The White Mountains (The Tripods)

by John Christopher

  But he had not thought of anything by the time we stopped for the night. We slept beneath the pines. It stayed dry and, even at this height, was fairly warm, and the bed of needles, inches thick it seemed from the long years of shedding, was softer than anything I had slept on since the castle. But there was not much consolation in that.

  The morning was gloomy, matching our mood; the pines were enshrouded in a thin gray cold mist, which brought us to shivering wakefulness while there was still barely enough light to see our way. We stumbled through the trees, trying to warm ourselves by our activity, and gnawing on raw potatoes as we went. We had not been able to see much of the valley the night before, and could see nothing now. It grew more light, but visibility was limited by the mist. There was a circle of a few yards, and after that the trunks of trees melted into the surrounding monochrome.

  Of course, we saw nothing of the Tripod. Nor did we hear anything: the only sound was the sound of our own progress and that, over the carpet of pine needles, was so quiet that it could not have carried much beyond the field of view, if as far. A day earlier, this would have been heartening, but we could not pretend that it made any difference that, for the present, our pursuer was out of sight and hearing. It had been so for well over twenty-four hours, and then had come, through the trackless forest of pines, to stand over us.

  We came out of the pines into wet grass which soaked our feet and the lower part of our legs. It was very cold. We had been setting a faster pace than usual, but the exercise had not warmed us. I was shivering, my teeth chattering a little. We did not talk much, and what we said was bare and unhopeful. There was no point in asking Beanpole if he had thought of a way out. One only had to look at his long miserable face, pinched by the cold, to see that he had not.

  The valley bottomed out, and we bore to the west. The map had showed us that if we followed it for some miles we would find an easier ascent. We were continuing to go by the map automatically, for want of anything better. We heard the lonely gurgle and splash and chatter of water, and found a river and followed it. We had been traveling for some hours, and I was as chilled and wretched as at the start, and a good deal more hungry. There was no sign of food or life here.

  Then, gradually, the mist lifted. The dirty gray turned whiter, became translucent, gleamed with silver, here and there admitted a shaft of brightness that dazzled briefly on the tumbling surface of the water before snuffing out. Our spirits lifted with it, to some extent, and when the sun appeared, first as a thin silver disc and at last as an orb of burning gold, we felt almost cheerful by comparison. I told myself that perhaps we had been wrong in thinking the Tripod had some magical way of tracking us. Perhaps its means of following us had been through senses—sight, hearing—which were only in degree better than our own. And if that were so, might it not in the long trek through the mist have lost us? It was not a rational optimism, but it made me feel better. The last of the mists trailed away into the distance, and we were traversing a broad sunlit valley, with the high ground on either side draped in white cloud. Birds were singing. Apart from them, we were entirely alone.

  Until I heard a distant crackling far up on the hillside, and looked there and saw it, half-veiled in cloud but hideously real.

  In the afternoon we found a clump of horseradish, and pulled the roots up and ate them. The taste was bitter and fiery, but it was food. We had left the valley, starting a climb up long but fairly moderate slopes of rough scrubland, and the Tripod was out of view again. But not out of mind. The feeling of hopelessness, of being caught in a trap which in due course must close, continually strengthened. I had followed the fox hunts on foot back at Wherton, but I would have had no stomach for them after this. Even the sun, which beat down more warmly than ever out of a clear sky, could not cheer me. When, with its rays slanting low from the west, Beanpole called a halt, I dropped on to the grass, empty and exhausted. The other two, after resting a while, stirred themselves and began foraging, but I did not move. I lay on my back, eyes closed against the light, hands clasped under the back of my neck. I still did not move when they came back, arguing about whether one could eat snakes—Henry had seen one but failed to kill it—and whether, anyway, they were hungry enough to eat it raw since there was no kindling for a fire. I kept my eyes shut when Henry, in quite a different, sharper voice, said:

  “What’s that?”

  It would not, I was sure, be anything that mattered. Beanpole said something, in a lower voice, which I did not catch. They were whispering together. I kept my closed eyes on the sun, which would soon be gone behind the hills. They whispered again. Then Beanpole said:

  “Will.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your shirt is torn, under the arm.”

  I said, “I know. I ripped it on a thorn bush coming up from the river.”

  “Look at me, Will.” I opened my eyes, and saw him standing over me, looking down. There was a strange look on his face. “What is it you have, under your arm?”

  I got into a sitting position. “Under my arm? What are you talking about?”

  “You do not know?” I had put my right hand under my left arm. “No, the other one.”

  I used my left arm this time, feeling into my armpit. I touched something whose texture was not the texture of flesh, but smoother and harder—something like a small metal button, on whose surface my fingertips traced faint corrugations, a kind of mesh. I craned my head around, trying to look at it, but could not. It seemed to melt into my skin, with no clear division between them. I looked up, and saw the other two watching me.

  “What is it?”

  “It is the metal of the Caps,” Beanpole said. “It grows into the skin, as the Caps do.”

  “The Tripod …” I said. “When it caught me, outside the castle, do you think … ?”

