Hothouse - Brian Aldiss [99]
Thickly through his mastication, Sodal Ye replied, ‘Something of all that I may tell you or I may not. You may as well know that only this one mute female can “vanish”, as you call it. Let me eat. Keep quiet.’
At last he had finished.
In the bottom of the gourd he had left some scraps, and on these the three woebegone humans made their meal, drawing to one side in pitiful modesty to do so. The women fed their stooped fellow, whose arms were still fixed as if paralysed over his head.
‘Now I am prepared to hear your story,’ announced the sodal, ‘and do something to help you if possible. Know that I come of the wisest race of this planet. My kind have covered all the vast seas and most of the less interesting land. I am a prophet, a Sodal of the Highest Knowledge, and I will stoop to help you if I consider your need interesting enough.’
‘Your pride is remarkable,’ she said.
‘Pah, what is pride when the Earth is about to die? Proceed with your silly tale, mother, if you are going to proceed at all.’
chapter twenty-four
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Yattmur wished to present the sodal with her problem concerning Gren and the morel. But because she possessed no skill in unfolding a story and selecting the telling details for it, she gave him virtually the history of her life, and of her childhood with the herders who lived on the edge of the forest by Black Mouth. She then related the arrival of Gren with his mate Poyly, and spoke of Poyly’s death, and of their subsequent wanderings, until fate like a heavy sea had cast them upon the shores of the Big Slope. Then finally she told of the birth of her baby, and of how she knew it to be threatened by the morel.
During all this, the sodal of the catch-carry-kind lay with seeming indifference on his boulder, his lower lip hanging low enough to reveal the orange rims round his teeth. Beside him – with total indifference – the pair of tattooed women lay on the grass flanking the bowed porter, who still stood like a monument to care with his arms above his skull. The sodal surveyed none of them; his gaze roved over the heavens.
At last he said, ‘You make an interesting case. I have heard details of many infinitesimal lives not unlike yours. By fitting them all together – by synthesizing them in my extraordinary intelligence – I can construct a true picture of this world in its last stages of existence.’
Angrily Yattmur stood up.
‘Why I could knock you off your perch for that, you deboshed fish!’ she exclaimed. ‘Is that all you have to say when previously you offered help?’
‘Oh I could say a deal more, little human. But your problem is so simple that for me it scarcely seems to exist. I have met with these morels before in my travels, and though they are clever fellows, they have several points of vulnerability upon which anyone of my intellect will quickly seize.’
‘Please make a suggestion quickly.’
‘I have only one suggestion: that you entrust your baby to your mate Gren when he calls for it.’
‘That I can’t do!’
‘Ah ha, but you must. Don’t back away. Come here while I explain why you must.’
She did not like the sodal’s plan. But behind his conceit and pomposity lay a stubborn stony force; his presence too was awing; the very way he chewed out his words made them seem incontrovertible; so Yattmur clutched Laren with all-ease and agreed to his dictates.
‘I dare not go and face him in the cave,’ she said.
‘Get your tummy-creatures to fetch him here then,’ ordered the sodal. ‘And hurry up about it. I travel on behalf of Fate, a master who at present has too much on his hands to bother with your concerns.’
A rumble of thunder sounded, as if some mighty being signalled agreement with his words. Yattmur looked anxiously towards the sun, still wearing its cocky feather of fire, and then went to speak to the tummy-bellies.
They sprawled together in the cosy dirt, arms round each other, chattering. As she entered the cave mouth, one of them picked up a handful of earth and gravel and flung it at her.
‘Before now you don’t come in our cave or