Hothouse, aka The Long Afternoon of Earth

by Brian Aldiss

  'We'll be safe when we get to the top. Hup ho!' cried the sodal encouragingly. 'Not much farther before we see Bountiful Basin. Hup hey there, you lazy, ugly brute!'

  Without word or warning his carrying man collapsed under him, pitching him forward into a gully. For a moment the sodal lay half-stunned on his back; then a flick of his powerful tail put him right way up again. He began to curse inventively at his steed.

  As for the tattooed women, they stopped, and the one carrying the gourd with the morel in set it down on the ground, but neither went over to the aid of the fallen man. Gren did that, running to the bundle of bones and turning it over as gently as possible. The carrying man made no sound. The eye like an ember had closed.

  Breaking into Sodal Ye's swearing, he said angrily, 'What have you to complain of? Didn't this poor wretch carry you until the last lungful of air left his body? You flogged all you could out of him, so be content! He's dead now, and he's free of you, and he'll never carry you again.'

  'Then you must carry me,' answered the sodal without hesitation. 'Unless we get out of here quickly, we shall all be torn to bits by those packs of sharp-furs. Listen to them – they're getting nearer! So look smart, man, if you know what's good for you, and make these women lift me on to your back.'

  'Oh, no! You're staying there in the gully, sodal. We can get on more quickly without you. You've had your last ride.'

  'No!' The sodal's voice rose like a foghorn. 'You don't know what the crest of this mountain's like. There's a secret way down the other side into Bountiful Basin that I can find and these women can't. You'll be trapped on the top without me, that I promise you. The sharp-furs will have you.'

  'Oh, Gren, I'm so afraid for Laren. Let's take the sodal rather than stand here arguing, please.'

  He stared at Yattmur through the dull dawnlight. She was a blur, a chalk drawing on a rock face, yet he clenched his fist as if she were a real antagonist.

  'Do you want to see me as a beast of burden?'

  'Yes, yes, anything rather than have us all torn apart! It's only over one mountain, isn't it? You carried the morel far enough without complaint.'

  Bitterly he motioned to the tattooed women.

  'That's better,' said the sodal, wriggling between Gren's encircling arms. 'Just try and keep your head a little lower, so that no discomfort is caused to my throat. Ah, better still. Fine, yes, you'll learn. Forward, hup ho!'

  Head well bent, back bent, Gren struggled up the slope with the catchy-carry-kind on top of him, Yattmur carrying the babe beside him and the two women going on ahead. A desolate chorus of sharp-fur cries floated to them. They scrambled along a stream bed with water washing cold about their knees, helped each other up a precipitous gravel bank, and came on to less taxing ground.

  Yattmur could see that over the next rise lay sunshine. When she thought to take in the landscape about them, she observed a new and more cheerful world of slopes and hill tops showing all round. The sharp-fur parties had fallen from view behind boulders.

  Now the sky was streaked with light. An occasional traverser sailed overhead, making for the night side or heading up into space. It was like a sign of hope.

  Still they had some way to go. But at last the sun lay hot on their backs and after a long steady pull they stood panting on the crest of the mountain. The other side of it fell away in a great ravaged cliff down which it would be impossible for anything to climb.

  Nestling in a hundred intersecting curtains of shadow lay an arm of the sea, wide and serene. Fanning straight across it, casting a glow over the whole basin of cliffs in which the sea rested, was a swathe of light, just as Sodal Ye had predicted. Creatures moved in the water, leaving their marks momentarily upon it. On a strip of beach, other figures moved, winding between primitive white huts as tiny as pearls in the distance.

  The sodal alone was not staring down.

  His eyes went to the sun and to the narrow section of fully illumined world that could be seen from this vantage point, the lands where the sun shone perpetually. There the brilliance wasalmost intolerable. He needed no instruments to tell him that the heat and light had increased in intensity even since they left Big Slope.

  'As I predicted,' he cried, 'all things are melting into light. The day is coming when the Great Day comes and all creatures become a part of the evergreen universe. I must talk to you about it some time.'

