by John Wyndham
But still no one came.
On the lower shelf of the bedside table I discovered a pair of dark glasses thoughtfully put ready against my need of them. Cautiously I put them on before I went right close to the window. The lower part of it was not made to open, so that the view was restricted. Squinting down and sideways, I could see one or two people who appeared to be wandering in an odd, kind of aimless way farther up the street. But what struck me most, and at once, was the sharpness, the clear definition of everything—even the distant housetops view across the opposite roofs. And then I noticed that no chimney, large or small, was smoking….
I found my clothes hung tidily in a cupboard. I began to feel more normal once I had them on. There were some cigarettes still in the case. I lit one and began to get into the state of mind where, though everything was still undeniably queer, I could no longer understand why I had been quite so near panic.
It is not easy to think oneself back to the outlook of those days. We have to be more self-reliant now. But then there was so much routine, things were so interlinked. Each one of us so steadily did his little part in the right place that it was easy to mistake habit and custom for the natural law—and all the more disturbing, therefore, when the routine was in any way upset.
When almost half a lifetime has been spent in one conception of order, reorientation is no five-minute business. Looking back at the shape of things then, the amount we did not know and did not care to know about our daily lives is not only astonishing but somehow a bit shocking. I knew practically nothing, for instance, of such ordinary things as how my food reached me, where the fresh water came from, how the clothes I wore were woven and made, how the drainage of cities kept them healthy. Our life had become a complexity of specialists, all attending to their own jobs with more or less efficiency and expecting others to do the same. That made it incredible to me, therefore, that complete disorganization could have overtaken the hospital. Somebody somewhere, I was sure, must have it in hand—unfortunately it was a somebody who had forgotten all about Room 48.
Nevertheless, when I did go to the door again and peer into the corridor I was forced to realize that, whatever had happened, it was affecting a great deal more than the single inhabitant of Room 48.
Just then there was no one in sight, though in the distance I could hear a pervasive murmur of voices. There was a sound of shuffling footsteps, too, and occasionally a louder voice echoing hollowly in the corridors, but nothing like the din I had shut out before. This time I did not shout. I stepped out cautiously—why cautiously? I don’t know. There was just something that induced it.
It was difficult in that reverberating building to tell where the sounds were coming from, but one way the passage finished at an obscured French window, with the shadow of a balcony rail upon it, so I went the other. Rounding a corner, I found myself out of the private-room wing and on a broader corridor.
At the far end of the wide corridor were the doors of a ward. The panels were frosted save for ovals of clear glass at face level.
I opened the door. It was pretty dark in there. The curtains had evidently been drawn after the previous night’s display was over—and they were still drawn.
“Sister?” I inquired.
“She ain’t ’ere,” a man’s voice said. “What’s more,” it went on, “she ain’t been ’ere for ruddy hours, neither. Can’t you pull them ruddy curtains, mate, and let’s ’ave some flippin’ light? Don’t know what’s come over the bloody place this morning.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
Even if the whole place were disorganized, it didn’t seem to be any good reason why the unfortunate patients should have to lie in the dark.
I pulled back the curtains on the nearest window and let in a shaft of bright sunlight. It was a surgical ward with about twenty patients, all bedridden. Leg injuries mostly; several amputations, by the look of it.
“Stop foolin’ about with ’em, mate, and pull ’em back,” said the same voice.
I turned and looked at the man who spoke. He was a dark, burly fellow with a weather-beaten skin. He was sitting up in bed, facing directly at me—and at the light. His eyes seemed to be gazing into my own; so did his neighbor’s, and the next man’s….
For a few moments I stared back at them. It took that long to register. Then:
“I—they—they seem to be stuck,” I said. “I’ll find someone to see to them.”
And with that I fled from the ward.
I was shaky again, and I could have done with a stiff drink. The thing was beginning to sink in. But I found it difficult to believe that all the men in that ward could be blind, and yet…
The elevator wasn’t working, so I started down the stairs. On the next floor I pulled myself together and plucked up the courage to look into another ward. The beds there were all disarranged. At first I thought the place was empty, but it wasn’t—not quite. Two men in nightclothes lay on the floor. One was soaked in blood from an unhealed incision, the other looked as if some kind of congestion had seized him. They were both quite dead. The rest had gone.
Back on the stairs once more, I realized that most of the background voices I had been hearing all the time were coming up from below, and that they were louder and closer now. I hesitated a moment, but there seemed to be nothing for it but to go on making my way down.
On the next turn I nearly tripped over a man who lay across my way in the shadow. At the bottom of the flight lay somebody who actually had tripped over him—and cracked his head on the stone steps as he landed.
At last I reached the final turn where I could stand and look down into the main hall. Seemingly everyone in the place who was able to move must have made instinctively for that spot, either with the idea of finding help or of getting outside. Maybe some of them had got out. One of the main entrance doors was wide open, but most of them couldn’t find it. There was a tight-packed mob of men and women, nearly all of them in their hospital nightclothes, milling slowly and helplessly around. The motion pressed those on the outskirts cruelly against marble corners or ornamental projections. Some of them were crushed breathlessly against the walls. Now and then one would trip. If the press of bodies allowed him to fall, there was little chance that it would let him come up again.
