When the Tripods Came (9 page)

The sergeant got more friendly after that. He said it was lucky Pa’s aunt lived on this side of the river; things were bad on the other bank, and they’d lost contact with Exmouth. There were reports, too, that Capped tanks were on the move from Dartmoor—towards Plymouth probably, but they might swing this way. Pa said we’d get home as soon as possible, and dig in. It couldn’t last long, could it?

The sergeant was a tall bony man with a Falklands ribbon.

He said, “My grandfather used to talk about the 1914 War. They told him it would be over by Christmas and he was four years out there.” He shook his head. “And at least they could tell who the enemy was.”

The weather had turned wintry, and by the time we reached the mooring, just after nine, sleet was driving in from the west. The tide was high—that
had been another reason for an early start—and boats jerked and bobbed on their lines. When we left the car’s warmth, the wind bit sharply.

We got the rubber dinghy off the roof and put on the outboard.

Pa said, “Laurie and me first, and then I’ll leave him in charge of ferrying while I check things inboard. OK?”

Martha stayed behind until last, organizing gear. Andy gave her a hand on board, though she didn’t really need it. She didn’t move like a grandmother.

She asked Pa, “Everything all right?”

He nodded. “Good job I filled the tanks last time. We don’t know who’ll be running the filling station.”

“I don’t suppose you got a forecast?”

“As a matter of fact, I did. A normal weather report, and not a single hail for the Tripod. Cold front passing through with more sleet and rain, snow on high ground. Winds west to southwest, force, five to seven.”

“Just as well the tanks are full. Sounds stiff for sail.”

They spoke lightly but I realized they weren’t relishing the voyage ahead. We would never normally have set out even for a trip along the coast with a prospect of near-gale-force winds.

Martha said, “No point in waiting. I’ll get some food going in the galley.”

Nothing else was moving on this stretch, not surprisingly, in view of the weather. Sleet drove hard
against the glass of the conning deck. Exmouth came up on the port side, a jumble of wet gray roofs. I saw something else—two figures in coast guard oilskins on the jetty. I nudged Pa.

“I know,” he said.

One was signaling to us. The other lifted a bullhorn, and a voice boomed across the choppy water, “Come in,
Edelweiss.
Come in,
Edelweiss.”

Pa throttled the engines and we surged ahead, rocking violently. The voice was still shouting, more faintly as we drove out to sea.

Andy said, “Do you think they’ll send a cutter after us?”

“I don’t know.”

Pa felt in his pocket for a cigarette, and then a match. I was surprised he was carrying them—he’d given up smoking a year before. He lit up and drew heavily on it.

“I’d like to tell you a story, Andy—Laurie knows it. Not long after Martha got the Jaguar she took us over to Honiton. It was summer and the main roads were packed, so she used minor roads. They were busy, too, and there was a bend every couple of hundred yards. It was pretty frustrating progress, especially in a car like that. Then, beyond Plymtree, there was a bit of open road with just three cars dawdling ahead of us. She put her foot down. We were doing over eighty when she passed the last of the three and realized what had been keeping the other two back: it was a low-slung police car.

“If I’d been driving I’d have braked and waited to
be pulled up and given a verbal going-over. Martha put her foot right down. They chased her, but she’s a good driver and she had the edge, with that engine. She lost them long before Cheriton.”

Andy said, “Didn’t they do anything about it? They must have got her number.”

“Yes. But if you don’t have radar, you’ve got to catch your chicken before you can chop it. They’d have needed to overtake her and flag her down. They could have come round to see her afterwards, but they’d have known her age from the registration details and I don’t suppose they fancied lecturing a sixty-year-old woman for outdriving them.”

We hit heavier seas, and he eased the throttle.

“The reason I mention it is that I think I’d have been right, then. In a normal law-abiding world it’s better to toe the line, and come to heel when the man in uniform calls you. But that world’s gone, for the time being at least. From now on it’s safer to follow Martha’s policy—turn a blind eye and put your foot down.”

I said, “No sign of anything coming after us so far.”

“Good. Keep your eyes skinned.”

