'Search me.'
'Why, that's preposterous.' He actually looked hurt by my implication. 'We went to a whole lot of trouble to rescue you.'
'Rescue me?'
'Sure.'
'Did I look as if I needed rescuing? If you could have seen me you'd have known I was having a great time. Besides, I was due to sail home the next day.'
'Yes, we know that.'
'Then what the hell were you playing at?'
'We knew you were sailing to England.' He looked at me levelly. 'We also knew that sailing behind you - just a little way over the horizon, out of sight - would be a battleship with a couple of destroyer escorts.'
'You're telling me that General Fielding plans to invade the Isle of Wight?'
'That's our information, Mr Masen.'
'But what's the point? We'd welcome friendly contact with open arms.'
'Are you sure of that?'
'Of course.'
The man took a deep breath, allowing his eyes to scan the sunlit landscape and its triffid sentinels.
'It seems you've been in the dark, Mr Masen. A metaphorical dark as well as a literal one.'
'Go on, surprise me.'
'You know the New York community under General Fielding doesn't have access to oil wells or gasoline reserves?'
'Yes. They run cars on wood alcohol.'
'Which is so rough it chews motors to hell after a couple of thousand miles.'
I nodded.
'Well,' Sam Dymes said, 'We've a couple of oil wells, plus a refinery that produces around a million gallons of gasoline a year - it's not much, I grant you. But it means we can run this old girl.' He patted the seat affectionately. 'And we have good clean aviation fuel for the boat-planes.'
'Which New York doesn't have.'
'Correct, Mr Masen. So they can only tootle around the oceans in their coal-fired steamers. You see, therefore, that if they can get their hands on your Masen-Coker… uhm, what do they call the thing, now?'
'Masen-Coker Processor.'
He nodded. 'The Masen-Coker Processor… then General Fielding can refine that darn triffid sap and have as much fuel as he wants for his automobiles, transport planes - and warplanes.'
'And the consequence of that?'
'The consequence of that for us is that we'll be wiped off the face of the Earth. Up here in the river estuaries we're safe from his warships. But if he has bombers and fighters… well.' Sam Dymes whistled. 'He'll bomb us all to hell and back.'
'Make peace with him.'
'You mean surrender?'
'No,' I said earnestly. 'Send a delegation. Negotiate.'
'He won't accept it. Soon he'll have the whip hand. Yes, he'll take our women and children to fuel his population drive. But our men? Why, they'll be shipped off to the coal mines or the logging camps, or those damn slave farms in the Caribbean where they work night and day to clear the triffids and grow all those fancy crops to keep his followers happy.'
'You really think he's so unreasonable?' I pictured Kerris's father, General Fielding - the man with that burning yellow eye. OK, so he appeared to me to be a firm leader, even a visionary one. But a murdering tyrant? No, I didn't see that.
Sam Dymes looked at me, his fingers tapping his lips, assessing me. Then, after an interval:
'Yes, Mr Masen. I do think General Fielding is totally unreasonable. I also think he would stop at nothing if he could conquer us, as well as invading the Isle of Wight. Moreover, I believe he is a brutal dictator.'
'But that's only your opinion.'
'Not only my opinion, Mr Masen.'
'Oh? Who else's?'
'Can't you guess?' The man smiled, enjoying keeping me in suspense.
I shrugged. 'Whose?'
'None other than that of your own father, Bill Masen.'
'My father? He's never met General Fielding.'
'Oh, but he has. Long ago. You, too - when you were a child.'
I shook my head, frowning.
With a smile Sam Dymes reached down towards his feet. His hand returned holding a briefcase. Opening it, he pulled out a book and showed me the cover. I read the title, then the name of its author below - William Masen. 'You'd be surprised where your father's book turns up. We traded twenty gallons of gasoline to get this from a Portuguese fisherman five years ago. I hope your father won't come chasing us for royalties, but we ran off a thousand copies for distribution to our own people.' Briskly Sam continued, 'Your father knew General Fielding by another name - Torrence.'
'Torrence?' I knew that name well enough and sat up straight. 'My father escaped from Torrence twenty-five years ago.'
