The Night of the Triffids

  'That's a sight you'll get used to,' she said, still walking arm in arm with me. 'You can guarantee a breakdown in every street.'

  'There's a shortage of engine parts?'

  'No, we're manufacturing replacements now. We run our engines on wood alcohol. It's combustible, but it plays havoc with the pistons. Ideally an engine should be stripped down and rebuilt every two thousand miles.'

  'It would be more convenient, more economical too, to switch to refined triffid oil. Of course, you'd have to convert the cars' engines but we find they're pretty good for a hundred thousand miles or so.'

  'Good Lord.' Kerris sounded genuinely impressed.

  At the risk of boasting I added, 'My father invented the refining technique, together with a chap called Coker. To date we have three Masen-Coker refining plants producing around five million gallons of fuel a year.'

  She let out a breath. 'I think it must be providence that blew you our way, David. If your people would show us how to build one of these Masen-Coker machines it would solve our fuel problems over night. Or as near as dammit,'

  'All you'd need then would be a lot of triffids.'

  'Triffids? We've got plenty of those.' We'd followed a road that ended at a river. This was narrower than the Hudson, maybe little wider than two hundred yards.

  She touched my arm. 'Just take a look at them.'

  I looked where she pointed. Across the river the land ran uphill to a line of ruined buildings.

  'Brooklyn Heights,' she explained. 'A place we seldom visit. For obvious reasons.'

  There, in that grave red light, I saw them. Triffids. Millions of the blasted things. Silent. Unmoving. I'd never seen such an intense concentration of the plants. Nor beheld any of such prodigious size. They covered every square inch of land as far as the eye could see. Triffids crowded down to the water's edge. The ones nearest us even stood with their roots in the water, giving the impression of some evil-looking mangrove swamp.

  I knew why they crowded there. Between them and what amounted to a breadbasket of more than three hundred thousand people was a mere narrow barrier of water. Whatever senses they possessed strained toward the noisy city, sensing those sweet morsels of humanity… hungering for them.

  I shivered, imagining an invasion by so many triffid plants. I had a nightmarish vision of them pouring onto Manhattan's streets.

  After a moment or so I commented, 'You've no shortage of raw material there, I see.'

  'No. And it's like that all around us.' Kerris leaned towards me, squeezing my arm, needing a sudden human closeness in the face of that implacable foe. She gave me a weak smile. 'That's right. We're under siege.'

  ***

  That evening I walked with Kerris to a restaurant near the hotel. She automatically slipped an arm through mine, a simple, human act that I found extremely pleasing.

  Gabriel hailed us on the street, genuinely happy to see us.

  'We're just about to eat,' I said, nodding towards the brightly lit restaurant. 'Why don't you join us?'

  His gaze met Kerris's. For a moment there was an awkwardness that was almost palpable.

  'No, I've got to dash. Thanks, anyway. I just dropped in to the hotel to see how you were settling in.'

  'That's very civil of you, Gabriel. Thanks.' A thought occurred to me. 'Give me your telephone number. It's time I gave you another thrashing at table tennis.'

  He laughed. 'You can't get enough of those beatings, can you? Here's my card. Ignore the telephone number at the top. That's the office. My home number's underneath.' With that he turned his collar up to the cold night air, before hurrying away.

  'Come on, David. My feet are like ice.'

  We headed for the welcome warmth of the restaurant. For a moment I wondered why there had been that sudden awkwardness between Kerris and Gabriel when I'd invited him to join us for dinner. Had he and Kerris been entangled romantically at some point in the past? As it was, I had only a moment to reflect on this before I reached the restaurant and saw the sign on the door. WHITES & SIGHTED ONLY.

  I gritted my teeth, then followed Kerris inside.

  ***

  My appetite had been blunted by that unsettling prohibition on the door so I just toyed with my food. Kerris gave no indication that she'd seen me notice the sign. Instead, she cut a piece of veal and moved it to the centre of her plate so that a pool of gravy surrounded it.

