When the Tripods Came

by Christopher, John

  I said, “We were all right in the shed.”

  He took a hand off the wheel to squeeze my shoulder.

  “You did the sensible thing, lying low. Andy said you argued him out of making a run for it. When I was talking to Ilse, she said we could rely on you being sensible.”

  I moved away from his hand.

  He said, “You know, Laurie, Ilse’s very fond of you.” I didn’t say anything. “As fond as she is of Angela.”

  Which made it silly.

  I said, “I hope the boat’s all right. It was wild in the night.”

  “Our bit of the river’s sheltered except from a true southerly. The wind was well west of south.”

  We’d used the boat a lot the first season, but much less since. Ilse wasn’t keen—maybe because the only boating in Switzerland was on lakes. She usually got sick. She didn’t complain, or refuse to come out on the Edelweiss—what a name for a boat!—but trips tailed off.

  “We never did make that trip to Guernsey.”

  I don’t know if I sounded accusing. He was apologetic. He talked about the work tying him up, and his partner being away sick. And Martha had been busy, too, and we needed to fit in with her. Martha had a small property in the Channel Island of Guernsey which we used for holidays. Or had done, previous years. This year Pa and Ilse and Angela had gone to Switzerland to stay with Ilse’s parents; her father (we called him the Swigramp) hadn’t been well. So I went to summer camp.

  “We’ll make it next year definitely,” Pa Said. “Early maybe. Easter. How about Easter?”

  “Sounds great,” I said.

  • • •

  I was doing my homework when the telephone rang. I picked it up, thinking it might be Andy. I couldn’t make out more than a word or two from the other end, but recognized the speaker as the Swigram, Ilse’s mother. She had an accent that made Ilse sound like a BBC announcer.

  I said, speaking slowly and deliberately, “This is Laurence. I will get her. Please hold the line. Warten Sie, bitte.”

  I called Ilse and went to my room. I’d left the radio on and they were playing the Trippy record. It was the theme music from the TV show, with a sound-synthesizer vocal added, which had gone to the top of the charts in a week. The words were stupid, the music was jangly and repetitive, and the synthetic voice was irritating, but it was the sort of number that gets under your skin and has you humming and being driven mad by it at the same time. The show had become fantastically popular all round the world, including Russia and China. I still hadn’t watched it, partly because Angela was a total fan, but I could feel the music grabbing me in an insidious son of way.

  When I finished my homework, I went through to the sitting room. Ilse and Pa were there; he’d poured drinks and they were talking.

  I arrived to hear Ilse saying, “Any attack is serious. And since a long time, he is not well.”

  “I just meant,” Pa said, “you could wait and see, for a day or so.”

  “Then it is maybe too late.”

  “Something wrong with the Swigramp?” I asked.

  Pa nodded. “Heart attack.” He went on to Ilse, “From what you say she said, it doesn’t sound desperate. He’s not even in intensive care.”

  “But it is desperate for her.” She looked at Pa, in an exhausted, wounded way. “I do not wish to go. You know that. But . . .”

  Her voice drifted off. He went to her and she put her arms round him. I looked out of the window. A mistle thrush and a blackbird were fighting over the orange berries on the creeper that covered the side wall.

  Pa said, “I’ll get you on the first possible flight. What about Angel?”

  “Do you think it best she comes with me?”

  Very much best, I thought. At that moment I saw Angela come in to the drive and lean her bicycle against the wall. Ilse saw her, too, and called her in. She explained that Grossvater was ill with a heart attack, that she needed to go to Switzerland to see him and Grossmutti, and that she thought it might be best for Angela to go with her.

  “When?” Angela asked.

  “As soon as Papa will get flights. Sometime tomorrow.”

  “Before the Pony Club gymkhana?”

  They’d got a pony for her in early summer, a little Shetland with a nasty temper, called Prince. It had bitten me twice and tried to kick me, but Angela was crazy about it. She’d been weeks practicing for the Pony Club event.

  “I forget Pony Club,” Ilse said.

  “If you want me to come . . .”

