Brian Aldiss - Hothouse, aka The Long Afternoon of Earth

The tuning knobs could be twiddled, the switches clicked!

With scarcely a murmur, Beauty rose from the ground, hovered before their eyes, rose above their heads. They cried with astonishment, they fell backwards, breaking the yellow container. It made no difference to Beauty. Superb in powered flight, it wheeled above them, glowing richly in the sun.

When it had gained sufficient altitude, it spoke.

'Make the world safe for democracy!' it cried. Its voice was not loud but piercing.

'Oh, it speaks!' cried Yattmur, gazing in delight at the flashing wings.

Up came the tummy-bellies, running to join in the excitement, falling back in apprehension when Beauty flew over them, standing baffled as it circled round their heads.

'Who rigged the disastrous dock strike of '31?' Beauty demanded rhetorically. "The same men who would put a ring through your noses today. Think for yourselves, friends, and vote for srh – vote for freedom!'

'It – what is it saying, morel?' Gren asked.

'It is talking of men with rings through their noses,' said the morel, who was as baffled as Gren. 'That is what men wore when they were civilized. You must try to learn from what it is saying.'

Beauty circled round one of the tall stalkers and remained overhead, buzzing slightly and emitting an occasional slogan. The humans, feeling they had gained an ally, were greatly cheered; for a long while they stood with their heads back, watching and listening. The tummy-bellies beat their stomachs in delight at its antics.

'Let us go back and try to unearth another toy,' Yattmur suggested.

After a moment's silence, Gren replied, 'The morel says not. He wants us to go down when we do not want to; when we want to go, he does not. I do not understand.'

'Then you are foolish,' grumbled the morel. 'This circling Beauty will not get us ashore. I want to think. We must help ourselves; especially I wish to observe these stalker plants. Keep quiet and don't bother me.'

It did not communicate with Gren for a long while. He and Yattmur were free to bathe again in the pool, and wash the underground dirt from their bodies and hair, while the tummy-bellies lolled near at hand, scarcely complaining, hypnotized by the yellow bird that circled tirelessly above them. Afterwards, they hunted over the ridge of the islet, away from the tumbled stones; Beauty wheeled above them following, occasionally crying 'The srh and a two-day working week!'

BEARING in mind what the morel had said, Gren took more notice than before of the stalker plants. Despite their strong and interlinked root structure, the actual flowers were of a lowly order, though, canted towards the sun, they attracted the cordate butterflies. Beneath five bright and simple petals grew a disproportionately large seed pod, a sexfid drum, from each face of which protruded gummy and fringed bosses resembling sea anemones.

All this Gren observed without interest. What happened to the flowers on fertilization was more sensational. Yattmur was passing one of them when a treebee bumbled past her and landed on the blossom, crawling over its pistil. The plant responded to pollination with violence. With an odd shrilling noise, flower and seed drum rocked up skywards on a spring that unravelled itself from the drum.

Yattmur dived into the nearest bush in startlement, Gren close behind. Cautiously they watched; they watched the spring unwind more slowly now. Warmed by the sun, it straightened and dried into a tall stalk. The six-sided drum nodded in sunlight, far above their heads.

For the humans, the vegetable kingdom offered no wonders. Anything that held no menace held little interest. They had already seen these stalkers, waving high in the air.

'Statistics prove that you are better off than your bosses,' Beauty said, flying round the new pole and returning. 'Be warned by what happened to the Bombay Interplanetary Freight Handlers' Union! Stand up for your rights while you still have them.

Only a few bushes away, another stalker rattled up into the air, its stalk straightening and gaining rigidity.

'Let's get back,' Gren said. 'Let's go and have a swim.'

As he spoke, the morel clamped down on him. He staggered and fought, then fell over into a bush, sprawling in pain.

'Gren! Gren! What is it?' Yattmur gasped, running to him, grasping his shoulders.

'I– I-I -' He could not get the words out of his mouth. A blue tinge spread from his lips outwards. His limbs went rigid. Within his head, the morel was punishing him, paralysing his nervous system.

'I've been too gentle with you, Gren. You're a vegetable! I gave you a warning. In future I will do more commanding and you will do more obeying. Though I do not expect you to think, you can at least observe and let me do the thinking. Here we are on the fringe of finding something valuable about these plants, and you turn stupidly away. Do you want to rot forever on this rock? Now lie still and watch, or I'll visit you with cramps, like this I'

Painfully, Gren rolled over, burrowing his face in grass and dirt. She lifted him up, crying his name in sorrow at his hurt.

'It's this magic fungus!' she said, looking with distaste at the hard glistening crust that ringed his neck. Her eyes filled with tears. 'Gren, my love, come along. Another mist is blowing up. We must get back to the others.'

He shook his head. Again his body was his own – for the present at least – and the cramps died from it, leaving his limbs as weak as jelly.

'The morel wants me to remain here,' he said faintly. Tears of weakness stood in his eyes. 'You go back to the others.'

Distressed, she stood up. She twisted her hands in anger at their helplessness.

'I'll be back soon,' she said. The tummy-bellies had to be looked after. They were almost too stupid to eat by themselves unless directed. As she picked her way back down the slope, she whispered aloud, 'O spirits of the sun, banish that magic fungus of cruelty and guile before he kills my dear lover.'

Unfortunately the spirits of the sun looked particularly weak. A chill wind blew from the waters, carrying with it a fog that obscured the light. Close by the island sailed an iceberg; its creaking and cracking could be heard even when it had disappeared phantom-like into the fog.

Half hidden by bushes, Gren lay where he was, watching. Beauty hovered overhead, faint in the gathering mist, calling out its slogan at intervals.

A third stalker had rocked upwards, squealing as it went. He watched it straighten out, more slowly than its partners now the sun was hidden. The mainland was lost to view. A butterfly fluttered past and was gone; he remained alone on an uncharted mound, rolled up in a universe of watery obscurity.

Distantly, the iceberg groaned, its voice echoing drably across the ocean. He was alone, isolated from his kind by the morel fungus. Once it had filled him with hopes and dreams of conquest; now it gave him only a feeling of sickness; but he knew no way of ridding himself of it.

'There goes another,' fhe morel said, deliberately breaking into his thought. A fourth stalker had sprung up from the rock nearby. Its case loomed above them, hanging like a decapitated head on the dirty wall of fog. A breeze caught it, bumping it against its neighbour. The anemone-like protruberances stuck against each other, so that the two cases remained locked, swaying quietly on their long legs.

'Ha!' said the morel. 'Keep watch, man, and don't worry. These blooms are not separate plants. Six of them with their communal root structure go to make up one plant. They have grown from the six-pronged tubers we have seen, the crawl-paws. You watch and you'll see the other two flowers of this particular group will be pollinated in a short while.'