'That's right. Your father and mother plied Torrence and his henchmen with drinks when they invaded Shirning. While Torrence slept your father sabotaged their vehicle, then slipped away. Torrence woke up to find his birds had flown. Worse, the house was surrounded by triffids, but resourceful feller that he is he made protective triffid gear from chicken wire and canvas sheeting. Only, as he left the house, a triffid cracked its stinger at his head and venom sprayed through the chicken-wire helmet, blinding him in one eye.'
'Then somehow Torrence turned up in New York with a new name?'
'And a helluva chip on his shoulder.'
'But he must have known I was Bill Masen's son.'
'Of course. He intended using you.'
This cleared things up a bit. But I knew it would take some thinking through.
'But I know Torrence's daughter. I know her very well.'
'Precisely,' Sam Dymes said emphatically. 'That's why she too is a pawn in the old man's strategy. Right. We're here.'
'But-'
'You'll have to stow the questions for later. There's something you need to see.'
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
ALGONQUIN
JAZMAY brought the vehicle to a halt at the edge of the plain. In front of us a valley dropped sharply away to a river shining in the midday sun. Sam stood on a steel bar that ran between the two seats, unbolted a hatch in the ceiling of the cab, and pushed it open. For a moment his blue eyes looked earnestly around the Jumbo. Then he beckoned me.
'All clear. The nearest triffid's five hundred yards away.' He hauled himself through the hatch and onto the vehicle's roof. 'It's easy enough, Mr Masen. Stand on the bar in the middle, then pull yourself up the rest of the way.'
In a moment I stood beside him on the machine's metal back. Behind me I saw where the caterpillar tracks had crimped the turf in a line as far as the eye could see. As Dymes had indicated, a lone triffid stood some way off. It had divined that we were there with whatever senses it possessed and had begun its lurching walk towards us on its three stumpy legs.
Sam noticed the movement too. 'We've got plenty of time before it gets here. But there's something important you should see. Then what I have to tell you next becomes a whole lot clearer.'
He handed me a pair of binoculars.
'Say.' He looked round, relishing the view. 'It's great to have real sunlight again. You know, we had darkness ten days straight. It made the triffids so antsy they were climbing over each other to get into our camp…' He breathed in deeply. 'Sun, glorious sun.' Shielding his eyes, he pointed into the valley below. 'See anything, Mr Masen?'
I looked. 'A river. Trees. Probably about a thousand triffids… gathered in three copses.'
'Use the binoculars. Anything now?'
'Yes, smoke. About half a mile away. From a settlement?'
'You've found it, Mr Masen. Look closer.'
Through the binoculars I saw a U-shaped bend in the river. 'A couple of canoes on a beach, and… and I can make out four, five… let's see eight timber cabins, with… Good Lord.' I took a surprised breath. 'What the hell's going on down there? They're going to be killed!'
Calmly, Sam gazed down. 'So, what do you see - exactly?'
My initial shock had graduated to amazement. 'There are people down there,' I told him. My eyes returned to the marvellous yet impossible sight. 'They're living
in a camp with no perimeter fence. I can see children playing in a grove of triffids. They're not even paying any attention to the plants.'
'And the plants don't notice them, either.' Dymes took the binoculars to look for himself. 'And there's an old man sitting in the shade of a triffid.'
'Wait a minute here…' I pinched the bridge of my nose between finger and thumb and closed my eyes. 'This isn't right… this is…'
'Impossible?'
'Absolutely. Unless it's some kind of after-effect of that dope you pumped into me.' I looked at him. 'Am I hallucinating?'
A smile crinkled the corners of his eyes. 'Those people in the valley below, Mr Masen, are American Indians from the Algonquin tribe. Round about a hundred years ago missionaries came along and civilized them. By the time The Blinding came the tribe had all but died out. What was left of them was a bunch of unhappy alcoholics. But look at them now.'
Children ran, laughing, through the triffids. One child of around eight, naked to the waist and with olive skin and long black hair, scampered up the hairy bole of the killer plant to swing round the stem, while calling mischievously to his playmates below.
From what I could see there in the valley, a happy people lived by the bend in the shining river.
'But,' I said, having difficulty taking on board the true implications of what I saw, 'the triffids are making no attempt to strike at them. Have their stings been docked?'
