'It sounds,' she said gently, 'as if you need a square meal and a good night's sleep.'
'I'll second that. And maybe a shot of rum if the ship can muster one?'
'I'm sure we can rustle up a tot or two. Now I'm the one with the bad manners.' She smiled at me with those bright green eyes as she held out her hand. 'Kerris Baedekker. New York City.'
I acknowledged the introduction with a nod and a smile - albeit a tired one. 'David Masen. Isle of Wight.'
Then we turned to look back over the rail as the girl in her rags climbed up the ladder. Even with the briefcase under one arm she moved with extraordinary agility.
I said, with feeling, 'I'm glad she's safely away from those triffids.'
Then Kerris said something that puzzled me a good deal. 'Yes,' she mused, gazing thoughtfully at what I took to be fearsome specimens of the plant. 'But they're scrawny little things, aren't they?'
CHAPTER TEN
Q&A
I had expected to find myself eating alone in a cabin. What I got was a little more than I had bargained for.
I'd showered - a wonderful hot shower at that Then I'd changed into trousers and a shirt of thin denim lent to me by a crew member of near enough the same size as myself. With no shoes yet available for me I was offered a pair of stout woollen socks that had been darned with enough black thread to give them a comical Dalmatian look.
Now, an hour after picking up the feral girl from the floating island, I could feel the throb of the powerful steam engine carrying the ship across open ocean. As I tidied up my hair with a borrowed comb a sailor stuck his head round the door. 'Chow's up, buddy,' he said cheerfully. 'Passengers' saloon, down the passageway, first door on your left. Can't miss it.'
Thanking him, I took a moment to appraise my now smoothly shaven jaw. The healthy but limited diet of the last few days had left my cheekbones a little more prominent than before. But I didn't look overly starved, considering.
The passengers' saloon smacked of unostentatious comfort, with well-upholstered seating in a room boasting a small but heart-warmingly well-stocked drinks bar in one corner. On one table stood a bowl full of stew that swam with vegetables and medallions of beef.
I saw that I wouldn't be alone. The strawberry blonde, Kerris Baedekker, was there, with three other men. There was a shining eagerness about them. Like children awaiting the arrival of the conjuror. They beamed at me as I walked across the carpeted floor in my stockinged feet.
'Don't stand on ceremony,' a tall black man told me, indicating the bowl of stew. 'You must be hungry.'
'I won't pretend I'm not. I'll be happy if I never taste triffid again.'
This seemed to surprise them and they shot questioning looks at each other.
Kerris stood up. 'I'll get that rum I promised you. But please make a start on lunch.' She crossed the room to the bar where she poured a generous jigger into a glass. 'By the way, I hope you don't mind some company?'
'No, not at all.'
With the bottle of rum still in one hand, she held out her free hand, indicating each man in turn. 'These are my fellow colleagues in adventure - Gabriel Deeds.'
The black man stepped forward. Tallest of the three men, he had the easy loose-limbed movement of an athlete. Smiling warmly, he shook my hand. 'Glad to have you aboard, Mr Masen.'
'David, please.' I corrected him, smiling
'The gent with the blond beard is Dek Hurney,' Kerris said breezily. 'Don't let him persuade you to play chess with him. His games last for days, and he smokes a pipe that's so evil-smelling you'll never be able to concentrate in a month of Sundays. If you ask me, those smoke screens are part of his strategy.'
Dek Hurney struck me as an amiable if shy man of around twenty-three. Grinning, he blushed at Kerris's banter.
'And last, but far from least, Rory Masterfield. He plays the meanest duelling banjo on the boat.'
Rory was sharp-eyed, with a nose that came out to a point. He smiled readily enough but there was waspishness there, along with a sharp inquisitor's eye. I completed the handshaking ceremony with Rory. 'That was some suit you had there, David. What kind of machine were you flying?'
I told him. He gave an impressed whistle. Then he blinked, as if storing the information for further use.
'Eat, eat,' Gabriel urged. 'There's plenty more if you need it, too. Ah, Dek, would you grab the bread on the table behind you? We gotta build this guy up.'