  We'd been talking about the triffids that surrounded Manhattan. She assured me that they weren't as menacing as I'd first thought.

  'Excuse me for playing with my food a little,' she began. 'But let's say this long sliver of meat is the island of Manhattan. Three rivers cut it off from mainland America. The Harlem River, which you looked across today, is the narrowest, so that gives you the best view of the triffids. But it's the same on the far banks of the Hudson and the East River, too. It was once calculated that there are nigh on seventy million triffid plants crowding on land that was once Queens, New Jersey, Brooklyn and The Bronx. They form a rough horseshoe cluster round the island. Luckily we have that water barrier between us and them. Needless to say, the bridges and tunnels that connect us with the mainland have some pretty substantial barriers in place.'

  'Phew.' I whistled. 'With tens of millions more triffids further out on the mainland.'

  'Right. The whole country's a no-go area.'

  'Are there many human settlements this side of the Atlantic?'

  'A few. None that we know of on the mainland. Most are on islands further to the south. With a few scattered on the Great Lakes.'

  'Do you have much contact with them?'

  'Hardly any. For the last thirty years folks have gotten more insular.'

  'How do you get logs for processing into wood alcohol?'

  'There are teams of loggers up the Hudson. Well guarded against triffid attack, I should add. They float the logs downriver to an industrial distillery in the north of the island.'

  'You said you have a population of over three hundred thousand?'

  'And growing fast.'

  'But how on earth do you feed everyone?' I looked round at the other diners. 'Veal, pork, beef, oysters, cheeses. Vegetables galore - not to mention coffee and tobacco. How can you produce it all in a place that's nine-tenths concrete?'

  'The answer is, of course, we don't. We import a good deal from the Caribbean.'

  'Oh?'

  'We've managed to clear some islands of triffids down there.'

  'Must have taken a heck of a lot of manpower.'

  'What's that Latin phrase?' She thought for moment. 'Labor ominia vincit.'

  I took a brave stab at translation. 'Where there's a will there's a way?'

  'Close. Work conquers everything.'

  We chatted on. I must confess, however, that that notice on the door, WHITES & SIGHTED ONLY, had shocked me. I'd never seen anything like it before: it was a man-made barrier between sighted and unsighted, black and white. When I'd arrived in New York it was like being offered a wonderful, beautifully decorated cake that promised ineffable sweetness. Yet just a couple of bites later it was as though I'd found an ugly fly squashed into the topping. But, I told myself, this was a different land. They had different customs. Not all of them might be to my taste. Could I sit here in judgement when the ways of my own land might appear questionable to outsiders?

  In any event, my opinion of this glittering metropolis and my plans for the future turned out to be irrelevant. It might have been right then, as I sat talking to Kerris over dinner, that a cold, harsh intellect focused on me. As a master chess player considers the layout of the board and sees in a new light a piece that he once ignored, so this entity now looked with its mind's eye at me. I would become a significant element in another's future strategy. Without knowing anything about it, I had become a very important chess piece in this individual's game.

  Perhaps, as I ordered coffee and shared a joke with Kerris, it at last made its decision and issued the necessary order. Then it sat back to see wh
at happened next.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  RHYTHMS OF THE NIGHT

  AFTER the restaurant Kerris suggested a bar with live music. I anticipated a cocktail or two while a pianist played discreetly in the corner. Instead, I experienced another very different aspect of this culture. At the end of a long bar musicians played on a raised stage. The instruments - guitars and drums - were electrically amplified. And the noise was phenomenal. It felt as if an avalanche of sound struck me the moment I entered the bar. On the dance floor people gyrated with wild abandon.

  Kerris shouted something in my ear. The shout must have been loud since my eardrum tickled outrageously but, against the decibel level of the music, I still couldn't hear what she said.

  I gestured, grinning, that I hadn't heard.

  She shouted again, so close that her lips brushed my ear.

  'Manhattan Blues!'

  Whether that was the name of the song or the band or the style of music I just didn't know. But there was something thrilling about being so close to the pounding rhythm of drums, while the guitar seemed to sing, uncannily imitating a human voice. It came as a complete surprise to see that the guitarist was none other than Gabriel Deeds.

