by Brian Aldiss
Gren had had trouble getting the tummy-belly men into position. To them, the islet was something to be clung to even in the face of blows, rather than exchange it for some imagined future bliss.
‘We can’t stay here: the food will probably give out,’ Gren told them, as they cowered before him.
‘O herder man, gladly we obey you with yesses. If food is all gone here, then we go away with you on a stalk-walker over the watery world. Now we eat lovely food with many teeth and do not go away till it is all gone.’
‘It will be too late then. We must go now, while the stalkers are leaving.’
Fresh protests at this, with much slapping of buttocks in anguish.
‘Never before have we seen the stalker-walkers to take a walk with them when they go stalking-walking? Where were they then when we never saw them? Terrible herder man and sandwich lady, now you two people without tails find this care to go with them. We don’t find the care. We don’t mind ever not to see the stalker-walkers stalky-walking.’
Gren did not confine himself to verbal argument for long; when he resorted to a stick, the tummy-bellies were quickly persuaded to acknowledge the truth of his reasoning and move accordingly. Snuffling and snorting, they were driven towards a group of six stalker flowers, the buds of which had just opened. They grew together on the edge of a low cliff overlooking the sea.
Under the morel’s direction, Yattmur and Gren had spent some while collecting food, wrapping it in leaves and attaching it with brambles to the stalker seed drums. Everything was ready for their journey.
The four tummy-bellies were forced to climb on to four drums. Telling them to hold on tightly, Gren went among them one by one, pressing his hand into the floury centre of each blossom. One by one, the seed cases shrilled into the air, noisily accompanied by a passenger hanging on for his life.
Only with the fourth case did anything go wrong. That particular flower was tilted towards the edge of the cliff. As the spring uncurled, the extra weight on the pod bore it sideways rather than upwards. It sagged over, an ostrich with a broken neck, and the tummy-belly yelled and kicked as his heels swung in mid-air.
‘O mummy! O tummy! Help your fat lovely son!’ he cried, but no help came. He lost his grip. Amid a shower of provision he fell, still protesting, an ignoble Icarus into the sea. The current carried him away. They saw his head go down below the swift water.
Freed of its burden, the stalker drum swayed upright, buffeted the three already erect, and joined with them into a solid unit.
‘Our turn!’ Gren said, turning to Yattmur.
Yattmur was still gazing out to sea. He grasped her arm and pushed her over to the two unsprouted flowers. Without showing anger, she freed herself from his grip.
‘Do I have to beat you like a tummy-belly?’ he asked her.
She did not laugh. He still held his stick.
When she did not laugh, his hold on the stick tightened. Obediently, she climbed on to the big green stalker drum.
They clutched the ribs of the plant, churning a hand about the pistil of the flower. Next minute, they too were spiralling up into the air. Beauty flew about them, begging them not to let vested interests prosper. Yattmur was most horribly afraid. She fell face forward among polleny stamens, almost unable to breathe for the scent of the flower, but incapable of moving. Dizziness filled her.
A timid hand touched her shoulder.
‘If you have a making hungry by the fear, do not eat of the nasty stalker flower but taste good fish without walking legs we clever menchaps catch in a pool!’
She looked up at the tummy-belly, his mouth moving nervously, his eyes large and soft, a dust of pollen making his hair ludicrously fair. He had no dignity. With one hand he scratched his crutch, with the other offered her fish.
Yattmur burst into tears.
Dismayed, the tummy-belly crawled forward, putting a hairy arm over her shoulder.
‘Do not make too many wet tears to fish when fish will not hurt you,’ he said.
‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘It’s just that we have brought so much trouble to you poor fellows – ’
‘O we poor tummy men all lost!’ he began, and his two companions joined in a dirge of sorrow. ‘It is true you cruelly bring us so much trouble.’
Gren had been watching as the six cases joined into one lumpy unit. He looked anxiously down to catch the first signs of the stalker detaching its legs from its root system. The chorus of lament made him switch his attention.