Dek passed me a plate piled high with bread.
The stew smelled delicious. The taste didn't disappoint, either. I found myself marvelling at the medallions of meat: it looked as if whole beefsteaks had been cast into the stew with careless abandon. There were yellow vegetables the size of peas that I didn't recognize but that tasted wonderfully sweet.
I'd eagerly wolfed down a few mouthfuls and had begun to wonder how to tackle those huge cuts of beef with a humble spoon when I noticed that the four of them sitting round the table were watching my every move with all the intensity of an audience waiting for a magician to pull a rabbit from a top hat.
I paused, wondering if I'd forgotten something or made an unwitting social blunder. Instead, Kerris flushed. 'Oh, do forgive us. We're staring.' She smiled apologetically. 'Only the last thing we expected to pick out of the sea was our very own Robinson Crusoe jet pilot.'
Dek grinned. 'Especially one who'd make a stand against the formidable Captain Sharpstone.'
Despite everything, I couldn't help but wonder about the feral girl. This altogether new and alarming experience of human company must have been overwhelming for her. 'The girl you brought on board-' I began.
'Don't worry,' Kerris told me. 'Kim So's with her in a cabin. She's happily eating a whole plateful of cookies. How's the stew?'
'Amazing,' I said with feeling. 'You don't know how good this tastes.'
'More bread? Here, help yourself.'
'And the rum?' asked Gabriel.
'Wonderful, absolutely wonderful. I'm starting to feel human again.'
Rory had been thinking for a moment. 'You had a run of bad luck, having to ditch your plane like that. What happened?'
I told him how we'd tried to find the extent of the cloud cover that we'd first supposed had caused the darkness, then how we'd learned - the hard way - that the thunderstorm must have knocked out our radio link with the airbase. I rounded the story off with an account of the crash landing on the mat of weed. Of course, this led to some discussion about nature's little trick of apparently not allowing the sun to shine as it should. A problem, I gathered, that they also faced in New York, suggesting that the problem was global rather than merely local.
I looked round at their eager faces as they watched me mop up the last of the gravy with a piece of bread. 'What brings you across here? It's the first time I've met any Americans or even heard of any crossing the Atlantic to Europe since The Blinding.'
'The Blinding?' Kerris nodded. 'Back home we call it The Beginning.'
'The Beginning?' Gabriel chuckled dryly. 'And I call that enforced optimism.'
'Come to that,' Rory said, 'no Europeans have made the trip west.'
'At least, none that we've heard of in recent years,' Kerris added.
I resisted the urge to lick my fingers and settled for draining the rum from the glass. 'I guess that's understandable; we've been so busy surviving this last thirty years or so that international travel's had to take a back seat.'
'Well, we're putting that to rights now,' Gabriel beamed. 'We're taking this tub down from the Arctic Circle and all along the coast of Europe and Africa, as far as the equator.'
'We're mapping, collecting specimens - animal, vegetable and mineral,' Dek added.
'Assessing the extent of the spread of the triffids, as best we can,' Kerris said. 'More rum, David?'
'Thanks, but I'd better say no. It's gone to my head as it is.'
'Oh, by the by,' Rory said, as if remembering a small but significant detail. 'We're calling on folks on the way to say hello.'
He smiled. 'It's time we started getting to know our neighbours. Now, tell us about yourself, David. What's life on the Isle of Wight like?'
What followed was a fairly intensive question-and-answer session. The four of them started by asking me questions and I supplied answers to the best of my ability. Somewhere along the way I managed to establish that the ship was already bound for the English Channel and they all agreed to join me for a pint or two of beer in Shanklin as soon as possible. After that, I gleaned a little information about my companions. They all hailed from New York. They formed a scientific research team on the Beagle Minor - you've guessed it, the ship was named after Darwin's vessel, the Beagle. Indeed, there was a big sister ship, Beagle Major, steadily working its way south down the American coast on a similar mission - basically, to ascertain what survived of the Old World, to map the extent of the triffid conquest and to contact scattered fragments of humanity with the long-term aim of uniting them into a cohesive global organization.
