Snail on the Slope Read online

  "Be quiet," said Kandid, taking a closer look.

  At first he thought that white tortoises were crawling toward him along the path. Then he realized that he'd never seen animals like this before. They resembled enormous opaque amoebas or very young tree-slugs except that the slugs had no pseudopodia and were a little larger. There were a lot of them. They crawled along in single file, quite quickly, hurling forward their pseudopodia neatly and flowing on into them.

  Soon they were quite near, white and shining; Kandid also sensed a sharp, unfamiliar smell and stepped from the path to the verge, drawing Nava after him. The slug-amoebas crawled on past them, one after the other, paying them no attention whatever. There turned out to be twelve of them in all. Nava kicked out at the twelfth and last, unable to restrain herself. The slug neatly tucked in its behind and went on in hope. Nava was delighted and wanted to rush forward and deliver another kick, but Kandid caught her dress.

  "They're so funny," said Nava, "and they crawl along the path just like people walking ... where are they going, I wonder? Likely, Dummy, they're off to that nasty village, they're from there likely, and they're going back now knowing the Accession's happened there. They'll march around the water and head back. Where will they go, poor things? Find another village? ... Hey!" she shouted, "stop! your village has gone, there's only a lake there now!"

  "Be quiet," said Kandid. "Let's go. They don't understand your language, don't waste your breath."

  They went on. After the slugs the path seemed somewhat slippery. Met and parted, mused Kandid. Met and went our separate ways. And I was the one to step out of the way. I, not they. This circumstance suddenly seemed extremely important to him. They were small and defenseless, I'm big and strong, but I stepped off the path and let them through, and now I'm thinking about them, they've passed through and probably don't remember me at all. Because they're at home in the forest and there's plenty of strange sights in the forest. Just as in a house there are cockroaches, bedbugs, woodlice, the odd brainless butterfly, or a fly banging against the glass. Anyway they don't bang against the glass. Flies think they're flying somewhere when they fly into the glass. I think I'm walking somewhere, only because I'm moving my legs... Probably I look funny from the side and ... as it were ... pitiful ... piteable ... which is correct.

  "There'll be a lake soon," said Nava. "Let's get on, I want to eat and drink. Maybe you can catch some fish for me."

  They put on speed. The reed-thickets began. Well, that's fine, thought Kandid. I'm just like the fly. Am I like a man? He remembered Karl and remembered that Karl wasn't like Karl. Very possible, he thought calmly, very possibly I'm not the man who crashed his helicopter how many years ago. Only in that case why do I bang against the glass. After all, Karl, when that happened to him, didn't bang against the glass. It'll be strange when I get out to the biostation and they see me. A good thing I thought of that. I've got to think good and hard about that. Good thing there's still lots of time and I won't reach the biostation all that soon...

  The path forked. One arm obviously led to the lake, the other turned off sharply to one side.

  "We won't go that way," said Nava, "it leads up and I want a drink."

  The path became narrower and narrower, and eventually turned into a rut and petered out in the undergrowth. Nava halted.

  "You know. Dummy," she said, "let's not go to this lake. There's something I don't like about this lake, there's something not right about it. I don't even think it is a lake, there's a lot of something there apart from the water..."

  "But there is water there?" asked Kandid. "You wanted a drink, I wouldn't mind either..."

  "There is water," said Nava reluctantly, "but it's warm, bad water, unclean... You know what, Dummy, you stay here. You make too much noise when you walk, I can't hear a thing, you stay and wait for me, I'll call you. I'll call like a hopper. You know what a hopper sounds like? Well, I'll call like that. You stand here, or better still, sit down..."

  She dived into the reeds and disappeared. Kandid then turned his attention to the deep, cushioned silence that reigned here. There were no insects droning, no sighings and suckings from the swamp, no cries of forest creatures, the damp hot air was still. This wasn't the dry silence of the nasty village; there it was quiet like behind a theater curtain at night. Here it was like being under water.

