The Night of the Triffids (17 page)

    I did follow. Secretly, I was horrified.

    Still smiling he added, 'And once I'd got the Pink Card it got me into what we called Neuter High.' He chuckled, amused. 'And I got the damn finest education someone like me could hope to get. Now I've got a nice apartment along with a job that's second to none. Hey, David. You've spilt some of your coffee. Can I get you a drop more?'

    I thanked him. No… I wanted to go up on deck to get some air… I complimented him on his game… I got a promise of a rematch. Then, without my face betraying what I was thinking, I left the room.

    

    

    The time passed. There were times when night couldn't be differentiated from day. Heavy cloud had rolled across a diminished sun, reducing the already meagre light to nothing. Still the ship thrummed on, screws churning the waters of the Atlantic, the prow pointing westward. At times the wind blew fiercely cold. From out of the darkness raced flurries of snow. Someone once said that a snowflake in June was an evil thing. I saw that wasn't far from the truth. On what should have been a warm summer's day I watched streams of snowflakes flashing by the porthole. Maybe there would be no let-up. And maybe after a few grim years the whole world would be encased in thick, dead
ice.

    But then, who knew? For a thousand years, a million years, or for all eternity the Earth would circle the sun - locked inside a coffin of
ice.
Without so much as a microbe remaining on its face.

    I wiped the condensation from the porthole glass. Beyond it lay utter darkness, sullied only by those spitting white flecks of snow.

    The long-dead poet was right. A snowflake in summer was an evil thing indeed.

    

    

    'Hello, bang-bang man!'

    Christina beamed brightly at me from across the passenger saloon. She'd been drawing stick men with a fat wax crayon.

    I smiled back, then touched my chest. 'David.' I drew out the vowel into a long 'aaay' sound. 'Daaay-vid.'

    'David Masen,' she said brightly. 'Yes. David Masen. Suppertime?'

    'No,' I said, taken aback by her progress. 'Supper won't be for a while yet.'

    Kerris looked up from her report-writing. 'Christina's coming along in leaps and bounds. Give her a year or two and I think she'll be signing up for our research team.'

    'She's going to be an Ollie, too?'

    'Ollies? Oh, you've been talking to the crew, have you?'

    'No. Gabriel told me. Truth be known the crew tend to steer clear of me.'

    'Don't worry. They do that to us as well. Oh well, a little mutual suspicion never did anyone any harm. Whiskey?'

    'Well… er, if you think-'

    'Oh, come on, join me. The sun must be over the yardarm by now. Even if we can't see the blasted thing.' Lightly she swung her long legs from under the table before walking across the room with that interesting swaying walk of hers. (Gabriel had described it as 'sassy', before giving me a knowing wink.) 'If you ask me,' she said, scooping
ice
into a pair of tumblers, 'the crew are a little bit jealous of our refreshments.' She waggled the whiskey bottle in my direction. 'They're required to be "dry" when they're at sea. Seeing us with a reviving glass of something or other really gets them miffed. That enough for you?' She held up the glass: it held a more than generous splash of spirit.

    'Yes… ample. Thanks.'

    Christina gave me a stern look. 'Mucky beer.' Then she pulled a face, crossing her eyes while wobbling her head from side to side in a fair imitation of someone who'd tippled just that bit too self-indulgently.

    Kerris smiled, 'Something tells me that within a few months our feral child here's going to be very much like a typical New York teenager… cheers!'

    

    

    Within a couple of days I had my sea legs. What's more, I'd settled into the ship's routines. Meals were incredibly generous. Coffee on tap all day. Often I talked to the Ollies. Kerris Baedekker and Gabriel Deeds were the friendliest. (Although Gabriel took great delight in beating me hollow at table tennis - even so, I did pull one or two games back. I also showed him the rudiments of cricket with a cardboard tube and a pair of tightly rolled socks. Ah. Revenge, sweet revenge.) Kim So spent most of her time tutoring Christina, so I didn't see much of them. But I did notice that Christina's vocabulary had acquired musical American accents, peppered here and there with a phrasing that was pure Highland Scots. Dek, pleasant but painfully shy, tended to retreat into his work. He'd spend most of his waking hours writing detailed reports on geological findings at the various landfalls the ship had made so far. As far as I could gather there was a pressing need to find new oilfields that were readily accessible
and
triffid-free. No mean task. The team member I warmed to least was Rory Masterfield. I found a certain sharpness in his eyes off-putting; and, though he masked it behind a chummy smile, I sensed a lurking prickliness.