Martha had gone below with Angela, who, like Use, tended to be seasick even in good weather. I felt my own stomach heaving as we hammered away from the comparative shelter of the shore. I held out for quarter of an hour, and had the satisfaction of seeing Andy dive for the rail before I did. Not long after, Pa handed me the wheel and went to be sick as
well. Martha was the only one who seemed unaffected. She brought us mugs of steaming tea, lurching precariously with them across the tilting deck.

Gradually the prospect of pursuit faded; the sea stretched gray and empty all round. Or almost empty—we saw a couple of cargo ships battling their way east and another heading west. Pa observed that trade must drop off when you couldn’t guarantee into whose hands a cargo would fall. Time passed slowly, no less slowly for the battering the
Edelweiss
was taking. Martha eventually produced stew, which I ate hungrily and then regretted.

At last there was the long shadow of Alderney on the port horizon, and not long after, Guernsey started to take shape ahead. It seemed an age before we were in the Russell channel, another before we rolled towards the beckoning arms of the harbor.

I felt weak and tired, but cheerful. We’d made it, in lousy weather, and we could relax. I’d always felt safe in Guernsey. Guernsey was different, a place where people drank the Queen’s health not as Queen but as Duke of Normandy, because the islands were part of the dukedom which conquered England back in 1066. The mainland, Trippies, and civil war seemed very far away.

Pa throttled back to the four knots which was the harbor speed limit. A uniformed figure watched from the quay, by the harbor master’s office.

Pa shouted up to him,
“Edelweiss
from Exeter, visiting. OK for a berth?”

“You can take K3. Know your way?”

“I know my way,” Pa said.

“Good. Welcome to Guernsey.”

He called out something else which a gust of wind took away. Pa cupped an ear, and he shouted it more loudly.

“Hail the Tripod!”

• • •

No one spoke as we chugged in. The harbor was less busy than in summer but otherwise unchanged. In the marina, tall masts swayed in long ranks. A lot of yachts wintered here. Traffic crawled as usual along the front, and the roofs of St. Peter Port rose in tiers behind. Above the crest of the hill the sky was lighter; it looked as though the sun might be breaking through.

When we’d tied up, Pa took us to the forward cabin.

He said, “I had the glasses on people onshore. You can’t always tell, obviously, but I’d say at least ten percent are Capped. And the real trouble is the Capped are in charge.”

Andy said, “We only know for certain that they’re running the harbor.”

Pa shook his head. “In an island this size it has to be all or nothing. They’ve taken over.”

Angela said, “Can we go to the cottage? I’m tired.”

Her face was white, eyes heavy. I didn’t feel all that bright myself.

Martha said, “If they’ve got Guernsey, I suppose
they must have Jersey as well. But maybe not the smaller islands. There’s Alderney and Sark. . . .”

“We’d be pinning ourselves down in a small community. When they do get there—in a few days, perhaps—we’d be sitting ducks.”

Martha put an arm round Angela, who was sniffling quietly. “We’ve not come this far just to give in.”

“There’s Switzerland.”

She said impatiently, “If they’ve taken over the island, that includes the airport. The no-travel regulation may not apply here: as far as the Trippies are concerned I suppose, the more traveling the better. But they’re bound to insist on passengers being Capped.”

“Yes, I suppose they will.”

Pa went through to the aft cabin. I wasn’t surprised he’d brought up Switzerland again. For him, getting back to Ilse was more important than the fight against being Capped. No, that was unfair. But very important.

I was surprised, though, that he’d accepted Martha’s argument so easily. I stared up at feet passing along the quay, and wondered if their owners were free or Capped, and, for the hundredth time, what being Capped must feel like. I was thinking miserably that I was likely to find out before long when Pa returned, carrying Uncle Ian’s briefcase. He lifted one of the Caps out.

“Basically, it has to be a radio receiver, or something
similar. The wiring runs just beneath the rubber. You could snip it with scissors. The Cap would look no different, but it wouldn’t receive. So, no induced trance, no compulsion to obey the Tripod.”

Andy asked, “Are you sure?”

Pa shook his head. “Not quite sure. But we could try it on one of us, and find out.”

I said, “The one who tries it might Trip.”

“It would be one against four. We can take it off again, by force if need be.” He paused. “I’d volunteer, except that we really want the physically weakest, in case it did come to that.”

