Hothouse - Brian Aldiss [110]
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