The Night of the Triffids (47 page)

    I watched the familiar countryside pass by. It did feel good to be home. However, I couldn't help but reflect on the last few months, beginning with what at first seemed an ill-fated mission to free Christina. It was only after the blinded Torrence had been carried away that I realized what had happened. I remembered when the triffids had lurched through the streets and I'd heard the radio broadcast instructing New Yorkers to head north to safety. Now it made perfect sense why radio and television engineers had joined the Foresters' mission. On the day of the attack radio and TV stations had been seized and warning broadcasts issued, urging the population to flee north of the 102nd Street Parallel. It had been a significant element of the overall Dymes plan to expose free New Yorkers to the horrendous reality of the slave-labour camp. The plan had worked beautifully. Such was the flow of panicking humanity northwards that Torrence's prison guards had been forced to open the gates. (No doubt they had also been persuaded to do so by the march of those monstrous triffid plants through the Manhattan streets.) Consequently tens of thousands of refugees from the south of Manhattan suddenly found themselves in the ghettos of the north. There they had looked around in both horror and astonishment. As simply as that, Torrence's gaff was blown. What followed then had been the spontaneous march on the Empire State Building by the Blind, whether they were slave or free.

    That was when Torrence's evil regime had died. Slave camps were liberated. Families had been reunited. Of course, the transition wasn't without its difficulties and setbacks, but progress was still being made.

    At the hotel we ate dinner. Family histories were exchanged. My father talked to Ryder Chee as if they'd known each other for decades.

    Then I said to my father, 'Ryder Chee would like to conduct a little test on yourself, along with the other people in the room. If everyone is willing?'

    Everyone was immediately curious.

    'Would you all roll up your sleeves?' I asked. All complied.

    My father raised an eyebrow. 'Is this the final surprise you were going to spring on me?'

    I nodded, smiling. 'It is.' I rolled up my sleeve too. 'Ryder Chee only finalized the test last week. We still need to refine it so that everyone on the island can be tested quickly and accurately. But Chee has the bones of the thing sorted out.'

    'Now you really
have
aroused my curiosity,' said my father. 'What are we being tested for, exactly?'

    I couldn't resist a touch of the theatrical. 'Wait and see.'

    Ryder Chee moved from person to person while Christina carried a tray for him on which a dozen or so needles rested on sterilized paper. Taking a needle, he dipped the point in a pinkish solution in a glass phial. Then, working very methodically, he moved from one person to the next, pricking each of them on the forearm with a needle before discarding it, selecting a fresh one and repeating the process with the next candidate.

    I gazed at the tiny pinprick on my skin. Chee told me I wouldn't have long to wait. I didn't. The pinprick began to itch, then burn as a single bright red spot appeared on my arm.

    My father looked at his own arm expectantly. Then he shook his head, almost as if he was disappointed when the red spot didn't appear on his skin. Ryder Chee looked carefully at his arm. 'There is no sensation, Bill Masen?'

    'None at all.' My father looked mystified.

    Ryder Chee nodded with satisfaction. Then: 'Bill Masen, there are still many triffid plants in England?'

    'Yes, I should say so. The whole place is infested with them. Why?'

    'Because, if you should wish to do so,' Chee told my father, 'you might like to take a trip to the mainland. And walk among the triffids.'

    My father looked astounded. 'You mean to say that this test shows that I'm immune?'

    'I pricked your skin with a needle dipped in a weak solution of the plant's poison. There was no reaction. Therefore the triffids cannot hurt you. But I can't say the same for your son. He can be harmed by the plant.'

    'But how?' my father asked in astonishment. 'Thirty years ago I was very nearly blinded by a triffid. My face felt as if it was on fire.'

