“No, leave ‘em where they are. They don’t take a lot of room,” he decided.
We went into the building and had some tea at an improvised canteen which a pleasant-faced, middle-aged woman had competently set up there.
“He thinks.” I said to Josella, “that I’ve got a bee in my bonnet over triffids.”
“He’ll learn-I’m afraid,” she replied. “It’s queer that no one else seems to have seen them about.”
“These people have all been keeping pretty much to the center, so it’s not very surprising. After all, we’ve seen none ourselves today.”
‘Do you think they’ll come right down here among the streets?”
“I couldn’t say. Maybe lost ones would.”
“How do you think they got loose?” she asked.
“If they worry’ at a stake hard enough and long enough, it’ll usually come in the end, The breakouts we used to get sometimes on the farms were usually due to their all crowding up against one section of the fence until it gave way.
“But couldn’t you make the fences stronger?”
We could have done, but we didn’t want them fixed quite permanently. It didn’t happen very often, ‘and when it did it was usually simply from one field to another, so we’d just drive them back and put up the fence again. I don’t think any of them will intentionally make this way. From a triffid point of view, a city must be much like a desert, so I should think they’ll be moving outward toward the open country on the whole. Have you ever used a triffid gun?” I added.
She shook her head.
After I’ve done something about these clothes, I was thin king of putting in a bit of practice, it you’d like to try,” I suggested.
I got back an hour or so later, feeling more suitably clad as a result of having infringed on her idea of a ski suit and heavy shoes, to find that she had changed into a becoming dress of spring green. We took a couple of the triffid guns and went out into the garden of Russell Square, close by. We had spent about half an hour snipping the topmost shoots off convenient bushes when a young woman in a brick-red lumber jacket and an elegant pair of green trousers strolled across the grass and leveled a small camera at us.
Who are you-the press?” inquired Josella.
“More or less,” said the young woman. “At least, I’m the official record. Elspeth Cary.”
“So soon?” I remarked. “I trace the hand of our order-conscious Colonel.”
“You’re quite right,” she agreed. She turned to look at Josella. “And you are Miss Playton. I’ve often wondered-”
Now look here,” interrupted Josella. “Why should the one static thing in a collapsing world be my reputation? Can’t we forget it?”
“Jim,” said Miss Cary thoughtfully. “Jib-huh.” She turned to another subject. “What’s all this about triffids?” she asked.
We told her.
“They think,” added Josella, “that Bill here is either scary or scatty on the subject.”
Miss Cary turned a straight look at me. Her face was interesting rather than good-looking, with a complexion browned by stronger suns than ours. Her eyes were steady, observant, and dark brown.
“Are you?” she asked.
‘Well, I think they’re troublesome enough to be taken seriously when they get out of hand,” I told her.
She nodded. “True enough. I’ve been in places where they are out of hand. Quite nasty. But in England-well, ifs hard to imagine that here.”
“There’ll not be a lot to stop them here now’,” I said.
Her reply, if she had been about to make one, was forestalled by the sound of an engine overhead. We looked up and presently saw a helicopter come drifting across the roof of the British Museum.
That’ll be Ivan,” said Miss Gary. “He thought he might manage to find one. I must go and get a picture of him landing. See you later.” And she hurried off across the grass.
Josella lay down, clasped her hands behind her head, and gazed up into the depths of the sky. When the helicopter’s engine ceased, things sounded very much quieter than before we had heard it.
Josella lay facing upward with a faraway look in her eyes. I thought perhaps I could guess something of what was passing in her mind, but I said nothing. She did not speak for a little while, then she said:
You know, one of the most shocking things about it is to realize how easily we have lost a world that seemed so safe and certain.”
She was quite right. It was that simplicity that seemed somehow to be the nucleus of the shock. From very familiarity one forgets all the forces which keep the balance, and thinks of security as normal. It is not. I don’t think it had ever before occurred to me that man’s supremacy is not primarily due to his brain, as most of the books would have one think. It is due to the brain’s capacity to make use of the information conveyed to it by a narrow band of visible light rays. His civilization, all that he had achieved or might achieve, hung upon his ability to perceive that range of vibrations from red to violet. Without that, he was lost. I saw for a moment the true tenuousness of his hold on his power, the miracles that he had wrought with such a fragile instrument.
Josella had been pursuing her own line of thought.
“It’s going to be a very queer sort of world-what’s left of it. I don’t think we’re going to like it a lot,” she said reflectively.
It seemed to me an odd view to take-rather as if one should protest that one did not like the idea of dying or being born. I preferred the notion of finding out first how it would be, and then doing what one could about the parts of it one disliked most, but I let it pass.
From time to time we had heard the sound of trucks driving up to the far side of the building. It was evident that most of the foraging parties must have returned by this hour. I looked at my watch and reached for the triffid guns lying on the grass beside me.
“If we’re going to get any supper before we hear what other people feel about all this, it’s time we went in,” I said.
CONFERENCE
I fancy all of us had expected the meeting to be simply a kind of briefing talk. Just the timetable, course instructions, the day’s objective-that kind of thing. Certainly I had no expectation of the food for thought that we received.
It was held in a small lecture theater, lit for the occasion by an arrangement of car headlamps and batteries. When we went in, some half dozen men and two women, who appeared to have constituted themselves a committee, were conferring behind the lecturer’s desk. To our surprise we found nearly a hundred people seated in the body of the hail. Young women predominated at a ratio of about four to one. I had not realized until Josella pointed it out to me how few of them were able to see.
Michael Beadley dominated the consulting group by his height. I recognized the Colonel beside hint The other faces were new to me, save that of Elspeth Cary, who had now exchanged her camera for a notebook, presumably for the benefit of posterity. Most of their interest was centered round an elderly man of ugly but benign aspect who wore gold-rimmed spectacles and had fine white hair trimmed to a rather political length. They all had an air of being a little worried about him.
The other woman in the party was not much more than a girl-perhaps twenty-two or -three. She did not appear happy at finding herself where she was. She cast occasional looks of nervous uncertainty at the audience.
Sandra Telmont came in, carrying a sheet of foolscap. She studied it a moment, then briskly broke the group up and sorted it into chairs. With a wave of her hand she directed Michael to the desk, and the meeting began.
He stood there, a little bent, watching the audience from somber eyes as he waited for the murmuring to die down.
When he spoke, it was in a pleasant, practiced voice and with a fireside manner.
“Many of us here,” he began, “must still be feeling numbed under this catastrophe. The world we knew has ended in a flash. Some of us may be feeling that it is the end of everything. It is not. But to all of you I will say at once that it can be the end of everything-if we let it.
“Stupendous as this disaster is, there is, however, still a margin of survival. It may be worth remembering just now that we are not unique in looking upon vast calamity. Whatever the myths that have grown up about it, there can be no doubt that somewhere far back in our history there was a Great Flood. Those who survived that must have looked upon a disaster comparable in scale with this and, in some ways, more formidable. But they cannot have despaired; they must have begun again-as we can begin again.