The Day of the Triffids(74)

“While that was going on, we were getting organized. There were some fifty or sixty of us to begin with. I took flips in the helicopter, and when I saw signs of a group anywhere, I’d go down and issue a general invitation to come along. Some did—but a surprising number simply weren’t interested: they’d escaped from being governed, and in spite of all their troubles they didn’t want any more of it. There are some lots in South Wales that have started sorts of tribal communities and resent the idea of any organization except the minimum they’ve set up for themselves. You’ll find similar lots near the other coal fields too. Usually the leaders are the men who happened to be on the shift below ground, so that they never saw the green stars—though God knows how they ever got up the shafts again.

“Some of them so definitely don’t want to be interfered with that they shoot at the aircraft—there’s one lot like that at Brighton——”

“I know,” I said. “They warned me off too.”

“Recently there are more like that. There’s one at Maidstone, another at Guildford, and other places. They’re the real reason why we hadn’t spotted you hidden away here before. The district didn’t seem too healthy when one got close to it. I don’t know what they think they’re doing—probably got some good food dumps and are scared of anyone else wanting some of it. Anyway, there’s no sense in taking risks, so I just let ’em stew.

“Still, quite a lot did come along. In a year we’d gone up to three hundred or so—not all sighted, of course.

“It wasn’t until about a month ago that I came across Coker and his lot—and one of the first things he asked, by the way, was whether you’d shown up. They had a bad time, particularly at first.

“A few days after he got back to Tynsham, a couple of women came along from London, and brought the plague with them. Coker quarantined them at the first symptoms, but it was too late. He decided on a quick move. Miss Durrant wouldn’t budge. She decided to stay and look after the sick, and follow later if she could. But she never did.

“They took the infection with them. There were three more hurried moves before they succeeded in shaking free of it. By then they had gone as far west as Devonshire, and they were all right for a bit there. But soon they began to find the same difficulties as we had—and you have. Coker stuck it out there for nearly three years, and then reasoned along much the same lines as we did. Only he didn’t think of an island. Instead he decided on a river boundary and a fence to cut off the toe of Cornwall. When they got there they spent the first months building their barrier, then they went for the triffids inside, much as we had on the island. They had more difficult country to work with, though, and they never did succeed in clearing them out completely. The fence was fairly successful to begin with, but they never could depend on it as we could trust to the sea, and too much of their man power had to be wasted on patrols.

“Coker thinks they might have made out all right once the children had grown old enough to work, but it would have been tough going all the time. When I did find them, they hadn’t much hesitation about coming along. They set about loading up their fishing boats right away, and they were all on the island in a couple of weeks. When Coker found you weren’t with us, he suggested you might still be somewhere in these parts.”

“You can tell him that wipes out any hard feelings about him,” said Josella.

“He’s going to be a very useful man,” Ivan said. “And from what he tells us, you could be too,” he added, looking at me. “You’re a biochemist, aren’t you?”

“A biologist,” I said.

“Well, you can hold on to your fine distinctions. The point is, Michael has tried to get some research going into a method of knocking off triffids scientifically. That has to be found if we are going to get anywhere at all. But the trouble so far is that the only people we have to work on it are a few who have forgotten most of the biology they learned at school. What do you think—like to turn professor? It’d be a worth-while job.”

“I can’t think of one that would be more worth while,” I told him.

“Does this mean you’re inviting us all to your island haven?” Dennis asked.

“Well, to come on mutual approval, at least,” Ivan replied. “Bill and Josella will probably remember the broad principles laid down that night at the university. They still stand. We aren’t out to reconstruct—we want to build something new and better. Some people don’t take to that. If they don’t, they’re no use to us. We just aren’t interested in having an opposition party that’s trying to perpetuate a lot of the old bad features. We’d rather people who want that went elsewhere.”

“Elsewhere sounds a pretty poor offer, in the circumstances,” remarked Dennis.

“Oh, I don’t mean we throw them back to the triffids. But there were a number of them, and there had to be some place for them to go, so a party went across to the Channel Isles and started cleaning up there on the same lines as we’d cleaned up the Isle of Wight. About a hundred of them moved over. They’re doing all right there.

“So now we have this mutual-approval system. Newcomers spend six months with us, then there’s a Council hearing. If they don’t like our ways, they say so; and if we don’t think they’ll fit, we say so. If they fit, they stay; if not, we see that they get to the Channel Isles—or back to the mainland, if they’re odd enough to prefer that.”