Hothouse, aka The Long Afternoon of Earth

CHAPTER ELEVEN

LITTLE silent things without minds sped around the highway, appearing from and disappearing into the dark greens that surrounded it.

Two fruit cases moved along the highway. From under them, two pairs of eyes looked askance at the silent things, and flitted here and there like the things themselves in their search for danger.

The highway was a vertical one; the anxious eyes could see neither its beginning nor its end. Occasional branches forked horizontally from the highway; these were ignored in the slow but steady progress. The surface of the highway was rough, providing excellent holds for the moving fingers and toes that protruded from the fruit cases. Also, the surface was cylindrical, for the highway was one trunk of the mighty banyan tree.

The two fruit cases moved from its middle layers towards the ground below. Foliage gradually filtered out the light, so that they seemed to move in a green mist towards a tunnel of black.

At last the leading fruit case hesitated and turned aside on to one of the horizontal branches, pursuing a scarcely visible trail. The other case followed it. Together they sat up, half leaning against each other, and with their backs to their erstwhile highway.

'I fear going down towards the Ground,' Poyly said, from under her case.

'We must go where the morel directs,' Gren said with patience, explaining as he had explained before. 'He has more wisdom than we have. Now that we are on the trail of another group, it would be foolish to disobey him. How can we live in the forest on our own?'

He knew that the morel in her head was soothing her with similar arguments. Yet ever since he and Poyly had left Nomansland several sleeps ago, she had been uneasy, her self-exile from the group having imposed on her a greater strain than she had expected.

'We should have made a stronger effort to pick up the trail of Toy and our other friends,' Poyly said. 'If we had waited till the fire died down we might have found them.'

'We had to move on because you were afraid of being burnt,' Gren said. 'Besides, you know Toy would not have taken us back. She had no mercy or understanding even of you, her friend.'

At this, Poyly merely grunted, and silence fell between them. Then she began again.

'Need we go farther?' she asked in a tiny voice, taking hold of Gren's wrist.

Then they waited with a timorous patience for another voice that they knew would answer them.

'Yes, you shall go farther, Poyly and Gren, for I advise you to go and I am stronger than you.' The voice was already familiar to them both. It was a voice made without lips and heard without ears, a voice born and dying within their heads like a jack-in-the-box eternally imprisoned in its little chest. It had the tone of a dusty harp.

'I have brought you so far in safety,' the morel continued, 'and I will take you farther in safety. I taught you to wear the fruit cases for camouflage and already we have come a long way in them unharmed. Go a little farther and there will be glory for you.'

'We need a rest, morel,' Gren said.

'Rest and then we will go on. We have found the traces of another human tribe – this is not the time to be faint of heart. We must find the tribe.'

Obeying the voice, the two humans lay down to rest. The cumbersome skins, hacked from two of the oedematous fruits of the forest, crudely pierced with holes for their legs and arms, prevented them from lying flat. They crouched as they could, limbs sprawling upwards as if they had been crushed to death by the weight of the leafage above them.

Like a distracting background hum, the thoughts of the morel ran somewhere beyond their supervision. In this age of vegetables, plants specialized in size while remaining brainless; the morel fungus, however, had specialized in intelligence – the sharp and limited intelligence of the jungle. To further its own wider propagation, it could become parasitic on other species, adding its deductive powers to their mobility. The particular individual which had bisected itself to take over both Poyly and Gren, laboured under constant surprise as it discovered in their nervous centre something owned by no other creature – a memory that included dim racial memories hidden even from their possessors.

Although the morel remained unaware of the phrase 'In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king,' it was nevertheless in the same position of power. The life forms of the great hothouse world lived out their days in ferocity or flight, pursuit or peace, before falling to the green and forming compost for the next generation. For them there was no past and no future; they were like figures woven into a tapestry, without depth. The morel, tapping human minds, was different. It had perspective.

It was the first creature in a billion years to be able to look back down the long avenues of time. Prospects emerged that frightened, dizzied, and nearly silenced the harp-like cadences of its voice.

'How can morel protect us from the terrors of the Ground?'

Poyly asked after a spell. 'How can he protect us from a wilt-milt or a dripperlip?'

'He knows things,' Gren said simply. 'He made us put on these fruit skins to hide us from enemies. They have kept us safe. When we find this other tribe we will be still safer.'

'My fruit skin chafes my thighs,' Poyly said, with a womanly gift for irrelevance that eons of time had not quenched.

As she lay there, she felt her mate's hand grope for her thigh and rub it tenderly. But her eyes still wandered among the boughs overhead, alert for danger.

A vegetable thing as bright as a parakeet fluttered down and settled on a branch above them. Almost at once a jittermop fell from its concealment above, dropping smack on to the veg-bird. Antipathetic liquids splashed. Then the broken vegbird was drawn up out of sight, only a smear of green juice marking where it had been.

'A jittermop, Gren! We should move on,' Poyly said, 'before it falls on us.'

The morel too had seen this struggle – had in fact watched with approval, for vegbirds were great fanciers of a tasty morel.

'We will move, humans, if you are ready,' it said. One pretext for moving on was as good as another; being parasitic, it needed no rest.

They were reluctant to move from their temporary comfort even to avoid a jittermop, so the morel prodded them. As yet it was gentle enough with them, not wishing to provoke a contest of wills and needing their co-operation. Its ultimate objective was vague, vain-glorious, and splendid. It saw itself reproducing again and again, until fungus covered the whole Earth, filling hill and valley with its convolutions.

Such an end could not be achieved without humans. They would be its means. Now – in its cold leisurely way – it needed as many humans under its sway as it could get. So it prodded. So Gren and Poyly obeyed.

They climbed back head downwards on to the trunk that was their highway, clinging to its rounded surface, and resumed their advance.

Other creatures used the same route, some harmless like the leafabians, making their endless leafy caravanserais from the depths of the jungle to its heights, some far from harmless, green in tooth and claw. But one species had left minute distinguishing marks down the trunk: a stab mark here, a stain there, that to a trained eye meant that humanity was somewhere near at hand. It was this trail the two humans followed.

The great tree and the denizens of its shade went about their business in silence. So did Gren and Poyly. When the marks they pursued turned along a side branch, they turned too, without discussion.

So they continued, horizontally and vertically, until Poyly glimpsed movement. A flitting human form revealed itself. Ducking among the leaves, it plunged for safety into a clump of fuzzypuzzle on a branch ahead – just the mystery of it, then silence.

They had seen no more than a flash of shoulder and a glimpse of face alert under flying hair, yet it had an electrifying effect on Poyly.

'She'll escape if we don't catch her,' she told Gren. 'Let me go and try to get her! Keep watch, in case her companions are near.'

'Let me go.'

'No, I'll get her. Make a noise to distract her attention when you think I'm ready to pounce.'

Shucking off her fruit case and sliding forward on her belly, she edged over the curve of the branch until she hung upside down under it. As she began to work her way along, the morel, anxious for its own safety in an exposed position, invaded her mind. Her perceptions became extraordinarily sharp, her vision clearer, her skin more sensitive.

'Go in from behind. Capture it, don't kill it, and it will lead us to the rest of its tribe,' twanged the voice in her head.

'Hush, or she'll hear,' Poyly breathed.

'Only you and Gren can hear me, Poyly; you are my kingdom.'

Poyly crawled beyond the fuzzypuzzle patch before climbing on to the upper side of the branch again, never rustling the leaves about her as she did so. Slowly she slid forward.

Above the soft lollipop buds of the fuzzypuzzle she spied her quarry's head. A fine young female was looking guardedly about, eyes dark and liquid under a sheltering hand and a crown of hair.

'She did not recognize you under your fruit cases as human, so she hides from you,' said the morel.

That was silly, Poyly thought to herself. Whether this female recognized us or not, she would always hide from strangers. The morel sucked the thought from her brain and understood why his reasoning had been false; for all he had already learnt, the whole notion of a human being was still alien to him.

Tactfully he removed himself from Poyly's mind, leaving her free to tackle the stranger in her own way.

Poyly moved a step nearer, and another step, bent almost double. Head down, she waited for Gren to signal as instructed.

On the other side of the fuzzypuzzle patch, Gren shook a twig. The strange female peered in the direction of the noise, her tongue running over her open lips. Before she could pull the knife from her belt, Poyly jumped on her from behind.

They struggled in among the soft fibres, the stranger grappling for Poyly's throat. Poyly in return bit her in the shoulder. Bursting in, Gren gripped the stranger round her neck and tugged her backwards until her saffron hair fell about his face. The girl put up a savage struggle, but they had her. Soon she was bound and lay on the branch looking up at them.

'You have done well! Now she will lead us -' began the morel.

'Quiet!' Gren rasped, so that the fungus instantly obeyed.

Something was moving fast in the layers of the tree above them.

Gren knew the forest. He knew how predators were attracted by the sounds of struggle. Hardly had he spoken when a thin-pin came spiralling down the nearest trunk like a spring and launched itself at them. Gren was ready for it.

Swords are useless against thinpins. He caught it a blow with a stick, sending it spinning. It anchored itself by a springy tail before rearing to strike again – and a rayplane curved down from the foliage above, snapped up the thinpin, and swooped on.

Poyly and Gren flung themselves flat beside their captive and waited. The terrible silences of the forest came in again like a tide all round them, and it was safe once more.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THEIR captive was almost speechless. She pouted and tossed her head in answer to Poyly's questions. They elicited from her only the fact that she went by the name of Yattmur. Obviously she was alarmed by the sinister ruff about their necks and the glistening lumps on their heads.

'Morel, she is too fearful to speak,' Gren said, moved by the beauty of the girl who sat bound at their feet. 'She does not care for the look of you. Shall we leave her and go on? We'll find other humans.'

'Hit her and then she may speak,' twanged the silent voice of the morel.

'But that will make her more fearful.'

'It may loosen her tongue. Hit her face, on that cheek you seem to admire -'

'Even though she is causing me no danger?'

'You silly creature, why can you never use all of your brain at once? She causes us all danger by delaying us.'

'I suppose she does. I never thought of that. You think deep, morel, that I must admit.'

'Then do as I say and hit her.'

Gren raised his hand hesitantly. Morel twitched at his muscles. The hand came down violently across Yattmur's cheek, jerking her head. Poyly winced and looked questioningly at her mate.

'You foul creature! My tribe will kill you,' Yattmur threatened, showing her teeth at them.

His eyes gleaming, Gren raised his hand again.

'Do you want another blow? Tell us where you live.'

The girl struggled ineffectually.

'I am only a herder. You do wrong to harm me if you are of my kind. What harm did I do you? I was only gathering fruit.'

'We need answers to questions. You will not be hurt if you answer our questions.' Again his hand came up, and this time she surrendered.

'I am a herder – I herd the jumpvils. It is not my job to fight or to answer questions. I can take you to my tribe if you wish.'

'Tell us where your tribe is.'

'It lives on the Skirt of the Black Mouth, which is only a small way from here. We are peaceful people. We don't jump out of the sky on to other humans.'

'The Skirt of the Black Mouth? Will you take us there?'

'Do you mean us harm?'

'We mean no harm to anyone. Besides you can see there are only two of us. Why should you be afraid?'

Yattmur put on a sullen face, as if she doubted his words.

'You must let me up then, and set my arms free. My people shall not see me with tied hands. I will not run away from you.'

'My sword through your side if you do,' Gren said.

'You are learning,' the morel said with approval.

Poyly released Yattmur from her bonds. The girl smoothed her hair, rubbed her wrists, and began to climb among the silent leaves, her two captors following close. They exchanged no more words, but in Poyly's heart doubts rose, particularly when she saw that the endless uniformity of the banyan was breaking.

Following Yattmur, they descended the tree. One great mass of broken stone crowned with nettlemoss and berrywish thrust itself up beside their way, and then another. But although they descended, it grew lighter overhead; which meant the banyan was here far from its average height. Its branches twisted and thinned. A spear of sunlight pierced through the travellers. The Tips were almost meeting the ground. What could it mean?

Poyly whispered the question in her mind, and the morel answered.

'The forest must fail somewhere. We are coming to a broken land where it cannot grow. Do not be alarmed.'

'We must be coming to the Skirt of the Black Mouth. I fear the sound of it, morel. Let us go back before we meet fatal trouble.'

'We have no back to go to, Poyly. We are wanderers. We can only go on. Have no fear. I will help you and I shall never leave you.'

Now the branches grew too weak and narrow to bear them. With a flying leap, Yattmur threw herself on to a massive outcrop of rock. Poyly and Gren landed beside her. They lay there looking at each other questioningly. Then Yattmur raised a hand.

'Listen! Some jumpvils are coming!' she exclaimed, as a sound came like rain through the forest. 'These are the beasts my tribe catches.'

Below their island of rock stretched the ground. It was not the foul quagmire of decay and death about which Gren and Poyly had so often been warned in their tribal days. It was curiously broken and pitted, like a frozen sea, and coloured red and black. Few plants grew in it. Instead, it seemed to have a frozen life of its own, so indented was it with holes that had stretched themselves into agonized navels, eye sockets, or leering mouths.

'The rocks have evil faces,' Poyly whispered as she gazed down.

'Quiet! They're coming this way,' Yattmur said.

As they looked and listened, a horde of strange creatures poured over the pitted ground, loping from the depths of the forest with a strange gait. They were fibrous creatures, plants that over an immensity of eons had roughly learnt to copy the hare family.

Their running was slow and clumsy by the standards of the animals they superseded. As they moved, their fibrous sinews cracked sharply; they lurched from side to side. Each jumpvil had a head all scoop jaw and enormous ears, while its body was without line and irregularly coloured. The front legs were more like poor stumps, small and clumsy, while the hind pair were much longer and captured at least something of the grace of an animal's leg.

Little of this was apparent to Gren and Poyly. To them, the jumpvils were merely a strange new species of creature with inexplicably ill-shaped legs. To Yattmur they meant something different.

Before they came into sight she pulled a weighted line from round her waist and balanced it between her hands. As the hordes thudded and clacked below the rock, she flung it dexterously. The line extended itself into a sort of elementary net, with the weights swinging at key points.

