by Brian Aldiss
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 for ever.' 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
CHAPTER TWENTY
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 it 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 e
xtend 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 human-like 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 for ever. 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.
Just for a moment the sun still shone on them. They had a last glimpse of a world with gold in the dull air, a floor of black foliage, and another stalker looming up on their left flank. Then the shoulder of the hill shrugged upwards, and down they jolted into the world of night. With one voice they gave forth a cry: a cry that echoed into the unseen wastes about them, dying as it fled.
For Yattmur only one interpretation of events was possible. They had stepped out of the world into death.
Dumbly she buried her face into the soft hairy flank of the nearest tummy-belly, until the steadily continued jolting of the stalker persuaded her that she had not entirely lost company with the things that were.
Gren said, grasping at what the morel told him, 'This world is fixed with one half always turned towards the sun... we are moving into the night side, across the terminator... into perpetual dark... '
His teeth were chattering. She clasped him, opening her eyes for the last time to search for sight of his face.
In the darkness it floated, a ghost of a face from which she nevertheless drew comfort. Gren put his arms round the girl, so that they crouched there together with cheeks touching. The posture gave her warmth and courage enough to peer furtively around.
She had visualized in her terror a place of reeling emptiness, imagining that perhaps they had fallen into some cosmic sea shell washed up on the mythical bea
ches of the sky. Reality was less impressive and more nasty. Directly overhead, a memory of sunlight lingered, illumining the vale into which they plodded. This light was split by a shadow that grew and grew across the sky and was projected by the black ogre's shoulder down which they were still climbing. Their descent was marked by thudding sounds. Peering down, Yattmur saw that they travelled through a bed of writhing worms. The worms were lashing themselves against the stilt legs of the stalker, which now moved with great care to avoid being thrown off balance. Glistening yellow in the stramineous light, the worms boiled and reared and thudded in fury. Some of them were tall enough to reach almost to where the humans crouched, so that as their heads flickered up on a level with Yattmur's, she saw they had bowl-like receptors at their tips. Whether these receptors were mouths, or eyes, or organs to catch what heat there was, she could not say. But her moan of horror roused Glen from his trance; almost cheerfully he set about tackling terrors which he could comprehend, lopping off the squidgy yellow tips as they flicked out of the murk.
The stalker over to their left was also in trouble. Though they could see it only dimly, it had walked into a stretch where the worms grew taller. Silhouetted against a bright strip of land to the far side of the hill, it had been reduced to immobility, while a forest of boneless fingers boiled all round it. It toppled. Without a sound it fell, the end of its long journey marked by worms.
Unaffected by the catastrophe, the stalker on which the humans rode continued to edge downwards.
Already it was through the thickest patch of opposition. The worms were rooted to the ground and could not follow. They fell away, grew shorter, more widely spaced, finally sprouted only in bunches, which the stalker avoided.
Relaxing slightly, Gren took the opportunity to look more searchingly at their surroundings. Yattmur hid her face in his shoulder; sickness stirred in her stomach and she wanted to see no more.