Hothouse - Brian Aldiss [69]
He would not be aware again of fear, of a last hopeless attempt to regain paradise, of the green going, of vertigo taking him, and eyes, a million eyes all saying ‘No’ and spitting him back where he belonged…
He was back in the cave, sprawled on the trampled sand in a posture crudely aping flight. He was alone. About him, a million stone eyes closed in disdain, and a green music died from his brain. He was doubly alone as the tower of rock removed its presence from the cave.
The rain still rained. He knew that that measureless eternity during which he had been away had lasted only for a flicker of time. Time… whatever it was… perhaps it was just a subjective phenomenon, a mechanism in a human bloodstream from which vegetables did not suffer.
Gren sat up, startled by his thoughts.
‘Morel!’ he whispered.
‘I’m here…’
A long silence fell.
At last, without prompting, the brain fungus spoke.
‘You have a mind, Gren,’ it twanged. ‘So the tower would not accept you – us. The tummy-bellies were almost as mindless as the sea creature or the bird; they were accepted. What is now mirage to us is now reality to them. They were accepted.’
Another silence.
‘Accepted where?’ Gren asked. It had been so beautiful…
The morel did not answer directly.
‘This age is the long age of the vegetable,’ it said. ‘It has grown green upon the earth, it has rooted and proliferated without thought. It has taken many forms and exploited many environments, so that every possible ecological nook has long since been filled.
‘The earth is more impossibly overcrowded than it ever was in any earlier age. Plants everywhere… all ingeniously, mindlessly, seeding and propagating, doubling the confusion, adding to the pressing problem of how one more blade of grass can find a niche in which to grow.
‘When your distant predecessor, man, was ruler of this planet, he had a way with the overcrowded bed in his garden. He transplanted or weeded out. Now, somehow, nature has invented her own gardener. The rocks have shaped themselves into transmitters. Probably there are stations like this all round the coasts… stations where any near-mindless thing can be accepted for onward transmission… stations where plants can be transplanted…’
‘Transplanted where?’ Gren asked. ‘Where was that place?’
Something like a sigh floated down the aisles of his mind.
‘Can’t you see I’m guessing, Gren? Since I have joined forces with you, I have become part human. Who knows the worlds available to different forms of life? The sun means one thing to you and another to a flower. For us the sea is terrible; to that great creature we saw… There would be neither words nor thought to describe where we went; how could there be, when it was so patently the product of… non-ratiocinative processes…’
Gren got unsteadily to his feet.
‘I want to be sick,’ he said.
He staggered out of the cave.
‘To conceive of other dimensions, other modes of being – ’ continued the morel.
‘For soul’s sake, shut up!’ Gren cried. ‘What does it matter to me that there are places – states – I can’t… can’t attain. I can’t, and that’s that. It was all a beastly mirage, so leave me alone, will you? I want to be sick.’
The rain was abating a little. It pattered lightly on his backbone as he arched it to lean a head forward against a tree. His head throbbed, his eyes watered, his stomach heaved.
They would have to make sails from the big leaves and sail away from here, he and Yattmur and the four surviving tummy-belly men. They must get away. As it had become colder, they might have to make coverings for themselves out of those same leaves. This world was no paradise,