by Brian Aldiss
Thev started to scramble up the slopes of the cone, surrounded by a galloping phantasmagoria of life. Above them the three long fingers waved in sinister invitation. A fourth finger appeared, and then a fifth, as if whatever it was in the volcano was working itself up to a climax.
Their eyes saw everything in a fuzz of grey as the melody swelled to an unbearable intensity and their hearts laboured. The jumpvils really showed their paces, their long back legs enabling them to bound up the steeper slopes. They poured by, jumped on to the lip of the crater and then took their final leap to whatever lured them.
The humans were filled with longing to meet the dread singer... Panting, impeded by the mess about their feet, they scrambled across the last few yards that separated them from the Black lip.
The dreadful melody ceased in mid-note. So unexpected was it, they fell flat on their faces. Exhaustion and relief washed over them. They lay with closed eyes, sobbing together. The melody had stopped, had stopped, entirely stopped.
After many pulses of his blood had gone by, Gren opened one eye.
The colours of the world were returning to normal again, white flooding with pink again, grey turning to blue and green and yellow, black dissolving into the sombre hues of the forest. By the same token, the overmastering desire in him turned to a revulsion for what they had been about to do.
The creatures round about that were too late to suffer the privilege of being swallowed by the Black Mouth evidently felt as he did. They turned and limped back towards the shelter of the forest, slowly at first and then faster, until their earlier stampede was reversed.
Soon the landscape was deserted.
Above the humans, five terrible long fingers came to rest precisely together on the lip of the Black Mouth. Then one by one they were withdrawn, leaving Gren with a vision of some unimaginable monster picking its teeth after an obscene repast.
'But for the greenguts we'd be dead by now,' he said. 'Are you all right, Poyly?'
'Let me alone,' she said. Her face remained buried in her hands.
'Are you strong enough to walk? For the gods' sake let's get back to the herders,' he said.
'Wait!' Yattmur exclaimed. 'You deceived Hutweer and the others into thinking you were great spirits. By your running to the Black Mouth, they will know now you are not great spirits. Because you deceived them, they will surely kill you if you return."
Gren and Poyly looked at each other hopelessly. Despite the manoeuvres of the morel, they had been pleased to be with a tribe again; the prospect of having to wander alone once more did not please them.
'Fear not,' twanged the morel, reading their thought. 'There are other tribes! What of these Fishers of which we heard? They sounded a more docile tribe than the herders. Ask Yattmur to lead us there.'
'Are the Fishers far away?' Gren asked the girl herder.
She smiled at him and pressed his hand. 'It will be pleasant to take you to them. You can see where they live from here.'
Yattmur pointed down the flanks of the volcano. In the opposite direction to that from which they had come, an opening was apparent at the base of the Black Mouth. From the opening came a swift broad stream.
'There runs Long Water,' Yattmur said. 'Do you see the strange bulb-shaped trees, three of them in number, growing on the bank? That is where the Fishers live.'
She smiled, looking Gren in the face. The beauty of her stole over his senses like a tangible thing.
'Let's get out of this crater, Poyly,' he said.
'That dreadful singing monster..." she said, stretching out a hand. Taking it, Gren pulled her to her feet.
Yattmur regarded them both without speaking.
'Off we go, then,' she said sharply.
She took the lead and they began sliding down towards the water, ever and anon glancing back fearfully over their shoulders to make sure that nothing came climbing out of the volcano after them.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
AT the foot of the Black Mouth they came to the stream called Long Water. Once they had escaped from the shadow of the volcano, they lay in the warmth by the river bank. The waters ran dark and fast and smooth. On the opposite bank, the jungle began again, presenting a colonnade of trunks to the onlookers. On the near bank, lava checked that luxuriant growth for some yards.
Poyly dipped her hand into the water. So fast was it running that a bow wave formed against her palm. She splashed her forehead and rubbed her wet hand over her face.
'I am so tired,' she said, 'tired and sick. I want to go no farther. All these parts here are so strange – not like the happy middle layers of jungle where we lived with Lily-yo. What happens to the world here? Does it go mad here, or fall apart? Does it end here?'