  I did not need to finish the sentence. Their faces showed me what they thought. I said wildly:

  “You don’t think I’ve been guiding it—that I’m under its control?”

  Henry said, “It’s been following since a few days after you caught up with us. We can’t throw it off, can we? Have you got a better way of accounting for it?”

  I stared at him. The mystery of the Tripod’s ability to find us, time after time, and the mystery of the small metal button, somehow welded to my body—they could not be separated; they must belong together. And yet my mind was my own: I was no traitor. I had the same certainty of that as I had of my very existence. But how could I prove it? There was no way I could see.

  Henry turned to Beanpole. “What are we going to do with him?”

  Beanpole said, “We must think carefully, before we do anything.”

  “We haven’t got time for that. We know he’s one of them. He’s been sending messages to it with his mind. He’s probably sent one saying he’s been found out. It may be coming after us right now.”

  “Will told us of the Tripod,” Beanpole said. “That it caught him, and released him again—that he was unconscious and could remember nothing. If his mind had been a servant of the Tripods, would he have said those things? And would he not have taken care, when his shirt was torn, rather than lie so that we could see it? Moreover, it is very small, not like the Caps, and not near the brain.”

  “But it is tracking us through him!”

  “Yes, I believe so. The compass—it points to the north, because there must be much iron there. If you bring other iron near, it will point to that. One cannot see or feel the thing that makes it do this. The Tripod caught him, going away from the castle, when everyone there was asleep. He was un-Capped, but it did not Cap him. Maybe it was curious about what he would do, where he was going. And put this thing on him which it could follow, like a needle on a compass.”

  It made sense: I was sure what he said was true. I could feel the button under my arm with every small movement I made—not hurting, but I knew it was there. Why had I not felt it before? The same thought must have occurred to Henry.

  “But he must ha
ve known about it,” he said. “A thing like that.”

  “Perhaps not. Do you have in your country … people who make show … with animals, those who swing through the air from bars, strong men, and such?”

  “Circuses,” Henry said. “I saw one once.”

  “One that came to my town had a man who did strange things. He told people to sleep, and to obey his commands, and they did as he ordered, even doing things which made them look foolish. Sometimes the commands lasted for a time. A sailor with a crippled hip walked with no limp for a week—afterward, the pain and the limp returned.”

  “I can feel it now,” I said.

  “We have shown it to you,” Beanpole said. “It may be that breaks the command.”

  Henry said impatiently, “None of this alters the facts. The Tripod can trace him through that thing, and can pick us up along with him.”

  I saw his point. I said, “There’s only one thing to do.”

  “What is that?” Beanpole asked.

  “If we separate, and I go a different way from you—it can follow me still, but you will be all right.”

  “A different way to the White Mountains? But you will still lead it there. Most likely, that is what it wishes.”

  I shook my head. “I won’t go there. I’ll double back.”

  “And be caught again. And Capped?”

  I remembered the moment of being plucked from Aristide’s back, the ground shrinking beneath me. I hoped I was not going white with the fear I felt. I said, “It will have to catch me first.”

  “It will catch you,” Beanpole said. “You have no chance of escaping.”

  I said, trying not to think of what it entailed, “I can lead it away, at least.”

  There was a silence. It was, as I had said, the only thing to do, and they were bound to agree with it. There was no need, really, for them to say anything. I got to my feet, turning away from their faces. Beanpole said, “Wait.”

  “For what?”

  “I said that we must think. I have been thinking. This thing under your arm—it is small, and though it is fastened to the skin I do not think it goes far beneath.”

  He paused. Henry said, “Well?”

  Beanpole looked at me. “It is clear of the big vein. But it will hurt if we cut it out.”

  I had not seen what he was driving at, and hope, when I did, made me dizzy.

  “Do you think you can?”

  “We can try.”

  I began stripping off my shirt. “Let’s not waste time then!”

  Beanpole was not to be hurried. He made me lie down, with my arm up, and explored the button and the skin around it with his fingers. I wanted him to get on with it, but I was in his hands, and realized there was no point in showing impatience. At last, he said:

  “Yes, it will hurt. I will do it as quickly as I can, but you will need something to bite on. And, Henry—you must hold his arm out, so that he cannot draw it back.”

  He gave me the leather strap of his pack to hold between my teeth; I felt the sour harsh taste of it on my tongue. The knife was one he had picked up in the great-city. It had a good edge, having been protected by grease, and he had spent some time sharpening it since then. It could not be too sharp for my liking. At a word from Beanpole, Henry took my arm, and stretched it out and back behind me. I was lying on my left hip, my face toward the ground. An ant scurried along and disappeared between blades of grass. Then there was the weight of Beanpole squatting over me, his left hand feeling again at the flesh under my arm, outlining the shape of the button. I was making a trial bite at the leather when he made the first cut, and my whole body jerked and I very nearly pulled my hand free from Henry’s grasp. The pain was excruciating.

