The Green Drift Read online

  Griswold held the magnifying glass over the tiny dead spider.

  ‘Know anything about ’em?’ he said.

  ‘They have six legs,’ Richard said. ‘There I stop.’ ‘They’re all shapes,’ Haynes said, wiping his face. ‘Some have a two-piece body, others just a round blob. Some have thick legs—the ones you find in the bath—and others have spidery things—’ He caught himself back in an absurdity. ‘What does it matter, anyway? It’s madness to say this is anything to do with insects! ’

  ‘You’ve heard about the cloud up there?’ Griswold pointed to the ceiling, but continued to stare through the glass lie held to investigate the insect.

  ‘There are all sorts of interferences that fool radar,’ Hayles said. ‘I don’t believe everything they pick up. I don’t believe our operators are foolproof either.’

  ‘Very soon you’ll be depending on nothing but yourself,’ said Griswold, still without looking up. ‘That would be fatal.’

  He straightened at last. Richard had an encyclopaedia from the bookshelf. He flicked the pages to the common spider, and handed a colour inset to Griswold.

  ‘Any help?’ he said.

  Griswold looked.

  ‘It isn’t any of those,’ he said. ‘Of course, it’s like them. It’s of the same family.’ Griswold rubbed his nose with the palm of his hand. ‘I’ll ring through the description. It might bring something.’

  He carried his prize out into the hall again.

  The women watched him at the phone. The man’s attitude was extraordinary. It seemed to create an insulated barrier between himself and anyone else. Barbara went slowly out on to the porch, flicking a little handkerchief as a fan. Jennifer looked at the hack of Griswold’s neck, its thickness and strength, then went back into the kitchen. Ellen had not come back into it and the lettuce was not there.

  Griswold spoke at length, and then began to be spoken to.

  ‘I can’t say what killed them,’ he answered. ‘That’s your job. You don’t believe these are anything to do with the space cloud? Splendid! What kind of wag brain are you? Where else could they have come from? What are the fireflies? Do you mean these happenings are just a series of coincidences? Rubbish. Cock. Mentality is being affected. One cannot say how, not knowing the people before, but they are surprising themselves and each other. Yes.’

  Barbara looked back from the loggia sharply.

  ‘No. Physically everything is normal, but for these dead insects. What I want to know is how can they affect anybody when they are dead? And they are dead, mark me.’

  He listened to the tin chat.

  ’But there aren’t any alive! ’ Griswold said. ‘They’re all dead! … What? Yes, normal insects are alive as far as I can see. The garden’s full of butterflies and you can hear bees. Yes, they’re all normal…. Well, you get down to it. I want to know pretty soon. We can’t hang on here not knowing… What are we going to do, then? Yes, stay on. That’s the job, I suppose. I’ll have to.’

  He put the phone down and turned towards the study. He saw Jennifer standing in the kitchen doorway.

  ‘Are we to go, or what?’ Jennifer said.

  Griswold watched her and wiped his face slowly with a handkerchief.

  ‘There’s no hurry,’ he said. ‘But then, if I tell you to go you’ll resent it and won’t. If I tell you not to go you won’t trust me.’

  ‘What danger is there?’ she asked, holding back her anger.

  ‘I don’t know,” Griswold said. ‘I’m here to try aud find out, but the whole damn lot of you is pixyllated. I can’t get any sense anywhere. Nobody remembers, or they don’t want to. Either’ way it’s the same.’ He leaned against the wall. ‘Last night there was a small’ storm of spiders. .They all died. If tonight there’s a large storm of them, we shall have more husks around in the morning.’

  Her eyes opened.

  ‘But supposing they aren’t dead?’ she said. ‘Suppose they don’t all die?’

  ‘That is the problem,’ he said. ‘The thing is if we can find out why they died last night, we could make sure tonight. But what happened here last night? Nobody seems to know. We can’t get a clue because everybody is under some kind of spell. Like Bruce. He doubled up his chances of disaster by watching spiders. People think spiders are supposed to be lucky. Perhaps that’s why they’re not giving their seerets away.’

  ‘How can you be sure they’re coming?’