The place looked—well, maybe you’ll have seen some of Doré’s pictures of sinners in hell. But Doré couldn’t include the sounds: the sobbbing, the murmurous moaning, and occasionally a forlorn cry.
A minute or two of it was all I could stand. I fled back up the stairs.
There was the feeling that I ought to do something about it. Lead them out into the street, perhaps, and at least put an end to that dreadful slow milling. But a glance had been enough to show that I could not hope to make my way to the door to guide them there. Besides, if I were to, if I did get them outside—what then?
I sat down on a step for a while to get over it, with my head in my hands and that awful conglomerate sound in my ears all the time. Then I searched for, and found, another staircase. It was a narrow service flight which led me out by a back way into the yard.
Maybe I’m not telling this part too well. The whole thing was so unexpected and shocking that for a time I deliberately tried not to remember the details. Just then I was feeling much as though it were a nightmare from which I was desperately but vainly seeking the relief of waking myself. As I stepped out into the yard I still half refused to believe what I had seen.
But one thing I was perfectly certain about. Reality or nightmare, I needed a drink as I had seldom needed one before.
There was nobody in sight in the little side street outside the yard gates, but almost opposite stood a pub. I can recall its name now—the Alamein Arms. There was a board bearing a reputed likeness of Viscount Montgomery hanging from an iron bracket, and below it one of the doors stood open.
I made straight for it.
Stepping into the public bar gave me for the moment a comforting sense of normality. It was prosaicall
y and familiarly like dozens of others.
But although there was no one in that part, there was certainly something going on in the saloon bar, round the corner. I heard heavy breathing. A cork left its bottle with a pop. A pause. Then a voice remarked:
“Gin, blast it! T’hell with gin!”
There followed a shattering crash. The voice gave a sozzled chuckle.
“Thash th’mirror. Wash good of mirrors anyway?”
Another cork popped.
“’S’damned gin again,” complained the voice, offended. “T’hell with gin.”
This time the bottle hit something soft, thudded to the floor, and lay there gurgling away its contents.
“Hey!” I called. “I want a drink.”
There was a silence. Then:
“Who’re you?” the voice inquired cautiously.
“I’m from the hospital,” I said. “I want a drink.”
“Don’ ’member y’r voice. Can you see?”
“Yes,” I told him.
“Well, then, for God’s sake get over the bar, Doc, and find me a bottle of whisky.”
“I’m doctor enough for that,” I said
I climbed across and went round the corner. A large-bellied, red-faced man with a graying walrus mustache stood there clad only in trousers and a collarless shirt. He was pretty drunk. He seemed undecided whether to open the bottle he held in his hand or to use it as a weapon.
“’F you’re not a doctor, what are you?” he demanded suspiciously.
“I was a patient—but I need a drink as much as any doctor,” I said. “That’s gin again you’ve got there,” I added.
“Oh, is it! Damned gin,” he said, and slung it away. It went through the window with a lively crash.
“Give me that corkscrew,” I told him.
I took down a bottle of whisky from the shelf, opened it, and handed it to him with a glass. For myself I chose a stiff brandy with very little soda, and then another. After that my hand wasn’t shaking so much.
I looked at my companion. He was taking his whisky neat, out of the bottle.
“You’ll get drunk,” I said.
He paused and turned his head toward me. I could have sworn that his eyes really saw me.
“Get drunk! Damn it, I am drunk,” he said scornfully.
He was so perfectly right that I didn’t comment. He brooded a moment before he announced:
“Gotta get drunker. Gotta get mush drunker.” He leaned doser. “D’you know what? I’m blind. Thash what I am—blind’s a bat. Everybody’s blind’s a bat. ’Cept you. Why aren’t you blind’s a bat?”
“I don’t know,” I told him.
“’S that bloody comet. Thash what done it. Green shootin’ shtarsh—an’ now everyone’s blind’s a bat. D’ju shee green shootin’ shtarsh?”
“No,” I admitted.
“There you are. Proves it. You didn’t see ’em: you aren’t blind. Everyone else saw ’em”—he waved an expressive arm —“all’s blind’s bats. Bloody comets, I say.”
I poured myself a third brandy, wondering whether there might not be something in what he was saying.
“Everyone blind?” I repeated.
“Thash it. All of ’em. Prob’ly everyone in th’world—’cept you,” he added as an afterthought.
“How do you know?” I asked.
“’S’easy. Listen!” he said.
We stood side by side, leaning on the bar of the dingy pub, and listened. There was nothing to be heard—nothing but the rustle of a dirty newspaper blown down the empty street. Such a quietness held everything as cannot have been known in those parts for a thousand years and more.
“See what I mean? ’S’obvious,” said the man.
“Yes,” I said slowly. “Yes—I see what you mean.”