It tripped three of the queer-limbed creatures. At once Yattmur scrambled down, jumped at the jumpvils before they could right themselves, and secured them to the line.

All the rest of the herd parted, ran on, and disappeared. The three that had been captured stood submissively in vegetable defeat. Yattmur looked challengingly at Gren and Poyly as if relieved to have shown her mettle – but Poyly ignored her, pointing into the clearing ahead of them and shrinking against her companion.

'Gren! Look! A – monster, Gren!' she said in a strangled voice. 'Did I not say this place was evil?'

Against a wide shoulder of rock, and near the path of the fleeing jumpvils, a silvery envelope was inflating. It stretched out into a great globe far higher than any human.

'It's a greenguts! Don't watch it!' Yattmur said. 'It makes a bad thing for humans!'

But they stared, fascinated, for the envelope was now a soggy sphere, and on that sphere grew one eye, a huge jelly-like eye with a green pupil. The eye swivelled until it appeared to be regarding the humans.

A vast gap appeared low down in the envelope. The last few retreating jumpvils saw it, paused, then staggered round on a new course. Six of them jumped through the gap, which at once closed over them like a mouth, while the envelope began to collapse.

'Living shadows!' Gren gasped. 'What is it?'

'It is a greenguts,' Yattmur said. 'Have you never seen one before? Many of them live near here, stuck to the tall rocks. Come, I must take these jumpvils to the tribe.'

The morel thought differently. It twanged in the heads of Gren and Poyly. Reluctantly they moved towards the shoulder of rock.

The greenguts had entirely collapsed. It was drawn in, adhering to the rock like so many folds of wet tissue. A still moving bulge near the ground marked its bag of jumpvils. As they surveyed it in horror, it surveyed them with its one striated green eye. Then the eye closed, and they seemed to be looking only at rock. The camouflage was perfect.

'It cannot hurt us,' twanged the morel. 'It is nothing but a stomach.'

They moved away. Again they followed Yattmur, walking painfully on the broken ground, the three captive creatures humping along at their side as if this was something they did every day.

The ground sloped upwards. In their heads, the morel suggested that this was why the banyan was falling away overhead, and waited to see what they would answer.

Poyly said, 'Perhaps these jumpvils have long back legs to help them get uphill.'

'It must be so,' said the morel.

But that's absurd, thought Gren, for what about when they want to run downhill again? The morel cannot know everything, or it would not agree to Poyly's silly idea.

'You are right that I do not know everything,' twanged the morel, surprising him. 'But I am capable of learning quickly, which you are not – for unlike some past members of your race, you work mainly by instinct.'

'What is instinct?'

'Green thoughts,' said the morel, and would not elaborate.

At length Yattmur halted. Her first sullenness had worn away, as if the journey had made them friends. She was almost gay.

'You are standing in the middle of my tribal area, where you wished to be,' she said.

'Call them, then; tell them that we come with good desires and that I shall speak to them,' Gren said, adding anxiously for the morel's benefit, 'but I don't know what to say to them.'

'I shall tell you,' twanged the morel.

Yattmur raised a clenched hand to her lips and blew a piping note through it. Alertly, Poyly and her mate looked about them... Leaves rustled, and they became surrounded by warriors who seemed to rise up from the ground. Glancing upwards, Poyly saw strange faces there regarding her from the branches overhead.

The three jumpvils shuffled uneasily.

Gren and Poyly stood absolutely still, allowing themselves to be inspected.

Slowly Yattmur's tribe came closer. Most of them, as was customary, were female, with flowers adorning their private parts. All were armed, many were as striking of feature as Yattmur. Several wore round their waists the same weighted trapping lines that Yattmur had carried.

'Herders,' Yattmur said, 'I have brought you two strangers, Poyly and Gren, who wish to join us.'

Prompted by the morel, Poyly said, 'We are wanderers who will do you no harm. Make us welcome if you wish to Go Up in peace. We need rest and shelter now, and later we can show you our skills.'

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.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

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.

Iccall brushed past these roots and crouched behind a boulder, beckoning them to join him. He pointed ahead.

'There is Black Mouth,' he whispered.

For Poyly and Gren it was a strange experience. The whole idea of open country was completely unknown to them; they were forest folk. Now their eyes stared ahead in wonder that a prospect could be so strange.

Broken and tumbled, the lava field stretched away from them into the distance. It tilted and shaped up towards the sky until it turned into a great ragged cone. The cone in its sad eminence dominated the scene, for all that it stood some distance away.

'That is the Black Mouth,' whispered Iccall again, watching the awe on Poyly's face.

He stabbed his finger to a suspiration of smoke that rose from the lip of the cone and trickled up into the sky.

'The Mouth breathes,' he said.

Gren pulled his eyes away from the cone to the forest beyond it, the eternal forest reasserting itself. Then his eyes were drawn back to the cone as he felt the morel grope deep into his mind with a dizzying sensation that made him brush his hand over his forehead. His sight blurred as the morel expressed resentment of his gesture.

The morel bored down deeper into the sludge of Gren's unconscious memory like a drunken man pawing through the faded photographs of a legacy. Confusion overwhelmed Gren; he too glimpsed these brief pictures, some of them extremely poignant, without being able to grasp their content. Swooning, he pitched over on to the lava.

Poyly and Iccall lifted him up – but already the fit was over and the morel had what it needed.

Triumphantly it flashed a picture at Gren. As he revived, the morel explained to him.

'These herders fear shadows, Gren. We need not fear. Their mighty Mouth is only a volcano, and a small one at that. It will do no harm. Probably it is all but extinct.' And he showed Gren and Poyly what a volcano was from the knowledge he had dredged out of their memory.

Reassured, they returned to the tribe's subterranean home, where Hutweer, Yattmur and the others awaited them.

'We have seen your Black Mouth and have no fear of it,' Gren declared. 'We shall sleep in peace with quiet dreams.'

'When the Black Mouth calls, everyone must go to it,' Hutweer said. 'Though you may be mighty, you scoff because you have only seen the Mouth in its silence. When it sings, we will see how you dance, O spirits!'

Poyly asked the whereabouts of the Fishers, the tribe Yattmur had mentioned.

'From where we stood, we could not see their home trees,' Iccall said. 'From the belly of the Black Mouth comes the Long Water. That also we did not see for the rise of the land. Beside the Long Water stand the trees, and there live the Fishers, a strange people who worship their trees.'

At this the morel entered into Poyly's thoughts, prompting her to ask, 'If the Fishers live so much nearer to the Black Mouth than you, O Hutweer, by what magic do they survive when the Mouth calls?'

The herders muttered among themselves, keen to find an answer to her question. None presented itself to them. At length one of the women said, 'The Fishers have long green tails, O spirit.'

This reply satisfied neither her nor the others. Gren laughed, and the morel launched him into a speech.

'Oh you children of an empty mouth, you know too little and guess too much! Can you believe that people are able to grow long green tails? You are simple and helpless and we will lead you. We shall go down to the Long Water when we have slept and all of you will follow.

'There we will make a Great Tribe, at first uniting with the Fishers, and then with other tribes in the forests. No longer shall we run in fear. All other things will fear us.'

In the reticulations of the morel's brain grew a picture of the plantation these humans would make for it. There it would propagate in peace, tended by its humans. At present – it felt the handicap strongly – it had not sufficient bulk to bisect itself again, and so take over some of the herders. But as soon as it could manage it, the day would come when it would grow in peace in a well-tended plantation, there to take over control of all humanity. Eagerly it compelled Gren to speak again.

'We shall no longer be poor things of the undergrowth. We will kill the undergrowth. We will kill the jungle and all its bad things. We will allow only good things. We will have gardens and in them we will grow – strength and more strength, until the world is ours as it was once long ago.'

Silence fell. The herders looked uneasily at each other, anxious yet self-defiant.

In her head, Poyly thought that the things Gren said were too big and without meaning. Gren himself was past caring. Though he looked on the morel as a strong friend, he hated the sensation of being forced to speak and act in a way often just beyond his comprehension.

Wearily, he flung himself down into a corner and dropped asleep almost immediately. Equally indifferent to what the others thought, Poyly too lay down and went to sleep.

At first the herders stood looking down in puzzlement at them. Then Hutweer clapped her hands for them to disperse.

'Let them sleep for now,' she said.

"They are such strange people! I will stay by them,' Yattmur said.

'There is no need for that; time enough to worry about them when they wake,' said Hutweer, pushing Yattmur on ahead of her.

'We shall see how these spirits behave when the spirit of the Black Mouth sings,' Iccall said, as he climbed outside.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

WHILE Poyly and Gren slept, the morel did not sleep. Sleep was not in its nature.

At present the morel was like a small boy who dashes into a cave only to find it full of jewels; he had staggered into wealth unsuspected even by its owner and was so constituted that he could not help examining it. His first predatory investigation merged into excited wonder.

That sleep which Gren and Poyly slept was disturbed by many strange fantasies. Whole blocks of past experience loomed up like cities in a fog, blazed on their dreaming eye, and were gone. Working with no preconceptions which might have provoked antagonism from the unconscious levels through which it sank, the morel burrowed back through the obscure corridors of memory where Gren's and Poyly's intuitive responses were stored.The journey was long. Many of its signs, obnubilated by countless generations, were misleading. The morel worked down to records of the days before the sun had begun to radiate extra energy, to the days when man was a far more intelligent and aggressive being than his present arboreal counterpart. It surveyed the great civilizations in wonder and puzzlement – and then it plunged back still further, far back, into much the longest mistiest epoch of man's history, before history began, before he had so much as a fire to warm him at night, or a brain to guide his hand at hunting.

And there the morel, groping among the very shards of human memory, made its astonishing find. It lay inert for many heartbeats before it could digest something of the import of what it chanced on.

Twanging at their brains, it roused Gren and Poyly. Though they turned over exhaustedly, there was no escaping that inner voice.

'Gren! Poyly! I have made a great discovery! We are more nearly brothers than you know!'

Pulsing with an emotion they had never before known it to show, the morel forced on them pictures stored in their own limbos of unconscious memory.

It showed them first the great age of man, an age of fine cities and roads, an age of hazardous journeys to the nearer planets. The time was one of great organization and aspiration, of communities, communes, and committees. Yet the people were not noticeably happier than their predecessors. Like their predecessors, they lived in the shade of various pressures and antagonisms. All too easily they were crushed by the million under economic or total warfare.

Next, the morel showed, Earth's temperatures began to climb as the sun went into its destructive phase. Confident in their technology, the people prepared to meet this emergency.

'Show us no more,' Poyly whimpered, for these scenes were very bright and painful. But the morel paid her no heed and continued to force knowledge upon her.

As their preparations were being made, people began to fall sick. The sun was pouring out a new band of radiation, and gradually all mankind succumbed to the strange sickness. It affected their skin, their eyes – and their brains.

After a prolonged spell of suffering, they became immune to the radiations. They crawled forth from their beds. But something had changed. They no longer had the power to command and cogitate and fight.

They were like different creatures!

They crawled away from their great and beautiful towns, left their cities, deserted their houses – as if all that had once been home had suddenly become alien. Their social structures also collapsed, and all organization died overnight. From then on, the weeds began to flourish in the streets, and the pollen to blow over the cash registers; the advance of the jungle had begun.

The downfall of man happened not gradually but in one dreadful rush, like the collapse of a tall tower.

'It's enough,' Gren told the morel, struggling against its power. 'What is past is no concern of ours. Why should we care what happened so very long ago? You've worried us enough! Let us sleep.'

A curious sensation took him, as if his inside were being rattled while his outside remained still. The morel was metaphorically shaking him by the shoulders.

'You are so indifferent,' twanged the morel, still gripped by excitement. 'You must attend. Look! We are going back now to very distant days, when man had no history or heritage, when he was not even Man. He was then a puny thing similar to what you are now___'

And Poyly and Gren could do nothing but see the visions that followed. Though the glimpses were blurred and muddy, they watched tarsier-like people sliding down trees and running barefoot among the ferns. They were small people, nervous and without language. They squatted and pranced and hid in bushes. No detail was clear, for there had never been clear perception to record it. Scents and sounds were sharp – yet taunting as a riddle. The humans saw merely flashes of half-light, as in that primaeval world the little lives scampered and enjoyed and died.

For no reason that they recognized, nostalgia flooded them and Poyly wept.

A clearer picture came. A group of the little people paddled in marsh under giant ferns. From the ferns, things dropped and landed on their heads. The things that dropped were recognizable as morel fungi.

'In that early oligocene world, my kind was the first to develop intelligence,' twanged the morel. "There's the proof of it! In ideal conditions of gloom and moisture we first discovered the power of thought. But thought needs limbs it can direct. So we became parasitic on those small creatures, your remote ancestors!'

And it pushed Poyly and Gren forward in time again, showing them the true history of the development of man, which was also the history of the morels. For the morels, which began as parasites, developed into symbiotes.

At first they clung to the outsides of the skulls of the tarsier-people. Then as those people prospered under the connection, as they were taught to organize and hunt, they were induced, generation by slow generation, to increase their skull capacity. At last the vulnerable morels were able to move inside, to become truly a part of the people, to improve their own abilities under a curving shelter of bone...

'So the real race of men developed,' intoned the morel, throwing up a storm of pictures. "They grew and conquered the world, forgetting the origins of their success, the morel brains which lived and died with them... Without us, they would still have remained among the trees, even as your tribes live now without our aid.'

To enforce its point, it again provoked their latent memories of the time when the sun had entered its latest phase and all mankind fell sick.

'Men were physically stronger than morels. Though they survived the stepping-up of solar radiation, their symbiotic brains did not. They quietly died, boiled alive in the little bone shelters they had fashioned for themselves. Man was left... to fend for himself equipped only with his natural brains, which were no better than those of the higher animals... Small wonder he lost his splendid cities and took again to the trees!'

'It means nothing to us... nothing at all,' Gren whimpered. 'Why do you haunt us now with this ancient disaster, which all finished uncounted millions of years ago?'

The morel gave a silent noise like laughter in his head.

