The Day of the Triffids(11)

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Now that walking plants were established facts, the press lost its former tepidity and bathed them in publicity. So a name had to be found for them. Already there were botanists wallowing, after their custom, in polysyllabic dog Latin and Greek to produce variants on ambulans and pseudopodia, but what the newspapers and the public wanted was something easy on the tongue and not too heavy on the headlines for general use. If you could see the papers of that time you would find them referring to:





TRICHOTS


TRINITS


TRICUSPS


TRIPEDALS


TRIGENATES


TRIPEDS


TRIGONS


TRIQUETS


TRILOGS


TRIPODS


TRIDENTATES


TRIPPETS




and a number of other mysterious things not even beginning with “tri”—though almost all centered on the feature of that active, three-pronged root.

There was argument, public, private, and bar-parlor, with heated championship of one term or another on near-scientific, quasi-etymological, and a number of other grounds, but gradually one term began to dominate this philological gymkhana. In its first form it was not quite acceptable, but common usage modified the original long first “i,” and custom quickly wrote in a second “f,” to leave no doubt about it. And so emerged the standard term. A catchy little name originating in some newspaper office as a handy label for an oddity—but destined one day to be associated with pain, fear, and misery—TRIFFID….

The first wave of public interest soon ebbed away. Triffids were, admittedly, a bit weird—but that was, after all, just because they were a novelty. People had felt the same about novelties of other days; about kangaroos, giant lizards, black swans. And when you came to think of it, were triffids all that much queerer than mudfish, ostriches, polliwogs, and a hundred other things? The bat was an animal that had learned to fly; well, here was a plant that had learned to walk—what of that?

But there were features of it to be less casually dismissed. On its origins the Russians, true to type, lay low and said nothing. Even those who had heard of Umberto did not yet connect him with it. Its sudden appearance, and, even more, its wide distribution, promoted very puzzled speculation. For though it matured more rapidly in the tropics, specimens in various stages of development were reported from almost any region outside the polar circles and the deserts.

People were surprised, and a little disgusted, to learn that the species was carnivorous, and that the flies and other insects caught in the cups were actually digested by the sticky substance there. We in temperate zones were not ignorant of insectivorous plants, but we were unaccustomed to finding them outside special hothouses, and apt to consider them as in some way slightly indecent, or at least improper. But actually alarming was the discovery that the whorl topping a triffid’s stem could lash out as a slender stinging weapon ten feet long, capable of discharging enough poison to kill a man if it struck squarely on his unprotected skin.

As soon as this danger was appreciated there followed a nervous smashing and chopping of triffids everywhere, until it occurred to someone that all that was necessary to make them harmless was the removal of the actual stinging weapon. At this, the slightly hysterical assault upon the plants declined, with their numbers considerably thinned. A little later it began to be a fashion to have a safely docked triffid or two about one’s garden. It was found that it took about two years for the lost sting to be dangerously replaced, so that an annual pruning assured that they were in a state of safety where they could provide vast amusement for the children.

In temperate countries, where man had succeeded in putting most forms of nature save his own under a reasonable degree of restraint, the status of the triffid was thus made quite clear. But in the tropics, particularly in the dense forest areas, they quickly became a scourge.

The traveler very easily failed to notice one among the normal bushes and undergrowth, and the moment he was in range the venomous sting would slash out. Even the regular inhabitant of such a district found it difficult to detect a motionless triffid cunningly lurking beside a jungle path. They were uncannily sensitive to any movement near them, and hard to take unawares.

Dealing with them became a serious problem in such regions. The most favored method was to shoot the top off the stem, and the sting with it. The jungle natives took to carrying long, light poles mounted with hooked knives, which they used effectively if they could get their blows in first—but not at all if the triffid had a chance to sway forward and increase its range by an unexpected four or five feet. Before long, however, these pikelike devices were mostly superseded by spring-operated guns of various types. Most of them shot spinning disks, crosses, or small boomerangs of thin steel. As a rule they were inaccurate above about twelve yards, though capable of slicing a triffid stem neatly at twenty-five if they hit it. Their invention pleased both the authorities—who had an almost unanimous distaste for the indiscriminate toting of rifles—and the users, who found the missiles of razor-blade steel far cheaper and lighter than cartridges, and admirably adaptable to silent banditry.

Elsewhere, immense research into the nature, habits, and constitution of the triffid went on. Earnest experimenters set out to determine, in the interests of science, how far and for how long it could walk; whether it could be said to have a front, or could perform its march in any direction with equal clumsiness; what proportion of its time it must spend with its roots in the ground; what reactions it showed to the presence of various chemicals in the soil; and a vast quantity of other questions, both useful and useless.