Hothouse - Brian Aldiss [51]
And it pushed Poyly and Gren forward in time again, showing them the true history of the development of man, which was also the history of the morels. For the morels, which began as parasites, developed into symbiotes.
At first they clung to the outsides of the skulls of the tarsier people. Then as those people prospered under the connection, as they were taught to organize and hunt, they were induced, generation by slow generation, to increase their skull capacity. At last the vulnerable morels were able to move inside, to become truly a part of the people, to improve their own abilities under a curving shelter of bone…
‘So the real race of men developed,’ intoned the morel, throwing up a storm of pictures. ‘They grew and conquered the world, forgetting the origins of their success, the morel brains which lived and died with them… Without us, they would still have remained among the trees, even as your tribes live now without our aid.’
To enforce its point, it again provoked their latent memories of the time when the sun had entered its latest phase and all mankind fell sick.
‘Men were physically stronger than morels. Though they survived the stepping-up of solar radiation, their symbiotic brains did not. They quietly died, boiled alive in the little bone shelters they had fashioned for themselves. Man was left… to fend for himself equipped only with his natural brains, which were no better than those of the higher animals… Small wonder he lost his splendid cities and took again to the trees!’
‘It means nothing to us… nothing at all,’ Gren whimpered. ‘Why do you haunt us now with this ancient disaster, which all finished uncounted millions of years ago?’
The morel gave a silent noise like laughter in his head.
‘Because the drama may not yet be finished! I am a sturdier strain than those of my bygone ancestors; I can tolerate high radiation. So can your kind. Now is the historic moment for us to begin another symbiosis as great and profitable as the one which once tempered those tarsiers until they rode among the stars! Again the clocks of intelligence begin to chime. The clocks have hands again…’
‘Gren, he is mad and I do not understand!’ Poyly cried, appalled by the turmoil behind her closed eyes.
‘Hear the clocks chime!’ twanged the morel. ‘They chime for us, children!’
‘Oh, oh! I can hear them!’ Gren moaned, twisting restlessly where he lay.
And in all their ears came a sound to drown all else, a chiming sound like diabolic music.
‘Gren, we are all going mad!’ Poyly cried. ‘The terrible noises!’
‘The chimes, the chimes!’ the morel twanged.
Then Poyly and Gren awoke, sitting up in a sweat with the morel afire about their heads and necks – and the terrible sound still came, more terrible still!
Through the disturbed race of their thoughts they perceived that they were now the sole occupants of the cavern under the lava bed. All the herders had gone.
The terrifying noises they could hear came from outside. Why they should be so frightening was hard to say. The main sound was almost a melody, though it gave no prospect of resolution. It sang not to the ear but to the blood, and the blood responded by alternately freezing and racing to its call.
‘We must go!’ Poyly said, struggling up. ‘It’s singing for us to go.’
‘What have I done?’ wailed the morel.
‘What’s gone wrong?’ Gren asked. ‘Why do we have to go?’
They clung together in fear, yet the urge in their veins would not let them remain. Their limbs moved without obedience. Whatever the dreadful tune was, it had to be followed to its source. Even the morel had no thought but to do otherwise.
Regardless of their bodies, they scrambled up the rock fall that served as stairs and into the open, to find themselves in the midst of nightmare.
Now the awful melody blew about them like a wind, though not a leaf moved. Frenziedly it plucked and tugged at their limbs. Nor were they the only creatures answering that syren call. Flying things and running things and hopping things and things that slithered battered their way through the clearing, all heading in