'No. The simple fact is that those people are immune. Triffids can't harm them.'
That took some absorbing. Then I persisted with my questioning: 'Not only that, the triffids are paying no attention to them. Don't they ever attempt to sting them?'
'I imagine they tried in the past. But when they realized that their stings were useless against those people they stopped wasting their venom.'
'The triffids realized, you say. So you attribute intelligence to those plants?'
'Of course. Don't you?'
I remembered my father's words of just a few weeks ago. In his greenhouse he had told me that those sinister plants could communicate with each other: that they could plot strategies, plan invasions, then march in a coordinated way to wage war against us.
But what Byzantine twist in nature's skein had brought about the change down there in the valley? Where men, women and children peacefully coexisted with triffids. What should have been a killing field for the likes of us had become a safe playground for the happy children of the Algonquin.
'Just imagine,' Dymes said. 'If we were as fortunate as those folks. Well, we could stroll right back out there into our world again. But we just can't get close enough to them to find out the secret of their immunity.'
We stood there on the roof of the vehicle, gazing down at the settlement. At that moment I felt as if I'd scrambled over some great divide that allowed me a peep into Eden. Equally, I understood, with a feeling of unease, that the miracle I was now witnessing was a fragile thing. One that in clumsy hands could so easily be broken.
'Ah, Mr Masen. We have company.'
I glanced behind us. The lone triffid had lurched its way over the intervening space. A few more seconds would bring us within striking distance of its fifteen-foot sting.
Dymes indicated the open hatch at our feet. 'After you, Mr Masen.'
***
By the time the rumbling Jumbo had reached the gates of the camp - letting fly with its flame-thrower at the clustering triffids for good measure - I had a clearer impression of my new hosts. Sam Dymes, an engineer by training, was halfway through his tour of duty as 'manager and general dogsbody' of this military outpost of the Foresters. (A name, Sam explained, derived not from any propensity to cut down trees but because his people lived among the triffids. 'Our proper name is the United Liberty Confederation, but as you can see - or hear, rather - that's something of an ungainly mouthful.') Unlike the New York community where the population was concentrated at a single geographical point, the Foresters consisted of several hundred semi-independent settlements that peppered the eastern seaboard from Maryland to the tip of Florida. 'We first settled on islands and on the coast,' Sam told me. 'But Torrence, under his new name of General Fielding, sent gunboats to blow us to smithereens. So we moved inland along rivers, where his gunboats couldn't find us. And, of course, he couldn't send armies overland because of the triffids.' He nodded at one such plant as it lashed its sting against the window. 'Those devils have wound up as our allies. Funny how things turn out, huh?'
When the Jumbo halted I climbed out, noticing that one of the two submarines had left its moorings. I saw that Sam had noticed, too, but he made no comment.
'I reckon you'll be ready for a good square meal, Mr Masen.' He smiled. 'Get yourself a wash-up and a brush-down or whatever. Chow's served across there in the canteen - the hut with the red roof.'
I stood uncertainly for a moment as Sam headed away towards another building. Jazmay had lost interest in me, too, and was talking to a couple of unsighted men who sat at typewriters beneath an awning.
Noticing me standing there with a lost look on my face, Sam called back, 'There're no more armed guards for you, Mr Masen. Make yourself at home.'
I'd tackled two bowlfuls of a spicy dish, along with a heap of bread, when I heard the crackle of a PA system. A female voice announced the arrival of a flying boat, and invited a group of waiting passengers known as the Everglades Team to assemble at pier three.
In due course a large silver flying boat came in low and smooth over the river to make a perfect landing on the water. This stirred the pilot's blood in me. What wouldn't I have given to get behind the controls again, with a pair of beautiful Rolls-Royce engines humming sweetly and the blue sky beckoning.
'Penny for your thoughts, Mr Masen.'
I looked up to see Sam Dymes carrying a tray with a plate of steaming vegetables on it.
'Mind if I join you?'
'By all means.'
'Starting to get your bearings round here?'
I said that I was.
'Good, good,' he responded in that slow, easy drawl of his. 'We'll get you fixed up with a bunk later. And it looks as if you could use the loan of a razor.'
I ran my fingers over my jaw. Bristles were softening into a full beard. 'I could use a change of clothes as well, if that can be arranged?'
