The sea-gulls were silent when Lucia returned to Tilling from a visit to Aggie Sandeman up in London. This was very odd, and there was something uncanny about driving down the coastline with the only sound in her ears being that of waves gently licking the shore. This was nothing, however, compared to the experience of High Street, usually the bustle of the recent gossip that was the symptom that the town was alive. She had leaned forward and told her trusted driver, Cadman, to take this way, and the total length of the street was completely silent, except for the rustling of a torn newspaper page rolling down the cobbles like a tumbleweed in the desert. The fronts of the houses looked bleak and empty, the windows dark like dead eyes staring into the void of a soulless world. As they drove along, there grew in their ears the lulling yet ennerving sound of a rhythmical creaking of the sign of Ye Olde Teahouse, dangling in the wind.
       Lucia leaned back in the seat and drew her silk kimono tightly around her, seeking comfort from the embroidered marine blue tulips on a snow-white background. Her instincts, which never before had failed her, told her that something was completely amiss, and she tried hard to hold back the goose pimples that were fighting to erupt all over her skin. She ought to have dressed warmer, she told herself, and not try to fool herself that spring was already there, and she pulled up the window.
       After what seemed an eternity, the car drew up before Mallards, and Lucia quickly got out, glad to have reached the comfort of her home. As she rang the doorbell, however, nobody answered. Frowning, she noticed that the front door was slightly ajar, no chain on, and she pushed at it. Without a sound, it slid open, and she walked into the hall. The only light anywhere was the pale sun, sifting through a thin veil of white clouds, trying to disperse the traces of winter, and entering her house through the big windows. She felt chilly, and went over to turn on the electric light. None came on.
       She called out for Grosvenor, her house-maid, at first in a feeble voice, then, recomposing, in a demanding and petulant voice, not at all like her usual self, and provoked only by the unease that had eaten itself into her marrows and seemed totally unwilling to leave again. She went into the garden room, and closed the French windows, through which a cool breeze entered. The kitchen, too, she found empty, and she went upstairs to look for her domestiche in their rooms.
       In her room, she found Grosvenor lying in bed, with fevered eyes staring into the ceiling. She ran over to her and drew the carpets closely around her, as they seemed to have slid off half-way, leaving the obedient servant semi-exposed in a not too decent way. She drew back the dark curls that were sticking to the maid’s sweaty forehead, and gently repeated her name several times.
       After a while, the brown eyes flickered vaguely with consciousness, settling on Lucia, for a moment without recognition, before an odd mingling of comfort and desperation filled them. A weak hand, which seemed to have grown thin and sinewy, grabbed at Lucia’s arm, and with pale lips, the maid managed to whisper a few words.
       "Oh, ma’am, is it really you?" she said, her eyes moistening. "You must get away at once. Flee from this place. Don’t mind me, I’m done for, but you might still make it."
       "You’re ill, Grosvenor," Lucia said. "I shall call up il dottore at once."
       "It’s not use," said the maid, turning away her head and staring out at the sky. "He can’t do anything. And they’ve probably got him as well, by now."
       Lucia went downstairs to call Dr. Dobbie, but when she picked up the phone, it was dead. Hearing footsteps behind her, she turned and saw that it was only Cadman who came with a confused look, complaining that he hadn’t been able to find his wife. Lucia ordered him to get the car back out and carry Grosvenor down there, as they couldn’t very well just leave her lying about, and while he attended his business, she checked the remaining rooms of the house.
       A peculiar mixture of relief and increased worry filled her when she entered the dining room and saw a familiar figure sitting alone at the table, his back towards her, and his head slumping forward, as though he were dozing off. She hurried up to him, almost shouting her greetings to him.
       "Georgino mio!" she exclaimed. "There you are! Whatever’s going on here?"