'Because the drama may not yet be finished! I am a sturdier strain than those of my bygone ancestors; I can tolerate high radiation. So can your kind. Now is the historic moment for us to begin another symbiosis as great and profitable as the one which once tempered those tarsiers until they rode among the stars! Again the clocks of intelligence begin to chime. The clocks have hands again...'

'Gren, he is mad and I do not understand!' Poyly cried, appalled by the turmoil behind her closed eyes.

'Hear the clocks chime!' twanged the morel. 'They chime for us, children!'

'Oh, oh! I can hear them!' Gren moaned, twisting restlessly where he lay.

And in all their ears came a sound to drown all else, a chiming sound like diabolic music.

'Gren, we are all going mad!' Poyly cried. 'The terrible noises!'

'The chimes, the chimes!' the morel twanged.

Then Poyly and Gren awoke, sitting up in a sweat with the morel afire about their heads and necks – and the terrible sound still came, more terrible still!

Through the disturbed race of their thoughts they perceived that they were now the sole occupants of the cavern under the lava bed. All the herders had gone.

The terrifying noises they could hear came from outside. Why they should be so frightening was hard to say. The main sound was almost a melody, though it gave no prospect of resolution. It sang not to the ear but to the blood, and the blood responded by alternately freezing and racing to its call.

'We must go!' Poyly said, struggling up. 'It's singing for us to go.'

'What have I done?' wailed the morel.

'What's gone wrong?' Gren asked. 'Why do we have to go?'

They clung together in fear, yet the urge in their veins would not let them remain. Their limbs moved without obedience. Whatever the dreadful tune was, it had to be followed to its source. Even the morel had no thought but to do otherwise.

Regardless of their bodies, they scrambled up the rock fall that served as stairs and into the open, to find themselves in the midst of nightmare.

Now the awful melody blew about them like a wind, though not a leaf moved. Frenziedly it plucked and tugged at their limbs. Nor were they the only creatures answering that syren call. Flying things and running things and hopping things and things that slithered battered their way through the clearing, all heading in one direction – towards the Black Mouth.

"The Black Mouth!' the morel cried. "The Black Mouth sings to us and we must go!'

It tugged not only at their ears but at their eyes. Their very retinas were partially drained of sensation, so that all the world appeared in black and white and grey. White the sky glimpsed overhead, grey the foliage that dappled it, black and grey the rocks distorted beneath their running feet. With hands extended before them, Gren and Poyly began to run amid the running things.

Now through a maelstrom of dread and compulsion they saw the herders.

Like so many shadows, the herders stood against the last trunks of the banyan. They had strapped or tied themselves there with ropes. In the centre of them, also tied, stood Iccall the Singer. Now he sang! He sang in a peculiarly uncomfortable position, as if disfigured, as if his neck were broken, with his head hanging down and his eyes wildly fixed on the ground.

He sang with all his voice and all his heart's blood. The song came valiantly out, flinging itself against the might of the Black Mouth's song. It had a power of its own, a power to counteract the evil that would otherwise have drawn all the herders out towards the source of that other melody.

The herders listened with grim intensity to what he sang. Yet they were not idle. Lashed to the tree trunks, they cast their line nets before them, trapping the creatures that poured past them to the undeniable call.

Poyly and Gren could not make out the words of Iccall's song. They had not been trained to it. Its message was overridden by the emanations from the mighty Mouth.

Wildly, they fought against that emanation – wildly but fruitlessly. Despite themselves, they stumbled on. Fluttering things struck them on the cheeks. The whole black and white world heaved and crawled in one direction alone! Only the herders were immune while they listened to Iccall's song.

When Gren stumbled, galloping vegetable creatures hopped over him.

Then the jumpvils poured by, teeming through the jungle. Still desperately listening to Iccall's song, the herders snared them as they flocked past, staying them and slaying them in the middle of the melee.

Poyly and Gren were passing the last of the herders. They were moving faster as the dreadful melody grew stronger. The open lay ahead of them. Framed in a canopy of foreground branches stood the distant Black Mouth! A strangled cry of – what? admiration? horror? – was torn from their lips at that spectacle.

Terror now had forms and legs and feelings, animated by the Black Mouth's song.

Towards it – they saw with their drained eyes – poured a stream of life, answering that accursed call, making as fast as it could go over the lava field, and up the volcanic slopes, and finally throwing itself in triumph over the lip and into that great aperture!

Another chilling detail struck their eyes. Over the edge of the Mouth appeared three great long chitinous fingers which waved and enticed and kept time to the fateful tune.

Both the humans screamed at the sight – yet they redoubled their speed, for the grey fingers beckoned them.

'O Poyly! O Gren! Gren!'

The cry came as a will o' the wisp. They did not pause. Gren managed a quick glance back, towards the jolting blacks and greys of the forest.

The last herder they had passed was Yattmur; regardless of Iccall's song, she threw off the thong that tied her to the tree. Her hair was flying wild, she was plunging knee deep through the tide of life to join them. Her arms stretched out to him like those of a lover in a dream.

In the weird light her face was grey, but bravely she sang as she ran, a song like Iccall's to counteract that other evil melody.

Gren faced ahead again, looking towards the Black Mouth, and instantly forgot about her. The long beckoning fingers beckoned him alone.

He had hold of Poyly's hand, but as they dashed past one of the outcrops of rock, Yattmur snatched his free hand.

For a saving moment they paid her attention. For a saving moment her brave song rose uppermost in their attention. Like a flash the morel seized this chance to break from bondage.

'Swerve aside!' it twanged. 'Swerve aside if you wish to live!'

A peculiar-looking copse of young shoots stood just by their path. Labouring hand in hand, they turned into its doubtful refuge. A jumpvil hurtled in ahead of them, no doubt looking for a short cut in its stampede. They plunged into the grey gloom.

At once the Black Mouth's monstrous tune lost much of its power. Yattmur fell against Gren's breast and sobbed – but all was still far from well.

Poyly touched one of the slender rods near her and screamed. A glutinous mass slid from the rod and over her head. She waved it and clutched it, hardly knowing what she did.

In despair they stared about, realizing they were in some kind of small enclosure. Their faulty vision had deceived them into entering a trap. Already the jumpvil that had entered before them was inextricably caught by the mess extruded from the rods.

Yattmur grasped the truth first.

'A greenguts!' she cried. 'We've been swallowed by a green-guts!'

'Cut our way out, quickly!' twanged the morel. 'Your sword, Gren – fast, fast! It's closing on us.'

The gap had shut behind them. They were totally enclosed. The 'ceiling' started to crumble and come down on them. The illusion of being in a copse faded. They were in a greenguts's stomach.

Wrenching out their swords, they began to defend their lives. As the rods about them – rods growing so cunningly to suggest the trunks of saplings – buckled and telescoped, so the ceiling lowered, its folds oozing a suffocating jelly. Jumping high, Gren slashed mightily with his sword. A great split appeared in the greenguts's envelope.

The two girls helped him to enlarge it. As the bag crumpled down, they managed to get their heads through the rent, thus avoiding certain death.

But now the older menace reasserted itself. Again the death wail from the Mouth seized them by their bloodstreams. They hacked with redoubled energy at the greenguts, to get loose and answer that chilling call.

They were free now but for their feet and ankles, which were stuck in the jelly. The greenguts was firmly anchored to a shoulder of rock so that it could not obey the call of the Black Mouth. It had collapsed entirely now, its solitary eye mournfully, helplessly, regarding their attempts to cut it to pieces.

'We must go!' Poyly cried, and at last managed to drag herself free. With her aid, Gren and Yattmur also broke away from the ruined creature. It closed its eye as they hurried off.

The delay had been longer than they knew. The ooze on their feet impeded them. They made their way over the lava as well as they could, still jostled by other creatures. Yattmur was too exhausted to sing again. Their wills were blotted out by the strength of the Black Mouth's song.

Thev started to scramble up the slopes of the cone, surrounded by a galloping phantasmagoria of life. Above them the three long fingers waved in sinister invitation. A fourth finger appeared, and then a fifth, as if whatever it was in the volcano was working itself up to a climax.

Their eyes saw everything in a fuzz of grey as the melody swelled to an unbearable intensity and their hearts laboured. The jumpvils really showed their paces, their long back legs enabling them to bound up the steeper slopes. They poured by, jumped on to the lip of the crater and then took their final leap to whatever lured them.

The humans were filled with longing to meet the dread singer... Panting, impeded by the mess about their feet, they scrambled across the last few yards that separated them from the Black lip.

The dreadful melody ceased in mid-note. So unexpected was it, they fell flat on their faces. Exhaustion and relief washed over them. They lay with closed eyes, sobbing together. The melody had stopped, had stopped, entirely stopped.

After many pulses of his blood had gone by, Gren opened one eye.

The colours of the world were returning to normal again, white flooding with pink again, grey turning to blue and green and yellow, black dissolving into the sombre hues of the forest. By the same token, the overmastering desire in him turned to a revulsion for what they had been about to do.

The creatures round about that were too late to suffer the privilege of being swallowed by the Black Mouth evidently felt as he did. They turned and limped back towards the shelter of the forest, slowly at first and then faster, until their earlier stampede was reversed.

Soon the landscape was deserted.

Above the humans, five terrible long fingers came to rest precisely together on the lip of the Black Mouth. Then one by one they were withdrawn, leaving Gren with a vision of some unimaginable monster picking its teeth after an obscene repast.

'But for the greenguts we'd be dead by now,' he said. 'Are you all right, Poyly?'

'Let me alone,' she said. Her face remained buried in her hands.

'Are you strong enough to walk? For the gods' sake let's get back to the herders,' he said.

'Wait!' Yattmur exclaimed. 'You deceived Hutweer and the others into thinking you were great spirits. By your running to the Black Mouth, they will know now you are not great spirits. Because you deceived them, they will surely kill you if you return."

Gren and Poyly looked at each other hopelessly. Despite the manoeuvres of the morel, they had been pleased to be with a tribe again; the prospect of having to wander alone once more did not please them.

'Fear not,' twanged the morel, reading their thought. 'There are other tribes! What of these Fishers of which we heard? They sounded a more docile tribe than the herders. Ask Yattmur to lead us there.'

'Are the Fishers far away?' Gren asked the girl herder.

She smiled at him and pressed his hand. 'It will be pleasant to take you to them. You can see where they live from here.'

Yattmur pointed down the flanks of the volcano. In the opposite direction to that from which they had come, an opening was apparent at the base of the Black Mouth. From the opening came a swift broad stream.

'There runs Long Water,' Yattmur said. 'Do you see the strange bulb-shaped trees, three of them in number, growing on the bank? That is where the Fishers live.'

She smiled, looking Gren in the face. The beauty of her stole over his senses like a tangible thing.

'Let's get out of this crater, Poyly,' he said.

'That dreadful singing monster..." she said, stretching out a hand. Taking it, Gren pulled her to her feet.

Yattmur regarded them both without speaking.

'Off we go, then,' she said sharply.

She took the lead and they began sliding down towards the water, ever and anon glancing back fearfully over their shoulders to make sure that nothing came climbing out of the volcano after them.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

AT the foot of the Black Mouth they came to the stream called Long Water. Once they had escaped from the shadow of the volcano, they lay in the warmth by the river bank. The waters ran dark and fast and smooth. On the opposite bank, the jungle began again, presenting a colonnade of trunks to the onlookers. On the near bank, lava checked that luxuriant growth for some yards.

Poyly dipped her hand into the water. So fast was it running that a bow wave formed against her palm. She splashed her forehead and rubbed her wet hand over her face.

'I am so tired,' she said, 'tired and sick. I want to go no farther. All these parts here are so strange – not like the happy middle layers of jungle where we lived with Lily-yo. What happens to the world here? Does it go mad here, or fall apart? Does it end here?'

'The world has to end somewhere,' Yattmur said.

'Where it ends may be a good place for us to start it going again,' twanged the morel.

'We shall feel better when we are rested,' Gren said. 'And then you must return to your herders, Yattmur.'

As he looked at her, a movement behind him caught his eye.

He spun round, sword in hand, jumping up to confront three hairy men who seemed to have materialized out of the ground.

The girls jumped up too.

'Don't hurt them, Gren,' Yattmur cried. 'These are Fishers and they will be perfectly harmless.'

And indeed the newcomers looked harmless. At second glance, Gren was less sure that they were human. All three were plump and their flesh beneath the abundant hair was spongy, almost like rotting vegetable matter. Though they wore knives in their belts, they carried no weapon in their hands, and their hands hung aimlessly by their sides. Their belts, plaited out of jungle creepers, were their only adornments. On their three faces, their three expressions of mild stupidity were so simliar as to represent almost a uniform.

Gren took in one other noteworthy fact about them before they spoke: each had a long green tail, even as the herders had said.

'Do you bring us food for eating?' the first of them asked.

'Have you brought us food for our tummies?' asked the second.

'Can we eat any food you have brought?' asked the third.

"They think you are of my tribe, which is the only tribe they know,' Yattmur said. Turning to the Fishers, she replied, 'We have no food for your bellies, O Fishers. We did not come to see you, only to travel.'

'We have no fish for you,' replied the first Fisher, and the three of them added almost in chorus, 'Very soon the time for fishing will be here.'

'We have nothing to exchange for food, but we should be glad of some fish to eat,' Gren said.

'We have no fish for you. We have no fish for us. The time for fishing will soon be here,' the Fishers said.

'Yes. I heard you the first time,' Gren said. 'What I mean is, will you give us fish when you have it?'

'Fish is fine to eat. There is fish for everyone when it comes.'

'Good,' Gren said, adding for the benefit of Poyly, Yattmur and the morel, 'these seem very simple people.'

'Simple or not, they didn't go chasing up the Black Mouth trying to kill themselves," the morel said. 'We must ask them about that. How did they resist its beastly song? Let's go to their place, as they seem harmless enough.'

'We will come with you,' Gren told the Fishers.

'We are going to catch fish when the fish come soon. You people do not know how to catch.'

'Then we will come and watch you catch fish.'

The three Fishers looked at each other, a slight uneasiness ruffling the surface of their stupidity. Without saying a word more, they turned and walked away along the river bank. Given no option, the others followed.

