The Night of the Triffids (25 page)

    When the Jumbo halted I climbed out, noticing that one of the two submarines had left its moorings. I saw that Sam had noticed, too, but he made no comment.

    'I reckon you'll be ready for a good square meal, Mr Masen.' He smiled. 'Get yourself a wash-up and a brush-down or whatever. Chow's served across there in the canteen - the hut with the red roof.'

    I stood uncertainly for a moment as Sam headed away towards another building. Jazmay had lost interest in me, too, and was talking to a couple of unsighted men who sat at typewriters beneath an awning.

    Noticing me standing there with a lost look on my face, Sam called back, 'There're no more armed guards for you, Mr Masen. Make yourself at home.'

    I'd tackled two bowlfuls of a spicy dish, along with a heap of bread, when I heard the crackle of a PA system. A female voice announced the arrival of a flying boat, and invited a group of waiting passengers known as the Everglades Team to assemble at pier three.

    In due course a large silver flying boat came in low and smooth over the river to make a perfect landing on the water. This stirred the pilot's blood in me. What wouldn't I have given to get behind the controls again, with a pair of beautiful Rolls-Royce engines humming sweetly and the blue sky beckoning.

    'Penny for your thoughts, Mr Masen.'

    I looked up to see Sam Dymes carrying a tray with a plate of steaming vegetables on it.

    'Mind if I join you?'

    'By all means.'

    'Starting to get your bearings round here?'

    I said that I was.

    'Good, good,' he responded in that slow, easy drawl of his. 'We'll get you fixed up with a bunk later. And it looks as if you could use the loan of a razor.'

    I ran my fingers over my jaw. Bristles were softening into a full beard. 'I could use a change of clothes as well, if that can be arranged?'

    'Consider it done, Mr Masen. Say, is that chilli? I never noticed it was on the menu.' He turned back, calling good-naturedly to an unsighted woman who was serving food behind a counter. 'Say, Irene - any of that firecracker chilli of yours, left?'

    'The young gentleman cleaned out the last drop.'

    'Say, Mr Masen, you've a mighty appetite there… but then, we did starve you for a while.'

    'How-'

    'How long were you out? Two whole days. So, here, have my cake; I figure that's the least I can do for you.'

    As we ate, something that I'd been dwelling on unconsciously for the best part of a fortnight at last surfaced into my conscious mind. 'Mr Dymes, when I-'

    'Sam. Call me Sam, please.' Grinning, he thrust his hand across the table. 'Pleased to make your acquaintance… oh, you don't shake hands, do you?' He cocked a suddenly roguish eyebrow at me.

    'Sam.' I allowed myself a smile that said something along the lines of
OK, you win.
I shook his hand. 'Drop the "Mr Masen", my name's David.'

    'Sure thing, David. Now, what were you going to tell me? You were looking pretty serious back there for a moment.'

    I nodded. 'I don't think the Algonquin we saw this morning are unique.'

    'You don't say?'

    'I believe there are others who are immune to triffid venom.'

    'What makes you think that, David?'

    As Sam tucked into a huge wedge of apple pie I told him about my forced landing on the triffid raft, then my encounter with the feral girl called Christina Schofield. He listened without comment, seemingly more intent on the apple pie, as I told him about her startled flight into a copse of triffids. How the stings had lashed out at her. How I'd been sure she'd been killed. I finished off with her miraculous return, completely unharmed.

    'Well?' I invited his opinion as he swallowed the last crust of pie.

    'Any more of that delicious pie, Irene?'

    For a moment I wondered if he'd even heard my story, but straightaway he turned back to me. 'Christina Schofield. Yes.' He looked serious. 'And you are right. Triffid poison doesn't harm her.'

    'You seem to know a lot about what goes on in New York.'

    'Inside information is worth a dozen gunboats, don't you think?' he said as the matronly woman placed another slice of pie in front of him. 'Thank you, Irene. Oh, that looks wonderful.' Despite his earlier enthusiasm for dessert, his appetite seemed a little blunted now as his expression grew more serious. 'David, I'm afraid Christina's future doesn't look that rosy.'

