Hothouse - Brian Aldiss [56]
The first three Fishers rejoined the main party and helped them with the net. Their movements were languid, although they appeared to be working with haste.
Poyly’s gaze wandered from them to the three trees in the shade of which they worked. She had never seen trees like them before, and their unusual aspect made her more uneasy.
Standing apart from all other vegetation, the trees bore a resemblance to giant pineapples. A collar of spiny leaves projected outwards direct from the ground, protecting the central fleshy trunk, which in each of the three cases was swollen into a massive knobbly ovoid. From the knobs of the ovoid sprouted long trailers; from the top of the ovoid sprouted more leaves, spiny and sharp, extending some two hundred feet into the air, or hanging stiffly out over Long Water.
‘Poyly, let us go and look more closely at those trees,’ the morel twanged urgently. ‘Gren and Yattmur will wait here and watch us.’
‘I do not like these people or this place, morel,’ Poyly said. ‘And I will not leave Gren here with this woman, do what you will.’
‘I shall not touch your mate,’ Yattmur said indignantly. ‘What makes you think such a silly thing?’
Poyly staggered forward under a sudden compulsion from the morel. She looked appealingly at Gren; but Gren was tired and did not meet her eye. Reluctantly she moved forward and soon was under the bloated trees. They towered above her, casting a spiked shade. Their swollen trunks stuck out like diseased stomachs.
The morel seemed not to feel their menace.
‘Just as I had assumed!’ it exclaimed after a long inspection. ‘Here is where the tails of our Fishers end. They are joined to the trees by their rumps – our simple friends belong to the trees.’
‘Humans do not grow from trees, morel. Did you not know – ’ She paused, for a hand had fallen on her shoulder.
She turned. One of the Fishers confronted her, looking her closely in the face with his blank eyes and puffing out his cheeks.
‘You must not come under the trees,’ he said. ‘Their shade is sacred. We said you must not come under our trees and you did not remember we said it. I will take you back to your friends who have not come with you.’
Poyly’s eye travelled down his tail. Even as the morel had claimed, it joined on to the swelling of the nearest spiky tree. She felt a shiver of dread and moved away from him.
‘Obey him!’ twanged the morel. ‘There is evil here, Poyly. We must fight it. Let him walk with us back to the others and then we will capture him and ask him a few questions.’
This will cause trouble, she thought, but at once the morel filled her mind saying, ‘We need these people and perhaps we need their boat.’
So she yielded to the Fisher and he grasped her arm and walked her slowly back to Gren and Yattmur, who watched this performance intently. As they went, the Fisher solemnly paid out his tail.
‘Now!’ cried the morel, when they reached the others.
Forced on by his will, Poyly flung herself on the Fisher’s back. The move was so sudden that he staggered and fell forward.
‘Help me!’ Poyly called. Before she had spoken, Gren was springing forward with his knife ready. And at the same moment a cry came from all the other Fishers. They dropped their great net and began in unison to run towards Gren and his party, their feet padding heavily over the ground.
‘Quickly, Gren, cut this creature’s tail off,’ Poyly said, prompted by the morel, as she struggled in the dust to keep her opponent down.
Without questioning her, for the morel’s orders were in his mind too, Gren reached forward and slashed once.
The green tail was severed a foot from the Fisher’s rump. At once the man ceased struggling. The tail that had been attached to him commenced a writhing motion, lashing the ground like an injured snake, and catching Gren in its coils. He slashed at it again. Leaking sap, it curled and went looping back to the tree. As if this were