Yattmur stood up and took him from them, putting his mouth to one of her own plump breasts, where he at once began pulling greedily and was silent. To feel him there gradually stilled her trembling.
She stooped over Gren.
He turned his face towards her when she touched his shoulder.
'Yattmur,' he said.
Weak tears stood in his eyes. All over his shoulders, in his hair, across his face, ran a red and white stippling where the probes of the morel had gone down into his skin for nourishment.
'Has it gone?' he asked, and his voice was his own again.
'Look at it,' she said. With her free hand, she tilted the gourd over so that he could see in.
For a long while he stared down at the still-living morel, helpless and motionless now, lying like excrement in the gourd. His inner vision was looking back – more with amazement now than fear – at the things that had been since the morel first dropped on him in the forests of Nomansland, the things that had passed like a dream: how he had travelled through lands and performed actions and above all held knowledge in his mind in ways that would have been unknown to his former free self.
He saw how all this had come about under the agency of the fungus that now was no more potent than a burnt mess of food in the bottom of a dish; and quite coolly he saw how he had at first welcomed this stimulus, for it had helped him overcome the limitations natural to him. Only when the morel's basic needs conflicted with his own had the process become evil, driving him almost literally out of his own mind, so that in working to the dictates of the morel he had almost preyed on his own kind.
It was over. The parasite was defeated. He would never again hear the inner voice of the morel twanging through his brain.
At that, loneliness more than triumph filled him. But he searched wildly along the corridors of his memory and thought, He has left me something good: I can evaluate, I can order my mind, I can remember what he taught me – and he knew so much.
Now it seemed to him that for all the havoc the morel had caused, he had found Gren's mind like a little stagnant pool and left it like a living sea – and it was with pity he looked down into the bowl that Yattmur held out to him.
'Don't weep, Gren,' he heard Yattmur's voice say. 'We are safe, we are all safe, and you will be all right.'
He laughed shakily.
'I shall be all right,' he agreed. He formed his scarred face into a smile and stroked her arms. 'We shall all be all right.'
Then reaction hit him. He rolled over and was instantly asleep.
Yattmur was busy, when Gren awoke, attending to Laren who squealed with delight as she washed him by the mountain stream. The tattooed women were also there, carrying water back and forth to pour over the catchy-carry-kind on his slab, while nearby stood the carrying man, cramped into his habitual gesture of servitude. Of the tummy-bellies, there was no sign.
He sat up gingerly. His face was puffy but his head clear; what then was the jarring he could feel that had woken him? He caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of his eye, and turning saw a trickle of stones roll down a gully some way off. At another point, more stones rolled.
'An earthquake is in progress," said Sodal Ye in a cavernous voice. 'I have discussed it with your mate Yattmur and have told her there is no need for alarm. The world is ending on schedule, according to my predictions.'
Gren rose to his feet and said, 'You have a big voice, fish face; who are you?'
'I delivered you from the devouring fungus, little man, for I am the Sodal and Prophet of the Nightside Mountains, and all the denizens of the mountains hear what I have to say."
Gren was still thinking this over when Yattmur came up and said, 'You've slept so long since the morel left you. We too have slept, and now we must prepare to move.'
'To move? Where is there to go from here?'
'I will explain to you as I explained to Yattmur,' said the sodal, blinking as his women threw another gourd full of water over him. 'I devote my life to travelling these mountains, giving out the Word of Earth. Now it is time for me to return to the Bountiful Basin, where my kind live, to gather fresh instructions. The Basin lies on the fringe of the Lands of Perpetual Twilight; if I take you as far as that, you can easily return to the eternal forests where you live. I will be your guide and you shall help attend me on the way.'
Seeing Gren hesitate, Yattmur said, 'You know we cannot stay here on Big Slope. We were carried here against our wishes. Now we have the chance to go, we must take it.'
'If you wish it, it shall be so, though I'm tired of travel.'
The earth trembled again. With unconscious humour, Yattmur said, 'We must leave the mountain before it leaves us.' She added, 'And we must persuade the tummy-bellies to come with us. If they stay here, either the sharp-fur mountainears or starvation will kill them.'
'Oh, no,' Gren said. They've been trouble enough. Let the wretched creatures remain here. I don't want them with us.'
'Since they don't want to come with you, that question is settled,' said the sodal with a flick of his tail. 'Now, let us move, since I must not be kept waiting.'
They had next to no possessions, so close were their lives to nature. To make ready was merely to check their weapons, to stow a little food for carrying and to cast a backward glance at the cave that had sheltered the birth of Laren. Catching sight of a nearby gourd and its contents, Gren asked, 'What about the morel?'
'Leave it there to fester,' Yattmur said.
'We take the morel with us. My women will carry it,' said the sodal.
His women were already busy, their tattoo lines merging with their wrinkles as they strained to lift the sodal from his perch and on to the back of his carry man. Between themselves they exchanged only grunts, although one of them was capable of making monosyllabic replies accompanied by gesture when the sodal addressed her, using a tongue Gren did not recognize. He watched fascinated until Sodal Ye was firmly in place, clutched round the middle by the stooped man.
'How long has that poor wretch been doomed to carry you about?' he asked.
'The destiny of his race – it is a proud one – is to serve the catch-carry-kind. He was trained to it early. He neither knows nor wishes to know any other life.'
They began to move, going downhill with the two slave women leading. Yattmur glanced back to see the three tummy-bellies staring mournfully at them from their cave. She raised her hand, beckoning and calling to them. Slowly they stood up and began to jostle forward, almost tripping over one another in their efforts to stay close together.
'Come on!' she called encouragingly. 'You fellows come with us and we'll look after you.'
'They've been trouble enough to us,' Gren said. Stooping, he collected a handful of stones and flung them.
One tummy-belly was hit in the groin, one on the shoulder, before they broke and fled back into the cave, crying aloud that nobody loved them.
'You are too cruel, Gren. We should not leave them at the mercy of the sharp-furs.'
'I tell you I've had enough of those creatures. We are better on our own.' He patted her shoulder, but she remained unconvinced.
As they moved down Big Slope, the cries of the tummy-bellies died behind them. Nor would their voices ever reach Gren and Yattmur again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
THEY descended the ragged flank of Big Slope and the shadows of the valley rose up to meet them. A moment came when they waded in dark up to their ankles; then it rose rapidly, swallowing them, as the sun was hidden by a range of hills ahead.
The pool of darkness in which they now moved, and in which they were to travel for some while, was not total. Though at present no cloud banks overhead reflected the light of the sun, the frequent lightning traced out their path for them.