  The lightning which had almost played itself out over the lands of Perpetual Twilight still flittered over the bright side. One particularly vivid shaft struck down into the mighty forest – and stayed visible. Writhing like a snake caught between earth and heaven it remained; and from the base it began to turn green. Green rose up it into the sky, and the shaft steadied and thickened as it went, until something like a pointing finger stretched into the canopy of space and the tip of it was lost to view in the hazy atmosphere.

  'Aaaah, now I have seen the sign of signs!' said the sodal. 'Now I see and now I know the end of the Earth draws near.'

  'What in the name of terror is it?' Gren said, squinting up from under his burden at the green column.

  'The spores, the dust, the hopes, the growth, the essence of the centuries of Earth's green fuse, no less. Up it goes, ascending, for new fields. The ground beneath that column must be baked to brick! You heat a whole world for half an eternity, stew it heavy with its own fecundity, and then apply extra current: and on the reflected energy rises the extract of life, buoyed up and borne into space on a galactic flux."

  The island of the tall cliff returned to Gren's mind. Though he did not know what the sodal meant by talking of extracts of life being buoyed up on galactic fluxes, it sounded like his experience in the strange cave with eyes. He wished he could ask the morel about it.

  'The sharp-furs are coming!' Yattmur cried. 'Listen! I can hear them shouting.'

  Looking back down the way they had come, she saw tiny figures in the gloaming, some still bearing smoky torches, climbing slowly but climbing steadily, swarming uphill mainly on all fours.

  'Where do we go?' Yattmur asked. "They'll be upon us if you don't stop talking, Sodal.'

  Shaken out of his contemplation, Sodal Ye said, 'We have to move higher up the crest of the mountain. Only a little way. Behind this big spur sticking up ahead is a secret way leading down among the rocks. There we strike a passage leading right through the cliff down to Bountiful Basin. Don't worry – those wretches have some distance to climb yet.'

  Gren had started moving towards the spur before Sodal Ye stopped speaking.

  Anxiously propping Laren over one shoulder, Yattmur ran forward. Then she paused.

  'Sodal,' she said. 'Look! One of the traversers has crashed behind the spur. Your escape way will be completely blocked!'

  The spur stood up crazily on the sheer edge of the cliff, like a chimney built on top of a steeply-pitched roof. Behind it, massive and firm, lay the bulk of a traverser. Only the fact that they viewed its shadowed side, which rose up like part of the ground, had prevented their noticing it earlier.

  Sodal Ye let out a great cry.

  'How are we to get under that great vegetable?' he demanded, and he slapped Gren's legs with his tail in a fury of frustration.

  Gren staggered and fell against the woman carrying the gourd. They sprawled together on the grass while the sodal flopped beside them, bellowing.

  The woman gave a cry of something between pain and rage, covering her face while her nose trickled blood. She took no notice when the sodal croaked at her. As Yattmur helped Gren up, the sodal said, 'Curse her dung-devouring descendants, I'm telling her to make the spanning woman get spanning and see how we can escape from here. Kick her and make her pay attention – and then get me on to your back again and see you're less careless in future.'

  He started shouting at the woman again.

  Without warning, she jumped up. Her face was distorted as a squeezed fruit. Seizing the gourd by her side, she brought it swinging down hard on to the sodal's skull. The blow
knocked him unconscious. The gourd split under the impact, and the morel slid out like treacle, covering the sodal's head with a sort of lethargic contentment.

  Gren and Yattmur's eyes met, worried, questioning. The spanning woman's mouth split open. She cackled soundlessly. Her companion sat down to weep; her period-of-being's one moment of revolt had come and gone.

  'Now what do we do?' asked Gren.

  'Let's see if we can find the sodal's bolthole; that's the first worry,' Yattmur said.

  He touched her arm for comfort.

  'If the traverser's alive, perhaps we can light a fire under it and drive it away,' he said.

  Leaving the Arabler women to wait vacantly beside Sodal Ye, they moved up towards the traverser.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  AS the sun's output of radiation increased towards that day, no longer so far distant, when it would turn nova, so the growth of vegetation had increased to undisputed supremacy, overwhelming all other kinds of life, driving them either to extinction or to refuge in the twilight zone. The traversers, great spider-like monsters of vegetable origin that sometimes grew up to a mile in length, were the culmination of the might of the kingdom of plants.