       Slowly, he lifted his head and met her eyes, and she had to let out a strangled cry as she saw that his usually so distinguished brown beard had almost a quarter of an inch of gray spurting at its roots. So far, she had been trying to tell herself that she was getting hysterical in a situation where everything could be accounted for, but the countenance of her spouse was so unexpected, so unlikely, that no natural explanation could possibly exist. Clearly, Georgie had not been dying his beard for days and days, as though he cared not at all if people might realize its true colour, or lack of the same.
       "Ah," he said in a voiceless tone. "So you’re back."
       "I’m not at all sure," she said. "I feel like I have come to a totally alien place. I demand that you tell me at once, Georgie, what is going on here!"
       "Concern is superfluous," he said. "Everything is good. Things are being restored. A better future beckons."
       Emmeline Pillson, known to friend and foe alike as Lucia, was in no way a weak character, this must be understood. But hearing her usually chatty husband speak in such a way, and in a voice devoid of inflection and feeling, she suddenly felt despair, a sensation totally foreign to her nature. She had to drop on to a chair opposite him, as she knew her legs would soon give way under her. She would never be able to show her face in the civilized world again, had anyone ever seen her faint, even if only her dear husband.
       "What future?" she asked firmly. "What is this restoring and beckoning you’re talking about, Georgie?"
       "The true order," he droned, "shall be restored. This planet shall soon be rid of its sickness."
       His head was lolling strangely, and she noticed lumps on his hands, making them look like the extremities of a man fourty years his senior.
       "Oo are vewwy naughty-baughty," she said. "Immediamente dell ickle Lucia evvyting."
       "Message not understood," Georgie said. "Please rephrase."
       That was enough. The thing before her, however much it looked like her Georgie, and even if it might somehow have taken over his body, was not him. If Georgie didn’t respond to her baby-talk, it would be because he was, for some reason or other, cross. He would never, when she appealed to him like that, respond in such a detached way, not ever, not anyhow, not anyplace. He would either talk baby-talk himself, or be aloof and acid. She instantly decided not to give herself away, but to act with a stiff upper lip, and try to find out what was going on, by humouring the creature that looked so like her dear Georgie that she almost felt like giving it a frivolous token of affection, such as a kiss on the cheek.
       "I was just saying, Georgino mio," she said calmly, "that I’m feeling quite peckish after my drive from London."
       His left arm ejected from his body and pushed a deep plate across the table.
       "Here," he, or it, said. "Have some trifle."
       She looked down and saw some bits of fruit heavily buried in whipped cream.
       "What is it?" she asked. "Not our usual lunch, I’m sure."
       "It is trifle," he intoned. "Do you need a spoon? Take this one."
       She took the piece of cutlery handed to her and dug it into the dish, tasting carefully at it, feeling like a Roman emperor who might be expected to be poisoned at any moment.
       "Um," she said. "Pineapple, is it?"
       "Yes," he said. "Pineapples are not too good to be fed even to animal creatures. They have been done in cream and sugar. Do you like them?"
       "Delicous," she said, putting down the spoon. "My, I’m full already. Now, tell me, is there any news?"
       "Temperatures in Tilling two degrees Kelvin below average for the time of the year," he said. "The number of animals in the area declining. A lot of beautiful flowers will grow this spring."
       "Oh, that does sound lovely," she enthused. "I do love flowers."
       "Flowers are the end of creation," said the thing looking like Georgie. "The frail beauty, the delicate colours, the perfection of arrangement. Yes, flowers are what we all admire."
       Lucia’s mind faltered for a moment. Surely, praising the aesthetic qualities of flowers was a very cunning trick of whatever it was that was posing as Georgie, but still she wasn’t fooled. This thing was sitting in a fixed position, talking without real enthusiasm. Georgie would be leaning back and forth and waving his hands about in exultation when talking about anything he found pretty. Her heart was sinking deeper and deeper any moment.

