by Brian Aldiss
'Now I am prepared to hear your story,' announced the sodal, 'and do something to help you if possible. Know that I come of the wisest race of this planet. My kind have covered all the vast seas and most of the less interesting land. I am a prophet, a Sodal of the Highest Knowledge, and I will stoop to help you if I consider your need interesting enough.'
'Your pride is remarkable,' she said.
'Pah, what is pride when the Earth is about to die? Proceed with your silly tale, mother, if you are going to proceed at all.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
YATTMUR wished to present the sodal with her problem concerning Gren and the morel. But because she possessed no skill in unfolding a story and selecting the telling details for it, she gave him virtually the history of her life, and of her childhood with the herders who lived on the edge of the forest by Black Mouth. She then related the arrival of Gren with his mate Poyly, and spoke of Poyly's death, and of their subsequent wanderings, until fate like a heavy sea had cast them upon the shores of the Big Slope. Then finally she told of the birth of her baby, and of how she knew it to be threatened by the morel.
During all this, the sodal of the catch-carry-kind lay with seeming indifference on his boulder, his lower lip hanging low enough to reveal the orange rims round his teeth. Beside him – with total indifference – the pair of tattooed women lay on the grass flanking the bowed porter, who still stood like a monument to care with his arms above his skull. The sodal surveyed none of them; his gaze roved over the heavens.
At last he said, 'You make an interesting case. I have heard details of many infinitesimal lives not unlike yours. By fitting them all together – by synthestizing them in my extraordinary intelligence – I can construct a true picture of this world in its last stages of existence.'
Angrily Yattmur stood up.
'Why I could knock you off your perch for that, you deboshed fish!' she exclaimed. 'Is that all you have to say when previously you offered help?'
'Oh I could say a deal more, little human. But your problem is so simple that for me it scarcely seems to exist. I have met with these morels before in my travels, and though they are clever fellows, they have several points of vulnerability upon which anyone of my intellect will quickly seize.'
'Please make a suggestion quickly.'
'I have only one suggestion: that you entrust your baby to your mate Gren when he calls for it.'
'That I can't do!'
'Ah ha, but you must. Don't back away. Come here while I explain why you must.'
She did not like the sodal's plan. But behind his conceit and pomposity lay a stubborn stony force; his presence too was aweing; the very way he chewed out his words made them seem incontrovertible; so Yattmur clutched Laren with all-ease and agreed to his dictates.
'I dare not go and face him in the cave,' she said.
'Get your tummy-creatures to fetch him here then,' ordered the sodal. 'And hurry up about it. I travel on behalf of Fate, a master who at present has too much on his hands to bother with your concerns.'
A rumble of thunder sounded, as if some mighty being signalled agreement with his words. Yattmur looked anxiously towards the sun, still wearing its cocky feather of fire, and then went to speak to the tummy-bellies.
They sprawled together in the cosy dirt, arms round each other, chattering. As she entered the cave mouth, one of them picked up a handful of earth and gravel and flung it at her.
'Before now you don't come in our cave or ever come here or want to come here, and now you are wanting to come here is too late, cruel sandwich lady! And the fishy-carry-man is your bad company – we don't belong. Poor tummy-men not want you come here – or they make the lovely sharp-furs crunch you up in the cave.'
She stopped. Anger, regret, apprehension, ran through her, then she said firmly, 'Your troubles are only just beginning if you feel like that. You know I wish to be your friend.'
'You make all our troubles! Go quickly away!'
She backed away and, as she began to walk towards the other cave where Gren lay, she heard the tummy-bellies crying out to her. Whether their tone was one of abuse or supplication she did not know. Lightning snickered, stirring her shadow about her ankles. The baby wriggled in her arms.
'Lie still!' she said sharply. 'He shall not harm you.'
Gren sprawled at the back of the cave where she had last seen him. Lightning stabbed the brown mask through which his eyes peered. Though she saw him staring at her, he did not move or speak.
