Hothouse, aka The Long Afternoon of Earth

by Brian Aldiss

  Impelled by the morel, he bounded off, Poyly and Yattmur following. Only the later cast a backward glance at the Fisher. He was rolling on the ground in a bout of misery, indifferent to everything but his own wretchedness.

  The rest of the Fishers had by now loaded their net into the boat. On seeing the refuse in the stream they gave a cheer and climbed into the vessel, each paying out his tail over the stern as he went. The last one was scrambling aboard as Gren and the women rushed up.

  'Jump for it!' Gren shouted, and the three of them jumped, landing on the crude and creaking deck close together. In unison, the nearer Fishers turned to face them, Unwieldly though it was, built under the direction of the pseudo-aware Tummy-trees, the boat was made to serve a particular purpose: to catch the big scavenger fish of Long Water. It boasted neither oars nor sail, since its only function was to drag a heavy net across the stream from one bank to the other. Accordingly, a stout woven rope had been stretched across the water and anchored to trees on either side. To this rope the boat was loosely secured through a series of eyes, thus preventing its being swept away on the flood. It was manoeuvred across the river by simple brute force, half the Fishers pulling on the guide rope while the others lowered the net into place. So it had been from dimmest times.

  Routine governed the Fishers' lives. When the three intruders landed in their midst, neither they nor the Tummy-trees knew clearly what action to take. Divided in purpose, the Fishers were made half to continue hauling the boat into mid-stream and half to defend their position.

  With one uniform rush, the defence force charged at Gren and the girls.

  Yattmur glanced over her shoulder. It was too late to jump ashore again; they were away from the bank. She drew her knife and stood by Gren and Poyly. As the Fishers fell at them, she plunged it into the stomach of the nearest man. He stumbled, but others bore her down. Her knife went skidding over the deck and her hands were pinned before she could draw her sword.

  The fat men flung themselves at Poyly and Gren. Though they fought desperately, they too were borne down.

  Evidently the Fishers and their pot-bellied masters ashore had not thought to use knives until they saw Yattmur's. Now – as one man – they all produced knives.

  Through Gren's brain, amid his panic and fury, seared the angry jangle of the morel's thoughts.

  'You brainless tarsiers! Waste no time on these dolls of men. Cut their umbilical cords, their tails, their tails, you fools! Hack their tails off and they'll not harm you!'

  Cursing, ramming a knee into a groin and knuckles into an attacker's face, Gren knocked aside a down-curving knife and twisted over on to his knees. Impelled by the morel, he grasped another Fisher by the neck, wrenching it savagely and then flinging the man aside. Now his way was clear. With a leap he was up on the stern.

  The green tails lay there, thirty of them together, stretching over to the shore.

  Gren let out a shout of triumph. Then he brought his blade down.

  Half a dozen slashes in cold anger and the thing was done!

  The boat rocked violently. The Fishers jerked and fell. All their activity stopped. They moaned and cried, picking themselves up to stand helplessly together in a knot, their severed tails dangling. Shorn of its motive power, the boat rested in mid-stream.

  'You see,' remarked the morel, 'the fight is over.'

  As Poyly picked herself up, a flailing movement caught her eye, and she looked at the bank they had left. A low cry of horror was wrenched from her lips. Gren and Yattmur turned to stare where she did. They stood transfixed, their knives still grasped in their hands.

  'Get down!' Poyly shouted.

  Scintillant leaves like toothed swords whirled above them. The three Tummy-trees heaved in wrath. Bereft of their willing slaves, they were lashing the tall leaves that formed their poll into action. Their whole bulk trembled as the dark green blades flashed above the vessel.

  As Poyly flung herself flat, the first leaf struck, throwing a great raw weal across the rough wood of the deck. Splinters flew. A second and a third blow fell. Such a terrible bombardment, she knew, would kill them all in no time.

  The unnatural anger of these trees was fearful to see. Poyly did not let it paralyse her. As Gren and Yattmur crouched under the frail shelter of the stern, she jumped up. Without heeding the morel to guide her, she leant over the side and hacked at the tough fibres that kept the boat square across the river.

