.  He marched in
with a malevolent air, and slapped a large photograph down on to the
table in front of the Colonel.  "There you are, gentlemen," he said
grimly.  "That cost two good men in one good aircraft, and we were
lucky not to lose another.  I hope it was worth it."

We crowded round to study the photograph, and compare it with the map.
"What's that?"  asked a Major of Intelligence, pointing.

The object he indicated showed as a pale oval outline, with a shape,
judging by the shadows, not unlike the inverted bowl of a spoon.  The
Chief Constable bent down, peering more closely.  "I can't imagine," he
admitted.  "Looks as if it might be some unusual kind of building only
it can't be.  I was round by the Abbey ruins myself less than a week
ago, and there was no sign of anything there then; besides, that's
British Heritage Association property.  They don't build, they just
prop things up."

One of the others looked from the photograph to the map, and back
again.  "Whatever it is, it's in just about the mathematical centre of
the trouble," he pointed out.  "If it wasn't there a few days ago, it
must be something that's landed there."  "Unless it could be a rick,
with a very bleached cover," someone suggested.

The Chief Constable snorted.  "Look at the scale, man and the shape.
It'd have to be the size of a dozen ricks, at least."  "Then what the
devil is it?"  inquired the Major.

One after another we studied it through the magnifier.  "You couldn't
get a lower altitude picture?"  suggested the Major.  "Trying that was
how we lost the aircraft," the Group Captain told him curtly.  "How far
up does the what sit this affected area extend?"  someone asked.

The Group Captain shrugged.  "You could find that out by flying into
it," he said.  "This," he added, tapping the photograph, 'was taken at
ten thousand.  The crew noticed no effect there."

Colonel Latcher cleared his throat.  "Two of my officers suggest that
the area may be hemispherical in form," he remarked.  "So it may,"
agreed the Group Captain, 'or it may be rhomboidal, or dodecahedral."
"I gather," said the Colonel mildly, 'that they observed birds flying
into it; getting a fix on them at the moment they became affected. They
claim to have established that the edge of the zone does not extend
vertically like a wall that it definitely is not a cylinder, in fact. 
The sides contract slightly.  From that they argue that it must be
either domed, or conical.  They say their evidence favours a
hemisphere, but they have had to work on too small a segment of too
large an arc to be certain."  "Well, that's the first contribution
we've had for some time," acknowledged the Group Captain.  He pondered,
"If they're right about a hemisphere, that should give it a ceiling of
about five thousand over the centre.  I suppose they didn't have any
helpful ideas on how we establish that without losing another
aircraft?"  "As a matter of fact," Colonel Latcher said, diffidently,
'one of them did.  He suggested that perhaps a helicopter dangling a
canary in a cage on a few hundred feet of line and slowly reducing
height Well, I know it sounds a bit ' "No," said the Group Captain.
"It's an idea.  Sounds like the same fellow who got the perimeter
taped."  "It is."  Colonel Latcher nodded.  "Quite a line of his own in
ornithological warfare," commented the Group Captain.  "I think perhaps
we can improve on the canary, but we're grateful for the idea.  A bit
too late for it today.  I'll lay it on for early tomorrow, with
pictures from the lowest safe altitude while there's a good
cross-light."

The Intelligence Major emerged from silence.  "Bombs, I think," he said
reflectively.  "Fragmentation, perhaps."  "Bombs?"  asked the Group
Captain, with raised brows.  "Wouldn't do any harm to have some handy.
Never know what these Ivans are up to.  Might be a good idea to have a
wham at it, anyway.  Stop it getting away.  Knock it out so that we can
have a proper look at it."  "Bit drastic at this stage," suggested the
Chief Constable.  "I mean, wouldn't it be better to take it intact, if
possible."  "Probably," agreed the Major, 'but meanwhile we are just
allowing it to go on doing whatever it came to do, while it holds us
off with this whatever-it-is."  "I don't see what it could have come to
do in Midwich," another officer put in, 'therefore I imagine that it
force-landed, and is using this screen to prevent interference while it
makes repairs."  "There's The Grange ...."  someone said tentatively.
"In either case, the sooner we get authority to disable it further, the
better," said the Major.  "It had no business over our territory,
anyway.  Real point is, of course, that it mustn't get away.  Much too
interesting.  Apart from the thing itself, that screen effect could be
very useful indeed.  I shall recommend taking any action necessary to
secure it; intact if possible; but damaged if necessary."

There was considerable discussion, but it came to little since almost
everyone present seemed to hold no more than a watching and reporting
brief.  The only decisions I can recall were that parachute flares
would be dropped every hour for observation purposes, and that the
helicopter would attempt to get more informative photographs in the
morning; beyond that nothing definite had been achieved when the
conference broke up.

I did not see why I had been taken along there at all or, for the
matter of that, why Bernard had been there, for he had made not a
single contribution to the conference.  As we drove back I asked: "Is
it out of order for me to inquire where you come into this?"  "Not
altogether.  I have a professional interest."  "The Grange?"  I
suggested.  "Yes.  The Grange comes within my scope, and naturally
anything untoward in its neighbourhood interests us.  This, one might
call very untoward, don't you think?"  "Us' I had already gathered from
his self-introduction before the conference, could be either Military
Intelligence in general, or his particular department of it.  "I
thought," I said, 'that the Special Branch looked after that kind of
thing."  "There are various angles," he said, vaguely, and changed the
subject.

We managed to get him a room at The Eagle, and the three of us dined
together.  I had hoped that after dinner he might make good his promise
to 'explain later', but though we talked of a number of things,
including Midwich, he was clearly avoiding any more mention of his
professional interest in it.  But for all that it was a good evening
that left me wondering how one can be so careless as to let some people
drift out of one's life.

Twice in the course of the evening I rang up the Trayne police to
inquire whether there had been any change in the Midwich situation, and
both times they reported that it was quite unaltered.  After the
second, we decided it was no good waiting up, and after a final round
we retired.  "A nice man," said Janet, as our door closed.  "I was
afraid it might be old-warriors-together which is so boring for wives,
but he didn't let it be a bit like that.  Why did he take you along
this afternoon?"  "That's what's puzzling me," I confessed.  "He seemed
to have second thoughts and become more reserved altogether once we
actually got close to it."  "It really is very queer," Janet said, as
if the whole thing had just struck her afresh.  "Didn't he have
anything at all to say about what it is?"  "Neither he, nor any of the
rest of them," I assured her.  "About the one thing they've learnt is
what we could tell them that you don't know when it hits you, and
there's no sign afterwards that it did."  "And that at least is
encouraging.  Let's hope that no one in the village comes to any more
harm than we did," she said.

*

While we were still sleeping, on the morning of the 28th, a met.
officer gave it as his opinion that ground mist in Midwich would clear
early, and a crew of two boarded a helicopter.  A wire cage containing
a pair of lively but perplexed ferrets was handed in after them.
Presently the machine took off, and whimmered noisily upwards.  "They
reckon," remarked the pilot, 'that six thousand will be dead safe, so
we'll try at seven thou.  for luck.  If that's okay, we'll bring her
down slowly."

The observer settled his gear, and occupied himself with teasing the
ferrets until the pilot told him: "Right.  You can lower away now, and
we'll make the trial crossing at seven."

The cage went through the door.  The observer let three hundred feet of
line unreel.  The machine came round, and the pilot informed ground
that he was about to make a preliminary run over Midwich.  The observer
lay on the floor, observing the ferrets, through glasses.

They were doing fine at present, clambering with non-stop sinuousness
all round and over one another.  He took the glasses off them for a
moment, and turned towards the village ahead, then: "Oy, Skipper," he
said.  "Uh?"  "That thing we're supposed to photograph, by the Abbey."
"What about it?"  "Well, either it was a mirage, or it's flipped off,"
said the observer.

Chapter 5

Midwich Reviviscit

At almost the same moment that the observer made his discovery, the
picket at the Stouch-Midwich road was carrying out its routine test.
The sergeant in charge threw a lump of sugar across the white line that
had been drawn across the road, and watched while the dog, on its long
lead, dashed after it.  The dog snapped up the sugar, and crunched
it.

The sergeant regarded the dog carefully for a moment, and walked close
to the line himself.  He hesitated there, and then stepped across it.
Nothing happened.  With increasing confidence, he took a few more
paces.  Half a dozen rooks cawed as they passed over his head.  He
watched them flap steadily away over Midwich.  "Hey, you there,
Signals," he called.  "Inform H. Q. Oppley.  Affected area reduced, and
believed clear.  Will confirm after further tests."

*

A few minutes earlier, in Kyle Manor, Gordon Zellaby had stirred with
difficulty, and given out a sound like a half-groan.  Presently he
realized that he was lying on the floor; also, that the room which had
been brightly lit and warm, perhaps a trifle over-warm, a moment ago,
was now dark, and clammily cold.

He shivered.  He did not think he had ever felt quite so cold.  It went
right through so that every fibre ached with it.  There was a sound in
the darkness of someone else stirring.  Ferrelyn's voice said, shakily:
"What's happened ....?  Daddy ....?  Angela ....?  Where are you?"

Zellaby moved an aching and reluctant jaw to say: "I'm here, nearly
f-frozen.  Angela, my dear ....?"  "Just here, Gordon," said her voice
unsteadily, close behind him.

He put out a hand which encountered something, but his fingers were too
numbed to tell him what it was.

There was a sound of movement across the room.  "Gosh, I'm stiff!
Oo-oooooh!  Oh, dear!"  complained Ferrelyn's voice.  "Oo-ow-oo!  I
don't believe these are my legs at all."  She stopped moving for a
moment.  "What's that rattling noise?"  "My t-teeth, I th-think," said
Zellaby, with an effort.

There was more movement, followed by a stumbling sound.  Then a clatter
of curtain-rings, and the room was revealed in a grey light.

Zellaby's eyes went to the grate.  He stared at it in disbelief.  A
moment ago he had put a new log on the fire, now there was nothing
there but a few ashes.  Angela, sitting up on the carpet a yard away
from him, and Ferrelyn by the window, were both staring at the grate,
too.  "What on earth ?"  began Ferrelyn.  "The ch-champagne?" 
suggested Zellaby.  "Oh, really, Daddy ....!"

Against the protest of every joint Zellaby tried to get up.  He found
it too painful, and decided to stay where he was for a bit.  Ferrelyn
crossed unsteadily to the fireplace.  She reached a hand towards it,
and stood there, shivering.  "I think it's dead," she said.

She tried to pick up The Times from the chair, but her fingers were too
numb to hold it.  She looked at it miserably, and then managed to sc
rumble it between her stiff hands, and stuff it into the grate. Still
using both hands she succeeded in lifting some of the smaller bits of
wood from the basket and dropping them on the paper.

Frustration with the matches almost made her weep.  "My fingers won't,"
she wailed miserably.

In her efforts she spilt the matches on the hearth.  Somehow she
managed to light one by rubbing the box on them.  It caught another.
She pushed them all closer to the paper bulging out of the grate.
Presently it caught, too, and the flame blossomed up like a wonderful
flower.

Angela got up, and staggered stiffly closer.  Zellaby made his approach
on all fours.  The wood began to crackle.  They crouched towards it,
greedy for warmth.  The numbness in their outstretched fingers began to
give way to a tingling.  After a while the Zellaby spirit began to show
signs of revival.  "Odd," he remarked through teeth that still showed a
tendency to chatter, 'odd that I should have to live to my present age
before appreciating the underlying soundness of fire-worship."

On both the Oppley and Stouch roads there was a great starting up and
warming of engines.  Presently two streams of ambulances, fire
appliances, police cars, jeeps, and military trucks started to converge
on Midwich.  They met at the Green.  The civilian transport pulled up,
and its occupants piled out.  The military trucks for the most part
headed for Hickham Lane, bound for the Abbey.  An exception to both
categories was a small red car that turned off by itself and went
bouncing up the drive of Kyle Manor to stop in grooves of gravel by the
front door.

Alan Hughes burst into the Zellaby study, pulled Ferrelyn out of the
huddle by the fire, and clutched her firmly.  "Darling!"  he exclaimed,
still breathing hard.  "Darling!  Are you all right?"  "Darling!"
responded Ferrelyn, rather as if it were an answer.

After a considerate interval Gordon Zellaby remarked: "We, also, are
all right, we believe, though bewildered.  We are also somewhat
chilled.  Do you think ?"

Alan seemed to become aware of them for the first time.  "The he began,
and then broke off as the lights came on.  "Good-oh," he said.  "Hot
drinks in a jiffy."  And departed, towing Ferrelyn after him.  ' "Hot
drinks in a jiffy," murmured Zellaby.  "Such music in a simple
phrase!"

*

And so, when we came down to breakfast, eight miles away, it was to be
greeted with the news that Colonel Westcott had gone out a couple of
hours before; and that Midwich was as near awake again as was natural
to it.

Chapter 6

Midwich Settles Down

There was still a police picket on the Stouch road, but as residents of
Midwich we passed through promptly, to drive on through a scene which
looked much as usual, and reach our cottage without further
hindrance.

We had wondered more than once what state of affairs we might find
there, but there proved to have been no need for alarm.  The cottage
was intact, and exactly as we had left it.  We went in and resettled
ourselves just as we had intended to on the previous day, with no
inconvenience except that the milk in the refrigerator had gone off, on
account of the cut in the electricity supply.  Indeed, within half an
hour of returning the happenings of the previous day were beginning to
seem unreal; and when we went out and talked to our neighbours we found
that for those who had actually been involved the feeling of unreality
was even more pronounced.

Nor was that surprising, for, as Mr.  Zellaby pointed out, their
knowledge of the affair was limited to an awareness that they had
failed to go to bed one night and had awakened, feeling extremely cold,
one morning: the rest was a matter of hearsay.  One had to believe that
they had during the interval missed a day, for it was improbable that
the rest of the world could be collectively mistaken; but, speaking for
himself, it had not even been an interesting experience, since the
prime requisite of interest was, after all, consciousness.  He
therefore proposed to disregard the whole matter, and do his best to
forget that he had been cheated out of one of the days which he found
to be passing, in proper sequence, far too quickly.

Such a dismissal turned out for a time to be surprisingly easy, for it
is doubtful whether the affair even had it not lain beneath the
intimidating muzzles of the Official Secrets Act could at this stage
have made a really useful newspaper sensation.  As a dish, it had a
number of promising aromas, but it proved short on substance.  There
were, in all, eleven casualties, and something might have been made of
them, but even they lacked the details to excite a blase readership,
and the stories of the survivors were woefully undramatic, for they had
nothing to tell but their recollections of a cold awakening.

We were able, therefore, to assess our losses, dress our wounds, and
generally readjust ourselves from the experience which afterwards
became known as the Dayout, with a quite unexpected degree of
privacy.

Of our eleven fatalities: Mr.  William Trunk, a farm-hand, his wife,
and their small son, had perished when their cottage burnt down.  An
elderly couple called Stagfield had been lost in the other house that
caught fire.  Another farm-hand, Herbert Flagg, had been discovered
dead from exposure in close, and not easily explained, proximity to the
cottage occupied by Mrs.  Harriman, whose husband was at work in his
bakery at the time.  Harry Crankhart, one of the two men whom the
Oppley church-tower observers had been able to see lying in front of
the Scythe and Stone had also been found dead from exposure.  The other
four were all elderly persons in whom neither the sulfas nor the
mycetes had been able to check the progress of pneumonia.

Mr.  Leebody preached a thanksgiving sermon on behalf of the rest of us
at an unusually well-attended service the following Sunday, and with
that, and his conduct of the last of the funerals, the dream-like
quality of the whole affair became established.

It is true that for a week or so there were a few soldiers about, and
there was quite a deal of coming and going in official cars, but the
centre of this interest did not lie within the village itself, and so
disturbed it little.  The visible focus of attention was close to the
Abbey ruins where a guard was posted to protect a large dent in the
ground which certainly looked as if something massive had rested there
for a while.  Engineers had measured this phenomenon, made sketches,
and taken photographs of it.  Technicians of various kinds had then
tramped back and forth across it, carrying mine-detectors,
geiger-counters, and other subtle gear.  Then, abruptly, the military
lost all interest in it, and withdrew.

Investigations at The Grange went on a little longer, and among those
occupied with them was Bernard Westcott.  He dropped in to see us
several times, but he told us nothing of what was going on, and we
asked no details.  We knew no more than the rest of the village did
that there was a security check in progress.  Not until the evening of
the day it was finished, and after he had announced his departure for
London the following day, did he speak much of the Dayout and its
consequences.  Then, following a lull in conversation, he said: "I've
got a proposition to make to you two.  If you'd care to hear it."
"Let's hear it and see," I told him.  "Essentially it is this: we feel
that it is rather important for us to keep an eye on this village for a
time, and know what goes on here.  We could introduce one of our own
men to help keep us posted, but there are points against that.  For one
thing, he would have to start from scratch; and it takes time for any
stranger to work into the life of any village, and, for another, it is
doubtful whether we could justify the detachment of a good man to
full-time work here at present and if he were not full-time it is
equally doubtful whether he could be of much use.  If, on the other
hand, we could get someone reliable who already knows the place and the
people to keep us posted on possible developments it would be more
satisfactory all round.  What do you think?"

I considered for a moment.  "Not, at first hearing, very much," I told
him.  "It rather depends, I suppose, what is involved."  I glanced
across at Janet.  She said, somewhat coldly: "It rather sounds as if we
are being invited to spy on our friends, and neighbours.  I think
perhaps a professional spy might suit you better."  "This," I backed
her up, 'is our home."

He nodded, rather as if that were what he had expected.  "You consider
yourselves a part of this community?"  he said.  "We are trying to be,
and, I think, beginning to be," I told him.

He nodded again.  "Good At least, good if you feel that you have begun
to have an obligation towards it.  That's what's needed.  It can well
do with someone who has its welfare at heart to keep an eye on it."  "I
don't see quite why.  It seems to have got along very well without for
a number of centuries or, at least, should I say that the attentions of
its own inhabitants have served it well enough."  "Yes," he admitted. 
"True enough until now.  Now, however, it needs, and is getting, some
outside protection.  It seems to me that the best chance of giving it
that protection depends quite largely on our having adequate
information on what goes on inside it."  "What sort of protection?  and
from what?"  "Chiefly, at present, from busybodies," he said.  "My dear
fellow, surely you don't think it was an accident that the Midwich
Dayout wasn't splashed across the papers on the Dayout?  Or that there
wasn't a rush of journalists of all kinds pestering the life out of
everyone here the moment it lifted?"  "Of course not," I said.
"Naturally I knew there was the security angle you told me as much
yourself and I was not surprised at that.  I don't know what goes on at
The Grange, but I do know it is very hush."  "It wasn't simply The
Grange that was put to sleep," he pointed out.  "It was everything for
a mile around."  "But it included The Grange.  That must have been the
focal point.  Quite possibly the influence, whatever it is, doesn't
have less than that range or perhaps the people, whoever they were,
thought it safer to have that much elbow room for safety."  "That's
what the village thinks?"  he asked.  "Most of it with a few
variations." "That's the sort of thing I want to know.  They all pin it
on The Grange, do they?"  "Naturally.  What other reason could there be
in Midwich?"  "Well then, suppose I tell you I have reason to believe
that The Grange had nothing whatever to do with it.  And that our very
careful investigations do no more than confirm that?"  "But that would
make nonsense of the whole thing," I protested.  "Surely not not, that
is, any more than any accident can be regarded as a form of nonsense."
"Accident?  You mean a forced landing?"

Bernard shrugged.  "That I can't tell you.  It's possible that the
accident lay more in the fact that The Grange happened to be located
where the landing was made.  But my point is this: almost everyone in
this village has been exposed to a curious and quite unfamiliar
phenomenon.  And now you, and all the rest of the place, are assuming
it is over and finished with.  Why?"

Both Janet and I stared at him.  "Well," she said, 'it's come, and it's
gone, so why not?"  "And it simply came, and did nothing, and went away
again, and had no effect on anything?"  "I don't know.  No visible
effect beyond the casualties, of course, and they mercifully can't have
known anything about it," Janet replied.  "No visible effect," he
repeated.  "That means rather little nowadays, doesn't it?  You can,
for instance, have quite a serious dose of X-rays, gamma-rays, and
others, without immediate visible effect.  You needn't be alarmed, it
is just an instance.  If any of them had been present we should have
detected them.  They were not.  But something that we were unable to
detect was present.  Something quite unknown to us that is capable of
inducing let's call it artificial sleep.  Now, that is a very
remarkable phenomenon quite inexplicable to us, and not a little
alarming.  Do you really think one is justified in airily assuming that
such a peculiar incident can just happen and then cease to happen, and
have no effect?  It may be so, of course, it may have no more effect
than an aspirin tablet; but surely one should keep an eye on things to
see whether that is so or not?"

Janet weakened a little.  "You mean, you want us, or someone, to do
that for you.  To watch for, and note, any effects?"  "What I'm after
is a reliable source of information on Midwich as a whole.  I want to
be kept posted and up to date on how things are here so that if it
should become necessary to take any steps I shall be aware of the
circumstances, and be better able to take them in good time."  "Now
you're making it sound like a kind of welfare work," Janet said.  "In a
way, that's what it is.  I want a regular report on Midwich's state of
health, mind, and morale so that I can keep a fatherly eye on it.
There's no question of spying.  I want it so that I can act for
Midwich's benefit, should it be necessary."

Janet looked at him steadily for a moment.  "Just what are you
expecting to happen here, Bernard?"  she asked.  "Would I have to make
this suggestion to you if I knew?"  he countered.  "I'm taking
precautions. We don't know what this thing is, or does.  We can't slap
on a quarantine order without evidence.  But we can watch for evidence.
At least, you can.  So what do you say?"  "I'm not sure," I told him.
"Give us a day or two to think it over, and I'll let you know." 
"Good," he said.  And we went on to talk of other things.

Janet and I discussed the matter several times in the next few days.
Her attitude had modified considerably.  "He's got something up his
sleeve, I'm sure," she said.  "But what?"

I did not know.  And: "It isn't as if we were being asked to watch a
particular person, is it?"

I agree that it was not.  And: "It wouldn't be really different in
principle from what a Medical Officer of Health does, would it?"

Not very different, I thought.  And: "If we don't do it for him, he'd
have to find someone else to do it.  I don't really see who he'd get,
in the village.  It wouldn't be very nice, or efficient, if he did have
to introduce a stranger, would it?"

I supposed not.

So, mindful of Miss Ogle's strategic situation in the post office, I
wrote, instead of telephoning, to Bernard telling him that we thought
we saw our way clear to cooperation provided we could be satisfied over
one or two details, and received a reply suggesting that we should
arrange a meeting when we next came to London.  The letter showed no
feeling of urgency, and merely asked us to keep our eyes open in the
meantime.

We did.  But there was little for them to perceive.  A fortnight after
the Dayout, only very small rumples remained in Midwich's placidity.

The small minority who felt that Security had cheated them of national
fame and pictures in the newspapers had become resigned: the rest were
glad that the interruption of their ways had been no greater.  Another
division of local opinion concerned The Grange and its occupants.  One
school held that the place must have some connexion with the event, and
but for its mysterious activities the phenomenon would never have
visited Midwich.  The other considered its influence as something of a
blessing.

Mr.  Arthur Crimm, OBE, the Director of the Station, was the tenant of
one of Zellaby's cottages, and Zellaby, encountering him one day,
expressed the majority view that the village was indebted to the
researchers.  "But for your presence, and the consequent Security
interest," he said, 'we should without doubt have suffered a visitation
far worse than that of the Dayout.  Our privacy would have been
ravaged, our susceptibilities outraged by the three modern Furies, the
awful sisterhood of the printed word, the recorded word, and the
picture.  So, against your inconveniences, which I am sure have been
considerable, you can at least set our gratitude that the Midwich way
of life has been preserved, largely intact."

Miss Polly Rushton, almost the only visitor to the district to be
involved, concluded her holiday with her uncle and aunt, and returned
home to London.  Alan Hughes found himself, to his disgust, not only
inexplicably posted to the north of Scotland, but also listed for
release several weeks later than he had expected, and was spending much
of his time up there in documentary argument with his regimental record
office, and most of the rest of it, seemingly, in correspondence with
Miss Zellaby.  Mrs.  Harriman, the baker's wife, after thinking up a
series of not very convincing circumstances which could have led to the
discovery of Herbert Flagg's body in her front garden, had taken refuge
in attack and was be labouring her husband with the whole of his known
and suspected past.  Almost everyone else went on as usual.

Thus, in three weeks the affair was nearly an historical incident. Even
the new tombstones that marked it might or, at any rate, quite half of
them might have been expected so to stand in a short time, from natural
causes.  The only newly created widow, Mrs.  Crankhart, rallied well,
and showed no intention of letting her state depress her, nor indeed
harden.

Midwich had, in fact, simply twitched curiously, perhaps, but only very
slightly for the third or fourth time in its thousand-year doze.

*

And now I come to a technical difficulty, for this, as I have
explained, is not my story; it is Midwich's story.  If I were to set
down my information in the order it came to me I should be flitting
back and forth in the account, producing an almost incomprehensible
hotchpotch of incidents out of order, and effects preceding causes.
Therefore it is necessary that I rearrange my information, disregarding
entirely the dates and times when I acquired it, and put it into
chronological order.  If this method of approach should result in the
suggestion of uncanny perception, or disquieting multi-science, in the
writer, the reader must bear with it the assurance that it is entirely
the product of hindsight.

It was, for instance, not current observation, but later inquiry which
revealed that a little while after the village had seemingly returned
to normal there began to be small swirls of localized uneasiness in its
corporative peace; certain disquiets that were, as yet, isolated and
unacknowledged.  This would be somewhere about late November, even
early December though perhaps in some quarters slightly earlier.
Approximately, that is, about the time that Miss Ferrelyn Zellaby
mentioned in the course of her almost daily correspondence with Mr.
Hughes that a tenuous suspicion had perturbingly solidified.

In what appears to have been a not very coherent letter, she explained
or, perhaps one should say, intimated that she did not see how it could
be, and, in fact, according to all she had learnt, it couldn't be, so
she did not understand it at all, but the fact was that, in some
mysterious way, she seemed to have started a baby well, actually
'seemed' wasn't quite the right word because she was pretty sure about
it, really.  So did he think he could manage a weekend leave, because
one did rather feel that it was the sort of thing that needed some
talking over ....?

Chapter 7

Coming Events

In point of fact, investigations have shown that Alan was not the first
to hear Ferrelyn's news.  She had been worried and puzzled for some
little time, and two or three days before she wrote to him had made up
her mind that the time had come for the matter to be known in the
family circle: for one thing, she badly needed advice and explanation
that none of the books she consulted seemed able to give her; and, for
another, it struck her as more dignified than just going on until
somebody should guess.  Angela, she decided, would be the best person
to tell first Mother, too, of course, but a little later on, when the
organizing was already done; it looked like one of those occasions when
Mother might get terribly executive about everything.

Decision, however, had been rather easier to take than action.  On the
Wednesday morning Ferrelyn's mind was fully made up.  At some time in
that day, some relaxed hour, she would draw Angela quietly aside and
explain how things were .... Unfortunately, there hadn't seemed to be
any part of Wednesday when people were really relaxed.  Thursday
morning did not feel suitable somehow, either, and in the afternoon
Angela had had a Women's Institute meeting which made her look tired in
the evening.  There was a moment on Friday afternoon that might have
done and yet it did not seem quite the kind of thing one could raise
while Daddy showed his lunch visitor the garden, preparatory to
bringing him back for tea.  So, what with one thing and another,
Ferrelyn arose on Saturday morning with her secret still unshared.
"I'll really have to tell her today even if everything doesn't seem
absolutely right for it.  A person could go on this way for weeks," she
told herself firmly, as she finished dressing.

Gordon Zellaby was at the last stage of his breakfast when she reached
the table.  He accepted her good-morning kiss absent-mindedly, and
presently took himself off to his routine once briskly round the
garden, then to the study, and the Work in progress.

Ferrelyn ate some cornflakes, drank some coffee, and accepted a fried
egg and bacon.  After two nibbles she pushed the plate away decisively
enough to arouse Angela from her reflections.  "What's the matter?"
Angela inquired from her end of the table.  "Isn't it fresh?"  "Oh,
there's nothing wrong with it," Ferrelyn told her.  "I just don't
happen to feel eggy this morning, that's all."

Angela seemed uninterested, when one had half-hoped she would ask why.
An inside voice seemed to prompt Ferrelyn: "Why not now?  After all, it
can't really make much difference when, can it?"  So she took a breath.
By way of introducing the matter gently she said: "As a matter of fact,
Angela, I was sick this morning."  "Oh, indeed," said her stepmother,
and paused while she helped herself to butter.  In the act of raising
her marmaladed toast, she added: "So was I. Horrid, isn't it?"

Now she had taxied on to the runway, Ferrelyn was going through with
it.  She squashed the opportunity of diverting, forthwith: "I think,"
she said, steadily, 'that mine was rather special kind of being sick.
The sort," she added, in order that it should be perfectly clear, 'that
happens when a person might be going to have a baby, if you see what I
mean."

Angela regarded her for a moment with thoughtful interest, and nodded
slowly.  "I do," she agreed.  With careful attention she buttered a
further area of toast, and added marmalade.  Then she looked up again.
"So was mine," she said.

Ferrelyn's mouth fell a little open as she stared.  To her
astonishment, and to her confusion, she found herself feeling slightly
shocked But Well, after all, why not?  Angela was only sixteen years
older than herself, so it was all very natural really, only well,
somehow one just hadn't expected it It didn't seem quite After all,
Daddy was a triple grandfather by his first marriage .... Besides, it
was all so unexpected It somehow hadn't seemed likely Not that Angela
wasn't a wonderful person, and one was very fond of her but, sort, of
as a capable elder sister It needed a bit of readjusting to .... She
went on staring at Angela, unable to find the right-sounding thing to
say, because everything had somehow turned the wrong way round ....
Angela was not seeing Ferrelyn.  She was looking straight down the
table, out of the window at something much further away than the bare,
swaying branches of the chestnut.  Her dark eyes were bright and
shiny.

The shininess increased and sparkled into two drops sparkling on her
lower lashes.  They welled, overflowed, and ran down Angela's cheeks.

A kind of paralysis still held Ferrelyn.  She had never seen Angela
cry.  Angela wasn't that kind of person .... Angela bent forward, and
put her face in her hands.  Ferrelyn jumped up as if she had been
suddenly released.  She ran to Angela, put her arms round her, and felt
her trembling.  She held her close, and stroked her hair, and made
small, comforting sounds.

In the pause that followed Ferrelyn could not help feeling that a
curious element of miscasting had intruded.  It was not an exact
reversal of roles, for she had had no intention of weeping on Angela's
shoulder; but it was near enough to it to make one wonder if one were
fully awake.

Quite soon, however, Angela ceased to shake.  She drew longer, calmer
breaths, and presently sought for a handkerchief.  "Phew!"  she said.
"Sorry to be such a fool, but I'm so happy."  "Oh' Ferrelyn responded,
uncertainly.

Angela blew, blinked, and dabbed.  "You see," she explained, "I've not
really dared to believe it myself.  Telling it to somebody else
suddenly made it real.  And I've always wanted to, so much, you see.
But then nothing happened, and went on not happening, so I began to
think 'well, I'd just about decided I'd have to try to forget about it,
and make the best of things.  And now it's really happening after all,
I I She began to weep again, quietly and comfortably.

A few minutes later she pulled herself together, gave a final pat with
the bunched handkerchief, and decisively put it away.  "There," she
said, 'that's over.  I never thought I was one to enjoy a good cry, but
it does seem to help."  She looked at Ferrelyn.  "Makes one thoroughly
selfish, too I'm sorry, my dear."  "Oh, that's all right.  I'm glad for
you," Ferrelyn said, generously she thought because, after all, one had
been a bit anti-climaxed.  After a pause, she went on: "Actually, I
don't feel weepy about it myself.  But I do feel a bit frightened
...."

The word caught Angela's attention, and dragged her thoughts from
self-contemplation.  It was not a response she expected from Ferrelyn.
She looked at her step-daughter for a thoughtful moment, as if the full
import of the situation were only just reaching her.  "Frightened, my
dear?"  she repeated.  "I don't think you need feel that.  It isn't
very proper, of course, but well, we shan't get anywhere by being
puritanical about it.  The first thing to do is to make sure you're
right."  "I am right," Ferrelyn said, gloomily.  "But I don't
understand it.  It's different for you, being married, and so on."

Angela disregarded that.  She went on: "Well, then, the next thing must
be to let Alan know."  "Yes, I suppose so," agreed Ferrelyn, without
eagerness.  "Of course it is.  And you don't need to be frightened of
that.  Alan won't let you down.  He adores you."  "Are you sure of
that, Angela?"  doubtfully.  "Why, yes, you silly.  One only has to
look at him.  Of course, it's all quite reprehensible, but I shouldn't
be surprised if you find he's delighted.  Naturally, it will Why,
Ferrelyn, what's the matter?"  She broke off, startled by Ferrelyn's
expression.  "But but you don't understand, Angela.  It wasn't Alan."