'Gren!'
Still he neither moved nor spoke.
Vibrant with strain, torn between love and hate of him, she leant there indecisively. When the lightning sparked again, she waved a hand before her eyes as though to brush it away.
'Gren, you can have the baby if you want him.'
Then he moved.
'Come outside for him; it's too dark in here.'
Having spoken, she walked away. Sickness rose in her as she felt the miserable difficulty of life. Over the saturnine slopes below her played inconstant light, adding to her dizziness. The catchy-carry-kind still lay on his boulder; beneath his shadow were the gourds, now empty of food and drink, and his forlorn retinue, hands to the sky, eyes to the ground. Yattmur sat down heavily with her back to the boulder, cradling Laren on her lap.
After a pause, Gren came out of the cave.
Walking slowly, slack-kneed, he approached her.
She could not tell whether she sweated from the heat or the tension. Because she was afraid to gaze on that pulpy mash that covered his face, Yattmur shut her eyes, opening them again only when she felt him near, fixing them on him as he stooped over her and the child. Uttering his pleased noise, Laren stretched up his arms with complete confidence 'Sensible boy!' said Gren in his alien voice. 'You are going to be a child apart, a wonder child, and I shall never leave you.'
Now she shivered so violently that she could not hold the baby still. But Gren was bending close now, down on his knees, so near she caught an acrid and clammy odour from him. Through the fluttering fringes of her eyelashes she saw the fungus on his face begin to move.
It hung above Laren's head, gathering ready to drop on him. Her vision was full of it, peppered with spongy spores, and with a slab of the big boulder and one of the empty gourds. She believed herself to be breathing in short screams, so that Laren commenced to cry – and again the tissue slid over Gren's face with the reluctant movement of stiff porridge.
'Now!' cried Sodal Ye in a Voice which twitched her into action.
Yattmur whipped the empty gourd forward, over the child.
The morel was caught in the bottom as it fell, trapped by the plan the sodal had devised. As Gren sagged sideways, she saw his true face twisted like a rope in a knot of pain. The light ebbed and flowed, quick as a pulse, but she only knew something screamed, not recognizing her own high note before she collapsed.
Two mountains clashed together like jaws with a bloated and squalling version of Laren lost between them. Thrown back to her senses. Yattmur sat up with a jerk and the monstrous vision fled.
'So you are not dead,' said the catchy-carry-kind gruffly. 'Kindly get up and silence your child, since my women are unable to do so.'
It was incredible that everything was much as it had been before she fainted, so long had she seemed to be enveloped in night. The morel lay inert in the gourd that had trapped it, with Gren face down beside it. Sodal Ye was atop his boulder. The pair of tattooed women hugged Laren to their withered breasts without being able to hush his cries.
Yattmur stood up and took him from them, putting his mouth to one of her own plump breasts, where he at once began pulling greedily and was silent. To feel him there gradually stilled her trembling.
She stooped over Gren.
He turned his face towards her when she touched his shoulder.
'Yattmur,' he said.
Weak tears stood in his eyes. All over his shoulders, in his hair, across his face, ran a red and white stippling where the
probes of the morel had gone down into his skin for nourishment.
'Has it gone?' he asked, and his voice was his own again.
'Look at it,' she said. With her free hand, she tilted the gourd over so that he could see in.
For a long while he stared down at the still-living morel, helpless and motionless now, lying like excrement in the gourd. His inner vision was looking back – more with amazement now than fear – at the things that had been since the morel first dropped on him in the forests of Nomansland, the things that had passed like a dream: how he had travelled through lands and performed actions and above all held knowledge in his mind in ways that would have been unknown to his former free self.
He saw how all this had come about under the agency of the fungus that now was no more potent than a burnt mess of food in the bottom of a dish; and quite coolly he saw how he had at first welcomed this stimulus, for it had helped him overcome the limitations natural to him. Only when the morel's basic needs conflicted with his own had the process become evil, driving him almost literally out of his own mind, so that in working to the dictates of the morel he had almost preyed on his own kind.
