Brian Aldiss - Hothouse, aka The Long Afternoon of Earth

'But you prefer them to death. How can we live here, Gren? It is merely a great round tower of rock skirted by a strip of sand.'

Gren lapsed into confused thought without reporting this unspoken conversation to Yattmur. The wise thing, he concluded, would be to postpone a decision until they had found the rest of the tummy-belly men.

He became aware of Yattmur looking more and more frequently over her shoulder at the high tower of rock. Bursting with nerves, he said, 'What's the matter with you? Look where you are going or you will break your neck.'

She took his hand.

'Hush! It will hear you,' she said. 'This terrible big tower of cliff has a million eyes that watch us all the time.'

As he began to turn his head she seized his face, pulling him down with her behind a protruding rock.

'Don't let it see that we know,' she whispered. 'Peep at it from here.'

So he did, his mouth dry, his gaze going over that large and watchful surface of grey. Cloud had obscured the sun, rendering the rock in the dull light more forbidding than ever. Already he had noticed that it was pitted; now he saw how evenly spaced those pits were, how much they resembled sockets, how uncannily they seemed to stare down at him from the rock face.

'You see!' Yattmur said. 'What terrible thing broods over this place? The place is haunted, Gren! What life have we seen since we came here? Nothing moving in the trees, nothing scampering on the beach, nothing climbing on that rock face. Only the speedseed, that something swallowed. Only we are alive, and for how much longer will that be?'

Even as she moaned, something moved on the tower of rock. The bleak eyes – now there was no mistaking them for anything else – rolled; countless numbers of them rolled in unison, and turned in a new direction as if to stare at something out to sea.

Compelled by the intensity of that stone gaze, Gren and Yattmur also turned. From where they crouched, only a section of the sea was visible, framed among the nearby broken rock lying on the beach. It was view enough for them to observe, far out on the grey waters, a commotion marking where a large swimming thing laboured towards the island.

'O shades! That creature's heading towards us! Do we run back to the boat?' Yattmur asked.

'Let's lie still. It cannot have seen us between these rocks.'

'The magic tower with eyes is calling it to come and devour us!'

'Nonsense,' said Gren, speaking also to his secret fears.

Hypnotized, they watched the sea thing. Spray made it difficult to distinguish its shape. Only two great flippers that flailed the water like crazy paddlewheels could be seen clearly at intervals. Occasionally they thought they could see a head poised as though straining towards the shore; but visibility was still failing.

The broad sheet of sea puckered. A rain curtain blew in from the heavy skies, cutting off sight of the sea creature and sousing everything with cold stinging droplets.

Obeying a common impulse, Gren and Yattmur dived for the trees, to stand dripping against one of the trunks. The rain redoubled its strength. For a moment they could see no farther than the tattered frill of whiteness that marked the margin of the sea.

From out of the wetness came a forlorn chord, a warning note as if the world were falling away. The sea creature was signalling for guidance. Almost at once it received answer. The island or the rock tower itself gave voice in return.

One hollow jarring note was wrenched from its very foundations. Not that it was a loud note; but it filled all things, spilling down to land and sea like the rain itself, as though every decibel was a drop that had to make itself individually felt. Shaken by the sound, Yattmur clung to Gren and cried.

Above her weeping, above the noise of the rain and sea, above the reverberations of the voice of the tower, another voice rose in a ragged intensity of fright and then died. It was a composite voice containing elements of supplication and reproach, and Gren recognized it.

'The missing tummy-belly men!' he exclaimed. 'They must be near at hand.'

He looked hopelessly about, dashing rain from his eyes as he did so. The great leathery leaves sagged and sprang up again under varying loads of water pouring off the cliff. Nothing but forest could be seen, forest bowing in submission to the downpour. Gren did not move; the tummy-bellies would have to wait till the rain abated. He stood where he was with an arm round Yattmur.

As they peered out towards the sea, the greyness before them was broken in a flurry of waves.

'O living shades, that creature has come to get us,' Yattmur breathed.

The vast marine creature had entered shallow water and was heaving itself from the sea. They saw the rain sizzling in cataracts off a great flat head. A mouth as narrow and heavy as a grave creaked open – and Yattmur broke from Gren's arms and ran off along the beach in the direction from which they had come, shrieking with fright.

'Yattmur!' His muscles strained to follow her, but the full dead weight of the morel's will fought unexpectedly against him. Gren stayed locked, momentarily immobile in a sprinter's stance. Caught off balance, he fell sideways into the streaming sand.

'Stay where you are,' twanged the morel. 'Since the creature is obviously not after us, we must stay to see what it is doing. It will do us no harm if you keep quiet.'

'But Yattmur -'

'Let the silly child go. We can find her later.'

Through the violence of the rain came an irregular and protracted groaning. The vast creature was out of breath. Laboriously it dragged itself up the shelving beach some few yards from where Gren lay. The rain folded it in grey curtains, so that with its anguished breathing and pained movements it took on the aspect, lumbering there in surroundings as unlikely as itself, of a grotesque symbol of pain conjured up in a dream.

Its head became hidden from Gren by the trees. Only its body could be seen, moved forward by jerks from its unwieldy flippers, before that too was concealed. The tail slithered up the beach; then it also was swallowed by the jungle.

'Go and see where it has gone,' ordered the morel.

'No,' said Gren. He knelt, and his body ran brown where rain and sand mingled.

'Do as I tell you,' twanged the morel. Always at the back of its mind lay its basic purpose, to propagate as widely as possible. Although this human had at first seemed by reason of its intelligence to hold promise as a useful host, it had hardly come up to expectations; a brute of mindless power such as they had just seen was worth investigation. The morel propelled Gren forward.

Walking by the fringe of the trees, they came to the sea creature's tracks. It had churned up a trench as deep as a man's height in its progress up the beach.

Gren dropped on to hands and knees, his blood racing. The creature could be only a short distince away; a distinct rotten briny smell hung in the air. He peered round a bole of a tree, following the tracks with his eye.

Here the strip of jungle stopped unexpectedly, to resume some paces farther along the shore. In the gap, the sand led right to the base of the cliff – and in the cliff was a large cave. Through the driving rain the monster's tracks could be seen leading right into the cave. Yet although the limits of the cave were visible – it was large enough to contain the creature, but no more – it stood silent and empty, like a mouth caught in a perpetual yawn of rock.

Perplexed, forgetting his fright, Gren came out into the open to observe better, and at once saw some of the sixteen tummy belly men.

They crouched together under the farther trees fringing the avenue of sand, pressing against the cliff very near the cave. Characteristically, they had sought shelter under an outcrop of rock that now sent a continuous spout of rainwater down upon them. With the long hairs of their bodies washed out flat, they looked very wet indeed, wet and frightened. When Gren appeared, they gave a wail of panic, clutching their genitals in apprehension.