Argosy: The Short Story Magazine — page 132: what you’re looking at

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

~nt | ew, ee a Ee OT te SLND TIE pee Vel SPSS I pie at eat ~ - 132 JOHN WYNDHAM “* Fairly well up,” he told her. ‘“‘ Why? ” “1 think you should drop back if you can manage it,” she told him. “ Have trouble with a girth, or something. It looks as if there is a trap planned by the Fringes people, some kind of ambush. Isn’t it possible for you to drop out and then work round and join us here? ”’ - Michael considered. ‘‘ But I don’t see how that could be done. The Fringes people must be out to get us. A straggler would be ag picked off before he’d any chance to explain.” There was a pause while we tried to think of some way round the difficulty. While we were still at it, Petra chipped in, “‘ Michael, is Father there? ”’ She took him off guard. I caught his yes before his quick effort to suppress it. I looked at Petra... Rosalind moved beside me and took my hand. Her mind was full of sympathy, but mine was filled with bitterness. I could hear my father’s voice, “‘ A baby which . . . would grow to breed, and, breeding, spread pollution until all round us there would be mutants and abominations. ‘That has happened in places where the will and faith were weak, but here it shall never happen.” And then my Aunt Harriet’s words to my father, ‘‘I shall pray God to send charity into this hideous world. . .” ‘ She was right,”’ I told myself. ‘‘ The world is hideous.” Rosalind’s hand tightened on mine. ‘* No, David, no,” she said. “You mustn’t be blind—like them.” ‘‘ What am I supposed to do?-”’ I asked, looking at Petra. ‘‘ He is our father. Do I forgive him? Agree with him? Try to kill him?” Petra’s Zealand friend came in suddenly and strongly, ‘‘ Leave him—that is all. Your father is part of the old world. He thinks he is the lord of creation. Change is his enemy. He does not want life. A living creature defies evolution at its peril; for if it cannot adapt, it will be broken. He is one of the Old People. He will go the way of the dinosaurs, and find his static world among the fossils.’’ ** And you? ”’ I asked. “Us? Oh, we—and you, too—are just beginning. We are the chrysalis of the future, of a new world. We can think-together and understand one another; we can share. We don’t have to try to cramp life into cages of words; we don’t need laws that treat living forms as if they were bricks; we could never think of trying to mint ourselves and our children into equality and identity like stamped coins. We don’t try to hammer life into geometrical shapes: life is evolution, and we are part of it.” There I am brought up against that very barrier of words, for what I was receiving was an impression, a view, an attitude, but ordinary words still have to serve, however inadequately, for its permanent expression and preservation, until somebody can invent a device that records and conveys thought. Above all, the impres- j sion we were receiving was of freshness and confidence; the shaking- comiclooks.comn