When he thought of Pertos, he thought of Ben Samuels and Noname, and he put the Pearl down in disgust.
After supper he took the Pearl in his hands again. There are those who contend that a Holistian Pearl is not just a bauble that can produce hallucinations or call up the memories of past owners, but a personality that seeks out those who need comforting. They say that, in a room with many bright objects, the distressed man will always pick up the Pearl, even if he does not know what it is and what it can do for him. And so it was that the idiot sat down with the jewel again, even though he did not wish to touch something that had belonged to Pertos and that now had associations with death.
The Pearl grew white as he touched it, caressed it.
He relaxed as the tendrils of manipulatory power threaded outwards from the jewel and reached his brain.
He was rising through the air, and the Earth was dwindling behind him. He watched this with fascination. He laughed with delight when the moon drew near in seconds, passed by and dwindled like the motherworld had.
The Pearl took him farther.
There were stars.
And soon there were ships, thousands of them, and he knew it was a colony of space gypsies that had never touched earth. And then the panic started. He realized he was not on solid ground either, and that old fear of aimlessness, of unstable surroundings, struck him with the force of a mallet, driving him in on himself.
He woke, shouting senseless things, and he threw the Pearl across the room. It snapped against the wall of the cargo hold, hit the floor, and rolled back to him. He did not pick it up again.
A week after the murders, on the first of many very cold days to come, he walked up the slope to the empty cabin. There were a few snow flurries in the sir and they dropped softly on his eyelashes, melted on his face and streamed down. He liked snow, and he was feeling better than he had in some time. The cabin door was unlocked, as it had been since the night of Samuels’ death. He had not been back since, but now he wanted to get the keys to drive the Rover down to the truck and charge his own vehicle’s battery, as the old man had taught him.
The keys were on a pegboard in the kitchen, and he found them easily. If he had left then, all might have remained as it was. But he had never been inside the old man’s bedroom, and he was curious. He pushed the door open and peered in at hand-carved furniture, a cozy place full of bookshelves. He stepped into the chamber, smiling at the sense of security the place seemed to emanate . . . .
And nearly walked right into the spider’s web.
It was inches in front of his face, hanging from open beams on the low ceiling, an enormous piece of work. One huge black bitch spider watched him, or appeared to. Around her, half a dozen smaller spiders scurried along the outermost reaches of the silken highways.
He could not move.
She came closer, descending on a silvered thread.
He was perspiring.
She had green markings across her back.
“No,” he said.
But she didn’t stop.
“Sorry,” he said.
She tensed, as if she would leap from the web and scrabble across his face to hide in the uncut masses of his hair.
She was so close he could see the spitting fibers flowing from her mouth, forming new lines.
“Pertos!” he shouted. “Pertos!”
There was no response.
“Help me I ”
There was quiet.
“Pertos!” This last call was strung out, each syllable many seconds long, agonized. He turned and ran, ran as fast as he could for the trailer of the puppet master’s truck. Inside, he hid himself, alone with the single light.
At two in the morning the light burned out, leaving him in complete darkness. It was a night of terror, for he kept hearing the sound of a thousand spiders stalking him across the cold metal floor.