His stick landed loudly across plump shoulders. The tummy-belly who had been comforting Yattmur drew back crying. His companions also shrank away.
‘Leave her alone!’ Gren cried savagely, rising to his knees. ‘You filthy hairy tummy-tails, if you touch her again I’ll throw you down to the rocks!’
Yattmur peered at him with her lips drawn back so that her teeth showed. She said nothing.
Nobody spoke again until at last the stalker began to stir with a purposeful movement.
Gren felt the morel’s combination of excitement and triumph as the tall-legged creature took its first step. One by one its six legs moved. It paused, gaining its balance. It moved again. It halted. Then again it moved, this time with less hesitation. Slowly it began to stalk away from the cliff, across the islet, down to the gently shelving beach where its kin had gone, where the ocean current was less strong. Beauty followed, flying overhead.
Without hesitation, it waded into the sea. Soon its legs were almost entirely immersed, and the sea slid by on all sides.
‘Wonderful!’ Gren exclaimed. ‘Free of that hateful island at last.’
‘It did us no harm. We had no enemies there,’ Yattmur replied. ‘You said you wanted to stay there.’
‘We couldn’t stay there forever.’ Contemptuously, he offered her only what he had said to the tummy-bellies.
‘Your magic morel is too glib. He thinks only of how he can make use of things – of the tummies, of you and me, of the stalkers. But the stalkers did not grow for him. They were not on the island for him. They were on the island before we came. They grow for themselves, Gren. Now they do not go ashore for us but for themselves. We ride on one, thinking ourselves clever. How clever are we? These poor fisher-bellies call themselves clever, but we see they are foolish. What if we are also foolish?’
He had not heard her speak like this. He stared at her, not knowing how to answer her until irritation helped him.
‘You hate me, Yattmur, or you would not speak like that. Have I hurt you? Don’t I protect you and love you? We know the tummy-bellies are stupid, and we are different from them, so we cannot be stupid. You say these things to hurt me.’
Yattmur ignored all these irrelevancies. She said sombrely, as if he had not spoken. ‘We ride on this stalker but we do not know where it is going. We muddle its wishes with our own.’
‘It is going to the mainland of course,’ Gren said angrily.
‘Is it? Why don’t you look about you?’
She gestured with a hand and he did look.
The mainland was visible. They had started towards it. Then the stalker had entered a current of water and was now moving directly up it, travelling parallel with the coast. For a long while, Gren stared angrily, until it was impossible to doubt what was happening.
‘You are pleased!’ he hissed.
Yattmur made no reply. She leant over and dabbled her hand in the water, quickly withdrawing it. A warm current had carried them to the island. This was a cold current the stalker waded in, and they moved towards its source. Something of that chill found its way up to her heart.
PART THREE
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chapter twenty
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The icy water flowed by, bearing icebergs. The stalker kept steadily on its course. Once it became partially submerged and its five passengers were soaked; even then its pace did not alter.
It was
not alone. Other stalkers joined it from other islands off the coast, all heading in the same direction. This was their migratory time when they made for unknown seed beds. Some of them were bowled over and broken by icebergs; the others continued.
From time to time the humans were joined on their raft-like perch by crawlpaws similar to the ones they had encountered on the island. Grey with cold, the tuberous hands hauled themselves up out of the water, fumbling about for a warm place, scuttling furtively from one nook to another. One climbed on to Gren’s shoulders. He flung it disgustedly far out to sea.
The tummy-bellies complained little about these visitors climbing coldly over them. Gren had rationed their food as soon as he realized they would not be getting ashore so quickly as expected, and they had withdrawn into apathy. Nor did the cold improve matters for them. The sun seemed about to sink into the sea, while a chill wind blew almost continuously. Once hail deluged down on them out of a black sky, almost skinning them as they lay defenceless.
To the least imaginative among them it must have seemed that they were taking a journey into nowhere. The frequent fog banks that rolled up round them increased that impression; and when the fogs lifted they saw on the horizon ahead a line of darkness that threatened and threatened and never blew away. But the time came when at last the stalker swerved from its course.
