Wyndham, John (23 page)

“People could be trained.”

“Yes—when enough of them can be spared from the mere
business of keeping alive. I’ve collected a mass of biochemical books in the
hope that perhaps sometime there will be people who can make use of them—I
shall teach David all I can, and

he must hand it on. Unless there is leisure for work on it
sometime, I can see nothing ahead but the reservations.”

Josella frowned down on a group of four triffids ambling
across a field below us.

“If I were a child now,” she said reflectively, “I think I
should want a
reason
for what happened. Unless I was given it—that is,
if I were allowed to think that I had been horn into a world which had been
quite pointlessly destroyed—I should find living quite pointless too. That does
make it awfully difficult, because it seems to be just what
has
happened.

She paused, pondering, then she added:

“Do you think we could—do you think we should be justified
in starting a myth to help them? A story of a world that was wonderfully
clever, but so wicked that it had to be destroyed—.-or destroyed itself by
accident? Something like the Rood, again? That wouldn’t crush them with
inferiority—it could give the incentive to build, and this time to build something
better.”

“Yes I said, considering it. “Yes. It’s often a good idea
to tell children the truth. Kind of makes things easier for them later ori—only
why pretend it’s a myth?”

Josella demurred at that.

“How do you mean? The triffids were—well, they were
somebody’s fault, or mistake, I admit. But the rest?”

“I don’t think we can blame anyone too much for the triffids.
The extracts they give were very valuable in the circumstances. Nobody can
ever see what a major discovery is going to lead to—whether it is a new kind of
engine or a triffid— and we coped with them all right in normal conditions. We
benefited quite a lot from them, as long as the conditions were to their
disadvantage.”

“Well, it wasn’t our fault the conditions changed. It was—
just one of those things. Like earthquakes or hurricanes—what an insurance
company would call an act of God. Maybe that’s just what it was—a judgment.
Certainly we never brought that comet.”

“Didn’t we, Josella? Are you quite sure of that?”

She turned to look at me.

“Are you trying to tell me that you don’t think it was a
Comet at all?”

“Just exactly that,” I agreed.

“But—I don’t understand. It must— What else
could
it
have been?”

I opened a vacuum-packed can of cigarettes and lit one for
each of us.

“You remember what Michael Beadley said about the tightrope
we’d all been walking on for years?”

“Yes, but—”

“Well, I think that what happened was that we came off it

—and that a few of us just managed to survive the crash.”

I drew on my cigarette, looking out at the sea and at the
infinite blue sky above it.

“Up there,” I Went on, “up there, there were—and maybe there
still are—unknown numbers of satellite weapons circling round and round the
Earth. Just a lot of dormant menaces, touring around, waiting for someone, or
something, to set them off. What was in them? You don’t know; I don’t know.
Top-secret stuff. All we’ve heard is guesses—fissile materials, radioactive
dusts, bacteria, viruses ... Now suppose that one type happened to have been
constructed especially to emit radiations that our eyes would not
stand—something that would burn out or at least damage the optic nerve.”

Josella gripped my hand.

“Oh no, Bill No, they couldn’t.. That’d be—diabolical.

. . .Oh, I Can’t believe— Oh
no,
Bill!”

“My sweet, all the things up there were diabolical. Do you
doubt that if it could be done, someone would do it?

Then suppose there were a mistake, or perhaps an accident—
maybe such an accident as actually encountering a shower of comet debris, if
you like—which starts some of these thin8s popping.

“Somebody begins talking about comets. It might not be
politic to deny that—and there turned out to be so little time, anyway.

“Well, naturally these things would have been intended to
operate close to the ground, where the effect would be spread over a definitely
calculable area. But they start going off out there in space, or maybe when they
hit the atmosphere—either way, they’re operating so far up that people all
round the world can receive direct radiations from them....

“Just what did happen is anyone’s guess now. But one thing
I’m quite certain of—that somehow or other we brought this lot down on
ourselves. And there was that plague, too:

it wasn’t typhoid, you know
....