'How much do you know of these people, Yattmur?' Poyly asked.

'Very little. We trade sometimes, as you know, but my people fear the Fishers because they are so strange, as if they were dead. They never leave this little strip of river bank.'

'They can't be complete fools, for they know enough to eat well,' Gren said, regarding the plump flanks of the men ahead.

'Look at the way they carry their tails!' Poyly exclaimed. 'These are curious folk. I never saw the like.'

"They would be simple for me to command,' thought the morel.

As they walked, the Fishers reeled in their tails, holding them in neat coils in their right hands; the action, done so easily, was clearly automatic. For the first time, the others saw that these tails were extraordinarily long; in fact, the ends of them were not visible. Where they joined the Fishers' bodies, a sort of soft green pad formed at the base of their spines.

Suddenly and in unison the Fishers stopped and turned.

'You can come no further now,' they said. 'We are near our trees and you must not come with us. Stop here and soon we will bring you fish.'

'Why can't we come any farther?' Gren asked.

One of the Fishers laughed unexpectedly.

'Because you have no tail! Now wait here and soon we will bring you fish.' And he walked on with his companion, not even bothering to look back and see if his order was being obeyed.

'These are curious folk,' Poyly said again. 'I don't like them, Gren. They are not like people at all. Let us leave them; we can easily find our own food.'

'Nonsense! They may be very useful to us,' twanged the morel. 'You see they have a boat of some kind down there.'

Farther down the bank, several of the people with long green tails were working. They laboured under the trees, dragging what looked like some sort of a net into their boat. This boat, a heavy barge-like craft, rode tight in against the near bank, plunging occasionally in the stiff current of Long Water.

The first three Fishers rejoined the main party and helped them with the net. Their movements were languid, although they appeared to be working with haste.

Poyly's gaze wandered from them to the three trees in the shade of which they worked. She had never seen trees like them before, and their unusual aspect made her more uneasy.

Standing apart from all other vegetation, the trees bore a resemblance to giant pineapples. A collar of spiny leaves projected outwards direct from the ground, protecting the central fleshy trunk, which in each of the three cases was swollen into a massive knobbly ovoid. From the knobs of the ovoid sprouted long trailers; from the top of the ovoid sprouted more leaves, spiny and sharp, extending some two hundred feet into the air, or hanging stiffly out over Long Water.

'Poyly, let us go and look more closely at those trees,' the morel twanged urgently. 'Gren and Yattmur will wait here and watch us.'

'I do not like these people or this place, morel,' Poyly said. 'And I will not leave Gren here with this woman, do what you will.'

'I shall not touch your mate,' Yattmur said indignantly. 'What makes you think such a silly thing?'

Poyly staggered forward under a sudden compulsion from the morel. She looked appealingly at Gren; but Gren was tired and did not meet her eye. Reluctantly she moved forward and soon was under the bloated trees. They towered above her, casting a spiked shade. Their swollen trunks stuck out like diseased stomachs.

The morel seemed not to feel their menace.

'Just as I had assumed!' it exclaimed after a long inspection. 'Here is where the tails of our Fishers end. They are joined to the trees by their rumps – our simple friends belong to the trees.'

'Humans do not grow from trees, morel. Did you not know -' She paused, for a hand had fallen on her shoulder.

She turned. One of the Fishers confronted her, looking her closely in the face with his blank eyes and puffing out his cheeks.

'You must not come under the trees,' he said. 'Their shade is sacred. We said you must not come under our trees and you did not remember we said it. I will take you back to your friends who have not come with you.'

Poyly's eye travelled down his tail. Even as the morel had claimed, it joined on to the swelling of the nearest spiky tree. She felt a shiver of dread and moved away from him.

'Obey him!' twanged the morel. "There is evil here, Poyly. We must fight it. Let him walk with us back to the others and then we will capture him and ask him a few questions.'

This will cause trouble, she thought, but at once the morel filled her mind saying, 'We need these people and perhaps we need their boat.'

So she yielded to the Fisher and he grasped her arm and walked her slowly back to Gren and Yattmur, who watched this performance intently. As they went, the Fisher solemnly paid out his tail.

'Now!' cried the morel, when they reached the others.

Forced on by his will, Poyly flung herself on the Fisher's back. The move was so sudden that he staggered and fell forward.

'Help me!' Poyly called. Before she had spoken, Gren was springing forward with his knife ready. And at the same moment a cry came from all the other Fishers. They dropped their great net and began in unison to run towards Gren and his party, their feet padding heavily over the ground.

'Quickly, Gren, cut this creature's tail off,' Poyly said, prompted by the morel, as she struggled in the dust to keep her opponent down.

Without questioning her, for the morel's orders were in his mind too, Gren reached forward and slashed once.

The green tail was severed a foot from the Fisher's rump. At once the man ceased struggling. The tail that had been attached to him commenced a writhing motion, lashing the ground like an injured snake, and catching Gren in its coils. He slashed at it again. Leaking sap, it curled and went looping back to the tree. As if this were a signal, the other Fishers came to a standstill en masse; they milled about aimlessly and then turned and went indifferently back to loading their net into the boat.

'Praise the gods for that!' Yattmur exclaimed, brushing her hair back. 'What made you attack this poor fellow, Poyly, jumping on him from behind as you did with me?'

'All these Fishers are not like us, Yattmur. They can't be human at all – their tails attach them to the three trees.' Not meeting the other girl's eyes, Poyly stared down at the stump of tail on the fellow weeping at her feet.

'These fat Fisher people are slaves of the trees,' twanged the morel. 'It is disgusting. The trailers from the trees grow into their backbones and compel the men to guard them. Look at this poor wretch grovelling here – a slave!'

'Is it worse than what you do with us, morel?' Poyly asked, showing signs of tears. 'Is it any different? Why don't you let us go? I had no wish to attack this fellow.'

'I help you – I save your lives. Now, attend to this poor Fisher and let's have no more silly talk from you.'

The poor Fisher was attending to himself, sitting up and examining a knee that had been grazed in his fall on to the rock. He gazed at them with an anxiety that still did not remove the simplicity from his countenance. Huddled there, he looked like a roughly rounded lump of dough.

'You can get up,' Gren told him gently, extending his hand to help the fellow to his feet. 'You're shaking. There's nothing to be afraid of. We won't hurt you if you answer our questions.'

The Fisher broke into a torrent of words, most of it incomprehensible, gesturing with his broad hands as he talked.

'Speak slowly. You're talking about the trees? What are you saying?'

'Please... The tummy-tree, yes. I and them all one part, all tummy or tummy-hands. Tummy-head to think for me where I serve Tummy-trees. You kill my tummy-cord, I feel no good in my veins, no good sap. You wild lost people with no Tummy-tree, not have the sap to see what I say... '

'Stop it! Talk sense, you great tummy! You're human, aren't you? You call those big swollen plants Tummy-trees? And you have to serve them? When did they catch you? How long ago?'

The Fisher put his hand to the height of his knee, rolled his head stupidly and burst into speech again.

'No– high the Tummy-tree take us, cuddle, bed, save snugly like mothers. Babies go in the soft folds, just legs to see, keep on sucking at the tummy, get put on a tummy-cord to walk. Please you let me go back, try find a new tummy-cord or I'm a poor baby too without one.'

Poyly, Gren and Yattmur stared at him as he chattered, not taking in half he said.

'I don't understand,' Yattmur whispered. 'He talked more sense before his tail was cut off.'

'We've set you free – we'll set all your friends free,' Gren said, the morel prompting him. 'We'll take you all away from these filthy Tummy-trees. You'll be free, free to work with us and start a new life, slaves no longer.'

'No, no, please... Tummy-trees grow us like flowers! We have no want to be wild men like you, no lovely Tummy-trees -'

'Shut up about the trees!' Gren raised his hand and at once the other fell silent, biting his lips and scratching his fat thighs in anguish. 'We are your liberators and you should be grateful to us. Now, tell us quickly, what is this fishing we've heard about? When does it start? Soon?'

'Soon now, so soon, please,' the Fisher said, trying to catch Gren's hand in entreaty. 'Most times, no fishy swim in Long Water, cut too sharply on out the hole of Black Mouth, so no fish swim. And if no fish means no fishing, see? Then the Black Mouth sings to all things to be a meal for him in his mouth, and so Tummy-trees make us big mummy noise, cuddle us up, not let us be any meal in his mouth. Then short time Mouth make rest, no sing, no eat, no noise. Then Mouth drop away what he eat not need not eat not have, drop away in Long Water under his self. Then up come big fish big hunger big eat all drop-away pieces, we quick Tummy-men Fishers go out catch big fish big hunger in big net, feed big glad Tummy-tree, feed Tummy-men, all feed -'

'All right, that'll do,' Gren said, and the Fishers subsided wretchedly, standing on one foot with the other. As they began an excited discussion, he sank to the ground, holding his head dolorously in his hands.

With the morel, Gren and Poyly quickly came to a plan of action.

'We can save them all from this humiliating way of life,' Gren said.

'They don't want to be saved,' Yattmur said. 'They're happy.'

'They're horrible,' Poyly said.

While they were talking, the Long Water changed colour. A myriad bits and pieces erupted on to its surface, dappling it as they were swept along in the direction of the Tummy-trees.

"The remains of the Mouth's feast,' Gren exclaimed. 'Come on, before the boat casts off and the Fishers start to fish. Out with your knives.'

Impelled by the morel, he bounded off, Poyly and Yattmur following. Only the later cast a backward glance at the Fisher. He was rolling on the ground in a bout of misery, indifferent to everything but his own wretchedness.

The rest of the Fishers had by now loaded their net into the boat. On seeing the refuse in the stream they gave a cheer and climbed into the vessel, each paying out his tail over the stern as he went. The last one was scrambling aboard as Gren and the women rushed up.

'Jump for it!' Gren shouted, and the three of them jumped, landing on the crude and creaking deck close together. In unison, the nearer Fishers turned to face them, Unwieldly though it was, built under the direction of the pseudo-aware Tummy-trees, the boat was made to serve a particular purpose: to catch the big scavenger fish of Long Water. It boasted neither oars nor sail, since its only function was to drag a heavy net across the stream from one bank to the other. Accordingly, a stout woven rope had been stretched across the water and anchored to trees on either side. To this rope the boat was loosely secured through a series of eyes, thus preventing its being swept away on the flood. It was manoeuvred across the river by simple brute force, half the Fishers pulling on the guide rope while the others lowered the net into place. So it had been from dimmest times.

Routine governed the Fishers' lives. When the three intruders landed in their midst, neither they nor the Tummy-trees knew clearly what action to take. Divided in purpose, the Fishers were made half to continue hauling the boat into mid-stream and half to defend their position.

With one uniform rush, the defence force charged at Gren and the girls.

Yattmur glanced over her shoulder. It was too late to jump ashore again; they were away from the bank. She drew her knife and stood by Gren and Poyly. As the Fishers fell at them, she plunged it into the stomach of the nearest man. He stumbled, but others bore her down. Her knife went skidding over the deck and her hands were pinned before she could draw her sword.

The fat men flung themselves at Poyly and Gren. Though they fought desperately, they too were borne down.

Evidently the Fishers and their pot-bellied masters ashore had not thought to use knives until they saw Yattmur's. Now – as one man – they all produced knives.

Through Gren's brain, amid his panic and fury, seared the angry jangle of the morel's thoughts.

'You brainless tarsiers! Waste no time on these dolls of men. Cut their umbilical cords, their tails, their tails, you fools! Hack their tails off and they'll not harm you!'

Cursing, ramming a knee into a groin and knuckles into an attacker's face, Gren knocked aside a down-curving knife and twisted over on to his knees. Impelled by the morel, he grasped another Fisher by the neck, wrenching it savagely and then flinging the man aside. Now his way was clear. With a leap he was up on the stern.

The green tails lay there, thirty of them together, stretching over to the shore.

Gren let out a shout of triumph. Then he brought his blade down.

Half a dozen slashes in cold anger and the thing was done!

The boat rocked violently. The Fishers jerked and fell. All their activity stopped. They moaned and cried, picking themselves up to stand helplessly together in a knot, their severed tails dangling. Shorn of its motive power, the boat rested in mid-stream.

'You see,' remarked the morel, 'the fight is over.'

As Poyly picked herself up, a flailing movement caught her eye, and she looked at the bank they had left. A low cry of horror was wrenched from her lips. Gren and Yattmur turned to stare where she did. They stood transfixed, their knives still grasped in their hands.

'Get down!' Poyly shouted.

Scintillant leaves like toothed swords whirled above them. The three Tummy-trees heaved in wrath. Bereft of their willing slaves, they were lashing the tall leaves that formed their poll into action. Their whole bulk trembled as the dark green blades flashed above the vessel.

As Poyly flung herself flat, the first leaf struck, throwing a great raw weal across the rough wood of the deck. Splinters flew. A second and a third blow fell. Such a terrible bombardment, she knew, would kill them all in no time.

The unnatural anger of these trees was fearful to see. Poyly did not let it paralyse her. As Gren and Yattmur crouched under the frail shelter of the stern, she jumped up. Without heeding the morel to guide her, she leant over the side and hacked at the tough fibres that kept the boat square across the river.

Armoured leaves flayed near her. The Fishers were struck once and then again. Parabolas of blood patterned the deck. Crying, the poor creatures tumbled together while their limbs bled and they staggered from the centre of the deck. Still the trees struck out mercilessly.

Tough though the securing rope was, it parted at last under Poyly's attack. She gave a shout of triumph as the boat freed itself and swayed round under the force of the water.

She was still climbing to cover when the next leaf crashed down. The spines along one fleshy edge of it raked her with full force across the chest.

'Poyly!' Gren and Yattmur cried with one voice, springing up.

They never reached her. The blow caught her off balance. She doubled up as blood came weeping from her wound. As her knees buckled she fell backwards. Momentarily her eyes caught Gren's in tender appeal, and then she disappeared over the side and hit the waters.

They rushed to the side and peered down. An extra turbidity marked where she had sunk. One hand appeared on the surface, its fingers outspread, severed from its arm. It vanished almost at once in a welter of smooth fish bodies and then there was no more sign of Poyly.

