“So much better for us!” Grendon said.
“But it’s not better. The things grow wildly, yes, but the taste is altered to suit the palates of those things out there. You’ve seen what happened. You can’t sell anything. People won’t touch your eggs or milk or meatthey taste too foul.”
“But that’s a lot of nonsense. We’ll sell in Norwich. Our produce is better than it ever was. We eat it, don’t we?”
“Yes, Joseph, you eat it. But anyone who eats at your table is doomed. Don’t you understandyou are all ‘fertilized’ just as surely as the pigs and chickens. Your place has been turned into a superfarm, and you are all meat to the Aurigans.”
That set a silence in the room, until Nancy said in a small voice, “You don’t believe such a terrible thing.”
“I suppose these unseen creatures told you all this?”
Grendon said truculently.
“Judge by the evidence, as I do. Your wife1 must be brutal, Josephyour wife was eaten, like the dog and the pigs. As everything else will be in time. The Aurigans aren’t even cannibals. They aren’t like us. They don’t care whether we have souls or intelligences, any more than we really care whether bullocks have.”
“No one’s going to eat me,” Neckland said, looking decidedly white about the gills.
“How can you stop them? They’re invisible, and I think they can strike like snakes. They’re aquatic and I think they may be oftly two feet tall. How can you protect.yourself?” He turned to the farmer. “Joseph, the danger is very great, and not only to us here. At first, they may have offered us no harm while they got the measure of usotherwise I’d have died in your rowing boat.
Now there’s no longer doubt of their hostile intent. I beg you to let me go to Heigham and telephone to the chief of police in Norwich, or at least to the local militia, to get them to come and help us.”
The farmer shook his head slowly, and pointed a finger at Gregory.
“You soon forgot them talks we had, bor, all about the coming age of socialism and how the powers of the state was going to wither away. Directly we get a bit of trouble, you want to call in the authorities. There’s no harm here a few savage dogs like my old Cuff can’t handle, and I don’t say as I ent going to get a couple of dogs, but you’m a fule if you reckon I’m getting the authorities down here. Fine old socialist you turn out to be!”
“You have no room to talk about that!” Gregory exclaimed.
“Why didn’t you let Grubby come here? If you were a socialist, you’d treat the men as you treat yourself. Instead, you leave him out in the ditch. I wanted him to hear this discussion.”
The farmer leant threateningly across the table at him.
“Oh, you did, did you? Since when was this your farm? And Grubby can come and go as he likes when it’s his, so put that in your pipe and smoke it, bor! Who do you just think you are?” He moved closer to Gregory, apparently happy to work off his fears as anger. “You’re trying to scare us all off this here little old bit of ground, ent you? Well, the Grendons ent a scaring sort, see!
Now I’ll tell you something. See that shotgun there on the wall?
That be loaded. And if you ent off this farm by midday, that shotgun ont be on that wall no more. It’ll be here, bor, right here in my two hands, and I’ll be letting you have it right where you’ll feel it most.”
“You can’t do that. Father,” Nancy said. “You know Gregory is a friend of ours.”
“For God’s sake, Joseph,” Gregory said, “see where your enemy lies. Bert, tell Mr. Grendon what we saw on the pond, go on!”
Neckland was far from keen to be dragged into this argument. He scratched his head, drew a red-and-white spotted kerchief from round his neck to wipe his face, and muttered, “We saw a sort of ripple on the water, but I didn’t see nothing really, Master Gregory. I mean, it could have been the wind, couldn’t it?”