Hothouse, aka The Long Afternoon of Earth

by Brian Aldiss

  The humans saw its distorted eye break from the celeries. Then they turned and fled.

  Even when the danger was left behind, they still moved rapidly, not knowing what they sought. Once they slept, ate, and then again pressed on through the unending growth, the undying daylight, until they came to where the jungle gaped.

  Ahead of them, everything seemed to cease and then go on again.

  Cautiously they went to see what they had arrived at. The ground underfoot had been uneven. Now it broke altogether into a wide crevasse. Beyond the crevasse the vegetation grew again – but how did humans span that gulf? The four of them stood anxiously where the ferns ended, looking across at the far side.

  Haris the man screwed his face in pain to show he had a troublesome idea in his head.

  'What I did before – going up in the air," he began awkwardly. 'If we do it again now, all of us, we go in the air across to the other side.'

  'No!' Lily-yo said. 'When you go up you come down hard. You will fall to the green!'

  'I will do better than before. I think I have the art now.'

  'NoI' repeated Lily-yo. 'You are not to go. You are not safe.'

  'Let him go," Flor said. 'He says he has the art.'

  The two women turned to glare at each other. Taking his chance, Haris raised his arms, waved them, rose slightly from the ground, and began to use his legs too. He moved forward over the crevasse before his nerve broke.

  As he fluttered down, Flor and Lily-yo, moved by instinct, dived into the gulf after him. Spreading their arms, they glided about him, shouting. Jury remained behind, crying in baffled anger down to them.

  Regaining a little control, Haris landed heavily on an outcropping ledge. The two women alighted chattering and scolding beside him. They looked up, pressing against the cliff for safety. Two lips fringed with fern sucked a narrow purple segment of sky above their heads. Jury could not be seen, though her cries still echoed down to them. They called back to her.

  Behind the ledge on which they stood, a tunnel ran into the cliff. All the rock face was peppered with similar holes, so that it resembled a sponge. From the tunnel ran three flymen, two male and one female, ropes and spears in their hands.

  Flor and Lily-yo were bending over Haris. Before they had time to recover, they were knocked sprawling and tied with ropes. Other flymen launched themselves from other holes and came gliding in to help secure them. Their flight seemed more sure, more graceful, than it had done on earth. Perhaps the fact that humans were lighter here had something to do with it.

  'Bring them in!' the flymen cried to each other. Their sharp, clever faces jostled round eagerly as they hoisted up their captives and bore them into the gloom of tunnel.

  In their alarm, Lily-yo, Flor and Haris forgot about Jury, still crouching on the lip of the crevasse. They never saw her again.

  The tunnel sloped gently down. Finally it curved and led into another which ran level and true. This in its turn led into an immense cavern with regular sides and a regular roof. Grey daylight flooded in at one end, for the cavern stood at the bottom of the crevasse.

  To the middle of this cavern the three captives were brought. Their knives were taken from them and they were released. As they huddled together uneasily, one of the flymen stood forward and spoke.

  'We will not harm you unless we must,' he said. 'You come by traverser from the Heavy World. You are new here. When you learn our ways, you will join us.'

  'I am Lily-yo,' Lily-yo proudly said. 'You must let me go. We three are humans and you are flymen.'

  'Yes, you are humans, we are flymen. Also we are humans, you are flymen, for we are all the same. Just now you know nothing. Soon you will know more when you have seen the Captives. They will tell you many things.'

  'I am Lily-yo. I know many things.'

  'The Captives will tell you many more things,' the flyman insisted.

  'If there were many more things, then I should know them, for I am Lily-yo.'

  'I am Band Appa Bondi and I say come to see the Captives. Your talk is stupid Heavy World talk, Lily-yo.'

  Several flymen began to look aggressive, so that Haris nudged Lily-yo and muttered, 'Let us do what he asks. Do not make more trouble.'