    To my surprise, I realized I was looking forward eagerly to my arrival in New York. My spirit of adventure had been reawakened. I wanted to explore. Naturally, when I returned to the Isle of Wight I'd give a full report on whatever I might find in the American city. I'd already flagged up one area of unease. Gabriel Deeds had been quite candid about the fact that he'd been chemically castrated in return for certain privileges. On my island, where fecundity was celebrated, the notion of neutering a healthy young male created an instant, reflexive abhorrence in me. But then, the creation of a eunuch class in society certainly wasn't anything new. Ancient Rome, Byzantium, the Ottoman Empire and many Oriental cultures had practised male castration. Often regarded as an elite within society, eunuchs performed many specialist roles, ranging from guarding the Sultan's harem to priestly duties to high office in the Byzantine civil service. As a horse is blinkered to enable it to perform that bit better, so a boy would sacrifice his manhood in order to concentrate on his duties with no hormonal distractions.

    Whether I found the practice detestable or not, clearly the New York eunuch was a fact of life in Gabriel's world.

    

    

    On the evening of the second day, with the sun nothing more than a brick-red smear above the horizon, the deck suddenly exploded into a frenzy of activity. Sailors raced up from hatchways wearing expressions that were as determined as they were tense.

    Captain Sharpstone called down to me where I stood on deck, his voice calm yet forceful. 'Mr Masen. Get down below, please.' In the near-dark he was no more than a dark silhouette on the bridge.

    My curiosity got the better of me. 'What's wrong?'

    'Nothing we can't handle. Now, I must ask you to go below deck.'

    By this time some crewmen had tugged protective tarpaulins from the big deck gun, while others were hoisting machine guns onto their mountings.

    '
Now
, Mr Masen,' the captain insisted. 'Otherwise I shall be obliged to have you escorted below for your own protection.'

    Reluctantly I quit the deck for the passenger saloon below.

    There the mood of the research team was tense. No one spoke. Gabriel twisted his fingers into complex tangles while gazing out through the porthole.

    'What's going on?' I asked. 'The crew have manned the guns up there.'

    'Just a precaution,' Rory told me. 'There's nothing to worry about.'

    Well said - but I noticed Kim and Dek's worried expressions.

    'Does this kind of thing happen often?' I asked. It occurred to me that these people had enemies. That out there in the darkened ocean their foe might now be stalking them.

    I sat quietly, too, waiting for the sound of the first gunshot.

    

    

    Supper, understandably enough, came late. Only after a hurriedly prepared omelette meal did a whistle sound over the ship's PA system.

    When I heard the relieved sighs of the team I guessed that this was the 'all clear' signal.' The sound of tramping feet came along the corridor as sailors returned to their usual quarters.

    Whatever it was, it was over without a shot being fired.

    Still, seeing that flurry of activity around the ship's guns gave me plenty of food for thought. When I retired to my bunk that night. I was still wondering what Captain Sharpstone had expected to encounter on the high seas.

    

    

    Morning didn't so much break as leak upward from the eastern horizon: a slowly spreading dull-hued stain like blood seeping through dark cloth.

    I'd woken up cold. Over breakfast I learned that in order to increase our speed Captain Sharpstone had ordered that every cubic centimetre of steam should be directed into driving the engines even harder, leaving no surplus heat for the cabins. So, bundled up as warmly as possible against a bitterly cold morning, one that had left a frosting here and there on the deck gun's tarpaulin, I stood looking forward into that wintry gloom. Behind me the smudge of red slid higher into the sky. Slowly - too slowly - it grew a little brighter. By mid-morning it had attained the lustre of red foil once more. Yet it still cast precious little light.