'Consider it done, Mr Masen. Say, is that chilli? I never noticed it was on the menu.' He turned back, calling good-naturedly to an unsighted woman who was serving food behind a counter. 'Say, Irene - any of that firecracker chilli of yours, left?'
'The young gentleman cleaned out the last drop.'
'Say, Mr Masen, you've a mighty appetite there… but then, we did starve you for a while.'
'How-'
'How long were you out? Two whole days. So, here, have my cake; I figure that's the least I can do for you.'
As we ate, something that I'd been dwelling on unconsciously for the best part of a fortnight at last surfaced into my conscious mind. 'Mr Dymes, when I-'
'Sam. Call me Sam, please.' Grinning, he thrust his hand across the table. 'Pleased to make your acquaintance… oh, you don't shake hands, do you?' He cocked a suddenly roguish eyebrow at me.
'Sam.' I allowed myself a smile that said something along the lines of OK, you win. I shook his hand. 'Drop the "Mr Masen", my name's David.'
'Sure thing, David. Now, what were you going to tell me? You were looking pretty serious back there for a moment.'
I nodded. 'I don't think the Algonquin we saw this morning are unique.'
'You don't say?'
'I believe there are others who are immune to triffid venom.'
'What makes you think that, David?'
As Sam tucked into a huge wedge of apple pie I told him about my forced landing on the triffid raft, then my encounter with the feral girl called Christina Schofield. He listened without comment, seemingly more intent on the apple pie, as I told him about her startled flight into a copse of triffids. How the stings had lashed out at her.
How I'd been sure she'd been killed. I finished off with her miraculous return, completely unharmed.
'Well?' I invited his opinion as he swallowed the last crust of pie.
'Any more of that delicious pie, Irene?'
For a moment I wondered if he'd even heard my story, but straightaway he turned back to me. 'Christina Schofield. Yes.' He looked serious. 'And you are right. Triffid poison doesn't harm her.'
'You seem to know a lot about what goes on in New York.'
'Inside information is worth a dozen gunboats, don't you think?' he said as the matronly woman placed another slice of pie in front of him. 'Thank you, Irene. Oh, that looks wonderful.' Despite his earlier enthusiasm for dessert, his appetite seemed a little blunted now as his expression grew more serious. 'David, I'm afraid Christina's future doesn't look that rosy.'
'Why's that?'
'The latest information we have is that Torrence has ordered a huge operation, code-named Avalanche.' Sam pushed the pie aside. 'Female human beings are born with two ovaries. Each ovary contains thousands of egg cells. And, as you know, each egg cell, if fertilized, has the potential to develop into a human being.'
'Go on.'
'Torrence's medical people have perfected the use of fertility drugs to stimulate multiple births. Again as you know, his aim is to create a population explosion in his community, so that the sheer weight of people drives back the triffids, and his community can start to reclaim Long Island and New Jersey and so on. In fact, he still sends out raiding parties to kidnap women and children from other communities.' He sipped his coffee. 'Now that he has Christina who is immune to triffid stings you can see what's going through his mind, can't you? With a million like her they can simply walk back onto the American mainland and begin building Torrence's empire.'
'Let me get this straight: you mean to say that surgeons will remove Christina's ovaries, fertilize the egg cells, then implant the embryos into other women?'
'And it will be on a colossal scale. Every woman physically capable of bearing a child will become a host for one of Christina's fertilized embryos. And I mean every fertile woman, young and not so young. That goes for Kerris Baedekker, too, if our sources are reliable - and they generally are. In short, Christina Schofield will become "mother" to hundreds of thousands of children. Naturally, Torrence hopes that these new babies will form the backbone of a super-race that will be immune to triffid poison. That, in turn, will make him the most powerful man on the planet.' Sam took a breath. 'In addition, Christina will be dissected as a living specimen in what amounts to the laboratory version of the death of a thousand cuts, in order to learn about her natural protection.' His hand made a slow chopping action to emphasize what he said. 'David, Torrence is fanatical about this. Rabidly fanatical. He now knows how to get what he craves. In fact, he's ordered that all already expectant mothers are… well, rendered otherwise, so they'll be ready to receive Christina's egg cells.'