Hothouse - Brian Aldiss [71]
‘Ohhh! Ahhh!’ At the sun’s disappearance, a cry of dismay rose from the tummy-bellies. They had been cuddled together on a pile of dead leaves in the stern. Now they came scampering forward, seizing Gren’s and Yattmur’s hands.
‘O mighty master and sandwich-makers!’ they cried. ‘All this mighty watery world sailing is too much badness, too much badness, for we have sailed away and lost all the world. The world has gone by bad sailing and we must quickly good-sail to get it back.’
Their long hair glistened with moisture, their eyes were in a fine frenzy rolling. They bounced up and down, crying their woes.
‘Some creature has eaten the sun, O great herder!’
‘Stop your silly noise,’ Yattmur said. ‘We are as frightened as you are.’
‘No we are not,’ Gren exclaimed angrily, dashing their clammy hands from his flesh. ‘Nobody could be as frightened as they are, for they are always frightened. Stand back, you blubbering tummy-bellies! The sun will come again when the mist clears.’
‘You brave cruel herder,’ one of the creatures cried. ‘You have hidden the sun to scare us because you love us no more, though we happily enjoy your lovely blows and happy good bad words! You – ’
Gren struck out at the man, glad to relieve his tensions in action. The poor fellow reeled backwards squealing. His companions fell on him instantly, cuffing him for not enjoying the mighty hurts with which his master honoured him. Savagely, Gren pulled them away.
As Yattmur came to his aid, a shock sent them all reeling. The deck canted sharply, and they sprawled together, six of them in a heap. Splinters of a jagged transparent stuff showered on to them.
Unhurt, Yattmur picked up one of the splinters and looked at it. As she watched it, the shard changed, dwindled, and left only a tiny puddle of water in her hand. She stared in surprise. A wall of the same glassy substance loomed over the front of the boat.
‘Oh!’ she said dully, realizing they had struck one of the phantom shapes they had noticed riding along on the sea. ‘A mountain of fog has caught us.’
Gren jumped up, silencing the loud protestations of the tummy-belly men. A gash was visible in the bows of their boat, through which only a trickle of water ran. He climbed on to the side and peered about.
The warm current had carried them into a great glassy mountain that appeared to float on the sea. The mountain had been eroded at water level, forming a sloping shelf there; it was up this icy beach that they had been driven, and this that kept their broken bow partly above the water.
‘We shan’t sink,’ Gren said to Yattmur, ‘for there is a ledge under us. But the boat is useless now; off the ledge, it would sink.’
It was indeed filling steadily with water, as the wails of the tummy-bellies testified.
‘What can we do?’ Yattmur asked. ‘Perhaps we should have stayed at the island of the tall cliff.’
Doubtfully, Gren looked about. A great row of what resembled long sharp teeth hung over the deck as if about to bite the ship in two. Icy droplets of saliva fell from them, splashing the humans. They had sailed straight in to this glass monster’s mouth!
Near at hand, its entrails were dimly visible, filling their vision with an array of blue and green lines and planes, some of which – with a dull murderous beauty – glowed orange from a sun still hidden from the humans.
‘This ice beast prepares to eat us!’ yelped the tummy-bellies, scampering round the deck. ‘Oh, oh, our death moment come hot upon us, ice cold in these nasty freezing jaws.’
‘Ice!’ exclaimed Yattmur. ‘Yes! How strange that these foolish belly-boy fishers should give us knowledge. Gren, this stuff is called ice. In the marsh grounds near Long Water where the tummies lived grew little flowers called colderpolders. At certain times these flowers, which flourish in the shade, made this cold ice to keep their seed in. When I was a girl-child