Hothouse - Brian Aldiss [53]
‘Swerve aside!’ it twanged. ‘Swerve aside if you wish to live!’
A peculiar-looking copse of young shoots stood just by their path. Labouring hand in hand, they turned into its doubtful refuge. A jumpvil hurtled in ahead of them, no doubt looking for a short cut in its stampede. They plunged into the grey gloom.
At once the Black Mouth’s monstrous tune lost much of its power. Yattmur fell against Gren’s breast and sobbed – but all was still far from well.
Poyly touched one of the slender rods near her and screamed. A glutinous mass slid from the rod and over her head. She waved it and clutched it, hardly knowing what she did.
In despair they stared about, realizing they were in some kind of small enclosure. Their faulty vision had deceived them into entering a trap. Already the jumpvil that had entered before them was inextricably caught by the mess extruded from the rods.
Yattmur grasped the truth first.
‘A greenguts!’ she cried. ‘We’ve been swallowed by a greenguts!’
‘Cut our way out, quickly!’ twanged the morel. ‘Your sword, Gren – fast, fast! It’s closing on us.’
The gap had shut behind them. They were totally enclosed. The ‘ceiling’ started to crumble and come down on them. The illusion of being in a copse faded. They were in a greenguts’ stomach.
Wrenching out their swords, they began to defend their lives. As the rods about them – rods growing so cunningly to suggest the trunks of saplings – buckled and telescoped, so the ceiling lowered, its folds oozing a suffocating jelly. Jumping high, Gren slashed mightily with his sword. A great split appeared in the greenguts’ envelope.
The two girls helped him to enlarge it. As the bag crumpled down, they managed to get their heads through the rent, thus avoiding certain death.
But now the older menace reasserted itself. Again the death wail from the Mouth seized them by their bloodstreams. They hacked with redoubled energy at the greenguts, to get loose and answer that chilling call.
They were free now but for their feet and ankles, which were stuck in the jelly. The greenguts was firmly anchored to a shoulder of rock so that it could not obey the call of the Black Mouth. It had collapsed entirely now, its solitary eye mournfully, helplessly, regarding their attempts to cut it to pieces.
‘We must go!’ Poyly cried, and at last managed to drag herself free. With her aid, Gren and Yattmur also broke away from the ruined creature. It closed its eye as they hurried off.
The delay had been longer than they knew. The ooze on their feet impeded them. They made their way over the lava as well as they could, still jostled by other creatures. Yattmur was too exhausted to sing again. Their wills were blotted out by the strength of the Black Mouth’s song.
They started to scramble up the slopes of the cone, surrounded by a galloping phantasmagoria of life. Above them the three long fingers waved in sinister invitation. A fourth finger appeared, and then a fifth, as if whatever it was in the volcano was working itself up to a climax.
Their eyes saw everything in a fuzz of grey as the melody swelled to an unbearable intensity and their hearts laboured. The jumpvils really showed their paces, their long back legs enabling them to bound up the steeper slopes. They poured by, jumped on to the lip of the crater and then took their final leap to whatever lured them.
The humans were filled with longing to meet the dread singer… Panting, impeded by the mess about their feet, they scrambled across the last few yards that separated them from the Black lip.
The dreadful melody ceased in mid-note. So unexpected was it, they fell flat on their faces. Exhaustion and relief washed over them. They lay with closed eyes, sobbing together. The melody had stopped, had stopped, entirely stopped.
After many pulses of his blood had gone by, Gren opened one eye.
The colours of the world were returning to normal again, white flooding with pink again, grey turning to blue and green and yellow, black dissolving into the sombre hues of the forest.