Hothouse - Brian Aldiss [92]
‘Not if it means looking after you as well.’
Before Gren finished speaking he received a blow, scattering directly over his brain, that sent him huddling against the cave wall in pain.
‘You and Yattmur will not desert the baby under any circumstances. You know that, and I see it in your thought. You know also that if any opportunity came you would get away from these barren miserable slopes to the fertile lands of light. That also fits in with my plan. Time presses, man; I must move according to my needs.
‘Knowing every fibre of you as I do, I pity your pain – but it can mean nothing at all to me when set against my own nature. I must have an able and preferably witless host that will carry me rapidly back into the sunlit world, so that I can seed there. So I have chosen Laren. That would be the best course for my progeny, don’t you think?’
‘I’m dying,’ Gren moaned.
‘Not yet,’ twanged the morel.
At the back of the tummy-belly cave sat Yattmur, half asleep. The foetid air of the place, the yammer of voices, the noise of the rain outside, all combined to dull her senses. She dozed, and Laren slept on a pile of dead foliage beside her. They had all eaten scorched leatherfeather, half-cooked, half-burnt over a blazing fire. Even the baby had accepted tit-bits.
When she appeared distraught at the cave entrance, the tummy-bellies welcomed her in, crying ‘Come, lovely sandwich lady, out of the raining wetness where the clouds fall. Come in with us to cuddle and make warmth without water.’
‘Who are these others with you?’ She looked anxiously at the eight mountainears, who were grinning and jumping up and down at the sight of her.
Seen close to, they were very formidable: a head taller than the humans, with thick shoulders on which long fur stood out like a mantle. They had grouped together behind the tummy-bellies, but now began circling Yattmur, showing their teeth and calling to each other in a weird perversion of speech.
Their faces were the most fearsome Yattmur had ever seen. Long-jawed, low-browed, they had snouts and brief yellow beards, while their ears curled out of fuzzy short fur like segments of raw flesh. Quick and irritable in movement, they seemed never to leave their faces in repose: bars of long, sharp ivories appeared and disappeared behind grey lips as they snapped out questions at her.
‘You yap you live here? On the Big Slope you yakker-yakker live? With the tummy-bellies, with the tummy-bellies live? You and them together, yipper-yap, slap-sleeping running living loving on the Big Big Slope?’
One of the largest mountainears asked Yattmur this rapid fire of questions, jumping before her and grimacing as he did so. His voice was so coarse and gutteral, his phrases so chopped into barks, that she had difficulty in understanding him at all. ‘Yipper yapper yes live you on Big Black Slope?’
‘Yes, I live on this mountain,’ she said, standing her ground. ‘Where do you live? What people are you?’
For answer he opened his goat eyes at her until a red brink of gristle showed all round them. Then he closed them tight, opened his cavernous jaws and emitted a high clucking soprano chord of laughter.
‘These sharp-fur people are gods, lovely sharp gods, sandwich lady,’ the tummy-bellies explained, the three of them hopping before her, jostling each other in an agony to be first to unburden their souls to her. ‘These sharp-fur people are called sharp-furs. They are our gods, missis, for they run all over the Big Slope mountain, to be gods for dear old tummy-belly men. They are gods, gods, they are big fierce gods, sandwich lady. They have tails!’
This last sentence was delivered in a cry of triumph. The whole mob of them went streaming round the cave, shrieking and whooping. Indeed the sharp-furs had tails, sticking out of their rumps at impudent angles. These the tummy-bellies chased, trying to pull and kiss them. As Yattmur shrank back, Laren, who had watched