Hothouse - Brian Aldiss [20]
chapter six
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The long afternoon of eternity wore on, that long golden road of an afternoon that would somewhen lead to everlasting night. Motion there was, but motion without event – except for those neglible events that seemed so large to the creatures participating in them.
For Lily-yo, Flor and Haris there were many events. Chief of these was, that they learnt to fly properly.
The pains associated with their wings soon died away as the wonderful new flesh and tendon strengthened. To sail up in the light gravity became an increasing delight – the ugly flopping movements of flymen on the Heavy World had no place here.
They learnt to fly in packs, and then to hunt in packs. In time they were trained to carry out the Captives’ plan.
The series of accidents that had first delivered humans to this world in burnurns had been a fortunate one, growing more fortunate as millennia rolled away. For gradually the humans adapted better to the True World. Their survival factor became greater, their power surer. All this: as on the Heavy World conditions grew more and more adverse to anything but vegetation.
Lily-yo at least was quick to see how much easier life was in these new conditions. She sat with Flor and a dozen others eating pulped pluggyrug, before they did the Captives’ bidding and left for the Heavy World.
It was hard to express all she felt.
‘Here we are safe,’ she said, indicating the whole green land that sweltered under the silver network of webs.
‘Except from the tigerflies,’ Flor agreed.
They rested on a bare peak, where the air was thin and even the giant creepers had not climbed. The turbulent green stretched away below them, almost as if they were on Earth although here it was continually checked by the circular formations of rock.
‘This world is smaller,’ Lily-yo said, trying again to make Flor know what was in her head. ‘Here we are bigger. We do not need to fight so much.’
‘Soon we must fight.’
‘Then we can come back here again. This is a good place, with nothing so savage and without so many enemies. Here the groups could live without so much fear. Veggy and Toy and May and Gren and the other little ones would like it here.’
‘They would miss the trees.’
‘We shall soon miss the trees no longer. We have wings instead. Everything is a matter of custom.’
This idle talk took place beneath the unmoving shadow of a rock. Overhead, silver blobs against a purple sky, the traversers drifted, walking their networks, descending only occasionally to celeries far below. As Lily-yo fell to watching these creatures, she thought in her mind of the grand plan the Captives had hatched, she flicked it over in a series of vivid pictures.
Yes, the Captives knew. They could see ahead as she could not. She and those about her had lived like plants, doing what came to hand. The Captives were not plants. From their cells they saw more than those outside.
This, the Captives saw. That the few humans who reached the True World bore few children, because they were old, or because the rays that made their wings grow made their seed die. That it was good here, and would be better still with more humans, That one way to get more humans here was to bring babies and children from the Heavy World.
For countless time, this had been done. Brave flymen had travelled back to that other world and stolen children. The flymen who had once attacked Lily-yo’s group on their climb to the Tips had been on that mission. They had taken Bain to bring her to the True World in burnurns – and had not been heard of since.
Many perils and mischances lay in that long double journey. Of those who set out, few returned.
Now the Captives had thought of a better and more daring scheme.
‘Here comes a traverser,’ Band Appa Bondi said, rousing Lily-yo from her thoughts. ‘Let us be ready to move.’
He walked before the pack of twelve flyers who had been chosen for this new attempt. He was the leaden of them. Lily-yo, Flor and Haris were in support of him,