I decided that I must get along. I did not know where to. But I must find out more about what was happening.
“Are you the landlord?” I asked him.
“Wha’ ’f I am?” he demanded defensively.
“Only that I’ve got to pay someone for three double brandies.”
“Ah—forget it.”
“But look here—”
“Forget it, I tell you. D’ju know why? ’Cause what’s the good ’f money to a dead man? An’ thash what I am—’s good as. Jus’ a few more drinks.”
He looked a pretty robust specimen for his age, and I said so.
“Wha’s good of living blind’s a bat?” he demanded aggressively. “Thash what my wife said. An’ she was right—only she’s more guts than I have. When she found as the kids was blind too, what did she do? Took ’em into our bed with her and turned on the gas. Thash what she done. An’ I hadn’t the guts to stick with ’em. She’s got pluck, my wife, more’n I have. But I will have soon. I’m goin’ back up there soon—when I’m drunk enough.”
What was there to say? What I did say served no purpose, save to spoil his temper. In the end he groped his way to the stairs and disappeared up them, bottle in hand. I didn’t try to stop him or follow him. I watched him go. Then I knocked off the last of my brandy and went out into the silent street.
THE COMING OF THE TRIFFIDS
This is a personal record. It involves a great deal that has vanished forever, but I can’t tell it in any other way than by using the words we used to use for those vanished things, so they have to stand. But even to make the setting intelligible I find that I shall have to go back farther than the point at which I started.
When I, William Masen, was a child we lived, my father, my mother, and myself, in a southern suburb of London. We had a small house which my father supported by conscientious daily attendance at his desk in the Inland Revenue Department, and a small garden at which he worked rather harder during the summer. There was not a lot to distinguish us from the ten or twelve million other people who used to live in and around London in those days.
My father was one of those persons who could add a column of figures—even of the ridiculous coinage then in use locally—with a flick of the eye, so that it was natural for him to have in mind that I should become an accountant. As a result, my inability to make any column of figures reach the same total twice caused me to be something of a mystery as well as a disappointment to him. Still, there it was: just one of those things. And each of a succession of teachers who tried to show me that mathematical answers were derived logically and not through some form of esoteric inspiration was forced to give up with the assurance that I had no head for figures. My father would read my school reports with a gloom which in other respects they scarcely warranted. His mind worked, I think, this way: no head for figures = no idea of finance = no money.
“I really don’t know what we shall do with you. What do you want to do?” he would ask.
And until I was thirteen or fourteen I would shake my head, conscious of my sad inadequacy, and admit that I did not know.
It was the appearance of the triffids which really decided the matter for us. Indeed, they did a lot more than that for me. They provided me with a job and comfortably supported me. They also on several occasions almost took my life. On the other hand, I have to admit that they preserved it, too, for it was a triffid sting that had landed me in hospital on the critical occasion of the “comet debris.”
In the books there is quite a lot of loose speculation on the sudden occurrence of the triffids. Most of it is nonsense. Certainly they were not spontaneously generated, as many simple souls believed. Nor did most people endorse the theory that they were a kind of sample visitation—harbingers of worse to come if the world did not mend its ways and behave its troublesome self. Nor did their seeds float to us through space as specimens of the horrid forms life might assume upon other, less favored worlds—at least I am satisfied that they did not.
I learned more about it than most people because triffids were my job, and the firm I worked for was intimately, if not very gracefully, concerned in their public appearance. Nevertheless, their true origin still remains obs
cure. My own belief, for what that is worth, is that they were the outcome of a series of ingenious biological meddlings—and very likely accidental, at that. Had they been evolved anywhere but in the region they were, we should doubtless have had a well-documented ancestry for them. As it was, no authoritative statement was ever published by those who must have been best qualified to know. The reason for this lay, no doubt, in the curious political conditions then prevailing.
The world we lived in was wide, and most of it was open to us with little trouble. Roads, railways, and shipping lines laced it, ready to carry one thousands of miles safely and in comfort. If we wanted to travel more swiftly still, and could afford it, we traveled by airplane. There was no need for anyone to take weapons or even precautions in those days. You could go just as you were to wherever you wished, with nothing to hinder you—other than a lot of forms and regulations. A world so tamed sounds Utopian now. Nevertheless, it was so over five sixths of the globe—though the remaining sixth was something different again.
It must be difficult for young people who never knew it to envisage a world like that. Perhaps it sounds like a golden age—though it wasn’t quite that to those who lived in it. Or they may think that an Earth ordered and cultivated almost all over sounds dull—but it wasn’t that, either. It was rather an exciting place—for a biologist, anyway. Every year we were pushing the northern limit of growth for food plants a little farther back. New fields were growing quick crops on what had historically been simply tundra or barren land. Every season, too, stretches of desert both old and recent were reclaimed and made to grow grass or food. For food was then our most pressing problem, and the progress of the regeneration schemes, and the advance of the cultivation lines on the maps, was followed with almost as much attention as an earlier generation had paid to battle fronts.