    'Why's that?'

    'The latest information we have is that Torrence has ordered a huge operation, code-named Avalanche.' Sam pushed the pie aside. 'Female human beings are born with two ovaries. Each ovary contains thousands of egg cells. And, as you know, each egg cell, if fertilized, has the potential to develop into a human being.'

    'Go on.'

    'Torrence's medical people have perfected the use of fertility drugs to stimulate multiple births. Again as you know, his aim is to create a population explosion in his community, so that the sheer weight of people drives back the triffids, and his community can start to reclaim Long Island and New Jersey and so on. In fact, he still sends out raiding parties to kidnap women and children from other communities.' He sipped his coffee. 'Now that he has Christina who is immune to triffid stings you can see what's going through his mind, can't you? With a million like her they can simply walk back onto the American mainland and begin building Torrence's empire.'

    'Let me get this straight: you mean to say that surgeons will remove Christina's ovaries, fertilize the egg cells, then implant the embryos into other women?'

    'And it will be on a colossal scale. Every woman physically capable of bearing a child will become a host for one of Christina's fertilized embryos. And I mean
every
fertile woman, young and not so young. That goes for Kerris Baedekker, too, if our sources are reliable - and they generally are. In short, Christina Schofield will become "mother" to hundreds of thousands of children. Naturally, Torrence hopes that these new babies will form the backbone of a super-race that will be immune to triffid poison. That, in turn, will make him the most powerful man on the planet.' Sam took a breath. 'In addition, Christina will be dissected as a living specimen in what amounts to the laboratory version of the death of a thousand cuts, in order to learn about her natural protection.' His hand made a slow chopping action to emphasize what he said. 'David, Torrence is fanatical about this. Rabidly fanatical. He now knows how to get what he craves. In fact, he's ordered that all already expectant mothers are… well, rendered otherwise, so they'll be ready to receive Christina's egg cells.'

    'My God… that's monstrous. If… if I'd had any idea what would happen to Christina I'd never have brought her to New York; I would…' I fell silent for a while, seething at Torrence's ruthless inhumanity. And knowing only too well now why the ship that had rescued me had been ordered to New York with all speed. 'By heaven,' I murmured at length. 'I wish I could do something to make this right for Christina. Poor kid… she raised herself from the age of six. Even though she's immune to triffid poison she's already gone through hell. Now she's going to go through worse.' A foul taste flooded my mouth. 'If I could only get my hands around Torrence's neck.'

    Sam regarded me with his bright blue eyes. 'We may not be able to get Torrence. But we are trying to do something.'

    'Oh?'

    'We know that Christina's been taken to hospital. There's a lead in time to Operation Avalanche of around four weeks while the first tranche of host mothers are prepared, so that gives us a fair interval before they operate on Christina.' He nodded out of the canteen window in the direction of the empty submarine bay. 'We've dispatched a snatch squad to bring her back here. All being well, she should be here safe and sound within the week.'

    'You believe you can do it?'

    'We're going to try, David. We're going to try our hardest.'

    

    

    

    'ONE radio message. Just one. Surely you can give me that?'

    I was up against a brick wall.

    Sam Dymes shook his head, genuinely regretful.

    'But,' I argued, 'I need to send a message back to my people on the Isle of Wight. You can see why?'

    'Of course.'

    'Then let me warn them that Torrence is still alive. And that, what's more, he's planning to send an invasion force.'

    We were standing on the banks of the river as this discussion took place, while a sun that was nearer purple than red slipped down beyond the horizon.

    'The weather conditions will be perfect for short-wave transmission,' I insisted.

    'Sorry. I really am. But no can do.' Sam spoke in his relaxed Southern accent despite my bluster. 'David. Torrence has ships out looking for us. If he picks up our broadcast and gets a fix then he's going to come storming up that river, spitting fire and fury like nothing you've ever seen before.'