  Armoured leaves flayed near her. The Fishers were struck once and then again. Parabolas of blood patterned the deck. Crying, the poor creatures tumbled together while their limbs bled and they staggered from the centre of the deck. Still the trees struck out mercilessly.

  Tough though the securing rope was, it parted at last under Poyly's attack. She gave a shout of triumph as the boat freed itself and swayed round under the force of the water.

  She was still climbing to cover when the next leaf crashed down. The spines along one fleshy edge of it raked her with full force across the chest.

  'Poyly!' Gren and Yattmur cried with one voice, springing up.

  They never reached her. The blow caught her off balance. She doubled up as blood came weeping from her wound. As her knees buckled she fell backwards. Momentarily her eyes caught Gren's in tender appeal, and then she disappeared over the side and hit the waters.

  They rushed to the side and peered down. An extra turbidity marked where she had sunk. One hand appeared on the surface, its fingers outspread, severed from its arm. It vanished almost at once in a welter of smooth fish bodies and then there was no more sign of Poyly.

  Falling on to the deck, beating his fists on it in sorrow, Gren cried to the morel.

  'Could you not have saved her, you miserable fungus, you useless growth? Could you not have done something? What did you ever bring her but trouble?'

  A long silence followed. Gren called at it again – in grief and hatred. At length the morel spoke in a small voice.

  'Half of me is dead,' it whispered.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  BY this time the boat had begun to whirl away down the flood. Already they were safe from the Tummy-trees, which fell rapidly behind, their murderous polls still beating the water into lines of spray.

  Seeing that they were being carried off, the Fishers began a chorus of groans. Yattmur paraded before them with her knife out, allowing herself to show no pity for their wounds.

  'You Tummy-belly men! You long-tailed sons of swollen plants 1 Cease your noise! Someone real has died and you shall mourn her or I'll throw you all overboard with my own two hands.'

  At that the Fishers fell into abject silence. Grouped humbly together, they comforted each other and licked each other's wounds. Running over to Gren, Yattmur put her arm round him and pressed her cheek against his. Only for a moment did he try to resist her.

  'Don't mourn too much for Poyly. She was fine in life – but a time comes for all of us to fall to the green. I am here now, and I will be your mate.'

  'You will want to get back to your tribe, to the herders,' Gren said miserably.

  'Ha! They lie far behind us. How shall I get back? Stand up and see how fast we are being swept along! I can hardly see the Black Mouth now – it's no bigger than one of my nipples. We are in danger, O Gren. Rouse yourself! Ask your magical friend the morel where we are going.'

  'I don't care what happens to us now.'

  'Look Gren -'

  A shout rose from the Fishers. They showed a sort of apathetic interest, pointing ahead and calling, which was enough to pull Yattmur and Gren up at once.

  Their boat was rapidly being swept towards another. More than one Fishers' colony grew by the banks of the Long Water. Another loomed ahead. Two bulging Tummy-trees marked its position. This colony's net was out across the stream, its boat resting against the far bank, full of Fishers. Their tails hung over the river along the top of the net.

  'We're going to hit them!' Gren said. 'What are we going to do?'

  'No, we shall
miss their boat. Perhaps their net will stop us. Then we can get safely ashore.'

  'Look at these fools climbing on to the sides of the boat. They'll be jerked overboard.' He called to the Fishers in question, who were swarming over the bows. 'Hey, you Short-tails! get down there, or you'll be flung into the water.'

  His cry was drowned by their shouts and the roar of the water. They were rushing irresistibly toward the other boat. Next moment they struck the net that stretched across their path.

  The cumbersome boat squealed and lurched. Several Fishers were flung down into the water by the impact. One of them managed to jump the narrowing distance into the other boat. The two vessels struck glancingly, cannoned off each other – and then the securing rope across the river broke.

  They whirled free again, to go racing on down the flood. The other boat, being already against the bank, stayed there, bumping uncomfortably. Many of its crew were scampering about the bank; some had been flung into the stream, some had had their tails lopped off. But their misadventures remained hidden for ever more as Gren's boat swept round a grand curve and jungle closed in on both sides.

