Brian Aldiss - Hothouse, aka The Long Afternoon of Earth

'Come out here!' called Gren, still looking round to try to account for the disappearance of the sea monster.

With the rain spurting into their faces, the tummy-belly men were thoroughly demoralized; Gren recalled their idiot cry of fear when they had glimpsed the monster. Now they showed an inclination to run from him, milling round in tight circles like sheep and uttering meaningless sounds. Fury for their stupidity filled Gren's veins. He picked up a heavy stone.

'Come out here to me, you blubbering belly babies!' he called.' Quickly before the monster finds you!'

'O terror! O master! All things hate poor lovely tummy-belly men!' they cried, blundering into each other and turning their fat backs on him.

Infuriated, Gren flung his stone. It hit one of the men on the buttock, a good shot that had a bad effect. The stricken one jumped squealing into the avenue of sand, whirled about, and began to run away from Gren towards the cave. Taking up the cry, the others bounded and tumbled after him, all clasping their behinds in imitation.

'Come back!' Gren cried, running after them down the centre of the sea monster's tracks. 'Stay out of that cave.'

They paid him no heed. Yelping like curs, they burst into the cave, their noise echoing sharply back from its walls. Gren followed them.

The briny reek of the sea monster was heavy in the air.

'Get out of here as quickly as you can,' the morel advised in Gren's mind, sending a twinge through his whole body.

All over the walls and roof of the cave were protruding rods of rock, pointing inwards and ending in eye sockets similar to those on the outside of the cliff. These eye sockets too were watchful; as the tummy-belly men bumped into them, they rolled back lids and began to stare, one by one, more and more.

Finding they were cornered, the men began to sprawl in the sand at Gren's feet and set up a hullabaloo for mercy.

'O mighty big killing lord with strong skin, O king of running and chasing, look how we ran to you when we saw you! How glad we are to honour our poor old tummy-eyes with a sight of you. We ran straight to you, though our poor running was confused and somehow our legs sent us the wrong way instead of happy right ways because the rain confused us.'

More eyes were opening round the cave now, directing a stony stare at the group. Gren seized one of the tummy-bellies roughly by his hair and pulled him into a standing position; at this the others fell quiet, glad perhaps that they had been momentarily spared.

'Now you listen to me,' Gren said, through clenched teeth. He had come to hate these people with a fierce aversion, for they drew out all the latent bullying instincts in him. 'I wish none of you harm, as I've told you before. But you have all got to get out of here at once. Danger waits here. Back on to the beach, quick, the lot of you!'

'You will stone us -'

'Never mind what I'll do! Do what I say. Move!' And as he spoke he sent the fellow reeling towards the cave mouth.

Then what Gren thought of afterwards as the Mirage began.

A critical number of eyes in the cave walls had opened.

Time stopped. The world turned green. The tummy-belly man by the cave mouth perched on one leg in a flying attitude, turned green, petrified in his absurd position. The rain behind him turned green. Everything: green and immobile.

And shrinking. To dwindle. To shrivel and contract. To become a drop of rain falling forever down the lungs of the heavens. Or to be a grain of sand marking an eternal tumble through hourglasses of endless time. To be a proton speeding inexhaustibly through its own pocket-sized version of limitless space. Finally to reach the infinite immensity of being nothing... the infinite richness of non-existence... and thus of becoming God... and thus of being the top and tail of one's own creation...

... of summoning up a billion worlds to rattle along the green links of every second... of flying through uncreated stacks of green matter that waited in a vast ante-chamber of being for its hour or eon of use...

For he was flying, wasn't he? And these happier notes alongside (weren't they?), were the beings that he or someone else, someone on another plane of memory, had once called 'tummy-bellies'. And if it was flight, then it was happening in this impossible green universe of delight, in some element other than air and in some flux apart from time. And they were flying in light, emitting light.

And they were not alone.

Everything was with them. Life had replaced time, that was it; death had gone, for the clocks here would tick off fertilities only. But two of the everythings were familiar...

In that vague other existence – oh it was so hard to recall, a dream within a dream – that existence connected with a beach of sand and grey rain (grey? that could be nothing like green, for green had no likenesses), in that existence there had been a great bird diving and a great beast emerging from the sea... and they had come through the... mirage and were here in this same sappy delight. The element about them was full of the assurance that here there was room for everything to grow and develop without conflict, to develop for ever if needed, tummy-belly, bird, or monster.

And he knew that the others had been directed to the mirage in a way he had not. Not that it mattered, for here was the sugar of being, of just being in this effortless eternal flight/ dance/song, without time or scale or worry.

With only the fulfilment of growing green and good.

Yet he was somehow falling behind the others! His first impetus was dying. There was worry, even here, and dimension had some meaning even here, or he would not be behind them.

They would not be looking back, smiling, beckoning, the bird, the beast, the tummy-bellies. Spores, seeds, happy sappy things, would not be whirling, filling the growing distance between him and his companions. He would not be following, crying, losing it all... Oh, losing all this suddenly dear and bright unimaginable natured place.

He would not be aware again of fear, of a last hopeless attempt to regain paradise, of the green going, of vertigo taking him, and eyes, a million eyes all saying 'No' and spitting him back where he belonged...

He was back in the cave, sprawled on the trampled sand in a posture crudely aping flight. He was alone. About him, a million stone eyes closed in disdain, and a green music died from his brain. He was doubly alone as the tower of rock removed its presence from the cave.

The rain still rained. He knew that that measureless eternity during which he had been away had lasted only for a flicker of time. Time... whatever it was... perhaps it was just a subjective phenomenon, a mechanism in a human bloodstream from which vegetables did not suffer.

Gren sat up, startled by his thoughts.

'Morel!' he whispered.

'I'm here... '

A long silence fell.

At last without prompting the brain fungus spoke.

'You have a mind, Gren,' it twanged. 'So the tower would not accept you – us. The tummy-bellies were almost as mindless as the sea creature or the bird; they were accepted. What is now mirage to us is now reality to them. They were accepted.'

Another silence.

'Accepted where?' Gren asked. It had been so beautiful...

The morel did not answer directly.

'This age is the long age of the vegetable,' it said. 'It has grown green upon the earth, it has rooted and proliferated without thought. It has taken many forms and exploited many environments, so that every possible ecological nook has long since been filled.

"The earth is more impossibly overcrowded than it ever was in any earlier age. Plants everywhere... all ingeniously, mindlessly, seeding and propagating, doubling the confusion, adding to the pressing problem of how one more blade of grass can find a niche in which to grow.