The Mad Planet
Page 3
revolution of his vessel brought thespear-shaft near him. He stretched his fingers and his arm, and touched,then grasped it.
A moment later he was tearing strips of flesh from the side of the fishand cramming the oily mess into his mouth with great enjoyment. He hadlost his edible mushroom. That danced upon the waves several yards away,but Burl ate contentedly of what he possessed. He did not worry aboutwhat was before him. That lay in the future, but suddenly he realizedthat he was being carried farther and farther from Saya, the maiden ofhis tribe who caused strange bliss to steal over him when hecontemplated her.
The thought came to him when he visualized the delight with which shewould receive a gift of part of the fish he had caught. He was suddenlystricken with dumb sorrow. He lifted his head and looked longingly atthe river banks.
A long, monotonous row of strangely colored fungus growths. No healthygreen, but pallid, cream-colored toadstools, some bright orange,lavender, and purple molds, vivid carmine "rusts" and mildews, spreadingup the banks from the turgid slime. The sun was not a ball of fire, butmerely shone as a bright golden patch in the haze-filled sky, a patchwhose limits could not be defined or marked.
In the faintly pinkish light that filtered down through the air, amultitude of flying objects could be seen. Now and then a cricket or agrasshopper made its bullet-like flight from one spot to another. Hugebutterflies fluttered gayly above the silent, seemingly lifeless world.Bees lumbered anxiously about, seeking the cross-shaped flowers of themonster cabbages. Now and then a slender-waisted, yellow-stomached waspflew alertly through the air.
Burl watched them with a strange indifference. The wasps were as long ashe himself. The bees, on end, could match his height. The butterfliesranged from tiny creatures barely capable of shading his face tocolossal things in the folds of whose wings he could have been lost. Andabove him fluttered dragonflies, whose long, spindle-like bodies werethree times the length of his own.
Burl ignored them all. Sitting there, an incongruous creature of pinkskin and soft brown hair upon an orange fungus floating in midstream, hewas filled with despondency because the current carried him foreverfarther and farther from a certain slender-limbed maiden of his tinytribe, whose glances caused an odd commotion in his breast.
* * * * *
The day went on. Once, Burl saw upon the blue-green mold that spreadupward from the river, a band of large, red Amazon ants, marching inorderly array, to raid the city of a colony of black ants, and carryaway the eggs they would find there. The eggs would be hatched, and thesmall black creatures made the slaves of the brigands who had stolenthem.
The Amazon ants can live only by the labor of their slaves, and for thatreason are mighty warriors in their world. Later, etched against thesteaming mist that overhung everything as far as the eye could reach,Burl saw strangely shaped, swollen branches rearing themselves from theground. He knew what they were. A hard-rinded fungus that grew uponitself in peculiar mockery of the vegetation that had vanished from theearth.
And again he saw pear-shaped objects above some of which floated littleclouds of smoke. They, too, were fungus growths, puffballs, which whentouched emit what seems a puff of vapor. These would have towered aboveBurl's head, had he stood beside them.
And then, as the day drew to an end, he saw in the distance what seemeda range of purple hills. They were tall hills to Burl, some sixty orseventy feet high, and they seemed to be the agglomeration of a formlessgrowth, multiplying its organisms and forms upon itself until the wholeformed an irregular, cone-shaped mound. Burl watched them apathetically.
Presently, he ate again of the oily fish. The taste was pleasant to him,accustomed to feed mostly upon insipid mushrooms. He stuffed himself,though the size of his prey left by far the larger part uneaten.
He still held his spear firmly beside him.
It had brought him into trouble, but Burl possessed a fund of obstinacy.Unlike most of his tribe, he associated the spear with the food it hadsecured, rather than the difficulty into which it had led him. When hehad eaten his fill he picked it up and examined it again. The sharpnessof its point was unimpaired.
Burl handled it meditatively, debating whether or not to attempt to fishagain. The shakiness of his little raft dissuaded him, and he abandonedthe idea. Presently he stripped a sinew from the garment about hismiddle and hung the fish about his neck with it. That would leave himboth hands free. Then he sat cross-legged upon the soggily floatingfungus, like a pink-skinned Buddha, and watched the shores go by.