The look of sympathy died from Angela's face.  Her expression went
cold.  She started to get up.  "No!"  exclaimed Ferrelyn, desperately,
'you don't understand, Angela.  It isn't that.  It wasn't anybody!
That's why I'm frightened ...."

*

In the course of the next fortnight, three of the Midwich young women
sought confidential interviews with Mr.  Leebody.  He had baptized them
when they were babies; he knew them, and their parents, well.  All of
them were good, intelligent, and certainly not ignorant, girls.  Yet
each of them told him, in effect: "It wasn't anybody, Vicar.  That's
why I'm frightened ...."

When Harriman, the baker, chanced to hear that his wife had been to see
the doctor, he remembered that Herbert Flagg's body had been found in
his front garden, and he beat her up, while she tearfully protested
that Herbert hadn't come in, and that she'd not had anything to do with
him, or with any other man.

Young Tom Dorry returned home on leave from the navy after eighteen
months' foreign service.  When he learned of his wife's condition, he
picked up his traps and went over to his mother's cottage.  But she
told him to go back and stand by the girl because she was frightened.
And when that didn't move him, she told him that she herself,
respectable widow for years was well, not exactly frightened, but she
couldn't for the life of her say how it had happened.  In a bemused
state Tom Dorry did go back.  He found his wife lying on the kitchen
floor, with an empty aspirin bottle beside her, and he pelted for the
doctor.

One not-so-young woman suddenly bought a bicycle, and pedalled it madly
for astonishing distances, with fierce determination.

Two young women collapsed in over-hot baths.

Three inexplicably tripped, and fell downstairs.

A number suffered from unusual gastric upsets.

Even Miss Ogle, at the post office, was observed eating a curious meal
which involved bloater-paste spread half an inch thick, and about half
a pound of pickled gherkins.

A point was reached when Dr.  Willers' mounting anxiety drove him into
urgent conference with Mr.  Leebody at the Vicarage, and, as if to
underline the need for action, their talk was terminated by a caller in
agitated need of the doctor.

It turned out less badly than it might have done.  Luckily the word
'poison' appeared on the disinfectant bottle in conformity with
regulations, and was not to be taken as literally as Rosie Platch had
thought.  But that did not alter the tragic intention.  When he had
finished, Dr.  Willers was trembling with an impotent, target less
anger.  Poor little Rosie Platch was only seventeen .... Chapter 8

Heads Together

The tranquillity that Gordon Zellaby had been pleasantly regaining
after the wedding of Alan and Ferrelyn two days before, was dissipated
by the irruption of Dr.  Willers.  The doctor, still upset by the
near-tragedy of Rosie Platch, was in an agitated state which gave
Zellaby some difficulty in grasping his purpose.

By stages, however, he discovered that the doctor and the vicar had
agreed to ask for his help or, more importantly, it seemed, Angela's
help over something that was far from clear, and that the misadventure
to the Platch child had brought Willers on his mission earlier than he
had intended.  "So far we've been lucky," Willers said, 'but this is
the second attempted suicide, in a week.  At any moment there may be
another; perhaps a successful one.  We must get this thing out in the
open, and relieve the tension.  We cannot afford any more delay."  "As
far as I am concerned, it is certainly not in the open.  What thing is
this?"  inquired Zellaby.

Willers stared at him for a moment, and then rubbed his forehead.
"Sorry," he said.  "I've been so wound up with it lately; I forgot you
mightn't know.  It's all these inexplicable pregnancies."
"Inexplicable?"  Zellaby raised his eyebrows.

Willers did his best to explain why they were inexplicable.  "The whole
thing is so incomprehensible," he concluded, 'that the vicar and I have
been driven back on to the theory that it must in some way be connected
with the other incomprehensible thing we have had here the Dayout."

Zellaby regarded him thoughtfully for several moments.  One thing about
which there could be no doubt at all was the genuineness of the
doctor's anxiety.  "It seems a curious theory," he suggested,
cautiously.  "It's a more than curious situation," replied Willers.
"However, that can wait.  What can't wait is a lot of women who are on
the verge of hysteria.  Some of them are my patients, more of them are
going to be, and unless this state of tension is resolved quickly He
left the sentence unfinished, with a shake of his head.  ' "A lot of
women"?"  Zellaby repeated.  "Somewhat vague.  How many?"  "I can't say
for certain," Willers admitted.  "Well, in round figures?  We need some
idea of what we have to deal with."  "I should say oh, about sixty-five
to seventy."  "What!"  Zellaby stared at him, incredulously.  "I told
you it is the devil of a problem."  "But, if you're not sure, why pitch
on sixty-five?"  "Because that's my estimate it's a pretty rough
estimate, I admit but I think you'll find it's about the number of
women of childbearing age in the village," Willers told him.

*

Later that evening, after Angela Zellaby, looking tired and shocked,
had gone to bed, Willers said: "I'm very sorry to have had to inflict
this, Zellaby but she would have had to know soon, in any case.  My
hope is that the others can take it only half as staunchly as your wife
has."

Zellaby gave a sombre nod.  "She is grand, isn't she?  I wonder how you
or I would have stood up to a shock like that?"  "It's a hell of a
thing," Willers agreed.  "So far, most of the married women will have
been easy in their minds, but now, in order to stop the unmarried going
neurotic, we've got to upset them, too.  But there's no way round that,
that I can see."  "One thing that has been worrying me all the evening
is how much we ought to tell them," Zellaby said.  "Should we leave the
thing a mystery, and let them draw conclusions eventually for
themselves or is there a better way?"  "Well, damn it, it is a mystery,
isn't it?"  the doctor pointed out.  "The how is a very mysterious
mystery," Zellaby admitted.  "But I don't think there can be much doubt
as to what has happened.  Nor, I imagine, do you unless you're
deliberately trying to avoid it."  "You tell me," suggested Willers.
"Your line of reasoning may be different.  I hope it is."

Zellaby shook his head.  "The conclusion he began, and then suddenly
broke off, staring at the picture of his daughter.  "My God!"  he
exclaimed.  "Ferrelyn, too ....?"

He turned his head slowly towards the doctor.  "I suppose the answer is
that you just don't know?"

Willers hesitated.  "I can't be sure," he said.

Zellaby pushed back his white hair, and lapsed back in his chair.  He
remained staring at the pattern of the carpet for a full minute, in
silence.  Then he roused himself.  With a studied detachment of manner,
he observed: "There are three no, perhaps four possibilities that
suggest themselves.  You would, I think, have mentioned it had there
been any evidence of the explanation that will at once occur to the
more obvious-minded?  Besides, there are other points against that
which I shall come to shortly."  "Quite so," agreed the doctor.

Zellaby nodded.  "Then, it is possible, is it not, in some of the lower
forms at any rate, to induce parthenogenesis?"  "But not, as far as is
known, among any of the higher forms certainly not among mammals."
"Quite.  Well then, there is artificial insemination."  "There is,"
admitted the doctor.  "But you don't think so."  "I don't."  "Nor do I.
And that," Zellaby went on, a little grimly, 'leaves the possibility of
implantation, which could result in what someone Huxley, I fancy has
called "xenogenesis".  That is, the production of a form that could be
unlike that of the parent or, should one perhaps say, "host"?  It would
not be the true parent."

Dr.  Willers frowned.

I've been hoping that that might not occur to them," he said.

Zellaby shook his head.  "A hope, my dear fellow, that you would do
better to abandon.  It may not occur to them straight away, but it is
the explanation if that is not too definite a word that the intelligent
ones are bound to arrive at before long.  For, look here.  We can
agree, can we not, to dismiss parthenogenesis?  there has never been a
reliably documented case?"

The doctor nodded.  "Well then, it will soon become as clear to them as
it is to me, and must be to you, that both crude assault and ai.  are
put right out of court by sheer mathematics.  And this, incidentally,
would seem to apply to parthenogenesis, too, if that were possible.  By
the law of averages it simply is not possible in any sizeable group of
women taken at random, for more than twenty-five per cent of them to be
in the same stage of pregnancy at the same time."  "Well began the
doctor, doubtfully.  "All right, let us make a concession to, say,
thirty-three and a third per cent which is high.  But then, if your
estimate of the incidence is right, or anywhere near right, the present
situation is still statistically quite impossible.  Ergo, whether we
like it or not, we are thrown back upon the fourth, and last
possibility that implantation of fertilized ova must have taken place
during the Dayout."

Willers was looking very unhappy, and still not altogether convinced.
"I'd question your "and last" there could be other possibilities that
have not occurred to us."

With a touch of impatience, Zellaby said: "Can you suggest any form of
conception that does not come up against that mathematical barrier? No?
Very well.  Then it follows that this cannot be conception: therefore
it must be incubation."

The doctor sighed.  "All right.  I'll grant you that," he said.  "For
myself, I am only incidentally concerned about how it happened: my
anxiety is for the welfare of those who are, and are going to be, my
patients ...."  "You will be concerned, later on," Zellaby put in,
'because, since they are all at the same stage now, it follows that the
births are going to occur barring accidents over a quite limited period
later on.  All round about the end of June, or the first week in July
everything else being normal, of course."  "At present," Willers
continued firmly, 'my chief worry is to decrease their anxiety, not to
increase it.  And for that reason we must do our best to stop this
implantation idea getting about, for as long as we can.  It's panicky
stuff.  For their good I ask you to pooh-pooh, convincingly, any
suggestion of the kind that may come your way."  "Yes," agreed Zellaby,
after consideration.  "Yes.  I agree.  Here, we really do have a case
for benign censorship, I think."  He frowned.  "It is difficult to
appreciate how a woman sees these matters: all that I can say is that
if I were to be called upon, even in the most propitious circumstances,
to bring forth life, the prospect would awe me considerably: had I any
reason to suspect that it might be some unexpected form of life, I
should probably go quite mad.  Most women wouldn't, of course; they are
mentally tougher, but some might, so a convincing dismissal of the
possibility will be best."

He paused, considering.  "Now we ought to get down to giving my wife a
line to work on.  There are various angles to be covered.  One of the
most tricky is going to be publicity or, rather, no publicity."  "Lord,
yes," said Willers.  "Once the Press get hold of it ' "I know.  God
help us if they do.  Day-by-day commentary, with six months of
gloriously mounting speculation to go.  They certainly wouldn't miss
the xenogenesis angle.  More likely to run a forecasting competition.
All right, then; MI managed to keep the Dayout ooooof the papers; we'll
have to see what they can do about this.  "Now, let's rough oooothe
approach for her ...."

Chapter 9

Keep it Dark

The canvassing for attendance at what was not very informatively
described as a "Special Emergency Meeting of Great Importance to every
Woman in Midwich' was intensive.  We ourselves were visited by Gordon
Zellaby who managed to convey a quite dramatic sense of urgency through
a considerable wordage which gave practically nothing away.  His
parrying of attempts to pump him only added to the interest.

Once people had been convinced that it was not simply a matter of
another Civil Defence drive, or any other of the hardy regulars, they
developed a strong curiosity as to what it could possibly be that could
pooothe doctor, the vicar, their wives, the district-nurse, and both
the Zellabys, too, to the trouble of seeing that everyone was called on
and given a personal invitation.  The very evasiveness of the callers,
backed by their reassurances that there would be nothing to pay, no
collection, and a free tea for all, had caused inquisitiveness to
triumph even in the naturally suspicious, and there were few empty
seats.

The two chief convenors sat on the platform with Angela Zellaby,
looking a little pale, between them.  The doctor smoked, with a nervous
intensity.  The vicar seemed lost in an abstraction from which he would
rouse himself now and then to make a remark to Mrs.  Zellaby who
responded to it with an absent-minded air.  They allowed ten minutes
for laggards, then the doctor asked for the doors to be closed, and
opened the proceedings with a brief, but still uninformative,
insistence on their importance.  The vicar then added his support.  He
concluded: "I earnestly ask every one of you here to listen very
carefully indeed to what Mrs.  Zellaby has to say.  We are greatly
indebted to her for her willingness to pooothe matter before you.  And
I want you to know in advance that she has the endorsement of Dr.
Willers and myself for everything she is going to tell you.  It is, I
assure you, only because we feel that this matter may come more
acceptably and, I am sure, more ably, from a woman to women that we
have burdened her with the task.  "Dr.  Willers and I will now leave
the hall, but we shall remain on the premises.  When Mrs.  Zellaby has
finished we shall, if you wish, return to the platform, and do our best
to answer questions.  And now I ask you to give Mrs.  Zellaby your
closest attention."

He waved the doctor ahead of him, and they both went out by a door at
the side of the platform.  It swung-to behind them, but did not close
entirely.

Angela Zellaby drank from a glass of water on the table before her. She
looked down for a moment at her hands resting on her notes.  Then she
raised her head, waiting for the murmurs to die down.  When they had,
she looked her audience over carefully as if noticing every face there.
"First," she said, "I must warn you.  What I have to tell you is going
to be difficult for me to say, difficult for you to believe, too
difficult for any of us to understand at present."  She paused, dropped
her eyes, and then looked up once more.  "I," she said, 'am going to
have a baby.  I am very, very glad, and happy about it.  It is natural
for women to want babies, and to be happy when they know they are
coming.  It is not natural, and it is not good to be afraid of them.
Babies should be joy and fun.  Unhappily, there are a number of women
in Midwich who are not able to feel like that.  Some of them are
miserable, ashamed, and afraid.  It is for their benefit we have called
this meeting.  To help the unhappy ones, and to assure them that they
need be none of these things."

She looked steadily round her audience again.  There was a sound of
caught breath here and there.  "Something very, very strange has
happened here.  And it has not happened just to one or two of us, but
to almost all of us to almost all the women in Midwich who are capable
of bearing children."

The audience sat motionless and silent, every eye fixed upon her as she
put the situation before them.  Before she had finished, however, she
became aware of some disturbance and shushing going on on the
right-hand side of the hall.  Glancing over there, she saw Miss
Latterly and her inseparable companion, Miss Lamb, in the middle of
it.

Angela stopped speaking, in mid-sentence, and waited.  She could hear
the indignant tone of Miss Latterly's voice, but not its words.  "Miss
Latterly," she said clearly.  "Am I right in thinking that you do not
find yourself personally concerned with the subject of this meeting?"

Miss Latterly stood up, she spoke in a voice trembling with
indignation.  "You most certainly are, Mrs.  Zellaby.  I have never in
all my life ' "Then, since this is a matter of the gravest importance
to many people here, I hope you will refrain from further interruptions
Or perhaps you would prefer to leave us?"

Miss Latterly stood firm, looking back at Mrs.  Zellaby.  "This is she
began, and then changed her mind.  "Very well, Mrs.  Zellaby," she
said.  "I shall make my protest against the extraordinary aspersions
you have made on our community, at another time."

She turned with dignity, and paused, clearly to allow Miss Lamb to
accompany her exit.

But Miss Lamb did not move.  Miss Latterly looked down at her, with an
impatient frown.  Miss Lamb continued to sit fast.

Miss Latterly opened her lips to speak, but something in Miss Lamb's
expression checked her.  Miss Lamb ceased to meet her eyes.  She looked
straight before her, while a tide of colour rose until her whole face
was a burning flush.

An odd, small sound escaped from Miss Latterly.  She put out a hand,
and grasped a chair to steady herself.  She stared down at her friend
without speaking.  In a few seconds she grew haggard, and looked ten
years older.  Her hand dropped from the chair back.  With a great
effort she pulled herself together.  She lifted her head decisively,
looking round with eyes that seemed to see nothing.  Then,
straight-backed, but a little uncertain in her steps, she made her way
up the aisle to the back of the hall, alone.

Angela waited.  She expected a buzz of comment, but there was none. The
audience looked shocked and bewildered.  Every face turned back to her,
in expectation.  In the silence she picked up where she had stopped,
trying to reduce by matter-of-factness the emotional tension which Miss
Latterly had increased.  With an effort she continued factually to the
end of her preliminary statement, and then broke off.

The expected buzz of comment rose quickly enough this time.  Angela
took a drink from her glass of water, and rolled her bunched
handkerchief between her damp palms while she watched the audience
carefully.

She could see Miss Lamb leaning forward with a handkerchief pressed to
her eyes while kindly Mrs.  Brant beside her tried to comfort her.  Nor
was Miss Lamb by any means the only one finding relief in tears.  Over
those bent heads the sound of voices, incredulous, high-pitched with
consternation and indignation, grew.  Here and there, one or two were
behaving a little hysterically, but there was nothing like the outburst
she had feared.  She wondered to what extent an inkling awareness had
blunted the shock.

With a feeling of relief and rising confidence she went on observing
them for several minutes.  When she decided that the first impact had
had long enough to register, she rapped the table.  The murmurs died
away, there were a few sniffs, and then rows of expectant faces turned
towards her once more.  Angela took a deep breath, and started in
again.  "Nobody," she said, 'nobody but a child, or a child-minded
person, expects life to be fair.  It is not, and this is going to be
harder on some of us than on others.  Nevertheless, fair or unfair,
whether we like it or not, we are all of us, married and single alike,
in the same boat.  There is no ground for, and consequently no place
for, disparagement of some of us by others.  All of us have been placed
outside the conventions, and if any married woman here is tempted to
consider herself more virtuous than her unmarried neighbour, she might
do well to consider how, if she were challenged, she could prove that
the child she now carries is her husband's child.  "This is a thing
that has happened to all of us.  We must make it bind us together for
the good of all.  There is no blame upon any of us, so there must be no
differentiation between us, except She paused, and then repeated:
"Except that those who have not the love of a husband to help them will
have more need of our sympathy and care."

She continued to elaborate that for a while until she hoped it had made
its mark.  Then she turned to another aspect.  "This," she told them
forcefully, 'is our affair there could not well be any matter more
personal to each of us.  I am sure, and I think you will agree with me,
that it should remain so.  It is for us to handle, ourselves; without
outside interference.  "You must all know how the cheap papers seize
upon anything to do with birth, particularly anything unusual.  They
make a peepshow of it, as if the people concerned were freaks in a
fairground.  The parents' lives, their homes, their children, are no
longer their own.  "We have all read of one instance of a multiple
birth where the papers took it up, then the medical profession backed
by the government, with the result that the parents were virtually
deprived of their own children quite soon after they were born.  "Well
I, for one, do not intend to lose my child that way, and I expect and
hope that all of you will feel the same.  Therefore, unless we want to
have, first, a great deal of unpleasantness for I warn you that if this
should become generally known it will be argued in every club and pub,
with a great many nasty insinuations unless then, we want to be exposed
to that, and then to the very real probability that our babies will be
taken away from us on one excuse or another by doctors and scientists,
we must, every one of us, resolve not to mention, or even hint outside
the village, at the present state of affairs.  It is in our power to
see that it remains Midwich's affair, to be managed, not as some
newspaper, or Ministry, decides, but as the people of Midwich
themselves wish it decided.  "If people in Trayne, or elsewhere, are
inquisitive, or strangers come here asking questions, we must, for our
babies' sakes, and our own, tell them nothing.  But we must not simply
be silent and secretive, as if we were concealing something.  We must
make it seem that there is nothing unusual in Midwich at all.  If we
all cooperate, and our men are made to understand that they must
cooperate too, no interest will be aroused, and people will leave us
alone as they should do.  It is not their business, it is ours.  There
is no one, no one at all who has a better right, or a higher duty, to
protect our children from exploitation than we who are to be their
mothers."

She surveyed them steadily, almost individually once more, as she had
at the start.  Then she concluded: "I shall now ask the Vicar and Dr.
Willers to come back.  If you will excuse me for a few minutes I will
join them here later.  I know there must be a great many questions you
are wanting to ask."

She slipped off into the little room at the side.  "Excellent, Mrs.
Zellaby.  Really excellent," said Mr.  Leebody.

Dr.  Willers took her hand, and pressed it.  "I think you've done it,
my dear," he told her, as he followed the vicar on to the platform.

Zellaby guided her to a chair.  She sat down, and leant back with her
eyes closed.  Her face was pale, and she looked exhausted.  "I think
you'd better come home," he told her.

She shook her head.  "No, I'll be all right in a few minutes.  I must
go back."  "They can manage.  You've done your part, and very well,
too."

She shook her head again.  "I know what those women must be feeling.
This is absolutely crucial, Gordon.  We've got to let them ask
questions and talk talk as long as they like.  Then they'll have got
over the first shock by the time they go.  They've got to get used to
the idea.  A feeling of mutual support is what they need.  I know I
want it, too."

She put a hand to her head, and pushed back her hair.  "You know, it
isn't true, Gordon, what I said just now."  "Which part, my dear?  You
said a lot, you know."  "About my being glad and happy.  Two days ago
it was quite, quite true.  I wanted the baby, yours and mine, so very
much.  Now I'm frightened about it I'm frightened, Gordon."

He tightened his arm round her shoulders.  She rested her head against
his, with a sigh.  "My dear, my dear," he said, stroking her hair
gently.  "It's going to be all right.  We'll look after you."  "Not to
know," she exclaimed.  "To know there's something growing there and not
to be sure how, or what It's so so abasing, Gordon.  It makes me feel
like an animal."

He kissed her cheek softly, and went on stroking her hair.  "You're not
to worry," he told her.  "I'm prepared to bet that when he or she comes
you'll take one look and say: "Oh dear, there's that Zellaby nose."
But, if not, we face it together.  You're not alone, my dear, you must
never feel that you are alone.  I'm here, and Willers is here.  We're
here to help you, always, all the time."

She turned her head, and kissed him.  "Gordon, darling," she said. 
Then she pulled away and sat up.  "I must get back," she announced.

Zellaby gazed after her a moment.  Then he moved a chair closer to the
unclosed door, lit a cigarette, and settled himself to listen
critically to the mood of the village as it showed in its questions.

Chapter 10

Midwich Comes to Terms

The task for January was to cushion the shock and steer the reactions,
and thus to establish an attitude.  The initiation meeting could be
considered a success.  It let the air in, and a lot of anxiety out; and
the audience, tackled while it was still in a semi-stunned condition,
had for the most part accepted the suggestion of communal solidarity
and responsibility.

It was only to be expected that a few individuals should hold aloof,
but they were no more anxious than the rest to have their private lives
invaded and exposed, and their roads jammed with motor-coaches while
goggling loads of sightseers peered in at their windows.  Moreover, it
was not difficult for the two or three who hankered for limelight to
perceive that the village was in a mood to subdue any active
non-cooperator by boycott.  And if Mr.  Wilfred Williams thought a
little wistfully at times of the trade that might have come to The
Scythe and Stone, he proved a staunch supporter and sensitive to the
requirements of longer-term goodwill.

Once the bewilderment of the first impact had been succeeded by the
feeling that there were capable hands at the helm; when the
pendulum-swing among the young unmarried women from frightened
wretchedness to smug bumptious ness had settled down; and when an air
of readiness to turn-to, not vastly dissimilar from that which preceded
the annual fete and flower-show, began to be apparent, the
self-appointed committee could feel that at least it had succeeded in
getting things on to the right lines.

The original Committee of the Willers, the Leebodys, the Zellabys, and
Nurse Daniels, had been augmented by ourselves, and also by Mr.  Arthur
Crimm who had been co-opted to represent the interests of several
indignant researchers at The Grange who now found themselves embroiled,
willy-nilly, in the domestic life of Midwich.

But though the feeling at the committee meeting held some five days
after the Village Hall meeting could be fairly summarized as 'so far,
so good', members were well aware that the achievement could not be
left to take care of itself.  The attitude that had been successfully
induced might, it was felt, slip back all too easily into normal
conventional prejudices if it were not carefully tended.  For some
time, at least, it would have to be sustained and fortified.  "What we
need to produce," Angela summed up, 'is something like the
companionship of adversity, but without suggesting that it is an
adversity which, indeed, as far as we know, it is not."

The sentiment gained the approval of everyone but Mrs.  Leebody, who
looked doubtful.  "But," she said hesitantly, "I think we ought to be
honest, you know."

The rest of us looked at her inquiringly.  She went on: "Well, I mean,
it is an adversity, isn't it?  After all, a thing like this wouldn't
happen to us for no reason, would it?  There must be a reason; so isn't
it our duty to search for it?"

Angela regarded her with a small, puzzled frown.  "I don't think I
quite understand ...."  she said.  "Well," explained Mrs.  Leebody,
'when things unusual things like this suddenly happen to a community
there is a reason.  I mean, look at the plagues of Egypt, and Sodom and
Gomorrah, and that kind of thing."

There was a pause.  Zellaby felt impelled to relieve the awkwardness.
"For my part," he observed, "I regard the plagues of Egypt as an
unedifying example of celestial bullying; a technique now known as
power-politics.  As for Sodom He broke off and subsided as he caught
his wife's eye.  "Er said the vicar, since something seemed to be
expected of him.  "Er '

Angela came to his rescue.  "I really don't think you need worry about
that, Mrs.  Leebody.  Barrenness is, of course, a classical form of
curse; but I really can't remember any instance where retribution took
the form of fruitfulness.  After all, it scarcely seems reasonable,
does it?"  "That would depend on the fruit," Mrs.  Leebody said,
darkly.

Another uneasy silence followed.  Everybody, except Mr.  Leebody,
regarded Mrs.  Leebody.  Dr.  Willers' eyes swivelled to catch those of
Nurse Daniels, and then went back to Dora Leebody who showed no
discomfort at being the centre of attention.  She glanced round at all
of us in an apologetic manner.  "I am sorry, but I am afraid I am the
cause of it all," she confided.  "Mrs.  Leebody the doctor began.

She raised her hand reprovingly.  "You are kind," she said.  "I know
you want to spare me.  But there is a time for confession.  I am a
sinner, you see.  If I had had my child twelve years ago, none of this
would have happened.  Now I must pay for my sin by bearing a child that
is not my husband's.  It is all quite clear.  I am very sorry to have
brought this down on the rest of you.  But it is a judgement, you see.
Just like the plagues ...."

The vicar, flushed and troubled, broke in before she could continue: "I
thinker perhaps if you will excuse us '

There was a general pushing back of chairs.  Nurse Daniels crossed
quietly to Mrs.  Leebody's side, and began a conversation with her. Dr.
Willers watched them for a moment until he became aware of Mr. Leebody
beside him, mutely inquiring.  He laid a hand reassuringly on the
vicar's shoulder.  "It has been a shock to her.  Not surprising at all.
I fully expected a number of cases before this.  I'll get Nurse
Daniels to see her home and give her a sedative.  Very likely a good
sleep will make all the difference.  I'll look in tomorrow morning."

A few minutes later we dispersed, in a subdued and thoughtful mood.

*

The policy advocated by Angela Zellaby was carried out with
considerable success.  The latter part of January saw the introduction
of such a programme of social activities and helpful neighbourliness as
we felt would leave only the most determined non-cooperators with the
isolation, or the time, to brood.

In late February I was able to report to Bernard that things were
going, on the whole, smoothly more smoothly, at any rate than we had
dared to hope at first.  There had been a few sags in the graph of
local confidence, and would doubtless be others, but, so far,
recoveries had been speedy.  I gave him details of the happenings in
the village since my last report, but information regarding the
attitude and views prevailing at The Grange which he had asked for I
could not supply.  Either the researchers were of the opinion that the
affair somehow came within the compass of their oaths of secrecy, or
else they were of the opinion that it was safer to act as if it did.

Mr.  Crimm continued to be their only link with the village, and it
seemed to me that to get any more information I must either have
authority to reveal to him the official nature of my interest, or
Bernard would have to tackle him himself.  Bernard preferred the latter
course, and a meeting was arranged for Mr.  Crimm's next visit to
London.

He called in on us on the way back, feeling at liberty to spill some of
his troubles, which seemed to be largely concerned with his
Establishments Section.  "They do so worship tidiness," he complained.
"I just don't know what we are going to do when my six problems start
to raise matters of allowances and absences, and make an undisguisable
mess of their nice tidy leave-rosters.  And then, too, there'll be the
effect on our work schedule.  I put it to Colonel Westcott that if his
Department really is seriously concerned to keep the matter quiet,
they'll only be able to do it by stepping in officially, at a high
level.  Otherwise, we shall have to give explanations before long.  I
think he sees my point there.  But, for the life of me, I can't see why
that particular aspect should be of such interest to MI, can you?" 
"Now that is a pity," Janet told him.  "One of our hopes when we heard
that you were going to see him was that you might learn enough to
enlighten us."

*

Life appeared to be going on smoothly enough in Midwich for the
present, but it was only a little later that one of the undercurrents
broke surface, and gave us a flutter of anxiety.

After the committee meeting which she had brought to a premature close,
Mrs.  Leebody ceased, not altogether surprisingly, to play any further
active part in the promotion of village harmony.  When she did reappear
after a few days' rest, she seemed to have recovered her balance by a
decision to regard the whole unfortunate situation as a distasteful
subject.

On one of the early days in March, however, the Vicar of St.  Mary's,
in Trayne, accompanied by his wife, brought her home in their car. They
had found her, he reported to Mr.  Leebody, with some embarrassment,
preaching in Trayne market, from an upturned box.  "Er preaching?" 
said Mr.  Leebody, a new uneasiness mingling with his concern.  "I er
can you tell me what about?"  "Oh, well well quite fantastical, I'm
afraid," the Vicar of St.  Mary's told him, evasively. "But I think I
ought to know.  The doctor will be sure to ask about it when he
arrives."  "Weller it was in the nature of a call to repentance; on a
note of er revivalist doom.  The people of Trayne must repent and pray
forgiveness for fear of wrath, retribution, and hellfire.  Rather
nonconformist, I'm afraid.  Lurid, you know.  And, it seems, they must
particularly avoid having anything to do with the people of Midwich who
are already suffering under divine disapproval. If the Trayne people do
not take heed, and mend their ways, punishment will inevitably descend
on them, too."  "Oh," said Mr.  Leebody, keeping his tone level.  "She
did not say what form our suffering here is taking?"  "A visitation,"
the Vicar of St.  Mary's told him. "Specifically, the infliction of a
plague of er babies.  That, of course, was causing some degree of
ribaldry.  A lamentable business altogether.  Of course, once my wife
had drawn my attention to Mrs. Leebody's er condition, the matter
became more intelligible, though still more distressing.  I oh, here is
Dr.  Willers, now."  He broke off with relief.

*

A week later, in the middle of the afternoon, Mrs.  Leebody took up a
position on the lowest step of the War Memorial, and began to speak.
She was dressed for the occasion in a garment of hessian, her feet were
bare, and there was a smudge of ash on her forehead.  Fortunately there
were not many people about at the time, and she was persuaded home
again by Mrs.  Brant before she had well begun.  Word was all round the
village in an hour, but her message, whatever it may have been,
remained undelivered.

Midwich heard the quickly following news of Dr.  Willers'
recommendation to rest in a nursing-home with sympathy rather than
surprise.

*

About mid-March Alan and Ferrelyn made their first visit since their
marriage.  With Ferrelyn putting in the time until Alan's release in a
small Scottish town entirely among strangers, Angela had been against
causing her worry by attempting to explain the Midwich state of affairs
in a letter; so, now, it had to be laid before them.

Alan's expression of concern deepened as the predicament was explained.
Ferrelyn listened without interruption, but with a swift glance now and
then at Alan's face.  It was she who broke the silence that followed. 
"You know," she said, "I had a sort of feeling all along that there was
something funny.  I mean, it oughtn't she broke off, struck apparently
by an ancillary thought.  "Oh, how dreadful!  I kind of shot-gunned
poor Alan.  This probably makes it coercion, or undue influence, or
something heinous.  Could it be grounds for divorce?  Oh, dear.  Do you
want a divorce, darling?"

Zellaby's eyes crinkled a little at the corners as he watched his
daughter.

Alan put his hand over hers.  "I think we ought to wait a bit, don't
you?"  he told her.  "Darling," said Ferrelyn, twining her fingers in
his.  Turning her head after a long look at him, she caught her
father's expression.  Treating him to a determinedly unresponsive look,
she turned to Angela, and asked for more details of the village's
reactions.  Half an hour later they went out, leaving the two men alone
together.  Alan barely waited for the door to latch before he broke
out.  "I say, sir, this is a bit of a facer, isn't it?"  "I'm afraid it
is," Zellaby agreed.  "The best consolation I can offer is that we find
the shock wears off.  The most painful part is the opening assault on
one's prejudices I speak for our sex, of course.  For the women that
is, unfortunately, only the first hurdle."

