Hothouse - Brian Aldiss [79]
A third stalker had rocked upwards, squealing as it went. He watched it straighten out, more slowly than its partners now the sun was hidden. The mainland was lost to view. A butterfly fluttered past and was gone; he remained alone on an uncharted mound, rolled up in a universe of watery obscurity.
Distantly, the iceberg groaned, its voice echoing drably across the ocean. He was alone, isolated from his kind by the morel fungus. Once it had filled him with hopes and dreams of conquest; now it gave him only a feeling of sickness; but he knew no way of ridding himself of it.
‘There goes another,’ the morel said, deliberately breaking into his thought. A fourth stalker had sprung up from the rock nearby. Its case loomed above them, hanging like a decapitated head on the dirty wall of fog. A breeze caught it, bumping it against its neighbour. The anemone-like protuberances stuck against each other, so that the two cases remained locked, swaying quietly on their long legs.
‘Ha!’ said the morel. ‘Keep watch, man, and don’t worry. These blooms are not separate plants. Six of them with their communal root structure go to make up one plant. They have grown from the six-pronged tubers we have seen, the crawlpaws. You watch and you’ll see the other two flowers of this particular group will be pollinated in a short while.’
Something of his excitement passed to Gren, warming him as he lay hunched among cold stones; staring and waiting because he could do nothing else, he let an age go by. Yattmur returned to him, threw over him a mat the tummy-bellies had plaited, and lay down beside him almost without speaking.
At last a fifth stalker flower was pollinated and rattled startlingly upwards. As its stalk straightened, it swayed against one of its neighbours; they joined, nodded on to the other pair as they did so, and then locked, so that a single case and a bundle of four now stood high above the humans’ heads.
‘What’s it mean?’ Yattmur asked.
‘Wait,’ Gren whispered. Scarcely had he spoken when the sixth and last fertilized drum headed up towards its brothers. Quivering, it hung in the mist awaiting a breeze; the breeze came; with hardly a sound, all six drums locked into one solid body. In the shrouded air, it resembled a hovering creature.
‘Can we go now?’ Yattmur asked.
Gren was shivering.
‘Tell the girl to fetch you some food,’ twanged the morel. ‘You are not leaving here yet.’
‘Are you going to have to stay here forever?’ she asked impatiently, when Gren passed on the message.
He shook his head. He didn’t know. Impatiently she vanished into the mist. A long while passed before she returned, and by then the stalker had taken the next step in its development.
The fog parted slightly. Horizontal rays of sun struck the stalker’s body, staining it bronze. As if encouraged by the slight additional warmth, the stalker moved one of its six stalks. The bottom of it snapped free from the root system and became a leg. The movement was repeated in each of the other legs. One by one they came free. As the last one was liberated, the stalker turned and began – oh, it was unmistakable, the seed cases on stilts began to walk downhill, slowly but sturdily.
‘Follow it,’ the morel twanged.
Climbing to his feet, Gren began to move in the wake of the thing, walking as stiffly as it did. Yartmur followed quietly by his side. Overhead, the yellow machine also followed.
The stalker happened to take their usual route to the beach. When the tummy-bellies saw it coming, they ran squealing into the bush for safety. Unperturbed, the stalker kept straight on, jabbed its way delicately through their camp, and headed for the sand.
Nor did it pause there. It stalked into the sea until little but its lumpy six-part body was above the water. It was slowly swallowed by mist as it waded in the direction of the coast. Beauty flew after it, uttering slogans, only to return in silence.
‘You see!’ exclaimed the morel, sounding so noisily inside Gren’s skull that he clutched his head. ‘There lies our escape route, Gren! These