Golden Age of Science Fiction Vol X

by Various

  He came to the bank of the river. Green scum covered much of its surface, occasionally broken by a slowly enlarging gas bubble released from decomposing matter on the bottom. In the center of the placid stream the current ran faster, and the water itself was visible.

  Over the shining current, water-spiders ran swiftly. They had not shared in the general increase in size of the insect world. Depending on surface tension to support them, an increase in size and weight would have deprived them of the means of locomotion.

  From the spot where Burl peered at the water, green scum spread out many yards into the stream. He could not see what swam, wriggled, and crawled beneath the evil-smelling covering. He looked up and down the banks.

  150 yards downstream, an outcropping of rock made a steep descent to the river, from which shelf-fungi stretched out. Dark red and orange above, light yellow below, they formed a series of platforms above the smoothly flowing stream. Burl moved cautiously toward them.

  En route he saw one of the edible mushrooms that formed most of his diet, and paused to break from the flabby flesh an amount that would feed him for many days. Often, his people would find a store of food, carry it to their hiding place, then gorge themselves for days, eating, sleeping, eating, sleeping until all was gone.

  Burl was tempted to abandon his plan. He would give Saya of this food, and they would eat together. Saya was the maiden who roused unusual emotions in Burl when she was near, strange impulses to touch and caress her. He did not understand.

  He went on, after hesitating. If he brought her food, Saya would be pleased, but if he brought her of the things that swam in the stream, she would be more pleased. Degraded as his tribe had become, Burl was yet a little more intelligent. He was an atavism, a throwback to ancestors who had cultivated the earth and subjugated its animals. He had a vague remnant of pride, unformed but potent.

  Burl's people herded together in a leaderless group, coming to the same hiding place to share the finds of the lucky and gather comfort in numbers. They had no weapons. They bashed stones against the limbs of insects they found partly devoured, cracking them open for what scraps of sweet meat remained inside, but sought safety from enemies solely in flight and hiding. If Burl did what no man before had done, if he brought a whole carcass to his tribe, they would admire him.

  He reached the rocky outcropping and lay prostrate, staring into the water's shallow depths. A huge crayfish, as long as Burl, leisurely crossed his vision. Small fishes and even huge newts fled before the voracious creature.

  Eventually the tide of underwater life resumed its activity. The wriggling dragonfly grubs reappeared. Little flecks of silver swam into view--a school of tiny fish. A larger fish appeared, moving slowly.

  Burl's eyes glistened; his mouth watered. He reached down with his long weapon. It barely touched the water. Disappointment filled him, yet the nearness and apparent practicability of his scheme spurred him on.

  He considered the situation. The shelf-fungi were below him. He rose and moved to a point just above them, then thrust his spear down. They resisted its point. Burl tested them tentatively with his foot, then dared to trust his weight to them. They held firmly. He clambered onto them and lay flat, again peering over the edge.

  The large fish, as long as Burl's arm, swam slowly to and fro below. Burl had seen the former owner of his spear strive to thrust it into an opponent. So when the fish swam by, he thrust sharply downward. To Burl's astonishment, the spear seemed to bend where it entered the water, and missed its mark by inches. He tried again and again.

  He grew angry with the fish. Repeated strokes had left it untouched, and it was insultingly unwary, not even trying to flee.

  Finally, the big fish stopped directly beneath his eyes. Burl thrust straight down with all his strenth. This time the spear, entering vertically, did not seem to bend. Its point penetrated the scales of the swimmer below, transfixing that lazy fish completely.

  An uproar began. The fish, struggling to escape, and Burl, trying to draw it up to his perch, made a huge commotion. Excited, he failed to notice an ominous, approaching ripple on the water.

  The unequal combat continued. Burl clung desperately to the end of his spear. Then there was a tremor in Burl's support; it gave way, falling into the stream with a mighty splash. Burl submerged, eyes wide open, facing death.

  As he sank, he saw waving before him the gaping claws of the huge crayfish, large enough to sever a limb with one stroke of their jagged jaws. Burl was sure he would die, for he could not swim. The only question was whether he would drown or be devoured first.

  But the section of the shelf fungus that had collapsed beneath him was lighter than water. It rapidly surfaced, with Burl still on top. The crayfish, deprived of its prey, wandered off.