'The world has to end somewhere,' Yattmur said.
'Where it ends may be a good place for us to start it going again,' twanged the morel.
'We shall feel better when we are rested,' Gren said. 'And then you must return to your herders, Yattmur.'
As he looked at her, a movement behind him caught his eye.
He spun round, sword in hand, jumping up to confront three hairy men who seemed to have materialized out of the ground.
The girls jumped up too.
'Don't hurt them, Gren,' Yattmur cried. 'These are Fishers and they will be perfectly harmless.'
And indeed the newcomers looked harmless. At second glance, Gren was less sure that they were human. All three were plump and their flesh beneath the abundant hair was spongy, almost like rotting vegetable matter. Though they wore knives in their belts, they carried no weapon in their hands, and their hands hung aimlessly by their sides. Their belts, plaited out of jungle creepers, were their only adornments. On their three faces, their three expressions of mild stupidity were so simliar as to represent almost a uniform.
Gren took in one other noteworthy fact about them before they spoke: each had a long green tail, even as the herders had said.
'Do you bring us food for eating?' the first of them asked.
'Have you brought us food for our tummies?' asked the second.
'Can we eat any food you have brought?' asked the third.
"They think you are of my tribe, which is the only tribe they know,' Yattmur said. Turning to the Fishers, she replied, 'We have no food for your bellies, O Fishers. We did not come to see you, only to travel.'
'We have no fish for you,' replied the first Fisher, and the three of them added almost in chorus, 'Very soon the time for fishing will be here.'
'We have nothing to exchange for food, but we should be glad of some fish to eat,' Gren said.
'We have no fish for you. We have no fish for us. The time for fishing will soon be here,' the Fishers said.
'Yes. I heard you the first time,' Gren said. 'What I mean is, will you give us fish when you have it?'
'Fish is fine to eat. There is fish for everyone when it comes.'
'Good,' Gren said, adding for the benefit of Poyly, Yattmur and the morel, 'these seem very simple people.'
'Simple or not, they didn't go chasing up the Black Mouth trying to kill themselves," the morel said. 'We must ask them about that. How did they resist its beastly song? Let's go to their place, as they seem harmless enough.'
'We will come with you,' Gren told the Fishers.
'We are going to catch fish when the fish come soon. You people do not know how to catch.'
'Then we will come and watch you catch fish.'
The three Fishers looked at each other, a slight uneasiness ruffling the surface of their stupidity. Without saying a word more, they turned and walked away along the river bank. Given no option, the others followed.
'How much do you know of these people, Yattmur?' Poyly asked.
'Very little. We trade sometimes, as you know, but my people fear the Fishers because they are so strange, as if they were dead. They never leave this little strip of river bank.'
'They can't be complete fools, for they know enough to eat well,' Gren said, regarding the plump f
lanks of the men ahead.
'Look at the way they carry their tails!' Poyly exclaimed. 'These are curious folk. I never saw the like.'
"They would be simple for me to command,' thought the morel.
As they walked, the Fishers reeled in their tails, holding them in neat coils in their right hands; the action, done so easily, was clearly automatic. For the first time, the others saw that these tails were extraordinarily long; in fact, the ends of them were not visible. Where they joined the Fishers' bodies, a sort of soft green pad formed at the base of their spines.
Suddenly and in unison the Fishers stopped and turned.
'You can come no further now,' they said. 'We are near our trees and you must not come with us. Stop here and soon we will bring you fish.'
'Why can't we come any farther?' Gren asked.
One of the Fishers laughed unexpectedly.
'Because you have no tail! Now wait here and soon we will bring you fish.' And he walked on with his companion, not even bothering to look back and see if his order was being obeyed.
'These are curious folk,' Poyly said again. 'I don't like them, Gren. They are not like people at all. Let us leave them; we can easily find our own food.'
'Nonsense! They may be very useful to us,' twanged the morel. 'You see they have a boat of some kind down there.'