  Grumpily, Lily-yo let herself and her two companions be led to another chamber. This one was partially ruined, and stank. At the far end of it, a fall of tindery rock marked where the roof had collapsed, while a shaft of the unremitting sunlight burnt on the floor, sending up a curtain of golden light about itself. Near this light were the Captives.

  'Do not fear to see them. They will not harm you.' Band Appa Bondi said, going forward.

  The encouragement was needed, for the Captives were not prepossessing.

  Eight of them there were, eight Captives, kept in eight great burnurns big enough to serve them as narrow cells. The cells stood grouped in a semicircle. Band Appa Bondi led Lily-yo, Flor and Haris into the middle of this semicircle, where they could survey and be surveyed.

  The Captives were painful to look on. All had some kind of deformity. One had no legs. One had no flesh on his lower jaw. One had four gnarled dwarf arms. One had short wings of flesh connecting ear lobes and thumbs, so that he lived perpetually with hands half raised to his face. One had boneless arms dangling at his side and one boneless leg. One had monstrous wings which trailed about him like carpet. One was hiding his ill-shaped form away behind a screen of his own excrement, smearing it on the transparent walls of his cell. And one had a second head, a small wizened thing growing from the first that fixed Lily-yo with a malevolent eye. This last captive, who seemed to lead the others, spoke now, using the mouth of his main head.

  'I am the Chief Captive. I greet you, children, and invite you to know yourselves. You are of the Heavy World; we are of the True World. Now you join us because you are of us. Though your wings and your scars are new, you are welcome to join us.'

  'I am Lily-yo. We three are humans, while you are only flymen. We will not join you.'

  The Captives grunted in boredom. The Chief Captive spoke again.

  'Always this talk from you denizens of the Heavy World! Understand that you have joined us by becoming like us. You are flymen, we are human. You know little, we know much.'

  'But we – '

  'Stop your stupid talk, woman!'

  'We are – '

  'Be silent, woman, and listen,' Band Appa Bondi said.

  'We know much,' repeated the Chief Captive. 'Some things we will tell you now to make you understand. All who make the journey from the Heavy World become changed. Some die. Most live and grow wings. Between the worlds are many strong rays, not seen or felt, which change our bodies. When you come here, when you come to the True World, you become a true human. The grub of the tigerfly is not a tigerfly until it changes. So humans change, becoming what you call flymen.'

  'I cannot know what he says,' Haris said stubbornly, throwing himself down. But Lily-yo and Flor were listening.

  'To this True World, as you call it, we came to die,' Lily-yo said, doubtingly.

  The Captive with the fleshless jaw said, 'The grub of the tigerfly thinks it dies when it changes into a tigerfly.'

  'You are still young,' said the Chief Captive. 'You have entered a fresh life. Where are your souls?'

  Lily-yo and Flor looked at each other. In their flight from the wiltmilt they had heedlessly thrown down their souls. Haris had trampled on his. It was unthinkable!

  'You see. You needed your souls no more. You are still young, and may be able to have babies. Some of those babies may be born with wings.'

  The Captive with the boneless arms added, 'Some may be born wrong, as we are. Some may be born right.'

  'You are too foul to live!' Haris growled. 'Why are you not killed for your horrible shapes?'

  'Because we know all things," the Chief Captive said. His second head roused itself and declared in a husky voice, 'To be a standard shape is not all in life. To know is also important. Because we cannot move
well, we can think. This tribe of the True World is good and understands the value of thought in any shape. So it lets us rule it.'

  Flor and Lily-yo muttered together.

  'Do you say that you poor Captives rule the True World?' Lily-yo asked at last.

  'We do.'

  'Then why are you captives?'

  The flyman with ear lobes and thumbs connected, making his perpetual little gesture of protest, spoke for the first time in a rich and strangled voice.

  'To rule is to serve, woman. Those who bear power are slaves to it. Only an outcast is free. Because we are Captives, we have the time to talk and think and plan and know. Those who know command the knives of others. We are power, though we rule without power.'

  'No hurt will come to you, Lily-yo,' Band Appa Bondi added. 'You will live among us and enjoy your life free from harm.'

