Chapter 15 – Interrogation
THE ROOM IN which Jacqui was now sitting was somewhat larger than her dome, and had several orifices in the walls where tubes fed into it—mostly below the waterline but a few above. She wondered what the senior Eel would look like. Would it ('she', she reminded herself) be bigger still than Major, who was by far the largest Eel she had so far met? But the 'flume' tubes were all about the same diameter as the 'igloo' tunnel at her dome, and Major had only just squeezed through that. And Major was long and well-muscled: if the Eels had muscles. There would be no obesity permitted on this planet—if only Earthlings had followed their example!
While they waited, some food and drink was brought for Jacqui, for which she was immensely grateful: the arduous journey had made her extremely hungry and thirsty. She wondered how she could eat with her mask on, but Major signed that she could take it off: the air was now safe to breathe. The food was pink-coloured and tasted, much to her surprise, like raspberry ice-cream, although warm—and, instead of water, they had provided a greyish translucent fluid which tasted, against all expectations, just like milk. She ate her meal hungrily.
After a while Major told Jacqui to prepare herself, and a moment later there was a ripple close to one of the orifices. Was some python-like monster, twenty feet long, about to enter the room? But what emerged was a modest creature, barely four feet long, and almost black in colour, with skin which was not smooth, like the others, but slightly rough in appearance, like the skin of a shark. Its Trumpets were diminutive and wrinkled, with a few notches around the edges. Jacqui guessed that this must be an extremely aged Trumpet-Eel—how old? she wondered. She was expecting Major to perform the introductions, but instead she heard the voice in her head, just as she had in the chamber in Midwich.
"I greet you, Jacqui, and welcome you to our planet. I am the [indecipherable word] of this region of our planet. I am very pleased to have this opportunity to communicate with you."
Major took up the introduction, in words. "The word you could not understand means 'director' or 'principal' in English. I am afraid that, as with me, her name would make no impression on your mind. You are welcome to give her any name you choose."
Jacqui thought for a moment. "Let her be 'Colonel'. A rank senior to 'Major'. Or should it be 'General'? No, I'll stick to 'Colonel'. Will that do?"
"Very well. Now, have you any questions before we begin?"
That sounded ominous. What was she in for? But a thought occurred to her, and she spent a moment preparing her next question. "When the Children—the 'second-phase hosts'—appeared on my planet, in Midwich, they appeared to all have a sort of group-mind: well, actually, two group-minds, one encompassing all the boys, the other, all the girls. Each individual in the group was feeling the same thoughts, experiencing the same events, as all the others. It was almost as if there were only two individuals: one Boy and one Girl. This much Zellaby found out, before the Children were even one year old. Oh, I'm sorry, I should have explained: Zellaby was a renowned writer and philosopher who lived in Midwich at that time. Long before I was born..."
"Indeed we know all about Zellaby," put in Major. Jacqui suddenly realised her faux pas. Of course, it was Zellaby who had all but exterminated the Children...
Embarrassed, Jacqui continued: "Anyway, I have noticed that you people seem to be more individual. You do not apparently all experience the same thoughts, and you have to consult with one another. Indeed, the fact that I have been brought here clearly indicates that Colonel—" and she nodded towards the older Eel, "—that Colonel wished to see me in person. Surely she would have 'seen' me at the same time as any one of your kind 'saw' me?"
"You have missed the point," replied Major. "All the Boys in your colony were a single clone, all sharing precisely the same genes, and all the Girls likewise a single clone. Within a clone, indeed we experience group minds. But not across different clones. Zellaby found that out: the Boys did not share there mind with the Girls...
"Here, most of our kin are not clones of one another. There is true genetic variation. Yes, the Eels who are returned to our planet after a successful Seeding, are true clones: one male and one female. But after arriving at our planet they are dispersed to widely-separated regions of our planet. We do not want to in-breed, when the next Seeding is to be initiated! And over a certain distance, the group-mind breaks down. I have many clones of myself in other parts of the planet, but I no longer share my mind with them. And Colonel, here, has no clones at all. All of her 'sisters' have long since died: she is the only one left alive."
There was a long silence whilst Jacqui took all this in. She was beginning to be overwhelmed by all she had learnt, and was beginning to suffer from 'information overload'. Perhaps she should stop asking questions for a while.
"Please tell me what you wish to know from me," she ventured.
"Very good," replied Major. There was a short pause. "Firstly, please tell us as much as you can about the antagonism that appeared to arise, between the second-phase hosts—the Children—and the humans. We recognise that you were not a first-hand witness, and that all those who experienced the hostility are dead."
Almost all, thought Jacqui, remembering her meeting with old Mary Histon in Stouch, who had actually been one of the Mothers—first-phase hosts. But of course she must be long dead now. She wished she had Grandad's laptop to refer to, but she had memorised the account pretty well.
"It only began in quite a mild way, with the Children, still as infants, compelling their mothers to bring them Midwich: those who had taken them elsewhere, that is. A nuisance, but hardly an assault. Then, there were reports of isolated incidents. The husband of one Mother struck her Child in the face, and was then forced to beat himself about the face. And another Mother accidentally pricked her Child with a pin, and was forced to prick herself with the same pin. There were also some attacks on animals: a dog which had bitten a Child was made to kill itself, for instance. It was recognised by now—at least by some people—that the Children had a duress power.
"But it all came to a head when a young man driving a car accidentally ran into one of the Children, by now about eight or nine years old. He was forced to crash his car into a wall, killing himself. And then his brother tried to shoot the children, and ended up shooting himself. What happened next was almost unbelievable.
"The men of the village—mostly men—assembled together and marched up towards the Grange, the place where the Children were housed, intending to set it on fire. But before they reached it, they fell to fighting viciously amongst themselves, and several people were killed. And when the Chief Constable—a sort of 'director'—of the district went to investigate, they did something to his mind to turn him into a gibbering imbecile.