  “No, you stay. If he is all right, I am maybe not long away.”

  Angela hugged her mother. She was good at getting her own way without causing trouble, as I tended to.

  I thought about the Swigramp. He was thickset, and red-faced from having lived all his life more than fifteen hundred meters above sea level. He spoke good English because of running a guesthouse, but I’d never talked much with him. It was different where Angela was concerned; I had a feeling he’d be even happier to see her than Ilse. It was tough on him that she was more hooked on a pony.

  People had different priorities. I was sorry about his heart attack, but not about Ilse leaving. It would have been better if Angela had been going, too, but you can’t have everything.

  THREE

  About a week after Ilse went to Switzerland, I finally caught a Trippy Show. Pa was out, and Martha had taken Angela to the shop. She’d refused to go at first because she wanted to watch, and rather than have her stick around I’d promised to videotape it for her. I switched on, and started to watch it myself.

  It was a mixture of cartoon, live action, stills, and abstract, the abstract using all the old computerized design tricks and a few new ones. The cartoons were very detailed and realistic, animated paintings almost, and even the abstract bits were full of Tripod shapes. The whole thing was backed up by music which seemed chaotic but after a time built into a pattern of sounds and rhythms which weirdly hung together.

  I’d heard it was a comic show, poking fun at the Tripods as stupid giants that lumbered around and got into trouble, getting their legs tied in knots and falling over—that sort of thing. It was like that to start with, but later the attitude changed. The second part featured a maiden in distress, imprisoned and tied up by a nasty-looking dragon, and a knight trying to rescue her. It was comic-book historical, with him in shining armor and her in a long dress, with one of those hoodlike things I think they call a wimple on her head.

  The knight’s rescue attempts kept on going wrong in ludicrous ways. Some of them were funny, and I laughed once or twice. But gradually it became less funny than frightening: what you could see of the girl’s face had a desperate look, the knight was sweating with fear, and the dragon was more sinister and had doubled in size.

  The climax saw the knight pinned down beneath one of the dragon’s feet, a claw through his armor and realistic blood dripping into the dust, and the dragon’s jaws moving down towards the girl’s head. The music was jagged and ugly, backed by a drumbeat like a death roll. There was a shot of the knight’s face, and he looked as dead as I’d ever seen. It gave me the shivers.

  That was when the Tripod came over the horizon, with dawn behind it and the music changing. It turned into the Trippy theme, but tricked out with extra harmonies and an orchestra which had everything from an organ to hunting horns. It sounded vigorous and hopeful. The silvery tentacles had a gentle gleam, not the hard metal glare I remembered, as they swished out of the sky—one to release the girl, a second to lift up the knight, the third to drive like a spear into the puffed-out chest of the dragon.

  It ended with the girl freed, the knight revived, and the pair of them mounted on his horse and riding off into the dawn. The dragon dissolved first into bones, then dust. And the Tripod presided over the scene, with the rising sun throwing a halo round its capsule. There was the Trippy tune and massed voices roaring “Hail the Tripod! Hail the Tripod! Hail the Tripod!” On and on.

  I’d watched it right through and i
t certainly hadn’t been boring, but it left me without any desire to see another Trippy Show. But I knew a lot of people were crazy on it, like Angela. Though the craze wasn’t confined to kids—a lot of adults were fans.

  I ran the tape back, and hit the playback button to check. The beginning of an antiques program Martha had videotaped came up. I thought I must have started recording partway in, but as the man droned on about some worm-eaten writing desk I realized what had happened. It was something I’d done before, pressing RECORD with the set tuned to TV instead of VCR.

  When they came back, I was in my room. I heard the car stop and the front door open, and Angela’s voice yelling for me. I thought it best to get it over with. I found her in the hall.

  “Where is it? The tape. You didn’t label it.”

  “No, I missed it. I’m sorry.”

  “What?”

  “I was watching on the TV channel, and forgot to switch to video.”

  “It’s not funny, Laurie. Where’s the tape?”

  I shook my head, and she saw I meant it.