  Burl's situation seemed scarely improved, however. He was floating downstream, perched--weaponless, alone, and frightened--on a soggy, degenerate fungus. In the water lurked death unseen, on the banks stalked peril, and above, danger fluttered on golden wings.

  He finally recovered his self-possession, and looked for his spear. It was floating in the water, still transfixing the fish whose capture had endangered Burl's life. The fish now floated lifelessly, belly upward.

  Burl forgot his predicament upon seeing his prey just out of reach. He gazed at it, mouth watering, while his cranky craft went downstream, spinning slowly in the current. He hastened to the edge of the raft.

  It tilted and nearly flung him overboard. Experimenting, Burl soon found that it remained stable if he lay flat across it. He wriggled into position, and waited until the slow revolution of his vessel brought the spear shaft near. He stretched his fingers and arm, and grasped it.

  A moment later he was tearing strips of flesh from the fish and cramming the oily mess into his mouth with gusto. He had lost his edible mushroom, yet Burl ate contentedly of what he possessed. He happily visualized the delight with which Saya would receive a gift of part of the fish he had caught.

  Burl suddenly realized he was being carried farther and farther from Saya. Stricken with dumb sorrow, he lifted his head and looked longingly at the riverbanks.

  A monotonous row of strangely colored fungus growths. No healthy green, but pallid, cream-colored toadstools, some bright orange, lavender, and purple molds, vivid carmine "rusts" and mildews, spreading up the banks from the turgid slime.

  In the faintly pinkish light filtering down through the ever-present clouds, myriad flying objects were visible. Now and then a giant cricket or grasshopper made its bulletlike flight from one spot to another. Huge butterflies fluttered gaily. Bees lumbered anxiously about, seeking the cross-shaped flowers of monster cabbages. Occasionally, a slender-waisted, man-sized wasp flew alertly past. And far above soared dragonflies, their spindlelike bodies thrice the length of his own.

  Burl ignored them all. He sat, an incongruous creature of pink skin and soft brown hair on an orange fungus floating in midstream, despondent because the current carried him forever farther from the slender-limbed maiden whose glance caused an odd commotion in his breast.

  The day wore on. Once, just beyond the riverbank, Burl saw a band of large, red Amazon ants, marching in orderly array, to raid a city of black ants, and steal their eggs. The eggs would be hatched, and the small black creatures enslaved by the brigands. Amazon ants live solely by the labor of their slaves; perforce they are mighty warriors in their world.

  Later, etched against the pervasive steaming mist, Burl saw strangely shaped, swollen branches rearing from the ground. They were a hard-rinded fungus that grew on itself in mockery of the vegetation that had vanished from the earth.

  He spied pear-shaped objects above some of which floated little clouds of smoke. They, too, were fungi, puffballs, which when touched emit what seems a puff of vapor. These would have towered above Burl's head had he stood beside them.

  As the day drew to an end, he saw in the distance what seemed a range of purple hills. Some 70 feet high, they were the agglomeratio
n of a formless growth, multiplying its organisms upon itself until the whole became an irregular, cone-shaped mound. Burl watched them apathetically.

  Presently, he ate again of the oily fish. The taste pleased Burl, a rare break from his diet of insipid mushrooms. He stuffed himself, though the size of his prey left most uneaten.

  He kept his spear, despite the trouble it had caused. Burl, unusually stubborn for his tribe, still associated the weapon with the food it had secured rather than with his current difficulties. He examined it again; its sharpness was unimpaired.

  He next stripped a sinew from the garment about his middle and hung the fish from his neck with it. That left him both hands free. Then he sat cross-legged on the soggily floating fungus, like a pink-skinned Buddha, and watched the shores go by.

  Time passed, and sunset drew near. Burl, never having seen the sun, did not think of this as "sunset". To him it was the letting down of darkness from the sky.

  Far to the west, the thick mist turned gold, while the thicker clouds above became blurred masses of dull red. Their shadows seemed lavender, from the contrast of shades. The river's still surface reflected faithfully the myriad tints and shadings, and the shining tops of giant mushrooms aside the river glowed faintly pink.

