When the Tripods Came by John Christopher Read Free Book Online Page A

the Cotswolds, with indoor and outdoor swimming pools, tennis courts, half a dozen stables, and grounds that stretched for miles.
    They had two children: Verity, who was seventeen, and Nathanael, a year older than me. (They really did call him Nathanael, even sitting round the swimming pool.) He looked like his father, with a thin, pale face and gingery hair and a weedy, slouching body, though without the potbelly Uncle Ian had got from living rich around the world. Verity was redheaded, too, but pretty.
    We didn’t see much of them, for a number of reasons. One was they made Ilse feel uncomfortable; another was that Martha disapproved of the way they lived. A third was because of the way they lived. You had to feel like a poor relation because you were. This didn’t worry me too much. I envied Nathanael some of the things he took for granted (like the swimming pools), but I wouldn’t have wanted them if it meant being like Nathanael, and I managed toconvince myself the two went together. I might have liked Verity if she’d ever paid me any attention, but she didn’t.
    Pa had telephoned Aunt Caroline after what happened with Angela, partly as a warning. From what he said to Martha, I gathered she’d not been very interested; Nathanael and Verity were safe at their expensive boarding schools (Eton in Nathanael’s case), and she and Ian didn’t watch television. She said the Tripod business was a nuisance, all the same. They’d been planning a trip to Los Angeles—Ian was setting up a company there—but he’d decided it was best to wait till things sorted themselves out.
    It was a very different Aunt Caroline who telephoned while Pa was fetching Andy. At first I couldn’t make out what she was saying, her voice was so choked. It gradually emerged that though television had been banned at Eton since the second Tripod invasion, someone had been operating a set illicitly. A master had found it tuned to the Trippy Show and confiscated it, but a dozen boys had run away during the night. Nathanael was one of them.
    Ian had set off at once to look for him. The nearest Tripod was on Farnham Common, not far from Eton, and they thought that was where they’d be heading. She was worried about Ian, too, now.
    She was still on the telephone when Pa came back with Andy. He listened to her and made big brother noises. I heard him say, “Ian will be all right, Caro.I’m sure of it. And Nathanael. It’s not as if they’re in physical danger. It’s been a week now, and nothing terrible’s happened. It’s just a silly business which will blow itself out. Have a drink, and try to relax. All right, have another drink. There are times when getting drunk’s not a bad idea.”
    He didn’t look so cheerful when he came away from the telephone. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “They called the police as soon as they heard from school, and the police didn’t even pretend to help—told Ian they’d given up handling missing persons calls. There were too many of them.”
    Andy nodded. “That’s what they told me. And some police are Tripping. The policeman at Little Ittery’s gone.”
    That was a village five miles away. Pa said, “Try not to worry about your mother. As I told my sister, it’s not as though anything terrible’s happening. Nobody’s been hurt. And hypnotic effects don’t last. They had a doctor on the radio this morning saying he expected people to start trickling back home any time now.”
    I asked, “What about Angela?”
    “What about her?”
    “Dr. Monmouth hypnotized her. Might that not last?”
    “That’s different. He hypnotized her to dehypnotize her. If we find her glued to the tube again there might be reason to worry, but I’ve seen no sign of that.”
    Nor had I. I’d noticed that if anyone left the TV switched on—as Martha sometimes did when she was going out, to deter burglars—Angela switched it off.
    • • •
    I wasn’t all that delighted about Andy staying