 

Broken nails rasping against bare stone, sick lungs contracting in desperate need of oxygen, the woman heaved herself up to the muddy pane giving a limited view over the cobbles and the empty wooden boxes beyond. Once, fresh figs and green gages from the garden of Mallards had been filling them. This time of the year, one would hope to see them filled with last year’s potatoes and Brussel sprouts. Under normal circumstances, that is. Their gaping vacancy was all that might be expected now.
       Although true to prediction, the bareness of Twistevant’s exhibition was not her prime concern at the moment. The Dominators were. She dared not go up the stairs, for she knew they had their guards positioned in the house, but for the last twenty-four hours they had not been marching in the street, and maybe, just maybe, they had left it alone for now. She wondered if she could make her way through the tiny window, but she had to try. She had been sucking up the moist from the floor this morning, but staying here would mean her impending demise. She picked up the discarded guerridon lying on the floor and, tottering with starvation beneath its weight, bashed it against the pane.

 

Cadman came staggering down the stairs, Grosvenor held limply in his outstretched arms, the cobweb-like pieces of her nightgown flowing in the breeze that came through the front door. Her eyes were flickering in feeble protest, and caught sight of Lucia and Georgie waiting in the hall. She gave out a shriek of panic, and managed to point an accusing finger in their general direction.
       "Don’t worry," said Lucia. "It’s only Georgie and I."
       "No, ma’am," she said hoarsely. "He’s one of them now! Don’t trust him!"
       Georgie hissed strangely, and stepped forward, raising an arm as though he was going to strike the suffering woman. Lucia adroitly caught his other arm and held him back, sensing in her grip that his arm felt very differently from the way she supposed it used to feel. Almost like the branch of a tree.
       He tried to wriggle free, and she yelled for Cadman’s help, who put down Grosvenor and joined her in holding down Georgie. Lucia quickly looked around, and retrieved the wire from the telephone in the little room next to her. They used it to tie Georgie’s arms to his body, and with a miserable sensation in her deepest guts, Lucia propelled her tragic hostage out of Mallards, while Cadman picked up Grosvenor and followed her.
       They put the maid in the front seat, and as Lucia got into the back seat of her car to sit beside Georgie, he leaned back his head, opening his mouth wide, and let out a long, inhuman and high-pitched sound that cut into her bones.
       "Hurry!" said Grosvenor. "He’s calling for the others. The Dominators!"
       "Who are ’The Dominators’?" asked Lucia. "Now, I really must know what all this is. Drive along, Cadman."
       Grosvenor didn’t answer, but slid into unconsciousness, and Georgie gave out a strange, hollow laugh. Having ordered Cadman to get out of town with the utmost speed, to take them somewhere where they might contact the authorities, so that everything could be taken care of, Lucia began thinking. Whatever it was that was ailing Georgie, a cure would certainly have to be found, and she was prepared to spend the whole fortune she had been making the last couple of years, by making thoughtful investments, by carefully studying the market and the telegrams from her broker. And those Dominators that Grosvenor had mentioned, by their very name sounded perfectly nasty, and maybe the military would have to be set in to conquer them. She might even show them the way herself, leading along a batallion of tanks to Tilling. She envisioned herself on a white stallion, dressed somewhat like a Roman centurion, only the white skirt certainly had to be much longer, with a golden belt and breastplate, and a sword raised triumphantly in the air, as she sped on towards the enemy, the peak of British manhood in her wake. That wouldn’t be very practical, of course, but it was a nice fantasy which she couldn’t help indulging in for a moment. Still, even if the actual situations might turn out a bit less picturesque, her heroic deed must surely pay off so well in honour and glamour, that it would be worth whichever price of mere gold that might be required, and she had another vision of the next edition of The Hastings Chronicle which might very well use the whole front page for a headline going, "Mayor of Tilling Saves The World". That would be very satisfying, and would probably have journalists from The Times and every other leading paper come down to Tilling, where she would entertain them in her garden room and tell them the whole story over and over again. Maybe she would be asked to make press conferences in London, and speaches to The Royal Academy and the Nobel committee, who might even award her the Peace Prize, and she would make a splendid speech of humility and gratitude that would be transmitted on the wireless all over the world. The possible returns of this terrible business seemed unlimited.
