'Unfortunately,' he pointed out, 'the Children do have that strength, and you must agree that they can't be allowed to use it.'

'No,' she said. 'But they won't when they're old enough to understand. I'm sure they won't. People are saying they must be sent away. But you won't do that, will you? They're so young. I know they're wilful, but they need us. They aren't wicked. It's just that lately they have been frightened. They weren't like this before. If they can stay here we can teach them love and gentleness, show them that people don't really mean them any harm...'

She looked up into his face, her hands pressed anxiously together, her eyes pleading, with tears not far behind them.

Bernard looked back at her unhappily, marvelling at the devotion that was able to regard six deaths and a number of serious injuries as a kind of youthful peccadillo. He could almost see in her mind the adored slight figure with golden eyes which filled all her view. She would never blame, never cease to adore, never understand... There had been just one wonderful, miraculous thing in all her life... His heart ached for Miss Lamb...

He could only explain that the decision did not lie in his hands, assure her, trying not to raise any false hopes, that what she had told him would be included in his report; and then detach himself as gently as possible to go on his way, conscious of her anxious, reproachful eyes at his back.

The village, as he passed through it, was wearing a sparse appearance and a subdued air. There must, he imagined, be strong feelings concerning the corralling measure, but the few people about, except for one or two chatting pairs, had a rather noticeable air of minding their own business. A single policeman on patrol round the Green was clearly bored with his job. Lesson One, from the Children – that there was danger in numbers – appeared to have been understood. An efficient step in dictatorship: no wonder the Russians had not cared for the look of things at Gizhinsk...

Twenty yards up Hickham Lane he came upon two of the Children. They were sitting on the roadside bank, staring upward and westward with such concentration that they did not notice his approach.

Bernard stopped, and turned his head to follow their line of sight, becoming aware at the same time of the sound of jet engines. The aircraft was easy to spot, a silver shape against the blue summer sky, approaching at about five thousand feet. Just as he found it, black dots appeared beneath it. White parachutes opened in quick succession, five of them, and began the long float down. The aircraft flew steadily on.

He glanced back at the Children just in time to see them exchange an unmistakable smile of satisfaction. He looked up again at the aircraft serenely pursuing its way, and at the five, gently sinking, white blobs behind it. His knowledge of aircraft was slight, but he was fairly certain that he was looking at a Carey light long-range bomber that normally carried a complement of five. He looked thoughtfully at the two Children again, and at the same moment they noticed him.

The three of them studied one another while the bomber droned on, right overhead now.

'That,' Bernard observed, 'was a very expensive machine. Someone is going to be very annoyed about losing it.'

'It's a warning. But they'll probably have to lose several more before they believe it,' said the boy.

'Probably. Yours is an unusual accomplishment,' he paused, still studying them. 'You don't care for the idea of aircraft flying over you, is that it?'

'Yes,' agreed the boy.

Bernard nodded. 'I can understand that. But, tell me, why do you always make your warnings so severe – why do you always carry them a stage further than necessary? Couldn't you simply have turned him back?'

'We could have made him crash,' said the girl.

'I suppose so. We must be grateful that you didn't, I'm sure. But it would have been no less effective to turn him back, wouldn't it? I don't see why you have to be so drastic.'

'It makes more of an impression. We should have to turn a lot of aircraft back before anyone would believe we were doing it. But if they lose an aircraft every time they come this way they'll take notice,' the boy told him.

'I see. The same argument applies to last night, I suppose. If you had just sent the crowd away, it would not have been warning enough,' Bernard suggested.

'Do you think it would?' asked the boy.

'It seems to me to depend on how it was done. Surely there was no need to make them fight one another, murderously? I mean, isn't it, to put it on its most practical level, politically unsound always to take that extra step that simply increases anger and hatred?'

'Fear, too,' the boy pointed out.

'Oh, you want to instil fear, do you? Why?' inquired Bernard.

'Only to make you leave us alone,' said the boy. 'It is a means; not an end.' His golden eyes were turned towards Bernard, with a steady, earnest look. 'Sooner or later, you will try to kill us. However we behave, you will want to wipe us out. Our position can be made stronger only if we take the initiative.'

The boy spoke quite calmly, but somehow the words pierced right through the front that Bernard had adopted.

In one startling flash he was hearing an adult, seeing a sixteen-year-old, knowing that it was a nine-year-old who spoke.

'For a moment,' he said later, 'it bowled me right over. I was as near panic as I have ever been. The child-adult combination seemed to be full of a terrifying significance that knocked away all the props from the right order of things... I know it seems a small thing now; but at the time it hit me like a revelation, and, by God, it frightened me... I suddenly saw them double: individually, still children; collectively, adult; talking to me on my own level...'

It took Bernard a few moments to pull himself together. As he did so, he recalled the scene with the Chief Constable which had been alarming, too, but in another, much more concrete, way, and he looked at the boy more closely.

'Are you Eric?' he asked him.

'No,' said the boy. 'Sometimes I am Joseph. But now I am all of us. You needn't be afraid of us; we want to talk to you.'

Bernard had himself under control again. He deliberately sat down on the bank beside them, and forced a reasonable tone.

'Wanting to kill you seems to me a very large assumption,' he said. 'Naturally, if you go on doing the kind of things you have been doing lately we shall hate you, and we shall take revenge – or perhaps one should say, we shall have to protect ourselves from you. But if you don't, well, we can see. Do you have such a great hatred of us ? If you don't, then surely some kind of modus vivendi can be managed...?'

He looked at the boy, still with a faint hope that he ought to have spoken more as one would to a child. The boy finally dispelled any illusion about that. He shook his head, and said:

'You're putting this on the wrong level. It isn't a matter of hates, or likes. They make no difference. Nor is it something that can be arranged by discussion. It is a biological obligation. You cannot afford not to kill us, for if you don't, you are finished...' He paused to give that weight, and then went on: 'There is a political obligation, but that takes a more immediate view, on a more conscious level. Already, some of your politicians who know about us must be wondering whether something like the Russian solution could not be managed here.'

'Oh, so you do know about them?'

'Yes, of course. As long as the Children of Gizhinsk were alive we did not need to look after ourselves, but when they died, two things happened: one was that the balance was destroyed, and the other was the realization that the Russians would not have destroyed the balance unless they were quite sure that a colony of the Children was more of a liability than a possible asset.