Alan shook his head.  "This is going to be a terrible blow for
Ferrelyn, I'm afraid as it must have been to Angela," he added, a
little hurriedly.  "Of course, one can't expect her, Ferrelyn, I mean,
to take in all the implications at once.  A thing like this needs a bit
of absorbing ...."  "My dear fellow," said Zellaby, 'as Ferrelyn's
husband you have the right to think all sorts of things about her, but
one of the things you must not do, for your own peace of mind, is to
underestimate her.  Ferrelyn, I assure you, was away ahead of you.  I
doubt whether she's missed a trick.  She was certainly far enough ahead
to move in with a lightweight remark because she knew that if she
seemed worried, you would worry about her."  "Oh, do you think so?"
said Alan, a little flatly.  "I do," said Zellaby.  "Furthermore, it
was sensible of her.  A fruitlessly worrying male is a nuisance.  The
best thing he can do is to disguise his worry, and staaaaaaaunchly by,
impersonating a pillar of strength while performing certain practical
and organizational services.  I offer you the fruit of somewhat
intensive experience.  "Another thing he can do is represent Modern
Knowledge and Commonsense but tactfully.  You can have no idea of the
number of venerable saws, significant signs, old wives' sooths,
gipsies' warnings, and general fiddle-faddle that has been thrown up by
this in the village, lately.  We have become a folklorist's
treasure-chest.  Did you know that in our circumstaaces it is dangerous
to pass under a lych-gate on a Friday?  Practically suicide to wear
green?  Very unwise indeed to eat seed-cake?  Are you aware that if a
dropped knife, or needle, sticks point down in the floor it will be a
boy?  No?  I thought you might not be.  But never mind.  I am
assembling a bouquet of these cauliflowers of human wisdom in the hope
that they may keep my publishers quiet."

Alan inquired with belated politeness after the progress of the Current
Work.  Zellaby sighed sadly.  "I am supposed to deliver the final draft
of The British Twilight by the end of next month.  So far I have
written three chapters of this supposedly contemporary study.  If I
could remember what they deal with, I've no doubt I should find them
obsolete by now.  It ruins a man's concentration to have a creche
hanging over his head."  "What is amazing me as much as anything is
that you've managed to keep it quiet.  I'd have said you hadn't a
chance," Alan told him.  "I did say it," Zellaby admitted.  "And I'm
still astonished.  I think it must be a kind of variant on The
Emperor's Clothes theme either that, or an inversion of the Hitler Big
Lie a truth too big to be believed.  But, mind you, both Oppley and
Stouch are saying un neighbourly things about some of us that they've
noticed, though they appear to have no idea of the real scale.  I'm
told that there is a theory current in both of them that we have all
been indulging in one of those fine old uninhibited rustic frenzies on
Hallowe'en.  Anyway, several of the inhabitants almost gather their
skirts aside as we pass.  I must say that our people have restrained
themselves commendably, under some provocation."  "But do you mean that
only a mile or two away they've no idea what's really happened?"  Alan
asked incredulously.  "I'd not say that, so much as that they don't
want to believe it.  They must have heard fairly fully I imagine, but
they choose to believe that that is all a tale to cover up something
more normal, but disgraceful.  Willers was right when he said that a
kind of self-protective reflex would defend the ordinary man and woman
from disquieting beliefs That is unless it should get into print.  On
the word of a newspaper, of course, eighty or ninety per cent would
swing to the opposite extreme, and believe anything.  The cynical
attitude in the other villages really helps.  It means that a newspaper
is unlikely to get anything to go on unless it is directly informed by
someone inside the village.  "Internal stresses were worst for the
first week or two after our announcement.  Several of the husbands were
awkward to handle, but once we got it out of their heads that it was
some elaborate system of whitewashing or spoofing, and when they
discovered that none of the others was in a position to make a butt of
them, they became more reasonable, and less conventional.  "The
Lamb-Latterly breach was mended after a few days, when Miss Latterly
got over the shock, and Miss Lamb is now being cosseted with a devotion
scarcely to be distinguished from tyranny.  "Our leading rebel for some
time was Tilly Oh, you must have seen Tilly Foresham jodhpurs,
roll-neck, hacking-jacket, dragged hither and thither by the whim of
fate in the form of three golden retrievers She protested indignantly
for some time that she would not mind much if she happened to like
babies; but, as she much preferred puppies, the whole thing was
particularly hard on her.  However, she seems now to have given in,
though grudgingly."

Zellaby rambled on for a time with anecdotes of the emergency,
concluding with the one in which Miss Ogle had been narrowly headed off
from making the first payment, in her own name, for the most
resplendent perambulator that Trayne could offer.

After a pause, Alan prompted: "You did say that about ten who might be
expected to be involved actually are not?"  "Yes.  And five of those
were in the bus on the Oppley road, and therefore under observation
during the Dayout that has at least done something to dispel the idea
of a fertilizing gas which some seemed to be inclined to adopt as one
of the new scientific horrors of our age," Zellaby told him.

Chapter 11

Well Played, Midwich

"I am really sorry," Bernard Westcott wrote to me early in May, 'that
circumstances preclude well-deserved official congratulations to your
village on the success of the operation to date.  It has been conducted
with a discretion and communal loyalty which, frankly, has astonished
us; most of us here were of the opinion that it would prove necessary
to take official action well before this.  Now, with only some seven
weeks to go before D-day, we are hopeful that we may get through
without it.  "The matter which has given us the greatest concern so far
was in connexion with Miss Frazer, on Mr.  Crimm's staff, and so, one
might say, not the fault of the village proper nor even of the lady
herself.  "Her father, a naval commander, retired, and a fire-eater of
some truculence, was bent on trouble all set to get questions asked in
the House about loose-living and orgiastic goings-on in government
establishments.  Anxious, apparently, to make a Fleet Street holiday of
his daughter.  Luckily we were able to arrange for suitably influential
people to have a few effective words with him in time.  "What is your
own opinion?  Do you think Midwich will last it out?"

That was far from easy to answer.  If there were no major upset, I
thought it might stand a good chance: on the other hand, one could not
fail to be anxiously aware of the unexpected, lurking round any corner
the small detonator that might set things off.

We had had our ups and downs, though, and managed to get through them.
Sometimes, they seemed to come from nowhere and spread like an
infection.  The worst, which looked at one time like becoming a panic,
was allayed by Dr.  Willers who hurriedly arranged X-ray facilities and
was able to show that all appeared to be quite normal.

The general attitude in May one could describe as a bracing-up, with
here and there an impatient desire to let battle commence.  Dr.
Willers, normally an ardent advocate of having one's baby in Trayne
hospital, had reversed his usual advice.  For one thing, it would,
particularly if there should be anything untoward about the babies,
render all attempts to keep the matter quiet utterly useless.  For
another, Trayne did not have the beds to cope with such a phenomenon as
a simultaneous application by the whole female population of Midwich
and that alone would certainly have been fuel for publicity so he went
on wearing and flogging himself to make the best local arrangements he
could.  Nurse Daniels, too, was tireless, and it was a matter for
thanksgiving by the whole village that she had happened to be away from
home at the critical time of the Dayout.  Willers, it was understood,
had a temporary assistant booked for the first week in June, and a sort
of commando of midwives signed-up for later on.  The small
committee-room in the Village Hall had been requisitioned as a
supply-base, and several large cartons from firms of manufacturing
chemists had already arrived.

Mr.  Leebody was working himself dead tired, too.  There was much
sympathy for him on account of Mrs.  Leebody, and he was more regarded
in the village than he ever had been before.  Mrs.  Zellaby was holding
resolutely to her solidarity line, and, aided by Janet, continued to
proclaim that Midwich would meet whatever was to come with a united
front, and unafraid.  It was, I think, chiefly on account of their work
that we had come so far with except in the matter of Mrs.  Leebody and
one or two others so little psychosomatic trouble.

Zellaby had operated, as might be expected, in less definable
capacities, one of which he described as chief liquidator of the
all-my-eye-and-crystal-balls division, and he had shown a pretty knack
of causing nonsense to wilt, without putting backs up.  One suspected
that he was also supplying quite a little help where there was need and
hardship.

Mr.  Crimm's worries with his Establishments Branch continued.  He had
been making increasingly urgent appeals to Bernard Westcott, and
reached the point of saying that the only thing that would save a
scandal throughout the Civil Service soon would be for his research
project to be switched, and quickly, from ministerial to War Office
control.  Bernard, it seemed, was trying to achieve that, insisting the
while that the whole affair must be kept quiet for just as long as it
was possible to hold it.  "Which, from the Midwich point of view," said
Mr.  Crimm, with a shrug, 'is all to the good.  But what the devil it
can matter to MI I still don't begin to see ...."

*

By mid-May there was a perceptible change.  Hitherto, the spirit of
Midwich had been not ill-attuned with that of the burgeoning season all
around.  It would be too much to say that it now went out of tune, but
there was a certain muting of its strings.  It acquired an air of
abstraction; a more pensive when.  "This," remarked Willers to Zellaby,
one day, 'is where we begin to stiffen the sinews."  "Some quotations,"
said Zellaby, 'are greatly improved by lack of context, but I take your
meaning.  One of the things that isn't helping is the nattering of
stupid old women.  What with one thing and another, it is such an
exceptionally good wicket for held ames  I wish they could be stopped."
"They're only one of the hazards.  There are plenty more."

Zellaby pondered glumly for a little, then he said: "Well, we can only
keep on trying.  I suppose we have done pretty well not to have more
trouble with it some time ago."  "A lot better than one thought
possible and nearly all of it due to Mrs.  Zellaby," the doctor told
him.

Zellaby hesitated, and then made up his mind.  "I'm rather concerned
about her, Willers.  I wonder if you could well, have a talk with her."
"A talk?"  "She's more worried than she has let us see.  It came out a
bit a couple of nights ago.  Nothing particular to start it.  I
happened to look up and found her staring at me, as though she were
hating me.  She doesn't you know .... Then, as if I had said something,
she broke out: "It's all very well for a man.  He doesn't have to go
through this sort of thing, and he knows he never will have to.  How
can he understand?  He may mean as well as a saint, but he's always on
the outside.  He can never know what it's like, even in a normal way so
what sort of an idea can he have of this?  Of how it feels to lie awake
at night with the humiliating knowledge that one is simply being used?
As if one were not a person at all, but just a kind of mechanism, a
sort of incubator .... And then go on wondering, hour after hour, night
after night, what just what it may be that one is being forced to
incubate.  Of course you can't understand how that feels how could you!
It's degrading, it's intolerable.  I shall crack soon.  I know I shall.
 I can't go on like this much longer."  '

Zellaby paused, and shook his head.  "There's so damned little one can
do.  I didn't try to stop her.  I thought it would be better for her to
let it out.  But I'd be glad if you would talk to her, convince her.
She knows that all the tests and X-rays show normal development but
she's got it into her head that it would be professionally necessary
for you to say that, in any case.  And I suppose it would."  "It's true
thank heaven," the doctor told him.  "I don't know what the devil I'd
have done if it weren't but I know we couldn't have just gone on as we
have.  I assure you the patients can't be more relieved that it is so
than I am.  So don't you worry, I'll set her mind at rest on that
point, at any rate.  She's not the first to think it, and she'll
certainly not be the last.  But, as soon as we get one thing nailed,
they'll find others to worry themselves with.  "This is going to be a
very, very dodgy time all round ...."

*

In a week, it began to look as if Willers' prophecy would prove a pale
understatement.  The feeling of tension was contagious, and almost
palpably increasing day by day.  At the end of another week Midwich's
united front had weakened sadly.  With self-help beginning to show
inadequacy, Mr.  Leebody had to bear more and more of the weight of
communal anxiety.  He did not spare any pains.  He arranged special
daily services, and for the rest of the day drove himself on from one
parishioner to another, giving what encouragement he could.

Zellaby found himself quite superfluous.  Rationalism was in disfavour.
He maintained an unusual silence, and would have accepted invisibility,
too, had it been offered.  "Have you noticed," he inquired, dropping in
one evening at Mr.  Crimm's cottage, 'have you noticed the way they
glare at one?  Rather as if one had been currying favour with the
Creator in order to be given the other sex.  Quite unnerving at times. 
Is it the same at The Grange?"  "It began to be," Mr.  Crimm admitted,
'but we got them away on leave a day or two ago. Those who wanted to go
home have gone there.  The rest are in billets arranged by the doctor. 
We are getting more work done, as a result. It was becoming a little
difficult."  "Understatement," said Zellaby. "As it happens, I have
never worked in a fireworks factory, but I know just what it must be
like.  I feel that at any moment something ungoverned, and rather
horrible, may break out.  And there's nothing one can do but wait, and
hope it doesn't happen.  Frankly, how we are going to get through
another month or so of it, I don't know."  He shrugged and shook his
head.

*

At the very moment of that despondent shake, however, the situation was
in the process of being unexpectedly improved.

For Miss Lamb, who had adopted the custom of a quiet evening stroll,
carefully supervised by Miss Latterly, that evening underwent a
misadventure.  One of the milk-bottles neatly arranged outside the back
door of their cottage had somehow been overturned, and, as they left,
Miss Lamb stepped on it.  It rolled beneath her foot, and she fell ....
Miss Latterly carried her back indoors, and rushed to the telephone
.... *

Mrs.  Willers was still waiting up for her husband when he came back,
five hours later.  She heard the car drive up, and when she opened the
door he was standing on the threshold, dishevelled, and blinking at the
light.  She had seen him like that only once or twice in their married
life, and caught his arm anxiously.  "Charley.  Charley, my dear, what
is it?  Not ?"  "Rather drunk, Milly.  Sorry.  Take no notice," he
said. "Oh, Charley!  Was the baby ?"  "Reaction, m'dear.  Jus'
reaction. Baby's perfect, you see.  Nothing wrong with the baby. 
Nothing 't all. Perfect."  "Oh, thank God for that," exclaimed Mrs. 
Willers, meaning it as fervently as she had ever meant any prayer. 
"Got golden eyes," said her husband.  "Funny but nothing against having
golden eyes, is there?"  "No, dear, of course not."  "Perfect, 'cept
for golden eyes. Not wrong at all."

Mrs.  Willers helped him out of his coat, and steered him into the
sitting-room.  He dropped into a chair and sat there slackly, staring
before him.  "S-so s-silly, isn't it?"  he said.  "All that worrying.
And now it's perfect.  I He burst suddenly into tears, and covered his
face with his hands.

Mrs.  Willers sat down on the arm of his chair, and laid her arm round
his shoulders.  "There, there, my darling.  It's all right, dear.  It's
over now."  She turned his face towards her own, and kissed him.
"Might've been black, or yellow, or green, or like a monkey.  X-rays no
good to tell that," he said.  "F the women of Midwich do the right
thing by Miss Lamb, should be window to her, in the church."  "I know,
my dear, I know.  But you don't need to worry about that any more.  You
said it's perfect."

Dr.  Willers nodded emphatically several times.  "That's right.
Perfect," he repeated, with another nod.  "Cept for golden eyes. Golden
eyes are all right.  Perfect Lambs, my dear, lambs may safely graze
safely graze Oh, God, I'm tired, Milly ...."

*

A month later Gordon Zellaby found himself pacing the floor of the
waiting-room in Trayne's best nursing-home, and forced himself to stop
it and sit down.  It was a ridiculous way to behave at his age, he told
himself.  Very proper in a young man, no doubt, but the last few weeks
had brought the fact that he was no longer a young man rather forcibly
to his notice.  He felt about twice the age he had a year ago.
Nevertheless, when, ten minutes later, a nurse rustled starchily in,
she found him pacing the room again.  "It is a boy, Mr.  Zellaby," she
said.  "And I have Mrs.  Zellaby's special instructions to tell you he
has the Zellaby nose."

Chapter 12

Harvest Home

On a fine afternoon in the last week of July, Gordon Zellaby, emerging
from the post office, encountered a small family-party coming from the
church.  It centred about a girl who carried a baby wrapped in a white
woollen shawl.  She looked very young to be the baby's mother; scarcely
more than a schoolgirl.  Zellaby beamed benevolently upon the group and
received their smiles in return, but when they had passed his eyes
followed the child carrying her child, a little sadly.

As he approached the lych-gate, the Reverend Hubert Leebody came down
the path.  "Hullo, Vicar.  Still signing up the recruits, I see," he
said.

Mr.  Leebody greeted him, nodded, and fell into step beside him.  "It's
easing off now, though," he said.  "Only two or three more to come."
"Making it one hundred per cent?"  "Very nearly.  I must confess I had
scarcely expected that, but I fancy they feel that though it can't
exactly regularize matters, it does go some way towards it.  I'm glad
they do."  He paused reflectively.  "This one," he went on, 'young Mary
Histon, she's chosen the name Theodore.  Chose it all on her own, I
gather.  And I must say I rather like that."

Zellaby considered for a moment, and nodded.  "So do I, Vicar.  I like
it very much.  And, you know, that embodies no mean tribute to you."

Mr.  Leebody looked pleased, but shook his head.  "Not to me," he said.
"That a child like Mary should want to call her baby "the gift of God"
instead of being ashamed of it is a tribute to the whole village." 
"But the village had to be shown how, in the name of humanity, it ought
to behave."  "Teamwork," said the Vicar.  "Teamwork, with a fine
captain in Mrs.  Zellaby."

They continued for a few paces in silence, then Zellaby said:
"Nevertheless, the fact remains that, however the girl takes it, she
has been robbed.  She has been swept suddenly from childhood into
womanhood.  I find that saddening.  No chance to stretch her wings. She
has to miss the age of true poetry."  "One would like to agree but, in
point of fact, I doubt it," said Mr.  Leebody.  "Not only are poets,
active or passive, rather rare, but it suits more temperaments than our
times like to pretend to go straight from dolls to babies."

Zellaby shook his head regretfully.  "I expect you're right.  All my
life I have deplored the Teutonic view of women, and all my life ninety
per cent of them have been showing me that they don't mind it a bit."
"There are some who certainly have not been robbed of anything," Mr.
Leebody pointed out.  "You're right.  I've just been looking in on Miss
Ogle.  She hasn't.  Still a bit bewildered, perhaps, but delighted too.
You'd think it was all some kind of conjuring trick she had invented
for herself, without knowing how."

He paused, and then went on: "My wife tells me that Mrs.  Leebody will
be home in a few days.  We were most happy to hear that."  "Yes.  The
doctors are very pleased.  She's made a wonderful recovery."  "And the
baby is doing well?"  "Yes," said Mr.  Leebody, a shade unhappily. 
"She adores the baby."

He paused at a gate which gave entrance to the garden of a large
cottage set well back from the road.  "Ah, yes," Zellaby nodded.  "And
how is Miss Foresham?"  "Very busy at the moment.  A new litter.  She
still maintains that a baby is less interesting than puppies, but I
think I notice a weakening of conviction."  "There are signs of that
even in the most indignant," Zellaby agreed.  "For my part, however,
that is as a male, I must admit to finding things a bit flat and
after-the-battle."  "It has been a battle," agreed Mr.  Leebody, 'but
battles, after all, are just the highlights of a campaign.  There are
more to come."

Zellaby looked at him more attentively.  Mr.  Leebody went on: "Who are
these children?  There's something about the way they look at one with
those curious eyes.  They are strangers, you know."  He hesitated, and
added: "I realize it is not a way of thinking that will commend itself
to you, but I find myself continually returning to the idea that this
must be some kind of test."  "But by whom, of whom?"  said Zellaby.

Mr.  Leebody shook his head.  "Possibly we shall never know.  Though it
has already shown itself something of a test of us here.  We could have
rejected the situation that was thrust upon us, but we accepted it as
our own concern."  "One hopes," said Zellaby, 'one hopes that we did
right."

Mr.  Leebody looked startled.  "But what else ?"  "I don't know.  How
is one to know with strangers?"

Presently they parted; Mr.  Leebody to make his call, Zellaby to
continue his stroll, with a thoughtful air.  Not until he was
approaching the Green did his attention turn outward, and then it was
caught by Mrs.  Brinkman, still at some distance.  One moment she was
hurrying along towards him behind a new and shiny perambulator; the
next, she had stopped dead, and was looking down into it in a helpless,
troubled fashion.  Then she picked the baby up and carried it the few
yards to the War Memorial.  There she sat down on the second step,
unbuttoned her blouse, and held the baby to her.

Zellaby continued his stroll.  As he drew near he raised his somewhat
ramshackle hat.  An expression of annoyance came over Mrs.  Brinkman's
face, and a suffusion of pink, but she did not move.  Then, as if he
had spoken, she said defensively: "Well, it's natural enough, isn't
it?"  "My dear lady, it's classical.  One of the great symbols."
Zellaby assured her.  "Then go away," she told him, and abruptly began
to weep.

Zellaby hesitated.  "Is there anything I can ?"  "Yes.  Go away," she
repeated.  "You don't think I want to make an exhibition of myself, do
you?"  she added, tearfully.

Zellaby was still irresolute.  "She's hungry," Mrs.  Brinkman said.
"You'd understand if yours was one of the Dayout babies.  Now, will you
please go away!"

It did not seem the moment to pursue the matter further.  Zellaby
lifted his hat once more, and did as he was required.  He went on, with
a puzzled frown on his brow as he realized that somewhere he had missed
a trick; something had been kept from him.

Half-way up the drive to Kyle Manor the sound of a car behind made him
draw in to the side for it to pass.  It did not pass, however.  It drew
up beside him.  Turning, he saw not the tradesman's van he had assumed
it to be, but a small black car with Ferrelyn at the wheel.  "My dear,"
he said, 'how nice to see you.  I had no idea you were coming.  I wish
they wouldn't forget to tell me things."

But Ferrelyn did not give him smile for smile.  Her face, a little
pale, remained tired-looking.  "Nobody had any idea I was coming not
even me.  I didn't intend to come."  She looked down at the baby in the
carry-cot on the passenger seat beside her.  "He made me come," she
said.

Chapter 13

Midwich Centrocline

On the following day there returned to Midwich, first, Dr.  Margaret
Haxby from Norwich, with baby.  Miss Haxby was no longer on the staff
of The Grange, having resigned two months before, nevertheless it was
to The Grange she went, demanding accommodation.  Two hours later came
Miss Diana Dawson, from the neighbourhood of Gloucester, also with
baby, also demanding accommodation.  She presented slightly less of a
problem than Miss Haxby since she was still a member of the staff,
though not due to return from leave for some weeks yet.  Third, came
Miss Polly Rushton from London, with baby, in a state of distress and
confused emotions, asking help and shelter of her uncle, the Reverend
Hubert Leebody.

The day after that, two more ex-staff from The Grange arrived, with
their babies, admitting their resignations from the Service, but at the
same time making it perfectly clear that it was The Grange's duty to
find them a room of some kind in Midwich.  In the afternoon, young Mrs.
Dorry, who had been staying in Devonport to be near her husband in his
latest posting, arrived unexpectedly, with her baby, and opened up her
cottage.

And on the next day there showed up from Durham, with baby, the
remaining member of The Grange staff involved.  She, too, was
technically on leave, but insisted that a place must be found for her.
Finally appeared Miss Latterly, with Miss Lamb's baby, urgently
returning from Eastbourne whither she had taken Miss Lamb for
recuperation.

This influx was observed with varying emotions.  Mr.  Leebody welcomed
his niece warmly, as though she were putting it within his power to
make some amends.  Dr.  Willers was perplexed and disconcerted as was
Mrs.  Willers, who feared it might cause him to postpone the
much-needed holiday she had arranged for him.  Gordon Zellaby had the
air of one regarding an interesting phenomenon with judicial reserve.
The person upon whom the development pressed most immediately was,
without doubt, Mr.  Crimm.  He was beginning to wear a distraught
look.

A number of urgent reports went in to Bernard.  Janet's and mine was to
the effect that the first, and probably the worst, hurdle had been
crossed, and the babies had arrived without nationwide obstetrical
interest, BUT if he still wished to avoid publicity the new situation
must be dealt with promptly.  Plans for the care and support of the
children would have to be established on a sound, official footing.

Mr.  Crimm urged that the irregularities appearing in his personnel
records were now on a scale that had taken them beyond his control, and
that unless there was swift intervention at a higher level, there was
soon going to be an almighty rumpus.

Dr.  Willers felt it necessary to turn in three reports.  The first was
in medical language, for the record.  The second expressed his opinions
in more colloquial terms, for the lay.  Among the points he made were
these: "The survival rate of one hundred per cent resulting in 31 males
and 30 females of this special type means that only superficial study
has been possible, but of the characteristics observed, the following
are common to them all: "Most striking are the eyes.  These appear to
be quite normal in structure; the iris, however, is, to the best of my
knowledge, unique in its colouring, being of a bright, almost
fluorescent-looking gold, and is the same shade of gold in all.  "The
hair, noticeably soft and fine, is, as well as I can describe it, of a
slightly darkened blond shade.  In section, under the microscope, it is
almost flat on one side, while the other is an arc; the shape being
close to that of a narrow D. Specimens taken from eight of the babies
are precisely similar.  I can find no record of such a hair-type being
observed hitherto.  The finger and toe nails are a trifle narrower than
is usual, but there is no suggestion of claw formation indeed, one
would judge them to be slightly flatter than the average.  The shape of
the occiput may be a little unusual, but it is too early to be definite
about that.  "In a former report it was surmised that the origin might
be attributable to some process of xenogenesis.  The very remarkable
similarity of the children; the fact that they are certainly not
hybrids of any known species, as well as all the circumstances
attending gestation, tend, in my view to support this opinion.
Additional evidence may accrue when the blood-groups can be determined
that is to say, when the blood circulating ceases to be that of the
mother's group, and becomes that of the individual.  "I have been
unable to find any record of a case of human xenogenesis, but I know of
no reason why it should not be possible.  This explanation has
naturally occurred to those involved.  The more educated women entirely
accept the thesis that they are host-mothers, rather than true mothers;
the less educated find in it an element of humiliation, and so tend to
ignore it.  "In general: the babies all appear to be perfectly healthy
although they do not show the degree of "chubbiness" one expects at
their age: the size of the head in relation to the body is that
normally found in a somewhat older child: a curious, but slight,
silvery sheen on the skin has given concern to some of the mothers, but
is common to all, and would appear to be normal to the type."

After reading through the rest of his report, Janet took him up on it
severely.  "Look here," she said.  "What about the return of all the
mothers and babies all this compulsion business?  You can't just skip
that altogether."  "A form of hysteria giving rise to collective
hallucination probably quite temporary," said Willers.  "But all the
mothers, educated or not, agree that the babies can, and do, exert a
form of compulsion.  Those who were away didn't want to come back here;
they came because they had to.  I've talked to all of them, and what
they all say is that they suddenly became aware of a feeling of
distress a sense of need which they somehow knew could only be relieved
by coming back here.  Their attempts to describe it vary because it
seems to have affected them in different ways one felt stifled, another
said it was like hunger or thirst, and another, that it was like having
a great noise battering at one.  Ferrelyn says she simply suffered from
intolerable jitters.  But, whichever way it took them, they felt it was
associated with the babies, and that the only way to relieve it was to
bring them back here.  "And that even goes for Miss Lamb, too.  She
felt just the same, but she was ill in bed at the time, and couldn't
possibly come.  So what happened?  The compulsion switched on to Miss
Latterly, and she was unable to rest until she had acted as Miss Lamb's
proxy and brought the baby back here.  Once she had parked it here with
Mrs.  Brant she felt free of the compulsion, and was able to return to
Miss Lamb, in Eastbourne."  "If," said Doctor Willers, heavily, 'if we
take all old wives' or young wives' tales at face value; if we remember
that the majority of feminine tasks are deadly dull, and leave the mind
so empty that the most trifling seed that falls there can grow into a
riotous tangle, we shall not be surprised by an outlook on life which
has the disproportion and the illogical inconsequence of a nightmare,
where values are symbolic rather than literal.  "Now, what do we have
here?  A number of women who are the victims of an improbable, and as
yet unexplained, phenomenon: and a number of resultant babies which are
not quite like other babies.  By a dichotomy familiar to us all, a
woman requires her own baby to be perfectly normal, and at the same
time superior to all other babies.  Well, when any of these women
concerned is isolated from the rest with her own baby, it is bound to
become more strongly borne in upon her that her golden-eyed baby is
not, in relation to the other babies she sees, quite normal.  Her
subconscious becomes defensive, and keeps it up until a point is
reached where the facts must either be admitted, or somehow sublimated.
The easiest way to sublimate the situation is to transfer the
irregularity into an environment where it no longer appears irregular
if there is such a place.  In this case there is one, and one only
Midwich.  So they pick up their babies, and back they come, and
everything is comfortably rationalized for the time being."  "It seems
to me that there is certainly some rationalizing going on," Janet said.
"What about Mrs.  Welt?"

On the occasion she was referring to, Mrs.  Brant had gone into Mrs.
Welt's shop one morning to find her engaged in jabbing a pin into
herself again and again, and weeping as she did it.  This had not
seemed good to Mrs.  Brant, so she had dragged her off to see Willers.
He gave Mrs.  Welt some kind of sedative, and when she felt better she
had explained that in changing the baby's napkin she had pricked him
with a pin.  Whereupon, by her account, the baby had just looked
steadily at her with its golden eyes, and made her start jabbing the
pin into herself.  "Well, really!"  objected Willers.  "If you can cite
me a plainer case of hysterical remorse hair-shirts, and all that I
shall be interested to hear it."  "And Harriman, too?"  Janet
persisted.

For Harriman had one day made his appearance in Willers' surgery in a
shocking mess.  Nose broken, couple of teeth knocked out, both eyes
blacked.  He had been set on, so he said, by three unknown men but no
one else had seen these men.  On the other hand, two of the village
boys claimed that through his window they had seen Harriman furiously
bashing himself with his own fists.  And the next day someone noticed a
bruise on the side of the Harriman baby's face.

Dr.  Willers shrugged.  "If Harriman were to complain of being set upon
by a troupe of pink elephants, it would not greatly surprise me," he
said.  "Well, if you aren't going to put it in, I shall write an
additional report," said Janet.

And she did.  She concluded it: "This is not, in my opinion, or in
anyone's opinion but Dr.  Willers', a matter of hysteria, but of simple
fact.  "The situation should, in my view, be recognized, not explained
away.  It needs to be examined and understood.  There is a tendency
among the weaker-willed to become superstitious about it, and to credit
the babies with magical powers.  This sort of nonsense does no one any
good, and invites exploitation by what Zellaby calls "the heldame
underground".  There ought to be an unbiased investigation."

An investigation, though on more general lines, was also the theme of
Dr.  Willers' third report which was in the form of a protest that
wound up: "In the first place, I do not see why MI is concerned in this
at all: in the second, that it should be, apparently, an exclusive
concern of theirs is outrageous.  "It is disgracefully wrong.  Somebody
should be making a thorough study of these children I am keeping notes,
of course, but they are only an ordinary GP's observations.  There
ought to be a team of experts on the job.  I kept quiet before the
births because I thought, and still think, that it was better for
everyone, and for the mothers in particular, but now that need is over.
"One has got used to the idea of military interference with science in
a number of fields a lot of it totally unnecessary but this is really
preposterous!  It is nothing less than a scandal that such a phenomenon
as this should continue to be hushed up so that it is going practically
unobserved.  "If it is not simply a piece of obstructionism, it is
still a scandal.  It must be possible for something to be done, within
the provisions of the Official Secrets Act, if necessary.  A wonderful
opportunity for the study of comparative development is simply being
thrown away.  "Think of all the trouble that has been taken to observe
mere quins and quads, and then look at the material for study that we
have here.  Sixty-one similars so similar that most of their ostensible
mothers cannot tell them apart.  (They will deny that, but it is true.)
Think of the work that should be taking place on the comparative
effects of environment, conditioning, association, diet, and all the
rest of it.  What is going on here is a burning of books before they
have been written.  Something must be done about it before more chances
are lost."

All these representations resulted in a prompt visit from Bernard, and
an afternoon of rather acrimonious discussion.  The discussion broke up
only partly mollified by his promises to stir the Ministry of Health
into swift, practical action.

*

After the others had left, he said: "Now that official interest in
Midwich is bound to become more overt, it might be very useful and,
indeed, might help to avoid awkwardness later on if we could enlist
Zellaby's sympathy.  Do you think you could arrange for me to meet
him?"

I rang up Zellaby who agreed at once, so after dinner I took Bernard up
to Kyle Manor, and left him there to talk.  He returned to our cottage
about a couple of hours later, looking thoughtful.  "Well," asked
Janet, 'and what do you make of the sage of Midwich?"

Bernard shook his head, and looked at me.  "He's got me wondering," he
said.  "Most of your reports have been excellent, Richard, but I doubt
whether you got him quite right.  Oh, there is a lot of chatter which
sounds like hot air, I know, but what you gave me was too much of the
manner, and too little of the matter."  "I'm sorry if I misled you," I
admitted.  "The trouble about Zellaby is that his matter is frequently
elusive, and often allusive.  Not much that he says is reportable fact;
he is given to mentioning things en passant, and by the time you've
thought it over you don't know whether he followed them up with serious
deductions, or was simply playing with hypotheses nor, for that matter,
are you at all sure how much he implied, and how much you inferred.  It
makes things difficult."

