The Chrysalids

young as we were, we could see enough of them to make us anxious. It was Michael who put it to Anne first.

‘You can’t, Anne. For your own sake you mustn’t,’ he told her. ‘It’d be like tying yourself for life to a cripple. Do think, Anne, do really think what it is going to mean.’

She came back at him angrily.

‘I’m not a fool. Of course I’ve thought. I’ve thought more than you have. I’m a woman — I’ve a right to marry and have children. There are three of you and five of us. Are you saying that two of us must never marry? Never have any lives or homes of our own? If not, then two of us have got to marry norms. I’m in love with Alan, and I intend to marry him. You ought to be grateful. It’ll help to simplify things for the rest of you.’

“That doesn’t follow,’ Michael argued. ‘We can’t be the only ones. There must be others like us — beyond our range, somewhere. If we wait a little—’

‘Why should I wait? It might be for years, or for always. I’ve got Alan — and you want me to waste years waiting for someone who may never come — or whom I may hate if he does. You want me to give up Alan, and risk being cheated of everything. Well, I don’t intend to. I didn’t ask to be the way we are; but I’ve as much right to get what I can out of life as anyone else. It isn’t going to be easy: but do you think I’d find it easier going on like this year after year? It can’t be easy for any of us, but it isn’t going to make it any better if two of us have to give up all hope of love and affection. Three of us can marry three of you. What is going to happen to the other two then — the two who’ll be on the outside? They won’t be in any group. Do you mean they ought to be cheated out of everything?

‘It’s you who haven’t thought, Michael — or any of you. I know what I intend to do: the rest of you don’t know what you intend to do because you’re none of you in love — except David and Rosalind — and so you’ve none of you faced it.’

That was partially true as far as it went — but, if we had not faced all the problems before they arose, we were well aware of those that were constantly with us, and of those the main one was the need of dissembling, of leading all the time a suffocating half-life with our families. One of the things we looked forward to most was relief some day from that burden, and though we’d few positive ideas how it could be achieved, we could all realize that marriage to a norm would become intolerable in a very short while. Our position in our present homes was bad enough; to have to go on living intimately with some one who had no thought-shapes would be impossible. For one thing, any of us would still have more in common with the rest and be closer to them than to the norm that he or she had married. It could not be anything but a sham of a marriage when the two were separated by something wider than a different language, which had always been hidden by the one from the other. It would be misery, perpetual lack of confidence, and insecurity; there’d be the prospect of a lifetime’s guarding against slips — and we knew well enough already that occasional slips were inevitable.

Other people seem so dim, so half-perceived, compared with those whom one knows through their thought- shapes; and I don’t suppose ‘normals‘, who can never share their thoughts, can understand how we are so much more a part of one another. What comprehension can they have of ‘thinking-together’ so that two minds are able to do what one could not? And we don’t have to flounder among the shortcomings of words; it is difficult for us to falsify or pretend a thought even if we want to; on the other hand, it is almost impossible for us to misunderstand one another. What, then, could there be for any of us tied closely to a half-dumb ‘normal’ who can never at best make more than a clever guess at anyone else’s feelings or thoughts? Nothing but prolonged unhappiness and frustration — with, sooner or later, a fatal slip; or else an accumulation of small slips gradually fostering suspicion….

Anne had seen this just as well as the rest of us, but now she pretended to ignore it. She began to defy her difference by refusing to respond to us, though whether she shut her mind off altogether, or continued to listen without taking part we could not tell. We suspected the former as being more in character, but, being unsure, we were not even able to discuss among ourselves what course, if any, we ought to take. Possibly there was no active course. I myself could think of none. Rosalind; too, was at a loss.

Rosalind had grown into a tall, slim young woman, now. She was handsome, with a face you could not help watching; she was attractive, too, in the way she moved and carried herself. Several of the younger men had felt the attraction, and gravitated towards her. She was civil to them, but no more. She was competent, decisive, self- reliant; perhaps she intimidated them, for before long they drifted their attentions elsewhere. She would not be entangled with any of them. Very likely it was for that reason that she was more shocked than any of us by what Anne proposed to do.

We used to meet, discreetly and not dangerously often. No one but the others, I think, ever suspected anything between us. We had to make love in a snatched, unhappy way when we did meet, wondering miserably whether there would ever be a time when we should not have to hide ourselves. And somehow the business of Anne made us more wretched still. Marriage to a norm, even the kindest and best of them, was unthinkable for both of us.

The only other person I could turn to for advice was Uncle Axel. He knew, as did everyone else, about the forthcoming marriage, but it was news to him that Anne was one of us, and he received it lugubriously. After he had turned it over in his mind, he shook his head.

‘No. It won’t do, Davie. You’re right there. I’ve been seeing these last five or six years how it wouldn’t do — but I’ve just been hoping that maybe it’d never come to it. I reckon you’re all up against a wall, or you’d not be telling me now?’

I nodded. ‘She wouldn’t listen to us,’ I told him. ‘Now she’s gone further. She won’t respond at all. She says that’s over. She never wanted to be different from normals, now she wants to be as like them as she can. It was the first real row we’ve ever had. She ended up by telling us she hated all of us, and the very idea of us — at least, that’s what she tried to tell us, but it’s not actually that. It’s really that she wants Alan so badly that she’s determined not to let anything stop her from having him. I — I never knew before that anybody could want anybody else quite like that. She’s so fierce and blind about it that she simply doesn’t care what may happen later. I don’t see what we can do.’

‘You don’t think that perhaps she can make herself live like a norm — cut out the other altogether? It’d be too difficult?’ Uncle Axel asked.

‘We’ve thought about that, of course,’ I told him. ‘She can refuse to respond. She’s doing that now, like somebody refusing to talk — but to go on with it…. It’d be like taking a vow of silence for the rest of her life. I mean, she can’t just make herself forget, and become a norm. We can’t believe that’s possible. Michael told her it’d be like pretending to have only one arm because the person one wants to marry has only one arm. It wouldn’t be any good — and you couldn’t keep it up, either.’

Uncle Axel pondered for a bit.

‘You’re convinced she’s crazy about this Alan — quite beyond reason, I mean?’ he asked.

‘She’s not like herself at all. She doesn’t think properly any more,’ I told him.’ Before she stopped responding her thought-shapes were all queer with it.’

Uncle Axel shook his head disapprovingly again. ‘Women like to think they’re in love when they want to marry; they feel it’s a justification which helps their self-respect,’ he observed. ‘No harm in that; most of them are going to need all the illusions they can keep up, anyway. But a woman who is in love is a different proposition. She lives in a world where all the old perspectives have altered. She is blinkered, single- purposed, undependable in other matters. She will sacrifice anything, including herself, to one loyalty. For her, that is quite logical; for everyone else it looks not quite sane; socially it is dangerous. And when there is also a feeling of guilt to be overcome, and, maybe, expiated, it is quite certainly dangerous for someone—’ He broke off and reflected in silence awhile. Then he added, ‘It is too dangerous, Davie. Remorse… abnegation… self-sacrifice… the desire for purification — all pressing upon her. The sense of burden, the need for help, for someone to share the burden…. Sooner or later, I’m afraid, Davie. Sooner or later…’

I thought so, too.

‘But what can we do?’ I repeated, miserably.

He turned steady, serious eyes on me.

‘How much are you justified in doing? One of you is set on a course which is going to endanger the lives of all eight. Not altogether knowingly, perhaps, but none the less seriously, for all that. Even if she does intend to be loyal to you, she is deliberately risking you all for her own ends — just a few words in her sleep would be enough. Does she have a moral right to create a constant threat hanging over seven heads just because she wants to live with this man?’