Farther down the bank, several of the people with long green tails were working. They laboured under the trees, dragging what looked like some sort of a net into their boat. This boat, a heavy barge-like craft, rode tight in against the near bank, plunging occasionally in the stiff current of Long Water.
The first three Fishers rejoined the main party and helped them with the net. Their movements were languid, although they appeared to be working with haste.
Poyly's gaze wandered from them to the three trees in the shade of which they worked. She had never seen trees like them before, and their unusual aspect made her more uneasy.
Standing apart from all other vegetation, the trees bore a resemblance to giant pineapples. A collar of spiny leaves projected outwards direct from the ground, protecting the central fleshy trunk, which in each of the three cases was swollen into a massive knobbly ovoid. From the knobs of the ovoid sprouted long trailers; from the top of the ovoid sprouted more leaves, spiny and sharp, extending some two hundred feet into the air, or hanging stiffly out over Long Water.
'Poyly, let us go and look more closely at those trees,' the morel twanged urgently. 'Gren and Yattmur will wait here and watch us.'
'I do not like these people or this place, morel,' Poyly said. 'And I will not leave Gren here with this woman, do what you will.'
'I shall not touch your mate,' Yattmur said indignantly. 'What makes you think such a silly thing?'
Poyly staggered forward under a sudden compulsion from the morel. She looked appealingly at Gren; but Gren was tired and did not meet her eye. Reluctantly she moved forward and soon was under the bloated trees. They towered above her, casting a spiked shade. Their swollen trunks stuck out like diseased stomachs.
The morel seemed not to feel their menace.
'Just as I had assumed!' it exclaimed after a long inspection. 'Here is where the tails of our Fishers end. They are joined to the trees by their rumps – our simple friends belong to the trees.'
'Humans do not grow from trees, morel. Did you not know -' She paused, for a hand had fallen on her shoulder.
She turned. One of the Fishers confronted her, looking her closely in the face with his blank eyes and puffing out his cheeks.
'You must not come under the trees,' he said. 'Their shade is sacred. We said you must not come under our trees and you did not remember we said it. I will take you back to your friends who have not come with you.'
Poyly's eye travelled down his tail. Even as the morel had claimed, it joined on to the swelling of the nearest spiky tree. She felt a shiver of dread and moved away from him.
'Obey him!' twanged the morel. "There is evil here, Poyly. We must fight it. Let him walk with us back to the others and then we will capture him and ask him a few questions.'
This will cause trouble, she thought, but at once the morel filled her mind saying, 'We need these people and perhaps we need their boat.'
So she yielded to the Fisher and he grasped her arm and walked her slowly back to Gren and Yattmur, who watched this performance intently. As they went, the Fisher solemnly paid out his tail.
'Now!' cried the morel, when they reached the others.
Forced on by his will, Poyly flung herself on the Fisher's back. The move was so sudden that he staggered and fell forward.
'Help me!' Poyly called. Before she had spoken, Gren was springing forward with his knife ready. And at the same moment a cry came from all the other Fishers. They dropped their great net and began in unison to run towards Gren and his party, their feet padding heavily over the ground.
'Quickly, Gren, cut this creature's tail off,' Poyly said, prompted by the morel, as she struggled in the dust to keep her opponent down.
Without questioning her, for the morel's orders were in his mind too, Gren reached forward and slashed once.
The green tail was severed a foot from the Fisher's rump. At once the man ceased struggling. The tail that had been attached to him commenced a writhing motion, lashing the ground like an injured snake, and catching Gren in its coils. He slashed at it again. Leaking sap, it curled and went looping back to the tree. As if this were a signal, the other Fishers came to a standstill en masse; they milled about aimlessly and then turned and went indifferently back to loading their net into the boat.
'Praise the gods for that!' Yattmur exclaimed, brushing her hair back. 'What made you attack this poor fellow, Poyly, jumping on him from behind as you did with me?'
'All these Fishers are not like us, Yattmur. They can't be human at all – their tails attach them to the three trees.' Not meeting the other girl's eyes, Poyly stared down at the stump of tail on the fellow weeping at her feet.