  'No!' the Chief Captive said with both mouths. 'Before she can enjoy, Lily-yo and her companion Flor – this other man creature is plainly useless – must help our great plan.'

  'You mean we should tell them about the invasion?' Bondi asked.

  'Why not? Flor and Lily-yo, you arrive here at a good time. Memories of the Heavy World and its savage life are still fresh in you. We need such memories. So we ask you to go back there on a great plan we have.'

  'Go back?' gasped Flor.

  'Yes. We plan to attack the Heavy World. You must help to lead our force.'

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE long afternoon of eternity wore on, that long golden road of an afternoon that would somewhen lead to everlasting night.

  Motion there was, but motion without event – except for those neglible events that seemed so large to the creatures participating in them.

  For Lily-yo, Flor and Haris there were many events. Chief of these was, that they learnt to fly properly.

  The pains associated with their wings soon died away as the wonderful new flesh and tendon strengthened. To sail up in the light gravity became an increasing delight – the ugly flopping movements of flymen on the Heavy World had no place here.

  They learnt to fly in packs, and then to hunt in packs. In time they were trained to carry out the Captives' plan.

  The series of accidents that had first delivered humans to this world in burnurns had been a fortunate one, growing more fortunate as millennia rolled away. For gradually the humans adapted better to the True World. Their survival factor became greater, their power surer. All this: as on the Heavy World conditions grew more and more adverse to anything but vegetation.

  Lily-yo at least was quick to see how much easier life was in these new conditions. She sat with Flor and a dozen others eating pulped pluggyrug, before they did the Captives' bidding and left for the Heavy World.

  It was hard to express all she felt.

  'Here we are safe,' she said, indicating the whole green land that sweltered under the silver network of webs.

  'Except from the tigerflies,' Flor agreed.

  They rested on a bare peak, where the air was thin and even the giant creepers had not climbed. The turbulent green stretched away below them, almost as if they were on Earth – although here it was continually checked by the circular formations of rock.

  'This world is smaller,' Lily-yo said, trying again to make Flor know what was in her head. 'Here we are bigger. We do not need to fight so much.'

  'Soon we must fight.'

  'Then we can come back here again. This is a good place, with nothing so savage and without so many enemies. Here the groups could live without so much fear. Veggy and Toy and May and Gren and the other little ones would like it here."

  "They would miss the trees.'

  'We shall soon miss the trees no longer. We have wings instead. Everything is a matter of custom.'

  This idle talk took place beneath the unmoving shadow of a rock. Overhead, silver blobs against a purple sky, the traversers drifted, walking their networks, descending only occasionally to celeries far below. As Lily-yo fell to watching these creatures, she thought in her mind of the grand plan the Captives had hatched, she flicked it over in a series of vivid pictures.

  Yes, the Captives knew. They could see ahead as she could not. She and those about her had lived like plants, doing what came to hand. The Captives were not plants. From their cells they saw more than those outside.

  This, the Captives saw. That the few humans who reached the True World bore few children, because they were old, or because the rays that made their wings grow made their seed die. That it was good here, and would be better still with more humans. That one way to get more humans here was to bring babies and children from the Heavy World.

  For countless time, this had been done. Brave flymen had travelled back to that other world and stolen children. The flymen who had once attacked Lily-yo's group on their climb to the Tips had been on that mission. They had taken Bain to bring her to the True World in burnurns – and had not been heard of since.

  Many perils and mischances lay in that long double journey. Of those who set out, few returned.

  Now the Captives had thought of a better and more daring scheme.

  'Here comes a traverser,' Band Appa Bondi said, rousing Lily-yo from her thoughts. 'Let us be ready to move.'

  He walked before the pack of twelve flyers who had been chosen for this new attempt. He was the leader of them. Lily-yo, Flor, and Haris were in support of him, together with eight others, three male, five female. Only one of them, Band Appa Bondi himself, had been carried to the True World as a boy; the rest had arrived here in the same manner as Lily-yo.

