Hothouse - Brian Aldiss [113]
Gren, with Yattmur and the tattooed women trailing behind, came up to it and stared up its height. He released the tail of the sodal, which he had dragged over the ground.
‘We can’t climb up there!’ he said. ‘You’re mad to consider such a thing, morel. It’s far too big!’
‘Climb, man creature, climb!’ bellowed the morel.
Still hesitating, Gren stood while Lily-yo and the others of her band came round. They had hidden behind the tall crag, and were anxious to get away.
‘As your fish-creature says, this is our only way to safety,’ Lily-yo said. ‘Climb, Gren! You can come with us and we’ll look after you.’
‘You don’t have to fear a traverser, Gren,’ Haris said.
He still stood there, not encouraged by their prompting. The thought of clinging to something that flew through the air made him sick; he remembered his ride on the back of the vegbird that crashed in Nomansland, remembered too the journeys by boat and stalker, each landing him in a worse situation than the last. Only on the journey just concluded, which he had undertaken under his own control with the sodal, had the destination seemed preferable to the starting point.
As he wavered, the morel was again bellowing with the sodal’s voice, goading the others to climb the fibrous leg, even goading the tattooed women to carry him up, which they did with the aid of Lily-yo’s party. They were soon all perched high up on the immense back, looking down and calling at him. Only Yattmur stood by him.
‘Just when we are free of the tummy-bellies and the morel, why should we have to depend on this monstrous creature?’ he muttered.
‘We must go, Gren. It will take us away to the warm forests, far from the sharp-furs, where we can live with Laren in peace. You know we can’t stay here.’
He looked at her, and at the big-eyed child in her arms. She had endured so much trouble for him, ever since the time the Black Mouth sang its irresistible song.
‘We will go if you wish it, Yattmur. Let me carry the boy.’ And then with a flash of anger he peered up, calling to the morel. ‘And stop your stupid shouting – I’m coming!’
He called too late: the morel had already stopped. When Gren and Yattmur finally pulled themselves panting on to the top of the living hill, it was to discover the morel busily directing Lily-yo and her company in a new enterprise.
The sodal turned one of its piggy stares at Gren and said, ‘As you know as well as anyone, it is time for me to divide, to propagate. So I’m going to take over this traverser as well as the sodal.’
‘Mind it doesn’t take you over,’ Gren said feebly. He sat down with a thud as the traverser moved. But the huge creature, in the throes of fertilization, had so little sensitivity that it remained engrossed in its own blind affairs as Lily-yo and the others, working savagely with their knives, cut into its epidermis.
When they had a crater exposed, they lifted the Sodal Ye so that he hung head down into it; though he wriggled weakly, the morel had him too much under control for him to do more. The ugly pitted brown shape of the morel began to slide; half of it dropped into the hole, after which – under direction – the others covered it with a sort of bung of flesh. Gren marvelled at the way they hurried to do the morel’s bidding; he seemed to have developed an immunity to orders.
Yattmur sat and suckled her child. As Gren settled beside her, she pointed a finger across the dark side of the mountain. From their vantage point, they could see sad and shadowy clusters of sharp-furs moving away to safety to await events; here and there their torches gleamed, punctuating the gloom like blossoms in a melancholy wood.
‘They’re not attacking,’ Yattmur said. ‘Perhaps we could climb down and find the secret way to Bountiful Basin?