'These fat Fisher people are slaves of the trees,' twanged the morel. 'It is disgusting. The trailers from the trees grow into their backbones and compel the men to guard them. Look at this poor wretch grovelling here – a slave!'
'Is it worse than what you do with us, morel?' Poyly asked, showing signs of tears. 'Is it any different? Why don't you let us go? I had no wish to attack this fellow.'
'I help you – I save your lives. Now, attend to this poor Fisher and let's have no more silly talk from you.'
The poor Fisher was attending to himself, sitting up and examining a knee that had been grazed in his fall on to the rock. He gazed at them with an anxiety that still did not remove the simplicity from his countenance. Huddled there, he looked like a roughly rounded lump of dough.
'You can get up,' Gren told him gently, extending his hand to help the fellow to his feet. 'You're shaking. There's nothing to be afraid of. We won't hurt you if you answer our questions.'
The Fisher broke into a torrent of words, most of it incomprehensible, gesturing with his broad hands as he talked.
'Speak slowly. You're talking about the trees? What are you saying?'
'Please... The tummy-tree, yes. I and them all one part, all tummy or tummy-hands. Tummy-head to think for me where I serve Tummy-trees. You kill my tummy-cord, I feel no good in my veins, no good sap. You wild lost people with no Tummy-tree, not have the sap to see what I say... '
'Stop it! Talk sense, you great tummy! You're human, aren't you? You call those big swollen plants Tummy-trees? And you have to serve them? When did they catch you? How long ago?'
The Fisher put his hand to the height of his knee, rolled his head stupidly and burst into speech again.
'No– high the Tummy-tree take us, cuddle, bed, save snugly like mothers. Babies go in the soft folds, just legs to see, keep on sucking at the tummy, get put on a tummy-cord to walk. Please you let me go back, try find a new tummy-cord or I'm a poor baby too without one.'
Poyly, Gren and Yatt
mur stared at him as he chattered, not taking in half he said.
'I don't understand,' Yattmur whispered. 'He talked more sense before his tail was cut off.'
'We've set you free – we'll set all your friends free,' Gren said, the morel prompting him. 'We'll take you all away from these filthy Tummy-trees. You'll be free, free to work with us and start a new life, slaves no longer.'
'No, no, please... Tummy-trees grow us like flowers! We have no want to be wild men like you, no lovely Tummy-trees -'
'Shut up about the trees!' Gren raised his hand and at once the other fell silent, biting his lips and scratching his fat thighs in anguish. 'We are your liberators and you should be grateful to us. Now, tell us quickly, what is this fishing we've heard about? When does it start? Soon?'
'Soon now, so soon, please,' the Fisher said, trying to catch Gren's hand in entreaty. 'Most times, no fishy swim in Long Water, cut too sharply on out the hole of Black Mouth, so no fish swim. And if no fish means no fishing, see? Then the Black Mouth sings to all things to be a meal for him in his mouth, and so Tummy-trees make us big mummy noise, cuddle us up, not let us be any meal in his mouth. Then short time Mouth make rest, no sing, no eat, no noise. Then Mouth drop away what he eat not need not eat not have, drop away in Long Water under his self. Then up come big fish big hunger big eat all drop-away pieces, we quick Tummy-men Fishers go out catch big fish big hunger in big net, feed big glad Tummy-tree, feed Tummy-men, all feed -'
'All right, that'll do,' Gren said, and the Fishers subsided wretchedly, standing on one foot with the other. As they began an excited discussion, he sank to the ground, holding his head dolorously in his hands.
With the morel, Gren and Poyly quickly came to a plan of action.
'We can save them all from this humiliating way of life,' Gren said.
'They don't want to be saved,' Yattmur said. 'They're happy.'
'They're horrible,' Poyly said.
While they were talking, the Long Water changed colour. A myriad bits and pieces erupted on to its surface, dappling it as they were swept along in the direction of the Tummy-trees.
"The remains of the Mouth's feast,' Gren exclaimed. 'Come on, before the boat casts off and the Fishers start to fish. Out with your knives.'