When the Tripods Came (7 page)

“It’s easy to enter the way of peace,” Uncle Ian said.

His briefcase was on the carpet beside him. He clicked it open, and produced something: a floppy helmetlike thing, black, but threaded with silver.

“The lucky ones,” Uncle Ian said, “are those who opened their hearts voluntarily to the Tripods’ message. But the Tripods want everyone to know the joy of belonging to the new brotherhood of man. So they’ve given us these Caps, which will banish all doubts and uncertainties.”

He held it out to me, and with his other hand pulled off his hat. He was wearing a helmet underneath.

He said earnestly, “Put it on, Laurie. Then you will know the secret of happiness, as we do.”

I looked from one to the other. Neither showed hostility. Nathanael’s thin features had lost their familiar sneering look and radiated goodwill. It was a chilling sight. The helmet looked harmless, just a piece of rubber with metal threads. But I felt my heart pounding.

“Sounds great,” I said. “Only—can it wait a couple of minutes? I lit the gas to make coffee just before you arrived. I’d better switch off before it sets fire to the kitchen.”

For a moment no one spoke. I started to walk towards the door, as naturally as I could.

In a calm voice, Uncle Ian said, “The human mind is full of trickery and deceit, until it has been brought into the harmony of the Tripods. Hold him, Nathanael.”

I tried to push past, and, when he grabbed at me, reversed and pulled back. I ran instead for the window, which was partly open. As I did I heard a car, and saw the Jaguar stopping. I tried to clamber out, but Nathanael had my leg. I kicked and yelled for help at the same time.

My kick dislodged Nathanael and overturned the sofa. It was a barrier between them and me, but a poor and temporary one. I heard Martha outside shouting to Angela as Uncle Ian, dangling the helmet from his hand, joined Nathanael. Going for the window meant turning my back on them. I didn’t know what to do and, out of panic, did nothing.

Uncle Ian said quietly, “This is silly, Laurie. No one’s going to hurt you. We have something to give, and when you have it, too, you’ll know it’s the most wonderful thing in the world. All you have to do is relax and accept.”

I said, stalling for time, “Tell me more about it—about the Tripods.”

He shook his head. “Trickery and deceit again. But it will soon be ended.”

I’d left it too late for the window. They’d have the helmet on my head while I was struggling through.
On the window ledge was a bronze statuette of a Roman god, one of Martha’s antiques. I grabbed it and held it like a club.

Uncle Ian said, “Nathanael . . .”

Nathanael leapt faster than I would have thought possible, his hand grabbing for my wrist. The speed of it and the shock made me let go of the bronze, and his hand had my wrist in a bone-twisting grip. His father was coming up behind. Looking between them I saw the door opening, and Martha.

She said, “Ian! I don’t know what this is about, but let him go. At once.”

He looked at her mildly. “We will bring you peace, too, Martha. After Laurie.”

My grandmother was a tough old lady, but no possible match for them. She was carrying her big red crocodile handbag, the one in which she kept her stock money. I wondered if she was thinking of hitting Uncle Ian over the head with it.

I called urgently, “Get away! Get help!”

She dropped the bag with a clatter. She was holding something: black, flat-sided—a small pistol. She said, “I told you: let go of him.”

Uncle Ian’s voice was untroubled. “Don’t be silly, Martha. We come in peace and bringing peace. No one is going to get hurt.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.” She spoke in her best bossy voice. “Unless you leave him, and get out, someone is. Badly hurt, killed perhaps.”

Uncle Ian stared at her. Tripping, as we’d found
with Angela, made people almost indifferent to pain and danger. Would he call her bluff?

He shook his head slowly. “You’re making such a mistake, Martha. If you’d only let me—”

He broke off as the gun exploded, shatteringly loud.

He sighed, and shrugged, and headed for the door, Nathanael following. Martha and I stood looking at each other, till we heard the Rolls start. She put out a hand, feeling for the nearest armchair, and dropped into it heavily.