Falling on to the deck, beating his fists on it in sorrow, Gren cried to the morel.

'Could you not have saved her, you miserable fungus, you useless growth? Could you not have done something? What did you ever bring her but trouble?'

A long silence followed. Gren called at it again – in grief and hatred. At length the morel spoke in a small voice.

'Half of me is dead,' it whispered.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

BY this time the boat had begun to whirl away down the flood. Already they were safe from the Tummy-trees, which fell rapidly behind, their murderous polls still beating the water into lines of spray.

Seeing that they were being carried off, the Fishers began a chorus of groans. Yattmur paraded before them with her knife out, allowing herself to show no pity for their wounds.

'You Tummy-belly men! You long-tailed sons of swollen plants 1 Cease your noise! Someone real has died and you shall mourn her or I'll throw you all overboard with my own two hands.'

At that the Fishers fell into abject silence. Grouped humbly together, they comforted each other and licked each other's wounds. Running over to Gren, Yattmur put her arm round him and pressed her cheek against his. Only for a moment did he try to resist her.

'Don't mourn too much for Poyly. She was fine in life – but a time comes for all of us to fall to the green. I am here now, and I will be your mate.'

'You will want to get back to your tribe, to the herders,' Gren said miserably.

'Ha! They lie far behind us. How shall I get back? Stand up and see how fast we are being swept along! I can hardly see the Black Mouth now – it's no bigger than one of my nipples. We are in danger, O Gren. Rouse yourself! Ask your magical friend the morel where we are going.'

'I don't care what happens to us now.'

'Look Gren -'

A shout rose from the Fishers. They showed a sort of apathetic interest, pointing ahead and calling, which was enough to pull Yattmur and Gren up at once.

Their boat was rapidly being swept towards another. More than one Fishers' colony grew by the banks of the Long Water. Another loomed ahead. Two bulging Tummy-trees marked its position. This colony's net was out across the stream, its boat resting against the far bank, full of Fishers. Their tails hung over the river along the top of the net.

'We're going to hit them!' Gren said. 'What are we going to do?'

'No, we shall miss their boat. Perhaps their net will stop us. Then we can get safely ashore.'

'Look at these fools climbing on to the sides of the boat. They'll be jerked overboard.' He called to the Fishers in question, who were swarming over the bows. 'Hey, you Short-tails! get down there, or you'll be flung into the water.'

His cry was drowned by their shouts and the roar of the water. They were rushing irresistibly toward the other boat. Next moment they struck the net that stretched across their path.

The cumbersome boat squealed and lurched. Several Fishers were flung down into the water by the impact. One of them managed to jump the narrowing distance into the other boat. The two vessels struck glancingly, cannoned off each other – and then the securing rope across the river broke.

They whirled free again, to go racing on down the flood. The other boat, being already against the bank, stayed there, bumping uncomfortably. Many of its crew were scampering about the bank; some had been flung into the stream, some had had their tails lopped off. But their misadventures remained hidden for ever more as Gren's boat swept round a grand curve and jungle closed in on both sides.

'Now what do we do?' Yattmur asked, trembling.

Gren shrugged his shoulders. He had no ideas. The world had revealed itself as too big and too terrible for him.

'Wake up, morel,' he said. 'What happens to us now? You got us into this trouble – now get us out of it.'

For answer the morel started turning his mind upside down. Dizzied, Gren sat down heavily. Yattmur clasped his hands while phantoms of memory and thought fluttered before his mental gaze. The morel was studying navigation.

Finally it said, 'We need to steer this boat to get it to obey us. But there is nothing to steer it with. We must wait and see what happens.'

It was an admission of defeat. Gren sat on the deck with an arm round Yattmur, properly indifferent to everything external. His thoughts went back to the time when he and Poyly were careless children in the tribe of Lily-yo. Life had been so easy, so sweet then, and little had they realized it! Why, it had even been warmer; the sun had shone almost directly overhead.

He opened one eye. The sun was quite far down in the sky.

'I'm cold,' he said.

'Huddle against me,' Yattmur coaxed.

Some freshly plucked leaves lay near them; perhaps they had been plucked to wrap the Fishers' expected catch of fish in. Yattmur pulled them over Gren and lay close against him, letting her arms steal round him.

He relaxed in her warmth. An interest in her awoke, he began instinctively to explore her body. She was as warm and sweet as childhood dreams, and pressed ardently against his touch. Her hands too began a journey of exploration. Lost in delight of each other they forgot the world. When he took her she was also taking him.

Even the morel was soothed by the pleasure of their actions under the warm leaves. The boat sped on down the river, occasionally bumping a bank, but never ceasing its progress.

After a while, it joined a much wider river and spun hopelessly in an eddy for some time, making them all dizzy. One of the wounded Fishers died here; he was thrown overboard; this might have been a signal, for at once the boat was released from the eddy and floated off again on the broad bosom of the waters. Now the river was very wide, and spreading still farther, so that in time they could see neither shore.

For the humans, especially for Gren to whom the idea of long empty distances was foreign, it was an unknown world. They stared out at the expanse only to turn away shivering and hide their eyes. Everywhere was motion! – and not only beneath them in the restless water. A cool wind had sprung up, a wind that would have lost its way in the measureless miles of the forest but was here master of all it passed over. It scuffed the water with its invisible footsteps, it jostled the boat and made it creak, it splashed spray in the troubled faces of the Fishers, it ruffled their hair and blew it across their ears. Gaining strength, it chilled their skins and drew a gauze of cloud over the sky, obscuring the traversers that drifted there.

Two dozen Fishers remained in the boat, six of them suffering badly from the attack of the Tummy-trees. They made no attempt to approach Gren and Yattmur at first, lying together like a living monument to despair. First one and then another of the wounded died and was cast overboard, amid desultory mourning.

So they were carried out into the ocean.

The great width of the river prevented them from being attacked by the giant seaweeds which fringed the coasts. Nothing, indeed, marked their transition from river to estuary or from estuary to sea; the broad brown roll of fresh water continued far into the surrounding salt waves.

Gradually the brown faded into green and blue depths, and the wind stiffened, taking them in a different direction, parallel with the coast. The mighty forest looked no bigger than a leaf.

One of the Fishers, urged by his companions, came humbly over to Gren and Yattmur where they lay resting among the leaves. He bowed to them.

'O great herders, hear us speak when we speak if you let me start talking,' he said.

Gren said sharply, 'We will do you no harm, fat fellow. We are in trouble just as you are. Can't you understand that? We meant to help you, and that we shall do if the world turns dry again. But try to gather your thoughts together so that you talk sense. What do you want?'

The man bowed low. Behind him, his companion bowed low in heart-sick imitation.

'Great herder, we see you since you come. We clever Tummy-tree chaps are seeing your size. So we know you will soon love to kill us when you jump up from playing the sandwich game along with your lady in the leaves. We clever chaps are not fools, and not fools are clever to make glad dying for you. All the same sadness makes us not clever to die with no feeding. All we poor sad clever Tummy-men have no feeding and pray you give us feeding because we have no mummy Tummy-feeding -'

Gren gestured impatiently.

'We've no food either,' he said. 'We are humans like you. We too must fend for ourselves.'

'Alas, we did not dare to have any hopes you would share your food with us, for your food is sacred and you wish to see us starve. You are very clever to hide from us the jumpvil food we know you always carry. We are glad, great herder, that you make us starve if our dying makes you have a laugh and a gay song and another sandwich game. Because we are humble, we do not need food to die with..."

'I really will kill these creatures,' Gren said savagely, releasing Yattmur and sitting up. 'Morel, what do we do with them? You got us into this trouble. Help us get out of it.'

'Make them throw their net over the side and catch fish,' twanged the morel.

'Good!' Gren said. He jumped up, pulling Yattmur with him, and began shouting orders at the Fishers.

Miserably, incompetently, f awningly, they arranged their net and cast it over the side of the vessel. The sea here teemed with life. No sooner was the net down than something big tugged at it – tugged and began unfalteringly to climb it.

The boat listed over to one side. With a cry, the Fishers fell away as a great pair of claws rattled over the gunwhales. Gren was beneath them. Without thought, he pulled out his knife and smote.

A lobster head bigger than his own loomed up before him. An eyestalk went flying – and another, as he smote again.

Soundlessly, the marine monster released its hold and fell back into the depths, leaving a frightened band of Fishers moaning in the scuppers. Almost as frightened himself – for he sensed the morel's fear in his mind – Gren rounded on them, kicking and shouting.

'Get up, you flabby tummy-bellies! Would you lie there and die? Well I won't let you. Get up and haul the net in again before we get any more monsters in on us. Come on, move! Get this net in! Jump to it, you blubbering brutes!'

'O great herder, you may throw us to the wonders of the wet world and we will not complain. We may not complain! You see we praise you even when you fetch up the beasts of the wet world upon us and we are too lowly to complain, so be merciful -'

'Merciful! I'll flay you alive if you don't get that net in at once. Move!' he yelled, and they moved, the hair on their flanks fluttering in the breeze.

The line came over the side laden with creatures that splashed and flapped about their ankles.

'Wonderful!' Yattmur cried, squeezing Gren. 'I am so hungry, my love. Now we shall live! Soon there will be an end to this Long Water, I know.'

But the boat drifted as it would. They went to sleep once more and then a second time, and the weather grew no warmer and then they woke to find the deck motionless beneath them.

Gren opened his eyes. A stretch of sand and bushes met his gaze. He and Yattmur were alone in the boat.

'Morel!' he cried, leaping to his feet. 'You never sleep – why did you not wake me and tell us that the water had stopped? And the flabby-bellies have escaped!'

He looked round at the ocean that had brought them here. Yattmur stood up silently, hugging her breasts and regarding with wonder a great peak that rose sheer from the nearby bushes.

The morel made something like a ghostly chuckle in Gren's mind. "The Fishers will not get far – let them find out the dangers for us first. I let you and Yattmur sleep on so that you would feel fresh. You need all your energies. This may be the place where we build our new kingdom, my friend!'

Gren made a doubtful move. No traversers were visible overhead, and he took it as a bad omen. All there was to be seen, apart from the forbidding island and the wastes of ocean, was a speedseed bird, sailing along under the ceiling of high cloud.

'I suppose we'd better get ashore,' Gren said.

I'd rather stay in the boat,' Yattmur said, eyeing the great cliff of rock with apprehension. But when he put out a hand to her, she took it and climbed over the side without fuss.

He could hear her teeth chattering.

They stood on the unwelcoming beach, testing it for menace.

The speedseed still flew along in the sky. It changed direction by a degree or so without interrupting the pulse of its flight. High over the ocean it soared, its wooden wings creaking like a fully rigged sailing ship.

The two humans heard its noise and looked up. The speed-seed had sighted land. Slowing, it circled and began to lose height.

'Is it after us?' Yattmur asked.

A choice of cover presented itself. They could hide under their boat, or they could dive into the fringe of jungle that curled over the low forehead of the beach. The boat was flimsy shelter from a large bird, should it choose to attack; together, man and woman slid into the foliage.

Now the speedseed was plunging steeply. Its wings did not retract. Stiffly outspread, they jarred and vibrated through the air under increased momentum.

Formidable though it was, the speedseed remained but a crude imitation of the true birds which had once filled the skies of Earth. The last of the true birds had perished many eons ago, when the sun had begun to pour out increased energy as it moved into the last phase of its existence. Speedseeds imitated the form of an extinct avian class with a lordly inefficiency in keeping with the supremacy of the vegetable world. The vibratory racket of its wings filled the heavens.

'Has it seen us, Gren?' Yattmur asked, peering from under the leaves. It was cold in the shadow of the towering cliff.

For answer Gren merely clutched her arm tightly, staring up with slitted eyes. Because he was both frightened and angry, he did not trust himself to speak. The morel offered him no comfort, withdrawing itself to await events.

It now became obvious that the clumsy bird could not straighten out in time to avoid hitting the land. Down it came, its shadow swept black over the bush, the leaves stirred as it shot past behind a nearby tree – and silence fell. No sound of impact reached the humans, though the bird must have hit the ground not more than fifty yards from them.

'Living shades!' Gren exclaimed. 'Did something swallow it?'

His mind backed hurriedly away from trying to visualize something big enough to swallow a speedseed bird.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

THEY stood waiting, but nothing interrupted the silence.

'It vanished like a ghost!' Gren said. 'Let's go and see what happened to it.'

She clung to him to hold him back.

'This is an unknown place, full of unknown perils,' she said. 'Let us not seek trouble when trouble is ready enough to seek us. We know nothing of where we are. First we must find what kind of place this is, and if we can live here.'

'I would rather find trouble than let it find me,' Gren said. 'But perhaps you are right, Yattmur. My bones tell me that this is not a good place. What has happened to those stupid tummy-belly men?'

They emerged on to the beach and started to walk slowly along it, the whole time looking watchfully about them, keeping an eye open for signs of their pitiful companions, moving between the flatness of the sea and the steepness of the great cliff.

The signs they looked for were not far to seek.

'They've been here,' said Gren, running along the strand.

Scuffed footprints and droppings marked the place where the tummy-belly men had paddled ashore. Many of the prints were imprecise and pointed this way and that; handprints also were not uncommon, marking where the creatures had stumbled into one another and fallen. The marks clearly betrayed the lumpish and uncertain way in which the tummy-bellies had progressed. After a short distance they led into a narrow belt of trees with leathery and sad leaves that stood between beach and cliff. As Gren and Yattmur followed the prints into the gloom, a low sound made them stop. Moans came from near at hand.

Drawing out his knife, Gren spoke. Looking into the grove that drew nourishment what it could from the sandy soil, he called, 'Whoever you are, come out before I haul you out squealing!'

The moans redoubled, a low threnody in which babbled words were distinguishable.

'It's a tummy-belly!' Yattmur exclaimed. 'Don't be angry with him if he's hurt.' Her eyes had adjusted to the shade, and now she ran forward as she spoke and knelt on the sandy ground among the sharp grasses.

