'Gren must go,' Driff whispered.
Gren pulled out a knife. Veggy at once jumped up and drew his. May behind him did the same. Soon they all stood armed against Gren. Only Poyly did not move.
Gren's face was thin with bitterness.
'Give me back my glass," he said, holding out his hand to Toy.
'It is ours,' Toy said. 'We can make a small sun without your help. Go away before we kill you."
He scanned their faces for the last time. Then he turned on his heel and walked silently away.
He was blind with defeat. No possible future lay open to him. To be on one's own in the forest was dangerous; here it was doubly dangerous. If he could get back to the middle layers of the forest, he might be able to find other human groups; but those groups were scarce and shy; even supposing they accepted him, the idea of fitting in with strangers did not appeal to Gren.
Nomansland was not the best place in which to walk about blind with defeat. Within five minutes of being outcast, he had fallen victim to a hostile plant.
The ground beneath his feet shelved down raggedly to a small water course along which water no longer flowed. Boulders taller than Gren lay thickly about, with shingle and the littered small change of pebbles underfoot. Few plants grew here except razor-sharp grasses.
As Gren wandered regardlessly on, something fell on to his head – something light and painless.
Several times, Gren had seen and been worried by the dark brain-like fungus that attached itself to other creatures. This discomycete plant form was a mutated morel. Over the ages it had learnt new ways of nourishing and propagating itself.
For some while Gren stood quite still, trembling a little beneath the touch of the thing. Once he raised his hand only to drop it again. His head felt cool, almost numb.
At last he sat down by the nearest boulder, his backbone firm against it, staring in the direction he had come. He was in deep shade, in a clammy place; at the top of the watercourse bank lay a brilliant bar of sunlight, behind which a backdrop of foliage seemed painted in indifferent greens and whites. Gren stared at it listlessly, trying to bring meaning out of the pattern.
Dimly he knew that it would all be there when he was dead – that it would even be a little richer for his death, as the phosphates of his body were reabsorbed by other things: for it seemed unlikely that he would Go Up in the manner approved and practised by his ancestors; he had no one to look after his soul. Life was short, and after all, what was he? Nothing!
'You are human,' said a voice. It was a ghost of a voice, an unspoken voice, a voice that had no business with vocal chords. Like a dusty harp, it seemed to twang in some lost attic of his head.
In his present state, Gren felt no surprise. His back was against stone; the shade about him covered not only him; his body was of common material; why should there not be silent voices to match his thoughts?
'Who is that speaking?' he asked idly.
'You call me morel. I shall not leave you. I can help you.'
He had a detached suspicion that morel had never used words before, so slowly did they come.
'I need help,' he said. 'I'm an outcast.'
'So I see. I have attached myself to you to help you. I shall always be with you.'
Gren felt very dull, but he managed to ask, 'How will you help me?'
'As I have helped other beings,' said morel. 'Once I am with them I never leave them. Many beings have no brain; I am brain. I collect thoughts. I and those of my kind act as brains, so that the creatures we attach ourselves to are more cunning and able than the others.'
'Will I be more cunning than other humans?' Gren asked. The sunlight at the top of the watercourse never changed. Everything was mixed in his mind. It was as though he spoke with the gods.
'We have never caught a human before,' said the voice, choosing its words more rapidly now. 'We morels live only in the margins of Nomansland. You live only in the forests. You are a good find. I will make you powerful. You shall go everywhere, taking me with you.'
Giving no answer, Gren rested against the cool stone. He was drained of energy and content to let time pass. At length the voice twanged in his head again.
'I know much about humans. Time has been terribly long on this world, and on the worlds in space. Once in a very distant time, before the sun was hot, your two-legged kind ruled this world. You were large beings then, five times as tall as you are now. You shrank to meet new conditions, to survive in whatever way you could. In those days, my ancestors were small, but change is always taking place, though so slowly as to go unnoticed. Now you are little creatures in the undergrowth, while I am capable of consuming you.'
After listening and thinking, Gren asked. 'How can you know all this, morel, if you have not met a human till now?'
'By exploring the structure of your mind. Many of your memories and thoughts are inherited from the far past and buried so that you cannot reach them. But I can reach them. Through them I read the history of your kind's past. My kind could be as great as your kind was... '
"Then would I be great too?'
'It would probably have to be that way... '
All at once a wave of sleep came over Gren. The sleep was fathomless, but full of strange fish – dreams he could not afterwards grasp by their flickering tails.
He woke suddenly. Something had moved nearby.
On the top of the bank, where the bright sun would always shine, stood Poyly.
'Gren, my sweet!' she said, when his slight movement revealed him. 'I have left the others to be with you and be your mate."
His brain was clear now, clear and sharp as spring water. Many things were plain to him that had been hidden before. He jumped up.
Poyly looked down at him in the shade. With horror she saw the dark fungus growing from him as it had from the snaptrap trees and the killerwillows. It protruded from his hair, it formed a ridge down the nape of his neck, it stood like a ruff half way round his collarbone. It glistened darkly in its intricate patterns.
'Gren! The fungus!' she cried in horror, backing away. 'It's all over you!'
He climbed out rapidly and caught her by the hand.
'It's all right, Poyly, there's no cause for alarm. The fungus is called morel. It will not hurt us. It can help us.'
At first Poyly did not answer. She knew the way in the forest, and in Nomansland. Things looked after themselves, not after others. Dimly she guessed that the real purpose of the morel was to feed on others and to propagate itself as widely as possible; and that to this end it might be clever enough to kill its hosts as slowly as possible.
'The fungus is bad, Gren,' she said. 'How can it be anything but bad?'
Gren fell on his knee and pulled her down with him, murmuringly reassuring as he did so.
He stroked her russet hair.
'Morel can teach us many things,' he said. 'We can be so much better than we are. We are poor creasures; surely there's no harm in being better creatures?'
'How can the fungus make us better?'
In Gren's head, morel spoke.
'She surely shall not die. Two heads are better than one. Your eyes shall be opened. Why – you'll be like gods!'
Almost word for word, Gren repeated to Poyly what morel had said.
'Perhaps you know best, Gren,' she said falteringly. 'You were always very clever.'
'You can be clever, too,' he whispered.
Reluctantly she lay back in his arms, nestling against him.
A slab of fungus fell from Gren's neck on to her forehead. She stirred and struggled, made as if to protest, then closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were very clear.
Like another Eve, she drew Gren to her. They made love in the warm sunlight, letting their wooden souls fall as they undid their belts.