“I find that
it’s
just the wrong side of coincidence
for me to believe that our of all the thousands of years in which a destructive
comet could arrive, it happens to do so just a few years after we have
succeeded in establishing satellite weapons—don’t you? No, I think that we
kept on that tightrope quite a while, considering the things that might have
happened—but sooner or later the foot had to slip.”

“Well, when you put it that way—” murmured Josella. She
broke off and was lost in silence for quite a while. Then she said:

“I suppose, in
a way,
that should be more horrible
than the idea of nature striking blindly at us. And yet I don’t think it is. It
makes me feel less hopeless about things because it makes them at least
comprehensible. If it
was
like that, then
it
is at least a thing
that can be prevented from happening again—just one more of the mistakes our
very great grandchildren are going to have to avoid. And, oh dear, there were
so many, many mistakes! But we can warn them.”

“H’m—well,” I said. “Anyway, once they’ve beaten the
triffids, and pulled themselves out of this mess, they’ll have plenty of scope
for making brand-new mistakes of their very own.”

“Poor little things,” she said, as if she were gazing down
increasingly great rows of grandchildren, “it’s not much that we’re offering
them, is it?”

We sat there a little longer, looking at the empty sea, and
then drove down to the town.

After a search which produced most of the things on our
wants list, we went down to picnic on the shore in the sunshine—with a good
stretch of shingle behind us over which no triffid could approach unheard.

“We must do more of this while we can,” Josella said. “Now
that Susan’s growing up I needn’t be nearly so tied.”

“If anybody ever earned the right to let up a bit, you have,”
I agreed.

I said it with a feeling that I would like us to go together
and say a last farewell to places and things we had known, while it was still
possible. Every year now the prospect of imprisonment would grow closer.
Already, to go northward from Shirning, it was necessary to make a detour of
many miles to by-pass the country that had reverted to marshland. All the roads
were rapidly growing worse with the erosion by rain and streams, and the roots
that broke up the surfaces. The time in which one would still be able to get an
oil tanker back to the house was already becoming measurable. One day one of
them would fail to make its way along the lane, and very likely block it for
good. A half-track would continue to run over ground that was dry enough, but
as time went on it would be increasingly difficult to find a route open enough
even for that.

“And we must have one real last fling,” I said. “You shall
dress up again, and we’ll go to—”

“Sh-sh!” interrupted Josella, holding up one finger and turning
her ear to the wind.

I held my breath and strained my ears. There was a feeling,
rather than a sound, of throbbing in the air. It was faint, but gradually
swelling.

“It is—it’s a plane!” Josella said.

We looked to the west, shading our eyes with our hands. The
humming was still little more than the buzzing of an insect. The sound
increased so slowly that it could come from nothing but a helicopter; any other
kind of craft would have passed over us or out of hearing in the time it was
taking.

Josella saw it first. A dot a little out from the coast, and
apparently coming our way, parallel with the shore. We stood up and started to
wave. As the dot grew larger, we waved more wildly, and, not very sensibly,
shouted at the tops of our voices. The pilot could not have failed to see us
there on the open beach had he come on, but that was what he did not do. A few
miles short of us he turned abruptly north to pass inland. We went on waving
madly, hoping that he might yet catch sight of us. But there was no indecision
in the machine’s course, no variation of the engine note. Deliberately and imperturbably
it droned away toward the hills.

We towed our arms and looked at one another.

“If it can come once, it can come again,” said Josella
sturdily, but not very convincingly.

But the sight of the machine had changed our day for us. It
destroyed quite a lot of the resignation we had carefully built up. We had been
saying to ourselves that there must be other groups but they wouldn’t be in any
better position tan we were, more likely in a worse. But when a helicopter
could come sailing in like a sight and sound from the past, it raised more than
memories: it suggested that someone somewhere was managing to make out better
than we were. . . . Was there a tinge of jealousy there?... And it also made us
aware that, lucky as we had been, we were still gregarious creatures by nature.