One of the fat Fishers lay there with three of his companions huddled against him. He shuddered violently away, half-rolling over, as Yattmur appeared.

'I shan't hurt you,' Yattmur said. 'We were searching to find where you had gone.'

'It is too late, for our hearts are broken by your not coming before,' the man cried, tears rolling down his cheeks. Dried blood from a long scratch across one shoulder had matted his hair at that point, but Yattmur could see the wound was only superficial.

'It's a good thing we found you,' she said. 'There's nothing much wrong with you. You must all get up now and return to the boat.'

At this the tummy-belly burst into fresh complaint; his fellows joined in the chorus, speaking in their peculiarly jumbled dialect.

'O great herders, the sight of you adds to our miseries. How very much we rejoice to see you again, though we know you will kill us, poor helpless loveable tummy-fellows that we are.'

'We are, we are, we are, and though our love is loving you, you cannot love us, for we are only miserable dirt and you are cruel murderers who are cruel to dirt.'

'You will kill us though we are dying! O how we admire your bravery, you clever tail-less heroes!'

'Stop this filthy babbling,' Gren ordered. 'We are not murderers and we have never desired to harm you.'

'How clever you are, master, to be pretending that cutting us off our lovely tails is no harm! O we thought you were dead and finished with making sandwiches in the boat when the watery world turned solid, so we crept away in good grief, crept away on all our feet because your snores were loud. Now you have caught us again and because you do not snore we know you will kill us!'

Gren slapped the cheek of the nearest creature, who wailed and writhed as if in mortal agony.

'Be silent, blubbering fools! We shall not hurt you if you trust us. Stand up and tell us where the rest of your number is.'

His order only brought forth fresh lamentation.

'You can see we four sad sufferers are fatally dying of the death that comes to all green and pink things, so you tell us to stand up, because to make any standing position will kill us badly, so that you kick us when our souls are gone and we can only be dead at you and not crying with our harmless mouths. O we fall down from our lying flat at such a sly idea, great herder!'

As they cried out, they tried blindly to grasp Yattmur and Gren's ankles and kiss their feet, making the two humans skip about to avoid this embrace.

'There's very little wrong with the foolish creatures,' said Yattmur, who had been trying to examine them during this orgy of lamentation. 'They are scratched and bruised, nothing more.'

'I'll soon heal them,' Gren said. His ankle had been caught; he kicked out into a podgy face. Impelled by loathing, he grasped one of the other prone tummy-bellies and dragged the creature to its feet by force.

'How wonderfully strong you are, master,' it groaned, trying at once to kiss and bite his hands. 'Your muscles and your cruelty are huge to poor little dying chaps like us whose blood is going bad inside them because of bad things and other bad things, alas!'

'I'll push your teeth down your throat if you don't keep quiet,' Gren promised.

With Yattmur's help, he got the other three weeping tummy-bellies to their feet; as she had said, there was little wrong with them apart from self-pity. Silencing them, he asked them whither their sixteen companions had gone.

'O wonderful no-tail, you spare this poor tiny number four to enjoy killing the big number sixteen. What self-sacrifice you sacrifice! We happily tell you of the happiness we feel in telling you which way went our jolly sad sixteen number, so we can be spared to go on living and enjoying your smacks and blows and cruel kicks in the noses of our tender face. The sixteen number laid us down here to die in peace before they ran on that way for you to catch them and play killing.'

And they pointed dejectedly along the shore.

'Stay here and keep quiet,' Gren ordered. 'We will come back for you when we've found your fellows. Don't go away or something may eat you.'

'We will wait in fear even if we die first.'

'See that you do.'

Gren and Yattmur set off along the beach. Silence descended; even the ocean made hardly a murmur as it nuzzled against the land; and they felt again a huge unease, as if a million eyes watched them unseen.

As they walked, they surveyed their surroundings. Creatures of the jungle, they would never face anything more alien than the sea; yet the land here held strangeness. It was not simply that the trees – with leathery leaves that seemed suitable for the colder climate – were of an unknown variety; nor that behind the trees there rose the steep cliff, so steep, so grey, so pitted, rising to a spire so far above their heads, that it dwarfed everything and seemed to cast a gloom over the whole scene.

Beside all these elements of visual strangeness was another, one to which they could give no name, but which seemed all the more obtrusive after their brush with the tummy-bellies. The murmuring silence of the beach contributed to their unease.

Taking a nervous glance across her shoulder, Yattmur looked up towards the towering cliff again. Gathering cloud scudding across the sky made that great wall look as if it were toppling.

Yattmur fell on her face and covered her eyes.

The mighty cliffs are crashing down on us!' she cried, pulling Gren down with her.

He looked up once. The illusion caught him too: that grand and high tower was coming grandly down on top of them! Together they squeezed their soft bodies among the hard rocks, seeking safety by pressing their faces into damp shingly sand. They were creatures who belonged to the jungles of the hothouse world; so many things here were alien to them, they could respond only with fear.

Instinctively, Gren called the fungus that draped his head and neck.

'Morel, save us! We trusted you and you brought us to this dreadful place. Now you must get us away from it, quickly before the cliff comes down on us.'

'If you die, I die,' said the morel, sending its twanging harmonics through Gren's head. It added more helpfully, 'You can both get up. The clouds move; the cliff does not.'

A moment or two passed – an interval of waiting filled with the dirge of the ocean – before Gren dared to test the truth of this observation. At length, finding that no rocks cascaded down on to his naked body, he peered up. Feeling him move, Yattmur whimpered.

Still the cliff seemed to fall. He braced himself to look at it more thoroughly.

The cliff appeared to be sailing out of the heavens on to him, yet at last he assured himself that it did not move. He dared to look away from its pitted face and nudge Yattmur.

'The cliff is not harming us yet,' he said. 'We can go on.'

She raised a woebegone face, its cheeks patterned redly where they had pressed against the tiny stones of the shore, some of which still clung there.

'It is a magic cliff. It always falls yet it never falls,' she said at last, after regarding the rock carefully. 'I don't like it. It has eyes to watch us.'

They scrambled on, Yattmur looking nervously up from time to time. Clouds were gathering, their shadows moving in from the sea.

The shore curved sharply and continuously, its sands often buried under great masses of rock on which the jungle encroached at one end and the sea at the other. Over these masses they had laboriously to climb, moving as quietly as possible.

'We shall soon be back where we started from,' Gren said, looking back and finding that their boat was now concealed behind the central cliff.

'Correct,' twanged the morel. We are on a small island, Gren.'

'We can't live here then, morel?'

'I think not.'

'How do we get away?'

'As we arrived – in the boat. Some of these giant leaves would serve us as sails.'

'We hate the boat, morel, and the watery world.'

'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.

'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.

'When your distant predecessor, man, was ruler of this planet, he had a way with the overcrowded bed in his garden. He transplanted or weeded out. Now, somehow, nature has invented her own gardener. The rocks have shaped themselves into transmitters. Probably there are stations like this all round the coasts... stations where any near-mindless thing can be accepted for onward transmission... stations where plants can be transplanted... '

'Transplanted where!' Gren asked. 'Where was that place?'

Something like a sigh floated down the aisles of his mind.

'Can't you see I'm guessing, Gren? Since I have joined forces with you, I have become part human. Who knows the worlds available to different forms of life? The sun means one thing to you and another to a flower. To us the sea is terrible; to that great creature we saw... There would be neither words nor thought to describe where we went; how could there be, when it was so patently the product of... non-ratiocin-active processes... '

Gren got unsteadily to his feet.

'I want to be sick,' he said.

He staggered out of the cave.

'To conceive of other dimensions, other modes of being -' continued the morel.

'For soul's sake, shut up!' Gren cried. 'What does it matter to me that there are places – states – I can't... can't attain. I can't, and that's that. It was all a beastly mirage, so leave me alone, will you? I want to be sick.'

The rain was abating a little. It pattered lightly on his backbone as he arched it to lean a head forward against a tree. His head throbbed, his eyes watered, his stomach heaved.

They would have to make sails from the big leaves and sail away from here, he and Yattmur and the four surviving tummy-belly men. They must get away. As it had become colder, they might have to make coverings for themselves out of those same leaves. This world was no paradise, but in some respects it was manageable.

He was still throwing up the contents of his stomach when he heard Yattmur calling.

He looked up, grinning feebly. She was coming back to him along the rainy beach.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THEY stood hand in hand, as confusedly he tried to tell her of his experiences in the cave.

'I'm glad you came back,' she said gently.

He shook his guilty head, thinking how beautiful and strange the experience had been. Weariness filled him. He dreaded the thought of their having to put to sea again, yet obviously they could not remain on this island.

'Get moving, then,' said the morel inside his head. 'You're as slow as a tummy-belly.'

Still holding Yattmur's hand, he turned and they trudged slowly back down the beach. A chilly wind blew up, carrying the rain out to sea. The four tummy-belly men stood huddling together where Gren had told them to wait. They fell on the sand in self-abasement as Gren and Yattmur came up.

'You can stop that,' he told them without humour. 'We've all got work to do, and you are going to do your share.

Slapping their fat flanks, he drove them before him towards the boat.

A breeze blew over the ocean as bright and sharp as glass.

To the occasional traversers that soared far overhead, the boat with its six passengers looked like nothing more than a drifting log. It floated now far beyond the island of the tall cliff.

The sail of large and crudely stitched leaves hung from an improvised mast; but adverse winds had long since torn it, robbing it of usefulness. In consequence the boat now moved without control and was carried eastwards on a strong thermal current.

The humans watched with either apathy or anxiety, according to their natures, as they were swept along. They had eaten several times and slept much since sailing away from the island of the tall cliff.

Much lay on either side for them to see when they cared to look. To port ran a long coastline, presenting from this distance an unbroken aspect of forest on its cliffs. Throughout uncounted watches it had remained the same; when hills appeared inland, as they did with increasing frequency, they too were clothed in forest.

Between coast and boat, small islands sometimes interposed themselves. On these grew a variety of foliage the mainland lacked, some being crowned by trees, some being covered in strange blossoms, some remaining mere barren humps of rock. Sometimes it appeared that the boat would be dashed against the shoals that fringed these islands: but so far it had always been carried clear at the last moment.

To starboard stretched the infinite ocean. This was now punctuated by evil-looking shapes of whose nature Gren and Yattmur had as yet no clue.

The helplessness of their position, as well as the mystery of it, bore down on the humans, though they were used to a subordinate place in the world. Now to add to their troubles a mist came up, closing round their boat and hiding all landmarks from them.

'It's the thickest mist I have ever seen,' Yattmur said, as she stood with her mate staring over the side of the boat.

'And the coldest,' Gren said. 'Have you noticed what is happening to the sun?'

In the gathering mist, nothing now could be seen except the sea immediately about the boat and a great red sun which hung low over the water in the direction from which they had come, dangling a sword of light across the waves.

Yattmur pressed more tightly to Gren.

"The sun used to be high above us,' she said. 'Now the watery world threatens to swallow it.'

'Morel, what happens when the sun goes?' Gren asked.

'When the sun goes, there is darkness,' twanged the morel, adding with gentle irony, 'as you might have deduced for yourself. We have entered the realm of eternal sunset and the stream carries us deeper and deeper into it.'

It spoke reservedly, yet a tremor ran through Gren at the fear of the unknown. He held more tightly to Yattmur as they stared fixedly at the sun, dull and huge through the moisture-laden air. As they watched, one of the phantom shapes they had observed to starboard intervened between them and the sun, taking a great jagged bite out of it. Almost at the same time, the mist thickened and the sun was lost to view.

'Ohhh! Ahhh!' At the sun's disappearance, a cry of dismay rose from the tummy-bellies. They had been cuddled together on a pile of dead leaves in the stern. Now they came scampering forward, seizing Gren's and Yattmur's hands.

'O mighty master and sandwich-makers!' they cried. 'All this mighty watery world sailing is too much badness, too much badness, for we have sailed away and lost all the world. The world has gone by bad sailing and we must quickly good-sail to get it back.'

Their long hair glistened with moisture, their eyes were in a fine frenzy rolling. They bounched up and down, crying their woes.

'Some creature has eaten the sun, O great herder!'

'Stop your silly noise,' Yattmur said. 'We are as frightened as you are.'

'No we are not,' Gren exclaimed angrily, dashing their clammy hands from his flesh. 'Nobody could be as frightened as they are, for they are always frightened. Stand back, you blubbering tummy-bellies! The sun will come again when the mist clears.'

'You brave cruel herder,' one of the creatures cried. 'You have hidden the sun to scare us because you love us no more, though we happily enjoy your lovely blows and happy good bad words! You -'

Gren struck out at the man, glad to relieve his tensions in action. The poor fellow reeled backwards squealing. His companions fell on him instantly, cuffing him for not enjoying the mighty hurts with which his master honoured him. Savagely, Gren pulled them away.

As Yattmur came to his aid, a shock sent them all reeling. The deck canted sharply, and they sprawled together, six of them in a heap. Splinters of a jagged transparent stuff showered on to them.

Unhurt, Yattmur picked up one of the splinters and looked at it. As she watched it, the shard changed, dwindled, and left only a tiny puddle of water in her hand. She stared in surprise. A wall of the same glassy substance loomed over the front of the boat.

'Oh!' she said dully, realizing they had struck one of the phantom shapes they had noticed riding along on the sea. 'A mountain of fog has caught us.'

Gren jumped up, silencing the loud protestations of the tummy-belly men. A gash was visible in the bows of their boat, through which only a trickle of water ran. He climbed on to the side and peered about.

The warm current had carried them into a great glassy mountain that appeared to float on the sea. The mountain had been eroded at water level, forming a sloping shelf there; it was up this icy beach that they had been driven, and this that kept their broken bow partly above the water.

'We shan't sink,' Gren said to Yattmur, 'for there is a ledge under us. But the boat is useless now; off the ledge, it would sink.'

It was indeed filling steadily with water, as the wails of the tummy-bellies testified.

'What can we do?' Yattmur asked. 'Perhaps we should have stayed at the island of the tall cliff.'