  Hard radiation had become a necessity for them. The first vegetable astronauts of the hothouse world, they travelled between Earth and Moon long after man had rolled up his noisy affairs and retired to the trees from whence he came.

  Gren and Yattmur moved along under the green and black fibrous bulk of the creature, Yattmur hugging Laren, who gazed at everything with alert eyes. Sensing danger, Gren paused.

  He looked up. A dark face stared down at him from high up that monstrous flank. After a startled moment, he made out more than one face. Concealed in the fuzz covering the traverser was a row of human beings.

  Instinctively he drew his knife.

  Seeing they were observed, the watchers emerged from hiding and began to swarm down the flank of the traverser. Ten of them appeared.

  'Get back!' Gren said urgently, turning to Yattmur.

  'But the sharp-furs -'

  The attackers took them by surprise. Spreading wings or cloaks, they jumped down from a height well above Gren's head. They started to surround Gren and Yattmur. Each one brandishing a stick or sword.

  'Stand steady or I'll run you through!' Gren shouted savagely, leaping in front of Yattmur and the baby.

  'Gren! You are Gren of the group of Lily-yo!'

  The figures had stopped. One of them, the one who exclaimed, came forward with open arms, dropping her sword.

  He knew her dark face!

  'Living shades! Lily-yo! Lily-yo! Is it you?'

  'It is I, Gren, and no other!'

  And now two others were coming up to him, crying in pleasure. He recognized them, faces forgotten but ever familiar, the faces of two adult members of his tribal group. Haris the man, and Flor, clasping his hand. Although they were so changed, he hardly noticed that in his surprise at meeting them again. He looked at their eyes rather than their wings.

  Seeing his questioning gaze run over their faces, Haris said, 'You are a man now, Gren. We too have altered much. These others with us are our friends. We have returned from the True World, flying through space itself in the belly of this traverser. The creature became ill on the way and crashed here, in this miserable land of shadows. With no way to get back to the warm forests, we have been caught here for far too long, suffering attacks from all sorts of unimaginable creatures.'

  'And you're about to suffer the worst one yet,' Gren said. He was not pleased to see people that he admired like Haris and Lily-yo consorting with flymen. 'Our enemies gather against us. Time for stories later, friends – and I'll guess mine is more strange than yours – because a great pack, two great packs, of sharp-furs are nearly on us.'

  'Sharp– furs you call them?' Lily-yo said. 'We could see a little of their approach from on top of the traverser. What makes you think they are after us? In this miserable land of starvation they must surely be after the traverser for food?'

  To Gren this idea was unexpected; yet he recognized its likelihood. Only the considerable bulk of food the traverser represented would have drawn so many sharp-furs so far so consistently. He turned to see what Yattmur thought. She was not there.

  Immediately, he pulled out the knife he had just sheathed and jumped round, searching for her, calling her name. The members of Lily-yo's band who did not know him fingered their swords anxiously, but he ignored them.

  Yattmur stood a short way off, clutching their child and scowling in his direction. She had gone back to where the sodal lay; the Arabler women stood fruitlessly by, gazing ahead. Muttering angrily, Gren pushed by Haris to go to her.

  'What are you doing?' he called. 'Bring Laren here.'

  'Come and get him if you want him,' she replied. 'I will have nothing to do with these strange savages. You belong to me – why do you turn from me to them? Why do you talk to them? Who are they?'

  'O shades protect me from foolish women! You don't understand -'

  He stopped.

  They had left their escape from the ridge too late.

  Moving in an impressive silence, perhaps because they needed their breath, the first lines of sharp-furs appeared over the crest of the hill.

  They halted on confronting the humans, but the back ranks jostled them forward. With their mantles standing out stiff about their shoulders and their teeth bared, they did not have the look of friends. One or two of them wore the ridiculous helmets shaped out of gourds on their heads.

  Through cold lips, Yattmur said, 'Some of these were the ones who promised they would help the tummy-bellies to get home.'