Angela started crying again; I hadn’t realized she was listening, let alone understanding.

Martha said, “Not Angela. Me, if you like.”

Andy said, “It’s OK. I’ll do it.”

Pa wasn’t looking in my direction, but he hadn’t looked at Angela, either.

I said, “I’m next smallest. Let’s get it over.”

No one spoke while Pa dug the blade of his Swiss Army knife into the inner surface of the rubber. It took time, but eventually he handed me the helmet.

“I’ve severed it in two places. That should put it out of action.”

The thing seemed to writhe in my hands, like a snake. I hadn’t looked at it closely before. It was like a flexible skullcap. Even a few days ago I wouldn’t have believed that this was something which might take away my freedom of thought and will, but I did now. And now it wasn’t easy to believe it could be
made harmless so simply. If Pa was wrong and it still worked . . .

I thought of a time when I was about ten, at a pool with a five-meter diving board. Others had dived from it, but when I climbed up the water looked a hundred miles away. I wanted to go back down, but facing the dive was a little less bad than seeing jeering faces. Just a little less. And that had just been physical fear; now I was terrified of losing my mind, my individuality—everything about myself that mattered.

Another thought followed on: what would happen if they did have to pin me down and take the Cap off? Would doing that remove the Tripods’ command from my mind? There was no Dr. Monmouth to dehypnotize me. What would they do? Tie and gag me to prevent me raising an alarm? And what if it half worked, leaving me part slave and part free? How long before I went mad?

They were looking at me. If I said any of this, they’d think I was trying to get out of it. They’d be right, too. I thought of the high board, and the heads bobbing in the water. The longer you delayed, the worse it got. I drew breath, and pulled it over my head, dragging it hard down.

Hail the Tripod.

I thought I’d said it, thought in despair that I really had handed myself over to the enemy. I imagined the others had heard it too, and waited for them to grab me. Nothing happened. Could it just have
been a random thought? I framed Hail the Tripod in my mind, testing myself with sick anticipation. Then I thought deliberately, I hate the Tripod—and felt a surge of relief.

“Well?” Pa’s voice was anxious.

“It’s all right.” I realized I was shivering. “It doesn’t work.”

• • •

Pa fixed a Cap for himself, and he and I went to the airline ticket office. He asked for five seats on the evening flight to Heathrow. The clerk, who had horn-rimmed spectacles tucked over the flaps of his Cap, punched his keyboard and stared at the screen.

“Five’s OK, but you’ll have to split up between Smoking and Nonsmoking.”

“That’s all right.” Pa fished a credit card out of his wallet. The clerk shook his head.

“No credit cards.”

“What?”

“Not while the emergency’s on.”

“But you’ll take a check?”

“If it’s on a local account.”

“I don’t have a local account. I’m on a boat.”

The clerk gave him a knowing smile. “English? I thought you were. No English checks. Sorry. Hail the Tripod.”

Pa picked up his card. “Hail the Tripod.”

The bank was a few doors away from the airline office. Pa wrote a check and passed it to the teller, who gave it leisurely scrutiny before pushing it back.

“Local accounts only.”

Pa said, keeping a reasonable tone, “I don’t have a local account. What do I do for money?”

“You could go back to England.” The teller rubbed a hand across his forehead and over the Cap. He smiled, too, not pleasantly. “We’ll manage without you.”

At first, Martha refused to believe it. “This is Guernsey, the friendly isle.
I’ll
get local money. The manager at Barclay’s knows me. He’s been cashing checks for me for over twenty years.”

Pa said, “You don’t understand, Martha. It’s all changed. If he’s manager still, he must be Capped. And arguing might make him suspicious about your Cap working properly. It’s not just a local rule, but a total change of attitude.”

“But why? Why should being Capped turn people against foreigners?”

“I don’t know, but it must be something that suits the Tripods. They could be thinking on the same lines as Julius Caesar with the Gauls: divide and rule. Maybe if they win we’ll wind up all living in villages, instead of cities. It would make it easier to keep us under control.”

That was the first time I’d heard anyone suggest we might lose. Angela said,
“Can’t
we go to the cottage?” She sounded frightened, as well as tired.