Huddled together in the centre of the seed cases, Gren and Yattmur were roused from sleep by the chatter of the three tummy-bellies.
‘The watery wetness of the watery world leaves us cold tummy-belly men by going dripping down long legs! We sing great happy cries, for we must be dry or die. Nothing is so lovely as to be a warm dry tummy-chummy chap, and the warm dry world is coming to us.’
Irritably, Gren opened his eyes to see what the excitement was about.
Truly enough, the stalker’s legs were visible again. It had turned aside from the cold current and was wading ashore, never altering its inflexible pace. The coast, covered thickly with the great forest, was near now.
‘Yattmur! We’re saved! We’re going ashore at last!’ It was the first time he had spoken to her in a long while.
She stood up. The tummy-bellies stood. The five of them, for once united, clasped each other in relief. Beauty flew overhead crying, ‘Remember what happened to the Dumb Resistance League in ’45! Speak out for your rights. Don’t listen to what the other side are saying – it’s all lies, propaganda. Don’t get caught between Delhi bureaucracy and Communist intrigues. Ban Monkey Labour now!’
‘Soon we will be dry good chaps!’ cried the tummy-bellies.
‘We’ll start a fire going when we get there,’ said Gren.
Yattmur rejoiced to see him in better spirits, yet a sudden wave of misgiving urged her to ask, ‘How do we get down off here?’
Anger burnt in his eyes as he stared at her, anger at having his elation punctured. When he did not immediately reply, she guessed he was consulting the morel for an answer.
‘The stalker is going to find a place to seed itself,’ he said. ‘When it finds a place, it will sink to the ground. Then we shall get off. You do not need to worry; I am in command.’
She could not understand the hardness of his tone. ‘But you aren’t in command, Gren. This thing goes where it will and we are helpless. That is why I worry.’
‘You worry because you are stupid,’ he said.
Although she was hurt, she determined to find all the possible comfort she could in the circumstances.
‘We can all worry less when we get ashore. Then perhaps you will be less unkind to me.’
The shore, however, did not extend them a particularly warm invitation. As they looked towards it hopefully, a pair of large black birds rose from the forest. Spreading their wings, they sailed upwards, hovered, and then began to beat their way heavily through the air towards the stalker.
‘Lie flat!’ Gren called, drawing his knife.
‘Boycott chimp goods!’ Beauty cried. ‘Don’t allow Monkey Labour in your factory. Support Imbroglio’s Anti-Tripartite scheme!’
The stalker was trampling through shallow water now.
Black wings flashed low overhead, thundering with a whiff of decay across the stalker. Next moment, Beauty had been snatched from its placid circling and was being carried coastwards in mighty talons. As it was borne off, its cry came back pathetically, ‘Fight today to save tomorrow. Make the world safe for democracy!’ Then the birds had it down among the branches.
With water draining from its slender shanks, the stalker was now wading ashore. Four or five of its kind could be seen doing or about to do the same thing, Their animation, their humanlike appearance of purpose, set them apart from the dreariness of their surroundings. The brooding sense of life that impregnated the world Gren and Yattmur had previously known was lacking entirely in these regions. Of that hothouse world, only a shade remained. With the sun lolling on the horizon like a bloody and raped eye upon a slab, twilight prevailed everywhere. In the sky ahead, darkness gathered.
From the sea, life seemed to have died. No monstrous seaweeds fringed the shore, no fish stirred in the rock pools. This desolation was emphasized by the shuddering calm of the ocean, for the stalkers – prompted by instinct – had chosen for their migration a season without storms.
On the land, a similar quietude reigned. The forest still grew, yet it was a forest stunned by shadow and cold, a forest half alive, smothered in the blues and greys of perpetual evening. As they moved about its stunted trunks, the humans looked down to see mildew speckling its foliage. Only at one point did a touch of yellow show brightly. A voice called to them, ‘Vote SRH today, the democratic way!’ The heckler machine lay like a broken toy where the birds had left it, with one wing visible amid the tree tops; it called still as they trudged inland, out of earshot.
