The Night of the Triffids (18 page)

    By this time Kerris had a relaxed smile on her face. For her this was home. For me… well… I'd seen nothing like it before. My chest felt tight. My head moved left and right, right and left as I tried to see everything at once.

    This was a land of wonder, of amazement, of near-super-natural splendour. A strange animal passion blazed within me at that moment. I wanted, no, I
craved
to plunge into the heart of that vortex of movement, light and sound.

    After what seemed like a whole string of delays the ship at last tied up alongside a quay. Moments later I walked down the gangway to see what this strange new world had to offer.

    An official reception of sorts awaited us. A group of men and women spirited Christina away with Kim protectively holding her hand. In a way I still felt responsible for the girl and I asked Kerris where they were taking her. Kerris reassured me that Christina would be well cared for. 'The only danger is that she's going to become a celebrity; the same goes for you, too, David.' Her eyes twinkled. 'Now. This wharf we're walking along… the
Titanic
would have docked here in 1912 if it had made it across the Atlantic… of course, I don't know if you'd take that as a good omen or a bad omen.' She smiled as a group of uniformed men appeared. 'Well, it looks as if there will be some formalities before we can get you to the hotel.'

    For an hour I completed forms in the Customs office. My photograph was taken in profile and full face for an immigration record. Then a man in a gold-braided uniform shook my hand, welcomed me to New York and invited me through a gate to where a car waited.

    With Kerris by my side I sat in the back, marvelling at the city as the car nosed its way through traffic. What could I say? The sights, sounds, even the smells of exotic food - all of it was nothing less than an assault on my senses. Eyes wide, head ducking, twisting, bending this way and that I tried to absorb everything. People of all different races on the streets; the road signs with mysterious-sounding names - Tribeca, Chinatown, Little Italy, fabled Broadway. Bars, shops, cafes, restaurants, all teeming with life. Everyone walking with a rapidity that spoke volumes about the population's vitality and sense of purpose.

    Even the sun had brightened in the once dingy sky. It filled the city with a soft red light, buildings glowing with every shade of red from deep copper to gold. In that confused melee of first impressions I formed a single strong sense of a clean city: well ordered, prosperous.

    At that moment I shared an affinity with the ancient Briton who'd travelled in his animal skins to stand in the Imperial Rome of the Caesars. How that man must have marvelled at the heroic statues, huge temples, soaring columns and finely dressed citizens in their silks and jewels.

    Suddenly I thought of my old island home. A rural backwater of winding lanes along which trundled horse-drawn carts. A hotchpotch of quaint villages, populated by sleepy yokels. It seemed a poor place in comparison with this.

    Presently the car pulled up outside a towering building.

    'Your hotel,' Kerris told me, then smiled at my no doubt perplexed expression. 'Don't worry, David. They're expecting you. New clothes should have been delivered, too - I telegraphed your sizes ahead. Although we still need to fix you up with more suitable shoes… sea boots in Manhattan just won't do.'

    

    

    I was like a child at Christmas, wide-eyed with excitement, rushing from one surprise to another. Even so, I felt a twinge of disloyalty to my old home on that quiet island thousands of miles away. It had been a safe refuge for the Masen family. What grew and grazed upon its lush landscape had fed me, clothed me. Its society had done its best to educate and entertain me. But this pulsating metropolis offered so much more.

    'What's that?' I asked the barman in the hotel bar.

    He grinned. 'That's television, sir.'

    Instantly I burned with embarrassment. I knew full well what television was. I'd seen enough of the dusty glass-fronted boxes dumped in garden sheds. But I'd never seen one, well… for want of a more appropriate word…
alive
before. On the set bolted high on the wall behind the bar coloured pictures flashed. In the space of what seemed like five seconds but was obviously longer came images of a dance troupe dressed in shocking pink and kicking their long legs to a brash rhythm. Then came a blonde girl saying how much she loved Pop's Poppercorn. Then a lady claiming that she always shopped at Macy's. Hard on the heels of that were shots of soldiers marching, then firing flamethrowers at triffids, and finally crushing the steaming plants to pulp with their boots. 'Jobs don't come any tougher or hotter than this,' boomed a deeply serious male voice. 'That's why I like nothing better than a long, cold drink of Rheingold. The beer that heroes go home to.'

