Hothouse - Brian Aldiss [60]
‘I don’t care what happens to us now.’
‘Look Gren – ’
A shout rose from the Fishers. They showed a sort of apathetic interest, pointing ahead and calling, which was enough to pull Yattmur and Gren up at once.
Their boat was rapidly being swept towards another. More than one Fishers’ colony grew by the banks of the Long Water. Another loomed ahead. Two bulging Tummy-trees marked its position. This colony’s net was out across the stream, its boat resting against the far bank, full of Fishers. Their tails hung over the river along the top of the net.
‘We’re going to hit them!’ Gren said. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘No, we shall miss their boat. Perhaps their net will stop us. Then we can get safely ashore.’
‘Look at these fools climbing on to the sides of the boat. They’ll be jerked overboard.’ He called to the Fishers in question, who were swarming over the bows. ‘Hey, you Short-tails! get down there, or you’ll be flung into the water.’
His cry was drowned by their shouts and the roar of the water. They were rushing irresistibly toward the other boat. Next moment they struck the net that stretched across their path.
The cumbersome boat squealed and lurched. Several Fishers were flung down into the water by the impact. One of them managed to jump the narrowing distance into the other boat. The two vessels struck glancingly, cannoned off each other – and then the securing rope across the river broke.
They whirled free again, to go racing on down the flood. The other boat, being already against the bank, stayed there, bumping uncomfortably. Many of its crew were scampering about the bank; some had been flung into the stream, some had had their tails lopped off. But their misadventures remained hidden forever more as Gren’s boat swept round a grand curve and jungle closed in on both sides.
‘Now what do we do?’ Yattmur asked, trembling.
Gren shrugged his shoulders. He had no ideas. The world had revealed itself as too big and too terrible for him.
‘Wake up, morel,’ he said. ‘What happens to us now? You got us into this trouble – now get us out of it.’
For answer the morel started turning his mind upside down. Dizzied, Gren sat down heavily. Yattmur clasped his hands while phantoms of memory and thought fluttered before his mental gaze. The morel was studying navigation.
Finally it said, ‘We need to steer this boat to get it to obey us. But there is nothing to steer it with. We must wait and see what happens.’
It was an admission of defeat. Gren sat on the deck with an arm round Yattmur, properly indifferent to everything external. His thoughts went back to the time when he and Poyly were careless children in the tribe of Lily-yo. Life had been so easy, so sweet then, and little had they realized it! Why, it had even been warmer; the sun had shone almost directly overhead.
He opened one eye. The sun was quite far down in the sky.
‘I’m cold,’ he said.
‘Huddle against me,’ Yattmur coaxed.
Some freshly plucked leaves lay near them; perhaps they had been plucked to wrap the Fishers’ expected catch of fish in. Yattmur pulled them over Gren and lay close against him, letting her arms steal round him.
He relaxed in her warmth. An interest in her awoke, he began instinctively to explore her body. She was as warm and sweet as childhood dreams, and pressed ardently against his touch. Her hands too began a journey of exploration. Lost in delight of each other they forgot the world. When he took her she was also taking him.
Even the morel was soothed by the pleasure of their actions under the warm leaves. The boat sped on down the river, occasionally bumping a bank, but never ceasing its progress.
After a while, it joined a much wider river and spun hopelessly in an eddy for some time, making them all dizzy. One of the wounded Fishers died here; he was thrown overboard; this might have been a signal, for at