It was over. The parasite was defeated. He would never again hear the inner voice of the morel twanging through his brain.
At that, loneliness more than triumph filled him. But he searched wildly along the corridors of his memory and thought, He has left me something good: I can evaluate, I can order my mind, I can remember what he taught me – and he knew so much.
Now it seemed to him that for all the havoc the morel had caused, he had found Gren's mind like a little stagnant pool and left it like a living sea – and it was with pity he looked down into the bowl that Yattmur held out to him.
'Don't weep, Gren,' he heard Yattmur's voice say. 'We are safe, we are all safe, and you will be all right.'
He laughed shakily.
'I shall be all right,' he agreed. He formed his scarred face into a smile and stroked her arms. 'We shall all be all right.'
Then reaction hit him. He rolled over and was instantly asleep.
Yattmur was busy, when Gren awoke, attending to Laren who squealed with delight as she washed him by the mountain stream. The tattooed women were also there, carrying water back and forth to pour over the catchy-carry-kind on his slab, while nearby stood the carrying man, cramped into his habitual gesture of servitude. Of the tummy-bellies, there was no sign.
He sat up gingerly. His face was puffy but his head clear; what then was the jarring he could feel that had woken him? He caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of his eye, and turning saw a trickle of stones roll down a gully some way off. At another point, more stones rolled.
'An earthquake is in progress," said Sodal Ye in a cavernous voice. 'I have discussed it with your mate Yattmur and have told her there is no need for alarm. The world is ending on schedule, according to my predictions.'
Gren rose to his feet and said, 'You have a big voice, fish face; who are you?'
'I delivered you from the devouring fungus, little man, for I am the Sodal and Prophet of the Nightside Mountains, and all the denizens of the mountains hear what I have to say."
Gren was still thinking this over when Yattmur came up and said, 'You've slept so long since the morel left you. We too have slept, and now we must prepare to move.'
'To move? Where is there to go from here?'
'I will explain to you as I explained to Yattmur,' said the sodal, blinking as his women threw another gourd full of water over him. 'I devote my life to travelling these mountains, giving out the Word of Earth. Now it is time for me to return to the Bountiful Basin, where my kind live, to gather fresh instructions. The Basin lies on the fringe of the Lands of Perpetual Twilight; if I take you as far as that, you can easily return to the eternal forests where you live. I will be your guide and you shall help attend me on the way.'
Seeing Gren hesitate, Yattmur said, 'You know we cannot stay here on Big Slope. We were carried here against our wishes. Now we have the chance to go, we must take it.'
'If you wish it, it shall be so, though I'm tired of travel.'
The earth trembled again. With unconscious humour, Yattmur said, 'We must leave the mountain before it leaves us.' She added, 'And we must persuade the tummy-bellies to come with us. If they stay here, either the sharp-fur mountainears or starvation will kill them.'
'Oh, no,' Gren said. They've been trouble enough. Let the wretched creatures remain here. I don't want them with us.'
'Since they don't want to come with you, that question is settled,' said the sodal with a flick of his tail. 'Now, let us move, since I must not be kept waiting.'
They had next to no possessions, so close were their lives to nature. To make ready was merely to check their weapons, to stow a little food for carrying and to cast a backward glance at the cave that had sheltered the birth of Laren. Catching sight of a nearby gourd and its contents, Gren asked, 'What about the morel?'
'Leave it there to fester,' Yattmur said.
'We take the morel with us. My women will carry it,' said the sodal.
His women were already busy, their tattoo lines merging with their wrinkles as they strained to lift the sodal from his perch and on to the back of his carry man. Between themselves they exchanged only grunts, although one of them was capable of making monosyllabic replies accompanied by gesture when the sodal addressed her, using a tongue Gren did not recognize. He watched fascinated until Sodal Ye was firmly in place, clutched round the middle by the stooped man.
