Hothouse - Brian Aldiss [95]
‘Stop! Don’t hurt them, let them come!’ Yattmur shouted. ‘They can’t harm us.’
‘Catchy carry kind! You you yap you keep quiet, lady, and be not any harm or take harm!’ they called, unintelligble with excitement. One of them charged at her, head first, banging his gourd helmet against her shoulder. In fear of him she turned and ran, blindly at first and then with purpose.
She could not deal with the sharp-furs: but probably Gren and the morel could.
Squelching and splashing, she ran back to her own cave. Unthinkingly, she plunged right in.
Gren stood against the wall by the entrance, half-concealed. She was past him before she realized it, only turning as he began to bear down on her.
Helpless with shock, she screamed and screamed, her mouth sagging toothily wide at the sight of him.
The surface of the morel was black and pustular now – and it had slipped down so that it covered all his face. Only his eyes gleamed sickly in the midst of it as he jumped forward at her.
She sank to her knees. It was all she could manage at the moment in the way of evasive action, so completely had the sight of that huge cancerous growth on Gren’s shoulders unnerved her.
‘Oh Gren!’ she gasped weakly.
He bent and took her roughly by her hair. The physical pain of this cleared her mind; though she trembled like a hill under a landslide of emotion, her wits returned to her.
‘Gren, the morel thing is killing you,’ she whispered.
‘Where’s the baby?’ he demanded. Though his voice was muffled, it had too an additional remoteness, a twanging quality, that gave her one more item for alarm. ‘What have you done with the baby, Yattmur?’
Cringing, she said, ‘You don’t speak like yourself any more, Gren. What’s happening? You know I don’t hate you – tell me what’s happening, so that I can understand.’
‘Why have you not brought the baby?’
‘You’re not like Gren any more. You’re – you’re somehow the morel now, aren’t you? You talk with his voice.’
‘Yattmur – I need the baby.’
Struggling to her feet though he still clasped her hair, she said, as steadily as possible, ‘Tell me what you want Laren for.’
‘The baby is mine and I need him. Where have you put him?’
She pointed to the gloomy recesses of the cave.
‘Don’t be silly, Gren. He’s lying back there behind you, at the back of the cave, fast asleep.’
Even as he looked, as his attention was diverted, she wrenched herself out of his grip, ducked under his arm, and ran. Squeaking with terror, she burst into the open.
Again the rain soused down on to her face, bringing her back to a world she had left – though that horrifying glimpse of Gren had seemed to last forever – little more than a moment before. From where she stood, the hillside cut off that strange trio the sharp-furs had called the catchy-carry-kind, but the group about the sledge was clearly visible. It stood in a tableau, tummy-bellies and sharp-furs motionless, looking over towards her, diverted from their other business by her screams.
She ran over to them, glad for all their irrationality to be with them again. Only then did she look back.
Gren had followed her from the cave mouth and there had stopped. After pausing indecisively, he went back and disappeared. The sharp-furs muttered and chattered to themselves, evidently awed by what they had seen. Taking advantage of the situation, Yattmur pointed back at Gren’s cave and said, ‘Unless you obey me, that terrible mate of mine with the deadly sponge face will come and devour you all. Now, let these other people approach, and don’t harm them until they offer us harm.’
‘Catchy-carry-kind no yap yap good!’ they burst out.
‘Do as I say or the sponge-face will devour you, ears and fur and all!’
The three slowly moving figures were nearer now. Two of them were human in outline, if very thin, though the weird biscuit light pervading everywhere