Doubtfully, Gren looked about. A great row of what resembled long sharp teeth hung over the deck as if about to bite the ship in two. Icy droplets of saliva fell from them, splashing the humans. They had sailed straight into this glass monster's mouth!

Near at hand, its entrails were dimly visible, filling their vision with an array of blue and green lines and planes, some of which – with a dull murderous beauty – glowed orange from a sun still hidden from the humans.

'This ice beast prepares to eat us!' yelped the tummy-bellies, scampering round the deck. 'Oh, oh, our death moment come hot upon us, ice cold in these nasty freezing jaws.'

'Ice!' exclaimed Yattmur. 'Yes! How strange that these foolish belly-boy fishers should give us knowledge. Gren, this stuff is called ice. In the marsh grounds near Long Water where the tummies lived grew little flowers called colderpolders. At certain times these flowers, which flourish in the shade, made this cold ice to keep their seed in. When I was a girl-child I went into the marshes to get these ice drops and suck them.'

'Now this big ice drop sucks us,' Gren said, as cold water soused down on his face from the vault overhead. 'What do we do, morel?'

'There is no safety here, so we must look for some,' twanged the morel. 'If the boat slips back off the ice shelf, all will drown but you: for the boat will sink and you alone can swim. You must get off the boat at once, and take the tummy-fishers with you.'

'Right! Yattmur, sweet, climb out on to the ice while I drive these four fools after you.'

The four fools were loath to leave the boat, though half of its deck was now shallowly under water. When Gren shouted at them, they leapt away, scattering as he approached, dashing away as he rushed to seize them, dodging and squealing as they went.

'Save us! Spare us, O herder! What have we four poor filthy lumps of compost done that you should wish to throw us to the ice beast? Help, help! Alas, that we should be so nasty you love to treat us in this way!'

Gren dived at the nearest and hairiest, who skipped away screaming, his bosoms flopping up and down as he went.

'Not me, great beastly spirit! Kill the other three that don't love you, but not me who loves you -'

Gren tripped him as he fled. The tummy-belly man sprawled, his sentence turning into a squeal before he pitched at full length head first into the water. Quickly Gren was on him; they splashed in the icy water until Gren got a firm hold and dragged the spluttering creature up by the flesh and hair of his neck, to pull him by sheer force to the side of the boat. With a heave, he sent him sprawling over, collapsing crying in the shallows at Yattmur's feet.

Thoroughly cowed by this display of force, the other three tummy-bellies climbed meekly out of their refuge and into the maw of the ice beast, teeth chattering with fear and cold. Gren followed them. For a moment the six stood together, looking into a grotto which to four of them at least was a gigantic throat. A ringing noise from behind made them turn back.

One of the ice fangs hanging overhead had cracked and fallen. It stuck upright in the wood of the deck like a dagger before slipping sideways and shattering into bits. Almost as if this were a signal, a much louder noise came from under the boat. The whole shelf on which the vessel rested gave way. Momentarily, the edge of a thin tongue of ice slid into view. Before it slumped back into the water, their boat was borne away on the dark flood. They watched it filling rapidly as it disappeared.

They were able to follow its progress for some while; the mist had lifted slightly and the sun once again painted a streak of cold fire down the back of the ocean.

For all that, it was with profound gloom that Gren and Yattmur turned away. With their boat gone, they were stranded on the iceberg. In silence the four tummy-bellies followed them as they took the only course possible and climbed along the cylindrical tunnel in the ice.

Splashing through chill puddles, they were hemmed in by ribs of ice, against which every sound threw itself in a frenzy of echoes. With each step they took, the noise grew louder and the tunnel smaller.

'O spirits, I hate this place! Better if we had perished with the boat. How much farther can we go?' Yattmur asked, as Gren paused.

'No farther,' he said grimly. 'We've come to a dead end. We're trapped here.'

Hanging nearly to the floor, several magnificent icicles barred their way almost as effectively as a portcullis. Beyond the portcullis, a flat pane of ice faced them.

'Always trouble, always difficulty, always some fresh trouble to living!' Gren said. 'Man was an accident on this world or it would have been made better for him!'

'I have already told you that your kind was an accident,' twanged the morel.

'We were happy till you started interfering,' Gren said sharply.

'You were a vegetable till then!'

Infuriated by this thrust, Gren grasped one of the great icicles and pulled. It snapped off some way above his head. Holding it like a spear, he hurled it at the wall of ice before him.

Painful carillons sparked down the tunnel as the entire wall shattered under the blow. Ice fell, broke, skidded past their ankles, as a whole half-melted curtain celebrated its downfall in swift disintegration. The humans crouched, holding their hands over their heads while it seemed as if the entire iceberg was collapsing round them.

When the din died, they looked up, to find through the gap ahead a whole new world awaiting them. The iceberg, caught in an eddy to the coastward side of the current, had come to rest against an islet where, held in the arms of a small bay, it was now weeping down into water again.

Though the isle looked far from hospitable, the humans drank in with relief the sight of the sparse green on it, at flowers clinging to it, and at seed pods towering in the air at the top of tall stalks. Here they could enjoy the feeling of ground that did not heave perpetually.

Even the tummy-bellies momentarily took heart. With small happy cries they followed Yattmur and Gren round a ledge of ice, eager to be beneath those flowers. Without too much protest, they jumped over a narrow gulf of deep blue water, to land on protruding rock and thus scramble safely ashore.

The islet was certainly no paradise. Broken rock and stone covered the crown of it. But in its smallness lay advantage: it was too tiny to support the larger sort of vegetable menaces that flourished on the mainland; with the smaller menaces, Gren and Yattmur could cope. To the disappointment of the tummy-bellies, no tummy-belly tree grew here to which they could attach themselves. To the morel's disappointment, none of his kind grew here; much though he wished to take control of Yattmur and the tummy-bellies, as well as Gren, his bulk was as yet too small to allow him to do this, and he was counting on allies to help him. To the disappointment of Gren and Yattmur, no humans lived here with whom they could join forces.

As compensation, a spring of pure water surged out of the rock, larking among the big tumbled stones which covered much of the islet. First they heard its music, then they saw it. The little stream cascaded down on to a strip of beach and so into the sea. With one rush, they ran along the sand to it, drinking there without waiting to gain a less brackish draught higher up.

Like children, they forgot their cares. When they had drunk too much and belched sufficiently, they plunged into the water to bathe their limbs, although the chill of it did not tempt them to stay there for long. Then they began to make themselves at home.

For a time they lived on the islet and were content. In this realm of eternal sunset, the air was cool. They devised themselves better body covering from leaves or trailing moss, binding the latter tightly round their bodies. Mists and fogs swallowed them from time to time; then the sun would shine again, low over the sea. Sometimes they would sleep, sometimes would lie on the sunward-facing rocks idly eating fruit while listening to the icebergs groan as they sailed by.

The four tummy-belly men built themselves a crude shelter a distance apart from Gren and Yattmur. During one sleep it collapsed on top of them. After that they slept in the open, huddled together under leaves as close to their masters as Gren would allow.

Being happy again was good. When Yattmur and Gren made love together, the tummy-bellies would jump about and hug each other with excitement, praising the agility of their clever clutching master and his sandwich lady.

Huge seed pods grew and clattered overhead. Underfoot ran vegetable equivalents of lizards. In the air fluttered cordate butterflies with wide wings that lived by photosynthesis. Life continued without the punctuation of nightfall or sunrise. Sloth ruled; peace reigned.

The humans would have merged contentedly into this general pattern had it not been for the morel.

'We cannot stay here, Gren,' it said on one occasion, when Gren and Yattmur woke from a comfortable sleep. 'You have rested enough and been well refreshed. Now we must move again, to find more humans and establish our own kingdom.'

'You speak nonsense, morel. Our boat is lost. We must always remain on this island. Chilly it may be, yet we have seen worse places. Let us stay here in content.'

He and the girl were splashing naked through a series of pools which had formed among the big square blocks of stone on the crown of the islet. Life was sweet and idle, Yattmur kicked her pretty legs and sang one of her herder's songs: he was loath to listen to that dreary voice in his head. More and more it came to represent something he disliked.

Their silent conversation was interrupted by a squeal from Yattmur.

Something like a hand with six bloated fingers had seized her ankle. Gren dived for it and pulled it away without difficulty. It struggled in his grasp as he examined it.

'I'm silly to make a noise,' Yattmur said. 'It is just another of those creatures that the tummy-bellies have named crawl-paws. They swim out of the sea on to land. If the tummy-bellies catch them, they split them open and eat them. They are tough but sweet to taste.'

The fingers were grey and bulbous, wrinkled in texture and extremely cold. They flexed slowly as Gren held them. Finally he dropped it on to the bank, where it scuttled off into the grass.

'Crawlpaws swim out of the sea and burrow into the ground. I've watched them,' Yattmur said. Gren made no answer.

'Does anything trouble you?' she asked.

'No,' he said flatly, not wishing to tell her that the morel desired them to move again. He sank stiffly to the ground, almost like an old man. Though she was uneasy, she stifled her apprehensions and returned to the bathing place. Yet from that time on she was aware of Gren drawing away from her and becoming more closed in on himself; and she knew the morel was to blame for it.

Gren woke from their next communal sleep to find the morel already restless in his mind.

'You wallow in sloth. We must do something.'

'We are content here,' replied Gren sulkily. 'Besides, as I have said, we have no boats to get us to the big land.'

'Boats are not the only way of crossing seas,' said the fungus.

'Oh morel, cease being clever before you kill us with it. Leave us in peace. We're happy here.'

'Happy, yes! You would grow roots and leaves if you could. Gren, you do not know what life is for! I tell you that great pleasures and powers await you if you only let me help you stretch out for them.'

'Go away! I don't know what you mean.'

He jumped up as if to run away from the morel. It gripped him tightly, rooting him to the spot. Gathering strength, he concentrated on sending waves of hatred at the morel – uselessly, for its voice continued in his head.

'Since it is impossible for you to be my partner, you must suffer being my slave. The spirit of enquiry is all but dead in you; you will respond to orders but not to observation.'

'I don't know what you are saying!' He cried the words aloud, waking Yattmur, who sat up and gazed mutely at him.

'You neglect so much!' said the morel. 'I can only see things through your senses, yet I take the trouble to analyse and find what is behind them. You can make nothing from your data, whereas I can make a lot. Mine is the way to power. Look about you again! Look at the stones over which you climb so regardlessly.'

'Go away!' Gren cried again. Instantly he doubled up in anguish. Yattmur came running over to him, holding his head and soothing him. She peered into his eyes. The tummy-bellies came up silently to stand behind her.

'It's the magic fungus, isn't it?' she said.

Dumbly he nodded. Phantoms of fire chased themselves over his nerve centres, burning a tune of pain through his body. While the tune continued he could scarcely move. At length it passed. Limply he said, 'We must help the morel. He wishes us to explore these rocks more carefully.'

Trembling in every limb, he rose to do what was commanded of him. Yattmur stood with him, sympathetically touching his arm.

'When we've explored, we will catch fish in the pool and eat them with fruit,' she said, with a woman's talent for producing comfort when it was needed.

He flashed her a humble look of gratitude.

The big stones had long been part of the natural landscape. Where the brook ran among them they were buried in mud and pebbles. Grass and sedge grew on them, deep earth covered them in many places. In particular, here prospered a crop of the flowers that bore their seed pods aloft on tall stalks, which the humans had seen from the iceberg; these Yattmur had casually called Stalkers, without realizing until much later how appropriate the title was.

Over the stones ran the roots of the Stalkers, like so many lengths of petrified snake.

'What a nuisance these roots are,' grumbled Yattmur. "They grow everywhere!'

'The funny thing is the way the roots from one plant grow into another as well as into the ground,' Gren said, answering abstractedly. He was squatting by a branch of two roots, one of which ran back to one plant, one to another. After they had joined, they curled over a block of stone and down into an irregular gap between other stones to the earth.

'You can get down there. You will come to no harm,' said the morel. 'Scramble down between the stones and see what you can see.'

A hint of that painful tune sprang again over Gren's nerves.

He scrambled down between the blocks as he was directed, nimble as a lizard for all his reluctance. Feeling cautiously, he discovered that they rested on other blocks below, and those on other blocks below that. They lay loosely; by twisting his body he was able to slide himself down between their cool planes.

Yatmur climbed after him, showering down a gentle rain of dirt on to his shoulders.

After crawling down the depth of five blocks, Gren reached solid ground. Yattmur arrived beside him. Now they were able to move horizontally, half squashed between the walls of stone. Attracted by a lessening in the darkness, they squeezed along to a large space, large enough for them to stretch out their arms.

'The smell of cold and dark is in my nostrils and I am afraid,' Yattmur said. 'What has your morel made us come down here for? What has he to tell of this place?'

'He is excited,' Gren replied, unwilling to admit that the morel was not communicating with him.

Gradually they began to see more clearly. The ground above had fallen away to one side, for the source of light was the sun, shining in horizontally between the piled stone, sending a thin ray probing there. It revealed twisted metal among the blocks, and an aperture ahead of them. In the collapse of these stones long ago, this gap had remained. Now the only living things here beside themselves were stalker roots, twisting down into the soil like petrified serpents.

Obeying the morel, Gren scrabbled in the grit at his feet. Here was more metal and more stone and brick, most of it immovable. Fumbling and tugging, he managed to pull out some broken bits of guttering; then came a long metal strip as tall as himself. One end of it was shattered; on the rest of it was a series of separate marks arranged to form a pattern:

"That is writing,' wheezed the morel, 'a sign of man when he had power in the world, uncounted ages ago. We are on his tracks. These must once have been his buildings. Gren, climb forward into the dark aperture and see what else you can find.'

'It is dark! I cannot go in there.'

'Climb forward, I tell you.'

Shards of glass glinted dully by the aperture. Rotted wood fell away all round it as Gren put a hand forward to steady himself. Plaster showered down on his head as he climbed through. On the other side of the aperture was a drop; Gren slid down a slope of rubble into a room, cutting himself on glass as he went.

From outside, Yattmur gave a squeak of alarm. He called back softly to reassure her, pressing a hand to his heart to steady it. Anxiously he stared about in the all-but-blackness. Nothing moved. The silence of the centuries, thick and cloying, lay here, lived here, more sinister than sound, more terrible than fear.