  It was followed by another slash, and another. I tried to concentrate on the leather strap, through which my teeth seemed to be almost meeting. I was sweating so much that I felt drops rolling down the side of my face, and I saw one splash in the dust. I wanted to cry to him to stop, to let me have a rest from the pain, and was on the point of spitting the strap out to be able to speak when a new jab made me bite it again, and the side of my tongue with it. There was the hot salty taste of blood in my mouth, and tears in my eyes. Then, from a great distance, I heard him say: “You can let go now,” and my hand and arm were free. The pain was furious still, but mild compared with what it had been a little earlier. Beanpole got up from me, and I started to drag myself to my feet. I had to move my arm to do so, and felt sick with what it did to me.

  “As I thought,” Beanpole said, “it is on the surface only. Observe.”

  I got rid of the gag, and looked at what he was holding in his hand. It was silvery gray, about half an inch in diameter, thicker in the center and tapering toward the edge. It was solid, but gave the impression of hundreds of tiny wires just below the surface. Attached to it were the bloody scraps of my flesh, which Beanpole had cut away.

  Beanpole poked the button with his finger.

  “It is curious,” he said. “I would like to study this. It is a pity we must leave it.”

  His gaze was one of dispassionate interest. Henry, who was also looking, had a greenish tinge to his face. Staring at the gobbets of flesh adhering, nausea rose in me again, and this time I had to turn away to be sick. When I recovered, Beanpole was still staring at the button.

  Gasping, I said, “Throw it away, and let’s get going. The farther we are from here, the better.”

  He nodded reluctantly, and dropped it in the grass. He said to me, “Your arm—does it hurt much?”

  “I wouldn’t care to bowl fast for the next hour or two.”

  “Bowl fast?”

  “In cricket. It’s a game we play in our country. Oh, never mind. Let’s get a move on. It will take my mind off it.”

  “There is a herb which heals wounds. I will look for it on the way.”

  A good deal of blood had flowed and was still flowing down my side. I had been mopping it up with my shirt, and I now rolled the shirt up into a ball, wadded it under my arm, and walked with it in that position. My hopeful suggestion that traveling would take my mind off the pain did not work out very well. It went on hurting just as much, if not more. But I was rid of the Tripod’s button, and each jolting step left it farther behind.

  We were continuing to climb over rough, but mostly open country. The sun was setting on our right; on the other side our long shadows were almost abreast of us. We were not talking, in my case because I was too occupied with gritting my teeth. It was, if one were in the mood for appreciating it, a lovely and peaceful evening. Calm and still. No sound, except …

  We stopped, and listened. My heart seemed to contract, and for a moment the pain was blotted out by the greater power of fear. It came from behind, faint but seeming to grow louder every instant: the hideous warbling ululation which we had heard in the cabin of the Orion—the hunting call of the Tripods.

  Seconds later it was in sight, coming around the base of the hill and, unmistakably, climbing toward us. It was some miles away, but coming on fast—much faster, I thought, than its usual rate of progress.

  Henry said, “The bushes …”

  He did not need to say any more; we were all three running. What he had indicated offered one of the few bits of cover on the hillside, the only one within reasonable reach. It was a small thicket of bushes, growing to about shoulder height. We flung ourselves in among them, burrowed into the center, and crouched down there.

  I said, “It can’t still be after me. Can it?”

  “The button,” Beanpole said. “It must be that cutting it out gave an alarm. So it has come after you, and this time hunting.”

  “Did it see us, do you think?” Henry asked.

  “I do not know. It was far away, and the light is poor.”

  In fact, the sun had gone down; the sky above our hiding place was drained of gold, a darker blue. But still terrifyingly clear—much lighter than it had been the morning I had left the castle. I tried to console myself with the th
ought that I had been much nearer to it, also. The howling was louder and closer. It must have reached and passed the place where Beanpole had operated on me. Which meant …

  I felt the ground shiver, and again and again with still greater force. Then one of the Tripod’s legs plunged across the blue, and I saw the hemisphere, black against the arc of sky, and tried to dig myself down into the earth. At that moment the howling stopped. In the silence I heard a different whistling sound of something whipping terribly fast through the air and, glancing fearfully, saw two or three bushes uprooted and tossed away.

  Beside me, Beanpole said, “It has us. It knows we are here. It can pull the bushes out till we are plainly seen.”

  “Or kill us, pulling them out,” Henry said. “If that thing hits you …”

  I said, “If I showed myself …”

  “No use. It knows there are three.”

  “We could run different ways,” Henry said. “One of us might get clear.”

  I saw more bushes sail through the air, like confetti. You do not get used to fear, I thought; it grips you as firmly every time. Beanpole said, “We can fight it.”

  He said it with a lunatic calm, which made me want to groan. Henry said, “What with? Our fists?”

  “The metal eggs.” He had his pack open already, and was rummaging in it. The Tripod’s tentacle whistled down again. It was ripping the bushes up systematically. A few more passes—half a dozen at most—would bring it to us. “Perhaps these were what our ancestors used, to fight the Tripods. Perhaps that is why they were in the underground Shmand-Fair—they went out from there to fight them.”

  I said, “And they lost! How do you think … ?”

  He had got the eggs out. “What else is there?”

  Henry said, “I threw mine away. They were too much trouble to carry.”