Time had passed, and it was drawing near sunset. Burl, never having seenthe sun save as a bright spot in the overhanging haze, did not think ofthe coming of night as "sunset." To him it was the letting down ofdarkness from the sky.
Today happened to be an exceptionally bright day, and the haze was notas thick as usual. Far to the west, the thick mist turned to gold, whilethe thicker clouds above became blurred masses of dull red. Theirshadows seemed like lavender, from the contrast of shades. Upon thestill surface of the river, all the myriad tints and shadings werereflected with an incredible faithfulness, and the shining tops of thegiant mushrooms by the river brim glowed faintly pink.
Dragonflies buzzed over his head in their swift and angular flight, themetallic luster of their bodies glistening in the rosy light. Greatyellow butterflies flew lightly above the stream. Here, there, andeverywhere upon the water appeared the shell-formed boats of a thousandcaddis flies, floating upon the surface while they might.
Burl could have thrust his hand down into their cavities and seized thewhite worms that inhabited the strange craft. The huge bulk of a tardybee droned heavily overhead. Burl glanced upward and saw the longproboscis and the hairy hinder legs with their scanty load of pollen. Hesaw the great, multiple-lensed eyes with their expression of stupidpreoccupation, and even the sting that would mean death alike for himand for the giant insect, should it be used.
The crimson radiance grew dim at the edge of the world. The purple hillshad long been left behind. Now the slender stalks of ten thousandround-domed mushrooms lined the river bank and beneath them spread fungiof all colors, from the rawest red to palest blue, but all now fadingslowly to a monochromatic background in the growing dusk.
The buzzing, fluttering, and the flapping of the insects of the day diedslowly down, while from a million hiding places there crept out into thedeep night soft and furry bodies of great moths, who preened themselvesand smoothed their feathery antennae before taking to the air. Thestrong-limbed crickets set up their thunderous noise--grown gravely basswith the increasing size of the organs by which the sound was made--andthen there began to gather on the water those slender spirals of tenuousmist that would presently blanket the stream in a mantle of thin fog.
* * * * *
Night fell. The clouds above seemed to lower and grow dark. Gradually,now a drop and then a drop, now a drop and then a drop, the languid fallof large, warm raindrops that would drip from the moisture-laden skiesall through the night began. The edge of the stream became a place wheregreat disks of coolly glowing flame appeared.
The mushrooms that bordered on the river were faintly phosphorescent(_Pleurotus phosphoreus_) and shone coldly upon the "rusts" andflake-fungi beneath their feet. Here and there a ball of lambent flameappeared, drifting idly above the steaming, festering earth.
Thirty thousand years before, men had called them "will-o'-the-wisps,"but Burl simply stared at them, accepting them as he accepted all thatpassed. Only a man attempting to advance in the scale of civilizationtries to explain everything that he sees. The savage and the child ismost often content to observe without comment, unless he repeats thelegends told him by wise folk who are possessed by the itch ofknowledge.
Burl watched for a long time. Great fireflies whose beacons lighted uptheir surroundings for many yards--fireflies Burl knew to be as long ashis spear--shed their intermittent glows upon the stream. Softlyfluttering wings, in great beats that poured torrents of ai
r upon him,passed above Burl.
The air was full of winged creatures. The night was broken by theircries, by the sound of their invisible wings, by their cries of anguishand their mating calls. Above him and on all sides the persistent,intense life of the insect world went on ceaselessly, but Burl rockedback and forth upon his frail mushroom boat and wished to weep becausehe was being carried from his tribe, and from Saya--Saya of the swiftfeet and white teeth, of the shy smile.
Burl may have been homesick, but his principal thoughts were of Saya. Hehad dared greatly to bring a gift of fresh meat to her, meat captured asmeat had never been known to be taken by a member of the tribe. And nowhe was being carried from her!
He lay, disconsolate, upon his floating atom on the water for a greatpart of the night. It was long after midnight when the mushroom raftstruck gently and remained grounded upon a shallow in the stream.
When the light came in the morning, Burl gazed about him keenly. He wassome twenty yards from the shore, and the greenish