  ’We can’t be sure, but we have to treat your husband as a seer. He’s been right several times already. I think he’s going to be right again.’

  ‘You mean you think he’s fey?’

  ‘He’s somehow in cahoots with these creatures. He knows about them. He knows what they’re going to do.’ ‘How can he know that?’

  ‘He could know by ESP. He could know by dreams, or by seeing the future.’ Griswold’s face slowly broke into a grin. ‘Or he could be the agent of these things, specially selected by them.’

  ‘But they arc insects! They can’t do things like that!’ ‘Madam, the only thing we know about insects is that sooner or later they will inherit this world from us, and run it. I don’t know when that is going to happen but I hope it won’t start tonight.’

  He leant away from the wall and opened the study door. She watched him go in, quite still with horror growing in her, but suddenly it became the horror of fantasy, and she turned to the kitchen to do something to take her mind from creeping thoughts.

  ‘I want to speak to my husband,’ she said turning back suddenly.

  ‘Of course,’ Griswold said. He went in and closed the door.

  SIX

  Richard came into the kitchen.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he said quickly.

  She stood back, astonished.

  ‘Good God! ’ she cried. ‘Is that all you can say? What’s the matter? What isn’t the bloody matter! That’s the question! ’

  ‘All right! I just thought something had happened out there! ’ he shouted back.

  ‘Well, it hasn’t! I just wanted to see you because I feel I’m doing my nut and you’re such a ruddy wet blanket I thought you’d cool me down.’

  ‘Charming! ’

  ‘Well, what do you expect? Saying stupid things like that. And I’m—’ Her brows puckered, she bit her lip and sniffed.

  He put his arm round her.

  ‘Darling, this isn’t the time to get worked up, really it isn’t,’ he said. ‘Griswold has explained it—’

  ‘I suppose he knows everything, then? Of course, yes he would, the great big know-all. I suppose he owns the house now, too, and we can come and go if he says so. I suppose—’

  ‘Darling, don’t be silly! He has a job to do! ’

  ‘You amaze me!’ She stared at him through broken tears. ‘You just accept everything. You sit down and let everything just happen to you as if it’s all perfectly normal. Anyone would think nothing has happened, the way you are! ’

  ‘Well, what has happened, then?’

  She stopped, then got going again regardless.

  ‘Everything! ’

  ‘Such as what?’

  “Everything! It’s all wrong! ’

  ‘It just feels all wrong. Nothing’s actually happened!’ ‘Oh. nothing’s actually happened, hasn’t it? And you with that woman naked in your cupboard! Oh no, that’s nothing. Nothing at all! What, would happen if you found a man in my cupboard? I can just see you standing by and waving your hand airily and saying, “That’s all right, dear, anyone can make a mistake! ” ’

  ‘Don’t be absurd ! ’

  ‘I’m not absurd, it’s you that’s absurd! Here is everything falling apart, including us, and all you do is say everything’s all right. You must be bonkers, behaving like that! Why don’t you do something, just sitting around saying things? What’s the good of that, and all those horrid people out there, just—just out there like that! Why don’t you hit them or something?’

  ‘Now you’re just being silly,’ he said.
‘They will go, and the police won’t let ’em back. It’ll be all right.’

  ‘And in the morning we’ll be buried in dead spiders, and that’ll be all right, too.’

  ‘We don’t even know they’re coming here,’ he protested. ‘It’s nil guesswork! Nobody can tell if they will or not.’

  ‘Oh rats! ’ Jennifer just shouted it out as a kind of explosion to relieve the pressure in her. Then she started to cry and relaxed in his arms.

  “I’m so worried,’ she said, uneasily. ‘Will our home be eaten up or something? I can’t bear the thought of it. I don’t think I want to go whatever happens. It’s ours. It’s part of us. They can’t just make us go like that. We might never see it again. I wouldn’t go! ’ She shook her head wildly. ‘I wouldn’t go! ’

  ‘We don’t have to go, anyway,’ he said quietly. ‘Nothing may happen at all. There have been a lot of these scares from outer space these last few years. They keep them localised, then when nothing happens nobody’s the worse for it. That’s what they’re doing now. If that damned newspaper hadn’t got hold of it, those gawpers wouldn’t be out there now.’