  I stood entranced at the sight of the swaying dancers in a room that was so hot it was oven-like, crammed with perspiring people and vibrating to those infectious rhythms. The music ran for twenty minutes or so, with Gabriel's amplified guitar flowing seamlessly from a beautiful lyrical tenderness to alarming shrieks and howls that reminded me of a jet flying low overhead. Gabriel's soulful brown eyes gazed at some point above our heads while he played, as if the far wall had melted away, allowing him a vision of paradise. The more I listened to the guitar the more I heard some deep and powerful yearning running through the music.

  After the band finished, Kerris seized my hand to pull me through the crowds to the stage. Gabriel propped the guitar against an amplifier the size of a tea chest and began to wipe the back of his neck with a towel before chasing away glistening drops of perspiration from his dark forehead.

  'Kerris? David?' He grinned. 'Did you catch any of that?'

  I told him I'd been completely bowled over by it. I'd heard nothing like it before.

  'Great,' he responded, pleased. 'This is the finest way I know of blowing the cobwebs away after a day locked in the office.'

  'I knew you'd be here,' Kerris said. 'I thought I'd show David the kind of music you play.'

  We chatted for a while, eventually turning to the subject of the perpetual twilight; Gabriel had attended a conference earlier in the day where various hypotheses (and a number of sheer guesses) had been aired. 'The most plausible,' Gabriel said, 'is that the reduction in light is a result of comet debris running between the earth and the sun.'

  'That would certainly account for the sunlight being obscured,' I said, 'But it's been nearly a month now; surely we should be coming through it soon?'

  'That's what they're figuring. Sunlight strength's up; average daytime temperatures have increased a couple of degrees.'

  'Then we might get a return to normal daylight soon?'

  'Maybe, but if you ask me a lot of fingers are crossed. I don't think we're out of the woods yet. And another thing.' He draped the towel round his neck. 'It may be these dark days, or it may be something else we don't know about, but it's got the triffids all jittery. They say you can even hear the noise they're making across the East River. They're rattling the old talking sticks away like their lives depend on it.'

  I nodded. 'If the lack of daylight is killing ordinary crops triffids will be suffering, too.'

  'It's not before time,' Kerris said with feeling. 'I hope the filthy things rot.'

  'But we do know that deprived of natural light they either become comatose after a while-'

  'Or they step up their nutrient intake.'

  Gabriel shot us a sober look. 'Which means they'll need meat.'

  'And having seventy million of the things as neighbours means they won't be needing just a cheeseburger or two,' Kerris said dryly. 'They'll be wanting the whole banquet.'

  'Right.' Gabriel glanced at his watch. 'Time for the next set. You people sticking around?'

  'Just you try tearing us away.'

  As the band played crowds of happy people surged back onto the dance floor to surrender with blissful abandonment to that soaring music. They looked as if they hadn't a care in the world.

  ***

  'Thank you for a very pleasant night out,' I began as we walked back toward the hotel. 'But, well…'

  'But what?' She turned to me, her eyes suddenly wide.

  'Well, I'm starting to feel guilty imposing myself on you so much of the time, when-'

  'Guilty for imposing,' she echoed. 'That sounds very English to me. What's it really mean? So long, I'll give you a call sometime never?'

  'Pardon? Oh no. Not at all.' I'd offended her. 'No, but if you've been instructed by your superiors to keep me company it doesn't seem fair that-'

  'I haven't been ordered to do anything I didn't want to.'

  'So you don't mind? It hasn't been an imposition?'

  'Imposition? My… you say the funniest things, David.'

  For a second we paused to look at each other, standing like two little islands there in the flow of pedestrians who still thronged the streets even at that time of night. Street lights reflected in her eyes, while above us skyscrapers soared, their electric lights transforming them into jewelled columns.

  She smiled, tilting her head to one side. 'It's true that I was asked to help you get settled in and to show you the sights.'