For a spell he stood frozen, until the morel nudged him.

Half the roof had collapsed. Metal beams and brick made a maze of the room. To Gren's untutored eye, everything was indistinguishable. The ancient smell of the place choked him.

'In the corner. A square thing. Go there,' ordered the morel, using his eyesight to advantage.

Reluctantly, Gren picked his way across to the corner. Something scuttled from under his feet and out the way he had come; he saw six thick fingers, and recognized a crawlpaw like the one that had seized Yattmur's ankle. A square box three times his height loomed over him, its front surface marked by three protruding semi-circles of metal. He could reach only the lowest of these semi-circles, which, the morel instructed him, were handles. He tugged at it obediently.

It opened the width of a hand, then stuck.

'Pull, pull, pull!' twanged the morel.

Growing savage, Gren pulled till the whole box rattled, but what the morel termed the drawer would come no farther. Still he pulled, while the tall box shook. Something was dislodged from the top of it. From high above Gren's head, an oblong thing came crashing down. As he ducked, it fell to the floor behind him, sending up a cloud of dust.

'Gren! Are you all right? What are you having to do down there? Come out!'

'Yes, yes, I'm coming! Morel, we'll never open this stupid box thing.'

'What's this object that nearly hit us? Examine it and let me see. Perhaps it is a weapon. If we could only find something to help us... '

The thing that had fallen was thin, long, and tapered, like a flattened burnurn seed. It seemed to be composed of a material with a soft surface, not cold like metal. The morel pronounced it to be a container. When it found that Gren could lift it with comparative ease, it became excited.

'We must carry this container to the surface,' it said. 'You can pull it up between the stones. We will examine it in daylight and find what it contains.'

'But how can the thing help us? Will it get us to the mainland?'

'I didn't expect to find a boat down here. Have you no curiosity? This is a sign of power. Come on, move! You are as stupid as a tummy-belly.'

Smarting under this gross insult, Gren scrambled back up the debris to Yattmur. She clutched him, but would not touch the yellow case he carried. For a moment they whispered together, pressing each others' genitals to gain strength; then they struggled up between the layers of tumbled stone back to daylight, dragging and pushing the container with them.

' Phooo! Daylight tastes sweet!' Gren muttered as he levered himself up the last block. As they emerged bruised and cut into the misty air, up came the tummy-bellies scampering, their tongues lolling out in relief. Dancing round their masters, they raised a hullabaloo of complaint and reproach at their absence.

'Kill us please, pretty cruel master, before you jump again into the lips of the earth! Stab us with wicked killing before you leave us alone to fight unknown fights alone!'

'Your bellies are too fat for you to have squeezed down that crevice with us,' Gren said, ruefully examining his wounds. 'If you're so pleased to see us, why not get us some food?'

When Yattmur and he had bathed their cuts and bruises in the stream, he turned his attention to the container. Squatting over it carefully, he turned it over several times. There was a strangeness about its symmetry that alarmed him. Evidently the tummy-bellies felt the same.

'That very bad strange shape for touching is a strange bad touching shape,' one of them wailed, dancing up and down. 'Please only do a touching for throwing it into the splashing watery world.' He clung to his companions, and they peered down in silly excitement.

'They offer you sensible advice,' Yattmur said, but with the morel urging him, Gren sat down and took the container between feet and fingers. While he examined it, he felt the fungus snatch at his impressions as soon as they arrived in his brain; shivers ran along his spine.

On the top of the container was one of the patterns that the morel called writing. This one resembled

heckler or HHT303H

depending on which way you looked at it, and was followed by several lines of similar but smaller patterns.

He began to tug and push at the container. It did not open. The tummy-bellies quickly lost interest and wandered away. Gren himself would have flung the thing aside, had the morel not kept him at it, poking and pressing. As he ran his fingers along one of the longer sides, a lid flipped open. He and Yatt-mur looked askance at one another, then peered down at the object in the container, squatting in the dirt and gaping with awe.

The object was of the same silky yellow material as its container. Reverently, Gren lifted it out and placed it on the ground. Releasing it from the box activated a spring; the object, which had been wedge-shaped to conform to the dimensions of its resting place, suddenly sprouted yellow wings. It stood between them, warm, unique, perplexing. The tummy-bellies crept back to stare.

'It's like a bird,' Gren breathed. 'Can it really have been made by men like us and not grown?'

'It's so smooth, so... ' Words failing, Yattmur put out a hand to stroke it. 'We will call it Beauty.'

Age and the endless seasons had puckered its container; the winged thing remained as new. As the girl's hand ran over its upper surface, a lid clicked back, revealing its insides. Four tummy-belly men dived for the nearest bush. Fashioned of strange materials, of metals and plastics, the insides of the yellow bird were marvellous to behold. Here were small spools, a line of knobs, a glimpse of amplifying circuits, a maze of cunning intestines. Full of curiosity, the two humans leant forward to touch. Full of wonder, they let their fingers – those four fingers with opposed thumb that had taken their ancestors so far – enjoy the delight of toggle switches.

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!'

CHAPTER NINETEEN

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.'

Something of his excitement passed to Gren, warming him as he lay hunched among cold stones; staring and waiting because he could do nothing else, he let an age go by. Yattmur returned to him, threw over him a mat the tummy-bellies had plaited, and lay down beside him almost without speaking.

At last a fifth stalker flower was pollinated and rattled startlingly upwards. As its stalk straightened, it swayed against one of its neighbours; they joined, nodded on to the other pair as they did so, and then locked, so that a single case and a bundle of four now stood high above the humans' heads.

'What's it mean?' Yattmur asked.

'Wait,' Gren whispered. Scarcely had he spoken when the sixth and last fertilized drum headed up towards its brothers. Quivering, it hung in the mist awaiting a breeze; the breeze came; with hardly a sound, all six drums locked into one solid body. In the shrouded air, it resembled a hovering creature.

'Can we go now?' Yattmur asked.

Gren was shivering.

Tell the girl to fetch you some food,' twanged the morel. 'You are not leaving here yet.'

'Are you going to have to stay here forever?' she asked impatiently, when Gren passed on the message.

He shook his head. He didn't know. Impatiently she vanished into the mist. A long while passed before she returned, and by then the stalker had taken the next step in its development.

The fog parted slightly. Horizontal rays of sun struck the stalker's body, staining it bronze. As if encouraged by the slight additional warmth, the stalker moved one of its six stalks. The bottom of it snapped free from the root system and became a leg. The movement was repeated in each of the other legs. One by one they came free. As the last one was liberated, the stalker turned and began – oh, it was unmistakable, the seed cases on stilts began to walk downhill, slowly but sturdily.

'Follow it,' the morel twanged.

Climbing to his feet, Gren began to move in the wake of the thing, walking as stiffly as it did. Yattmur followed quietly by his side. Overhead, the yellow machine also followed.

The stalker happened to take their usual route to the beach. When the tummy-bellies saw it coming, they ran squealing into the bush for safety. Unperturbed, the stalker kept straight on, jabbed its way delicately through their camp, and headed for the sand.

Nor did it pause there. It stalked into the sea until little but its lumpy six-part body was above the water. It was slowly swallowed by mist as it waded in the direction of the coast. Beauty flew after it, uttering slogans, only to return in silence.

'You see!' exclaimed the morel, sounding so noisily inside Gren's skull that he clutched his head. 'There lies our escape route, Gren! These stalkers grow here, where there is room for their full development, then go back to the mainland to seed themselves. And if these migratory vegetables can get ashore, they can take us with them!'

The stalker seemed to sag a little at its metaphorical knees. Slowly, as if rheumatism had it tight by those long joints, it moved its six legs, one by one, and with long vegetable pauses between each move.

Gren had had trouble getting the tummy-belly men into position. To them, the islet was something to be clung to even in the face of blows, rather than exchange it for some imagined future bliss.

'We can't stay here: the food will probably give out,' Gren told them, as they cowered before him.

'O herder man, gladly we obey you with yesses. If food is all gone here, then we go away with you on a stalk-walker over the watery world. Now we eat lovely food with many teeth and do not go away till it is all gone.'

'It will be too late then. We must go now, while the stalkers are leaving.'

Fresh protests at this, with much slapping of buttocks in anguish.

'Never before have we seen the stalker-walkers to take a walk with them when they go stalking-walking? Where were they then when we never saw them? Terrible herder man and sandwich lady, now you two people without tails find this care to go with them. We don't find the care. We don't mind ever not to see the stalker-walkers stalky-walking.'

Gren did not confine himself to verbal argument for long; when he resorted to a stick, the tummy-bellies were quickly persuaded to acknowledge the truth of his reasoning and move accordingly. Snuffling and snorting, they were driven towards a group of six stalker flowers, the buds of which had just opened. They grew together on the edge of a low cliff overlooking the sea.

Under the morel's direction, Yattmur and Gren had spent some while collecting food, wrapping it in leaves and attaching it with brambles to the stalker seed drums. Everything was ready for their journey.

The four tummy-bellies were forced to climb on to four drums. Telling them to hold on tightly, Gren went among them one by one, pressing his hand into the floury centre of each blossom. One by one, the seed cases shrilled into the air, noisily accompanied by a passenger hanging on for his life.

Only with the fourth case did anything go wrong. That particular flower was tilted towards the edge of the cliff. As the spring uncurled, the extra weight on the pod bore it sideways rather than upwards. It sagged over, an ostrich with a broken neck, and the tummy-belly yelled and kicked as his heels swung in mid-air.

'O mummy! O tummy! Help your fat lovely son!' he cried, but no help came. He lost his grip. Amid a shower of provision he fell, still protesting, an ignoble Icarus into the sea. The current carried him away. They saw his head go down below the swift water.

Freed of its burden, the stalker drum swayed upright, buffeted the three already erect, and joined with them into a solid unit.

'Our turn!' Gren said, turning to Yattmur.

Yattmur was still gazing out to sea. He grasped her arm and pushed her over to the two unsprouted flowers. Without showing anger, she freed herself from his grip.

'Do I have to beat you like a tummy-belly?' he asked her.

She did not laugh. He still held his stick.

When she did not laugh, his hold on the stick tightened. Obediently, she climbed on to the big green stalker drum.

They clutched the ribs of the plant, churning a hand about the pistil of the flower. Next minute, they too were spiralling up into the air. Beauty flew about them, begging them not to let vested interests prosper. Yattmur was most horribly afraid She fell face forward among polleny stamens, almost unable to breathe for the scent of the flower, but incapable of moving. Dizziness filled her.

A timid hand touched her shoulder.

'If you have a making hungry by the fear, do not eat of the nasty stalker flower but taste good fish without walking legs we clever menchaps catch in a pool!'

She looked up at the tummy-belly, his mouth moving nervously, his eyes large and soft, a dust of pollen making his hair ludicrously fair. He had no dignity. With one hand he scratched his crutch, with the other offered her fish.

Yattmur burst into tears.

Dismayed, the tummy-belly crawled forward, putting a hairy arm over her shoulder.

'Do not make too many wet tears to fish when fish will not hurt you,' he said.

'It's not that,' she said. 'It's just that we have brought so much trouble to you poor fellows -'

'O we poor tummy men all lost!' he began, and his two companions joined in a dirge of sorrow. 'It is true you cruelly bring us so much trouble.'

Gren had been watching as the six cases joined into one lumpy unit. He looked anxiously down to catch the first signs of the stalker detaching its legs from its root system. The chorus of lament made him switch his attention.

His stick landed loudly across plump shoulders. The tummy-belly who had been comforting Yattmur drew back crying. His companions also shrank away.

'Leave her alone!' Gren cried savagely, rising to his knees. 'You filthy hairy tummy-tails, if you touch her again I'll throw you down to the rocks!'

Yattmur peered at him with her lips drawn back so that her teeth showed. She said nothing.

Nobody spoke again until at last the stalker began to stir with a purposeful movement.

Gren felt the morel's combination of excitement and triumph as the tall-legged creature took its first step. One by one its six legs moved. It paused, gaining its balance. It moved again. It halted. Then again it moved, this time with less hesitation. Slowly it began to stalk away from the cliff, across the islet, down to the gently shelving beach where its kin had gone, where the ocean current was less strong. Beauty followed, flying overhead.

Without hesitation, it waded into the sea. Soon its legs were almost entirely immersed, and the sea slid by on all sides.

'Wonderful!' Gren exclaimed. 'Free of that hateful island at last.'

'It did us no harm. We had no enemies there,' Yattmur replied. 'You said you wanted to stay there.'

'We couldn't stay there for ever.' Contemptuously, he offered her only what he had said to the tummy-bellies.

'Your magic morel is too glib. He thinks only of how he can make use of things – of the tummies, of you and me, of the stalkers. But the stalkers did not grow for him. They were not on the island for him. They were on the island before we came. They grow for themselves, Gren. Now they do not go ashore for us but for themselves. We ride on one, thinking ourselves clever. How clever are we? These poor fisher-bellies call themselves clever, but we see they are foolish. What if we are also foolish?'

He had not heard her speak like this. He stared at her, not knowing how to answer her until irritation helped him.

'You hate me, Yattmur, or you would not speak like that. Have I hurt you? Don't I protect you and love you? We know the tummy-bellies are stupid, and we are different from them, so we cannot be stupid. You say these things to hurt me.'

Yattmur ignored all these irrelevancies. She said sombrely, as if he had not spoken. 'We ride on this stalker but we do not know where it is going. We muddle its wishes with our own.'

'It is going to the mainland of course,' Gren said angrily.

'Is it? Why don't you look about you?'

She gestured with a hand and he did look.

The mainland was visible. They had started towards it. Then the stalker had entered a current of water and was now moving directly up it, travelling parallel with the coast. For a long while, Gren stared angrily, until it was impossible to doubt what was happening.

'You are pleased!' he hissed.

Yattmur made no reply. She leant over and dabbled her hand in the water, quickly withdrawing it. A warm current had carried them to the island. This was a cold current the stalker waded in, and they moved towards its source. Something of that chill found its way up to her heart.