Shadowland. Spider World 06 by Colin Wilson

During the remainder of the journey to the northern exit, he and Typhon ate their way through a dozen cakes, and agreed she deserved a wider field for the exercise of her talents.

The point had come where they had to leave the cart. They dismounted on level ground, so the gelbs could find their way back to the city, and at Typhon’s command, they turned and trotted off. Then began the long climb uphill, to the cave guarded by the headless moog.

This reminded Niall of something else he had intended to ask Typhon: whether moogs could be transported to Korsh to perform heavy labor, such as the rebuilding of the harbor. But there was, it seemed, a problem. The moogs’ digestive system was almost nonexistent, so they could not eat normal food. They lived on the Magician’s blue elixir, and unless Niall could learn to reproduce the strange machine that made it, and find a kalinda tree to collect it, they would quickly lose their energy and decay like any corpse.

During the long climb to the top meadow, Niall studied the path carefully, calculating where it might be turned into a road suitable for wheeled vehicles. He decided this could not be done without blasting, or possibly the use of Reapers, and that he would have to bring Doggins on his next trip to Shadowland, to give him professional advice. According to Typhon, the Reapers in the Shadowland arsenal were virtually useless, being low on their radioactive fuel; one alternative might be to persuade the master of the bombardier beetles to grant permission to use those he was holding in the city armory.

When they arrived at the top meadow shortly before one o’clock, Niall was glad to see that it was a sunny day, with a vigorous north wind that drove the high white clouds like sailboats on a choppy sea. The vale itself was warm, being sheltered from the wind, and Niall flung himself down on the thick grass and gave himself up to the pleasure of feeling sunlight on his face.

The spider balloons came into sight half an hour later. The captain, who was standing on the top of the south peak, guided them in telepathically. The first landed within a dozen feet of where Niall was standing, and he was amused to note that the nauseating smell of the porifids actually brought a flash of nostalgia.

These balloons were twice the normal size — it was Niall himself who had suggested that they should be constructed to carry passengers. The mass of legs and fur that disentangled itself from the undercarriage was Grel, son of Asmak, and again Niall wished that it was physically possible to embrace a spider.

It seemed that Asmak had given in to his son’s pleas to be allowed to go and meet Niall, since the other two pilots were skilled veterans of the aerial survey who could rescue him in the event of trouble. But they had not expected the strength of the north wind, and had almost come to grief over the Valley of the Dead.

A quarter of an hour later they were airborne again, Niall sharing the double compartment with Grel, whose soft, glossy fur somehow aroused an amused and protective feeling. The compartment below the balloon was made of a flexible, transparent material, exuded by the black rupa worm of the Delta, and smelled oily and oddly like a geranium.

The balloon carrying Typhon was a hundred feet away, so they were able to wave to one another as the Vale of Thanksgiving dropped away below them. Niall’s balloon rocked heavily as it was caught by the full force of the wind, then steadied as it entered a current as swift and eddyless as a deep river. At a height of about two thousand feet the wind ceased to be audible, and only the clouds they passed betrayed that they were moving.

It was at this point that Niall stared intently at a bird flying powerfully alongside the balloon, and startled Grel by exclaiming aloud. It was the raven. Curious about how it felt to be exposed to the gale, Niall transferred his consciousness to the bird, which, since it was moving several times faster than it had ever traveled in its life, was not even aware of Niall’s intrusion inside its head.

Instantly, Niall was plunged into one of the most remarkable experiences of his life. His consciousness had divided into two: half in the soundproof and insulated world of the undercarriage, half in the roaring chaos outside.

He had, in effect, become two persons. In an exhilarating surge of freedom, he understood suddenly how every human being spends a lifetime trapped in a narrow room behind his eyes, becoming so accustomed to the prison that he is not even aware of his captivity.

And this, he realized, was the root of the human dilemma. Every one of us is so accustomed to seeing the world from a single point of view that it is almost impossible to believe that other people are as real as we are.

That also explained the Magician’s ruthlessness. He was a double prisoner: inside his palace, and inside his head. With no one to love, no close confidants, he had been sentenced to a lifetime in solitary confinement.

One single moment of Niall’s double consciousness — inside his own head and inside the raven’s — would have given him back his freedom and changed his life. As it was, he continued to believe he was alone in a universe of illusions until the moment he died.

In that same dazzling bird’s-eye view, Niall could also see the answer to another question that had puzzled him: why the Magician was so cruel. His prison had convinced him that the whole world was his enemy, and that safety lay in power. He believed that only cruelty and ruthlessness could ensure his survival.

But the karvasid was merely suffering from a more intense form of the negativity that afflicted the human race. Why had the spiders felt it necessary to enslave human beings? Because they recognized this element of cruelty and impatience as a human characteristic. Man felt they were necessary if he was to survive.

The chameleon men knew better. Close to the living soul of nature, they knew that every rock, every tree root, every vein of quartz, embodies the force of life. And this force could afford to be benevolent, for it was infinitely powerful.

But unless Niall’s fellow men could grasp that secret, they were doomed to remain trapped in this attitude that had brought the human race so much misery.

Could man ever realize that he was the chief cause of his own misery and misfortune, that a mere habit of negative-seeing, and a lack of the courage to dare to abandon it, had trapped him in a destiny of conflict and self-mistrust? Could he ever grasp, as Niall could now grasp so clearly, that an enormous optimism was justified?

It seemed strange to be flying through space at sixty miles an hour, and to know that he had just seen the answer to the most basic problem of human existence.

It had been half an hour since they had flown over the Valley of the Dead, and Niall had caught sight of the tower of Sephardus. Now they were approaching the domain of the chameleon men. Soon they would be back in the spider city, where Niall would escort Typhon into the presence of the Death Lord and the ruling council, and explain that this human was the first of thousands of new subjects of the spider empire.

The spiders, of course, would accept Typhon, for they trusted Niall, knowing him to be the representative of the goddess. But to make sure their trust was not misplaced, Niall had to find some way of making his fellow men understand the secret he had just grasped. And at the moment he could not even imagine how to begin.

The answer came a few minutes later, when he caught his first glimpse of the spider city on the horizon, and the dark blue line of the October sea beyond it. Niall waved to attract Typhon’s attention, but Typhon was looking down at the landscape below. Then Niall sent a telepathic signal, and when Typhon looked across at him, pointed and said:

“Korsh.”

Typhon waved back. “Wonderful!” His pleasure was communicated as clearly as a handshake.

It was then that Niall recalled that there are more direct ways of conveying insights than through words, and realized that communicating the secret might be less difficult than he had thought.

Eight hours later, in the early hours of the morning, Niall awoke from a vivid dream about the Magician.

He was back in the laboratory in Shadowland. It no longer smelled of blood because the walls and ceiling had been washed, and were still wet. The room was full of ghosts, including troglas and four-legged graddiks. The Magician was not among them, but when he suddenly spoke, his voice was clearly recognizable. It said: “Help me.”