  “You can’t have done.” Her voice rose to a howl. “You can’t have, you can’t! You couldn’t be so rotten!”

  Martha came in to find her sobbing, and asked what was the matter.

  I said, “I forgot to record the Trippy Show. At least, I didn’t forget . . .”

  Martha said coldly, “You promised her.”

  “I know. And I tried to.” The sobbing was getting louder and wilder; I had to raise my own voice to be heard. “Anyway, I don’t think it’s a program kids ought to watch. I don’t think you would either, if you’d seen it. You’ve always gone on about violence on TV, and . . .”

  Angela’s face was white and tense. Without warning she came at me like a small but savage bull. I grabbed the stairpost to avoid going over, and the bull turned into a cat, clawing wildly. I heard Martha’s voice, shocked, saying “Angel,” and then was too busy defending myself. It was silly—she was only seven and not particularly big for her age—but I realized I needed to use all my strength to hold her off. In the end I managed to pin her against the stairs. She struggled and screamed for quite a bit; then went limp.

  She lay slumped as I stood up.

  Martha said, “What have you done to her?”

  “Nothing. Only tried to stop her killing me.”

  I felt a trickle down my cheek and my hand came away smeared with blood. Martha was stooping beside Angela. She said, “Angel, are you all right?”

  Angela didn’t answer, but the sobbing started again; no longer violent, just miserable. Martha said we should get her to bed. We practically had to carry her.

  Martha discussed it with Pa that evening. Angela was still in her room, and he went up to see her.

  When he came down, he said, “She seems all right.”

  “I was worried,” Martha said. “She was—well, violent.”

  Pa said, “Children do have storms for no reason.” He smiled at me. “Laurie did, when he was that age.”

  I remembered a particular time, when he’d said he would play football with me and hadn’t. When he finally came out, I kicked him instead of the ball, and went on kicking him. I’d had a good reason, though. That was before Ilse came to live with us, but I knew about her; and I knew he’d been talking to her on the telephone and had forgotten his promise to me.

  Angela seemed normal when she came down, at least as far as the others were concerned; she didn’t speak to me. Martha went to fix supper, and she headed for the stack of videotapes. We both saw what she picked out: one of the Trippy Shows.

  Pa said, “I don’t think we want that, Angel.”

  “There’s time. Martha said half an hour.”

  “All the same . . .”

  I expected her to go into one of her wheedling routines, but her face was expressionless as she stared at him, holding the cassette.

  Pa said, after a moment, “Well, keep it quiet. I think I’ll go to the study phone, and find out what the weather in the Alps is like.”

  I went to my room. The Trippy music followed me up the stairs.

  • • •

  We had double physics on Monday morning, which made a depressing start to the week. Wild Bill was late and we gossiped. Talk got round to the Trippy Show, and I noticed the difference in reactions, some saying it was lousy and others raving about it. There didn’t seem to be any logical way of working out who was likely to be for, and who against.

  Andy just said he thought it a bit silly. I said it wasn’t silly, it was zilch, and poked fun at the bit with the knight and the dragon.

  Rodney Chambers, in the row in front of me, said, “What do you know?”

  I was surprised, not by the remark but by his making it. I couldn’t remember him expressing an opinion about anything before. I said, “I know a load of rubbish when I see it. My little sister goes for it, though. I suppose it’s her age level.”

  Chambers stood up. “Shut up,” he said. “Or I’ll shut you up!”

  He doubled a fist. That was surprising—he never got into fights, either—but it was his expression that hit me. It was exactly like the one on Angela’s face before she went into that demented attack. The others were watching. I shrugged and tried to grin it off.

  “The Trippy Show is the best thing on television.” He leaned forward. “Say it, Cordray!”

  The classroom door opened, and Wild Bill came in.

  “A little preclass discussion, ladies and gentlemen? But not of physics, I suspect.” He ran his fingers through his hair as he came to stand in front of us. “Did I catch a reference to the Trippy Show? Oddly enough, I watched it myself the other day, and liked it more than I had anticipated. It has a curious, and curiously strong, appeal.”

