by John Wyndham
“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 hard 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 be 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.
I thought of Coker and his talk of the leader, the teacher, and the doctor—and of all the work that would be needed to support us on our few acres. Of how it would affect each of us if we had been imprisoned here. Of the three blind ones, still feeling useless and frustrated as they grew older. Of Susan, who should have the chance of a husband and babies. Of David, and Mary’s little girl, and any other children there might be who would have to become laborers as soon as they were strong enough. Of Josella and myself having to work still harder as we became older, because there would be more to feed and more work that must be done by hand….
Then there were the triffids patiently waiting. I could see hundreds of them in a dark green hedge beyond the fence. There must be research—some natural enemy, some poison, a debalancer of some kind, something must be found to deal with them; there must be relief from other work for that—and soon. Time was on the triffids’ side. They had only to go on waiting while we used up our resources. First no more fuel, then no more wire to mend the fences…. And they, or their descendants, would still be waiting there when the wire rusted through….
And yet Shirning had become our home. I sighed.
There was a light step on the grass. Josella came and sat down beside me. I put an arm round her shoulders.
“What do they think about it?” I asked her.
“They’re badly upset, poor things. It must be hard for them to understand how the triffids wait like that when they can’t see them. And then they can find their way about here, you see. It must be dreadful to have to contemplate going to an entirely strange place when you’re blind. They only know what we tell them. I don’t think they properly understand how impossible it will become here. If it weren’t for the children, I believe they’d say ‘No,’ flatly. It’s their place, you see, all they have left. They feel that very much.” She paused, then she added: “They think that—but, of course, it’s not really their place at all; it’s ours, isn’t it? We’ve worked hard for it.” She put her hand on mine. “You’ve made it and kept it for us, Bill. What do you think? Shall we stay a year or two longer?”
“No,” I said. “I worked because everything seemed to depend on me. Now it seems—rather futile.”
“Oh, darling, don’t! A knight-errant isn’t futile. You’ve fought for all of us, and kept the dragons away.”
“It’s mostly the children,” I said.
“Yes—the children,” she agreed.
“And all the time, you know, I’ve been haunted by Coker—the first generation, laborers; the next, savages … I think we had better admit defeat before it comes, and go now.”
She pressed my hand.
“Not defeat, Bill dear, just a—what’s the phrase?—a strategic withdrawal. We withdraw to work and plan for the day when we can come back. One day we will. You’ll show us how to wipe out every one of these foul triffids and get our land back from them for us.”
“You’ve a lot of faith, darling.”
“And why not?”
“Well, at least I’ll be fighting them. But, first, we go—when?”
“Do you think we could let them have the summer out here? It could be a sort of holiday for all of us—with no preparations to make for the winter. We deserve a holiday, too.”
“I should think we could do that,” I agreed.
We sat, watching the valley dissolve in the dusk. Josella said:
“It’s queer, Bill. Now I can go, I don’t really want to. Sometimes it’s seemed like prison—but now it seems like treachery to leave it. You see, I—I’ve been happier here than ever in my life before, in spite of everything.”
“As for me, my sweet, I wasn’t even alive before. But we’ll have better times yet—I promise you.”
“It’s silly, but I shall cry when we do go. I shall cry buckets. You mustn’t mind,” she said.
But, as things fell out, we were all of us much too busy to cry….
STRATEGIC WITHDRAWAL
There was, as Josella had implied, no need for hurry. While we saw the summer out at Shirning, I could prospect a new home for us on the island and make several journeys there to transport the most useful part of the stores and gear that we had collected. But, meanwhile, the woodpile had been destroyed. We needed no more fuel than would keep the kitchen going for a few weeks, but that we had to have, so the next morning Susan and I set off to fetch coal.
The half-track wasn’t suitable for that job, so we took a four-wheel-drive truck. Although the nearest rail coal depot was only ten miles away, the roundabout route, due to the blockage of some roads and the bad condition of others, meant that it took us nearly the whole day. There were no major misha
ps, but it was drawing on to evening when we returned.