  Kandid cautiously squatted on his haunches, pulled off some blades of grass. He pulled up a clump of grass, rubbed it between his fingers and unexpectedly realized that the earth here should be edible and began eating. The turf effectively combatted hunger and thirst, it was cool and salty to the taste. Cheese, thought Kandid, yes, cheese ... what was cheese? Swiss cheese, processed cheese, sweating cheese ... what was cheese? Nava noiselessly ducked out of the reeds. She squatted beside him and started eating, rapidly and neatly. Her eyes were round.

  "It's a good thing we've eaten here," she said finally. "Do you want to see what sort of a lake it is? I want to see it again but on my own I'm scared. It's the lake Hopalong keeps talking about, only I thought he was making it up or he dreamed it, but it looks like it's true, if I'm not dreaming, that is..."

  "Let's take a look," said Kandid. The lake was about fifty yards in. Kandid and Nava came down the boggy bank and parted the reeds. Above the water lay a thick layer of white mist. The water was warm, even hot, but clean and transparent. There was a smell of food. The mist slowly eddied in a regular rhythm and after a minute Kandid felt he was going dizzy. There was someone in the mist. People. Lots of people. They were all naked and were lying absolutely motionless on the water. The mist rhythmically rose and fell, now revealing, now concealing the yellowy, white bodies, faces lying back - the people weren't swimming, they lay on the water as if they might on a beach. Kandid retched. "Let's get out of here," he whispered and pulled Nava by the arm. They got out onto the shore and returned to the path.

  "They're not drowned," said Nava, "Hopalong didn't understand, they were just bathing here then a hot spring started up suddenly and they all got boiled... That's really awful, Dummy," she said after a silence. "I don't even feel like talking about it... so many of them ... a whole village..." They had reached the place where the path forked. Here they halted. "Now up?" asked Nava.

  "Yes," said Kandid, "now up."

  They turned right and began to ascend a slope. "And they're all women," said Nava, "did you notice?"

  "Yes," said Kandid.

  "That's the most awful thing, that's what I just can't understand. Maybe ..." Nava looked at Kandid, "maybe the deadlings drive them here? Likely the deadlings drive them here - catch them around all the villages, drive them to this lake and boil them... Listen, Dummy, why did we leave the village? We'd have lived there and not seen any of this. Thought that Hopalong had dreamed it up, lived quietly, but no, you had to go to the City... Well, why did you have to go to the City?"

  "I don't know," said Kandid.

  Chapter Eight

  They were lying in bushes at the very edge of the trees and gazing at the crest of the hill through the foliage. The hill was steep and bare, and its crest was capped by a cloud of lilac mist. Above the hill was the open sky; a gusty wind was bringing drizzle. The lilac mist was motionless as if there were no wind. It was rather cool, even fresh; they were soaked, and had gooseflesh from the cold, their teeth chattered but they couldn't go away; twenty paces from them, upright as statues, stood three deadlings, their wide black mouths open, also looking at the crest of the hill with empty eyes. These deadlings had arrived five minutes before. Nava had sensed them and was set to flee, but Kandid had clamped his palm across her mouth and forced her down into the grass. Now she had calmed down a little; though she still shuddered heavily, it was due to the cold rather than fear. She was now watching the hill, not the deadlings.

  On and around the hill something strange was happening, some kind of grandiose ebbing and flowing. Out of the forest, with a dense, deep droning, suddenly erupted enormous swarms of flies, which hea
ded into the lilac fog on the hill and were hidden from view. The slopes were alive with columns of ants and spiders, hundreds of slug-amoebas were pouring out of the bushes, huge swarms of bees and wasps, clouds of multi-colored beetles flew over, under the rain. It sounded like a typhoon. This wave reached the heights and was sucked in, disappeared, and there came a sudden silence. The hill was dead once more and bare; some time passed and the noise and roar rose again and it all erupted again from the mist and headed for the forest. Only the slugs remained on the hilltop. In their place came spilling down the slopes the most incredible animals - hairies came rolling, clumsy arm-chewers came lurching down on frail legs, and there were plenty of others unknown as yet, speckled, multi-eyed, naked, shining half-beast, half-insects. Then the silence again, then the process started up once more, and again, and again, in a frightening, urgent rhythm, an inexorable energy. It seemed as though this rhythm and this energy had always been and would always be... Once a young hippocete emerged from the mist with a frightful roar, deadlings came running out from time to time and at once rushed into the forest, leaving white trails of cooling steam in their wake. And the motionless lilac cloud kept swallowing and spitting out, swallowing and spitting out, tireless and regular as a machine.

