“That’ll be Ivan,” said Miss Cary. “He thought he might manage to find one. I must go and get a picture of him landing. See you later.” And she hurried off across the grass.
Josella lay down, clasped her hands behind her head, and gazed up into the depths of the sky. When the helicopter’s engine ceased, things sounded very much quieter than before we had heard it.
Josella lay facing upward with a faraway look in her eyes. I thought perhaps I could guess something of what was passing in her mind, but I said nothing. She did not speak for a little while, then she said:
“You know, one of the most shocking things about it is to realize how easily we have lost a world that seemed so safe and certain.”
She was quite right. It was that simplicity that seemed somehow to be the nucleus of the shock. From very familiarity one forgets all the forces which keep the balance, and thinks of security as normal. It is not. I don’t think it had ever before occurred to me that man’s supremacy is not primarily due to his brain, as most of the books would have one think. It is due to the brain’s capacity to make use of the information conveyed to it by a narrow band of visible light rays. His civilization, all that he had achieved or might achieve, hung upon his ability to perceive that range of vibrations from red to violet. Without that, he was lost. I saw for a moment the true tenuousness of his hold on his power, the miracles that he had wrought with such a fragile instrument…
Josella had been pursuing her own line of thought.
“It’s going to be a very queer sort of world—what’s left of it. I don’t think we’re going to like it a lot,” she said reflectively.
It seemed to me an odd view to take—rather as if one should protest that one did not like the idea of dying or being born. I preferred the notion of finding out first how it would be, and then doing what one could about the parts of it one disliked most, but I let it pass.
From time to time we had heard the sound of trucks driving up to the far side of the building. It was evident that most of the foraging parties must have returned by this hour. I looked at my watch and reached for the triffid guns lying on the grass beside me.
“If we’re going to get any supper before we hear what other people feel about all this, it’s time we went in,” I said.
CONFERENCE
I fancy all of us had expected the meeting to be simply a kind of briefing talk. Just the timetable, course instructions, the day’s objective—that kind of thing. Certainly I had no expectation of the food for thought that we received.
It was held in a small lecture theater, lit for the occasion by an arrangement of car headlamps and batteries. When we went in, some half dozen men and two women, who appeared to have constituted themselves a committee, were conferring behind the lecturer’s desk. To our surprise we found nearly a hundred people seated in the body of the hall. Young women predominated at a ratio of about four to one. I had not realized until Josella pointed it out to me how few of them were able to see.
Michael Beadley dominated the consulting group by his height. I recognized the Colonel beside him. The other faces were new to me, save that of Elspeth Cary, who had now exchanged her camera for a notebook, presumably for the benefit of posterity. Most of their interest was centered round an elderly man of ugly but benign aspect who wore gold-rimmed spectacles and had fine white hair trimmed to a rather political length. They all had an air of being a little worried about him.
The other woman in the party was not much more than a girl—perhaps twenty-two or -three. She did not appear happy at finding herself where she was. She cast occasional looks of nervous uncertainty at the audience.
Sandra Telmont came in, carrying a sheet of foolscap. She studied it a moment, then briskly broke the group up and sorted it into chairs. With a wave of her hand she directed Michael to the desk, and the meeting began.
He stood there, a little bent, watching the audience from somber eyes as he waited for the murmuring to die down. When he spoke, it was in a pleasant, practiced voice and with a fireside manner.