Hothouse - Brian Aldiss [85]
Their descent was marked by thudding sounds. Peering down, Yattmur saw that they travelled through a bed of writhing worms. The worms were lashing themselves against the stilt legs of the stalker, which now moved with great care to avoid being thrown off balance. Glistening yellow in the stramineous light, the worms boiled and reared and thudded in fury. Some of them were tall enough to reach almost to where the humans crouched, so that as their heads flickered up on a level with Yatmur’s, she saw they had bowl-like receptors at their tips. Whether these receptors were mouths, or eyes, or organs to catch what heat there was, she could not say. But her moan of horror roused Glen from his trance; almost cheerfully he set about tackling terrors which he could comprehend, lopping off the squidgy yellow tips as they flicked out of the murk.
The stalker over to their left was also in trouble. Though they could see it only dimly, it had walked into a stretch where the worms grew taller. Silhouetted against a bright strip of land to the far side of the hill, it had been reduced to immobility, while a forest of boneless fingers boiled all round it. It toppled. Without a sound it fell, the end of its long journey marked by worms.
Unaffected by the catastrophe, the stalker on which the humans rode continued to edge downwards.
Already it was through the thickest patch of opposition. The worms were rooted to the ground and could not follow. They fell away, grew shorter, more widely spaced, finally sprouted only in bunches, which the stalker avoided.
Relaxing slightly, Gren took the opportunity to look more searchingly at their surroundings. Yattmur hid her face in his shoulder; sickness stirred in her stomach and she wanted to see no more.
chapter twenty-one
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Rock and stones lay thick on the ground below the stalker’s legs. This detritus had been shed by an ancient river which no longer flowed; the old river bed marked the bottom of a valley; when they crossed it, they began to climb, over ground free of any form of growth.
‘Let us die!’ moaned one of the tummy-belly men. ‘It is too awful to be alive in the land of death. Turn all things the same, great herder, give us the benefit of the cutting of your cosy and cruel little cutting sword. Let tummy-belly men have a quick short cutting to leave this long land of death! O, O, O, the cold burns us, ayeee, the long cold cold!’
In chorus they cried their woe.
Gren let them moan, At last, growing weary of their noise, which echoed so strangely across the valley, he lifted his stick to strike them. Yattmur restrained him.
‘Are they not right to moan?’ she asked. ‘I would rather moan with them than strike them, for soon it must be that we shall die with them. We have gone beyond the world, Gren. Only death can live here.’
‘We may not be free, but the stalkers are free. They would not walk to their death. You are turning into a tummy-belly, woman!’
For a moment she was silent. Then she said, ‘I need comfort, not reproach. Sickness stirs like death in my stomach.’
She spoke without knowing that the sickness in her stomach was not death but life.
Gren made no answer. The stalker moved steadily over rising ground. Lulled by the threnody of the tummy-bellies, Yattmur fell asleep. Once the cold woke her. The chant had ceased; all her companions were sleeping. A second time she woke, to hear Gren weeping; but lethargy had her, so that she succumbed again to tiring dreams.
When she roused once more, she came fully awake with a start. The dreary twilight was broken by a shapeless red mass apparently suspended in the air. Gasping between fright and hope, she shook Gren.
‘Look, Gren,’ she cried, pointing up ahead. ‘Something burns there! What are we coming to?’
The stalker quickened its pace, almost as if it had scented its destination.
In the near-dark, seeing ahead was baffling.