Hothouse - Brian Aldiss [35]
Over the disputed strip called Nomansland many sorts of vegbird passed, both those that fed at sea and those that fed on land. They passed without alighting, knowing well the dangers that lurked there. Their shadows sped and dappled over the outcast plants without pause.
The rayplanes were so mortally engaged they did not know where they went. With a crash they sprawled among the upper branches near the group.
At once Nomansland sprang to life.
The famished angry trees spread up and lashed their branches. Toothed briars uncurled. Gigantic nettles shook their bearded heads. Moving cactus crawled and launched its spikes. Climbers hurled sticky bolas at the enemy. Cat-like creatures, such as Gren had seen in the termight’s nest, bounded past and swarmed up the trees to get to the attack. Everything that could move did so, prodded on by hunger. On the instant, Nomansland turned itself into a war machine.
Those plants that possessed no sort of mobility came alert for secondary spoils. The thicket of whistlethistles near which the group now lay trembling shook its thorns in anticipation. Harmless enough in its normal habitat, here the need to feed its roots had goaded the whistlethistle into a more offensive role. It would impale any passer-by it could. Similarly, a hundred other plants, small and stationary and armed, prepared to ignore the doomed rayplanes but to feed on those who – returning from their feed – blundered into their path.
A great killerwillow appeared, heaving itself into view with root-tentacles waving. Sand and grit poured off its pollarded head as it struggled up. Soon it too was grappling with the luckless rayplanes, with the snaptrap trees, and indeed with any living thing whose existence offended it.
The scene was chaos. The rayplanes never had a chance.
‘Look – there’s some of the fungus!’ Gren exclaimed, pointing.
In among the short snake-like branches that formed the head of the killerwillow grew the deadly fungus. Nor was this the first time Gren had seen it since the rayplanes crashed. Several of the plants lumbering past had borne traces of it. Gren shuddered at the sight, but the others were less impressed. Death, after all, had many shapes; everyone knew it: it was the way.
Twigs showered on them from the target area. The rayplanes were shredded by now; the fight was among the feasters.
‘We are too close to the trouble,’ Poyly said. ‘Let’s move.’
‘I was about to order it myself,’ Toy said stiffly.
They scrambled up and made their way as best they could. All were armed now with long poles which they thrust out before them to test the ground for danger. The fearful remorselessness of the killerwillows had struck caution into their hearts.
For a long while they moved, overcoming obstacle after obstacle and frequently avoiding death. Finally they were overcome – by sleep.
They found a fallen trunk of a tree that was hollow. They beat out the poisonous leafy creature that lived in it, and slept there, curled up together and feeling secure. When they awoke, they were prisoners. Both ends of the tree trunk were sealed.
Driff, who was the first to rouse and discover this, set up a howl that quickly brought the others to investigate. No doubt of it, they were now sealed in and liable to suffocation. The walls of the tree that previously had felt dry and rotten were now tacky, dripping a sweetish syrup on to them. In fact, they were about to be digested!
The fallen trunk was nothing more than an abdomen into which they had thoughtlessly climbed.
After eons of time, the bellyelm had entirely abandoned its earlier attempts to draw nourishment from the inhospitable shores of Nomansland. Retracting all form of root structure, it had adopted its present horizontal mode of living. It camouflaged itself as a dead log. Its branch and leaf system had become separate, evolving into the symbiotic leafy creature the group had beaten off – a symbiotic creature