As we turned the last corner of the lane, with the triffids slashing at the truck as indefatigably as ever from the banks, we stared in astonishment. Beyond our gate, parked in our yard, stood a monstrous-looking vehicle. The sight so dum-founded us that we sat gaping at it for some moments before Susan put on her helmet and gloves and climbed down to open the gate.
After I had driven in we went over together to look at the vehicle. The chassis, we saw, was supported on metal tracks, which suggested a military origin. The general effect was somewhere between a cabin cruiser and an amateur-built caravan. Susan and I looked at it, and then looked at one another, with raised eyebrows. We went indoors to learn more about it.
In the living room we found, in addition to the household, four men clad in gray-green ski suits. Two of them wore pistols holstered to the right hip; the other two had parked their submachine guns on the floor beside their chairs.
As we came in, Josella turned a completely expressionless face toward us.
“Here is my husband. Bill, this is Mr. Torrence. He tells us he is an official of some kind. He has proposals to make to us.” I had never heard her voice colder.
For a second I failed to respond. The man she indicated did not recognize me, but I recalled him, all right. Features that have faced you along sights get sort of set in your mind. Besides, there was that distinctive red hair. I remembered very well the way that efficient young man had turned back my party in Hampstead. I nodded to him. Looking at me, he said:
“I understand you are in charge here, Mr. Masen?”
“The place belongs to Mr. Brent,” I replied.
“I mean that you are the organizer of this group?”
“In the circumstances, yes,” I said.
“Good.” He had a now-we-are-going-to-get-someplace air. “I am Commander, Southeast Region,” he added.
He spoke as if that should convey something important to me. It did not. I said so.
“It means,” he amplified, “that I am the chief executive officer of the Emergency Council for the Southeastern Region of Britain. As such, it happens to be one of my duties to supervise the distribution and allocation of personnel.”
“Indeed,” I said. “I have never heard of this—er—Council.”
“Possibly. We were equally ignorant of the existence of your group here until we saw your fire yesterday.”
I waited for him to go on.
“When such a group is discovered,” he said, “it is my job to investigate it, and assess it, and make the necessary adjustments. So you may take it that I am here officially.”
“On behalf of an official Council? Or does it happen to be a self-elected Council?”
“There has to be law and order,” he said stiffly. Then, with a change of tone, he went on:
“This is a well-found place you have here, Mr. Masen.”
“Mr. Brent has,” I corrected.
“We will leave Mr. Brent out. He is here only because you made it possible for him to stay here.”
I looked across at Dennis. His face was set.
“Nevertheless, it is his property,” I said.
“It was, I understand. But the state of society which gave sanction to his ownership no longer exists. Titles to property have therefore ceased to be valid. Furthermore, Mr. Brent is not sighted, so that he cannot in any case be considered competent to hold authority.”
“Indeed!” I said again.
I had had a distaste for this young man and his decisive ways at our first meeting. Further acquaintance was doing nothing to mellow it. He went on:
“This is a matter of survival. Sentiment cannot be allowed to interfere with the necessary practical measures. Now, Mrs. Masen has told me that you number eight altogether. Five adults, this girl, and two small children. All of you are sighted, except these three.” He indicated Dennis, Mary, and Joyce.
“That is so,” I admitted.
“H’m. That’s quite disproportionate, you know. There’ll have to be some changes here, I’m afraid. We have to be realistic in times like this.”
Josella’s eye caught mine. I saw a warning in it. But, in any case, I had no intention of breaking out just then. I had seen the redheaded man’s direct methods in action, and I wanted to know more of what I was up against. Apparently he realized that I would.
“I’d better put you in the picture,” he said. “Briefly, it is this. Regional H. Q. is at Brighton. London soon became too bad for us. But in Brighton we were able to clear and quarantine a part of the town, and we ran it. Brighton’s a big place. When the sickness had passed and we could get around more, there were plenty of stores to begin with. More recently we have been running in convoys from other places. But that’s folding up now. The roads are getting too bad for trucks, and they are having to go too far. It had to come, of course. We’d figured that we could last out there several years longer—still, there it is. It’s possible we undertook to look after too many from the start. Anyway, we are now having to disperse. The only way to keep going will be to live off the land. To do that, we’ve got to break up into smaller units. The standard unit has been fixed at one sighted person to ten blind, plus any children.