'Some just aren't interested,' Kerris sighed. 'A community on the coast of Norway answered our request to come ashore with a few well-aimed rifle shots.'
'Which cost us a couple of crewmen.' Rory's glassy look told me he was remembering an unpleasant event. 'That's why the captain was a bit prickly when you came on board today.' As we talked I became in near awe of these young people. Their vitality, their sheer energy was extraordinary. I recall telling myself: Plug 'em into the power supply and they could electrify every circuit in the ship. They moved constantly, whether they sat or stood, gesturing expressively and talking with a swift confidence that I'd never witnessed before. At times I felt like the classic dim-witted country cousin. What's more, there wasn't a detail about life on my island that they didn't want to know about.
'Where do you find your coal?' Dek asked, polishing the lenses of his spectacles until they flashed like a heliograph. 'The Isle of Wight has no "native" coal mines, does it?'
'Er, no-' I said between mouthfuls of biscuits, which they called 'cookies'. 'We hardly ever use-'
'You don't use coal?' This surprised them. 'But for heat and light? And you have steamships?'
'We have, but they've been converted to burn oil.'
'Oil? You have oil wells?'
'No, but-'
'Surely you're not still drawing on old stockpiles?'
'No. The oil comes from triffids.'
'Triffids?' Rory's eyes widened as if I'd babbled nonsense. 'But how on earth do you refine it to produce combustible fuel?'
'Well, we have built a refinery that processes triffids on an industrial scale. My father and a man called Coker invented the system twenty years ago. It's possible to distil the oil to produce a light spirit with similar properties to petroleum and-'
'Just listen to that,' exclaimed Gabriel. 'These guys are squeezing gasoline out of those damn plants. Incredible!'
'And heavier oils for lubricants, cooking and pharmaceuticals,' I added with a kind of bewildered pride. 'The fuel for my jet was triffid spirit; it's different from our oils for internal combustion engines or-'
'Jeepers.' Kerris looked astonished. 'The question is, will your people share your technology with our people?'
I grinned somewhat naively. 'I don't see why not.'
Rory rubbed his jaw. 'And you people have a fleet of jet aircraft?'
'Yes. Mainly fighters and light bombers.'
'Jeez.' Dek and the other three suddenly sat back in their seats, looking at each other. There seemed to be a fair amount of communication going on through eye contact alone. Suddenly, I had the notion that they wanted to go away into a huddle to chew over what I'd shared with them out of earshot of me.
At last Kerris said to me in a studiedly careful manner that made me a bit uneasy for the first time: 'David. You mean to say your island maintains a military air force?'
'Yes,' I said, a little more guardedly now. 'For defence purposes.'
'Do you see yourself threatened by - for want of a better phrase - a foreign power?'
'Not as such. But in the past pirates have targeted us. The smaller islands in our group have been particularly vulnerable.'
'So you've used the jets aggressively?'
'On occasion.' A little voice in the back of my head warned me to rein in my wagging tongue.
'I see.' Kerris reflected for a moment. 'You do appreciate why we might be concerned when we hear that an overseas community has such an effective force of combat aircraft?'
'They're purely defensive.'
'But as quickly offensive?'
'True.' I smiled and shrugged. 'But believe me, our people aren't hell-bent on world domination.'
Rory let out a breath, then fixed his gimlet eyes on me. 'But you see the dilemma, David? We - I mean, our people - are really going out on a limb here. Yes, we are going out to communities all over the world, extending the hand of friendship, offering to set up trade links - to trade knowledge as well as goods - but we are also advertising that we have a viable, self-supporting society with access to raw materials like coal and timber.'
I nodded. 'And you're concerned that some community here in Europe might try and invade and take it all away from you.'
'That is a danger.' Gabriel's expression turned serious. 'We've had pirate raids, too. We've lost friends and family.'