    I leaned forward, my elbows taking my weight on the guard rail. The sea, flat calm, had the look of congealing blood - a kind of viscous reddish brown. Once more I wondered if I was bound for some grim underworld.

    From the distance came an eerie cry. Lonely, plaintive, ghostly with lost and dying echoes. I looked for its source. It didn't require much effort to imagine that it came from the phantom mouth of a long-dead sailor. But reason told me it must be a gull, gliding somewhere out there in that twilit world. I looked for a long while, yet never saw so much as a single seabird. The plaintive cry came again.

    Between sea and sky a pale line ran as far as the eye could see.
Mist,
I told myself. Probably due to the cold air touching a slightly warmer sea. Then, as I gazed at it, there came a subtle transformation.

    In the distance tiny shapes emerged. They were clustered densely at the centre, then thinned out toward the edges. There weren't many. Moreover, they didn't seem that large, but as I watched they became that little bit more distinct. There, emerging slowly from the mist like some enchanted Babylon, were spires and towers reaching towards the sky. A magic citadel, floating above the waves.

    So taken was I with the vision that I didn't notice Kerris as she came to stand beside me.

    'Quite something, isn't it?' she murmured. I turned to see her green eyes shine as, nodding, she softly said, 'Home.'

    

    

    

    PHOTOGRAPHS, sketches, film, even a picture on a biscuit tin - I'd seen many images of the place. But this vision of buildings floating mysteriously and quite magically out of the mist filled me with wonder.

    Beside me, her hair rippling in the breeze, Kerris too watched entranced. This had to be a sight you never tired of. No matter how many times you experienced it.

    At length Kerris said, 'She looks quite something, doesn't she?'

    I had to admit 'she' did.

    Misty towers resolved themselves sharply into skyscrapers. Even at a distance of fifteen miles or so I easily recognized the streamlined symmetry of the Chrysler Building while the more aggressive neo-megalithic lines of the Empire State Building towered alongside. Long ago, H.G. Wells wrote: 'What a funny place New York was - all sticking up and full of windows.' I didn't think the great man had done this enchanting vista justice. Not by a long chalk.

    Despite the bone-deep cold, we, by some mutual yet unspoken agreement, decided to stand there in the prow of the steamship and watch. Up on the bridge, sensed rather than seen, was the formidable presence of Captain Sharpstone, guiding his ship and crew safely home to port. Presently I glimpsed fishing boats standing like inkspots on the sea, while a destroyer, bristling with big guns and missiles, stood guard in the final approaches.

    The colour of the water changed to silty brown as we passed from the open sea to the confluence of the Hudson, Harlem and East Rivers. The ship's engines slowed as the ship drew ever closer to the city now rearing hugely before us.

    Moments later that famous bronze lady, the Statue of Liberty, moved past our port bow. Still a greenish hue in this meagre light I noticed with some sadness that she'd suffered a savage act of mutilation. Her eyes had been dynamited from her face, leaving the great statue blinded and monstrous-looking. On the island itself half a dozen field guns pointed out to sea, their barrels gleaming dully.

    Turning to look at the city of Manhattan, I saw that the skyscrapers now towered above us, their windows reflecting that same sombre sun - a million dull red eyes seemingly glaring down at me, David Masen, a stranger in a very strange land.

    There were many different kinds of boat moving around the port - tugs, fishing vessels, river pilots, police launches, barges, as well as a great number of sailing ships - which indicated much about this resource-hungry nation. Now I could see roads running away straight into the heart of the city, through canyons of steel and concrete. And there were cars, thousands of cars, trucks, buses, vans of all shapes and sizes, sounding their horns and filling the air with engine sounds that sounded like a continuous low thunder. Headlights, switched on even though it was noon, shone brilliantly.