The Chrysalids

‘Rachel’s afraid. She’s crying inside. She wants Michael.’

The under-Rosalind was in her face, smiling, shiny-eyed. The armour was gone. She let me look beneath it. It was like a flower opening. . .

The Sealand woman was leaning forward, watching him. There was sympathy and admiration in her eyes, but she shook her head gently.

She’s gone all muddled up and crying again. She does seem to cry an awful lot, that girl, doesn’t she? I don’t see why. Her behind-thinks aren’t miserable at all this time: it’s sort of happy-crying. Isn’t that silly?’

The static, the enemy of change, is the enemy of life, and therefore our implacable enemy.

The essential quality of life is living; the essential quality of living is change; change is evolution: and we are part of it.

They’re all dead. The plastic threads contract as they dry. A man who struggles and entangles himself soon becomes unconscious. It is more merciful than your arrows and spears.’

Her eyes were large, with irises more brown than green, and fringed with long, deep-gold lashes. Her nose was straight, but her nostrils curved with the perfection of a sculpture. Her mouth was, perhaps, a little wide; the chin beneath it was rounded, but not soft. Her hair was just a little darker than Rosalind’s, and, astonishingly in a woman, it was short. Cut off nearly level with her jaw.

Sophie struggled to her feet and ran on by herself. An arrow pierced right through her upper arm, but she held on, with it lodged there. Then another took her in the back of the neck. She dropped in mid-stride, and her body slid along in the dust. . . .

The spider-man threw down his bow, and turned. With a scoop of his long arms he snatched up Sophie, and began to run.