The restless feeling that the machine left behind destroyed
our mood and the lines along which our thoughts had been running. In unspoken
agreement, we began to pack up our belongings, and, each occupied with our
thoughts, we made our way back to the half-track and started for home.

We had covered perhaps half the distance back to Shirning
when Josella noticed the smoke.
At
-first sight it might have been a
cloud, but as we neared the top of the hilt we could see the gray column
beneath the more diffused upper layer. She pointed to it, and looked at me
without a word. The only fires we had seen in years had been a few spontaneous outbreaks
in later summer. We both knew at once that the plume ahead was rising from the
neighborhood of Shirning. I forced the half-track along at a greater speed than
it had ever done on the deteriorated roads. We were thrown about inside it
,
and
yet still seemed to be crawling. Josella sat silent all the time, her lips
pressed together and her eyes fixed on the smoke. I knew that she was searching
for some indication that the source was nearer or farther away; anywhere but at
Shirning itself. But the closer we came, the less room there was for doubt. We
tore up the final lane quite oblivious of the stings whipping at the vehicle as
it passed. Then, at the turn, we were able to see that it was not the house
itself but the woodpile that was ablaze.

At the sound of the horn Susan came running out to pull on
the rope which opened the gate from a safe distance. She shouted something
which was drowned in the rattle of our driving in. Her free hand was pointing,
not to the fire, but toward the front of the house. As we ran farther into the
yard we could see the reason. Skillfully landed in the middle of out lawn stood
the helicopter.

By the time we were out of the half-track a man in a leather
jacket and breeches had come cut of the house. He was tall, fair, and sunburned.
At first glance II had a feeling I had seen him somewhere before. He waved, and
grinned cheerfully as we hurried across.

“Mr. Bill Masen, I presume. My name is Simpson—Ivan
Simpson.”

“I remember,” said Josella. “You brought in a helicopter
that night at the University Building.”

“That’s right. Clever of you to remember. But just to show
you’re not the only one with a memory: you are Josella Playton, author of—”

“You’re quite wrong,” she interrupted him firmly. “I’m
Josella Masen, author of David Masen.”

“Ah, yes. I’ve been looking at the original edition, and a
very creditable bit of craftsmanship, too, if I may say so.”

“Hold on a bit,” I said.
“That fire—”

“it’s safe enough. Blowing away from the house. Though I’m
afraid most of your stock of wood has gone up.”

“What happened?”

”That was Susan. She didn’t mean me to miss the place. When
she heard my engine she grabbed a flame thrower and bounded out to start a
signal as quickly as she could. The woodpile was handiest—no one could have
missed what she did to that.”

We went inside and joined the others.

“By the way,” Simpson said to me, “Michael said I was to be
sure to start off with his apologies.”

“To me?” I said, wondering.

“You were the only one who saw any danger in the triffids,
and he didn’t believe you.”

“But—do you mean to say you knew I was here?”

“We found out very roughly your probable location a few days
ago—from a fellow we all have cause to remember: one Coker.”

“So Coker came through too,” I said. “After the shambles I
saw at Tynsham, I’d an idea the plague might have got him.”

Later on, when
we
had had a meal and produced our
best brandy, we got the story out of him.

When Michael Beadley and his party had gone on, leaving
Tynsham to the mercies and principles of Miss Durrant, they had not made for
Beaminster, nor anywhere near it. They had gone northeast, into
Oxfordshire. Miss Durrant’s misdirection to us must have been deliberate, for
Beaminster had never been mentioned.