  He was silent for a moment or two. “Yes, curiously strong. But I suppose we’d better consider physics. Chapter Nine, I think.”

  • • •

  Pa didn’t tell Ilse about Angela’s crazy fit, I suppose so as not to worry her. He telephoned her every evening as soon as he got in. It seemed the Swigramp was no worse, but no better. She wanted to come back, but felt she had to stay because another attack might kill him.

  It suited me. Martha was tougher than Ilse—no bribing treats—but I knew where I was with Martha. Angela didn’t seem to be missing her mother, either, but nowadays all Angela was interested in was the Trippy Show. She didn’t even seem to care about her pony, and Martha had to remind her about exercising and mucking out. She had all the shows on tape—she’d got the one I’d missed from somewhere—and hogged the VCR playing them. Martha tried cutting down, but Angela went hysterical on her, and she didn’t push it. She’d joined the new Trippy fan club, and got a lot of stuff through the mail.

  I overheard Martha telling Pa one night they ought to do something about it.

  Pa said, “Kids have these crazes.”

  “But not behaving the way she does when one tries to curb her. I’m not sure she doesn’t need treatment.”

  “I thought you despised psychiatry?”

  “I think Geoffrey should see her, at least.”

  Geoffrey Monmouth was our doctor. He and Pa played golf together.

  “I don’t see the need.”

  His voice was resentful, perhaps because he didn’t like the idea of admitting there could be anything wrong with his Angel, especially to someone in the golf club.

  “You haven’t seen her in a mood.”

  Pa didn’t answer.

  “There are other things to be concerned about, you know, apart from when Ilse might be coming back.”

  I’d been listening from the hall. I turned away and went up to my room.

  • • •

  A couple of days later, the Daily Mail came out against Trippies. We didn’t have that paper at home but it was being passed around in the playground when I got to school. There was a banner headline:

  TRIPPY BRAINWASH?

  Underneath they asked, IS THIS SHOW A MENACE TO OUR YOUNG? They w
ent on to quote from a couple of psychologists, saying the Trippy cult could be dangerous because it was developing a fanatical following which showed signs of getting out of hand. They gave examples of children behaving in ways which made Angela’s craziness seem dead normal. One boy had tried to burn the house down when his Trippy tapes were taken from him; and a girl of thirteen had almost killed her father with a kitchen knife. They claimed things were even worse in other countries: in the United States and Germany, kids were leaving home in droves to live together in Trippy communes. As fast as they were brought back, they took off again.

  One of the Trippy fans at school produced a lighter, and set fire to the newspaper in the playground. The rest watched it flare up; their faces were like some I saw in a movie about people burning witches.

  They were still muttering at the beginning of first class, which happened to be physics. The noise didn’t stop when Wild Bill came in, and I expected him to erupt. He was tight on classroom discipline. Instead he looked at the Trippy fans in a funny way, fondly almost.

  He said, “I saw you burn that evil newspaper. They had one in the common room, and I burned it, too.”

  The Trippy fans were still cheering him when the school secretary, Mr. Denlum, knocked and entered. He was a little man and timid, especially where Wild Bill was concerned. He went close and whispered something. Wild Bill smiled contemptuously.

  “If the headmaster wishes to see me, I am of course at his disposal.”

  He told us to get on with our work and went out, with Denlum creeping after him. At the door he stopped and turned round, still smiling. He cried out, shouted almost, “Hail the Tripod!”

  • • •

  Trippies were the lead in the television news that evening. They showed a mob of them rioting outside the Daily Mail offices, and scuffles when police tried to disperse them. There were Trippies being dragged into police vans, a policeman with blood running down his face. The announcer said that another mob had assembled outside the editor’s home. Windows had been smashed and Tripod figures daubed on the walls.

  “In the House of Commons this afternoon,” he went on, “the prime minister said that the situation is being closely watched. There is particular concern that the practice of Trippy cultists banding together to live communally has now spread to this country. It is reported that there are several groups in London, squatting in empty flats and offices, and that similar communes have been set up in a number of provincial cities, including Birmingham and Exeter.”