  Hopalong used to say that the City stood on a hill, that thing is the City, perhaps, that's what they call the City. Yes, probably that's the City. But what's the meaning of it? Why is it like this? And the strange activity... I expected something like this... Rubbish, I never expected anything like it. I thought only about the masters, and where are the masters here? Kandid looked at the deadlings. These were standing in their former postures, their mouths open as before. Perhaps I'm wrong, thought Kandid. Perhaps they are the masters. Probably I'm mistaken all the time. I've completely forgotten how to think here. If ideas come to me, I can't fit them together. Not a single slug has come out of the fog yet. Question: why hasn't a single slug come out of the fog yet? ... No, that's not it. Get it straight. I am searching for the source of intelligent activity... Not true, again not true. I'm not interested in intelligent activity at all. I'm simply looking for someone to help me get home. Help me to get through six hundred miles of forest. Tell me which direction to go at least... The deadlings must have masters, I'm looking for these masters, I'm looking for the source of intelligent activity. He was quite pleased with himself; it was quite coherent. Let's start from the beginning, we'll think it all through - calmly and slowly. No need to hurry, now's just the time to think everything through slowly and calmly. Start from the very beginning. The deadlings must have masters - because deadlings aren't people - because they aren't animals. Therefore they are manufactured. If they aren't people... But why aren't they people? He rubbed his forehead. I've already worked that out. Long ago, in the village, I worked it out twice even, because the first time I forgot the answer, and now I've forgotten the proofs...

  He shook his head as hard as he could and Nava quietly whispered at him. He was quiet and for a while lay with his face pressed into the wet grass.

  Why they aren't animals - I worked that out before sometime... High temperature... No, no rubbish... Suddenly, he realized with horror that he'd forgotten what deadlings looked like. He remembered only their red-hot bodies and a sharp pain in his palms. He turned his head to look at them. Yes, I ought not to think. Thinking's out for me, right now, when I have to think more intensively than ever before.

  Time to eat; you've told me that before, Nava; we set off the day after tomorrow - that's my limit. But I did go! And I'm here. Now I'm going into the City. Whatever it is - it's the City. My brain's overgrown with forest. I understand nothing... I've remembered. I was going to the City, to find an explanation for everything; about the Accession, the deadlings, the Great Harrowing, the lake of drowned bodies ... all a deception it seems, everybody's lied their heads off nobody can be trusted... I hoped they would explain how I could get back to my own people, the old man used to keep on saying: the City knows everything - it couldn't possibly not know about our biostation, about the Directorate. Even Hopalong nattered on about Devil's Rocks and flying trees... But surely a lilac cloud couldn't explain anything? It would be terrible if the master turned out to be a lilac cloud. And why "would be"? It's terrible now! It's in front of your nose, Dummy: the lilac fog is the master, here, surely you remember? Yes, and it's no fog either... So that's the way it is, why people are driven away like beasts into dense forest, into swamps, drowned in lakes: they were too weak, they didn't understand and even when they understood they couldn't do anything to interfere with the process... When I hadn't been driven out, when I was still living at home, somebody proved very convincingly that contact between human-oid and non-humanoid intelligence was impossible. Yes, it is impossible. Of course it's impossible. And now nobody can tell me how to get home.

  I can have no contact with people, and I can prove that. I can still get a sight of Devil's Rocks, so they say, you can see them sometimes if you climb the right tree in the right season, but you've got to find the right tree first, an ordinary human tree. That doesn't jump and doesn't throw you off, and doesn't try and spike your eyes. Anyway, there's no tree I can see the biostation from... Biostation? Bi-o-sta-tion. I've forgotten what a biostation is.