They bad found there an estate which seemed at first to
offer the group all it required, and no doubt they could have entrenched
themselves there as we had entrenched ourselves at Shirning; but as the menace
of the triffids increased, the disadvantages of the place became more obvious.
In a year bath Michael and the Colonel were highly dissatisfied with the
longer-term prospects there. A great deal of work had already been put into
the place, but by the end of the second summer there was general agreement that
it would be better to cut their losses. To build a community they had to think
in
terms of years—a considerable number of years. They also had to bear in
mind that the longer they delayed, the more difficult any move would be. What
they needed was a place where they would have room to expand and develop: an
area with natural defenses, which, once it had been cleared of exit-lids, could
economically be kept clear of them. Where they now were a high proportion of
their labor was occupied with maintaining fences. And as their numbers
increased, the length of fence line would have to be increased. Clearly, the
best sell-maintaining defense line would be water. To that end they had held a
discussion on the relative merits of various islands. It had been chiefly
climate that had decided them in favor of the Isle of Wight, despite some
misgivings over the area that would have to be cleared. Accordingly, in the following
March they had packed up again and moved on.

“When we got there,” Ivan said, “the triffids seemed even
thicker than where we’d left. Na sooner had we begun to set-tie ourselves into
a big country house near Godshill than they started collecting along the walls
in thousands. We let ‘em conic for a couple of weeks or so, then we went for
‘em with the flame throwers.

“After we’d wiped that lot out, we let them accumulate
again, and then we blitzed ‘em once more—and so on. We could afford to do it
properly there, because once we were clear of them we’d not need to use the
throwers any more. There could only be a limited number on the island, and the
more of them that came round us to be wiped out, the better we liked it.

“We bad to do it a dozen times before there was any appreciable
effect. All round the walls we had a belt of charred stumps before they began
to get shy. There were a devil of a lot more of them than we had expected.”

“There used to be at least half a dozen nurseries breeding
high quality triffids on the island—not to mention the private and park ones,”
I said.

“That doesn’t surprise me. There might have been a hundred
nurseries by the look of it. Before all this began I’d have said there were
only a few thousand of the things in the whole country, if anyone had asked me,
but there must have been hundreds of thousands.”

“There were,” I said. “They’ll grow practically anywhere,
and they were pretty profitable. There didn’t seem to be so many when they were
penned up in farms and nurseries. All the same, judging from the amount round
here, there must be whole tracts of country practically free of them now.”

“That’s so,” he agreed. “But go and live there, and they’ll
start collecting in a few days. You can see that from the air. I’d have known
there was someone here without Susan’s fire. They make a dark border round any
inhabited place.

“Still, we managed to thin down the crowd round our walls
after a bit. Maybe they got to find it unhealthy, or maybe they didn’t care a
lot for walking about on the charred remains of their relatives—and, of course,
there were fewer of them. So then we started going out to hunt them instead of
just letting them come to us. It was our main job for months. Between us we
covered every inch of the island—or thought we did. By the time we were through
we reckoned we’d put paid to every one in the place, big and small. Even so,
some managed to appear the next year, and the year alter that. Now we have an
intensive search every spring, on account of seeds blowing over from the
mainland, and settle with them right away.

“While that was going on, we were getting organized. There
were some fifty or sixty of us to begin with. I took flips in the helicopter,
and when I saw signs of a group anywhere, I’d go down and issue a general
invitation to come along. Some did but a surprising number simply weren’t
interested: they’d escaped from being governed, and in spite of all their
troubles they didn’t want any more of it. There are some lots in South Wales
that have started sorts of tribal communities and resent the idea of any
organization except the minimum they’ve set up for themselves. You’ll find similar
lots near the other coal fields too. Usually the leaders are the men who
happened to be on the shift below ground, so that they never saw the green
stars—though God knows how they ever got up the shafts again.
“Some of them so definitely don’t want to be interfered with that they shoot
at the aircraft—there’s one lot like that at Brighton—”
“I know,” I said. “They warned me off too.”
“Recently there are more like that. There’s one at Maidstone, another at
Guildford, and other places. They’re the real reason why we hadn’t spotted you
hidden away here before.
The district didn’t seem too healthy when one got close to it. I don’t know
what they think they’re doing—probably got some good food dumps and are scared
of anyone else wanting some of it. Anyway, there’s no sense in taking risks, so
I just let ‘em stew.
“Still, quite a lot did come along. In a year we’d gone up to three hundred
or so—not all sighted, of course. “It wasn’t until about a month ago that I
came across Coker and his lot—and one of the first things he asked, by the way,
was whether you’d shown up. They had a bad time, particularly at first.
“A
few days after he got back to Tynsham, a couple of women came
along from London, and brought the plague with them. Coker quarantined them at
the first symptoms, but it was too late. He decided on a quick move. Miss
Durrant wouldn’t budge. She decided to stay and look after the sick, and follow
later if she could. But she never did.