Bernard nodded, understandingly.  "I appreciate that now.  I've just
had some of it.  He spent quite ten minutes towards the end telling me
that it is only recently that he has come to wonder whether
civilization is not, biologically speaking, a form of decadence.  From
that he went on to wonder whether the gap between homo sapiens and the
rest was not too wide; with the suggestion that it might have been
better for our development had we had to contend with the conditions of
some other sapient, or at least semi-sapient, species.  I'm sure he
wasn't being altogether irrelevant but I'm hanged if I can really pin
down the relevance.  One thing seems pretty clear though; erratic as he
seems, he doesn't miss a lot Incidentally, he is strong on the same
line as the doctor concerning expert observation particularly on this
"compulsion", but in his case for the opposite reason: he doesn't
consider it hysterical, and is anxious to know what it is.  "By the
way, you seem to have missed one trick did you know his daughter tried
to take her baby for a drive in her car the other day?"  "No," I said,
'what do you mean, "tried"?"  "Just that after about six miles she had
to give up, and come back again.  He doesn't like it.  As he put it:
for a child to be tied to its mother's apron strings is bad, but for a
mother to be tied to a baby's apron strings is serious.  He feels it is
time he took some steps about it."

Chapter 14

Matters Arising

For various reasons almost three weeks went by before Alan Hughes was
free to come for a week-end visit, so that Zellaby's expressed
intention of taking steps had to be postponed until then.

By this time the disinclination of the Children (now beginning to
acquire an implied capital C, to distinguish them from other children)
to be removed from the immediate neighbourhood had become a phenomenon
generally recognized in the village.  It was a nuisance, since it
involved finding someone to look after the baby when its mother went to
Trayne, or elsewhere, but not regarded with any great seriousness more,
indeed, as a foible; just another inconvenience added to the
inconveniences inevitable with babies, anyway.

Zellaby took a less casual view of it, but waited until the Sunday
afternoon before putting the matter to his son-in-law.  Reasonably
certain, then, of a spell without interruption he led Alan to
deck-chairs under the cedar tree on the lawn where they would not be
overheard.  Once they were seated he came to the point with quite
unusual directness.  "What I want to say, my boy, is this: I'd feel
happier if you can get Ferrelyn away from here.  And the sooner, I
think, the better."

Alan looked at him with an expression of surprise which became changed
into a slight frown.  "I should have thought it fairly clear that there
is nothing I want more than to have her with me."  "Of course it is, my
dear fellow.  One could not fail to realize that.  But at the moment I
am concerned with something more important than interfering in your
private affairs; I am not thinking of what either of you wants, or
would like, so much as what needs to be done for Ferrelyn's sake, not
for yours."  "She wants to come away.  She set out to come once," Alan
reminded him.  "I know.  But she tried to take the baby with her: it
brought her back, just as it brought her here before, and just, it
appears, as it will if she tries again.  Therefore you must take her
away without the baby.  If you can persuade her to that, we can arrange
to have it excellently looked after here.  The indications are that if
it is not actually with her it will not probably cannot exert any
influence stronger than that of natural affection."  "But according to
Willers ' "Willers is making a loud blustering noise to prevent himself
from being frightened.  He's refusing to see what he doesn't want to
see.  I don't suppose it matters very much what casuistries he uses to
comfort himself, as long as they don't take in the rest of us."  "You
mean that this hysteria he talks about isn't the real reason for
Ferrelyn and the rest coming back here?"  "Well, what is hysteria?  A
functional disorder of the nervous system.  Naturally there has been
considerable strain upon the nervous systems of many of them, but the
trouble with Willers is that he stops before he ought to begin. Instead
of facing it, and honestly inquiring why the reaction should take this
particular form, he hides in a smoke-screen of generalities about a
long period of sustained anxiety, and so on.  I don't blame the man. 
He's had enough for the time being; he's tired out, and he deserves a
rest.  But that doesn't mean we must let him obscure the facts, which
is what he is trying to do.  For instance, even if he has observed it,
he has not admitted that none of this "hysteria" has ever been known to
manifest itself without one of the babies being present." "Is that so?"
Alan asked, surprised.  "Without exception.  This sense of compulsion
occurs only in the vicinity of one of the babies. Separate the baby
from the mother or perhaps one should say remove the mother from the
neighbourhood of any of the babies and the compulsion at once begins to
lessen, and gradually dies away.  It takes longer to fade in some than
in others, but that is what happens."  "But I don't see I mean, how is
it done?"  "I've no idea.  There could, one supposes, be an element
akin to hypnotism, perhaps, but, whatever the mechanism, I am perfectly
satisfied that it is exerted wilfully and with purpose by the child. 
One would instance the case of Miss Lamb: when it was physically
impossible for her to comply, the compulsion was promptly switched to
Miss Latterly, who had previously felt none of it, with the result that
the baby had its way, and got back here, as did the rest. "And since
they got back, no one has managed to take one of them more than six
miles from Midwich.  "Hysteria, says Willers.  One woman starts it, the
rest subconsciously accept it, and so exhibit the same symptoms.  But
if the baby is parked with a neighbour here the mother is able to go to
Trayne, or anywhere else she wants to, without any hindrance.  That,
according to Willers, is simply because her subconscious hasn't been
led to expect anything to happen when she is on her own, so it doesn't.
"But my point is this: Ferrelyn cannot take the baby; but if she makes
up her mind to go, and leave it here, there's nothing to stop her. 
Your job is to help to make up her mind for her."

Alan considered.  "Sort of put out an ultimatum make her choose between
baby and me?  That's a bit tough and er fundamental, isn't it?"  he
suggested.  "My dear fellow, the baby's put the ultimatum already. 
What you have to do is to clarify the situation.  The only possible
compromise would be for you to surrender to the baby's challenge, and
come to live here, too."  "Which I couldn't, anyway."  "Very well,
then. Ferrelyn has been dodging the issue for some weeks now, but
sooner or later she must face it.  Your job is first to make her
recognize the hurdle, and then help her over it."

Alan said slowly: "It's quite a thing to ask, though, isn't it?" 
"Isn't the other quite a thing to ask of a man when it isn't his baby?"
"H'm," Alan remarked.  Zellaby went on: "And it isn't really her baby,
either, or I'd not be talking quite like this.  Ferrelyn and the rest
are the victims of an imposition: they have been cheated into an
utterly false position.  Some kind of elaborate confidence trick has
made them into what the veterinary fellows call host-mothers; a
relationship more intimate than that of the foster-mother, but similar
in kind.  This baby has absolutely nothing to do with either of you
except that, by some process not yet explained, she was placed in a
situation which forced her to nourish it.  So far is it from belonging
to either of you that it doesn't correspond to any known racial
classification.  Even Willers has to admit that.  "But if the type is
unknown, the phenomenon is not our ancestors, who did not have Willers'
blind faith in the articles of science had a word for it: they called
such beings changelings.  None of this business would have seemed as
strange to them as it does to us because they had only to suffer
religious dogmatism, which was not so dogmatic as scientific dogmatism.
"The idea of the changeling, therefore, far from being novel, is both
old and so widely distributed that it is unlikely to have arisen, or to
have persisted, without cause, and occasional support.  True, one has
not encountered the idea of it taking place on such a scale as this,
but quantity does not, in this case, affect the quality of the event;
it simply confirms it.  All these sixty-one golden-eyed children we
have here are intruders, changelings: they are cuckoo-children.  "Now,
the important thing about the cuckoo is not how the egg got into the
nest, nor why that nest was chosen; the real matter for concern comes
after it has been hatched what, in fact, it will attempt to do next. 
And that, whatever it may be, will be motivated by its instinct for
survival, an instinct characterized chiefly by utter ruthlessness."

Alan pondered a little.  "You really think you've got a sound analogy
there?"  he asked, uneasily.  "I'm perfectly certain of it," Zellaby
asserted.

The two of them fell silent for some little time, Zellaby lying back in
his chair with his hands behind his head, Alan staring unseeingly
across the lawn.  At length: "All right," he said.  "I suppose most of
us have been hoping that once the babies arrived things would
straighten out.  I admit that it doesn't look like it now.  But what
are you expecting to happen?"  "I'm just being expectant, not specific
except that I don't think it will be anything pleasant," Zellaby
replied.  "The cuckoo survives because it is tough and single-purposed.
That is why I hope you will take Ferrelyn away and keep her away.
"Nothing satisfactory can come of this, at best.  Do your utmost to
make her forget this changeling in order that she may have a normal
life.  It will be difficult at first, no doubt, but not so hard if she
has a child that is really her own."

Alan rubbed the furrows on his forehead.  "It is difficult," he said.
"In spite of the way it happened, she does have a maternal feeling for
it a well, a sort of physical affection, and a sense of obligation, you
know."  "But of course.  That's how it works.  That's why the poor hen
works herself to death feeding the greedy cuckoo-chick.  It's a form of
confidence-trick, as I told you the callous exploitation of a natural
proclivity.  The existence of such a proclivity is important to the
continuation of a species, but, after all, in a civilized society we
cannot afford to give way to all the natural urges, can we?  In this
case, Ferrelyn must simply refuse to be blackmailed through her better
instincts."  "If," said Alan slowly, 'if Angela's child had turned out
to be one of them, what would you have done?"  "I should have done what
I am advising you to do for Ferrelyn.  Taken her away.  I should also
have cut off our connexion with Midwich by selling this house, fond as
we both are of it.  I may have to do that yet, even though she is not
directly involved.  It depends how the situation develops.  One waits
to see.  The potentialities are unknown, but I don't care for the
logical implications.  Therefore the sooner Ferrelyn is out of it, the
happier I shall be.  I don't propose to say anything about it to her
myself.  For one thing it is a matter for you to settle between you;
for another, there is the risk that by crystallizing a not very clear
misgiving I might do the wrong thing make it appear as a challenge to
be met, for instance.  You have a positive alternative to offer.
However, if it is difficult, and you need something to tip the balance,
Angela and I will back you up quite fully."

Alan nodded slowly.  "I hope that won't be necessary I don't think it
will be.  We both know really that we can't just go on like this.  Now
you've given me a push, we'll get it settled."

They continued to sit, in silent contemplation.  Alan was aware of some
relief that his fragmentary feelings and suspicions had been collected
for him into a form which warranted action.  He was also considerably
impressed, for he could recall no previous conversation with his
father-in-law in which Zellaby, spurning one tempting diversion after
another, had held so stoutly to his course.  Moreover, the speculations
which could arise were interesting and numerous.  He was on the point
of raising one or two of them himself when he was checked by the sight
of Angela crossing the lawn towards them.

She sat down in the chair on the other side of her husband, and
demanded a cigarette.  Zellaby gave her one and held out the match.  He
watched her take the first few puffs.  "Trouble?"  he inquired.  "I'm
not quite sure.  I've just had Margaret Haxby on the telephone.  She's
gone."

Zellaby lifted his eyebrows.  "You mean, cleared out?"  "Yes.  She was
speaking from London."  "Oh," said Zellaby, and lapsed into thought.
Alan asked who Margaret Haxby was.  "Oh, I'm sorry.  You probably don't
know her.  She's one of Mr.  Crimm's young ladies or was.  One of the
brightest of them, I understand.  Academically Dr.  Margaret Haxby
Ph.D."  London."  "One of the er afflicted?"  Alan inquired.  "Yes. 
And one of the most resentful," Angela said.  "Now she's made up her
mind to beat it, and gone leaving Midwich holding the baby. 
Literally." "But where do you come in, my dear?"  Zellaby inquired. 
"Oh, she just decided I was a reliable subject for official
notification.  She said she'd have rung Mr.  Crimm, but he's away
today.  She wanted to arrange about the baby."  "Where is it now?" 
"Where she was staying.  In the older Mrs.  Dorry's cottage."  "And
she's just walked out on it?" "That's it.  Mrs.  Dorry doesn't know
yet.  I'll have to go and tell her."  "This could be awkward," Zellaby
said.  "I can see a pretty panic starting up among the other women
who've taken these girls in.  They'll all be throwing them out
overnight before they get left in the cart, too.  Can't we stall?  Give
Crimm time to get back and do something? After all, his girls aren't a
village responsibility not primarily, anyway.  Besides, she might
change her mind."

Angela shook her head.  "Not this one, I think.  She's not done it on
the spur of the moment.  She's been over it pretty carefully, in fact.
Her line is: She never asked to come to Midwich, she was simply posted
here.  If they'd posted her to a yellow-fever area they'd be
responsible for the consequences; well, they posted her here, and
through no fault of her own she caught this instead; now it's up to
them to deal with it."  "H'm," said Zellaby.  "One has a feeling that
that parallelism is not going to be accepted in government circles nem.
con.  However ....?"  "Anyway, that's her contention.  She repudiates
the child entirely.  She says she is no more responsible for it than if
it had been left on her doorstep, and there is, therefore, no reason
why she should put up with, or be expected to put up with, the wrecking
of her life, or her work, on account of it."  "With the upshot that it
is now thrown on the parish unless she intends to pay for it, of
course."  "Naturally, I asked about that.  She said that the village
and The Grange could fight out the responsibility between them; it
certainly was not hers.  She will refuse to pay anything, since payment
might be legally construed as admission of liability.  Nevertheless,
Mrs.  Dorry, or any other person of good character who cares to take
the baby on, will receive a rate of two pounds a week, sent anonymously
and irregularly."  "You're right, my dear.  She has been thinking it
out; this is going to need looking into.  What is the effect if this
repudiation is allowed to go unchallenged?  I imagine legal
responsibility for the child has to be established somewhere.  How is
that done?  Get the Relieving Officer in, and slap a court order on
her, do you suppose?"  "I don't know, but she's thought of something of
the kind happening.  If it does, she intends to fight it in court.  She
claims that medical evidence will establish that the child cannot
possibly be hers; from this it will be argued that as she was placed in
loco parentis without her knowledge or consent, she cannot be held
responsible.  Failing this, it is still open to her to bring an action
against the Ministry for negligence resulting in her being placed in a
position of jeopardy; or it might be for conniving at assault; or,
possibly, procuring.  She isn't sure."  "I should think not," said
Zellaby.  "It ought to be an interesting indictment to frame."  "Well,
she didn't seem to think it was likely to come to that," Angela
admitted.  "I imagine she's perfectly right there," agreed Zellaby. 
"We have made our own efforts, but the unperceived official
machinations to keep all this quiet must have been quite considerable. 
Even the evidence brought to dispute a court order would be manna to
journalists of all nations.  In fact, the issue of such an order would
probably bring Dr.  Haxby a considerable fortune, one way and another. 
Poor Mr. Crimm and poor Colonel Westcott.  They are going to be
worried, I'm afraid.  I wonder just what their powers in the matter are
....?"  He lapsed into thought for some moments before he went on: "My
dear, I've just been talking to Alan about getting Ferrelyn away.  This
seems to make it a little more urgent.  Once it becomes generally
known, others may decide to follow Margaret Haxby's example, don't you
think?"  "It may make up their minds for some of them," Angela agreed. 
"In which case, and supposing an inconvenient number should take the
same course, don't you think there is a possibility of some
counter-move to stop more desertions."  "But if, as you say, they don't
want publicity ?" "Not by the authorities, my dear.  No, I was
wondering what would happen if it were to turn out that the children
are as opposed to being deserted as they are to being removed."  "But
you don't really think ?" "I don't know.  I'm simply doing my best to
place myself in the situation of a young cuckoo.  As such, I fancy I
should resent anything that appeared likely to lessen attention to my
comfort and well-being. Indeed, one does not even have to be a cuckoo
to feel so.  I just air the suggestion, you understand, but I do feel
that it is worth making sure that Ferrelyn is not trapped here if
something of the sort should happen."  "Whether it does or not, she'll
be better away," Angela agreed.  "You could start by suggesting two or
three weeks away while we see what happens," she told Alan.  "Very
well," Alan said.  "It does give me a handle to start with.  Where is
she?"  "I left her on the veranda."

The Zellabys watched him cross the lawn and disappear round a corner of
the house.  Gordon Zellaby lifted an eyebrow at his wife.  "Not very
difficult, I think," Angela said.  "Naturally she's longing to be with
him.  The obstacle is her sense of obligation.  The conflict is doing
her harm, wearing her out."  "How much affection does she really have
for the baby?"  "It's hard to say.  There is so much social and
traditional pressure on a woman in these things.  One's self-defensive
instinct is to conform to the approved pattern.  Personal honesty takes
time to assert itself if it is ever allowed to."  "Not with Ferrelyn,
surely?"  Zellaby looked hurt.  "Oh, it will with her, I'm sure.  But
she hasn't got there yet.  It's a bit much to face, you know.  She's
had all the inconvenience and discomfort of bearing the baby, as much
as if it were her own and now, after all that, she has to re-adjust to
the biological fact that it is not, that she is only what you call a
"host-mother" to it.  That must take a lot of doing."

She paused, looking thoughtfully across the lawn.  "I now say a little
prayer of thanksgiving every night," she added.  "I don't know where it
goes to, but I just want it to be known somewhere how grateful I am."

Zellaby reached out, and took her hand.  After some minutes, he
observed: "I wonder if a sillier and more ignorant catachresis than
"Mother Nature" was ever perpetrated?  It is because Nature is
ruthless, hideous, and cruel beyond belief that it was necessary to
invent civilization.  One thinks of wild animals as savage, but the
fiercest of them begins to look almost domesticated when one considers
the viciousness required of a survivor in the sea; as for the insects,
their lives are sustained only by intricate processes of fantastic
horror.  There is no conception more fallacious than the sense of
cosiness implied by "Mother Nature".  Each species must strive to
survive, and that it will do, by every means in its power, however foul
unless the instinct to survive is weakened by conflict with another
instinct."

Angela seized the pause to put in, with a touch of impatience: "I've no
doubt you are gradually working round to something, Gordon."  "Yes,"
Zellaby owned.  "I am working round again to cuckoos.  Cuckoos are very
determined survivors.  So determined that there is really only one
thing to be done with them once one's nest is infested.  I am, as you
know, a humane man; I think I may even say a kindly man, by
disposition."  "You may, Gordon."  "As a further disadvantage, I am a
civilized man.  For these reasons I shall not be able to bring myself
to approve of what ought to be done.  Nor, even when we perceive its
advisability, will the rest of us.  So, like the poor hen-thrush we
shall feed and nurture the monster, and betray our own species ....
"Odd, don't you think?  We could drown a litter of kittens that is no
sort of threat to us but these creatures we shall carefully rear."

Angela sat motionless for some moments.  Then she turned her head and
looked at him, long and steadily.  "You mean that about what ought to
be done, don't you, Gordon?"  "I do, my dear."  "It isn't like you." 
"As I pointed out.  But then, it is a situation I have never been in
before. It has occurred to me that "live and let live" is a piece of
patronage which can only be afforded by the consciously secure.  I now
find, when I feel as I never expected to feel my situation at the
summit of creation to be threatened, that I don't like it a bit." 
"But, Gordon, dear, surely this is all a little exaggerated.  After
all, a few unusual babies ...."  "Who can at will produce a neurotic
condition in mature women and don't forget Harriman, too in order to
enforce their wishes."  "It may wear off as they get older.  One has
heard sometimes of odd understanding, a kind of psychic sympathy ...." 
"In isolated cases, perhaps.  But in sixty-one inter-connected cases! 
No, there's no tender sympathy with these, and they trail no clouds of
glory, either.  They are the most practical, sensible, self-contained
babies anyone ever saw they are also quite the smuggest, and no wonder
they can get anything they want.  Just at present they are still at a
stage where they do not want very much, but later on well, we shall see
...." "Dr.  Willers says his wife began, but Zellaby cut her short
impatiently.  "Willers rose to the occasion magnificently so well that
it's not surprising that he's addled himself into behaving like a
damned ostrich now.  His faith in hysteria has become practically
pathological.  I hope his holiday will do him good."  "But, Gordon, he
does at least try to explain it."  "My dear, I am a patient man, but
don't try me too far.  Willers has never tried to explain any of it. He
has accepted certain facts when they became inescapable; the rest he
has attempted to explain away which is quite different."  "But there
must be an explanation."  "Of course."  "Then what do you think it is?"
"We shall have to wait until the children are old enough to give us
some evidence."  "But you do have some ideas?"  "Nothing very cheering,
I'm afraid."  "But what?"

Zellaby shook his head.  "I'm not ready," he said again.  "But as you
are a discreet woman I will put a question to you.  It is this: If you
were wishful to challenge the supremacy of a society that was fairly
stable, and quite well weaponed, what would you do?  Would you meet it
on its own terms by launching a probably costly, and certainly
destructive, assault?  Or, if time were of no great importance, would
you prefer to employ a version of a more subtle tactic?  Would you, in
fact, try somehow to introduce a fifth column, to attack it from
within?"

Chapter 15

Matters to Arise

The next few months saw a number of changes in Midwich.

Dr.  Willers handed over his practice to the care of a locum, the young
man who had helped him during the crisis, and, accompanied by Mrs.
Willers, went off, in a state of mingled exhaustion and disgust with
authority, on a holiday that was said to be taking him round the
world.

In November we had an epidemic of influenza which carried off three
elderly villagers, and also three of the Children.  One of them was
Ferrelyn's boy.  She was sent for, and came hurrying home at once, but
arrived too late to see him alive.  The others were two of the girls.

Well before that, however, there had been the sensational evacuation of
The Grange.  A fine bit of service organization: the researchers first
heard about it on the Monday, the vans arrived on Wednesday, and by the
weekend the house and the expensive new laboratories stood
blank-windowed and empty, leaving the villagers with the feeling that
they had seen a piece of pantomime magic, for Mr.  Crimm and his staff
had gone, too, and all that was left were four of the golden-eyed
babies for whom foster-parents had to be found.

A week later a desiccated-looking couple called Freeman moved into the
cottage vacated by Mr.  Crimm.  Freeman introduced himself as a medical
man specializing in social psychology, and his wife, too, it appeared,
was a doctor of medicine.  We were led to understand, in a cautious
way, that their purpose was to study the development of the Children on
behalf of an unspecified official body.  This, after their own fashion,
they presumably did, for they were continually lurking and peering
about the village, often insinuating themselves into the cottages, and
not infrequently to be found on one of the seats on the Green,
pondering weightily and watchfully.  They had an aggressive discretion
which verged upon the conspiratorial, and tactics which, within a week
of their arrival, caused them to be generally resented and referred to
as the Noseys.  Doggedness, however, was another of their
characteristics, and they persisted in the face of discouragement until
they gained the kind of acceptance accorded to the inevitable.

I checked on them with Bernard.  He said they were nothing to do with
his department, but their appointment was authentic.  We felt that if
they were to be the only outcome of Willers' anxiety for study of the
Children, it was as well that he was away.

Zellaby offered, as indeed did all of us, a few cooperative overtures
to them, but made no headway.  Whatever department was employing them
had picked winners for discretion, but we felt that, importantly as
discretion might be regarded in the larger sphere, a little more
sociability within the community could have brought them fuller
information with less effort.  Still, there it was: they might, for all
we knew, be turning in useful reports somewhere.  All we could do was
let them prowl in their chosen fashion.

However interesting, scientifically, the Children may have been during
the first year of their lives there was little about them during that
time to cause further misgiving.  Apart from their continued resistance
to any attempt to remove any of them from Midwich, the reminders of
their compulsive powers were mostly mild and infrequent.  They were, as
Zellaby had said, remarkably sensible and self-sufficient babies as
long as nobody neglected them, or crossed their wishes.

There was very little about them at this stage to support the ominous
ruminations of the heldame group, or, for that matter, the differently
cast, but scarcely less gloomy, prognostications of Zellaby himself,
and, as the time passed with unexpected placidity, Janet and I were not
the only ones who began to wonder whether we had not all been misled,
and if the unusual qualities in the Children were not fading, perhaps
to dwindle into insignificance as they should grow older.

And then, early in the following summer, Zellaby made a discovery which
appeared to have escaped the Freemans, for all their conscientious
watching.

He turned up at our cottage one sunny afternoon, and ruthlessly routed
us out.  I protested at having my work interrupted, but he was not to
be put off.  "I know, my dear fellow, I know.  I have a picture of my
own publisher, with tears in his eyes.  But this is important  I need
reliable witnesses."  "Of what?"  inquired Janet, with little
enthusiasm.  But Zellaby shook his head.  "I am making no leading
statements, incubating no germs.  I am simply asking you to watch an
experiment, and draw your own conclusions.  Now here," he fumbled in
his pockets, 'is our apparatus."

He laid on the table a small ornamental wooden box about half as big
again as a matchbox, and one of those puzzles consisting of two large
nails so bent that they are linked together, but will, when held in the
right positions, slide easily apart.  He picked up the wooden box, and
shook it.  Something rattled inside.  "Barley-sugar," he explained.
"This is one of the products of feckless Nipponese ingenuity.  It has
no visible means of opening, but slide aside this bit of the marquetry
here, and it opens without difficulty, and here's your barley-sugar.
Why anybody should trouble himself to construct such a thing is known
only to the Japanese, but, for us it will, I think, turn out to have a
useful purpose, after all.  Now, which of the Children, male, shall we
try it on first?"  "None of these babies is quite one year old yet,"
Janet pointed out, a little chillingly.  "In every respect, except that
of actual duration, they are, as you very well know, quite
well-developed two-year-olds," Zellaby countered.  "And in any case,
what I am proposing is not exactly an intelligence test or, is it
....?"  He broke off uncertainly.  "I must admit that I'm not sure
about that.  However, it doesn't greatly matter.  Just name the child."
"All right.  Mrs.  Brant's," said Janet.  So to Mrs.  Brant's we
went.

Mrs.  Brant showed us through into her small back-garden where the
child was in a play-pen on the lawn.  He looked, as Zellaby had pointed
out, every bit of two years old, and brightly intelligent at that.
Zellaby gave him the little box.  The boy took it, looked at it, found
that it rattled, and shook it delightedly.  We watched him decide that
it must be a box, and try unsuccessfully to open it.  Zellaby let him
go on playing with it for a bit, and then produced a piece of
barley-sugar, and traded it for the return of his box, still unopened.
"I don't see what that's supposed to show," Janet said, as we left.
"Patience, my dear," Zellaby said, reprovingly.  "Which shall we try
next, male again?"

Janet suggested the Vicarage as convenient.  Zellaby shook his head.
"No that won't do.  Polly Rushton's baby girl would very likely be on
hand, too."  "Does that matter?  It all seems very mysterious," said
Janet.  "I want my witnesses satisfied," said Zellaby.  "Try
another."

We settled for the elder Mrs.  Dorry's.  There, he went through the
same performance, but, after playing with the box a little, the child
offered it back to him, looking up expectantly.  Zellaby, however, did
not take it from him.  Instead, he showed the child how to open the
box, and then let him do it for himself, and take out the sweet.
Zellaby thereupon put another piece of barley-sugar in the box, closed
it, and presently handed it to him again.  "Try once more," he
suggested, and we watched the little boy open it easily, and achieve a
second sweet.  "Now," said Zellaby as we left, 'we go back to Exhibit
One, the Brant child."

In Mrs.  Brant's garden again, he presented the child in the play-pen
with the box, just as he had before.  The child took it eagerly.
Without the least hesitation he found and slid back the movable bit of
marquetry, and extracted the sweet, as if he had done it a dozen times
before.  Zellaby looked at our dumbfounded expressions with an amused
twinkle.  Once more he retrieved and reloaded the box.  "Well," he
said, 'name another boy."

We visited three, up and down the village.  None of them showed the
least puzzlement over the box.  They opened it as if it were perfectly
familiar to them, and made sure of the contents without delay.
"Interesting, isn't it?"  remarked Zellaby.  "Now let's start on the
girls."

We went through the same procedure again, except that this time it was
to the third, instead of to the second, Child that he showed the secret
of opening the box.  After that, matters went just as before.
"Fascinating, don't you think?"  beamed Zellaby.  "Like to try them
with the nail-puzzle?"  "Later, perhaps," Janet told him.  "Just at
present I should like some tea."  So we took him back with us to the
cottage.  "That box idea was a good one," Zellaby congratulated himself
modestly, while wolfing a cucumber sandwich.  "Simple, incontestable,
and went off without a hitch, too."  "Does that mean you've been trying
other ideas on them?"  Janet inquired.  "Oh, quite a number.  Some of
them were a bit too complicated, though, and others not fully
conclusive besides, I hadn't got hold of the right end of the stick to
begin with."  "Are you quite sure you have now because I'm not at all
sure that I have?"  Janet told him.  He looked at her.  "I rather think
you must have and that Richard has, too.  You don't need to be shy of
admitting it."

He helped himself to another sandwich, and looked inquiringly at me. 
"I suppose," I told him, 'that you are wanting me to say that your
experiment has shown that what one of the boys knows, all the boys
know, though the girls do not; and vice versa.  All right then, that is
what it appears to show unless there is a catch somewhere."  "My dear
fellow !"  "Well, you must admit that what it appears to show is a
little more than anyone is likely to be able to swallow at one gulp."
"I see.  Yes.  Of course, I myself arrived at it by stages," he nodded.
"But," I said, 'it is what we were intended to infer?"  "Of course, my
dear fellow.  Could it be clearer?"  He took the linked nails from his
pocket and dropped them on the table.  "Take these, and try for
yourselves or, better still, devise your own little test, and apply it.
You'll find the inference at least the preliminary inference
inescapable."  "To appreciate takes longer than to grasp," I said, 'but
let's regard it as a hypothesis which I accept for the moment ' "Wait a
minute," put in Janet.  "Mr.  Zellaby, are you claiming that if I were
to tell anything to any one of the boys, all the rest would know it?"
"Certainly provided, of course, that it was something simple enough for
them to understand at this stage."

Janet looked highly sceptical.

Zellaby sighed.  "The old trouble," he said.  "Lynch Darwin, and you
show the impossibility of evolution.  But, as I said, you've only to
apply your own tests."  He turned back to me.  "You were allowing the
hypothesis ....?"  he suggested.  "Yes," I agreed, 'and you said that
was the preliminary inference.  What is the next one?"  "I should have
thought that just that one contained implications enough to capsize our
social system."  "Couldn't this be something like I mean, a more
developed form of the sort of sympathetic understanding that's
sometimes found between twins?"  Janet asked.

Zellaby shook his head.  "I think not or else it has developed far
enough to have acquired new features.  Besides, we don't have here one
single group en rapport; we have two separate groups of rapport,
apparently without cross-connexions.  Now, if that is so, and we have
seen that it is, a question that immediately presents itself is this:
to what extent is any of these Children an individual?  Each is
physically an individual, as we can see but is he so in other ways?  If
he is sharing consciousness with the rest of the group, instead of
having to communicate with others with difficulty, as we do, can he be
said to have a mind of his own, a separate personality as we understand
it?  I don't see that he can.  It seems perfectly clear that if A, B,
and C share a common consciousness, then what A expresses is also what
B and C are thinking, and that way action taken by B in particular
circumstances is exactly that which would be taken by A and C in those
circumstances subject only to modifications arising from physical
differences between them, which may, in fact, be considerable in so far
as conduct is very susceptible to conditions of the glands, and other
factors in the physical individual.  "In other words if I ask a
question to any of these boys I shall get exactly the same answer from
whichever I choose to ask: if I ask him to perform an action, I shall
get more or less the same result, but it is likely to be more
successful with some who happen to have better physical coordination
than others though, in point of fact, with such close similarity as
there is among the Children the variation will be small.  "But my point
is this: it will not be an individual who answers me, or performs what
I ask, it will be an item of the group.  And in that alone lie plenty
of further questions, and implications."

Janet was frowning.  "I still don't quite ' "Let me put it
differently," said Zellaby.  "What we have seemed to have here is
fifty-eight little individual entities.  But appearances have been
deceptive, and we find that what we actually have are two entities only
a boy, and a girl: though the boy has thirty component parts each with
the physical structure and appearance of individual boys; and the girl
has twenty-eight component parts."

There was a pause.  Presently: "I find that rather hard to take," said
Janet, with careful understatement.  "Yes, of course," agreed Zellaby.
"So did I."  "Look here," I said, after a further pause.  "You are
putting this forward as a serious proposition?  I mean, it isn't just a
dramatic manner of speaking?"  "I am stating a fact having shown you
the evidence first."

I shook my head.  "All you showed us was that they are able to
communicate in some way that I don't understand.  To proceed from that
to your theory of non-individualism is too much of a jump."  "On that
piece of evidence alone, perhaps so.  But you must remember that,
though this is the first you have seen, I have already conducted a
number of tests, and not one of them has contradicted the idea of what
I prefer to call collective-individualism.  Moreover, it is not as
strange, per se, as it appears at first sight.  It is quite a well
established evolutionary dodge for getting round a shortcoming.  A
number of forms that appear at first sight to be individuals turn out
to be colonies and many forms cannot survive at all unless they create
colonies which operate as individuals.  Admittedly the best examples
are among the lower forms, but there's no reason why it should be
confined to them.  Many of the insects come pretty near it.  The laws
of physics prevent them increasing in size, so they contrive greater
efficiency by acting as a group.  We ourselves combine in groups
consciously, instead of by instinct, for the same purposes.  Very well,
why shouldn't nature produce a more efficient version of the method by
which we clumsily contrive to overcome our own weakness?  Another case
of nature copying art, perhaps?  "After all, we are up against the
barriers to further development, and we have been for some time unless
we are to stagnate we must find some way of getting round them.  G. B.
S. proposed, you will remember, that the first step should be to extend
the term of human life to three hundred years.  That might be one way
and no doubt the extension of individual life would have a strong
appeal to so determined an individualist but there are others, and,
though this is not perhaps a line of evolution one would expect to find
among the higher animals, it is obviously not impracticable though, of
course, that is by no means to say that it is bound to be
successful."