    I ran my hand through my hair. Frustrating, damned frustrating, yet Sam had a point. In the secrecy of their location lay the heart of the Foresters' survival. During the three days I'd been here I'd heard ample tales of Torrence's banditry and slaughter.

    I sighed. 'You see my concerns? I could be sitting here in the sun while Torrence's invasion force rips into my people back home.'

    'David, listen to me. That won't happen yet.'

    'How can you be so sure?'

    'Because he's going to divert his manpower into Operation Avalanche. He's going to need all the medics he has to work in the hospitals on the mass fertilization programme. He'll also require the services of his ships' crews, too. After all, egg cells won't fertilize themselves, will they?'

    I sighed again. 'Point taken.'

    'In any event, from what you say the Isle of Wight has quite a formidable force of aircraft. Torrence can't risk losing his ships on the off chance your people won't fight back. No, he'd planned on using you as the Trojan horse to bring ashore a team of saboteurs and commandos in civilian clothes. It doesn't take a lot of figuring to see that they would seize airfields, then hold them until Torrence's warships brought in reinforcements. You follow?'

    'I follow.'

    'Ready for that cold beer yet?'

    And that, as they say, was that.

    Nevertheless, my time at the base wasn't unpleasant. The amiable, gangling Sam Dymes was a good companion with his idiosyncratic way of speaking, liberally peppered with
uhms, ahms
and long thoughtful
mmmmms.
I found myself believing that he couldn't be responsible for the shooting of Gabriel Deeds back in New York. Moreover, I believed him when he explained to me that Torrence's prosperous community was built on the sweating backs of slave labour. Slaves felled the trees that provided wood alcohol for motor fuel. Slaves worked the coal mines until they died of lung disease or sheer exhaustion, never seeing the light of day from one month to the next. Female slaves were shackled in baby factories where they were forced into pregnancy year after year. It seemed, moreover, that slaves were selected by colour and their inability to see - or if they'd voiced any criticism of the Torrence regime. Most slaves were confined to the north of Manhattan Island in the districts formerly known as Harlem and Washington Heights, now known as the bland-sounding 'Industrial Zone 1'. This ghetto lay beyond the high wall I'd seen with Kerris and that she'd referred to as the 102nd Street Parallel. True, some men and women of colour worked in other parts of Manhattan, but they understood that they had been granted a special privilege and all, but
all,
knew that the slightest misdemeanour would mean swift and savage punishment.

    Torrence and his cronies weren't so dim that they failed to understand that among the people of different skin colours and the Blind there were many exceptionally talented men and women. Those who were a real asset to the community would be exploited accordingly. However, there was a price to pay. In return for elevation in both career and social standing these individuals had to forfeit their sex. Whether this was a symbolic surrendering of power to Torrence or whether it made for a more pliant servant class no one was quite sure. Nevertheless, Torrence viewed a eunuch workforce as eminently useful.

    During my days at the base I helped out with general chores, such as patrolling the anti-triffid fences, chopping firewood or peeling mountains of potatoes. And during the warm, balmy evenings I talked and joked with these people over a beer or two. Yet I found myself dwelling endlessly on Kerris Baedekker. I would ask myself a thousand times a day what she was doing at that very moment. Did she wonder what had become of me? Was she friend or foe now? If I could somehow spirit her away from Manhattan Island, would she go freely? Would she accept that her father was no better than a robber baron, a brutal tyrant who should be driven from power?

    I didn't know. I just didn't know.

    Then at night, as I closed my eyes, I saw her in my mind's eye - and sometimes she would come to me in my dreams.

    The next day, the seventh after my arrival, was a fateful one.

    

    

    Dawn crept redly from the rocky bluff across the river. Birds called in the trees. From the hen-coop came a cockcrow.

    Triffids greeted the daylight with a rattling of sticks against their boles.
Here comes the sun,
I imagined them saying.
Here comes the sun…
Perhaps they were still jittery after that period of near-supernatural darkness when, maybe, they had foreseen their own extinction. Now they applauded the rising sun with a crescendo rapping that swelled quickly to an ungodly roar.