       Just outside town, the car suddenly slowed down, and Lucia leaned forward to ask Cadman what was the matter. Mutely, he pointed ahead, bringing the vehicle under his loving care and command to a complete stop. Lucia looked ahead, seeing that the road was now blocked by a large barricade of what looked like curly tree stems, lianae, and foliage.
       "Most extraordinary," she said curiously. "It looks as if it has just all grown there. We ought to get a botanist down to Tilling and examine it. It must be a whole new species of vegetation. Don’t they give the discoverers of new species the right to name them?"
       Cadman didn’t respond, but watched with incredulous eyes as small parts of the barricade seemed to writhe loose of the main body, forming grotesque figures like parodies of human bodies, with branches for arms and legs, and eyeless pumpkins on top for heads. Slowly, they began to stagger in direction of the car, stretching out their leaved extremities in gestures like Mr. Karloff in that modern, sensationalist Hollywood production of Mary Shelley. Georgie, who had been sitting quietly in the front seat, leaned back his head and gave a hoarse and loud laugh of triumph. Putting the car in reverse gear, the chauffeur turned around and began racing at an incredible sixty miles per hour in the direction of Tilling, while Lucia, holding on to her hat, and a silk scarf fluttering in the wind, stared back in fascination.
       "What a discovery," she said. "Somebody will have to lecture about it to the scientific community."

 

The vicar climbed the long stairs of the Tower, having to call on all his morals for every step he took, constantly reminding himself of his unquenchable faith. This was not a trial to be taken lightly, for every lamb in his little flock had been taken away from him, one by one, except his quaint and now solitary companion. They had tried to turn himself into one of those demonic creatures, and only by a miracle had he been the one to escape the fate that had fallen over everybody else that had been caught. He had been kept prisoner for days, and been fed nothing except pineapple trifle, so that the thought of it made his guts revolt. Only by pretending to begin to undergo the change had he been able to get away. All humans, all animals, and all birds had, by degree, vanished from the area, turning into hideous vegetations, and the water and power supply had gone. He had lost his wife, he had been on the run, and he had not had a rubber of bridge for at least a fortnight.
       Kenneth Bartlett opened the door and stepped outside on top of the Church Tower, feeling the chill air bite his cheeks. He beheld his the last friend remaining, who, having put on the copper bowl of the baptismal font for a helmet, and expropriated his bird-watcher’s binoculars for scouting purposes, now kept a constant watch over the little spot that had, he now realized, been an exquisite little paradise where people ought to have appreciated their unique fortune more profoundly.
       How distant those happy days now seemed.
       "We can’t stay here forever," he said flatly, having for days forgotten his almost natural tongue of anglo-saxon with a Scottish dialect. "Our food supply is running short."
       Irene Coles dropped the binoculars an turned towards him.
       "Don’t worry, Padre," she said. "Lucia must be back soon. She’ll know how to put everything all right. She’ll just get some pesticides from Coplen’s, and spray them onto those brainless weeds."
       He gave her a wan smile. Her courage and determination to keep up spirits were admirable, but reality did not seem to warrant her optimism. This was too much like the Book of Iob, only worse, and doomed to a sadder outcome.

 

"Stop!" cried Lucia, and the Rolls Royce came to a halt too abrupt to Cadman’s pleasure. He jumped out to have a close look at the maltreated tires, while Lucia’s index finger was pointed in a fixed position at a wriggling female figure stuck in the basement window of Mrs. Plaistow’s house, Wasters.
       Her arms were flinging about, and her corrugated face shouted angrily.
       "Help!" a desperate voice tore through the barren town. "You! Get me free!"
