Brian Aldiss - Hothouse, aka The Long Afternoon of Earth

One of the group, a stocky woman with braided hair in which was inserted a gleaming shell, stood forward. She held out her hand palm upwards.

'Greetings, strangers, I am called Hutweer. I lead these herders. If you join us, you follow me. Do you consent to that?'

If we do not consent, they may kill us, thought Gren.

Right from the first we must show we are leaders, replied the morel.

Their knives point at us, Gren told it.

We must lead from the start or not at all, the morel returned.

As they stood wrapped in conflict, Hutweer clapped her hands impatiently.

'Answer, strangers! Will you follow Hutweer?'

We must agree, morel.

No Gren, we cannot afford to.

But they will kill us!

You must kill her first then, Poyly!

No!

I say yes.

No... No... No...

Their thoughts grew more fierce as a three-cornered argument grew up.

'Herders, alert!' Hutweer called. Dropping her hand to her sword belt, she came a pace nearer, her face stern. Obviously these strangers were not friends.

To the strangers something strange was happening. They began to writhe, as if in an unearthly dance. Poyly's hands twisted up to the darkly glistening ruff about her neck, and then curved away as if dragged by force. Both of them twisted slowly and stamped their feet. Their faces stretched and wrinkled in an unknown pain. From their mouths came foam, and in their extremity they urinated upon the hard ground.

Slowly they moved, staggered, turned, arching their bodies, biting their lips, while their eyes glared madly at nothing.

The herders dropped back in awe.

'They fell on me from the sky! They must be spirits!' Yatt-mur cried, covering her face.

Hutweer dropped the sword she had drawn, her countenance pale. It was a sign to her followers. With frightened haste they dropped their weapons, hiding their faces in their hands.

Directly the morel saw that it had inadvertently achieved what it had wished to do, it ceased trying to impose its will on Gren and Poyly. As the wrenching pressure on their minds relaxed, they would have fallen had the fungus not stiffened them again.

'We have won the victory we need, Poyly,' it said in its harp-like voice. 'Hutweer kneels before us. Now you must speak to them.'

'I hate you, morel,' she said sullenly. 'Make Gren do your work – I won't.'

Strongly prompted by the fungus, Gren went over to Hutweer and took her hand.

'Now you have acknowledged us,' he said, 'you need fear no more. Only never forget that we are spirits inhabited by spirits. We will work with you. Together we shall establish a mighty tribe where we can live in peace. Human beings will no longer be fugitives of the forest. We are going to lead you out of the forest to greatness.'

'The way out of the forest is only just ahead,' Yattmur ventured. She had handed the captive jumpvils to one of the other women, and now came forward to hear what Gren was saying.

'We will lead you farther than that,' he told her.

'Will you free us from the spirit of the Black Mouth?' Hutweer enquired boldly.

'You shall be led as you deserve,' Gren declared. 'First my fellow spirit Poyly and I desire food and sleep, then we will talk with you. Take us now to your place of safety.'

Hutweer bowed – and disappeared into the ground beneath her feet.

THE tortured lava bed on which they were standing was pierced by many holes. Under some of these, the earth had fallen away or had been scooped out by the herders to form a hideout below ground level. Here they lived in something like safety and something like darkness, in a cave provided with boltholes conveniently situated overhead.

With Yattmur helping them, Poyly and Gren were induced to go down into the gloom more gently than Hutweer had done. There they were seated on couches and a meal was brought to them almost at once.

They tasted jumpvil, which the herders had flavoured in a way unknown to the two travellers, with spices to make it tempting and peppers to make it hot. Jumpvil, Yattmur explained, was one of their chief dishes; but they had a speciality, and this was now set before Gren and Poyly with some deference.

'It is called fish,' Yattmur said, when they expressed their satisfaction with it. 'It comes from the Long Water that pours from the Black Mouth.'

At this, the morel became attentive and made Gren ask, 'How do you catch this fish if it lives in water?'

'We do not catch them. We do not go to the Long Water, for a tribe of strange men called Fishers live there. Sometimes we meet them, and as we are at peace with them we exchange our jumpvil for their fish.'

The life of the herders sounded pleasant. Trying to work out exactly what their advantages were, Poyly asked Hutweer, 'Are there not many enemies around you?'

Hutweer smiled.

'There are very few enemies here. Our big enemy, the Black Mouth, swallows them. We live near the Black Mouth because we believe one big enemy is easier to deal with than a lot of small ones.'

At this the morel began to confer urgently with Gren. Gren had now learnt to talk in his mind with the morel without speaking aloud, an art Poyly never mastered.

'We must examine this Mouth of which they talk so much.' the morel twanged. 'The sooner the better. And since you have lost face by eating with them like an ordinary human, you must also make them a stirring speech. The two must go together. Let us find out this Mouth and show them how little we fear it by speaking there.'

'No, morel! You think clever but you don't think sense! If these fine herders fear the Black Mouth, I am prepared to do the same.'

'If you think like that, we are lost.'

'Poyly and I are tired. You do not know what tiredness is. Let us sleep as you promised us we could.'

'You are always sleeping. First we must show how strong we are.'

'How can we when we are weak from tiredness?' Poyly interposed.

'Do you want to be killed while you sleep?'

So the morel had its way, and Gren and Poyly demanded to be taken to look at the Black Mouth.

At this the herders were startled. Hutweer silenced their murmurs of apprehension.

'It shall be as you say, O Spirits. Come forth, Iccall,' she cried, and at once a young male with a white wishbone in his hair jumped forward. He held his palm upwards in greeting to Poyly.

'Young Iccall is our best Singer,' Hutweer said. 'With him you will come to no harm. He will show you the Black Mouth and bring you back here. We will await your return.'

They climbed up again in the broad and everlasting daylight. As they stood blinking, feeling the hot pumice beneath their feet, Iccall smiled brilliantly at Poyly and said, 'I know you feel tired, but it is only a little way I have to take you.'

'Oh, I'm not tired, thank you,' Poyly said, smiling back, for Iccall had large dark eyes and a soft skin, and was as beautiful in his way as Yattmur. 'That is a pretty bone in your hair, shaped like the veins of a leaf.'

'They are very rare – perhaps I might get you one.'

'Let's move if we are going,' Gren said sharply to Iccall, thinking he had never seen a man grin so foolishly. 'How can a mere singer – if that is what you are – be any use against this mighty enemy, the Black Mouth?'

'Because when the Mouth sings, I sing – and I sing better,' said Iccall, not at all upset, and he led the way among the leaves and the broken pillars of rock, swaggering a little as he went.

As he foretold, they did not have far to go. The ground continued to rise gently and became more and more coated with the black and red igneous rock, so that nothing could grow there. Even the banyan, which had crossed a thousand miles of continent in its sinewy stride, was forced to draw back here. Its outmost trunks showed scars from the last lava flow, yet they dropped aerial roots which explored among the rock for nourishment with greedy fingers.