  ‘If they hadn’t got hold of it! ’ She pushed herself out of his arms. ‘You did that! You did that when you were with her last night! ’

  ‘Oh. don’t be silly! There’s nothing—’

  ‘Well, I can see something! You don’t have to be very clever to see what she thinks about it.’

  ‘Look, she wants her husband back.’

  ‘I’m beginning to wonder why her husband went!’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so stupid! When you talk like that I think—’

  Both became petrified as Barbara walked in at the door behind him.

  ‘The policeman’s crazy,’ Barbara said. ‘He stands there watching me and talking to himself. Right out there amongst the flowers as if he’s some kind of nature man. I don’t get it. I’m going to pieces.’

  She dropped into a kitchen chair. Her brown hair was, untidy and made her look very young. Jennifer glared at her a moment, then turned to the slatted windows.

  ‘Something’s happened to Ellen,’ she said. She went to the garden door and opened it. The little brick yard was empty. Jennifer looked round the jamb to the thinning crowd in the lane. The fields were still scattered with people, but many were squatting, as if tired by the vigil. ‘Is she there?’ Richard said, coming near the door.

  ‘No. She was out here.’

  He realised Jennifer was not looking for Ellen but just hiding her face from Barbara.

  ‘The crowd’s fading away,’ Jennifer said over her shoulder. ‘You’ll be able to go soon.’

  ‘No! ’ Barbara cried out sharply. They both looked round at her. ‘I can’t go back there. I shan’t leave here. I’ve got to stay. You don’t understand. I’ve got to stay! ’

  She let her head fall on to her arms as if she was going to sleep across the table.

  ‘Oh Christ!’ Richard muttered. For the first time he realised why he kept having terrible surges of anger. It was sheer frustration at knowing things were falling right out of control.

  The phone bell rang out in the hall. Richard started round, then stopped. Most likely it wasn’t for him. Nothing seemed to be for him any more. As Jennifer had said, Griswold had taken it all away from him.

  Anger rose at the thought. He strode across the kitchen and into the hall. Griswold came out of the study, glanced at him briefly and went to take the phone. Richard stopped where he was, staring at the broad white shirt back of the occupational force.

  Griswold barked and grunted. It was just like a pig snorting, Richard thought, with harsh pleasure.

  Griswold slammed down and turned, his hot face angry and sweating.

  ‘They’ve got the samples we sent up from the village street,’ he said, without looking at Richard. ‘It seems to be some kind of spider we had on Earth a few million years ago, which developed into the species we know.’

  ‘So there has been this kind of invasion before?’

  ‘You can’t trust what those fools say!’ Griswold sneered. ‘One top-liner will say that. The next will deliberately say the opposite. This is the day of the specialist. Everybody specialises at being a know-all in something, and so busy is he telling lesser specialists that he forgets what he should know. I don’t take that spider theory. There could be other explanations.’

  ‘But the cloud is still up there?’

  ‘Yes.’ Griswold grunted rather than spoke. ‘Yes, it’s still there. Why can’t you remember? I’m sure you saw what’s going to happen. If only you could remember the details! ’

  ‘If I saw them, why didn’t I give them to the paper?’

  ‘You forget, you came off that time-belt suddenly, and you realised you had, too. You said so to that news tape. I think something jumped you off that tape, like a sudden shocking sight makes a man turn away, and wish he could escape it. When the horror is real, you have to turn back to it. But you knew it wasn’t, knew you could turn away because you knew you were on a forward belt. So the automatic wish became the fact. The shock sent you back and you were back in last night and the phone box light came on.’ He leant nearer, his hand fiat on the wall. ‘What gave you the shock? What was the horror you shied from?’

  ‘I don’t remember any. If it wasn’t for that tape, I wouldn’t believe I’d made such a call. The whole of yesterday evening is a dream. Even the part I can remember doesn’t seem to have had any real existence.’

  ‘Can you remember back to when you got the idea for the short story—“The Night Spiders”?’