       Lucia jumped out of the care and ran towards the woman, only then realizing that it was her Mayoress, Elizabeth Mapp-Flint thus caught in an unflattering position. She also realized that to get her free, she would have to get into an almost equally unflattering position, in which she could not remember having seen any statue, classic or renaissance. To do so, and in front of dear Elizabeth, was so challenging to her persona that she had to draw in a deep breath of air before heaving up her kimono, stemming her heels against the ground, and clasping Elizabeth’s hands in order to pull with all her might.
       "Dear Worship," groaned the trapped woman. "I never thought I’d be so pleased to see you. Ouch!"
       "It’s not working," gasped Lucia. "Cadman! Come at once!"
       After a moment of the application of their combined strength, Elizabeth literally popped out of Wasters and fell heavily onto the cobbles. As she yelled bitterly, something seemed to be stirring inside the house, and she looked up, clasping a hand before her mouth.
       "Oh, dear, I’m afraid they heard me," she mumbled through her fingers.
       "Who?" asked Lucia.
       "The Dominators. We must get away. Hurry!"
       That was easy enough for Elizabeth to order, but Lucia and Cadman had to put together their efforts once again to pull Elizabeth upright, and even then it took a little while. By the time they finally made their way to the car, more of those grotesque plant men were pouring out of Wasters. They only managed to get into the Rolls and drive off, as the creatures were almost catching up on them.
       Georgie laughed, and emitted another of those high-pitched sounds which seemed to be directed at the plant men.
       "They’ve got him!" said a terrified Elizabeth. "And Grosvenor too! We must get them out of the car!"
       "We’ll do no such thing," said Lucia calmly.
       "But, Lulu, don’t you see," Elizabeth explained impatiently, "they’re turning into that kind of… things!"
       "Pero e verro," said Lucia, "but we have to do our best!"
       "Well," said Elizabeth in the face of stubborn stupidity, "if you want to get us all killed, I suppose the best thing is to keep them."
       This was certainly a day of firsts for Lucia, for now Cadman broke into her conversation, asking in an unseemly hurry where he was supposed to drive. Elizabeth shouted the rather obvious answer of the huff out of here, and Lucia had to explain to her that they had already tried all ways out of Tilling, and they were now all blocked by those curious plant barricades. Hearing that, Elizabeth quite lost grip of herself, and began crying, and Lucia put her arms around her.
       "There, there, dear Lib-lib," she comforted. "We’ll soon set all this straight."
       "And pray," wailed the Mayoress, "exactly how do you propose to do that?"
       "I don’t know yet," said Lucia in an optimistic voice, "but first you have to tell me all about this business. I’m afraid Georgie and Cadman have not been a great help in that respect."
       Elizabeth, who would not expect so, launched herself on a tale of how a huge meteor had landed in the marches, and how her husband had bravely gone to investigate the phenomenon, only to return with a kind of infection that had brought him, a stout and healthy ex-Major of His Majesty’s Army, down with a fever for several days. Then he had slowly turned into one of those horrid vegetable things, and by that time several other Tillingites had caught the fever, including Susan Wyse and Mr. Twistewant, who refused to sell his normal convestibles, claiming that it was a terrible crime to maim any plant, let alone eat it. Except pineapples, which he found disgusting and not worthy of a better fate.
       When a dozen people had turned into those pumpkin trees, they had formed a group, and started catching the others, performing some kind of incubation ritual that made them turn into things like themselves. They had put up a couple of laboratories, one of them in Wasters, and faster than the industrial revolution had been the construction of factories that produced plants from people.
       She herself had been caught, and they had performed the operation, which she was reluctant to describe, on her. For some reason, however, she had seemed immune to the incubation, and after a couple of days, during which she had been fed nothing but pineapple trifle, she had sneaked down to the basement and hid herself there. She didn’t know why she escaped the transformation, and only knew of one other person who had resisted it, namely the Padre whom she had met just before she was caught, and who was going to hide in the church, praying to the Lord to turn things right.