  The forest began to hum and buzz, crackle and snort, once again myriads of flies and ants whirled toward the lilac dome. One swarm passed above their heads and the bushes were deluged with the weak and the dying, the still and the barely twitching, those crushed in the press of the swarm. Kandid sensed an unpleasant burning sensation in his arm and glanced down. Slender threads of mushroom spawn were creeping over the elbow he had propped upon the porous earth. Kandid indifferently brushed them off with his palm. Devil's Rocks was a mirage, thought he, none of that exists. If they told you stories about Devil's Rocks, then it was all lies, none, none of that existed, and now I don't know why I ever came here...

  Away to one side came a familiar terrifying snort. Kandid turned his head. At once a mother hippocete looked stupidly out from behind the seven trees on the hill. One of the deadlings suddenly sprang to life, got in gear, and made a few steps toward the hippocete. Once more came the appalling snort, the trees crackled, and the hippocete made off. Even hippocetes are afraid of the deadlings, thought Kandid. Who isn't? Where can you find someone who isn't? ... Flies roaring. Stupid, absurd. Flies - roaring. Wasps roaring...

  "Mam!" whispered Nava suddenly. "It's mam coming..."

  She was on all fours and gazing over his shoulder. Her face expressed huge astonishment and disbelief. And Kandid saw that three women had emerged from the forest, and, without noticing the deadlings, were heading for the foot of the hill.

  "Mam!" shrieked Nava in a voice not her own, leapt over Kandid, and raced to intercept them. At that Kandid also jumped up; it seemed to him that the deadlings were right next to him and he could feel the heat of their bodies.

  Three, he thought. Three... One would have been more than enough. He looked at the deadlings. This is the end for me, he thought. Stupid. Why did these old birds have to come barging in here? I hate women, always something going wrong because of them.

  The deadlings closed their mouths, their heads slowly swiveling after the sprinting Nava. Then they strode off in unison and Kandid compelled himself to leap up from the bushes and face them.

  "Back!" he yelled to the women without looking. "Get out of it! Deadlings!"

  The deadlings were enormous, broad-shouldered, in mint condition, not a single scratch or rough edge. Their incredibly long arms reached down to the grass. Without taking his eyes from them, Kandid halted in their path. The deadlings were gazing over the top of his head and moved unhurriedly toward him; he faltered, gave ground, putting off the inevitable beginning and the inevitable end, contending with a nervous desire to bs sick and trying to bring himself to make a stand. Behind his back, Nava was shouting: "Mam! It's me. Mam, main!" Stupid women, why don't they run? Too scared to run? Stop, he said to himself,
stop, blast you! How long can you walk backward? He was unable to stop. Nava's there, he thought. And those three idiots... Fat, dreamy, indifferent idiots... And Nava... What are they to me anyway, he thought. Hopalong would have made off long ago on his one leg. Buster quicker than that... But I've got to stay. Not fair. But I must stay! Well, stop then! ... He was unable to stop, and despised himself for it, and applauded himself for it, and hated himself for it, and kept on going backward.

  The deadlings stopped. Straight away, as if at an order. The one in the lead froze with one leg in the air, then slowly, as if undecided, lowered it to the grass. Their mouths dropped slackly open and their heads swiveled toward the hilltop.

  Kandid, still retreating, glanced around. Nava, legs kicking, was hanging around the neck of one of the women, who, it seemed, was smiling and clapping her lightly on the back. The other two women were standing calmly by watching them. Not watching the dead-lings, not the hill. Not even Kandid, a strange hairy man, perhaps a robber. The deadlings, for their part, were standing stock-still, like some primitive graven image of old, as if their legs grew straight into the earth, as if in all the forest there were no woman left to seize and carry off somewhere, in obedience to orders; from beneath their feet, like the smoke of a sacrificial fire, rose pillars of steam.

  Kandid now swung around and walked toward the women. Not walked, but rather trailed, totally uncertain, not believing eyes, ears, or brain anymore. His skull was a seething mass of pain, and his whole body ached from the tension of his brush with death.