  ‘I do now. Yes. It was just a couple of dead spiders I found in a comer of the window frame. I wondered how long they’d been there, and I looked at them with a glass. My son was home from school, sick. He set them up on his microscope and we had a look through. They looked all transparent under the lens. From that I made the story of the travellers on the time-belt, which the faulty lens split up. I told you the theme.’

  ‘Oh, you actually found dead spiders?’

  ‘Yes. Been there since the summer, I reckoned.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me this before.’

  ‘I remembered it since. I just told you.’

  ‘You have this microscope here? Can we have a look at them through it? You never know, it might help.’

  ‘I’ll get it.’

  He went up the stairs and along the corridor to his son’s room. The microscope was standing on a low bookshelf beside the door. He picked the instrument up and glanced round the room.

  There was a faint sound of bubble slap from the little aquarium of tropical fish which stood on the chest of drawers behind the door. Richard looked at the slowly- turning skeleton hanging by the window and felt a sudden revulsion for this grisly miniature. It made him draw back and close the door.

  He did not see the aquarium tank. The tropical fish had all gone and amid the weeds and fronds a metallic blue coloured spider was swimming and darting in the agitated water. Its legs touched either side of the long glass tank as it went, for it was then almost eighteen inches across. The aeration and warmth of the water was supplied by a steel plate battery charged from the mains, so that in the event of a power-cut the temperature would not fall and the delicate fish die.

  Richard went down into the study again. Griswold was going through a sheaf of papers and wiping his face with a handkerchief. -Hayles stood looking sourly out of the window.

  ‘Bloody morons! ’ Hayles said, turning back. ‘What makes you think they’re not people?’

  ‘Now and again you can see through them,’ Griswold said. ‘I can’t make out whether it’s them, or us. Hasn’t it happened to you yet?’ fi ‘See through them-?’

  ‘X-ray type,’ Richard said.

  ‘Lord, no! ’

  ‘And then they tend to melt away if you go near,’ Griswold went on, ‘colloquially, that would be.’

  Hayles laughed.

  ‘I know that! But they still seem stupidly human to me.�
� He swung back. ‘Why don’t they go away?’

  ‘Easy now,’ said Griswold. ‘This must be the first time you’ve been on the bad end of a crowd. You’re part of something they’re just frightened of. Which accounts for their look of petrified wonder.’

  ‘They’re mad! ’ Hayles shouted. ‘What is there to see?’ ‘Something they can talk about tomorrow, when this spot is a seething bed of alien spiders,’ Griswold said.

  Richard adjusted the microscope on the tiny cadaver. ‘It looks just like any spider to me,’ he said.

  Griswold took a look.

  ‘Except it looks as if it’s made of cellophane.’

  ‘Like a young shrimp,’ Richard said.

  ‘Yes. I wonder if that’s the key?’

  ‘Were they meant to aim for the sea?’ Richard asked.

  ‘Could be,’ Griswold said, peering. ‘Or sand? The soil is sandy here.’

  ‘Why sand? The sea’s bigger.’ Hayles sounded cross.

  ‘I can’t make out any gills,’ Griswold said.

  ‘Is that cloud still up there?’ Hayles said.

  ‘Yes. Patrolling.’

  Hayles began walking about in sharp angles from one point to another of the room in lines of crazy geometry.

  ‘It’s unbelievable!’ he said. ‘It can’t be true! It’s like the end of the world! ’

  ‘Perhaps it is,’ said Griswold, peering. ‘The final coming of the insects. The last revenge for insecticides.’

  ‘I don’t like your warped sense of humour,’ Hayles snarled.

  ‘I haven’t got one,’ said Griswold, looking up at last. ‘Well, it’s a spider, but what else it is I don’t know. The specimen sent to the labs was almost dust when it got there. They had difficulty, but they did identify it as prehistoric—that, of course, is as far as we’re concerned. Clearly it’s right up-to-date type somewhere else.’

  The door burst open as if the man had charged the lock. Porch stood there, sweating, bright-eyed, breathing hard.

  ‘There’s something in the pond out there,’ he said.

  “Pond?’ Griswold swung to Richard.