Brian Aldiss - Hothouse, aka The Long Afternoon of Earth

She and Gren called these beings Mountainears, and kept a sharp watch out for them, for the creatures were fast and well-armed, though they had never offered the humans any harm.

For a moment the tableau held: three tummy-belly men trotting downhill, eight mountainears moving up, and the one surviving bird wheeling overhead, uncertain whether to mourn or escape. The mountainears were armed with bows and arrows; tiny but clear in the distance, they lifted their weapons, and suddenly Yattmur was full of anxiety for the three plump half-wits with whom she had travelled so far. Clutching Laren to her breast, she stood up and called to them.

'Hey, you tummies! Come back!'

Even as she called, the first fierce mountainear had unleashed his arrow. Swift and sure it went – and the surviving leather-feather spiralled down. Beneath it, the leading tummy-belly ducked and squealed. The falling bird, its wings still faintly beating, hit him between the shoulder blades as it dropped. Staggering, he fell, while the bird flopped feebly about him.

The group of tummy-bellies and mountainears met.

Yattmur turned and ran. She burst into the smoky cave where she, Gren, and the baby lived.

'Grenl Please come! The tummy-bellies will be killed. They are out there with the terrible big-eared white ones attacking them. What can we do?'

Gren lay propped against a column of rock, his hands clasped together on his stomach. When Yattmur entered, he fixed her with a dead gaze, then dropped his eyes again. Pallor marked his features, contrasting with the rich livery brown that glistened about his head and throat, framing his face with its sticky folds.

'Are you going to do anything?' she demanded. 'What is the matter with you these days?'

'The tummy-bellies are useless to us,' Gren said. Nevertheless, he stood up. She put out her hand, which he clutched listlessly, and dragged him to the cave mouth.

'I've grown fond of the poor creatures,' she said, almost to herself.

They peered down the steep slope to where figures moved against a backdrop of hazy shadow.

The three tummy-belly men were walking back up the hill, dragging one of the leatherfeathers with them. Beside them walked the mountainears, pulling their sleigh, on the top of which lay the other leatherfeather. The two groups went amicably together, chattering with plentiful gesticulation from the tummy-bellies.

'Well, what do you make of that?' Yattmur exclaimed.

It was an odd procession. The mountainears in profile were sharp-snouted; they moved in an irregular fashion, sometimes dropping forward to pace on all fours up the incline. Their language came to Yattmur in short barks of sound, though they were too far away for her to distinguish what was being said – even provided that what they said was intelligible.

'What do you make of it, Gren?' she asked.

He said nothing, staring out at the little crowd that was now clearly heading for the cave in which he had directed the tummy-bellies to live. As they passed beyond the stalker grove, he saw them point in his direction and laugh. He made no sign.

Yattmur looked up at him, suddenly struck with pity at the change that had recently possessed him.

'You say so little and you look so ill, my love. We have come so far together, you and I with only each other to love, yet now it is as if you were gone from me. From my heart flows only love for you, from my lips only kindness. But love and kindness are lost things on you now, O Gren, O my Gren!'

She put her free arm round him, only to feel him move away. Yet he said, as if the words came wrapped one by one in ice, 'Help me, Yattmur. Be patient. I am ill.'

Now she was half-preoccupied with the other matter.

'You'll be better. But what are those savage mountainears doing? Can they be friendly?'

'You'd better go and see,' Gren said, still in his bleak voice. He disengaged her hand, went back inside the cave and lay down, resuming his former position with his hands clasped over his stomach. Yattmur sat down at the cave mouth, undecided. The tummy-bellies and mountainears had disappeared into the other cave. The girl stayed helplessly where she was, while clouds piled up overhead. Presently it began to rain, the rain turning to snow. Laren cried and was given a breast to suck.

Slowly the girl's thoughts grew outwards, eclipsing the rain. Vague pictures hung in the air about her, pictures that despite their lack of logic were her way of reasoning. Her safe days in the tribe of herders was represented by a tiny red flower that could also, with just the tiniest shift of emphasis, be her, as her safe days had been her: she had not seen herself as a phenomenon distinct from the phenomena about her. And when she tried to do so now, she could only picture herself distantly, in a crowd of bodies, or as part of a dance, or as a girl whose turn it was to take the buckets to Long Water.

Now the red flower days were over, except that a new bud put forth petals at her breast. The crowd of bodies had gone, and vanished with it was the yellow shawl symbol. The lovely shawl! Perpetual sun overhead like a hot bath, innocent limbs, a happiness that did not know itself – these were the strands of the yellow shawl she pictured. Distinctly she saw herself throw it away to follow the wanderer whose merit was that he was the unknown.

The unknown was a big withered leaf in which something crouched. She had followed the leaf – the tiny figure of herself grew nearer and somehow more spiky – while shawl and red petals blew merrily off in the one way wind of time. Now the leaf turned flesh, rolling with her. She became a big figure, swarming with traffic, a land of milk and honeyed public parts.

And in the red flower had been no music like the music of the fleshy leaf.

Yet it all faded. The mountain came marching in. Mountain and flower were opposed. Mountain rolled on for ever, in one steep slope that had no bottom or top, though the base rested in black mist and the peak in black cloud. Black mist and cloud were reaching everywhere through her reverie, long-handed shorthand for evil; while by another of those tiny shifts of emphasis, the slope became not just her present life, but all her life. In the mind are no paradoxes, only moments; and in the moment of the slope, all the bright flowers and shawls and flesh were as if they had never been.

Thunder snored over the real mountain, rousing Yattmur from her reverie, scattering her pictures.

She looked back into the cave at Gren. He was unmoving. He did not look at her. Her daydreaming brought her the comprehension she sought, and she told herself, 'It is the magic morel that has brought us this trouble. Laren and I are victims of it as much as poor Gren. Because it preys on him, he is ill. It is on his head and in his head. Somehow, I must find a way to deal with it.'

Comprehension was not the same as comfort. Gathering up the baby, tucking her breast away, she stood up.

'I'm going to the cave of the tummy-bellies,' she said, half-expecting to get no reply.

Gren answered her.

'You cannot take Laren through that pouring rain. Give him to me and I will take care of him.'

She crossed the floor towards him. Though the light was bad, she thought the fungus in his hair and round his neck looked darker than before. Certainly it was expanding, standing out over his forehead in a way it had never done. Sudden revulsion checked her movement as she began to offer him the baby.

He glanced up at her from under the morel with a look she could not recognize as his; it held the fatal mixture of stupidity and cunning that lurks at the bottom of all evil. Instinctively, she jerked her child back.

'Give him to me. He won't be hurt,' Gren said. 'A young human could be taught so much.'

Though his movements were generally lethargic, he jumped up with all swiftness. She leapt away angrily, hissing at him, drawing her knife, afraid in all her fibres. She showed him her teeth like an animal.