'How long has that poor wretch been doomed to carry you about?' he asked.
'The destiny of his race – it is a proud one – is to serve the catch-carry-kind. He was trained to it early. He neither knows nor wishes to know any other life.'
They began to move, going downhill with the two slave women leading. Yattmur glanced back to see the three tummy-bellies staring mournfully at them from their cave. She raised her hand, beckoning and calling to them. Slowly they stood up and began to jostle forward, almost tripping over one another in their efforts to stay close together.
'Come on!' she called encouragingly. 'You fellows come with us and we'll look after you.'
'They've been trouble enough to us,' Gren said. Stooping, he collected a handful of stones and flung them.
One tummy-belly was hit in the groin, one on the shoulder, before they broke and fled back into the cave, crying aloud that nobody loved them.
'You are too cruel, Gren. We should not leave them at the mercy of the sharp-furs.'
'I tell you I've had enough of those creatures. We are better on our own.' He patted her shoulder, but she remained unconvinced.
As they moved down Big Slope, the cries of the tummy-bellies died behind them. Nor would their voices ever reach Gren and Yattmur again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THEY descended the ragged flank of Big Slope and the shadows of the valley rose up to meet them. A moment came when they waded in dark up to their ankles; then it rose rapidly, swallowing them, as the sun was hidden by a range of hills ahead.
The pool of darkness in which they now moved, and in which they were to travel for some while, was not total. Though at present no cloud banks overhead reflected the light of the sun, the frequent lightning traced out their path for them.
Where the rivulets of Big Slope gathered into a fair-sized stream, the way became precipitous, for the water had carved a gully for itself, and they were forced to follow along its higher bank, going in single file along a steep cliff edge. The need for care slowed them. They descended laboriously round boulders, many of them clearly dislodged by the recent earth tremors. Apart from the sound of their footsteps, the only noise to compete with the stream was the regular groaning of the carrying man.
Soon a roaring somewhere ahead told them of a waterfall. Peering into the gloom, they saw a light. It was burning on what, as far as they could discern, was the lip of the cliff. The procession halted, bunching protectively together.
'What is it?' Gren asked. 'What sort of creature lives in this miserable pit?'
Nobody answered.
Sodal Ye grunted something to the talking woman, who in turn grunted at her mute companion. The mute companion began to vanish where she stood, rigid in an attitude of attention.
Yattmur clasped Gren's arm. It was the first time he had seen this disappearing act. Shadows all about them made it the more uncanny, as a ragged incline showed through her body. For a while her tattoo lines hung seemingly unsupported in the gloom. He strained his eyes to see. She had gone, was as intangible as the resonance of falling water.
They held their tableau until she returned.
Wordlessly the woman made a few gestures, which the other woman interpreted into grunts for the sodal's benefit. Slapping his tail round his porter's calves to get him moving again, the sodal said, 'It's safe. One or two of the sharp-furs are there, possibly guarding a bridge, but they'll go away.'
'How do you know?' Gren demanded.
'It will help if we make a noise,' said Sodal Ye, ignoring Gren's question. Immediately he let out a deep baying call that startled Yattmur and Gren out of their wits and set the baby wailing.
As they moved forward, the light flickered and went over the lip of the cliff. Arriving at the point where it had been, they could look down a steep slope. Lightning revealed six or eight of the snouted creatures bouncing and leaping into the ravine, one of them carrying a crude torch. Ever and again they looked back over their shoulders, barking invective.
'How did you know they'd go away?' Gren asked.
'Don't talk so much. We must go carefully here.'
They had come to a sort of bridge: one cliff of the gully had fallen forward in a solid slab, causing the stream to tunnel beneath it before splashing down into the nearby ravine; the slab rested against the opposite cliff, forming an arch over the flood. Because the way looked so broken and uncertain, its hazards increased in the twilight, the party moved hesitantly. Yet they had hardly stepped on to the crumbling bridge when a host of tiny beings clattered up startlingly from beneath their feet.