    The barman served me the beer I'd ordered as I perched myself on a stool. For the next hour I watched as a blond-haired man with an incongruously precise hairstyle rescued a succession of children and blushingly grateful young women from fifth columnists of some sort who'd hijacked a passenger liner. Infuriatingly, just as it appeared that the blond man would be blown to smithereens by a hand grenade or forced backwards over the ship's guard rail into a shark-infested sea, the suspense would be interrupted by more jangling exhortations to buy a coat of a certain cut, to acquire shoes that promised wearers would find themselves 'walking on air' or to purchase 'the gum that gets the gal'.

    'Now don't go getting square eyes on me,' said a bright voice.

    Kerris sat briskly beside me and ordered a beer. She wore trousers of an eyebrow-raising fit with a powder-blue sweater; around her neck she'd loosely tied a silk scarf shot through with flashes of gold and electric blue. After exchanging a few pleasantries with me she handed me an envelope.

    'What's this?'

    'Just some cash.'

    'Kerris, I can't accept this.'

    'Of course you can. You'll need money. Oh, and I've included a pass for the subway.'

    'But I won't be able to pay you back.'

    'Nonsense.'

    'But-'

    'Anyway, the money isn't mine. Consider it a welcoming gift from the city of New York.' She smiled a vivacious smile. 'Right, drink up. I can't let you waste your days alone in a hotel bar.'

    'Where are we going?'

    'Sightseeing.'

    

    

    

    KERRIS Baedekker didn't stint when it came to the tour. Even riding the subterranean railway system was a thing of wonder for me. Huge steel carriages thundered through tunnels that were vast enough to make me think of cathedrals. She showed me the Empire State Building with a 'That's where my father has his office'. From there we went into Greenwich Village with its much smaller buildings and an exotic bohemian atmosphere that I found strangely exciting.

    Sometimes she slipped into a tour-guide role, quoting facts and figures. 'Manhattan Island is a twenty-two-square-mile slab of rock three billion years old. Fresh water arrives through a one-hundred-and-twenty-five-mile-long tunnel from three reservoir systems. Power stations are coal-fired. The name "Manhattan" comes from an explorer celebrating discovery of the island with a local group of Indians. After the rather boozy party the island was named "Mannahattanink", which means "the island of general intoxication".'

    'Really?'

    'Well, it's a rather fanciful story. In truth, no one really knows how the name originated. Hungry yet?'

    We ate at the homely White Horse Tavern on Hudson Street, an establishment that wouldn't have been out of place alongside the pubs of the Isle of Wight.

    More than once I noticed the skyward-pointing muzzle of an anti-aircraft gun on the flat roof of a building. More evidence of a defence-conscious society? Or was there a more specific threat? If there was, however, these bustling natives made no show of it affecting their nerves.

    Once more we rode the underground express train. This time north to Central Park, now under cultivation with potatoes and corn. But I did notice that the lack of natural daylight had taken its toll. Plants had turned a pale green. Stalks wilted miserably.

    Kerris looked at them unhappily. 'Unless there's a return to normal daylight we're in big trouble. The crops will be dead within a week.'

    We crossed what had once been an elegant formal park for the eastern side of the island. Even in that gloom I could see a pale wall running east to west. Standing perhaps twenty feet high, a number of guard towers were also clearly visible at regular intervals.

    'Kerris, what's kept in there?'

    'Oh, that's the 102nd Street Parallel. It cuts Manhattan Island in two.'

    'Oh? Why?'

    'It goes back twenty years or so.' She spoke a trifle vaguely. I waited for her to elaborate. Instead she said, 'Come on, there's lots more to see.' She took my arm, guiding me between fields of drooping corn.

    The lady was right. There was lots to see. Art galleries. Museums. Libraries. Civic monuments. At one point a car pulled up on the street with a painful-sounding crunch. It appeared that its engine had suddenly and ruinously seized.

    '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.