“You have a good place here, fully capable of supporting two units. We shall allocate to you seventeen blind persons, making twenty with the three already here—again, of course, plus any children they may have.”
I stared at him in amazement.
“You’re seriously suggesting that twenty people and their children can live off this land,” I said. “Why, it’s utterly impossible. We’ve been wondering whether we shall be able to support ourselves on it.”
He shook his head confidently.
“It is perfectly possible. And what I am offering you is the command of the double unit we shall install here. Frankly, if you do not care to take it, we shall put in someone else who will. We can’t afford waste in these times.”
“But just look at the place,” I repeated. “It simply can’t do it.”
“I assure you that it can, Mr. Masen. Of course you’ll have to lower your standards a bit—we all shall, for the next few years, but when the children grow up you’ll begin to have labor to expand with. For six or seven years it’s going to mean personal hard work for you, I admit—that can’t be helped. From then on, however, you’ll gradually be able to relax until you are simply supervising. Surely that’s going to make a good return for just a few years of the tougher going?
“Placed as you are now, what sort of future would you have? Nothing but hard work until you died in your tracks—and your children would be faced with working in the same way, just to keep going, not more than that. Where are the future leaders and administrators to come from in that kind of setup? Your way, you’d be worn out and still in harness in another twenty years—and all your children would be yokels. Our way, you’ll be the head of a clan that’s working for you, and you’ll have an inheritance to hand on to your sons.”
Comprehension began to come to me. I said wonderingly:
“Am I to understand that you are offering me a kind of—feudal seigneury?”
“Ah,” he said. “I see you do begin to understand. It is, of course, the obvious and quite natural social and economic form for that state of things we are having to face now.”
There was no doubt whatever that the man was putting this forward as a perfectly serious plan. I evaded a comment on it by repeating myself:
“But the place just can’t support that many.”
“For a few years, undoubtedly, you’ll have to feed them mostly on mashed triffids—there won’t be any shortage of that raw material by the look of it.”
“Cattle food!” I said.
“But sustaining—rich in the important vitamins, I’m told. And beggars—particularly blind beggars—can’t be choosers.”
“You’re seriously suggesting that I should take on all these people and keep them on cattle fodder?”
“Listen, Mr. Masen. If it were not for us, none of these blind people would be alive at all now—nor would their children. It’s up to them to do what we tell them, take what we give them, and be thankful for whatever they get. If they like to refuse what we offer—well, that’s their own funeral.”
I decided it would be unwise to say what I felt about such a philosophy at the moment. I turned to another angle:
“I don’t see—Tell me, just where do you and your Council stand in all this?”
“Supreme authority and legislative power is vested in the Council. It will rule. It will also control the armed forces.”
“Armed forces!” I repeated blankly.
“Certainly. The forces will be raised, as and when necessary, by levies on what you called the seigneuries. In return, you will have the right to call on the Council in cases of attack from outside or unrest within.”
I was beginning to feel a bit winded.
“An army! Surely a small mobile squad of police—”
“I see you haven’t grasped the wider aspect of the situation, Mr. Masen. This affliction we have had was not confined to these islands, you know. It was world-wide. Everywhere there is the same sort of chaos—that must be so, or we should have heard differently by now—and in every country there are probably a few survivors. Now it stands to reason, doesn’t it, that the first country to get on its feet again and put itself in order is also going to be the country to have the chance of bringing order elsewhere? Do you suggest that we should leave it for some other country to do this, and so make itself the new dominant power in Europe—and possibly farther afield? Obviously not. Clearly, it is our national duty to get ourselves back on our feet as soon as possible and assume the dominant status, so that we can prevent dangerous opposition from organizing against us. Therefore, the sooner we can raise a force adequate to discourage any likely aggressors, the better.”