"The Children then revealed that the reason for this step-up in aggression was partly due to their knowledge that another colony, in an area we call Russia, had just been destroyed. By the humans there.
"Finally, the Children delivered an ultimatum. They wished some sort of secluded habitat to be prepared for them, where they could live on undisturbed, until they could achieve their ultimate aim. To take over the Earth, eliminate the human race, and claim it for themselves. That was what they told Bernard—my Grandfather's friend—my friend."
Jacqui fell silent, and there was a long pause. She wondered whether the Eels were feeling any emotion: of course she could read no expression in their blank Trumpet-features. After a while Major spoke.
"This is a shocking report you have just delivered, Jacqui. None of this was supposed to happen. None, that is, apart from the bringing together of the colony all in one location, so that their group-minds could be assembled. Then it was planned that they would be sequestered away from other beings on the host-planet—as was indeed done in Midwich—until such time as they became mature and were able to breed. To breed beings of our kind, that is. Then, after breeding, the second-phase hosts would all die, and their progeny would be collected and brought back to our planet. That is what normally happens. What your friend Bernard was told was all lies. We do not have a policy of 'colonising' other planets.
"We are beginning to suspect that something went wrong in the first stage of cloning—when the genetic material of our kind was modified so that the first-phase hosts would bring forth young resembling their kind. But neither Colonel nor I are experts in that field. We must bring another into the discussion. So you will have to wait, I'm afraid, because we do not have one available to join us at present.
"Meanwhile, you may remain in this room for the time being. A better habitat, more suited to your needs, will be prepared, elsewhere in this complex. Our robots will bring you the things you need. One thing I must warn you: when the door to this room is opened, you must wear your mask. Do you see that red spot on the wall there?" gesturing with his Trumpet. "When it turns green, you must wear the mask. You will also hear a sound."
'Green for danger, Red for safety'. Well, Jacqui would have to get used to that! Major and Colonel took their leave, and left Jacqui alone with her bewildering confusion of thoughts. After a while robots appeared and brought her the things she would need: a bed and a commode: also what looked like a table and chair, on a platform which would keep her feet out of the water. She assumed that these newcomers were robots: they closely resembled the Trumpet-Eels, but were pure white in colour and had bunches of tentacles surrounding their 'Trumpets': grasping appendages, she realised. She thought they looked disgusting—a bit creepy even—and she was relieved when they left her in peace.
In about a day or so, she was visited once more, this time by three Trumpet-Eels. The newcomer was similar to Major, but a lot shorter, and with smaller Trumpets. He or she (Major did not announce its sex) was presented as an expert in the cloning and genetic modification procedures, and Jacqui promptly dubbed it 'Doc'. She was tempted to call him or her 'Monsanto'—but she desisted. It would only bring trouble should they suspect!
Once again Major acted as interpreter.
"Our work with genetic modification is far more advanced than that practised on your planet," began Doc, via Major. "We aim to control not only the physical characteristics of the variants we create, but also the mental and psychological features. It seems that we may have unwittingly inserted unwelcome personalities into the clones."
"How do you get the information you need in order to construct human lookalikes?" asked Jacqui, struck by a sudden thought.
"Our spaceships spend some time at a distance from the host planet, closely studying a sample from the species we intend to implant. We endeavour to learn as much as we can about their physical form and behaviour, during that time—so as to enable us to prepare an exact lookalike. It is not always an easy task."
"Did you say a sample? How do you choose that sample?" asked Jacqui. A nasty suspicion was forming in her mind.
"Because your planet is a large one, and the population at the time we studied was around two-to-the-thirty-one—I'm sorry, that's over two billion in your numbering—as I said, because of the large population we could not sample the whole of the planet. We selected what we assumed was a typical area and concentrated our study on that area."
"What area, exactly?" Jacqui was getting even more worried.
"It was a country you call Germany—some distance to the east of your home country, England."
"And when precisely did you carry out this study?"
"We began about eight of your years before the seeding was carried out. We had to abandon our examination after about two years because the region we were studying was undergoing a period of internal strife—but we had gathered enough data. As it turned out, we chose to seed your region, England, instead of Germany, because conditions there were more stable."
Eight years! The Dayout at Midwich had been in 1950, so the study had begun in 1942. The Eels had taken, as their example of 'typical' humans, the Nazis in Germany! Jacqui was close to exploding in a passion. "Did you observe aggressive behaviour, killing even, amongst the humans you observed?" she ventured, tremulously, straining to keep her voice calm.
"Yes we did," continued Doc, via Major. "It seemed to be typical activity amongst your species: killing or wounding others of the same species. Also there were groups of humans attempting to seize the territory of other humans. We designed that characteristic into the genetics of our second-phase hosts. We have since realised—"
All was clear now—Jacqui could no longer contain herself, and she interrupted Major. "YOU MONSTERS!" she exploded, with a scream. "You chose the worst of all humans to model your Children on. No wonder they behaved as they did. No wonder we had to rid ourselves of them! You are evil! As bad as the Nazis—"
"—as I was saying," interrupted Major in his turn, "we have now realised that this was a big mistake. We are really sorry..." But Jacqui was no longer listening. She had thrown herself face down on her bed, shaking all over and sobbing uncontrollably. Never had she felt so lonely. However cruel humans had so often been to one another, she craved the company of another human being more fervently now, than at any time since she'd come to this planet. The Eels were no longer the 'friendly' folk she had supposed them to be...
When she raised her head, she saw that the Eels had tactfully withdrawn, leaving her in peace. She wondered what they would do next: whether this abortive 'interrogation' would ever be resumed. She felt sick in her body, and wished never to set eyes on another Trumpet-Eel in her life.