“Pour me a brandy, Laurie,” she said. “A stiff one.”

• • •

Angela had been hiding in the shrubbery. She was more interested than frightened and wanted to see the gun, but Martha dropped it back in her bag.

I said, “I didn’t know you had one.”

“I got it last year, after a dealer got robbed on his way back from an antiques fair. The silly thing is, I never got round to practicing with it.” She took the glass and gulped down brandy. “I was terrified of hitting something.”

By “something” she meant one of her bits of china; her gaze ranged round the room for reassurance. The only sign of damage was a neat hole in the plaster of the wall. But she saw the bronze on the floor, and got up to examine it. The briefcase was still on the carpet where Uncle Ian had left it. I looked inside and saw more helmets.

“I wonder why he left this,” I said.

Martha ran her fingers over the statuette, and said absently, “No idea.”

“Except maybe he thought if he left them we’d try the helmets on, and . . . bingo!”

She shivered with repulsion. “As if we would!”

“Who can tell how a Trippy’s mind works? He really thinks these things are passports to paradise, so he might think we’d be tempted. He did take the one he was trying to make me wear. Where were they heading, do you suppose? Home?”

She slammed the statuette down.

“Caroline . . .”

“What?”

She went to the telephone and dialed the number. I heard her telling Aunt Caroline what had happened. Then she said, “Caroline, listen—you must listen. . . . Leave the house before they get back. Come here. They aren’t the same people, I tell you, they’re dangerous. . . .”

She took the telephone from her ear and looked at it for a moment before putting it back on its rest.

I asked, “What did she say?”

I’d never seen her look helpless before.

She said, “She won’t believe me. All she was concerned about was that they were alive and well. She hung up on me.”

More went missing from school. You couldn’t be sure if they were Tripping or just staying away because things were in a mess. Very little work got done, anyway.

In assembly the Head Man gave us a warning about people who might try to Cap us. It seemed Uncle Ian wasn’t the only one around carrying rubber helmets. We were to report anyone acting suspiciously.

I was standing next to Hilda Goossens, who sniffed and said, “Silly old twit!”

“Why?”

“As if we need to be told.”

“Someone said they saw Wild Bill hanging about school this morning. If he spots you, he might decide to Cap his pet genius.”

“I
don’t
think so.”

“My uncle nearly managed it, with me.”

She just looked at me pityingly. I wondered what it must be like to be Hilda Goossens and so sure of yourself about everything. The Head Man droned on. He was thin and anxious, white-faced and white-haired (what there was of it), due for retirement at the end of the school year. I wondered about being like him, too—just about able to cope under normal conditions, without things like Tripping to contend with.

What I was suddenly aware of was the importance of their being whatever each of them was—cocky and contemptuous, or bothered and beaten—as long as it was something they’d come to in their own way: the importance of being human, in fact. The peace and harmony Uncle Ian and the others claimed to be handing out in fact was death, because without being yourself, an individual, you weren’t really alive.

The first class was meant to be chemistry, but there was no sign of the chemistry teacher. Hilda Goossens and a couple of others got on with their assignments. The rest of us talked. We stopped when the door flew open. It wasn’t Mrs. Green, though, but a hairy little Welshman called Wyllie, who taught physical exercise.

He shouted, “Right! School dismissed. Everybody out.”

Andy asked, “Why?”

He said importantly, “Police warning. The Exeter Tripod’s on the move. The path they’ve plotted takes
it a couple of miles north, but they want everyone out of the area as a precaution. Get cracking.”

A boy called Marriott said, “I live in Todpole.”

Todpole was six miles north of the school. Wyllie said, “Well, you can’t go there. They’re evacuating along the route. It will probably be OK in an hour or two, but check with the police.”

In the bike shed I waited while Andy fiddled about. The shed was empty before he straightened up. I said, “Come on—we’re last.”

“I’ve been thinking.”