       "Of course!" exclaimed Lucia. "That’s the place to seek refuge when under attack. Cadman, the Church at once!"

 

And so, on her lookout on the top of the Church Tower, Quaint Irene had her prediction rewarded when she saw Lucia’s car, filled with strange passengers, turning the corner from High Street and speeding directly towards her.
"Hooray!" she shouted, throwing the binoculars into the air, and banging the copper bowl against the wall all the way, she ran downstairs. "Padre, Lucia’s coming to Tilling! Her second coming! Rejoice! Rejoice!"
They both rushed to unbolt the front door, and there were delighted exclamations from both Lucia and Irene, who with the Padre rushed out to help get Georgie and Grosvenor inside, while Elizabeth rushed inside all by herself and tried to slam the door. Irene just managed to put her foot in, literally, and waved a forefinger at the panic-stricking woman.
"Naughty, naughty," she said. "You’re not going to leave us all outside, Mapp?"
"But they’re coming!" Elizabeth shouted, pointing a trembling finger down the street. "Look!"
They all looked, and saw that Elizabeth was right. At the far end of the street, a horde of the pumpkin men were emerging, wailing that piercing sound that was beginning to get quite on the nerves of those still human. Irene mercilesly drove Elizabeth back out to help get the others in, and they all struggled to carry Grosvenor and pushing Georgie, who was now resisting, trying to call the plant creatures that were making their way towards the church.
Just at the last moment, when Irene and Elizabeth managed to pull the apostate inside, Lucia slammed the door and pulled the bolts and bars. There was a heavy thumping against the wood from the outside, but it seemed solid enough to resist so far.
Elizabeth staggered into the nave to sit down and breathe and breathe and breathe on one of the benches, followed by the Padre trying to bring her some spiritual comfort with which she seemed somewhat impatient. Cadman put down Grosvenor carefully on the next bench, furnishing her with a blanket, and Irene danced around Lucia, kissing her cheeks so frequently that the Mayor was beginning to feel it was, perhaps, overdoing it all a bit.

 

Some hours went by, and dusk came. The bangings against the door had stopped, but the Dominators were still outside, as Irene frequently confirmed, making rounds of looking out the windows. They seemed to be digging trenches, preparing a long time siege that would have the refugees surrender or succumb.
       "Lulu, dear," said Irene, coming up to Lucia. "What are we going to do?"
       "I’m going to have to think a bit about that," said Lucia, and leaned back on her bench, pressing two fingers against her forehead.
       Georgie was sitting, his head lolling back and forth, emitting a shrill laughter every now and then. Grosvenor’s feverish jerkings grew more violent, and Elizabeth fell asleep behind the altar. The Padre made several attempts to force himself into the pulpit to give them all some words of comfort, but every time he slunk away again.
       A sense of despair lowered itself on the little group as night fell, and they had troubled dreams of being forced whole pineapples down their throats, and small pumpkins growing like pimples in their faces.
       Lucia finally woke up, sensing a fresh breeze and golden sunshine. She sat up on her bench, her limps feeling stiff and sore, and after a couple of seconds she jumped up to do some calisthenics in order to get into her usual supple state. Irene was already up and around, having opened the window that let in the cool morning air, and she cheered Lucia by telling what a beautiful morning it was. When the Padre, Elizabeth, and Cadman came around, the five of them joined in a breakfast on the last bisquits that had originally been intended for the Eucharist. Lucia found it a drab meal, but Elizabeth seemed almost exulted by the wafers.
       "Anything but pineapple," she explained, digging her teeth into the last of the crispy things.
       "Why do they let you eat pineapples," Irene complained, "if they think that plants are the thing, and animals are the sickness. They ought to treat pineapples as well as any other fruit. Bloody racialists."
