The Wheel by John Wyndham (Startling Stories, January 1952) opens with an old man dozing at a farm wake up to see his grandson appear with a box that is riding on four improvised wheels. Before he can say anything the mother appears and screams, which brings the rest of the family. The mother then orders the boy, Davie, into the barn. When she tells the grandfather that she would never expected that sort of behaviour from her son, he says that if she hadn’t screamed no-one would have had to know. She is scandalized.
The reason for this puzzling behaviour becomes obvious when the grandfather subsequently goes to talk to Davie. He asks the boy to say his Sunday prayers:
“There,” he said. “That last bit.”
“Preserve us from the Wheel?” Davie repeated, wonderingly. “What is the Wheel, gran? It must be something terrible bad, I know, ’cos when I ask them they just say it’s wicked, and not to talk of it. But they don’t say what it is.”
The old man paused before he replied, then he said: “That box you got out there. Who told you to fix it that way?”
“Why, nobody, gran. I just reckon it’d move easier that way. It does, too.”
“Listen, Davie. Those things you put on the side of it—they’re wheels.”
It was sometime before the boy’s voice came back out of the darkness. When it did, it sounded bewildered.
“What, those round bits of wood? But they can’t be, gran. That’s all they are—just round bits of wood. But the Wheel—that’s something awful, terrible, something everybody’s scared of.” p. 118
The grandfather’s further explanations to Davie make it apparent that they are living in a post-nuclear holocaust world, and one where there is a religious prohibition on technology. The grandfather explains that the priests see devices like the wheel as the work of the Devil, his way of leading mankind astray, and, when they find such inventions, they not only burn them but their inventors too. He then tells Davie that when the priests question him the following day, he must tell them he didn’t make the wheels but that he found them. Then, after a final observation about progress being neither good nor evil, the grandfather gives the boy a hug and leaves.
The final section (spoiler) sees the priests arrive to find the grandfather busily making two more wheels. They are horrified, the box is burnt, and the grandfather is taken away. The ending is nicely understated:
In the afternoon a small boy whom everyone had forgotten turned his eyes from the column of smoke that rose in the direction of the village, and hid his face in his hands.
“I’ll remember, gran. I’ll remember. It’s only fear that’s evil,” he said, and his voice choked in his tears. p. 120
A short piece but a solid one.
*** (Good). 2,700 words. Story link.