I said impatiently, “You can bike and think at the same time, can’t you?”

“I wouldn’t mind having a look at it.”

It took me a moment to realize he was talking about the Tripod.

“There’ll be a roadblock.”

“We can get round it.”

Can,
not
could.
And
we,
which meant there was no way of backing out without looking chicken.

I said, “I don’t suppose it’s any different from the one we saw.”

“No, I don’t suppose it is.” He wheeled his bike out of the shed. “I’d still like to take a look.”

• • •

It was a bright day but the wind, blowing a swirl of leaves from the side of the road, had a wintry edge. There weren’t many people about, and they were all going the opposite way.

We found the roadblock half a mile out of town.
A patrol car was slewed across the road with a policeman standing beside it smoking a cigarette, and another at the wheel. It was fairly obvious which way we’d need to go to get past it. To the left the ground fell away in open fields, but the higher ground on the right was wooded.

I said, “What about the bikes?”

“No sweat. Stick them in the ditch.”

Mine was new from my birthday a month earlier, a racer I’d been wanting a long time. I laid it down carefully by the roadside. We got through a gap in the hedge and made for the trees. Once under cover we stayed close to the edge of the wood. We passed within a hundred yards of the patrol car. The policeman who was smoking glanced our way but gave no sign of seeing us.

If we were invisible to him, the same would presumably apply to the Tripod, which made me feel better. I even began to feel lighthearted. There were bird sounds—a blackbird, the rowdy clatter of a pheasant. Normal country stuff. This was probably a wild goose chase, anyway—a wild Tripod chase. Even if it had moved it might stop again, as the one on the moor had, or change course. The trees ended, and we ducked under a fence into a field where Friesian cows were grazing. Here high ground on our left gradually fell away, giving a view across open country. You could see for miles—fields, copses, farmhouses. In the distance, sunlight dazzled from a river.

But there was something else in the distance, too, catching the sun with a colder gleam. And moving our way; I heard the thump of its passage above the noises of birds and cows.

Andy said, “The hedge.” We ran thirty meters across open meadow, and dived under. I wondered if it had seen us; it was still far off, but we didn’t know its range of vision. I hoped we were hidden now. Andy squirmed forward to a position where he could look out, and after a moment’s hesitation I wriggled after him, scratching my wrist on a bramble.

He whispered, “I’d forgotten how comic it looks—like a mechanical clown.”

The three legs, swinging in succession, produced a motion which was a cross between lumbering and mincing. It did look ridiculous. And even though each stride covered ten or more meters, its progress seemed slow and laborious. The thumping rhythm was louder, and I caught the buzz of a helicopter, presumably shadowing it. I thought of the grace and speed of a Harrier fighter plane, and couldn’t understand why this ugly thing was being allowed to bestride the land—why no one had ordered a strike the moment it moved away from its Trippies. Then, as it got closer, I could see the small specks clinging to the gigantic feet. It had brought its disciples with it. And I could hear them, singing and shouting, the words indistinguishable but the voices wild and cheerful.

“How are they managing to hang on?” Andy asked.

“I don’t know.” A foot slammed down, another lifted and soared across the sky, and my stomach lurched with vertigo. “I think it’ll miss us by quite a bit.”

I was relieved, though, when Andy nodded agreement. “By a hundred meters, I’d say. But keep your head down.”

I didn’t need telling. We watched the Tripod hammer its way across the valley between us and Todpole. A foot landed in water which jetted up, sparkling like diamonds. The Trippies burst into what sounded like a hymn. Then, as the next foot reached its high point, something detached and fell. The singing didn’t even check as a figure dropped to earth in the next field, like a stone.

We waited till the Tripod was out of sight before going to see. It was a girl about sixteen, wearing jeans, her legs horribly jumbled. I thought she was dead as Andy bent over her. But she wasn’t quite. She whispered “Hail the Tripod.” Her lips barely moved, but she was smiling. The smile faded, and she really was dead.