  'Now what do we do?' Yattmur asked, trembling.

  Gren shrugged his shoulders. He had no ideas. The world had revealed itself as too big and too terrible for him.

  'Wake up, morel,' he said. 'What happens to us now? You got us into this trouble – now get us out of it.'

  For answer the morel started turning his mind upside down. Dizzied, Gren sat down heavily. Yattmur clasped his hands while phantoms of memory and thought fluttered before his mental gaze. The morel was studying navigation.

  Finally it said, 'We need to steer this boat to get it to obey us. But there is nothing to steer it with. We must wait and see what happens.'

  It was an admission of defeat. Gren sat on the deck with an arm round Yattmur, properly indifferent to everything external. His thoughts went back to the time when he and Poyly were careless children in the tribe of Lily-yo. Life had been so easy, so sweet then, and little had they realized it! Why, it had even been warmer; the sun had shone almost directly overhead.

  He opened one eye. The sun was quite far down in the sky.

  'I'm cold,' he said.

  'Huddle against me,' Yattmur coaxed.

  Some freshly plucked leaves lay near them; perhaps they had been plucked to wrap the Fishers' expected catch of fish in. Yattmur pulled them over Gren and lay close against him, letting her arms steal round him.

  He relaxed in her warmth. An interest in her awoke, he began instinctively to explore her body. She was as warm and sweet as childhood dreams, and pressed ardently against his touch. Her hands too began a journey of exploration. Lost in delight of each other they forgot the world. When he took her she was also taking him.

  Even the morel was soothed by the pleasure of their actions under the warm leaves. The boat sped on down the river, occasionally bumping a bank, but never ceasing its progress.

  After a while, it joined a much wider river and spun hopelessly in an eddy for some time, making them all dizzy. One of the wounded Fishers died here; he was thrown overboard; this might have been a signal, for at once the boat was released from the eddy and floated off again on the broad bosom of the waters. Now the river was very wide, and spreading still farther, so that in time they could see neither shore.

  For the humans, especially for Gren to whom the idea of long empty distances was foreign, it was an unknown world. They stared out at the expanse only to turn away shivering and hide their eyes. Everywhere was motion! – and not only beneath them in the restless water. A cool wind had sprung up, a wind that would have lost its way in the measureless miles of the forest but was here master of all it passed over. It scuffed the water with its invisible footsteps, it jostled the boat and made it creak, it splashed spray in the troubled faces of the Fishers, it ruffled their hair and blew it across their ears. Gaining strength, it chilled their skins and drew a gauze of cloud over the sky, obscuring the traversers that drifted there.

  Two dozen Fishers remained in the boat, six of them suffering badly from the attack of the Tummy-trees. They made no attempt to approach Gren and Yattmur at first, lying together like a living monument to despair. First one and then another of the wounded died and was cast overboard, amid desultory mourning.

  So they were carried out into the ocean.

  The great width of the river prevented them from being attacked by the giant seaweeds which fringed the coasts. Nothing, indeed, marked their transition from river to estuary or from estuary to sea; the broad brown roll of fresh water continued far into the surrounding salt waves.

  Gradually the brown faded into green and blue depths, and the wind stiffened, taking them in a different direction, parallel with the coast. The mighty forest looked no bigger than a leaf.

  One of the Fishers, urged by his companions, came humbly over to Gren and Yattmur where they lay resting among the leaves. He bowed to them.

  'O great herders, hear us speak when we speak if you let me start talking,' he said.

  Gren said sharply, 'We will do you no harm, fat fellow. We are in trouble just as you are. Can't you understand that? We meant to help you, and that we shall do if the world turns dry again. But try to gather your thoughts together so that you talk sense. What do you want?'

  The man bowed low. Behind him, his companion bowed low in heart-sick imitation.