A quick glance at Janet's expression showed me that she had dropped
out.  When she has decided that someone is talking nonsense she makes a
quick decision to waste no more effort upon it, and pulls down an
impervious mental curtain.  I went on pondering, looking out of the
window.  "I feel, I think," I said presently, 'rather like a chameleon
placed on a colour it can't quite manage.  If I have followed you, you
are saying that in each of these two groups the minds are in some way
well pooled.  Would that imply that the boys have, collectively, a
normal brain-power multiplied by thirty, and the girls have it
multiplied by twenty-eight?"  "I think not," said Zellaby, quite
seriously, 'and it certainly does not mean normal abilities to the
power of thirty, thank heaven that would be beyond any comprehension.
It does appear to mean multiplication of intelligence in some degree,
but at their present stage I don't see how that can be estimated if it
ever could be.  That may portend tremendous things.  But what seems to
me of more immediate importance is the degree of will-power that has
been produced the potentialities of that strike me as very serious
indeed.  One has no idea how these compulsions are exerted, but I fancy
that if it can be explored we might find that when a certain degree of
will is, so as to speak, concentrated in one vessel a Hegelian change
takes place that is, that in more than a critical quantity it begins to
display a new quality.  In this case, a power of direct imposition.
"That, however, I frankly admit is speculative and I can now foresee a
devil of a lot to speculate about and investigate."  "The whole thing
sounds incredibly complicated to me if you are right."  "In detail, in
the mechanics, yes," Zellaby admitted, 'but in principle, I think, not
nearly so much as would appear at first sight.  After all, you would
agree that the essential quality of man is the embodiment of a spirit?"
"Certainly," I nodded.  "Well, a spirit is a living force, therefore it
is not static, therefore it is something which must either evolve, or
atrophy.  Evolution of a spirit assumes the eventual development of a
greater spirit.  Suppose, then, that this greater spirit, this super
spirit, is attempting to make its appearance on the scene.  Where is it
to dwell?  The ordinary man is not constructed to contain it; the
superman does not exist to house it.  Might it not, then, for lack of a
suitable single vehicle, inform a group rather like an encyclopedia
grown too large for one volume?  I don't know.  But if it were so, then
two super-spirits, residing in two groups, is no less probable."

He paused, looking out of the open windows, watching a bumble-bee fly
from one lavender-head to another, then he added reflectively: "I have
wondered about these two groups quite a lot.  I have even felt that
there ought to be names for these two super-spirits.  One would imagine
there were plenty of names to choose from, and yet I find just two, out
of them all, persistently invading my mind.  Somehow, I keep on
thinking of Adam and Eve."

*

Two or three days later I had a letter telling me that the job I had
been angling for in Canada could be mine if I sailed without delay.  I
did, leaving Janet to clear things up, and follow me.

When she arrived she had little more news of Midwich except on a rather
one-sided feud which had broken out between the Freemans and Zellaby.

Zellaby, it appeared, had told Bernard Westcott of his findings.  An
inquiry for further particulars had reached the Freemans to whom the
whole idea came as a novelty, and one which they instinctively opposed.
They at once instituted tests of their own, and were seen to be growing
gloomier as they proceeded.  "But at least I imagine they'll stop short
of Adam and Eve," she added.  "Really, old Zellaby!  The thing I shall
never cease to be thankful for was that we happened to go to London
when we did.  Just fancy if I'd become the mother of a thirty-first
part of an Adam, or a twenty-ninth part of an Eve.  It's been bad
enough as it is, and thank goodness we're out of it.  I've had enough
of Midwich, and I don't care if I never hear of the place again."

Part Two

Chapter 16

Now We Are Nine

During the next few years, such visits home as we managed were brief
and hurried, spent entirely in dashing from one lot of relatives to
another, with interludes to improve business contacts.  I never went
anywhere near Midwich, nor indeed thought much about it.  But, in the
eighth summer after we had left, I managed a six-week spell, and at the
end of the first week I ran into Bernard Wescott one day, in
Piccadilly.

We went to the In and Out for a drink.  In the course of a chat I asked
him about Midwich.  I think I expected to hear that the whole thing had
fizzled out, for on the few occasions I had recalled the place lately,
it and its inhabitants had the improbability of a tale once realistic,
but now thoroughly unconvincing.  I was more than half-ready to hear
that the Children no longer trailed clouds of anything unconventional,
that, as so often with suspected genius, expectations had never
flowered, and that, for all their beginnings and indications, they had
become an ordinary gang of village children, with only their looks to
distinguish them.

Bernard considered for a moment, then he said: "As it happens, I have
to go down there tomorrow.  Would you care to come for the run, renew
old acquaintance, and so on?"

Janet had gone north to stay with an old school friend for a week
leaving me on my own, with nothing particular to do.  "So you do still
keep an eye on the place?  Yes, I'd like to come and have a few words
with them.  Zellaby's still alive and well?"  "Oh, yes.  He's that
rather dry-stick type that seems set to go on for ever, unchanged."
"The last time I saw him apart from our farewell he was off on a weird
tack about composite personality," I recalled.  "An old spellbinder. He
manages to make the most exotic conceptions sound feasible while he's
talking.  Something about Adam and Eve, I remember."  "You won't find
much difference," Bernard told me, but did not pursue that line.
Instead, he went on: "My own business there is a bit morbid I'm afraid
an inquest, but that needn't interfere with you."  "One of the
Children?"  I asked.  "No," he shook his head.  "A motor accident to a
local boy called Pawle."  "Pawle," I repeated.  "Oh, yes, I remember.
They've a farm a bit outside, nearer to Oppley."  "That's it.  Dacre
Farm.  Tragic business."

It seemed intrusive to ask what interest he could have in the inquest,
so I let him switch the conversation to my Canadian experiences.

The next morning, with a fine summer's day already well begun, we set
off soon after breakfast.  In the car he apparently felt at liberty to
talk more freely than he had at the club.  "You'll find a few changes
in Midwich," he warned me.  "Your old cottage is now occupied by a
couple called Welton he etches, and his wife throws pots.  I can't
remember who is in Crimm's place at the moment there's been quite a
succession of people since the Freemans.  But what's going to surprise
you most is The Grange.  The board outside has been repainted; it now
reads: "Midwich Grange Special School Ministry of Education."  ' "Oh? 
The Children?"  I asked.  "Exactly."  He nodded.  "Zellaby's "exotic
conception" was a lot less exotic than it seemed.  In fact, it was a
bull to the great discomfiture of the Freemans.  It showed them up so
thoroughly that they had to clear out to hide their faces."  "You mean
his Adam and Eve stuff?"  I said incredulously.  "Not that exactly.  I
meant the two mental groups.  It was soon proved that there was this
rapport everything supported that and it continued.  At just over two
years old one of the boys learnt to read simple words ' "At two!"  I
exclaimed.  "Quite the equivalent of any other child's four," he
reminded me.  "And the next day it was found that any of the boys could
read them.  From then on, the progress was amazing.  It was weeks later
before one of the girls learnt to read, but when she did, all the rest
of them could, too.  Later on, one boy learnt to ride a bicycle; right
away any of them could do it competently, first shot.  Mrs.  Brinkman
taught her girl to swim; all the rest of the girls were immediately
able to swim; but the boys could not until one of them got the trick of
it, then the rest could.  Oh, from the moment Zellaby pointed it out,
there was no doubt about it.  The thing there has been and still is a
whole series of rows about, on all levels, is his deduction that each
group represents an individual.  Not many people will wear that one.  A
form of thought transmission, possibly; a high degree of mutual
sensitivity, perhaps; a number of units with a form of communication
not yet clearly understood, feasible; but a single unit informing
physically independent parts, no.  There's precious little support for
that."

I was not greatly surprised to hear it, but he was going on: "Anyway,
the arguments are chiefly academic.  The point is that, however it
happens, they do have this rapport within the groups.  Well, sending
them to any ordinary school was obviously out of the question there'd
be tales about them all over the place in a few days if they'd just
turned up at Oppley or Stouch schools.  So that brought in the Ministry
of Education, as well as the Ministry of Health, with the result that
The Grange was opened up as a kind of
school-cum-welfare-centre-cum-social-observatory for them.  "That has
worked better than we expected.  Even when you were here it was pretty
obvious they were going to be a problem later on.  They have a
different sense of community their pattern is not, and cannot by their
nature, be the same as ours.  Their ties to one another are far more
important to them than any feeling for ordinary homes.  Some of the
homes resented them pretty much, too they can't really become one of
the family, they're too different; they were little good as company for
the true children of the family, and the difficulties looked like
growing.  Somebody at The Grange had the idea of starting dormitories
there for them.  There was no pressure, no persuasion they could just
move in if they wanted to, and a dozen or more did, quite soon.  Then
others gradually joined them.  It was rather as if they were beginning
to learn that they could not have a great deal in common with the rest
of the village, and so gravitated naturally towards a group of their
own kind."  "An odd arrangement.  What did the village people think of
it?"  I asked.  "There was disapproval from some, of course more from
convention than conviction, really.  A lot of them were relieved to
lose a responsibility that had rather scared them, though they didn't
feel it proper to admit it.  A few were genuinely fond of them, still
are, and have found it distressing.  But in general they have just
accepted.  Nobody really tried to stop any of them shifting to The
Grange, of course it wouldn't have been any use.  Where the mothers
feel affectionately for them the Children keep on good terms, and are
in and out of the houses as they like.  Some others of the Children
have made a complete break."  "It sounds the queerest set-up I ever
heard of," I said.

Bernard smiled.  "Well, if you'll throw your mind back you'll recall
that it had a somewhat queer beginning," he reminded me.  "What do they
do at The Grange?"  I asked.  "Primarily it is a school, as it says.
They have teaching and welfare staff, as well as social psychologists,
and so on.  They also have quite eminent teachers visiting and giving
short courses in various subjects.  At first they used to hold classes
like an ordinary school, until it occurred to somebody that that wasn't
necessary.  So now any lesson is attended by one boy and one girl, and
all the rest know what those two have been taught.  And it doesn't have
to be one lesson at a time, either.  Teach six couples different
subjects simultaneously, and they somehow sort it out so that it works
the same way."  "But, good heavens, they must be mopping up knowledge
like blotting-paper, at that rate."  "They are indeed.  It seems to
give some of the teachers a touch of jitters."  "And yet you still
manage to keep their existence quiet?"  "On the popular level, yes. 
There is still an understanding with the Press and, anyway, the story
hasn't nearly the possibilities now that it would have had in the early
stages, from their point of view.  As for the surrounding district,
that has involved a certain amount of undercover work.  The local
reputation of Midwich was never very high an ingenuous neighbourhood is
perhaps the kindest way of putting it.  Well, with a little helping-on,
we've got it still lower.  It is now regarded by the neighbouring
villages, so Zellaby assures me, as a kind of mental home without bars.
Everybody there, it is known, was affected by the Dayout; particularly
the Children, who are spoken of as day touched an almost exact synonym
of "moonstruck" and are retarded to such an extent that a humane
government has found it necessary to provide a special school for them.
Oh, yes, we've got it pretty well established as a local deficiency
area.  It is in the same class of toleration as a dotty relative. There
is occasional gossip; but it is accepted as an unfortunate affliction,
and not a matter to be advertised to the outside world. Even
protestations occasionally made by some of the Midwich people are not
taken seriously, for, after all, the whole village had the same
experience, so that all must be, in greater or lesser degree, day
touched "It must," I said, 'have involved quite a deal of engineering
and maintenance.  What I never understood, and still don't understand,
is why you were, and apparently are, so concerned to keep the matter
quiet.  Security at the time of the Dayout is understandable something
made an unauthorized landing; that was a Service concern. But now ....?
All this trouble to keep the Children hidden away still. This queer
arrangement at The Grange.  A special school like that couldn't be run
for a few pounds a year."  "You don't think that the Welfare State
should show so much concern for its responsibilities?" he suggested. 
"Come off it, Bernard," I told him.

But he did not.  Though he went on talking of the Children, and the
state of affairs in Midwich, he continued to avoid any answer to the
question I had raised.

We lunched early at Trayne, and ran into Midwich a little after two.  I
found the place looking utterly unchanged.  It might have been a week
that had passed instead of eight years since I last saw it.  Already
there was quite a crowd waiting on the Green, outside the Hall where
the inquest was to be held.  "It looks," Bernard said as he parked the
car, 'it looks as if you had better postpone your calls until later.
Practically the whole place seems to be here."  "Will it take long, do
you think?"  I inquired.  "Should be purely formal I hope.  Probably
all over in half an hour."  "Are you giving evidence?"  I asked,
wondering why, if it were to be so formal, he should bother to come all
the way from London for it.  "No.  Just keeping an eye on things," he
said.

I decided that he had been right about postponing my calls, and
followed him into the hall.  As the place filled up, and I watched
familiar figures trooping in and finding seats, there could be no doubt
that almost every mobile person in the place had chosen to attend.  I
did not quite understand why.  Young Jim Pawle, the casualty, would be
known to them all, of course, but that did not seem quite to account
for it, and certainly did not account for the feeling of tension which
inescapably pervaded the hall.  I could not, after a few minutes,
believe that the proceedings were going to be as formal as Bernard had
predicted.  I had a sense of waiting for an outburst of some kind from
someone in the crowd.

But none came.  The proceedings were formal, and brief, too.  It was
all over inside half an hour.

I noticed Zellaby slip out quickly as the meeting closed.  We found him
standing by the steps outside watching us emerge.  He greeted me as if
we had last met a couple of days ago, and then said: "How do you come
into this?  I thought you were in India."  "Canada," I said.  "It's
accidental."  And explained that Bernard had brought me down.

Zellaby turned to look at Bernard.  "Satisfied?"  he asked.

Bernard shrugged slightly.  "What else?"  he asked.

At that moment a boy and a girl passed us, and walked up the road among
the dispersing crowd.  I had only time for a glimpse of their faces,
and stared after them in astonishment.  "Surely, they can't be ?"  I
began.  "They are," Zellaby said.  "Didn't you see their eyes?"  "But
it's preposterous!  Why, they're only nine years old!"  "By the
calendar," Zellaby agreed.

I gazed after them as they strode along.  "But it's it's unbelievable!"
"The unbelievable is, as you will recall, rather more prone to
realization in Midwich than in some other places," Zellaby observed.
"The improbable we can now assimilate at once; the incredible takes a
little longer, but we have learnt to achieve it.  Didn't the Colonel
warn you?"  "In a way," I admitted.  "But those two!  They look fully
sixteen or seventeen."  "Physically, I am assured, they are."

I kept my eyes on them, still unwilling to accept it.  "If you are in
no hurry, come up to the house and have tea," Zellaby suggested.

Bernard, after a glance at me, offered the use of his car.  "All
right," said Zellaby,"but take it carefully, after what you've just
heard." "I'm not a dangerous driver," said Bernard.  "Nor was young
Pawle he was a good driver, too," replied Zellaby.

A little way up the drive we came in sight of Kyle Manor at rest in the
afternoon sun.  I said: "The first time I saw it it was looking just
like this.  I remember thinking that when I got a little closer I
should hear it purring, and that's been the way I've seen it ever
since."

Zellaby nodded.  "When I saw it first it seemed to me a good place to
end one's days in tranquillity but now the tranquillity is, I think,
questionable."

I let that go.  We ran past the front of the house, and parked round
the side by the stables.  Zellaby led the way to the veranda, and waved
us to cushioned cane chairs.  "Angela's out at the moment, but she
promised to be back for tea," he said.

He leant back, gazing across the lawn for some moments.  The nine years
since the Midwich Dayout had treated him not unkindly.  The fine silver
hair was still as thick, and still as lucent in the August sunshine.
The wrinkles about his eyes were just a little more numerous, perhaps;
the face very slightly thinner, the lines on it faintly deeper, but if
his lanky figure had become any sparser, it could not have been by a
matter of more than four or five pounds.

Presently he turned to Bernard.  "So you're satisfied.  You think it
will end there?"  "I hope so.  Nothing could be undone.  The wise
course was to accept the verdict, and they did," Bernard told him. 
"H'm," said Zellaby.  He turned to me.  "What, as a detached observer,
did you think of our little charade this afternoon?"  "I don't oh, the
inquest, you mean.  There seemed to be a bit of an atmosphere, but the
proceedings appeared to me to be in good enough order.  The boy was
driving carelessly.  He hit a pedestrian.  Then, very foolishly, he got
the wind up, and tried to make a getaway.  He was accelerating too fast
to take the corner by the church, and as a result he piled up against
the wall.  Are you suggesting that "accidental death" doesn't cover it
one might call it misadventure, but it comes to the same thing." 
"There was misadventure all right," Zellaby said, 'but it scarcely
comes to the same thing, and it occurred slightly before the fact.  Let
me tell you what happened I've only been able to give the Colonel a
brief account yet ...."

*

Zellaby had been returning, by way of the Oppley road, from his usual
afternoon stroll.  As he neared the turn to Hickham Lane four of the
Children emerged from it, and turned towards the village, walking
strung out in a line ahead of him.

They were three of the boys, and a girl.  Zellaby studied them with an
interest that had never lessened.  The boys were so closely alike that
he could not have identified them if he had tried, but he did not try;
for some time he had regarded it as a waste of effort.  Most of the
village except for a few of the women who seemed genuinely to be seldom
in doubt shared his inability to distinguish between them, and the
Children were accustomed to it.

As always, he marvelled that they could have crammed so much
development into so short a time.  That alone set them right apart as a
different species it was not simply a matter of maturing early; it was
development at almost twice normal speed.  Perhaps they were a little
light in structure compared with normal children of the same apparent
age and height, but it was lightness of type, without the least
suggestion of weediness, or overgrowth.

As always, too, he found himself wishing he could know them better, and
learn more of them.  It was not for lack of trying that he had made so
little headway.  He had tried, patiently and persistently, ever since
they were small.  They accepted him as much as they accepted anyone,
and he, for his part, probably understood them quite as well as, if not
better than, any of their mentors at The Grange.  Superficially they
were friendly with him which they were not with many they were willing
to talk with him, and to listen, to be amused, and to learn; but it
never went further than the superficial, and he had a feeling that it
never would.  Always, quite close under the surface, there was a
barrier.  What he saw and heard from them was their adaptation to their
circumstances; their true selves and real nature lay beneath the
barrier.  Such understanding as passed between himself and them was
curiously partial and impersonal; it lacked the dimension of feeling
and sympathy.  Their real lives seemed to be lived in a world of their
own, as shut off from the main current as those of any Amazonian tribe
with its utterly different standards and ethics.  They were interested,
they learnt, but one had the feeling that they were simply collecting
knowledge somewhat, perhaps, as a juggler acquires a useful skill
which, however he may excel with it, has no influence whatever upon
him, as a person.  Zellaby wondered if anyone would get closer to them.
The people up at The Grange were an un forthcoming lot, but, from what
he had been able to discover, even the most assiduous had been held
back by the same barrier.

Watching the Children walking ahead, talking between themselves, he
suddenly found himself thinking of Ferrelyn.  She did not come home as
much as he could have wished, nowadays; the sight of the Children still
disturbed her, so he did not try to persuade her; he made the best he
could of the knowledge that she was happy at home with her own two
boys.

It was odd to think that if Ferrelyn's Dayout boy had survived he would
probably be no more able now to distinguish him from those walking
ahead, than he was to distinguish them from one another rather
humiliating, too, for it seemed to bracket one with Miss Ogle, only she
got round the difficulty by taking it for granted that any of the boys
she chanced to meet was her son and, curiously, none of them ever
disillusioned her.

Presently, the quartet in front rounded a corner and passed out of his
sight.  He had just reached the corner himself when a car overtook him,
and he had, therefore, a clear view of all that followed.

The car, a small, open two-seater, was not travelling fast, but it
happened that just round the corner, and shielded from sight by it, the
Children had stopped.  They appeared, still strung out across the road,
to be debating which way they should go.

The car's driver did his best.  He pulled hard over to the right in an
attempt to avoid them, and all but succeeded.  Another two inches, and
he would have missed them entirely.  But he could not make the extra
inches.  The tip of his left wing caught the outermost boy on the hip,
and flung him across the road against the fence of a cottage garden.

There was a moment of tableau which remained quite static in Zellaby's
mind.  The boy against the fence, the three other Children frozen where
they stood, the young man in the car in the act of straightening his
wheels again, still braking.

Whether the car actually came to a stop Zellaby could never be sure; if
it did it was for the barest instant, then the engine roared.

The car sprang forward.  The driver changed up, and put his foot down
again, keeping straight ahead.  He made no attempt whatever to take the
corner to the left.  The car was still accelerating when it hit the
churchyard wall.  It smashed to smithereens, and hurled the driver
headlong against the wall.

People shouted, and the few who were near started running towards the
wreckage.  Zellaby did not move.  He stood half-stunned as he watched
the yellow flames leap out, and the black smoke start upwards.  Then,
with a stiff-seeming movement, he turned to look at the Children. They,
too, were staring at the wreck, a similar tense expression on each
face.  He had only a glimpse of it before it passed off, and the three
of them turned to the boy who lay by the fence, groaning.

Zellaby became aware that he was trembling.  He walked on a few yards,
unsteadily, until he reached a seat by the edge of the Green.  There he
sat down and leant back, pale in the face, feeling ill.

The rest of this incident reached me not from Zellaby himself, but from
Mrs.  Williams, of The Scythe and Stone, somewhat later on: "I heard
the car go tearing by, then a loud bang, and I looked out of the window
and saw people running," she said.  "Then I noticed Mr.  Zellaby go to
the bench on the Green, walking very unsteadily.  He sat down, and
leaned back, but then his head fell forward, like he might be passing
out.  So I ran across the road to him, and when I got to him I found he
was passed out, very near.  Not quite, though.  He managed to say
something about "pills" and "pocket" in a sort of funny whisper.  I
found them in his pocket.  It said two, on the bottle, but he was
looking that bad I gave him four.  "Nobody else was taking any notice.
They'd all gone up where the accident was.  Well, the pills did him
good, and after about five minutes I helped him into the house, and let
him lay on the couch in the bar-parlour.  He said he'd be all right
there, just resting a bit, so I went to ask about the car.  "When I
came back, his face wasn't so grey any more, but he was still lying
like he was tired right out.  ' "Sorry to be a nuisance, Mrs. 
Williams.  Rather a shock," he said.  ' "I'd better get the doctor to
you, Mr.  Zellaby," I said.  But he shook his head.  ' "No.  Don't do
that.  I'll be all right in a few minutes," he told me.  ' "I think
you'd better see him," I said.  "Fair put the wind up me, you did."  '
"I'm sorry about that," he said.  And then after a bit of a pause he
went on: "Mrs.  Williams, I'm sure you can keep a secret?"  ' "As well
as the next, I reckon," I told him.  ' "Well, I'd be very grateful if
you'd not mention this lapse of mine to anyone."  ' "I don't know," I
said.  "To my way of thinking you ought to see the doctor."  "He shook
his head at that.  ' "I've seen a number of doctors, Mrs.  Williams,
expensive and important ones.  But one just can't help growing old, you
see, and as one does, the machinery begins to wear out, that's all."  '
"Oh, Mr.  Zellaby, sir " I began.  ' "Don't distress yourself, Mrs. 
Williams.  I'm still quite tough in a lot of ways, so it may not come
for some little time yet. But, in the meantime, I think it is rather
important that one should not trouble the people one loves any more
than can be helped, don't you think?  It is an unkindness to cause them
useless distress, I'm sure you'll agree?"  ' "Well, yes, sir, if you're
sure that there's nothing ?" ' "I am.  Quite sure.  I am already in
your debt, Mrs.  Williams, but you will have done me no service unless
I can rely on you not to mention it.  Can I?"  ' "Very well.  If that's
the way you want it, Mr. Zellaby," I told him.  ' "Thank you, Mrs. 
Williams.  Thank you very much," he said.  "Then, after a bit, I asked
him: ' "You saw it all happen, then, sir?  Enough to give anyone a
shock, it must've been."  ' "Yes," he said.  "I saw it but I didn't see
who it was in the car."  ' "Young Jim Pawle," I told him, "from Dacre
Farm."  "He shook his head.  ' "I remember him nice lad."  ' "Yes, sir.
A good boy, Jim.  Not one of the wild ones.  Can't think how he'd come
to be driving mad in the village.  Not like him at all."  "Then there
was quite a pause till he said in a funny sort of voice: ' "Before
that, he hit one of the Children one of the boys.  Not badly, I think,
but he knocked him across the road."  ' "One of the Children " I said. 
Then I suddenly saw what he was meaning.  "Oh no, sir!  My God, they
couldn't've " but then I stopped again, because of the way he was
looking at me.  ' "Other people saw it, too," he told me.  "Healthier
or, possibly less shock able people Perhaps I myself should have found
it less upsetting if, at some previous stage of my quite long life, I
had already had the experience of witnessing deliberate murder ...." 
'

*

The account that Zellaby himself gave us, however, ended at the point
where he had sat shakily down on the bench.  When he finished, I looked
from him to Bernard.  There was no lead at all in Bernard's expression,
so I said: "You're suggesting that the Children did it that they made
him drive into that wall?"  "I'm not suggesting," said Zellaby with a
regretful shake of his head, "I'm stating.  They did it, just as surely
as they made their mothers bring them back here."  "But the witnesses
the ones who gave evidence ....?"  "They're perfectly well aware of
what happened.  They only had to say what they actually saw."  "But if
they know it's as you claim ?"  "Well, what then?  What would you have
said if you had known, and happened to be called as a witness?  In an
affair such as this there has to be a verdict acceptable to authority
acceptable, that means, to our well-known figment, the reasonable man.
Suppose that they had somehow managed to get a verdict that the boy was
willed to kill himself do you imagine that would stand?  Of course it
wouldn't.  There'd have to be a second inquest, called to bring in a
"reasonable" verdict, which would be the verdict we now have, so why
should the witnesses run the risk of being thought unreliable, or
superstitious, for nothing?  "If you want evidence that they would be,
take a look at your own attitude now.  You know that I have some little
reputation through my books, and you know me personally, but how much
is that worth against the thought-habits of the "reasonable man"?  So
little that when I tell you what actually occurred, your immediate
reaction is to try to find ways in which what appeared to me to have
occurred could not in actual fact have done so.  You really ought to
have more sense, my dear fellow.  After all you were here when those
Children forced their mothers to come back."  "That wasn't quite on a
level with what you are telling me now," I objected.  "No?  Would you
care to explain the essential difference between being forced into the
distasteful, and being forced into the fatal?  Come, come, my dear
fellow, since you've been away you have lost touch with improbability.
You've been blunted by rationality.  Here, the unorthodox is to be
found on one's doorstep almost every morning."

I took an opportunity to lead away from the topic of the inquest.  "To
an extent which has caused Willers to abandon his championship of
hysteria?"  I asked.  "He abandoned that some little time before he
died," Zellaby replied.

I was taken aback.  I had meant to ask Bernard about the doctor, but
the intention had been mislaid in our talk.  "I'd no idea he was dead.
He wasn't much over fifty, was he?  How did it happen?"  "He took an
overdose of some barbiturate drug."  "He you don't mean ?  But Willers
wasn't that sort ...."  "I agree," said Zellaby.  "The official verdict
was that "the balance of his mind was disturbed".  A kindly meant
phrase, no doubt, but not explanatory.  Indeed, one can think of minds
so steady that disturbance would be a positive benefit.  The truth is,
of course, that nobody had the least idea why he did it.  Certainly not
poor Mrs.  Willers.  But it had to suffice."  He paused, and then
added: "It was not until I realized what the verdict on young Pawle
would have to be that I began to wonder about that on Willers." 
"Surely you don't really think that?"  I said.  "I don't know.  You
yourself said Willers was not that sort.  Now it has suddenly been
revealed that we live much more precariously here than we had thought. 
That is a shock.  "One has, you see, to realize that, though it was the
Pawle boy who came round the corner at that fatal moment, it might as
easily have been Angela, or anyone else .... It suddenly becomes clear
that she, or I, or any of us, may accidentally do something to harm or
anger the Children at any moment .... There's no blame attached to that
poor boy. He tried his very best to avoid hitting any of them, but he
couldn't And in a flare of anger and revenge they killed him for it. 
"So one is faced with a decision.  For myself well, this is by far the
most interesting thing that has ever come my way.  I want very much to
see how it goes.  But Angela is still quite a young woman, and Michael
is still dependent on her, too We have sent him away already.  I am
wondering whether I should try to persuade her to go, too.  I don't
want to do it until I must, but I can't quite decide whether the moment
has arrived.  "These last few years have been like living on the slopes
of an active volcano.  Reason tells one that a force is building up
inside, and that sooner or later there must be an eruption.  But time
passes, with no more than an occasional tremor, so that one begins to
tell oneself that the eruption which appeared inevitable may, perhaps,
not come after all.  One becomes uncertain.  I ask myself is this
business of the Pawle boy just a bigger tremor, or is it the first sign
of the eruption?  and I do not know.  "One was more acutely aware of
the presence of danger years ago, and made plans which came to seem
unnecessary; now one is abruptly reminded of it, but is this where it
changes to an active danger which justifies the breaking up of my home,
or is it still only potential?"

He was obviously, and very genuinely, worried, nor was there any trace
of scepticism in Bernard's manner.  I felt impelled to say,
apologetically: "I suppose I have let the whole business of the Dayout
fade in my mind it needs a bit of adjustment when one's brought up
against it once more.  That's the subconscious for you trying to pass
off the uncomfortable by telling me that the peculiarities would
diminish as the Children grew older."  "We all tried to think that,"
said Zellaby.  "We used to show one another evidence that it was
happening but it wasn't."  "But you're still no nearer to knowing how
it is done the compulsion, I mean?"  "No.  It seems just to amount to
asking how any personality dominates another.  We all know individuals
who seem to dominate any assembly they attend; it would appear that the
Children have this quality greatly developed by cooperation, and can
direct it as they wish.  But that tells us nothing about how it is
done."

*

Angela Zellaby, looking very little changed since I had last seen her,
emerged from the house on to the veranda a few minutes later.  She was
so clearly preoccupied that her attention was only brought to bear on
us with a visible effort, and after a brief lobbing back and forth of
civilities it showed signs of wavering again.  A touch of awkwardness
was relieved by the arrival of the tea tray.  Zellaby bestirred himself
to prevent the situation congealing.  "Richard and the Colonel were at
the inquest, too," he said.  "It was the expected verdict, of course. I
suppose you've heard?"

Angela nodded.  "Yes, I was at Dacre Farm, with Mrs.  Pawle.  Mr. Pawle
brought the news.  The poor woman's quite beside herself.  She adored
Jim.  It was difficult to keep her from going to the inquest herself. 
She wanted to go there and denounce the Children make a public
accusation.  Mr.  Leebody and I managed between us to persuade her not
to, and that she'd only get herself and her family into a lot of
trouble, and do no good to anybody.  So we stayed to keep her company
while it was on."  "The other Pawle boy, David, was there," Zellaby
told her.  "He looked as if he were on the point of coming out with it
more than once, but his father stopped him."  "Now I'm wondering
whether it wouldn't have been better if someone had, after all," Angela
said.  "It ought to come out.  It will have to some time.  It isn't
just a matter of a dog, or a bull, any more."  "A dog and a bull.  I've
not heard of them," I put in.  "The dog bit one of them on the hand; a
minute or two later it dashed in front of a tractor, and was killed.
The bull chased a party of them; then it suddenly turned aside, charged
through two fences, and got itself drowned in the mill pond," Zellaby
explained, with unusual economy.  "But this," said Angela, 'is murder."
"Oh, I don't say they meant it that way.  Very likely they were
frightened and angry, and it was their way of hitting out blindly when
one of them was hurt.  But it was murder, all the same.  The whole
village knows it, and now everybody can see that they are going to get
away with it.  We simply can't afford to let it rest there.  They don't
even show any sign of compunction.  None at all.  That's what frightens
me most.  They just did it, and that's that.  And now, after this
afternoon, they know that, as far as they are concerned, murder carries
no penalty.  What is going to happen to anyone who seriously opposes
them later on?"

Zellaby sipped his tea thoughtfully.  "You know, my dear, while it's
proper for us to be concerned, the responsibility for a remedy isn't
ours.  If it ever was, and that is highly questionable, the authorities
took it away from us a long time ago.  Here's the Colonel representing
some of them for heaven knows what reason.  And The Grange staff cannot
be ignorant of what all the village knows.  They will have made their
report, so, in spite of the verdict, the authorities are aware of the
true state of affairs though just what they will be able to do about
it, within the law and hampered by "the reasonable man", I'm bothered
if I know.  We must wait and see how they move.  "Above all, my dear, I
do implore you most seriously not to do anything that will bring you
into conflict with the Children."  "I shan't, dear," Angela shook her
head.  "I've a cowardly respect for them."  "The dove is not a coward
to fear the hawk; it is simply wise," said Zellaby, and proceeded to
steer the conversation on to more general lines.