  'How can you tell? They are so much alike.'

  'That old one with the yellow whiskers and a finger missing – I'm sure I recognize him at least.'

  Lily-yo, coming up with her group, asked, 'What are we going to do? Will these beasts trouble us if we let them have the traverser?'

  Gren made no reply. He walked forward until he stood directly in front of the yellow-whiskered creature Yattmur had pointed out.

  'We bear you no ill-will, sharp-fur bamboon people. You know we never fought you when we were on Big Slope. Do you have the three tummy-belly men who were our companions with you?'

  Without answering, Yellow Whisker shambled round to consult with his friends. The nearest sharp-furs reared upon their hind legs and talked yappingly to each other. Finally Yellow Whisker turned back to Gren, showing his fangs as he spoke. He cuddled something in his arms.

  'Yip yip yap yes, skinny one, the bouncing-bellies are wiff wiff with us. See! Look! Catch!'

  With a quick motion, he threw something at Gren – who was so close he could do nothing but catch it.

  It was the severed head of one of the tummy-bellies.

  Gren acted without thought. Dropping the head, he flung himself forward in scarlet fury, thrusting out with his knife as he did so. His blade caught the yellow-whiskered sharp-fur in the stomach before he could dodge. As the creature staggered sideways screaming, Gren grabbed his grey paw with both hands. He spun completely round on one heel, and cast Yellow Whiskers right over the edge of the tall cliff.

  Absolute silence fell, a silence of surprise, as Yellow Whiskers' cries died.

  In the next moment, our fate is decided, Gren thought. His blood ran too high for him to care. He sensed Yattmur, Lily-yo, and the other humans behind him, but he did not deign to look back at them.

  Yattmur leant forward to the broken and bloodied object lying at their feet. The head by its severance had been reduced to a mere thing, a thing of horror. Looking into the watery jelly that had been eyes, Yattmur read there the fate of all three tummy-belly men.

  Unheard she cried, 'And they were always so gentle with Laren!'

  Then the noise broke out behind her.

  A terrible roar burst forth, a roar of alien cadence and power, a roar – breaking over their heads so unexpectedly – that turned her blood to snow. The sharp-
furs cried in awe: then they turned about, jostling and fighting to get back into the safety of the shadows below the crest of the mountain.

  Deafened, Gren looked round. Lily-yo and her companions were heading back towards the dying traverser. Yattmur was trying to pacify the baby. Hands over their heads, the Arabler women lay prone on the ground.

  Again the noise came, swelling with an anguished despair. Sodal Ye had recovered consciousness and cried aloud his wrath. And then, opening his fleshy mouth with its huge lower lip, he spoke, in words that only gradually merged into sense.

  'Where are your empty-headed heads, you creatures of the darkling plains You have toads in the head, not to understand my prophecies where the green pillars grow. Growing is symmetry, up and down, and what is called decay is not decay but the second part of growth. One process, you toad-heads – the process of devolution, that carries you down into the green well from which you came... I'm lost in the mazes – Gren! Gren, like a mole I tunnel through an earth of understanding... Gren, the nightmares – Gren, from the fish's belly I call to you. Can you hear me? It's I – your old ally the morel!'

  'Morel?'

  In his astonishment, Gren dropped to his knees before the catchy-carry-kind. Blank-faced, he stared at the leprous brown crown that now adorned its head. As he stared, the eyes opened, filmily at first, and then they focused on him.

  'Gren! I was near death... Ah, the pain of consciousness... Listen, man, it is I, your morel, who speaks. I hold the sodal in check, and am using his faculties, as once I had to use yours; there's so much richness in his mind – coupling it with my own knowledge... ah, I see clearly not just this little world but all the green galaxy, the evergreen universe...'

  Frantically, Gren jumped up.

  'Morel, are you crazed? Do you not see what a position we are in here, all about to be killed by these sharp-furs when they gather courage to charge? What are we to do? If you are truly here, if you are sane, help us!'

  'I'm not crazed – unless to be the only wise creature in a toad-minded world is to be crazed... All right, Gren, I tell you help comes! Look into the sky!'