       When they had finished their morning supper, Lucia went to the corner in which her husband sat slumped against the wall. She talked to him gently, trying to find a flicker of her old Georgie inside the creature that was now increasingly looking like a plant. His skin now looked like bark, his fingers like twigs.
       "Georgino," she said sadly. "I know you’re still in there. Please fight this thing. You have to, if we’re to save the world. The whole human civilisation depends on people being able to fight. Think of the proud nations of the world, the geniuses of Michaelangelo and Shakespeare, the human spirit itself! We’ll lose all of that if you cannot fight the thing that is taking you over."
       Georgie just laughed his hollow laugh.
       "There’s nothing you animal fiends can do now," he said. "Beasts are beastly, beasts eat and fight each other. You’re a sickness on a planet that could be a greenhouse under this sun. And it will be. Soon, supple trees will grow all over the planet, in harmony with flowers and bracken, all living on the soil and the water below, not on each other’s misery! Be happy, Lucia. Earth shall be a place of peace and beauty!"
       She argued with him for a while, but the colours of the birds resounded no sentimental chords in him, the achievement of great men was nothing like the delicate leave of a tree. Her Georgie seemed completely lost to her. Finally, she got up and joined Irene for an inspection round, and from the tower they watched the Dominators consolidate their siege. They milled around the church, and had even occupied Lucia’s dear Secret Garden. She knew that Irene was expecting her to come up with a brilliant idea of how to fight the enemy, and she realised that she had to, or her Mayordom would be snatched away from her forever. But how was she going to fight an enemy whose weaknesses she didn’t know?
       From every window, the view was a sorry sight, and they went back to the nave to join the others, and Lucia announced that a deliberation would be held at noon. The Padre and Cadman nodded silently with pessimistic faces, and Elizabeth suggested that they ought to do it an hour sooner than Lucia had suggested. They might of course as well have held it right away, but Lucia wanted some time to think. She sat down on a bench a leaned her head forwards, supporting her forehead with all five fingers of her right hand in order to signal intense concentration.
       Elizabeth sat next to Georgie near her, and began to chat to him about the days prior to the arrival of the Dominators. She talked about Susan Wyse who had just got a new canary which she had discovered was a reincarnation of her sorely missed Blue Birdie. Mrs. Diva Plaistow, it seemed, had developed an eczema on her hands, which made it impossible for her to work in the kitchen, so that the catering of Ye Olde Teahouse had to be done all by her maid Janet. Bereft of the use of her hands, usually so industriously employed, she had had nothing to do but to hang over her servants all the time, instructing them how to do everything, and her gardener had been so exasperated that he had left her. The Padre had a small selection of his sermons, written in old English, accepted for printing by the publisher of The Hastings Chronicle, even if they didn’t normally deal in even slim books, and Elizabeth suspected that he had bribed them and would have had to cover the expenses of the enterprise himself.
       The endless flow of trivial details generously seasoned with Elizabeth’s critical comments, was very distracting, and Lucia found herself listening to it rather than think about solving the present quandary. Even if she pressed her fingertips harder and harder against her forehead, she couldn’t help following the tale of how Susan had first noticed that Yellow Birdie had sung exactly the same way that Blue Birdie had used to, and how a medium she had met on her latest holiday, had visited her and during a favourably priced seance had discovered the truth about the reincarnation. In the end, she gave up, and looked over at Elizabeth and Georgie, to ask if her dear Mayoress found it absolutely necessary to pursue her obsession with these, at the moment, irrelevant stories.
       However, as her glance fell on Georgie, she seemed to notice a new expression on his face. There was a flicker of interest in his eyes, and his mouth was opening slightly. Lucia sat completely still and watched as he underwent an increasingly speedy transformation as Elizabeth kept up her effortless flow of gossip. Even his skin changed from its barky quality back to a somewhat pale but definitely human texture. At length, he suddenly had a violent seizure of coughs, and afterwards looked up all red in his face, and with moisture at the corner of his eyes.