  Slowly the pack stood up, stretching their wings. The moment of their great adventure was here. Yet they felt little fear; they could not look ahead as the Captives did, except perhaps for Band Appa Bondi and Lily-yo. She strengthened her will by saying 'It is the Way'. Then they all spread their arms wide and soared off to meet the traverser.

  The traverser had eaten.

  It had caught one of its most tasty enemies, a tigerfly, in a web and sucked it till only the shell was left. Now it sank down into a bed of celeries, crushing them under its great bulk. Gently, it began to bud; then it could be heading out for the great black gulfs, where heat and radiance called it. It had been born on this world. Being young, it had never yet made that dreaded and desired journey to the other world.

  Its buds burst up from its back, hung over, popped, fell to the ground, and scurried away to bury themselves in the pulp and dirt where they might begin their ten thousand years' growth in peace.

  Young though it was, the traverser was sick. It did not know this. The enemy tigerfly had been at it, but it did not know this either. Its vast bulk held little sensation.

  The twelve humans glided over and landed on its back, low down on the abdomen in a position hidden from the creature's cluster of eyes. They sank among the tough shoulder-high fibres that served the traverser as hair, and looked about them. A ray-plane swooped overhead and disappeared. A trio of tumbleweeds skittered into the fibres and were seen no more. All was as quiet as if they lay on a small deserted hill.

  At length they spread out and moved along in line, heads down, eyes searching, Band Appa Bondi at one end, Lily-yo at the other. The great body was streaked and pitted and scarred, so that progress down the slope was not easy. The fibre grew in patterns of different shades, green, yellow, black, breaking up the traverser's bulk when seen from the air, serving it as natural camouflage. In many places, tough parasitic plants had rooted themselves, drawing their nourishment entirely from their host; most of them would die when the traverser launched itself out between worlds.

  The humans worked hard. Once they were thrown flat when the traverser changed position. As the slope down which they moved grew steeper, so progress became more slow.

  'Here!' cried Y Coyin, one of the women.

  At last they had found what they sought, what the Captives sent them to seek.

  Clustering round Y Coyin with their knives out, the pack looked down at a place whe
re the fibres had been neatly champed away in swathes, leaving a bare patch as far across as a human was long. In this patch was a round scab. Lily-yo stooped and felt it. It was immensely hard.

  Lo Jint put his ear to it. Silence.

  They looked at each other.

  No signal was needed, none given.

  Together they knelt, prising with their knives round the scab. Once the traverser moved, and they threw themselves flat. A bud rose nearby, popped, rolled down the slope and fell to the distant ground. A thinpin devoured it as it ran. The humans continued prising.

  The scab moved. They lifted it off. A dark and sticky tunnel was revealed to them.

  'I go first,' Band Appa Bondi said.

  He lowered himself into the hole. The others followed. Dark sky showed roundly above them until the twelfth human was in the tunnel. Then the scab was drawn back into place. A soft slobber of sound came from it, as it began to heal back into position again.

  They crouched where they were for a long time, in a cavity that pulsed slightly. They crouched, their knives ready, their wings folded round them, their human hearts beating strongly.

  In more than one sense they were in enemy territory. At the best of tunes, traversers were only allies by accident; they ate humans as readily as they devoured anything else. But this burrow was the work of that yellow and black destroyer, the tigerfly. One of the last true insects to survive, the tough and resourceful tigerflies had instinctively made the most invincible of all living things its prey.

  The female tigerfly alights and bores her tunnel into the traverser. Burrowing away, she stops at last and prepares a natal chamber, hollowing it from the living traverser, paralysing its flesh with her needletail to prevent it healing again. There she lays her store of eggs before climbing back to daylight. When the eggs hatch, the larvae have fresh and living stuff to nourish them.

  After a while, Band Appa Bondi gave a sign and the pack moved forward, climbing awkwardly down the tunnel. A faint luminescence guided their eyes. The air lay heavy and green in their chests. Very slowly, very quietly, they moved – for they heard movement ahead.