    'And since that day you have eaten triffid, worked with them. You have been exposed to their poison in quantities so small that they have been harmless to you. Over the years this has stimulated your body into providing a natural immunity, in much the same way that snake-charmers become immune to the venom of the snake.' He checked the arms of the others in the room. 'A quarter of the people here have not responded adversely to the test. I imagine this sample will be representative of the local population as a whole. Many thousands of your people will be immune. They are now free to begin reclaiming their old homelands.'

    My father sat there at the table, shaking his head. The truth would take some time to sink in. He'd worked so hard to find a scientific way to neutralize the power of the triffids. While he'd toiled away in the laboratory, however, his own body had done just that - without him even knowing.

    That is the lasting impression that stays with me. My father is sitting next to Christina. And there is such a look of awe on his face at he gazes down at his unblemished forearm. In it he sees the key to a new world.

    That was more than six months ago. Now, even though it's the last day of March today, here in Manhattan we are still in the grip of the fiercest winter I have ever known. Blizzards sweep across the city, turning the world beyond my hundredth-storey window into a maelstrom of white. Normally I would have had perfect views of the Statue of Liberty, the mouth of the Hudson where it pours out into the Atlantic, and the tiny island where the blinded Torrence still roars out his fury in his one-man prison.

    While the scattered remnants of humankind followed their ancient instincts and made war on each other, the wider universe ran according to the eternal laws that govern its own celestial mechanism. As we battled for control of Manhattan, so the cloud of interstellar dust, which we now know was responsible for the great darkness that fell on the Earth, continued to drift through the solar system. At times it formed a dense veil between our planet and the sun, reducing day to the blackest of nights. During the summer months it thickened again. Frosts in August ruined our crops. By September there were five inches of snow on the ground in the Isle of Wight and America's southern states alike.

    By October the dust cloud had gone, no doubt continuing its silent journey through the cosmos. For us, though, the damage it had wrought lingered on. While there were the joys - including the birth of our son, William, and seeing Rowena recover her health - there were, and still are, bitter realities to confront, too. The battle to find enough food for our people is never-ending. New Yorkers had to accept slashing cuts in their standard of living with the liberation of the slave-labour camps. Those days of gluttonous consumerism are over for the foreseeable future, - with luck, for ever. Triffids are more aggressive now than they have ever been before. They mutate faster, spawning newer, more lethal models of themselves. At least now, however, the people of the Isle of Wight, Manhattan and the communities I'd come to know as the Foresters have joined together, allies against both hunger and the triffid menace.

    As I sat here earlier today at my desk, with the shrieking wind blowing snow against the glass and William asleep in the next room, I had reached the stage in this account of my experiences where it's customary to write those two simple words:
The End.
Then I planned to find Kerris and share a coffee with her before returning to our apartment. But as in so many areas of life, whether we are speaking of civilizations or individuals, it is simply not possible to say 'We have reached the end' as though everything will cease to exist beyond that point.

    This was brought home to me not half an hour ago when Sam Dymes bounded into my office with the words, 'Say, sorry to bust in on you like this, David, but just take a look this…' He showed me a report from the people in Wireless Research announcing that they had picked up some inexplicable - and indecipherable - radio signals of staggering power. As I write this I can still see Sam pacing excitedly up and down, repeating the details to Kerris: that the transmissions are belting out from a far corner of the world; that they make the best of our own transmitters look as powerful as a tin megaphone; that already he's planning to launch an expedition to find the source of this mysterious broadcast…

    See? There are no endings. Until a moment ago I'd been looking ahead to months spent here in this office, working on flight schedules for our airlines, calculating budgets for the airmail service and a host of other vital but mundane chores.

    But now I'm seeing myself behind the controls of an aircraft once more, golden sunlight shining on its wings, engines humming sweeter than honey. And there on the horizon lie new territories just crying out to be explored.

    So at the very final page, here, I know to the depths of my bones that I will have to defy convention. For I can't with any certainty write '
The End
'.

    Instead, on the threshold of a new world and new adventures, I can - and I will - write with total confidence:

    
This is the beginning…