*

My intention had been to look in on the Leebodys and one or two others,
but by the time we got up to leave it was clear that, unless we were
going to be back in London much later than we had intended, any further
calls would have to be postponed until another visit.

I did not know how Bernard felt when we had made our farewells and were
running down the drive he had, in fact, talked very little since we had
reached the village, and revealed scarcely anything of his own views
but, for my part, I had a pleasantly relaxing sensation of being on my
way back to the normal world.  Midwich values gave a feeling of having
only a finger-tip touch with reality.  One had a sense of being several
stages in the rear.  While I was back at the difficulties of
reconciling myself to the Children's existence, and boggling at what I
was told of them, the Zellabys had long ago left all that behind.  For
them, the improbable element had become submerged.  They accepted the
Children, and that, for good or ill, they were on their hands; their
anxieties now were of a social nature over whether such a modus vi
vendi as had been contrived was going to collapse.  The sense of
uneasiness which I had caught from the tension in the Village Hall had
been with me ever since.

Nor, I think, was Bernard unaffected by it.  I had the impression that
he drove with more than usual caution through the village and past the
scene of the Pawle boy's accident.  He began to increase his speed a
little as we rounded the corner on to the Oppley Road, and then we
caught sight of four figures approaching.  Even at a distance they were
unmistakably a quartet of the Children.  On an impulse I said: "Will
you pull up, Bernard?  I'd like the chance of a better look at them."

He slowed again, and we came to a stop almost at the foot of Hickham
Lane.

The Children came on towards us.  There was a touch of institutionalism
in their dress the boys in blue cotton shirts and grey flannel
trousers, the girls in short, pleated grey skirts and pale yellow
shirts.  So far I had only set eyes on the pair outside the Hall, and
seen little of them but a glimpse of their faces, and then their
backs.

As they approached I found the likeness between them even greater than
I had expected.  All four had the same browned complexions.  The
curious lucency of the skin that had been noticeable in them as babies
had been greatly subdued by the sunburn, yet enough trace of it
remained to attract one's notice.  They shared the same dark-golden
hair, straight, narrow noses, and rather small mouths.  The way the
eyes were set was perhaps more responsible than anything for a
suggestion of 'foreigners', but it was an abstract foreignness, not
calling to mind any particular race, or region.  I could not see
anything to distinguish one boy from the other; and, indeed, I doubted
whether, had it not been for the cut of the hair, I could have told the
boys' faces from the girls', with certainty.

Soon I was able to see the eyes themselves.  I had forgotten how
striking they were in the babies, and remembered them as yellow.  But
they were more than that: they had a quality of glowing gold.  Strange
indeed, but, if one could disregard the strangeness, with a singular
beauty.  They looked like living, semi-precious stones.

I went on watching, fascinated, as they drew level with us.  They took
no more notice of us than to give the car a brief, unembarrassed
glance, and then turned into Hickham Lane.

At close quarters I found them disturbing in a way I could not quite
account for, but it became less surprising to me that a number of the
village homes had been unprotestingly willing for them to go and live
at The Grange.

We watched them a few yards up the lane, then Bernard reached for the
starter.

A sudden explosion close by made us both jump.  I jerked my head round
just in time to see one of the boys collapse, and fall face down on the
road.  The other three Children stood petrified .... Bernard opened the
door, and started to get out.  The standing boy turned, and looked at
us.  His golden eyes were hard, and bright.  I felt as if a sudden gust
of confusion and weakness were sweeping through me .... Then the boy's
eyes left ours, and his head turned further.

From behind the hedge opposite, came the sound of a second explosion,
more muffled than the first then, and further away, a scream ....
Bernard got out of the car, and I shifted across to follow him.  One of
the girls knelt down beside the fallen boy.  As she made to touch him
he groaned, and writhed where he lay.  The standing boy's face was
anguished.  He groaned, too, as if in agony himself.  The two girls
began to cry.

Then, eerily down the lane, out of the trees that hid The Grange, swept
a moan like a magnified echo, and, mingled with it, a threnody of young
voices, weeping .... Bernard stopped.  I could feel my scalp prickling,
and my hair beginning to rise .... The sound came again; and ululation
of many voices blended in pain, with the higher note of crying piercing
through .... Then the sound of feet running down the lane .... Neither
of us tried to go on.  For myself, I was held for the moment by sheer
fright.

We stood there watching while half a dozen boys, all disconcertingly
alike, came running to the fallen one, and lifted him between them. Not
until they had started to carry him away did I become aware of a quite
different sound of sobbing coming from behind the hedge to the left of
the lane.

I clambered up the bank, and looked through the hedge there.  A few
yards away a girl in a summer frock was kneeling on the grass.  Her
hands were clenched to her face, and her whole body was shaking with
her sobs.

Bernard scrambled up beside me, and together we pushed our way through
the hedge.  Standing up in the field now, I could see a man lying prone
at the girl's knees, with the butt of a gun protruding from beneath his
body.

As we stepped closer, she heard us.  Her sobs stopped momentarily as
she looked up with an expression of terror.  Then when she saw us it
faded, and she went on weeping, helplessly.

Bernard walked closer to her, and lifted her up.  I looked down at the
body.  It was a very nasty sight indeed.  I bent over it and pulled the
jacket up, trying to make it hide what was left of the head.  Bernard
led the girl away, half supporting her.

There was a sound of voices on the road.  As we neared the hedge a
couple of men there looked up and saw us.  "Was that you shootin'?" 
one of them asked.

We shook our heads.  "There's a dead man up here," Bernard said.

The girl beside him shivered, and whimpered.  "Oo is it?"  asked the
same man.

The girl said hysterically: "It's David.  They've killed him.  They
killed Jim; now they've killed David, too," and choked in a fresh burst
of grief.

One of the men scrambled up the bank.  "Oh, it's you, Elsa, lass," he
exclaimed.  "I tried to stop him, Joe.  I tried to stop him, but he
wouldn't listen," she said through her sobs.  "I knew they'd kill him,
but he wouldn't listen ...."  She became incoherent, and clung to
Bernard, shaking violently.  "We must get her away," I said.  "Do you
know where she lives?"  "Aye," said the man, and decisively picked the
girl up, as though she were a child.  He scrambled down the bank, and
carried her, crying and shivering, to the car.  Bernard turned to the
other man.  "Will you stand by and keep anyone off till the police
come?"  "Aye It'll be young David Pawle?"  the man said, climbing the
bank.  "She said David.  A young man," Bernard told him.  "That'll be
him the bastards."  The man pushed through the hedge.  "Better call the
coppers at Trayne, guvnor.  They got a car there."  He glanced towards
the body.  "Murderin' young bastards!"  he said.

*

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 looking 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.  "If you've any sense you'll stay here out of harm's way,"
Angela replied bluntly, and turned again to her husband.  "Gordon,
we're wasting time.  Will you ring up Trayne, and see whether anyone
has told the police there, and ask for ambulances as well."
"Ambulances!  Isn't that a biter premature?"  Zellaby protested.  "You
introduced this "true to form" consideration but you don't seem to have
considered it," Angela replied.  "I have.  I say ambulances, and if you
don't, I will."

Zellaby, with rather the air of a small boy subdued, picked up the
telephone.  To me he remarked: "We don't even know I mean, we've only
Mrs.  Brant's word for any of it ...."  "As I recall Mrs.  Brant, she
was one of the reliable pillars," I said.  "That's true," he admitted.
"Well, I'd better risk it."

When he had finished he returned the telephone thoughtfully to the
rest, and regarded it for a moment.  He decided to make one more
attempt.  "Angela, my dear, don't you think that if one were to keep at
a discreet distance ....?  After all, I am one of the people the
Children trust, they're my friends, and '

But Angela cut him short, with unweakened decision.  "Gordon, it's no
good trying to get round me with that nonsense.  You're just
inquisitive.  You know perfectly well that the Children have no
friends."

Chapter 18

Interview With a Child

The Chief Constable of Winshire looked in at Kyle Manor the next
morning, just at the right time for a glass of Madeira and a biscuit.
"Sorry to trouble you over this affair, Zellaby.  Ghastly business
perfectly horrible.  Can't make any sense of it.  Nobody in your
village quite on target, seems to me.  Thought you might be able to put
up a picture a fellow can understand."

Angela leant forward.  "What are the real figures, Sir John?  We've
heard nothing officially yet."  "Bad, I'm afraid."  He shook his head.
"One woman and three men dead.  Eight men and five women in hospital.
Two of the men and one woman in a pretty bad way.  Several men who
aren't in hospital look as if they ought to be.  Regular riot by all
accounts everybody fighting everybody else.  But why?  That's what I
can't get at.  No sense out of anybody."  He turned back to Zellaby.
"Seeing that you called the police, and told them there was going to be
trouble, it'd help us to know what put you on to it."  "Well," Zellaby
began cautiously, 'it's a curious situation '

His wife cut him short by breaking in: "It was Mrs.  Brant, the
blacksmith's wife," she said, and went on to describe the vicar's
departure.  "I'm sure Mr.  Leebody will be able to tell you more than
we can.  He was there, you see; we weren't."  "He was there all right,
and got home somehow, but now he's in Trayne hospital," said the Chief
Constable.  "Oh, poor Mr.  Leebody.  Is he badly hurt?"  "I'm afraid I
don't know.  The doctor there tells me he's not to be disturbed for a
bit.  Now."  He turned back to Zellaby once more, 'you told my people
that a crowd was marching on The Grange with the intention of setting
fire to it.  What was your source of information?"

Zellaby looked surprised.  "Why, Mrs.  Brant.  My wife just told you."
"Is that all!  You didn't go out to see for yourself what was going
on?"  "Er no," Zellaby admitted.  "You mean that, on the unsupported
word of a woman in a semi-hysterical condition, you called out the
police, in force, and told them that ambulances would be needed?"  "I
insisted on it," Angela told him, with a touch of chill.  "And I was
perfectly right.  They were needed."  "But simply on this woman's word
' "I've known Mrs.  Brant for years.  She's a sensible woman."

Bernard put in: "If Mrs.  Zellaby had not advised us against going to
see for ourselves, I'm quite sure we should now be either in hospital,
or worse."

The Chief Constable looked at us.  "I've had an exhausting night," he
said, at last.  "Perhaps I haven't got this straight.  What you seem to
be saying is that this Mrs.  Brant came here and told you that the
villagers perfectly ordinary English men and women, and good Winshire
stock, were intending to march on a school full of children, their own
children, too, and ' "Not quite, Sir John.  The men were going to
march, and perhaps some of the women, but I think most of the women
would be against it," Angela objected.  "Very well.  These men, then,
ordinary, decent, country chaps, were going to set fire to a school
full of children.  You didn't question it.  You accepted an incredible
thing like that at once.  You did not try to check up, or see for
yourselves what was happening.  You just called in the police because
Mrs.  Brant is a sensible woman?"  "Yes," Angela said icily.  "Sir
John," Zellaby said, with equal coolness.  "I realize you have been
busy all night, and I appreciate your official position, but I think
that if this interview is to continue, it must be upon different
lines."

The Chief Constable went a little pink.  His gaze dropped.  Presently
he massaged his forehead vigorously with a large fist.  He apologized,
first to Angela, and then to Zellaby.  Almost pathetically he said:
"But there's nothing to get hold of.  I've been asking questions for
hours, and I can't make head or tail of anything.  There's no sign that
these people were trying to burn The Grange: they never touched it.
They were simply fighting one another, men, and a few women, too but
they were doing it in The Grange grounds.  Why?  It wasn't just the
women trying to stop the men or, it seems, some of the men trying to
stop the rest.  No, it appears they all went up from the pub to The
Grange together, with nobody trying to stop anybody, except the parson,
whom they wouldn't listen to, and a few women who backed him up.  And
what was it all about?  Something, apparently, to do with the children
at the school but what sort of a reason is that for a riot like this?
It just doesn't make sense, any of it."  He shook his head, and
ruminated a moment.  "I remember my predecessor, old Bodger, saying
there was something deuced funny about Midwich.  And, by God, he was
right.  But what is it?"  "It seems to me that the best we can do is to
refer you to Colonel Westcott," suggested Zellaby, indicating Bernard.
With a slightly malicious touch, he added: "His Department, for a
reason which has continued to elude me for nine years, preserves a
continuing interest in Midwich, so that he probably knows more about us
than we do ourselves."

Sir John turned his attention to Bernard.  "And what is your
Department, sir?"  he inquired.

At Bernard's reply his eyes bulged slightly.  He looked like a man
wishing to be given strength.  "Did you say Military Intelligence?"  he
inquired flatly.  "Yes, sir," said Bernard.

The Chief Constable shook his head.  "I give up."  He looked back at
Zellaby, with the expression of one only two or three straws from the
end.  "And now Military Intelligence," he muttered.

*

About the same time that the Chief Constable had arrived at Kyle Manor,
one of the Children a boy came walking unhurriedly down the drive of
The Grange.  The two policemen who were chatting at the gate broke off
their conversation.  One of them turned and strolled to meet the boy.
"And where'll you be off to, son?"  he inquired amiably enough.

The boy looked at the policeman without expression, though the curious
golden eyes were alert.  "Into the village," he said.  "Better if you
didn't," advised the policeman.  "They're not feeling too friendly
there about your lot not after last night, they're not."

But the boy neither answered, nor checked his walk.  He simply kept on.
The policeman turned and walked back towards the gate.  His colleague
looked at him curiously.  "Lumme," he said.  "Didn't make much of a job
of that, did you?  Thought the idea was to persuade 'em to keep out of
harm's way."

The first policeman looked after the boy, going on down the lane, with
a puzzled expression.  He shook his head.  "Funny, that," he said
uneasily.  "I don't get it.  If there's another, you have a try,
Bert."

A minute or two later one of the girls appeared.  She, too, was walking
in a casually confident way.  "Right," said the second policeman. 
"Just a bit of advice fatherly-like, see?"

He began to stroll towards the girl.

After perhaps four steps he turned round, and came back again.  The two
policemen standing side by side watched her walk past them, and into
the lane.  She never even glanced at them.  "What the hell ?"  asked
the second policeman, in a baffled voice.  "Bit off, isn't it?"  said
the other.  "You go to do something, and then you do something else
instead.  I don't reckon I like it much.  Hey!"  he called after the
girl.  "Hey!  you, missie!"

The girl did not look back.  He started in pursuit, covered half a
dozen yards, and then stopped dead.  The girl passed out of sight,
round the corner of the lane.  The policeman relaxed, turned round, and
came back.  He was breathing rather fast, and had an uneasy look on his
face.  "I definitely don't like it," he said unhappily.  "There's
something kind of funny about this place ...."

*

The bus from Oppley, on its way to Trayne via Stouch, stopped in
Midwich, opposite Mrs.  Welt's shop.  The ten or a dozen women waiting
for it allowed the two off-loading passengers to descend, and then
moved forward in a ragged queue.  Miss Latterly, at its head, took hold
of the rail, and made to step aboard.  Nothing further happened.  Both
her feet appeared to be glued to the ground.  "Hurry along there,
please!"  said the conductor.

Miss Latterly tried again; with no better success.  She looked up
helplessly at the conductor.  "Just you stand aside, and let 'em get
on, mum.  I'll give you a hand in a minute," he advised her.

Miss Latterly, looking bewildered, took his advice.  Mrs.  Dorry moved
up to take her place, and grasped the rail.  She, too, failed to get
any further.  The conductor reached down to take her arm and pull her
up, but her foot would not lift to the step.  She moved beside Miss
Latterly, and they both watched the next in turn make an equally
fruitless attempt to get aboard.  "What's this?  Some kind of joke?"
inquired the conductor.  Then he saw the expression on the faces of the
three.  "Sorry, ladies.  No offence.  But what's the trouble?"

It was Miss Latterly who, turning her attention from the fourth woman's
ineffective approach to the bus, noticed one of the Children.  He was
sitting casually on the mounting-block opposite The Scythe and Stone,
with his face turned towards them, and one leg idly swinging.  She
detached herself from the group by the bus, and walked towards him. She
studied him carefully as she approached.  Even so, it was with a touch
of uncertainty she said: "You're not Joseph, are you?"

The boy shook his head.  She went on: "I want to go to Trayne to see
Miss Foresham, Joseph's mother.  She was hurt last night.  She's in the
hospital there."

The boy kept on looking at her.  He shook his head very slightly. Tears
of anger came into Miss Latterly's eyes.  "Haven't you done enough
harm?  You're monsters.  All we want to do is to go and see our friends
who've been hurt hurt because of what you did."

The boy said nothing.  Miss Latterly took an impulsive half-step
towards him, and then checked herself.  "Don't you understand?  Haven't
you any human feelings?"  she said, in a shaking voice.

Behind her, the conductor, half-puzzled, half-jocular was saying: "Come
along now, ladies.  Make up your minds.  The old bus don't bite, you
know.  Can't wait 'ere all day."

The group of women stood irresolute, some of them looking frightened.
Mrs.  Dorry made one more attempt to board the bus.  It was no use. Two
of the women turned to glare angrily at the boy who looked back at them
unmoved.

Miss Latterly turned helplessly, and began to walk away.  The
conductor's temper shortened.  "Well, if you're not coming, we're off.
Got our times to keep, you know."

None of the group made any move.  He hit the bell decisively, and the
bus moved on.  The conductor gazed at them as they dwindled forlornly
behind, and shook his head.  As he ambled forward to exchange comments
with the driver he muttered to himself the local adage: "In Oppley
they're smart, and in Stouch they're smarmy, but Midwich folk are just
plain barmy."

*

Polly Rushton, her uncle's invaluable right hand in the parish ever
since she had fled across the unmended breach between the two families,
was driving Mrs.  Leebody into Trayne to see the vicar.  His injuries
in the fracas, the hospital had telephoned reassuringly, were
uncomfortable, but not serious, only a fracture of the left radius, a
broken right clavicle, and a number of contusions, but he was in need
of rest and quiet.  He would be glad of a visit in order to make some
arrangements to cover his absence.

Two hundred yards out of Midwich, however, Polly braked abruptly, and
started to turn the car about.  "What have we forgotten?"  inquired
Mrs. Leebody, in surprise.  "Nothing," Polly told her.  "I just can't
go on, that's all."  "Can't?"  repeated Mrs.  Leebody.  "Can't," said
Polly. "Well, really," said Mrs.  Leebody.  "I should have thought that
aaaa time like this ...."  "Aunt Dora, I said "can't", not "won't"." 
"I don't understand what you're talking about," said Mrs.  Leebody. 
"All right," said Polly.  She drove onaa few yards, and turned the car
again so that it faced away from the village once more.  "Now change
places, and you try," she told her.

Unwillingly Mrs.  Leebody took the driving seat.  She didn't care for
driving, but accepted the challenge.  They moved forward again, and at
precisely the spot where Polly had braked, Mrs.  Leebody braked.  There
came the sound of a horn behind them, and a tradesman's van with aa
Trayne address on it squeezed by.  They watched it vanish round the
corner ahead.  Mrs.  Leebody aa tempted to reach the accelerator-pedal,
but her foot stopped short of it.  She tried again.  Her foot still
could not get to it.

Polly looked round and saw one of the Children sitting half-hidden in
the hedge, watching them.  She looked harder at the girl, making sure
which one it was.  "Judy," Polly said, withasudden misgiving.  "Is it
you doing this?"

The girl's nod was barely perceptible.  "But you mustn't," Polly
protested.  "We want to go to Trayne to see Uncle Hubert.  He was hurt.
He's in hospital."  "You can't go," the girl told her, with aa faintly
apologetic inflection.  "But, Judy.  He has to arrange lots of things
wit hame for the time he'll have to be away."

The girl simply shook her head, slowly.  Polly felt her temper rising.
She drew breathato speak again, but Mrs.  Leebody cut-in, nervously:
"Don't annoy her, Polly.  Wasn't last night enough of a lessonafor all
of us?"

Her advice went home.  Polly said no more.  She sat glaring at the
Child in the hedge, with aa muddle of frustrated emotion that brought
tears of resentment to her eyes.

Mrs.  Leebody succeeded inafinding reverse, and moved the lever into
it.  She tentatively put her right foot forward and found that it now
reached the accelerator without any difficulty.  They backed a few
yards, and changed seats again.  Polly drove them back to the Vicarage,
in silence.

*

At Kyle Manor we were still having difficulty withathe Chief Constable.
"But," he protested, from under corrugated brows, 'our
informationasupports your original statement that the villagers were
marching on The Grange to burn the place."  "So they were," agreed
Zellaby.  "But you also say, and Colonel Westcott agrees, that the
children at The Grange were the real culprits they provoked it."
"That's true," Bernard agreed.  "But I'm afraid there's nothing we can
do about that."  "No evidence, you mean?  Well, finding evidence is our
job."  "I don't mean no evidence.  I mean no imputability under the
law."  "Look," said the Chief Constable, withaconscientious patience.
"Four people have been killed I repeat killed; thirteen are in
hospital; aa number more have been badly knocked about.  It is not the
sort of thing we can just say "what a pity" about, and leave it at
that.  We have to bring the whole thing into the open, decide where
responsibility lies, and draw up charges.  You must see that."  "These
are very unusual Children Bernard began.  "I know.  I know.  Lot of
wrong-side-of-the-blanket stuff in these parts.  Old Bodger told me
about that when I took over.  Not quite firing onaall cylinders, either
special school for them, and so on."

Bernard repressed a sigh.  "Sir John, it's not that they are backward.
The special school was opened because they are different.  They are
morally responsible for last night's trouble, but that isn't the same
as being legally responsible.  There's nothing you can charge them
with."  "Minors can be charged or somebody responsible for them can.
You're not going to tell me that a gang of nine-year-old children can
somehow though I'm blest if I can see how promote a riot in which
people get killed, and then just get away with it scot free!  It's
fantastic!"  "But I've pointed out several times that these Children
are different.  Their years have no relevance except in so far as they
are children, which may mean that they are crueller in their acts than
in their intentions.  The law cannot touch them and my Department
doesn't want them publicized."  "Ridiculous," retorted the Chief
Constable. "I've heard of those fancy schools.  Children mustn't be
what-do-you-call it?  frustrated.  Self-expression, co-education,
wholemeal bread, and all the rest of it.  Damned nonsense!  More
frustrated by being different about things than they would be if they
were normal.  But if some Departments think that because a school of
that kind happens to be a government-run institution the children there
are in a different position as regards the law, and can beer
uninhibited as they like well, they'll soon learn differently."

Zellaby and Bernard exchanged hopeless glances.  Bernard decided to try
once more.  "These Children, Sir John, have strong willpower quite
remarkably strong strong enough, when they exert it, to be considered a
form of duress.  Now, the law has not, so far, encountered this
particular form of duress; consequently, having no knowledge of it, it
cannot recognize it.  Since, therefore, the form of duress has no legal
existence, the Children cannot in law be said to be capable of exerting
it.  Therefore, in the eyes of the law, the crimes attributed by
popular opinion to its exercise must (a) never have taken place at all,
or (b) be attributable to other persons, or means.  There cannot,
within the knowledge of the law, be any connexion between the Children
and the crimes."  "Except that they did 'em, or so you all tell me,"
said Sir John.  "As far as the law is concerned they've done nothing at
all.  And, what is more, if you could find a formula to charge them
under you'd not get anywhere.  They would bring this duress to bear on
your officers.  You can neither arrest them, nor hold them, if you try
to."  "We can leave those finer points to the lawyer fellows that's
their job.  All we need is enough evidence to justify a warrant," the
Chief Constable assured him.

Zellaby gazed with innocent thoughtfulness at a corner of the ceiling.
Bernard had the withdrawn air of a man who might be counting ten, not
too quickly.  I found myself troubled by a slight cough.  "This
schoolmaster fellow at The Grange what's his name Torrance?"  the Chief
Constable went on.  "Director of the place.  He must hold the official
responsibility for these children, if anyone does.  Saw the chap last
night.  Struck me as evasive.  Everybody round here's evasive, of
course."  He studiedly met no eye.  "But he definitely wasn't helpful."
"Dr.  Torrance is an eminent psychiatrist, rather than a schoolmaster,"
Bernard explained.  "I think he may be in considerable doubt as to his
right course in the matter until he can take advice."  "Psychiatrist?"
repeated Sir John, suspiciously.  "I thought you said this is not a
place for backward children?"  "It isn't," Bernard repeated, patiently.
"Don't see what he has to be doubtful about.  Nothing doubtful about
the truth, is there?  That's all you've got to tell when the police
make inquiries: if you don't, you're in for trouble and so you ought to
be."  "It's not quite as simple as that," Bernard responded.  "He may
not have felt himself at liberty to disclose some aspects of his work.
I think that if you will let me come along with you and see him again
he might be more willing to talk and much better able to explain the
situation than I am."

He got to his feet as he finished.  The rest of us rose, too.  The
Chief Constable's leave-taking was gruff.  There was a barely
perceptible flicker to Bernard's right eye as he said au revoir to the
rest of us, and escorted him out of the room.

Zellaby collapsed into an easy chair, and sighed deeply.  He searched
absent-mindedly for his cigarette case.  "I've not met Dr.  Torrance,"
I said, 'but I already feel quite sorry for him."  "Unnecessary," said
Zellaby.  "Colonel Westcott's discretion has been irritating, but
passive.  Torrance's has always had an aggressive quality.  If he has
now got to make the situation lucid enough for Sir John, it's simply
poetic justice.  "But what interests me more at the moment is your
Colonel Westcott's attitude.  The barrier there is down quite a bit. If
he could have got as far as a mutually understandable vocabulary with
Sir John, I do believe he might have told us all something.  I wonder
why?  This seems to me just the kind of situation that he has been
trying so hard to avoid all along.  The Midwich bag is now very nearly
too small for the cat.  Why, then, doesn't he appear more concerned?" 
He lapsed into a reverie, tattooing gently on the chair-arm.

Presently Angela reappeared.  Zellaby became aware of her from the
far-off.  It took him a moment or two to re-establish himself in the
here and now, and observe her expression.  "What's the matter, my
dear?" he inquired, and added in recollection: "I thought you were
bound for Trayne hospital, with a cornucopia."  "I started," she said. 
"Now I've come back.  It seems that we're not allowed to leave the
village."

Zellaby sat up.  "That's absurd.  The old fool can't put the whole
place under arrest.  As a JP he began indignantly.  "It's not Sir John.
It's the Children.  They're picketing all the roads, and won't let us
out." "Are they indeed!"  exclaimed Zellaby.  "That's extremely
interesting. I wonder if ' "Interesting be damned," said his wife. 
"It's very unpleasant, and quite outrageous.  It's also rather
alarming," she added, 'because one can't see just what's behind it."

Zellaby inquired how it was being done.  She explained, concluding:
"And it's only us, you see people who live in the village, I mean.
They're letting other people come and go as they like."  "But no
violence?"  asked Zellaby, with a touch of anxiety.  "No.  You simply
have to stop.  Several people have appealed to the police, and they've
looked into it.  Hopeless, of course.  The Children didn't stop them,
or bother them, so naturally they can't understand what the fuss is
about.  The only result is that those who had merely heard that Midwich
is half-witted are now sure of it."  "They must have some reason for it
the Children, I mean," said Zellaby.

Angela eyed him resentfully.  "I daresay, and possibly it will be of
great sociological interest, but that isn't the point at the moment.
What I want to know is what is to be done about it?"  "My dear," said
Zellaby soothingly.  "One appreciates your feelings, but we've known
for some time now that if it should suit the Children to interfere with
us we have no way of stopping them.  Well, now, for some reason that I
confess I do not perceive, it evidently does suit them."  "But, Gordon,
there are these people seriously hurt, in Trayne hospital.  Their
relatives want to visit them."  "My dear, I don't see that there is
anything you can do but find one of them, and put it to him on humane
grounds.  They might consider that, but it really depends on what their
reason for doing it is, don't you think?"

Angela regarded her husband with a frown of dissatisfaction.  She
started to reply, thought better of it, and took herself off with an
air of reproof.  Zellaby shook his head as the door closed.  "Man's
arrogance is boastful," he observed, 'woman's is something in the
fibre.  We do occasionally contemplate the once lordly dinosaurs, and
wonder when, and how, our little day will reach its end.  But not she.
Her eternity is an article of her faith.  Great wars and disasters can
ebb and flow, races rise and fall, empires wither with suffering and
death, but these are superficialities: she, woman, is perpetual,
essential; she will go on for ever.  She doesn't believe in the
dinosaurs: she doesn't really believe the world ever existed until she
was upon it.  Men may build and destroy and play with all their toys;
they are uncomfortable nuisances, ephemeral conveniences, mere
scamperers-about, while woman, in mystical umbilical connexion with the
great tree of life itself, knows that she is indispensable.  One
wonders whether the female dinosaur in her day was blessed with the
same comfortable certainty."

He paused, in such obvious need of prompting that I said: "And the
relevance to the present?"  "Is that while man finds the thought of his
super session abominable, she simply finds it unthinkable.  And since
she cannot think it, she must regard the hypothesis as frivolous."

It seemed to be my service again.  "If you are implying that we see
something which Mrs.  Zellaby fails to see, I'm afraid I ' "But, my
dear fellow, if one is not blinded by a sense of indispensability, one
must take it that we, like the other lords of creation before us, will
one day be replaced.  There are two ways in which it can happen: either
through ourselves, by our self-destruction, or by the incursion of some
species which we lack the equipment to subdue.  Well, here we are now,
face to face with a superior will and mind.  And what are we able to
bring against it?"  "That," I told him, 'sounds defeatist.  If, as I
assume, you do mean it quite seriously, isn't it rather a large
conclusion from rather a small instance?"  "Very much what my wife said
to me when the instance was considerably smaller, and younger," Zellaby
admitted.  "She also went on to scout the proposition that such a
remarkable thing could happen here, in a prosaic English village.  In
vain did I try to convince her that it would be no less remarkable
wherever it should happen.  She felt that it was decidedly a thing that
would be less remarkable in more exotic places a Balinese village,
perhaps, or a Mexican pueblo; that it was essentially one of those
sorts of things that happens to other people.  Unfortunately, however,
the instance has developed here and with melancholy logic."  "It isn't
the locality that troubles me," I said.  "It's your assumptions.  More
particularly, your taking it for granted that the Children can do what
they like, and there's no way of stopping them."  "It would be foolish
to be quite so didactic as that.  It may be possible, but it will not
be easy.  Physically we are poor weak creatures compared with many
animals, but we overcome them because we have better brains.  The only
thing that can beat us is something with a still better brain.  That
has scarcely seemed a threat: for one thing, its occurrence appeared to
be improbable, and, for another, it seemed even more improbable that we
should allow it to survive to become a menace.  "Yet here it is'
another little gimmick out of Pandora's infinite evolutionary box: the
contesserate mind two mosaics, one of thirty, the other of
twenty-eight, tiles.  What can we, with our separate brains only in
clumsily fumbling touch with one another, expect to do against thirty
brains working almost as one?"

I protested that, even so, the Children could scarcely have accumulated
enough knowledge in a mere nine years to oppose successfully the whole
mass of human knowledge, but Zellaby shook his head.  "The government
has for reasons of its own provided them with some excellent teachers,
so that the sum of their knowledge should be considerable indeed, I
know it is, for I lecture to them myself sometimes, you know that has
importance, but it is not the source of the threat.  One is not unaware
that Francis Bacon wrote: nam et ipsa scientia potestas est knowledge
itself is power and one must regret that so eminent a scholar should,
at times, talk through his hat.  The encyclopedia is crammed full of
knowledge, and can do nothing with it; we all know of people who have
amazing memories for facts, with no ability to use them; a
computing-engine can roll out knowledge by the ream in multi plicate
but none of this knowledge is of the least use until it is informed by
understanding.  Knowledge is simply a kind of fuel; it needs the motor
of understanding to convert it into power.  "Now, what frightens me is
the thought of the power producible by an understanding working on even
a small quantity of knowledge-fuel when it has an extraction-efficiency
thirty times that of our own.  What it may produce when the Children
are mature I cannot begin to imagine."

I frowned.  As always, I was a little unsure of Zellaby.  "You are
quite seriously maintaining that we have no means of preventing this
group of fifty-eight Children from taking what course they choose?"  I
insisted. "I am."  He nodded.  "What do you suggest we could do?  You
know what happened to that crowd last night; they intended to attack
the Children instead, they were induced to fight one another.  Send
police, and they would do the same.  Send soldiers against them, and
they would be induced to shoot one another."  "Possibly," I conceded. 
"But there must be other ways of tackling them.  From what you've told
me, nobody knows nearly enough about them.  They appear to have
detached themselves emotionally from their host-mothers quite early if,
indeed, they ever had the emotions we normally expect.  Most of them
chose to adopt progressive segregation as soon as it was offered.  As a
result the village knows extremely little of them.  In quite a short
time most people seem scarcely to have thought of them as individuals. 
They found them difficult to tell apart, got into the habit of
regarding them collectively so that they have tended to become
two-dimensional figures with only a limited kind of reality."

