John Wyndham The Chrysalids

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.'The machine,' she told us, 'uses fuel.The more weight it has tocarry, and the faster it travels, the more of this fuel it uses, and now wehave only just enough of it left to get us back, if we go carefully.If wewere to go to Waknuk and make another landing and take-off there, and try tocarry four of you, as well as Petra, we should use up all our fuel before wecould reach home.That would mean that we should fall into the sea, and drown.Three of you from here we can just manage with safety; four, and the extralanding, we can't.'There was a pause while we appreciated the situation.She had madeit clear enough, and she sat back, a motionless figure in hergleaming white suit, her knees drawn up and her hands clasped roundthem, waiting sympathetically and patiently for us to accept the facts.In the pause one became aware of the uncanniness of the silence all about us.There was not a sound to be heard now.Not a movement.Even the leaves on the trees were unable to rustle.Asudden shock of realization jerked a question from Rosalind:'They're not they're not all dead? I didn't understand.I thought.''Yes,' the Sealand woman told her simply.'They're all dead.The plasticthreads contract as they dry.A man who struggles and entangles himself soonbecomes unconscious.It is more merciful than your arrows and spears.'Rosalind shivered.Perhaps I did, too.There was an un-nerving quality aboutit something quite different from the fatal issue of a man-to-man fight,or from the casualty roll of an ordinary battle.We were puzzled, too, by theSealand woman, for there was no callousness in her mind, nor any great concerneither: just a slight distaste, as if foran unavoidable, but unexceptional, necessity.She perceived our confusion, andshook her head reprovingly.' It is not pleasant to kill any creature,' she agreed, ' but topretend that one can live without doing so is self-deception.Therehas to be meat in the dish, there have to be vegetables forbidden to flower,seeds forbidden to germinate; even the cycles of microbes must be sacrificedPage 102ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.htmlfor us to continue our cycles.It is neither shameful nor shockingthat it should be so: it is simply a part of the great revolving wheel ofnatural economy.And just as we have to keep ourselves alive in these ways,so, too, we have to preserve our species against other species thatwish to destroy it or else fail in our trust.' The unhappy Fringes people were condemned through no act of their own to alife of squalor and misery there could be no future for them.As for those who condemned them well,that, too, is the way of it.There have been lords of life before, youknow.Did you ever hear of the great lizards? When the time camefor them to be superseded they had to pass away.'Sometime there will come a day when we ourselves shall have to give place toa new thing.Very certainly we shall struggle against the inevitable just asthese remnants of the Old People do.We shall try with all our strength togrind it back into the earth from which it is emerging, for treachery to one'sown species must always seem a crime.We shall force it to prove itself, andwhen it does, we shall go; as, by the same process, these are going.'In loyalty to their kind they cannot tolerate our rise; in loyalty to ourkind, we cannot tolerate their obstruction.' If the process shocks you, it is because you have not been able to stand offand, knowing what you are, see what a differ-ence in kind must mean.Yourminds are confused by your ties and your upbringing: you are stillhalf-thinking of them as the same kind as yourselves.That is why you areshocked.And that is why they have you at a disadvantage, for they are notconfused.They are alert, corporately aware of danger to their species.Theycan see quite well that if it is to survive they have not only to preserve itfrom deterioration, but they must protect it from the even more serious threatof the superior variant.' For ours a superior variant, and we are only just begin-ning.We are ableto think-together and understand is one an-other as they never could; weare beginning to understand how to assemble and apply the compositeteam-mind to a problem and where may that not take us one day? We are notshut away into individual cages from which we can reach out only withinadequate words [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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