  Dragonflies buzzed overhead in swift, angular flight, bodies glistening with metallic luster in the rosy light. Great yellow butterflies flew lightly above the stream. Here, there, everywhere on the water appeared the shell-formed boats of a thousand caddis flies.

  Burl could have thrust his hand down into their cavities and seized the white worms inhabiting the strange craft. The huge bulk of a tardy bee droned heavily overhead. He glanced upward and saw the long proboscis and hairy hinder legs with their scanty load of pollen, the compound eyes with their expression of stupid preoccupation, and the sting that would mean death alike for him and the giant insect, were it used.

  The crimson radiance at the edge of the world dimmed. The purple hills had long been left behind. Now the slender stalks of 10,000 round-domed mushrooms lined the riverbank and beneath them spread fungi of all colors, from rawest red to palest blue, fading slowly to a monochromatic background in the glowing dusk.

  The buzzing, fluttering, and flapping of diurnal insects died slowly down, while from a million hiding places there crept soft and furry bodies of great moths, who preened themselves and smoothed their feathery antennae before taking to the air. Strong-limbed crickets set up their thunderous noise--grown gravely bass with the increasing size of their sound organs--and there began to gather on the water those slender spirals of tenuous mist that would presently blanket the stream in a mantle of fog.

  Night fell. The clouds above seemed to lower and grow dark. Gradually, now a drop and then a drop, the languid fall of large, warm raindrops that would drip from the moisture-laden skies all night began.

  Great disks of coolly glowing flame appeared along the stream's edge. The mushrooms there were faintly phosphorescent (Pleurotus phosphoreus) and shone coldly on the "rusts" and fake-fungi beneath. Here and there a ball of lambent flame appeared, drifting idly above the steaming, festering earth.

  30,000 years before, men called them "will-o'-the-wisps" but Burl simply accepted them as he accepted all that passed. Only a man attempting to advance in the scale of civilization tries to explain everything. A savage or child is content to observe without comment, unless he repeats legends from wise folk possessed by the itch of knowledge.

  Burl watched a long time. The beacons of fireflies as long as his spear flashed intermittently, illuminating the stream for yards around. Softly fluttering wings, in great beats that poured torrents of air onto him, passed above.

  The sky was full of winged creatures. Their anguished cries, mating calls, and wing beats broke the night. Above and all around the intense life of the insect world went on ceaselessly, but Burl only rocked sadly back and forth on his frail mushroom boat because he was being carried from his tribe, and from Saya--Saya of swift feet and white teeth, of shy smile. This, after he had dared so greatly to bring her a gift of fresh meat, captured as never before!

  Homesick, he lay on his floating atom all night. At last the mushroom raft struck gently and remained grounded on a shallow in the stream.

  At daybreak, Burl gazed keenly about. He was 20 yards from shore, and the greenish scum surrounded his now disintegrating vessel. The river had widened until the other bank was barely visible through the haze above the surface, but the nearer shore seemed firm and no more dangerous than the territory his tribe inhabited. He tested the water's depth with his spear, then was struck with the multiple usefulness of that weapon. The water would come but slightly above his ankles.

  Burl timidly stepped down into the water, then made for the bank. A soft something clung to one of his bare feet. Terrified, he ran faster, and stumbled ashore. He stared down at his foot. A shapeless, flesh-colored pad clung to his heel, and as Burl watched, it swelled slowly, while the pink of its wrinkled folds deepened.

  It was simply a leech, sharing in the enlargement nearly all the lower world had undergone, but Burl did not know that. He scraped frantically at it with the side of his spear, and it fell off, leaving a blotch of blood on his skin. It lay, writhing and pulsating, on the ground, and Burl fled.

  He found himself in another toadstool forest, and finally paused. He recognized the type of fungus growths around him, and began eating voraciously. In Burl the sight of food always produced hunger--Nature's compensation for his lack of an instinct to store food.

  Burl's heart was small within him. He was far from Saya and his tribe. Just 40 miles separated them, but Burl did not think of distances. He had come down the river. He was alone in a land he had never known or seen.

  Food was plentiful. The mushrooms surrounding him were edible, a supply of sustenance Burl's whole tribe could not have eaten in many days, but that very fact made him think of Saya. He suddenly remembered the large oily fish he had caught for her, still hanging down his back from the sinew about his neck.