Zellaby looked appreciative of the point.  "You're perfectly right, my
dear fellow.  There is a lack of normal contacts and sympathies.  But
that is not entirely our shortcoming.  I have myself kept as close to
them as I can, but I am still at a distance.  In spite of all my
efforts I still find them, as you excellently put it, two-dimensional.
And it is strongly my impression that the people at The Grange have
done no better."

"Then the question remains," I said, 'how do we get more data?"

We contemplated that for a while until Zellaby emerged from his reverie
to say: "Has it occurred to you to wonder what your own status here is,
my dear fellow?  If you were thinking of leaving today it might be as
well to find out whether the Children regard you as one of us, or
not?"

That was an aspect that had not occurred to me, and I found it a little
startling.  I decided to find out.

Bernard had, it appeared, gone off in the Chief Constable's car, so I
borrowed his for the test.

I found the answer a little way along the Oppley road.  A very odd
sensation.  My hand and foot were guided to bring the car to a halt by
no volition of my own.  One of the girl Children was sitting by the
roadside, nibbling at a stalk of grass, and looking at me without
expression.  I tried to put the gear in again.  My hand wouldn't do it.
Nor could I bring my foot on the clutch pedal.  I looked at the girl,
and told her that I did not live in Midwich, and wanted to get home.
She simply shook her head.  I tried the gear lever again, and found
that the only way I could move it was into reverse.  "H'm," said
Zellaby, on my return.  "So you are an honorary villager, are you?  I
rather thought you might be.  Just remind me to tell Angela to let the
cook know, there's a good fellow."

*

At the same time that Zellaby and I were talking at Kyle Manor, more
talk, similar in matter but different in manner, was going on at The
Grange.  Dr.  Torrance, feeling some sanction in the presence of
Colonel Westcott, had endeavoured to answer the Chief Constable's
questions more explicitly than before.  A stage had been reached,
however, when lack of coordination between the parties could no longer
be disguised, and a noticeably off-beat query caused the doctor to say,
a little forlornly: "I am afraid I cannot have made the situation quite
clear to you, Sir John."

The Chief Constable grunted impatiently.  "Everybody keeps on telling
me that, and I'm not denying it; nobody round here seems to be capable
of making anything clear.  Everybody keeps on telling me, too and
without producing a scrap of evidence that I can understand that these
infernal children are in some way responsible for last night's affair
even you, who I am given to understand are in charge of them.  I agree
that I do not understand a situation in which young children are
allowed to get so thoroughly out of hand that they can cause a breach
of the peace amounting to a riot.  I don't see why I should be expected
to understand it.  It is as a Constable that I wish to see one of the
ringleaders, and find out what he has to say about it."  "But, Sir
John, I have already explained to you that there are no ringleaders
...."  "I know I know.  I heard you.  Everyone is equal here, and all
that all very well perhaps in theory, but you know as well as I do that
in every group there are fellers that stand out, and that those are the
chaps you've got to get hold of.  Manage them, and you can manage the
rest." He paused expectantly.

Dr.  Torrance exchanged a helpless look with Colonel Westcott.  Bernard
gave a slight shrug, and the faintest of nods.  Dr.  Torrance's look of
unhappiness increased.  He said uneasily: "Very well, Sir John, since
you make it virtually a police order I have no alternative, but I must
ask you to watch your words carefully.  The Children are very er
sensitive."

His choice of the final word was unfortunate.  In his own vocabulary it
had a somewhat technical meaning; in the Chief Constable's it was a
word used by doting mothers about spoilt sons, and did nothing to make
him feel more sympathetically disposed towards the Children.  He made a
vowel less sound of disapproval as Dr.  Torrance got up and left the
room.  Bernard half opened his mouth to reinforce the Doctor's warning,
and then decided that it would only increase the Chief Constable's
irritation, thus doing more harm than good.  The cussedness of
commonsense, Bernard reflected, was that, invaluable as it might be in
the right soils, it could turn into a pestiferous kind of bind-weed in
others.  So the two waited in silence until the Doctor presently
returned, bringing one of the boy-Children with him.  "This is Eric,"
he said, by way of introduction.  To the boy he added, "Sir John Tenby
wishes to ask you some questions.  It is his duty as Chief Constable,
you see, to make a report on the trouble last night."

The boy nodded, and turned to look at Sir John.  Dr.  Torrance resumed
his seat at his desk, and watched the two of them intently, and
uneasily.

The boy's regard was steady, careful, but quite neutral; it gave no
trace of feeling.  Sir John met it with equal steadiness.  A
healthy-looking boy, he thought.  A bit thin well, not exactly thin in
the sense of being scraggy, slight would be a better word.  It was
difficult to make much of a judgement from the features; the face was
good-looking, though without weakness which often accompanies male good
looks; on the other hand, it did not show strength the mouth, indeed,
was a little small, though not petulant.  There was not a lot to be
learnt from the face as a whole.  The eyes, however, were even more
remarkable than he had been led to expect.  He had been told of the
curious golden colour of the irises, but no one had succeeded in
conveying to him their striking lambency, their strange effect of being
softly lit from within.  For a moment it disquieted him, then he took
himself in hand; reminded himself that he had some kind of freak to
deal with; a boy only nine years old, yet looking every bit of sixteen,
brought up, moreover, on some of these fiddle-faddling theories of
self-expression, non-inhibition, and so on.  He decided to treat the
boy as if he were the age he looked, and constrained himself into that
man-to-boy attitude that is represented by its practitioners as
man-to-man.  "Serious business last night," he observed.  "Our job to
clear it up and find out what really happened who was responsible for
the trouble, and so forth.  People keep on telling me that you and the
others here were now, what do you say to that?"  "No," said the boy
promptly.

The Chief Constable nodded.  One would scarcely expect an immediate
admission, in any case.  "What happened, exactly?"  he asked.  "The
village people came here to burn The Grange down," said the boy.
"You're sure of that?"  "It was what they said, and there was no other
reason to bring them here at that time," said the boy.  "All right,
we'll not go into the whys and wherefores just now.  Let's take it from
there.  You say some of them came intending to burn the place.  Then I
suppose others came to stop them doing it, and the fighting started?"
"Yes," agreed the boy, but less definitely.  "Then, in point of fact,
you and your friends had nothing to do with it.  You were just
spectators?"  "No," said the boy.  "We had to defend ourselves.  It was
necessary, or they would have burnt the house."  "You mean you called
out to some of them to stop the rest, something like that?"  "No," the
boy told him patiently.  "We made them fight one another.  We could
simply have sent them away, but if we had they would very likely have
come back some other time.  Now they will not, they understand it is
better for them to leave us alone."

The Chief Constable paused, a little nonplussed.  "You say you "made"
them fight one another.  How did you do that?"  "It is too difficult to
explain.  I don't think you could understand," said the boy,
judicially.

Sir John pinked a little.  "Nevertheless, I'd like to hear," he said,
with an air of generous restraint that was wasted.  "It wouldn't be any
use," the boy told him.  He spoke simply, and without innuendo, as one
stating a fact.

The Chief Constable's face became a deeper pink.  Dr.  Torrance put in
hurriedly: "This is an extremely abstruse matter, Sir John, and one
which all of us here have been trying to understand, with very little
headway, for some years now.  One can really get little nearer to it
than to say that the Children "willed" the people in the crowd to
attack one another."

Sir John looked at him and then at the boy.  He muttered, but held
himself in check.  Presently, after two or three deep breaths, he spoke
to the boy again, but now with his tone a little ruffled.  "However it
was done and we'll have to go into that later you are admitting that
you were responsible for what happened?"  "We are responsible for
defending ourselves," the boy said.  "To the extent of four lives and
thirteen serious injuries when you could, you say, have simply sent
them away."  "They wanted to kill us," the boy told him,
indifferently.

The Chief Constable looked lengthily at him.  "I don't understand how
you can have done it, but I take your word for it that you did, for the
present; also your word that it was unnecessary."  "They would have
come again.  It would have been necessary then," replied the boy.  "You
can't be sure of that.  Your whole attitude is monstrous.  Don't you
feel the least compunction for these unfortunate people?"  "No," the
boy told him.  "Why should we?  Yesterday afternoon one of them shot
one of us. Now we must protect ourselves."  "But not by private
vengeance.  The law is for your protection, and for everyone's ' "The
law did not protect Wilfred from being shot; it would not have
protected us last night. The law punishes the criminal after he has
been successful: it is no use to us, we intend to stay alive."  "But
you don't mind being responsible so you tell me for the deaths of other
people."  "Do we have to go round in circles?"  asked the boy.  "I have
answered your questions because we thought it better that you should
understand the situation.  As you apparently have not grasped it, I
will put it more plainly.  It is that if there is any attempt to
interfere with us or molest us, by anybody, we shall defend ourselves. 
We have shown that we can, and we hope that that will be warning enough
to prevent further trouble."

Sir John stared at the boy speechlessly while his knuckles whitened and
his face em purpled  He half rose from his chair as if he meant to
attack the boy, and then sank back, thinking better of it.  Some
seconds passed before he could trust himself to speak.  Presently, in a
half-choked voice he addressed the boy who was watching him with a kind
of critically detached interest.  "You damned young blackguard!  You
insufferable little prig!  How dare you speak to me like that!  Do you
understand that I represent the police force of this county?  If you
don't, it's time you learnt it, and I'll see that you do, b'God.
Talking to your elders like that, you swollen-headed little upstart! So
you're not to be "molested"; you'll defend yourselves, will you! Where
do you think you are?  You've got a lot to learn, m'lad, a whole '

He broke off suddenly, and sat staring at the boy.

Dr.  Torrance leant forward over his desk.  "Eric he began in protest,
but made no move to interfere.

Bernard Westcott remained carefully still in his chair, watching.

The Chief Constable's mouth went slack, his jaws fell a little, his
eyes widened, and seemed to go on widening.  His hair rose slightly.
Sweat burst out on his forehead, at his temples, and came trickling
down his face.  Inarticulate gobblings came from his mouth.  Tears ran
down the sides of his nose.  He began to tremble, but seemed unable to
move.  Then, after long rigid seconds, he did move.  He lifted hands
that fluttered, and fumbled them to his face.  Behind them, he gave
queer thin screams.  He slid out of the chair to his knees on the
floor, and fell forward.  He lay there grovelling, and trembling,
making high whinnying sounds as he clawed at the carpet, trying to dig
himself into it.  Suddenly he vomited.

The boy looked up.  To Dr.  Torrance he said, as if answering a
question: "He is not hurt.  He wanted to frighten us, so we have shown
him what it means to be frightened.  He'll understand better now.  He
will be all right when his glands are in balance again."

Then he turned away and went out of the room, leaving the two men
looking at one another.

Bernard pulled out a handkerchief, and dabbed at the sweat that stood
in drops on his own forehead.  Dr.  Torrance sat motionless, his face a
sickly grey.  They turned to look at the Chief Constable.  Sir John was
lying slackly now, seemingly unconscious, drawing long, greedy breaths,
shaken occasionally by a violent tremor.  "My God!"  exclaimed Bernard.
He looked at Torrance again.  "And you have been here three years!"
"There's never been anything remotely like this," the Doctor said.
"We've suspected many possibilities, but there's never been any enmity
and, after this, thank God for that!"  "Yes, you could well do worse
than that," Bernard told him.  He looked at Sir John again.  "This chap
ought to be got away before he pulls round.  We'd be better out of the
way, too it's the sort of situation where a man can't forgive
witnesses.  Send in a couple of his men to collect him.  Tell them he's
had an attack of some kind."

Five minutes later they stood on the steps and watched the Chief
Constable driven off, still only semi-conscious.  ' "All right when his
glands are in balance"!"  murmured Bernard.  "They seem better at
physiology than at psychology.  They've broken that man, for the rest
of his life."

Chapter 19

Impasse

After a couple of strong whiskies Bernard began to lose some of the
shaken look with which he had returned to Kyle Manor.  When he had
given us an account of the Chief Constable's disastrous interview at
The Grange, he went on: "You know, one of the few childlike things
about the Children, it strikes me, is their inability to judge their
own strength.  Except, perhaps for the corralling of the village,
everything they have done has been overdone.  What might be excusable
in intent they contrive to make unforgivable in practice.  They wanted
to scare Sir John in order to convince him that it would be unwise to
interfere with them; but they did not do simply what was necessary for
that; they went so much farther that they brought the poor man to a
state of grovelling fear near the brink of imbecility.  They induced a
degree of personal degradation that was sickening, and utterly
unpardonable."

Zellaby asked, in his mild, reasonable tone: "Are we not perhaps
looking at this from too narrow an angle?  You, Colonel, say
"unpardonable", which assumes that they expect to be pardoned.  But why
should they?  Do we concern ourselves whether jackals or wolves will
pardon us for shooting them?  We do not.  We are concerned only to make
them innocuous.  "In point of fact our ascendancy has been so complete
that we are rarely called upon to kill wolves nowadays in fact, most of
us have quite forgotten what it means to have to fight in a personal
way against another species.  But, when the need arises we have no
compunction in fully supporting those who slay the threat whether it is
from wolves, insects, bacteria, or filterable viruses; we give no
quarter, and certainly expect no pardon.  "The situation vis-vis the
Children would seem to be that we have not grasped that they represent
a danger to our species, while they are in no doubt that we are a
danger to theirs.  And they intend to survive.  We might do well to
remind ourselves what that intention implies.  We can watch it any day
in a garden; it is a fight that goes perpetually, bitterly, lawlessly,
without trace of mercy or compassion ...."

His manner was quiet, but there was no doubt that his intention was
pointed; and yet, somehow, as so often with Zellaby, the gap between
theory and practical circumstances seemed too inadequately bridged to
carry conviction.

Presently Bernard said: "Surely this is quite a change of front by the
Children.  They've exerted persuasion and pressure from time to time,
but, apart from a few early incidents, almost no violence.  Now we have
this outbreak.  Can you point to the start of it, or has it been
working up?"  "Decidedly," said Zellaby.  "There was no sign whatever
of anything in this category before the matter of Jimmy Pawle and his
car."  "And that was let me see last Wednesday, the third of July.  I
wonder he was beginning, but broke off as the gong called us to
luncheon.

*

"My experience, hitherto, of interplanetary invasion," said Zellaby, as
he concocted his own particular taste in salad-dressing, 'has been
vicarious indeed, one might even say hypothetically vicarious, or do I
mean vicariously hypothetical ?"  He pondered that a moment, and
resumed: "At any rate it has been quite extensive.  Yet, oddly enough,
I cannot recall a single account of one that is of the least help in
our present dilemma.  They were, almost without exception, unpleasant;
but, also, they were almost always forthright, rather than insidious.
"Take H. G. Wells' Martians, for instance.  As the original exponents
of the death-ray they were formidable, but their behaviour was quite
conventional: they simply conducted a straightforward campaign with
this weapon which outclassed anything that could be brought against it.
But at least we could try to fight back, whereas in this case ' "Not
cayenne, dear," said his wife.  "Not what?"  "Not cayenne.  Hiccups,"
Angela reminded him.  "So it does.  Where is the sugar?"  "By your left
hand, dear."  "Oh, yes .... where was I?"  "With H. G."s Martians," I
told him.  "Of course.  Well, there you have the prototype of
innumerable invasions.  A super-weapon which man fights valiantly with
his own puny armoury until he is saved by one of several possible kinds
of bell.  Naturally, in America it is all rather bigger and better.
Something descends, and something comes out of it.  Within ten minutes,
owing no doubt to the excellent communications in that country, there
is a coast-to-coast panic, and all highways out of all cities are
crammed, in all lanes, by the fleeing populace except in Washington.
There, by contrast, enormous crowds stretching as far as the eye can
reach, stand grave and silent, white-faced but trusting, with their
eyes upon the White House, while somewhere in the Catskills a hitherto
ignored professor and his daughter, with their rugged young assistant
strive like demented midwives to assist the birth of the dea ex
laboritoria which will save the world at the last moment, minus one.
"Over here, one feels, the report of such an invasion would be received
in at least some quarters with a tinge of preliminary scepticism, but
we must allow the Americans to know their own people best.  "Yet,
overall, what do we have?  Just another war.  The motivations are
simplified, the armaments complicated, but the pattern is the same,
and, as a result, not one of the prognostications, speculations, or
extrapolations turns out to be of the least use to us when the thing
actually happens.  It really does seem a pity when one thinks of all
the cerebration the prognosticators have spent on it, doesn't it?"

He busied himself with eating his salad.  "It is still one of my
problems to know when you are to be taken literally, and when
metaphorically," I told him.  "This time you can take him literally,
with assurance," Bernard put in.

Zellaby cocked a sideways look at him.  "Just like that?  Not even
reflex opposition?"  he inquired.  "Tell me, Colonel, how long have you
accepted this invasion as a fact?"  "For about eight years," Bernard
told him.  "And you?"  "About the same time perhaps a little before.  I
did not like it, I do not like it, I am probably going to like it even
less.  But I had to accept it.  The old Holmes axiom, you know: "When
you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however
improbable, must be the truth."  I had not known, however, that that
was recognized in official circles.  What did you decide to do about
it?"  "Well, we did our best to preserve their isolation here, and to
see to their education."  "And a fine, helpful thing that turns out to
have been, if I may say so.  Why?"  "Just a minute," I put in, "I'm in
between the literal and figurative again.  You are both of you
seriously accepting as a fact that these Children are a kind of
invaders?  That they do originate somewhere outside the Earth?"  "See?"
said Zellaby.  "No coast-to-coast panic.  Just scepticism.  I told
you."  "We are," Bernard told me.  "It is the only hypothesis that my
department has not been forced to abandon though, of course, there are
some who still won't accept it, even though we had the help of a little
more evidence than Mr.  Zellaby did."  "Ah!"  said Zellaby, brought to
sudden attention, with a forkful of greenstuff in mid-air.  "Are we
getting closer to the mysterious MI interest in us?"  "There's no
longer any reason now, I think, why it should not have a restricted
circulation," Bernard admitted.  "I know that in the early stages you
did quite a little inquiring into our interest on your own account,
Zellaby, but I don't believe you ever discovered the clue."  "Which
was?"  inquired Zellaby.  "Simply that Midwich was not the only, nor
even the first place to have a Dayout.  Also, that during the three
weeks around that time there was a marked rise in the radar detection
of unidentified flying objects."  "Well, I'm damned!"  said Zellaby.
"Oh, vanity, vanity ....!  There are other groups of Children beside
ours, then?  Where?"

But Bernard was not to be hurried, he continued deliberately: "One
Dayout took place at a small township in the Northern Territory of
Australia.  Something apparently went badly wrong there.  There were
thirty-three pregnancies, but for some reason the Children all died;
most of them a few hours after birth, the eldest at a week old.  "There
was another Dayout at an Eskimo settlement on Victoria Island, north of
Canada.  The inhabitants are cagey about what happened there, but it is
believed that they were so outraged, or perhaps alarmed, at the arrival
of babies so unlike their own kind that they exposed them almost at
once.  At any rate, none survived.  And that, by the way, taken in
conjunction with the time of the Midwich babies' return here, suggests
that the power of duress does not develop until they are a week or two
old, and that they may be truly individuals until then.  Still another
Dayout '

Zellaby held up his hand.  "Let me guess.  There was one behind the
Iron Curtain."  "There were two known ones behind the Curtain," Bernard
corrected him.  "One of them was in the Irkutsk region, near the border
of Outer Mongolia a very grim affair.  It was assumed that the women
had been lying with devils, and they perished, as well as the Children.
The other was right away to the east, a place called Gizhinsk, in the
mountains north-east of Okhotsk.  There may have been others that we
didn't hear of.  It's pretty certain it happened in some places in
South America and in Africa, too, but it's difficult to check.  The
inhabitants tend to be secretive.  It's even possible that an isolated
village would miss a day and not know it in which case the babies would
be even more of a puzzle.  In most of the instances we do know of, the
babies were regarded as freaks, and were killed, but we suspect that in
some they may have been hidden away."  "But not, I take it, in
Gizhinsk?"  put in Zellaby.

Bernard looked at him with a small twitch to the corner of his mouth.
"You don't miss much, do you, Zellaby?  You're right not in Gizhinsk.
The Dayout there took place a week before the Midwich one.  We had the
report of it three or four days later.  It worried the Russians quite a
lot.  That was at least some consolation to us when it happened here;
we knew that they couldn't have been responsible.  They, presumably, in
due course found out about Midwich, and were also relieved.  Meanwhile,
our agent kept an eye on Gizhinsk, and in due course reported the
curious fact that every woman there was simultaneously pregnant.  We
were a little slow in appreciating any significance in that it sounded
like useless, if peculiar, little-tattle but presently we discovered
the state of affairs in Midwich, and began to take more interest.  Once
the babies were born the situation was easier for the Russians than for
us; they practically sealed off Gizhinsk a place about twice the size
of Midwich and our information from there virtually ceased.  We could
not exactly seal off Midwich, so we had to work differently, and, in
the circumstances, I don't think we did too badly."

Zellaby nodded.  "I see.  The War Office view being that it did not
know quite what we had here, or what the Russians had there.  But if it
should turn out that the Russians had a flock of potential geniuses, it
would be useful for us to have a similar flock to put up against them?"
"More or less that.  It was quite quickly clear that they were
something unusual."  "I ought to have seen that," said Zellaby.  He
shook his head sadly.  "It simply never crossed my mind that we in
Midwich were not unique.  It does, however, now cross my mind that
something must have happened to cause you to admit it.  I don't quite
see why the events here should justify that, so it probably happened
somewhere else, say in Gizhinsk?  Has there been a new development
there that our Children are likely to display shortly?"

Bernard put his knife and fork neatly together on his plate, regarded
them for a moment, and then looked up.  "The Far-East Army," he said
slowly, 'has recently been equipped with a new medium-type atomic
cannon, believed to have a range of between fifty and sixty miles. Last
week they carried out the first live tests with it.  The town of
Gizhinsk no longer exists ...."

We stared at him.  With a horrified expression, Angela leant forward.
"You mean everybody there?"  she said incredulously.

Bernard nodded.  "Everybody.  The entire place.  No one there could
have been warned without the Children getting to know of it.  Besides,
the way it was done it could be officially attributed to an error in
calculation or, possibly to sabotage."

He paused again.  "Officially," he repeated, 'and for home and general
consumption.  We have, however, received a carefully channelled
observation from Russian sources.  It is rather guarded on details and
particulars, but there is no doubt that it refers to Gizhinsk, and was
probably released simultaneously with the action taken there.  It
doesn't refer directly to Midwich, either, but what it does do, is to
put out a most forcefully expressed warning.  After a description which
fits the Children exactly, it speaks of them as groups which present
not just a national danger, wherever they exist, but a racial danger of
a most urgent kind.  It calls upon all governments everywhere to
"neutralize" any such known groups with the least possible delay.  It
does this most emphatically, with almost a note of panic, at times.  It
insists, over and over again, even with a touch of pleading, that this
should be done swiftly, not just for the sake of nations, or of
continents, but because these Children are a threat to the whole human
race."

Zellaby went on tracing the damask pattern on the table cloth for some
time before he looked up.  Then he said: "And MI's reaction to this? To
wonder what fast one the Russians were trying to pull this time, I
suppose?"  And he returned to doodling on the damask.  "Most of us, yes
some of us, no," admitted Bernard.

Presently Zellaby looked up again.  "They dealt with Gizhinsk last
week, you say.  Which day?"  "Tuesday, the second of July," Bernard
told him.

Zellaby nodded several times, slowly.  "Interesting," he said.  "But
how, I wonder, did ours know ....?"

*

Soon after luncheon, Bernard announced that he was going up to The
Grange again.  "I didn't have a chance to talk to Torrance while Sir
John was there and after that, well, we both needed a bit of a break."
"I suppose you can't give us any idea of what you intend to do about
the Children?"  Angela asked.

He shook his head.  "If I had any ideas I suppose they'd have to be
official secrets.  As it is, I'm going to see whether Torrance, from
his knowledge of them, can make any suggestions.  I hope to be back in
an hour or so," he added, as he left us.

Emerging from the front door, he made automatically towards his car,
and then as he reached for the handle, changed his mind.  A little
exercise, he decided, would freshen him up, and he set off briskly down
the drive, on foot.

Just outside the gate a small lady in a blue tweed suit looked at him,
hesitated, and then advanced to meet him.  Her face went a little pink,
but she pushed resolutely on.  Bernard raised his hat.  "You won't know
me.  I am Miss Lamb, but of course we all know who you are, Colonel
Westcott."

Bernard acknowledged the introduction with a small bow, wondering how
much 'we all' (which presumably comprehended the whole of Midwich) knew
about him, and for how long they had known it.  He asked what he could
do for her.  "It's about the Children, Colonel.  What is going to be
done?"

He told her, honestly enough, that no decision had yet been made.  She
listened, her eyes intently on his face, her gloved hands clasped
together.  "It won't be anything severe, will it?"  she asked.  "Oh, I
know last night was dreadful, but it wasn't their fault.  They don't
really understand yet.  They're so very young you see.  I know they
look twice their age, but even that's not very old, is it?  They didn't
really mean the harm they did.  They were frightened.  Wouldn't any of
us be frightened if a crowd came to our house wanting to burn it down?
Of course we should.  We should have a right to defend ourselves, and
nobody could blame us.  Why, if the villagers came to my house like
that I should defend it with whatever I could find perhaps an axe."

Bernard doubted it.  The picture of this small lady setting about a
crowd with an axe was one that did not easily come into focus.  "It was
a very drastic remedy they took," he reminded her, gently.  "I know.
But when you are young and frightened it is very easy to be more
violent than you mean to be.  I know when I was a child there were
injustices which positively made me burn inside.  If I had the strength
to do what I wanted to do it would have been dreadful, really dreadful,
I assure you."  "Unfortunately," he pointed out, 'the Children do have
that strength, and you must agree that they can't be allowed to use
it."  "No," she said.  "But they won't when they're old enough to
understand.  I'm sure they won't.  People are saying they must be sent
away.  But you won't do that, will you?  They're so young.  I know
they're wilful, but they need us.  They aren't wicked.  It's just that
lately they have been frightened.  They weren't like this before.  If
they can stay here we can teach them love and gentleness, show them
that people don't really mean them any harm ...."

She looked up into his face, her hands pressed anxiously together, her
eyes pleading, with tears not far behind them.

Bernard looked back at her unhappily, marvelling at the devotion that
was able to regard six deaths and a number of serious injuries as a
kind of youthful peccadillo.  He could almost see in her mind the
adored slight figure with golden eyes which filled all her view.  She
would never blame, never cease to adore, never understand .... There
had been just one wonderful, miraculous thing in all her life .... His
heart ached for Miss Lamb .... He could only explain that the decision
did not lie in his hands, assure her, trying not to raise any false
hopes, that what she told him would be included in his report; and then
detach himself as gently as possible to go on his way, conscious of her
anxious, reproachful eyes at his back.

The village, as he passed through it, was wearing a sparse appearance
and a subdued air.  There must, he imagined, be strong feelings
concerning the corralling measure, but the few people about, except for
one or two chatting pairs, had a rather noticeable air of minding their
own business.  A single policeman on patrol round the Green was clearly
bored with his job.  Lesson One, from the Children that there was
danger in numbers appeared to have been understood.  An efficient step
in dictatorship: no wonder the Russians had not cared for the look of
things at Gizhinsk .... Twenty yards up Hickham Lane he came upon two
of the Children.  They were sitting on the roadside bank, staring
upward and westward with such concentration that they did not notice
his approach.

Bernard stopped, and turned his head to follow their line of sight,
becoming aware at the same time of the sound of jet engines.  The
aircraft was easy to spot, a silver shape against the blue summer sky,
approaching at about five thousand feet.  Just as he found it, black
dots appeared beneath it.  White parachutes opened in quick succession,
five of them, and began the long float down.  The aircraft flew
steadily on.

He glanced back at the Children just in time to see them exchange an
unmistakable smile of satisfaction.  He looked up again at the aircraft
serenely pursuing its way, and at the five, gently sinking, white blobs
behind it.  His knowledge of aircraft was slight, but he was fairly
certain that he was looking at a Carey light long-range bomber that
normally carried a complement of five.  He looked thoughtfully at the
two Children again, and at the same moment they noticed him.

The three of them studied one another while the bomber droned on, right
overhead now.  "That," Bernard observed, 'was a very expensive machine.
Someone is going to be very annoyed about losing it."  "It's a warning.
But they'll probably have to lose several more before they believe it,"
said the boy.  "Probably.  Yours is an unusual accomplishment," he
paused, still studying them.  "You don't care for the idea of aircraft
flying over you, is that it?"  "Yes," agreed the boy.

Bernard nodded.  "I can understand that.  But, tell me, why do you
always make your warnings so severe why do you always carry them a
stage further than necessary?  Couldn't you simply have turned him
back?"  "We could have made him crash," said the girl.  "I suppose so.
We must be grateful that you didn't, I'm sure.  But it would have been
no less effective to turn him back, wouldn't it?  I don't see why you
have to be so drastic."  "It makes more of an impression.  We should
have to turn a lot of aircraft back before anyone would believe weeeere
doing it.  But if they lose an aircraft every time they come this way
they'll take notice," the boy told him.  "I see.  The same argument
applies to last night, I suppose.  If you had just sent the crowd away,
it would not have been warning enough," Bernard suggested.  "Do you
think it would?"  asked the boy.  "It seems to me to depend on how it
was done.  Surely there was no need to make them fight one another,
murderously?  I mean, isn't it, to put it on its most practical level,
politically unsound always to take that extra step that simply
increases anger and hatred?"  "Fear, too," the boy pointed out.  "Oh,
you want to instil fear, do you?  Why?"  inquired Bernard.  "Only to
make you leave us alone," said the boy.  "It is a means; not an end." 
His golden eyes cere turned towards Bernard, with a steady, earnest
look. "Sooner or later, you will try to kill us.  However wee behave
you will want to wipe us out.  Our position can be made stronger only
if wee take the initiative."

The boy spoke quite calmly, but somehow the words pierced right through
the front that Bernard had adopted.

In one startling flash he was hearing an adult, seeing a
sixteen-year-old, knowing that it was a nine-year-old who spoke.  "For
a moment," he said later, 'it bowled me right over.  I was as near
panic as I have ever been.  The child-adult combination seemed to be
full of a terrifying significance that knocked away all the props from
the right order of things .....I know it seems a small thing now; but
at the time it hit me like a revelation, and, by God, it frightened me
.....I suddenly saw them double: individually, still children;
collectively, adult; talking to me on my own level ...."

It took Bernard a few moments to pull himself together.  As he did so,
he recalled the scene with the Chief Constable which had been alarming,
too, but in another, much more concrete, way, and he looked at the boy
more closely.  "Are you Eric?"  he asked him.  "No," said the boy.
"Sometimes I am Joseph.  But now I am all of us.  You needn't be afraid
of us; wee want to talk to you."

Bernard had himself under control again.  He deliberately sat down on
the bank beside them, and forced a reasonable tone.  "Wanting to kill
you seems to me a very large assumption," he said.  "Naturally, if you
go on doing the kind of things you have been doing lately wee shall
hate you, and wee shall take revenge or perhaps one should say, wee
shall have to protect ourselves from you.  But if you don't, well, wee
can see.  Do you have such a great hatred of us?  If you don't, then
surely some kind of modus vi vendi can be managed ....?"

He looked at the boy, still with a faint hope that he ought to have
spoken more as one would to a child.  The boy finally dispelled any
illusion about that.  He shook his head, and said: "You're putting this
on the wrong level.  It isn't a matter of hates, or likes.  They make
no difference.  Nor is it something that can be arranged by discussion.
It is a biological obligation.  You cannot afford not to kill us, for
if you don't, you are finished ...."  He paused to give that weight,
and then went on: "There is a political obligation, but that takes a
more immediate view, on a more conscious level.  Already, some of your
politicians who know about us must be wondering whether something like
the Russian solution could not be managed here."  "Oh, so you do know
about them?"  "Yes, of course.  As long as the Children of Gizhinsk
were alive wee did not need to look after ourselves, but when they
died, two things happened: one was that the balance was destroyed, and
the other was the realization that the Russians would not have
destroyed the balance unless they were quite sure that a colony of the
Children was more of a liability than a possible asset.  "The
biological obligation will not be denied.  The Russians fulfilled it
from political motives, as, no doubt, you will try to do.  The Eskimos
did it by primitive instinct.  But the result is the same.  "For you,
however, it will be more difficult.  To the Russians, once they had
decided that the Children at Gizhinsk were not going to be useful, as
they had hoped, the proper course was not in question.  In Russia, the
individual exists to serve the State; if he puts self above State, he
is a traitor, and it is the duty of the community to protect itself
from traitors whether they are individuals, or groups.  In this case,
then, biological duty and political duty coincided.  And if it were
inevitable that a number of innocently involved persons should perish
too, well, that could not be helped; it was their duty to die, if
necessary to serve the State.  "But for you, the issue is less clear.
Not only has your will to survive been much more deeply submerged by
convention, but you have the inconvenience here of the idea that the
State exists to serve the individuals who compose it.  Therefore your
consciences will be troubled by the thought that we have "rights". 
"Our first moment of real danger has passed.  It occurred when you
first heard of the Russian action against the Children.  A decisive man
might have arranged a quick "accident" here.  It has suited you to keep
us hidden away here, and it suited us to be hidden, so it might have
been cunningly managed without too much trouble.  Now, however, it
cannot. Already, the people in Trayne hospital will have talked about
us; in fact, after last night there must be talk and rumours spreading
all round.  The chance of making any convincing "accident" has gone. 
So what are you going to do to liquidate us?"

