Argosy, September 1955 — page 138: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

136 JOHN WYNDHAM Then other people came running up. Some who had followed me from the twelve-acre, some from the other side, wondering why Rosalind had run as she had. I picked Petra up to carry her home. One of the men from the field looked at me in a puzzled way: “‘ But how did you know?” he asked. ‘‘ None of us heard a thing.”’ Rosalind turned on an expression of surprise. “What, with the way she was yelling for help! You must be a deaf lot,” she remarked, disparagingly. It was confirmation enough to make them uncertain of them- selves, and stop curiosity. That night I had a dream. ‘The whole household was gathered in the yard, singing hymns as it always did when an Offence was to be expiated. My father stood in the middle, waiting for the first rays of the rising sun. Presently they glanced redly across the yard. He lifted the knife in his right hand. It glittered there, and everybody sang a little louder. ‘Then he brought it down with a sweeping motion to cut the throat of the Offence—only, this time, it was_no deviating lamb or sucking-pig that was being cleansed: the form that his left hand grasped by both ankles and held up ready for the knife was Petra’s .. . I woke up, sweating with fright. The next day I tried to send thought-shapes to Petra. I was anxious for her to know as soon as possible how important it was not to give herself away. I tried hard, but I could make no contact with her. I told the others, and they tried, too, but there was no response. Rosalind and I consulted, wondering whether we should try to warn her in ordinary words. Rosalind was against it. “It must have been panic that brought it out,’ she said. ‘“‘ If she can’t feel it now and understand, it might be dangerous to tell her about it at all. She’s only six, remember. She might easily say something to make them suspicious.”’ I had to agree with that. It isn’t easy to keep on hiding things all the time. ‘They will slip out now and then. We'd all had diffi- culties at times with the unexpected word or comment that made people’s eyebrows rise. Most of that trouble was due to Michael. School, in Waknuk, meant going to the parlour of one of several old women who taught a few children how to read and write and do a little with figures. You read parts of the Bible there, and some of Nicholson’s Repentances, but there wasn’t much more to it; when you could do that well enough, you had finished with school. But Michael’s parents wanted more than that for him, so they sent him to a school over in Kentak where he learnt a great deal more than our old ladies could teach us. Of course, he wanted the rest of us to know what he was learning. At first he wasn’t very clear, but when he’d had some practice, he got good enough to hand on everything he was being taught to the rest of us. So after a time it was difficult always to remember how much one was supposed to know. We had to watch ourselves commiclooks.comn