  He took it and fingered it all over, getting his hands and himself thoroughly greasy in the process, but he could eat no more. The thought of Saya's pleasure at the sight of it gave him renewed determination.

  With all the immediacy of a child or savage he set off. He had come along the bank of the stream. He would return along the bank of the stream.

  Through the awkward aisles of the mushroom forest he moved, eyes and ears open for danger. Several times he heard the omnipresent clicking of ants on their multifarious businesses in the wood, but he ignored those shortsighted foragers. He feared only one kind of ant, the army ant, which sometimes travels in hordes of millions, eating all in its path. Ages ago, when they were tiny creatures not an inch long, even the largest animals fled from them. Now that they measured a foot long, not even the gorged spiders whose distended bellies were a yard thick dared challenge them.

  The mushroom forest ended. A cheerful grasshopper (Ephigger) munched at some dainty it had found. Its hind legs were bunched beneath it in perpetual readiness for flight. But a monster wasp--as long as Burl himself--suddenly dropped from the sky and seized the luckless feaster.

  The battle was brief. The wasp's flexible abdomen curved delicately. Precise as a surgeon's scalpel, its sting entered the jointed armor just beneath the head of its prey. All struggle ceased.

  The wasp grasped the paralyzed--not dead--insect and flew away. Burl grunted, and passed on.

  The ground grew rough, impeding Burl's progress. He clambered arduously up steep slopes and cautiously down their farther sides. Once he climbed through a mass of small mushrooms so densely tangled that he had to smash them with blows of his spear to clear a path. They shed torrents of a fiery red liquid that rolled off his greasy breast and sank into the ground (Lactarius deliciosus).

  Overconfidence now possessed Burl. He walked less cautiously, more boldly. The fact that he had struck something and destroyed it lent him foolhardy courage.

  He
climbed to the top of a red clay cliff, 100 feet high. Erosion from the river had carved it ages ago, but now the riverbank came no nearer than a quarter-mile.

  Shelf-fungi, large and small, white, yellow, orange, and green, in indescribable confusion and luxuriance, covered the cliffside. From a point halfway up the cliff the inch-thick cable of a spider's web stretched down to an anchorage on the ground. The geometrical pattern of the web glistened evilly.

  Somewhere among the cliffside fungi the huge creature waited until some unfortunate prey should struggle helplessly in its monster snare. The spider waited motionless, implacably patient, invicibly certain of prey, utterly merciless to its victims.

  Burl strutted at the cliff's edge, a silly little pink-skinned creature with an oily fish slung about his neck, a draggled fragment of moth's wing about his middle, and a minotaur beetle's nose in his hand. He looked scornfully down on the whitely shining trap. He had struck mushrooms, and they had fallen before him. He feared nothing.

  60 paces before him, a shaft sank vertically in the sandy, clayey soil. Carefully rounded, lined with silk, it descended 30 feet, then enlarged into a chamber where the owner and digger of the shaft might rest. An inconspicuous trapdoor, camouflaged with mud and earth, sealed the top of the hole. Only a keen eye could have perceived the opening. But a keen eye now peered out from a tiny crack, the eye of the engineer of the underground dwelling.

  Eight hairy legs surrounded the creature that hung motionless at the top of the shaft. Two pairs of ferocious mandibles stretched before its fierce mouthparts. Two eyes glittered evilly in the darkness of the burrow. Rough, mangy, brown fur covered the huge misshapen globe of its body.

  Implacably malignant, incredibly ferocious, was the brown hunting spider, the American tarantula (Mygale Hentzii). Its body was over two feet in diameter. Its hairy legs, outstretched, would cover a circle three yards across. Eyes glistening, jaws slavering, it watched Burl.

  And Burl strutted at the cliff's edge, puffed up with a sense of importance. The white snare of the spinning spider below amused him. He knew the spider would not leave its web to attack. Using his spear, he shoved a chunk of fungus growing at his feet down the cliffside into the colossal web. The black bulk of the hidden spider swung out to investigate. Burl kept pace with it, knocking more lumps of shelf-fungus loose, and laughing as they narrowly missed the confused, black-and-silver creature. Then--