Bernard shook his head.  "Look," he said, 'suppose we consider this
thing from a more civilized standpoint after all, this is a civilized
country, and famous for its ability to find compromises.  I'm not
convinced by the sweeping way you assume there can be no agreement.
History has shown us to be more tolerant of minorities than most."

It was the girl who answered this time: "This is not a civilized
matter," she said, 'it is a very primitive matter.  If we exist, we
shall dominate you that is clear and inevitable.  Will you agree to be
superseded, and start on the way to extinction without a struggle?  I
do not think you are decadent enough for that.  And then, politically,
the question is: Can any State, however tolerant, afford to harbour an
increasingly powerful minority which it has no power to control?
Obviously the answer is again, no.  "So what will you do?  We are very
likely safe for a time while you talk about it.  The more primitive of
you, your masses, will let their instincts lead them we saw the pattern
in the village last night they will want to hunt us down, and destroy
us.  Your more liberal, responsibly-minded, and religious people will
be greatly troubled over the ethical position.  Opposed to any form of
drastic action at all, you will have your true idealists and also your
sham idealists: the quite large number of people who profess ideals as
a form of premium for other-life insurance, and are content to lay up
slavery and destitution for their descendants so long as they are
enabled to produce personal copybooks of elevated views at the gate of
heaven.  "Then, too, with your Government of the Right reluctantly
driven to consider drastic action against us, your politicians of the
Left will see a chance of party capital, and possible dismissal of the
Government.  They will defend our rights as a threatened minority, and
children, at that.  Their leaders will glow with righteousness on our
behalf.  They will claim, without referendum, to be representing
justice, compassion, and the great heart of the people.  Then it will
occur to some of them that there really is a serious problem, and that
if they were to force an election there would very likely be a split
between the promoters of the party's official Warm-heart policy, and
the rank and file whose misgivings about us will make them a Cold-feet
faction; so the display of abstract righteousness, and the plugging of
well-tested, best-selling virtues will diminish."  "You don't appear to
think very highly of our institutions," Bernard put in.  The girl
shrugged.  "As a securely dominant species you could afford to lose
touch with reality, and amuse yourselves with abstractions," she
replied.  Then she went on: "While these people are wrangling, it will
come home to a lot of them that the problem of dealing with a more
advanced species than themselves is not going to be easy, and will
become less easy with procrastination.  There may be practical attempts
to deal with us.  But we have shown last night what is going to happen
to soldiers if they are sent against us.  If you send aircraft, they
will crash.  Very well then, you will think of artillery, as the
Russians did, or of guided missiles whose electronics we cannot affect.
But if you send them, you won't be able to kill only us, you will have
to kill all the people in the village as well it would take you a long
time even to contemplate such an action, and if it were carried out,
what government in this country could survive such a massacre of
innocents on the grounds of expediency?  Not only would the party that
sanctioned it be finished for good, but, if they were successful in
removing the danger, the leaders could then be safely lynched, by way
of atonement and expiation."

She stopped speaking, and the boy took up: "The details may vary, but
something of the sort will become inevitable as the threat of our
existence is more widely understood.  You might easily have a curious
epoch when both parties are fighting to keep out of office rather than
be the one that has to take action against us."  He paused, looking out
thoughtfully across the fields for some moments, then he added: "Well,
there it is.  Neither you, nor we, have wishes that count in the matter
or should one say that we both have been given the same wish to
survive?  We are all, you see, toys of the life force.  It made you
numerically strong, but mentally undeveloped; it made us mentally
strong, but physically weak: now it has set us at one another, to see
what will happen.  A cruel sport, perhaps, from both our points of
view, but a very, very old one.  Cruelty is as old as life itself.
There is some improvement: humour and compassion are the most important
of human inventions; but they are not very firmly established yet,
though promising well."  He paused, and smiled.  "A real bit of
Zellaby, that our first teacher," he put in, and then went on.  "But
the life force is a great deal stronger than they are; and it won't be
denied its blood-sports.  "However, it has seemed possible to us that
the serious stage of the combat might at least be postponed.  And that
is what we want to talk to you about ...."

Chapter 20

Ultimatum

"This," Zellaby said reprovingly, to a golden-eyed girl who was sitting
on the branch of a tree beside the path, 'this is a quite uncalled-for
circumscription of my movements.  You know perfectly well that I always
take an afternoon stroll, and that I always return for tea.  Tyranny
easily becomes a very bad habit.  Besides, you've got my wife as a
hostage."

The Child appeared to think it over, and presently pushed a large
bullseye into one cheek.  "All right, Mr.  Zellaby," she said.

Zellaby advanced a foot.  This time it passed unobstructedly over an
invisible barrier that had stopped it before.  "Thank you, my dear," he
said, with a polite inclination of his head.  "Come along, Gaylord."

We passed on into the woods, leaving the guardian of the path idly
swinging her legs, and crunching her bullseye.  "A very interesting
aspect of this affair is the demarcations between the individual and
the collective," Zellaby remarked.  "I've really made precious little
progress in determining it.  The Child's appreciation of her sweet is
indubitably individual, it could scarcely be other; but her permission
for us to go on was collective, as was the influence that stopped us.
And since the mind is collective, what about the sensations it
receives?  Are the rest of the Children vicariously enjoying her
bullseye, too?  It would appear not, yet they must be aware of it, and
perhaps of its flavour.  A similar problem arises when I show them my
films and lecture to them.  In theory, if I had two of them only as my
audience, all of them would share the experience that's the way they
learn their lessons, as I told you but in practice I always have a full
house when I go up to The Grange.  As far as I can understand it, when
I show a film they could get it from one representative of each sex,
but, presumably, in the transmission of visual sensation something is
lost, for they all very much prefer to see it with their own eyes.  It
is difficult to get them to talk about it much, but it does appear that
individual experience of a picture is more satisfactory to them as, one
must suppose, is individual experience of a bullseye.  It is a
reflection that sets off a whole train of questions."  "I can believe
that," I agreed, 'but they are post-graduate questions.  As far as I am
concerned, the basic problem of their presence here at all gives me
quite enough to be going on with."  "Oh," said Zellaby, "I don't think
there is much that's novel about that.  Our presence here at all raises
the same problem."  "I don't see that.  We evolved here but where did
the Children come from?"  "Aren't you taking a theory for an
established fact, my dear fellow?  It is widely supposed that we
evolved here, and to support that supposition it is supposed that there
once existed a creature who was the ancestor of ourselves, and of the
apes what our grandfathers used to call "the missing link".  But there
has never been any satisfactory proof that such a creature existed. 
And the missing link, why, bless my soul, the whole proposition is
riddled with missing links if that is an acceptable metaphor.  Can you
see the whole diversity of races evolving from this one link?  I can't,
however hard I try.  Nor, at a later stage, can I see a nomadic
creature segregating the strains which would give rise to such fixed
and distinctive characteristics of race.  On islands it is
understandable, but not on the great land-masses.  At first sight,
climate might have some effect until one considers the Mongolian
characteristics apparently indigenous from the equator to the North
Pole.  Think, too, of the innumerable intermediary types there would
have to be, and then of the few poor relics we have been able to find. 
Think of the number of generations we should have to go back to trace
the blacks, the whites, the reds, and the yellows to a common ancestor,
and consider that where there should be innumerable traces of this
development left by millions of evolving ancestors there is practically
nothing but a great blank. Why, we know more about the age of reptiles
than we do about the age of supposedly evolving man.  We had a complete
evolutionary tree for the horse many years ago.  If it were possible to
do the same for man we should have done it by now.  But what do we
have?  Just a few, remarkably few, isolated specimens.  Nobody knows
where, or if, they fit into an evolutionary picture because there is no
picture only supposition.  The specimens are as unattached to us as we
are to the Children ...."

For half an hour or so I listened to a discourse on the erratic and
unsatisfactory phylogeny of mankind, which Zellaby concluded with an
apology for his inadequate coverage of a subject which was not
susceptible to a condensation into half a dozen sentences, as he had
attempted.  "However," he added, 'you will have gathered that the
conventional assumption has more lacunae than substance."  "But if you
invalidate it, what then?"  I inquired.  "I don't know," Zellaby
admitted, 'but I do refuse to accept a bad theory simply on the grounds
that there is not a better, and I take the lack of evidence that ought,
if it were valid, to be plentiful, as an argument for the opposition
whatever that may be.  As a result I find the occurrence of the
Children scarcely more startling, objectively, than that of the various
other races of mankind that have apparently popped into existence fully
formed, or at least with no clear line of ancestral development."

So dissolute a conclusion seemed unlike Zellaby.  I suggested that he
probably had a theory of his own.

Zellaby shook his head.  "No," he admitted modestly.  Then he added:
"One has to speculate, of course.  Not very satisfactorily, I'm afraid,
and sometimes uncomfortably.  It is, for instance, disquieting for a
good rationalist, such as myself, to find himself wondering whether
perhaps there is not some Outside Power arranging things here.  When I
look round the world, it does sometimes seem to hold a suggestion of a
rather disorderly testing-ground.  The sort of place where someone
might let loose a new strain now and then, and see how it will make out
in our rough and tumble.  Fascinating for an inventor to watch his
creations acquitting themselves, don't you think?  To discover whether
this time he has produced a successful tearer-to-pieces, or just
another torn-to-pieces and, too, to observe the progress of the earlier
models, and see which of them have proved really competent at making
life a form of hell for others You don't think so?  Ah, well, as I told
you, the speculations tend to be uncomfortable."

I told him: "As man to man, Zellaby, not only do you talk a great deal,
but you talk a great deal of nonsense, and make some of it sound like
sense.  It is very confusing for a listener."

Zellaby looked hurt.  "My dear fellow, I always talk sense.  It is my
primary social failing.  One must distinguish between the content, and
the container.  Would you prefer me to talk with that monotonous
dogmatic intensity which our simpler-minded brethren believe, God help
them, to be a guarantee of sincerity?  Even if I should, you would
still have to evaluate the content."  "What I want to know," I said
firmly, 'is whether, having disposed of human evolution, you have any
serious hypothesis to put in its place?"  "You don't like my Inventor
speculation?  Nor do I, very much.  But at least it has the merit of
being no less improbable, and a lot more comprehensible than many
religious suggestions.  And when I say "Inventor", I don't necessarily
mean an individual, of course.  More probably a team.  It seems to me
that if a team of our own biologists and geneticists were to take a
remote island for their testing-ground they would find great interest
and instruction in observing their specimens there in ecological
conflict.  And, after all, what is a planet but an island in space? But
a speculation is, as I said, far from being a theory."

Our circuit had taken us round to the Oppley road.  As we were
approaching the village a figure, deep in thought, emerged from Hickham
Lane, and turned to walk ahead of us.  Zellaby called to him.  Bernard
came out of his abstraction.  He stopped and waited for us to catch up.
"You don't look," remarked Zellaby, 'as though Torrance has been
helpful."  "I didn't get as far as Dr.  Torrance," Bernard admitted.
"And now there seems to be little point in troubling him.  I've been
talking with a couple of your Children."  "Not with a couple of them,"
Zellaby protested gently.  "One talks with either the Composite Boy, or
the Composite Girl, or with both."  "All right.  I accept the
correction.  I have been talking with all the Children at least, I
think so, though I seemed to detect what one might call a strong
Zellaby flavour in the conversational style of both boy and girl."

Zellaby looked pleased.  "Considering we are lion and lamb, our
relations have usually been good.  It is gratifying to have had some
educational influence," he observed.  "How did you get on?"  "I don't
think "get on" quite expresses it," Bernard told him.  "I was informed,
lectured, and instructed.  And, finally, I have been charged with
bearing an ultimatum."  "Indeed and to whom?"  asked Zellaby.  "I am
really not quite sure.  Roughly, I think, to anyone who is in a
position to supply them with air transport."

Zellaby raised his brows.  "Where to?"  "They didn't say.  Somewhere, I
imagine, where they will be able to live unmolested."

He gave us a brief version of the Children's arguments.  "So it really
amounts to this," he summed up.  "In their view, their existence here
constitutes a challenge to authority which cannot be evaded for long.
They cannot be ignored, but any government that tries to deal with them
will bring immense political trouble down on itself if it is not
successful, and very little less if it is.  The Children themselves
have no wish to attack, or to be forced to defend themselves '
"Naturally," murmured Zellaby.  "Their immediate concern is to survive,
in order, eventually, to dominate."  ' therefore it is in the best
interests of all parties that they should be provided with the means of
removing themselves."  "Which would mean, game to the Children,"
Zellaby commented, and withdrew into thought.  "It sounds risky from
their point of view, I mean.  All conveniently in one aircraft," I
suggested.  "Oh, trust them to think of that.  They've considered quite
a lot of details.  There are to be several aircraft.  A squad is to be
put at their disposal to check the aircraft, and search for time-bombs,
or any such devices.  Parachutes are to be provided, some of which,
picked out by themselves, are to be tested.  There are quite a number
of similar provisos.  They've been quicker to grasp the full
implications of the Gizhinsk business than our own people here, and
they aren't leaving much scope for sharp practice."  "H'm," I said.  "I
can't say I envy you the job of pushing a proposition like that through
the red tape. What's their alternative?"

Bernard shook his head.  "There isn't one.  Perhaps ultimatum wasn't
quite the right word.  Demand would be better.  I told the Children I
could see very little hope of getting anyone to listen to me seriously.
They said they would prefer to try it that way first there'd be less
trouble all round if it could be put through quietly.  If I can't put
it across and it is pretty obvious I shall not be able to by myself
then they propose that two of them shall accompany me on a second
approach.  "After seeing what their "duress" could do to the Chief
Constable, it isn't a pleasant prospect.  I can see no reason why they
should not apply pressure at one level after another until they reach
the very top, if necessary.  What's to stop them?"  "One has, for some
time, seen this coming, as inevitably as the change of the seasons,"
Zellaby said, emerging from his reflections.  "But I did not expect it
so soon nor do I think it would have come for years yet if the Russians
had not precipitated it.  I would guess it has come earlier than the
Children themselves would wish, too.  They know they are not ready to
face it.  That is why they want to get away to some place where they
can reach maturity unmolested.  "We are presented with a moral dilemma
of some niceness.  On the one hand, it is our duty to our race and
culture to liquidate the Children, for it is clear that if we do not we
shall, at best, be completely dominated by them, and their culture,
whatever it may turn out to be, will extinguish ours.  "On the other
hand, it is our culture that gives us scruples about the ruthless
liquidation of unarmed minorities, not to mention the practical
obstacles to such a solution.  "On the oh dear, how difficult on the
third hand, to enable the Children to shift the problem they represent
to the territory of a people even more ill equipped to deal with it is
a form of evasive procrastination which lacks any moral courage at all.
"It makes one long for H. G."s straightforward Martians.  This would
seem to be one of those unfortunate situations where no solution is
morally defensible."

Bernard and I received that in silence.  Presently I felt compelled to
say: "That sounds to me the kind of masterly summing-up that has landed
philosophers in sticky situations throughout the ages."  "Oh, surely
not," Zellaby protested.  "In a quandary where every course is immoral,
there still remains the ability to act for the greatest good of the
greatest number.  Ergo, the Children ought to be eliminated at the
least possible cost, with the least possible delay.  I am sorry to have
to arrive at that conclusion.  In nine years I have grown rather fond
of them.  And, in spite of what my wife says, I think I have come as
near friendship with them as possible."

He allowed another, and longer, pause, and shook his head.  "It is the
right step," he repeated.  "But, of course, our authorities will not be
able to bring themselves to take it for which I am personally thankful
because I can see no practical course open to them which would not
involve the destruction of all of us in the village, as well."  He
stopped and looked about him at Midwich resting quietly in the
afternoon sun.  "I am getting to be an old man, and I shall not live
much longer in any case, but I have a younger wife, and a young son;
and I should like to think, too, that all this will go on as long as it
may.  No, the authorities will argue, no doubt; but if the Children
want to go, they'll go.  Humanitarianism will triumph over biological
duty is that probity, would you say?  Or is it decadence?  But so the
evil day will be put off for how long, I wonder ....?"

Back at Kyle Manor tea was ready, but after one cup Bernard rose, and
made his farewells to the Zellabys.  "I shan't learn any more by
staying longer," he said.  "The sooner I present the Children's demands
to my incredulous superiors, the sooner we shall get things moving.  I
have no doubt your arguments are right, on their plane, Mr.  Zellaby,
but I personally shall work to get the Children anywhere out of this
country, and quickly.  I have seen a number of unpleasant sights in my
life, but none that has ever been such a clear warning as the
degradation of your Chief Constable.  I'll keep you informed how it
goes, of course."

He looked at me.  "Coming with me, Richard?"

I hesitated.  Janet was still in Scotland, and not due back for a
couple of days yet.  There was nothing that needed my presence in
London, and I was finding the problem of the Midwich Children far more
fascinating than anything I was likely to encounter there.  Angela
noticed.  "Do stay if you would like to," she said.  "I think we'd both
be rather glad of some company just now."

I judged that she meant it, and accepted.  "Anyway," I added, to
Bernard.  "We don't even know that your new courier status includes a
companion.  If I were to try to come with you we'd probably find that I
am still under the ban."  "Oh, yes, that ridiculous ban," said Zellaby.
"I must talk to them seriously about that a quite absurd panic measure
on their part."

We accompanied Bernard to the door, and watched him set off down the
drive, with a wave of his hand.  "Yes.  Game to the Children, I think,"
Zellaby said again, as the car turned out into the road.  "And set, too
.... later on ....?"  He shrugged faintly, and shook his head.

Chapter 21

Zellaby of Macedon

"My dear," said Zellaby, looking along the breakfast table at his wife,
'if you happen to be going into Trayne this morning, will you get one
of those large jars of bullseyes?"

Angela switched her attention from the toaster to her husband.
"Darling," she said, though without endearment, 'in the first place, if
you recall yesterday, you will remember that there is no question of
going to Trayne.  In the second, I have no inclination to provide the
Children with sweets.  In the third, if this means that you are
proposing to go and show them films at The Grange this evening, I
strongly protest."  "The ban," said Zellaby, 'is raised.  I pointed out
to them last night that it was really rather silly and ill-considered.
Their hostages cannot make a concerted flight without word reaching
them, if only through Miss Lamb, or Miss Ogle.  Everybody is
inconvenienced to no purpose; only half, or a quarter, of the village
makes as good a shield for them as the whole of it.  And furthermore,
that I proposed to cancel my lecture on the Aegean Islands this evening
if half of them were going to be out making a nuisance of themselves on
the roads and paths."  "And they just agreed?"  asked Angela.  "Of
course.  They're not stupid, you know.  They are very susceptible to
reasoned argument."  "Well, really!  After all we've been through '
"But they are," protested Zellaby.  "When they are jittery, or
startled, they do foolish things, but don't we all?  And because they
are young they over-reach themselves, but don't all the young?  Also,
they are anxious and nervous and shouldn't we be nervous if the threat
of what happened at Gizhinsk were hanging over us?"  "Gordon," his wife
said, "I don't understand you.  The Children are responsible for the
loss of six lives.  They have killed these six people whom we knew
well, and hurt a lot more, some of them badly.  At any time the same
thing may happen to any of us.  Are you defending that?"  "Of course
not, my dear.  I am simply explaining that they can make mistakes when
they are alarmed, just as we can.  One day they will have to fight us
for their lives; they know that, and out of nervousness they made the
mistake of thinking that the time had come."  "So now all we have to do
is to say: "We're so sorry you killed six people by mistake.  Let's
forget all about it."  ' "What else do you suggest?  Would you prefer
to antagonize them?"  asked Zellaby.  "Of course not, but if the law
can't touch them as you say it can't though I really don't see what
good the law is if it can't admit what everybody knows but even if it
can't, it doesn't mean we've got to take no notice and pretend it never
happened. There are social sanctions, as well as legal ones."  "I
should' be careful, my dear.  We have just been shown that the sanction
of power can override both," Zellaby told her seriously.

Angela looked at him with a puzzled expression.  "Gordon, I don't
understand you," she repeated.  "We think alike about so many things.
We share the same principles, but now I seem to have lost you.  We
can't just ignore what has happened: it would be as bad as condoning
it."  "You and I, my dear, are using different yardsticks.  You are
judging by social rules, and finding crime.  I am considering an
elemental struggle, and finding no crime just grim, primeval danger."
The tone in which he said the last words was so different from his
usual manner that it startled both of us into staring at him.  For the
first time in my knowledge I saw another Zellaby the one whose incisive
hints of his existence made the Works more than they seemed showing
clearly through, and seeming younger than, the familiar, dilettante
spinner of words.  Then he slipped back to his usual style.  "The wise
lamb does not enrage the lion," he said.  "It placates him, plays for
time, and hopes for the best.  The Children like bullseyes, and will be
expecting them."

His eyes and Angela's held for some seconds.  I watched the puzzlement
and hurt fade out of hers, and give place to a look of trust so naked
that I was embarrassed.

Zellaby turned to me.  "I'm afraid there is some business that needs my
attention this morning, my dear fellow.  Perhaps you would care to
celebrate the lifting of our siege by escorting Angela into Trayne?"

*

When we got back to Kyle Manor, a little before lunchtime, I found
Zellaby in a canvas chair on the bricks in front of the veranda.  He
did not hear me at first, and as I looked at him I was struck by the
contrasts in him.  At breakfast there had been a glimpse of a younger,
stronger man; now he looked old and tired, older than I had ever
thought him; showing, too, something of the withdrawal of age as he sat
with the light wind stirring his silky white hair, and his gaze on
things far, far away.

Then my foot gritted on the bricks, and he changed.  The air of
lassitude left him, the vacancy went out of his eyes, and the face he
turned to me was the Zellaby countenance I had known for ten years.

I took a chair beside him, and set down the large bottle of bullseyes
on the bricks.  His eyes rested on it a moment.  "Good," he said.
"They're very fond of those.  After all, they are still children with a
small "c" too."  "Look," I said, "I don't want to be intrusive, but
well, do you think it's wise of you to go up there this evening?  After
all, one can't really put the clock back.  Things have changed.  There
is acknowledged enmity now, between them and the village, if not
between them and all of us.  They must suspect that there will be moves
against them.  Their ultimatum to Bernard isn't going to be accepted
right away, if it is at all.  You said they were nervous, well, they
must still be nervous and, therefore, still dangerous."

Zellaby shook his head.  "Not to me, my dear fellow.  I began to teach
them before the authorities took any hand in it, and I've gone on
teaching them.  I wouldn't say I understand them, but I think I know
them better than anyone else does.  The most important thing is that
they trust me ...."

He lapsed into silence, leaning back in his chair, watching the poplars
sway with the wind.  "Trust he was beginning when Angela came out with
the sherry decanter and glasses, and he broke off to ask what they were
saying about us in Trayne.

At lunch he talked less than usual, and afterwards disappeared into the
study.  A little later I saw him setting off down the drive on his
habitual afternoon walk, but as he had not invited me to join him I
made myself comfortable in a deck-chair in the garden.  He was back for
tea at which he warned me to eat well as dinner was replaced by a late
supper on the evenings that he lectured to the Children.

Angela put in, though not very hopefully: "Darling, don't you think ? I
mean, they've seen all your films.  I know you've shown them the Aegean
one twice before, at least.  Couldn't you put it off, and perhaps hire
a film that will be new to them?"  "My dear, it's a good film; it will
stand seeing more than once or twice," Zellaby explained, a little
hurt.  "Besides, I don't give the same talk every time there's always
something more to say about the Isles of Greece."

At half past six we started loading his gear into the car.  There
seemed to be a great deal of it.  Numerous cases containing projector,
resistance, amplifier, loud-speaker, a case of films, a tape-recorder
so that his words should not be lost, all of them very heavy.  By the
time we had the lot in, and a stand microphone on top, it began to look
as if he were starting on a lengthy safari rather than an evening's
talk.

Zellaby himself hovered round while we were at work, inspected, counted
everything over, including the jar of bullseyes, and finally approved.
He turned to Angela.  "I've asked Gaylord if he'll drive me up there
and help to unload the stuff," he said.  "There's nothing to worry
about." He drew her to him, and kissed her.  "Gordon she began. 
"Gordon '

Still with his left arm round her he caressed her face with his right
hand, looking into her eyes.  He shook his head, in gentle reproof.
"But, Gordon, I'm afraid of the Children now Suppose they ?"  "You
don't need to be anxious, my dear.  I know what I'm doing," he told
her.

Then he turned and got into the car, and we drove down the drive, with
Angela standing on the steps, looking after us unhappily.

*

It was not entirely without misgiving that I drove up to the front door
of The Grange.  Nothing in its appearance, however, justified alarm. It
was simply a large, rather ugly Victorian house, incongruously flanked
by the new, industrial-looking wings that had been built as
laboratories in Mr.  Crimm's time.  The lawn in front of it showed
little sign of the battle of a couple of nights before, and though a
number of the surrounding bushes had suffered, it was difficult to
believe in what had actually taken place.

We had not arrived unobserved.  Before I could open the car door to get
out, the front door of the house was pulled violently back, and a dozen
or more of the Children ran excitedly down the steps with a scattered
chorus of "Hullo, Mr.  Zellaby."  They had the rear doors open in a
moment, and two of the boys began to hand things out for the others to
carry.  Two girls dashed back up the steps with the microphone, and the
roller screen, another pounced with a cry of triumph on the jar of
bullseyes, and hurried after them.  "Hi, there," said Zellaby
anxiously, as they came to the heavier cases, 'that's delicate stuff. 
Go gently with it."

A boy grinned at him, and lifted out one of the black cases with
exaggerated care to hand to another.  There was nothing odd or
mysterious about the Children now unless it was the suggestion of
musical-comedy chorus work given by their similarity.  For the first
time since my return I was able to appreciate that the Children had 'a
small "c", too'.  Nor was there any doubt at all that Zellaby's visit
was a popular event.  I watched him as he stood watching them with a
kindly, half-wistful smile.  It was impossible to associate the
Children, as I saw them now, with danger.  I had a confused feeling
that these could not be the Children, at all; that the theories, fears,
and threats we had discussed must have to do with some other group of
Children.  It was hard indeed to credit them with the deliquium of the
vigorous Chief Constable that had shaken Bernard so badly.  All but
impossible to believe that they could have issued an ultimatum which
was being taken seriously enough to be carried to the highest levels.
"I hope there'll be a good attendance," Zellaby said, in half-question.
"Oh, yes, Mr.  Zellaby," one of the boys assured him.  "Everybody
except Wilfred, of course.  He's in the sick-room."  "Oh, yes.  How is
he?"  Zellaby asked.  "His back hurts still, but they've got all the
pellets out, and the doctor says he'll be quite all right," said the
boy.

My feeling of schism went on increasing.  I was finding it harder every
moment to believe that we had not all of us been somehow deluded by a
sweeping misunderstanding about the Children, and incredible that the
Zellaby who stood beside me could be the same Zellaby who had spoken
that morning of 'grim, primeval danger'.

The last of the cases was lifted out of the car.  I remembered that it
had been in the car already when we loaded the rest.  It was evidently
heavy, because two of the boys carried it between them.  Zellaby
watched them up the steps a little anxiously, and then turned to me.
"Thank you very much for your help," he said, as though dismissing
me.

I was disappointed.  This new aspect of the Children fascinated me; I
had decided I would like to attend his talk, and study them when they
were all relaxed, all together, and being children with a small 'c'.
Zellaby caught my expression.  "I would ask you to join us," he
explained.  "But I must confess that Angela is considerably in my
thoughts this evening.  She is anxious, you know.  She has always been
uneasy about the Children, and these last few days have upset her more
than she shows.  She would, I think, be the better for company this
evening.  I was rather hoping that you, my dear fellow It would be a
great kindness ...."  "But of course," I told him.  "How inconsiderate
of me not to have thought of it.  Of course."  What else could one
say?

He smiled, and held out his hand.  "Excellent.  I am most grateful, my
dear fellow.  I'm sure I can rely on you."

Then he turned to three or four of the Children who still hovered near,
and beamed on them.  "They'll be getting impatient," he remarked. 
"Lead on, Priscilla."  "I'm Helen, Mr.  Zellaby," she told him.  "Ah,
well. Never mind.  Come along, my dear," said Zellaby, and they went up
the steps together.

*

I got back into the car and drove off unhurriedly.  On the way through
the village I noticed that The Scythe and Stone seemed to be doing
well, and was tempted to pause there to find out how local feeling was
running now, but, with Zellaby's request in mind, I resisted, and kept
going.  In the Kyle Manor drive I turned the car round and left it
standing, ready to fetch him back later on, and went in.

In the main sitting-room Angela was sitting in front of the open
windows, with the radio playing a Haydn quartet.  She turned her head
as I came in, and at the sight of her face I was glad Zellaby had asked
me to come back.  "An enthusiastic welcome," I told her, in answer to
her unspoken question.  "For all I could tell they might apart from the
bewildering feeling that one was seeing multiple have been a crowd of
decent schoolchildren anywhere.  I've no doubt he's right when he says
they trust him."  "Perhaps," she allowed, 'but I don't trust them.  I
don't think I have, ever since the time they forced their mothers back
here.  I managed not to let it worry me much until they killed Jim
Pawle, but ever since then I've been afraid of them.  Thank goodness I
packed Michael off at once There's no telling what they might do at any
time.  Even Gordon admits that they are nervous and panicky. It's
nonsense for us to go on staying here, with our lives at the mercy of
any childish fright or temper that comes over them .... "Can you see
anybody taking Colonel Westcott's "ultimatum" seriously?  I can't. That
means that the Children will have to do something to show that they
must be listened to; they've got to convince important, hard-headed,
and thick-headed people, and goodness knows how they may decide to do
that.  After what's happened already, I'm frightened I really am They
just don't care what becomes of any of us ...."  "It wouldn't do much
good their making their demonstration here," I tried to console her. 
"They'll have to do it where it counts.  Go up to London with Bernard,
as they threatened.  If they treat a few big-wigs there as they treated
the Chief Constable '

I broke off, interrupted by a bright flash, like lightning, and a sharp
tremor that shook the house.  "What ?"  I began.  But I got no
further.

The blast that blew in through the open window almost carried me off my
feet.  The noise came, too, in a great, turbulent, shattering breaker
of sound, while the house seemed to rock about us.

The overwhelming crash was followed by a clatter and tinkle of things
falling, and then by an utter silence.

Without any conscious purpose I ran past Angela, huddled in her chair,
through the open french windows, out on to the lawn.  The sky was full
of leaves torn from the trees, and still fluttering down.  I turned,
and looked at the house.  Two great swatches of creeper had been pulled
from the wall, and hung raggedly down.  Every window in the west front
gaped blankly back at me, without a pane of glass left.  I looked the
other way again, and through and above the trees there was a white and
red glare.  I had not a moment's doubt what it meant .... Turning again
I ran back to the sitting-room, but Angela had gone, and the chair was
empty .....I called to her, but there was no answer .... I found her at
last, in Zellaby's study.  The room was littered with broken glass. One
curtain had been torn from its hangings and was draped half across the
sofa.  A part of the Zellaby family record had been swept from the
mantel-shelf and now lay shattered in the hearth.  Angela herself was
sitting in Zellaby's working chair, lying forward across his desk, with
her head on her bare arms.  She did not move nor make any sound as I
came in.

The opening of the door brought a draught through the empty
window-frames.  It caught a piece of paper lying on the desk beside
her, slid it to the edge, and sent it fluttering to the floor.

I picked it up.  A letter in Zellaby's pointed handwriting.  I did not
need to read it.  The whole thing had been clear the moment I saw the
red-white glow in the direction of The Grange, and recalled in the same
instant the heavy cases which I had supposed to contain his
recording-machine, and other gear.  Nor was the letter mine to read,
but as I put it back on the desk beside the motionless Angela, I caught
sight of a few lines in the middle: 'doctor will tell you, a matter of
a few weeks, or months, at best.  So no bitterness, my own love.  "As
to this well, we have lived so long in a garden that we have all but
forgotten the commonplaces of survival.  It was said: Si fuer is Romae,
Romani vi vito more, and quite sensibly, too.  But it is a more
fundamental expression of the same sentiment to say: If you want to
keep alive in the jungle, you must live as the jungle.  does ...."