‘When do we stop?’ Yattmur whispered.
Gren did not answer; nor did she expect an answer. His face was cold and fixed; he did not even glance towards her. She dug her nails into her palm to keep her anger back, knowing the fault was not his.
Picking their way with care, the stalkers moved above the forest, leaves brushing against their legs or occasionally sweeping their bodies. Always the stalkers marched with the sun behind them, leaving it half-hidden beneath a wilderness of sour foliage. Always they marched towards the darkness that marked the end of the world of light. Once a flock of black vegbirds rose from the treetops and clattered away towards the sun; but the stalkers never faltered.
Despite their fascination, their growing apprehension, the humans eventually had to resign themselves to eating more of their rations. Eventually, too, they had to settle to sleep, huddling up closely at the centre of their perch. And still Gren would not speak.
They slept, and when they woke, coming reluctantly back to the consciousness that was now associated with cold, the view about them had changed – though hardly for the better.
Their stalker was crossing a shallow valley. Darkness stretched beneath them, though one ray of sun lit the vegetable body on which they rode. Forest still covered the ground, a distorted forest that now resembled the newly blind who stagger forward with arms and fingers extended, fright apparent in every feature. Here and there a leaf hung, otherwise the limbs were naked, contorting themselves into grotesque forms as the great solitary tree that had over the ages turned itself into a whole jungle fought to grow where it had never been intended to grow.
The three tummy-bellies shuddered with alarm. They were looking not down but ahead.
‘O tummies and tails! Here comes the swallowing-up place of all night forever. Why did we not sadly happily die long long ago, when we were all together and sweating together was juicily nice so long ago?’
‘Be quiet, the pack of you!’ Gren shouted, grasping his stick. His voice rang hollow and confused to his ears as it was thrown back by the valley.
‘O big little tailless herder, you should have been kind and killed us with killing cruelly long when we could sweat,
in the time when we still grew on happy long tails. Now here comes the black old end of the world to chop its jaws over us without tails. Alas the happy sunshine, O poor us!’
He could not stop their cries. Ahead lay the darkness, piled up like layers of slate.
Emphasizing that mottled blackness stood one small hill. It stuck up uncompromisingly before them, bearing the weight of the night on its shattered shoulders. Where the sun struck its upper levels it had a golden touch, the world’s last colour of defiance. Beyond it lay obscurity. Already they were climbing its lower slopes. The stalker toiled upwards into light; stretched out across the valley, five more stalkers could be seen, one near, four more half lost in murk.
The stalker was labouring. Yet it climbed up into the sunshine and continued on without pause.
The forest too had come through the valley of shadow. For this it had fought its way through the gloom: to be able to fling its last wave of greenery up the last strip of lit ground. Here, on slopes looking back towards the ever-setting sun, it threw off its blights to grow in something like its old exuberance.
‘Perhaps the stalker will stop here,’ Yattmur said. ‘Do you think it will, Gren?’
‘I don’t know. Why should I know?’
‘It must stop here. How can it go any farther?’
‘I don’t know, I tell you. I don’t know.’
‘And your morel?’
‘He does not know either. Leave me alone. Wait to see what happens.’
Even the tummy-bellies fell silent, staring about them at the weird scene in mingled fear and hope.
Without giving any indication that it ever meant to stop, the stalker climbed on, creaking up the hill. Its long legs continued to pick a safe course through the foliage, until it dawned on them that wherever it intended to go, it was not stopping here on this last bastion of light and warmth. Now they were at the brow of the hill, yet still it marched, an automatic vegetable thing they suddenly hated.
‘I’m going to jump off!’ Gren cried, standing up. Yattmur, catching the wildness in his eyes, wondered whether it was he or the morel that spoke. She wrapped her arms round his thighs, crying that he would kill himself. With his stick half lifted to strike her, he paused – the stalker, unpausing, had commenced to climb down the unlit side of the hill.