'So you see why we might get a tad nervous when we hear about someone with fleets of jet bombers and fighters,' Kerris added.
'After all-' Rory looked at me levelly '-you might decide not to trade but merely to bomb us all to hell and just take what you want.'
'We're not like that,' I said firmly. 'We are peace-loving. We too want to build bridges between communities.'
Gabriel relaxed a little. 'Then I'm glad to hear it.'
'And we too only want to make friends,' Rory smiled. 'Not enemies.'
'Besides,' I pointed out, 'none of our aircraft, even the jets, have the range to reach New York.'
'You don't have any aircraft carriers, then?'
I laughed. 'No. That's one luxury we don't have.'
Suddenly they were all smiles again.
'Then we're all going to be the best of friends,' Gabriel said, rising to his feet. 'I think this calls for at least a shot of something in celebration.'
He returned with a whiskey that was as fiery as it was potent. A couple of those and the alcohol went singing through my veins and right to my head. After sleeping in a cramped cockpit for eleven days straight I suddenly felt dog-tired. Kerris noticed the way my chin had started to droop down to my chest. She told me that a cabin was ready for me and led the way lightly along the corridor to a small but comfortable room where a freshly made bunk waited.
'Oh, David,' she said as she stood smiling in the doorway. 'The skipper says we should reach the Isle of Wight in the morning. In the meantime feel free to make yourself at home.'
I managed to thank her before I slipped away into a beautiful, dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
NIGHT
FROM the ship to a far distant shore radio signals flashed, back and forth, racing across the ether. Information dispatched. Questions asked. Orders transmitted.
I knew none of this then. I slept in blissful, peaceful ignorance in my bunk below decks.
Engine notes changed in pitch. Pulsing tremors from pounding pistons ran through the ship, growing stronger and stronger. Stokers, roused early from their bunks, were ordered below without breakfast, where, no doubt, they stoked not only boiler fires but also the very air around them with fiery curses. But needs must. They had to raise as much steam as that old ship could. They fed the furnaces with coal and yet more coal. The ship sped faster and faster through the night-time ocean.
Again, I knew none of this. I slept on.
Above me sparks cascaded from the funnel to flicker against a sky that remained starless and deathly dark. Anyone standing on deck would have seen the wake running out astern, like a luminously white chalk line across a blackboard. At first it woul
d have been straight. Presently, however, degree by degree, the observer would have seen the line begin to curve as the ship turned, adopting a new course. She carried a treasure on board. One of such huge value that the ship's master had been ordered to stop for nothing. Or for no one.
It was in that same cosy envelope of blissful ignorance that I climbed from my bunk, donned those comical Dalmatian-patterned socks, pulled on my clothes and went to the passengers' saloon where I breakfasted on a concoction of crisped bacon, eggs and toast, all drenched in some sort of extremely sweet syrup. What was more, I didn't give two hoots when Gabriel Deeds strolled in, taking mighty swallows from a coffee mug, and commented, 'Anyone know why the skipper's driving the old tub so hard? She's shooting along like a speedboat this morning.'
The others shrugged before carrying on eating. Kerris asked me about the Isle of Wight's infrastructure.
Infrastructure? I'd have to take a couple of runs at spelling the word, never mind going into detail about how many miles of rail track or water mains we boasted.
Ignorant fool that I was then, I thought we were only an hour or so from home. Kerris had already requisitioned film stock from the ship's stores and had loaded a handsome German-made 8 mm movie camera. I couldn't help but watch her slender fingers, working the film round guiders and sprockets before delicately inserting it into the lens gate. The mechanism might have been forty years old but the camera still ran sweet as a Swiss clock. The first meeting for thirty years between our two peoples would be recorded for posterity.
After a while I went on deck. The crew had their heads down, working hard. I saw Captain Sharpstone on his bridge, hands behind his back, standing four-square to the approaching horizon, his iron gaze fixed bow-ward.
I noticed too a four-pounder artillery gun on the foredeck, along with a couple of mounts for heavy machine guns. These people certainly weren't going into dangerous waters unprepared.