       "Did the Padre really tell you that he had included a warning against dabbing with the occult and reincarnations in his book?" he excitedly asked Elizabeth, and Lucia at once recognized her old Georgie’s voice. "Did Susan know that? Do go on."
       Lucia jumped up from her place.
       "Heureka!" she cried. "Come here, all of you. Deliberation, at once!"
       They all seemed to wake up from slight trances, and Irene came rushing over to her and gave her a hug.
       "I knew you make it out!" said Irene.
       The Padre and Cadman came over, while Elizabeth just looked sceptically at Lucia. When she had their full attention, she pointed dramatically at Georgie.
       "Look, there’s a cure!" she announced. "Georgie’s returning to normal."
       Not until now had Elizabeth looked at the tied up Georgie over whom she had been pouring her thoughts, and like the others, she saw that Lucia was right.
       "Why are you all staring at me?" asked Georgie. He followed their glances, and looked down his body. "And why am I tied like this? Give me free!"
       "At once, Georgino mio," said Lucia, and ordered Elizabeth to untie him. "But there’s no time to explain now. We must employ my scheme for saving Tilling at once. It’s all a question of resisting the Dominators. I’m convinced that the Padre and Elizabeth managed to thwart them simply by sheer will-power."
       Will-power was a term she deliberately picked, not wanting to antagonize anybody at this critical moment by talking about stubbornness.
       "So, how do we muster the concentration and will-power by our brain-washed friends?" she asked. "Simple. Just like Georgie just mustered his. We’ll have to appeal to their human interest, and they will be able to win their internal fight all by themselves. We have to remind them of the things that they care about, to talk to them about their lives and daily interest. It’s as simple as that."
       "If you’ll excuse me, dear Worship," Elizabeth said acidly, "although I’m sure you know best, perhaps you’ll allow me to doubt if it’ll really be as simple as that. To quench the Dominators, we’ll have to get help from the authorities, I think."
       "But we can’t, can we?" said Lucia. "And unless anybody has any other suggestion about what we should actually do, why don’t we try my plan instead of just sitting around?"
       As nobody could come up with any objection to that argument, they got working. Lucia had the others produce a primitive megaphone out of some cardboard that the Padre kept out in the back, and when that was done, they went to the top of the tower, and the others watched as Lucia went around, shouting details about Susan’s reincarnated canary and Diva’s eczema in all directions of Tilling.
       Her calling her subjects to moral rearmament like that, was a bit like a muslem shouter calling Allah’s servants to prayer, and she kept on for equally long, it seemed to Elizabeth, repeating the gossip to town as were it gospel.
       But after a while, nobody could argue that Lucia’s idea had the intended impact. The plant men below stopped their activity, and stopped to listen. After a while, they began dropping to the ground and writhing, beginning to transform back into their previous identities. This all went on for a couple of hours, until not a plant man was left, and only confused Tillingites woke up on the cobbles, sitting up and looking around, wondering why they were sitting in the middle of the street, in the churchyard, or in the garden of Mallards.
       It was past noon when the little group that had saved Tilling went downstairs and unbolted the door to the church, going outside to meet their friends. On the way, Lucia instructed them all that it was probably better to keep the whole affair a secret between herself, Elizabeth, the Padre, Irene and Cadman. The truth might be too traumatic to those who had, if temporarily, given themselves over to the plant men. Besides, nobody would probably believe them, anyway.
       Elizabeth reluctantly agreed, comforting herself that Lucia would then score no points at all from this, after all, greatest deed of her life, not for a moment realizing that Lucia had got the whole idea from herself. She just picked her husband up on the street outside the church, and grumpily told him he had probably drunk a bit too much to remember how he had ended up there. As they went home, arm in arm, the only thought that occupied her mind, was that inviting her to a dinner of cod with trifle for dessert, was now all that was needed to turn her into a murderess.

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