Hothouse - Brian Aldiss [52]
‘The Black Mouth!’ the morel cried. ‘The Black Mouth sings to us and we must go!’
It tugged not only at their ears but at their eyes. Their very retinas were partially drained of sensation, so that all the world appeared in black and white and grey. White the sky glimpsed overhead, grey the foliage that dappled it, black and grey the rocks distorted beneath their running feet. With hands extended before them, Gren and Poyly began to run amid the running things.
Now through a maelstrom of dread and compulsion they saw the herders.
Like so many shadows, the herders stood against the last trunks of the banyan. They had strapped or tied themselves there with ropes. In the centre of them, also tied, stood Iccall the Singer. Now he sang! He sang in a peculiarly uncomfortable position, as if disfigured, as if his neck were broken, with his head hanging down and his eyes wildly fixed on the ground.
He sang with all his voice and all his heart’s blood. The song came valiantly out, flinging itself against the might of the Black Mouth’s song. It had a power of its own, a power to counteract the evil that would otherwise have drawn all the herders out towards the source of that other melody.
The herders listened with grim intensity to what he sang. Yet they were not idle. Lashed to the tree trunks, they cast their line nets before them, trapping the creatures that poured past them to the undeniable call.
Poyly and Gren could not make out the words of Iccall’s song. They had not been trained to it. Its message was overridden by the emanations from the mighty Mouth.
Wildly, they fought against that emanation – wildly but fruitlessly. Despite themselves, they stumbled on. Fluttering things struck them on the cheeks. The whole black and white world heaved and crawled in one direction alone! Only the herders were immune while they listened to Iccall’s song.
When Gren stumbled, galloping vegetable creatures hopped over him.
Then the jumpvils poured by, teeming through the jungle. Still desperately listening to Iccall’s song, the herders snared them as they flocked past, staying them and slaying them in the middle of the mêlée.
Poyly and Gren were passing the last of the herders. They were moving faster as the dreadful melody grew stronger. The open lay ahead of them. Framed in a canopy of foreground branches stood the distant Black Mouth! A strangled cry of – what? admiration? horror? – was torn from their lips at that spectacle.
Terror now had forms and legs and feelings, animated by the Black Mouth’s song.
Towards it – they saw with their drained eyes – poured a stream of life, answering that accursed call, making as fast as it could go over the lava field, and up the volcanic slopes, and finally throwing itself in triumph over the lip and into that great aperture!
Another chilling detail struck their eyes. Over the edge of the Mouth appeared three great long chitinous fingers which waved and enticed and kept time to the fateful tune.
Both the humans screamed at the sight – yet they redoubled their speed, for the grey fingers beckoned them.
‘O Poyly! O Gren! Gren!’
The cry came as a will o’ the wisp. They did not pause. Gren managed a quick glance back, towards the jolting blacks and greys of the forest.
The last herder they had passed was Yattmur; regardless of Iccall’s song, she threw off the thong that tied her to the tree. Her hair was flying wild, she was plunging knee deep through the tide of life to join them. Her arms stretched out to him like those of a lover in a dream.
In the weird light her face was grey, but bravely she sang as she ran, a song like Iccall’s to counteract that other evil melody.
Gren faced ahead again, looking towards the Black Mouth, and instantly forgot about her. The long beckoning fingers beckoned him alone.
He had hold of Poyly’s hand, but as they dashed past one of the outcrops of rock, Yattmur snatched his free hand.
For a saving moment they paid her attention. For a saving moment her brave song rose uppermost in their attention. Like a flash