  'Well, that's my point. If I'm intruding-'

  'But.' She held up her finger. 'Point number one, I didn't want to see you rattling round in a big place like this alone. Two, believe it or not, I genuinely enjoy your company.' She smiled. 'Maybe it's your quaint turns of phrase, or your accent or something.'

  'In that case, it's safe for me to say-' But instead of saying what I intended I found myself making a kind of surprised grunt. 'Uh… who switched out the lights?'

  I looked round as the street lights, the building lights; in fact, every light in the city suddenly went out, leaving only the car lights. In an instant the cars stopped sharply. Though from the sound of a tinkling crash one did not stop quickly enough. Then, in scarcely two blinks of an eye, for some inexplicable reason drivers switched off their lights, too.

  Immediately an eerie darkness descended on Manhattan. Smokers even nipped out the glowing tips of cigarettes. An equally strange silence fell, accompanied by a sense of people holding their breath in expectation.

  A hand clutched my arm. I heard Kerris whisper, 'Quick. Into the doorway.'

  I couldn't see Kerris in this utter darkness but I felt my way into a recess in the wall. Then my shoulder bumped against a closed door.

  'Oh, damn…' she whispered. There was a note of regret in that mild curse.

  Initially, it seemed that a power failure had blacked out the city. But why had the car drivers so quickly extinguished their lights? Barely had the question run through my head when a searchlight's beam sprang from the top of a building. Then another. And another, until a dozen great beams of searing white light were playing in the sky. For a moment they danced, seemingly at random, throwing splashes of brilliance onto the clouds.

  From another building came a sharp crack that made the door behind me rattle. Kerris pulled in a sharp breath. There was another cracking sound. This time I saw a blue-white spark fly skyward. A moment later an explosion echoed across the city.

  Another anti-aircraft gun spoke from the direction of the Empire State Building. At first it was all fairly hit-and-miss. Searchlights shone in different directions; odd bursts of ack-ack fire were either aimed at a wildly shifting target or the gunners were shooting blind.

  But then, as if the searchlight operators and gunners had begun to receive coordinating instructions, the lights drew together so that they formed a massive tripod of daz
zling columns converging at a single point overhead. Almost simultaneously a dozen different anti-aircraft guns fired at this apex.

  For a full ten seconds balls of flame thundered up towards the illuminated area of cloud while shells detonated thunderously five thousand feet above the city. Soon, however, the guns fell silent. And only for a little while longer the searchlights made a sweep of the sky, hunting a target that had either retreated or never been there in the first place.

  The city's lights remained out for nearly an hour. In that pitch dark there was no way we could move. Not that it mattered. Because for much of that time Kerris was in my arms, and I was only conscious of one thing. Her soft lips against mine.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  PARADISE FOUND

  FOR the next two weeks the sun grew just that little bit brighter every day. Early morning and evening still painted the sky as red as hellfire, but by noon it was usually blue. Meanwhile the sun strengthened from dull red to brilliant orange. Normal sunlight had not yet returned fully, but it seemed like a start - a definite, heart-warming start.

  I saw Kerris Baedekker regularly. And soon, in a no-nonsense kind of way, we were what some call an item.

  There was no repeat of the air raid. The morning after the blackout, newspapers and TV carried reports that could be summarized as 'Air bandits sent packing' and there were references to past atrocities, such as bombing attacks on defenceless fishing boats by something known as 'the Quintling faction'. A mood of self-congratulation took hold of the populace for a while but the drama was soon forgotten. Normal life resumed.

  I was free to continue exploring that great city, often with Kerris, sometimes with Gabriel Deeds and Christina. My former wild child of the island had come on in leaps and bounds. With the cut of her hair and the style of her clothes she looked very much like any other New York girl of fifteen. Her vocabulary had expanded at a tremendous rate, too, but she still couldn't help grinning mischievously at me sometimes, pointing her finger and saying 'Bang-bang man'. And so we went to funfairs, rode subways, toured galleries, or visited bars where Gabriel Deeds and his fellow musicians played their hypnotic music.