“They took the infection with them. There were three more
hurried moves before they succeeded in shaking free of it. By then they had
gone as far West as Devonshire. and they were all right for a bit there. But
soon they began to find the same difficulties as we had—and you have. Coker
stuck it out there for nearly three years, and then reasoned along much the
same lines as we did. Only he didn’t think of an island. Instead he decided on
a river boundary and a fence to cut off the toe of Cornwall. When they got
there they spent the first months building their barrier, then they went for
the triffids inside, much as we had on the island. They had more difficult
country to work with, though, and they never did succeed in clearing them out
completely. The fence was fairly successful to begin with, but they never could
depend on it as we could trust to the sea, and too much of their man power had
to be wasted on patrols.

“Coker thinks they might have made out all right once the
children had grown old enough to work, but it would have been tough going all
the time. When I did find them, they hadn’t much hesitation about coming along.
They set about loading up their fishing boats right away, and they were all on
the island in a couple of weeks. When Coker found you weren’t with us, he
suggested you might still be somewhere in these parts.”

“You can tell him that wipes out any bard feelings about
him,” said Josella.

“He’s going to be a very useful man,” Ivan said. “And from
what he tells us, you could be too,” he added, looking at me. “You’re a
biochemist, aren’t you?”

“A biologist,” I said.

“Well, you can hold onto your fine distinctions. The point
is, Michael has tried to get some research going into a method of knocking off
triffids scientifically. That has to be found if we are going to get anywhere
at all. But the trouble so far is that the only people we have to work on it
are a few who have forgotten most of the biology they learned at school. What
do you think—like to turn professor? It’d be a worth-while job.”

“I can’t think of one that would be more worth while,” I
told him.

“Does this mean you’re inviting us all to your island
haven?” Dennis asked.

“Well, to come on mutual approval, at least,” Ivan replied.
“Bill and Josella will probably remember the broad principles laid down that
night at the university. They still stand. We aren’t out to reconstruct—we want
to build something new and better. Some people don’t take to that. If they
don’t they’re no use to us. We just aren’t interested in having an opposition
party that’s trying to perpetuate a lot of the old bad features. We’d rather
people who want that went elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere sounds a pretty poor offer, in the circumstances,”
remarked Dennis.

“Oh, I don’t mean we throw them back to the triffids. But
there were a number of them, and there had to he some place for them to go, so
a party went across to the Channel Isles and started cleaning up there on the
same lines as we’d cleaned up the Isle of Wight. About a hundred of them moved
over. They’re doing all right there.

“So now we have this mutual-approval system. Newcomers spend
six months with us, then there’s a Council hearing. If they don’t like our
ways, they say so; and if we don’t think they’ll fit, we say so. If they fit,
they stay; if not, we see that they get to the Channel Isles—or back to the
mainland, if they’re odd enough to prefer that.”

“Sounds to have a touch of the dictatorial. How’s this Council
of yours formed?” Dennis wanted to know.

Ivan shook his head.

“It’d take too long to go into constitutional questions now.
The best way to learn about us is to come and find out. If you like us, you’ll
stay—but even if you don’t, I think you’ll find the Channel Isles a better spot
than this is likely to be a few years from now.”

In the evening, after Ivan had taken off and vanished away
to the southwest, I went and sat on my favorite bench in a corner of the
garden.

I looked across the valley, remembering the well-drained and
tended meadows that had been there. Now it was far on its way back to the wild.
The neglected fields were dotted with thickets, beds of reeds, and stagnant
pools. The bigger trees were slowly drowning in the sodden soil.