  'Great herder, we see you since you come. We clever Tummy-tree chaps are seeing your size. So we know you will soon love to kill us when you jump up from playing the sandwich game along with your lady in the leaves. We clever chaps are not fools, and not fools are clever to make glad dying for you. All the same sadness makes us not clever to die with no feeding. All we poor sad clever Tummy-men have no feeding and pray you give us feeding because we have no mummy Tummy-feeding -'

  Gren gestured impatiently.

  'We've no food either,' he said. 'We are humans like you. We too must fend for ourselves.'

  'Alas, we did not dare to have any hopes you would share your food with us, for your food is sacred and you wish to see us starve. You are very clever to hide from us the jumpvil food we know you always carry. We are glad, great herder, that you make us starve if our dying makes you have a laugh and a gay song and another sandwich game. Because we are humble, we do not need food to die with..."

  'I really will kill these creatures,' Gren said savagely, releasing Yattmur and sitting up. 'Morel, what do we do with them? You got us into this trouble. Help us get out of it.'

  'Make them throw their net over the side and catch fish,' twanged the morel.

  'Good!' Gren said. He jumped up, pulling Yattmur with him, and began shouting orders at the Fishers.

  Miserably, incompetently, f awningly, they arranged their net and cast it over the side of the vessel. The sea here teemed with life. No sooner was the net down than something big tugged at it – tugged and began unfalteringly to climb it.

  The boat listed over to one side. With a cry, the Fishers fell away as a great pair of claws rattled over the gunwhales. Gren was beneath them. Without thought, he pulled out his knife and smote.

  A lobster head bigger than his own loomed up before him. An eyestalk went flying – and another, as he smote again.

  Soundlessly, the marine monster released its hold and fell back into the depths, leaving a frightened band of Fishers moaning in the scuppers. Almost as frightened himself – for he sensed the morel's fear in his mind – Gren rounded on them, kicking and shouting.

  'Get up, you flabby tummy-bellies! Would you lie there and die? Well I won't let you. Get up and haul the net in again before we get any more monsters in on us. Come on, move! Get this net in! Jump to it, you blubbering brutes!'

  'O great herder, you may throw us to the wonders of the wet world and we will not complain. We may not complain! You see we praise you even when you fetch up the beasts of the wet world upon us and we are too lowly to complain, so be merciful -'

  'Merciful
! I'll flay you alive if you don't get that net in at once. Move!' he yelled, and they moved, the hair on their flanks fluttering in the breeze.

  The line came over the side laden with creatures that splashed and flapped about their ankles.

  'Wonderful!' Yattmur cried, squeezing Gren. 'I am so hungry, my love. Now we shall live! Soon there will be an end to this Long Water, I know.'

  But the boat drifted as it would. They went to sleep once more and then a second time, and the weather grew no warmer and then they woke to find the deck motionless beneath them.

  Gren opened his eyes. A stretch of sand and bushes met his gaze. He and Yattmur were alone in the boat.

  'Morel!' he cried, leaping to his feet. 'You never sleep – why did you not wake me and tell us that the water had stopped? And the flabby-bellies have escaped!'

  He looked round at the ocean that had brought them here. Yattmur stood up silently, hugging her breasts and regarding with wonder a great peak that rose sheer from the nearby bushes.

  The morel made something like a ghostly chuckle in Gren's mind. "The Fishers will not get far – let them find out the dangers for us first. I let you and Yattmur sleep on so that you would feel fresh. You need all your energies. This may be the place where we build our new kingdom, my friend!'

  Gren made a doubtful move. No traversers were visible overhead, and he took it as a bad omen. All there was to be seen, apart from the forbidding island and the wastes of ocean, was a speedseed bird, sailing along under the ceiling of high cloud.

  'I suppose we'd better get ashore,' Gren said.

  I'd rather stay in the boat,' Yattmur said, eyeing the great cliff of rock with apprehension. But when he put out a hand to her, she took it and climbed over the side without fuss.

  He could hear her teeth chattering.

  They stood on the unwelcoming beach, testing it for menace.

  The speedseed still flew along in the sky. It changed direction by a degree or so without interrupting the pulse of its flight. High over the ocean it soared, its wooden wings creaking like a fully rigged sailing ship.