Shadowland. Spider World 06 by Colin Wilson

No sooner had this question entered his head than Niall understood. They were not using language as human beings use it, with words laid out in order like a game of dominoes. Their words were a kind of music. But unlike human music, whose meanings were indeterminate, the chameleon language was quite precise. It had been developed out of their mutual experience, and it was intended to convey that experience.

As he entered this shared experience, Niall suddenly understood that the chameleon men were in a basic sense rather like human beings, in that they spent their days engaged in various kinds of activity. As guardians of this vast tract of countryside, they had the task to wander around it, either singly or in pairs, communicating with trees, bushes, plants, and with such animals as moles, slow worms, grass snakes, frogs, and lizards. These creatures, being of low intelligence, were inclined to remain isolated from one another in a kind of half-sleep. The task of the chameleon men was to act as mental bridges between them, making them aware of one another, and bringing a sense of unity that extended from tree mites and grubs to mice, water voles, and squirrels.

So the human notion that nature is full of conflict and confrontation was, as Niall could now see, a misconception. The instinct of the chameleon men was to help create harmony as the instinct of a musician is to create beautiful sounds.

Niall found himself wondering what part the trolls played in this harmony. His access to the minds of the chameleon men instantly provided him with the answer. Their task was to convert the raw energies of the Earth — the electrical force of lightning, the piezoelectric energies released by rocks under stress — into a living energy capable of nourishing the microorganisms that live in the soil, and which give the Earth its living aura. Each troll was like a power station, and this is why they needed to be so massive and formidable — the troll who had guided them to the sacred lake weighed as much as if he was made of solid granite. Trolls were to be found wherever quartz was plentiful, in places like the sacred mountain and the Valley of the Dead.

Unlike the task of the trolls, which was unending, the activity of the chameleon men varied with the seasons. Now, with the onset of winter, when nature itself was preparing to sleep, they had less to do. Even so, when they came together at the end of a day, they had a great deal to communicate, like any group of countrymen sitting in the bar of their local pub. Their language was a language of rhythms and images, and behind it all was a continuous awareness of the sound of the wind and rushing water. The actual syllables of this language could be compared to the sounds the wind makes as it encounters obstacles like trees, or a stream as it splashes over rocks and pebbles.

So as he “listened” to two chameleon men describing (at the same time, their words forming a counterpoint like music) a tree-covered hillside and a family of mice that had made their nest in the roots of the same oak tree as an owl, he was like a stranger overhearing a conversation between two friends, feeling curious and detached at the same time.

Then something happened that startled him. He was no longer “listening” to the conversation. Nor was he in the underground cave. He was on the hillside miles away, observing the activities of the mice in their nest among the roots. Everything was completely real: the moon half-covered in clouds, the branches rustling in the wind, the movements of wood lice under a piece of rotten bark. Yet although he was perfectly aware that he was still in the cave of the chameleon men, everything looked so solid and real that it would have been quite easy to persuade him otherwise.

What was happening was obvious. He had now entered the mental world of the chameleon men. And they clearly possessed a far more powerful faculty for remembering the reality of other times and places than human beings.

He had, in fact, experienced something of the sort before. When the great spider lord Cheb the Mighty had described the conflict between men and spiders, which had resulted in the triumph of the spiders, his words had conjured up scenes of slaughter that were painfully real. But Niall had assumed that it was his own imagination that had helped endow them with reality.

Suddenly, Niall was back in the cave. But only for a moment. Another of the chameleon men was speaking, this time about the plight of fishes who lived downstream. Last year, an exceptional volume of floods, due to melting snow, had damaged the backwater where many of them spent the winter, drowsing in the mud and leaves that covered the bottom. Niall witnessed trees torn up by the roots, mud that had lain undisturbed for years swept away by the flood, water rats struggling to escape torrents that often left them battered or drowned. For Niall, it was an unpleasant reminder of his own experience of near-drowning, and was so real that he involuntarily gasped for breath as his head plunged into a foaming eddy.

What happened next puzzled him deeply.

He was struck by the reflection that, with the river flowing so strongly, his backpack must by now have been swept out to sea.

His thought entered the shared stream of awareness, and because Niall was a guest, automatically commanded more attention than it might have done otherwise.

Their immediate response was to show him that the stream he had just seen was not the river that flowed under the spider city, but one that issued from the hills to the northeast. His pack might have found its way to a mud bank on the edge of the marshes, where corpses of slaves were often carried.

Niall saw this country of the marshes, twenty miles from the spider city, looking desolate in the light of a waning moon that was close to the horizon. There was a smell of rotting vegetation, and he wrinkled his nose in disgust at the sight of a decaying carcass whose eyes were being pecked out by a sea bird.

And then, among the reeds just beyond the corpse, Niall was startled to see his own pack, lying in the mud. He was so surprised that he said aloud: “Look, there it is!” before it struck him that they could see it as well as he could.

His words caused the scene to fade, and he was back in the other reality of the cave.

The sight of the westering moon reminded Niall that the night must be almost at an end, and that it would soon be time to leave. But Niall’s companions had overheard the thought, and as he started to rise to his feet, the leader indicated that he thought this was not a good idea — that traveling by daylight was dangerous. Niall would be better advised to wait until nightfall.

Niall explained that his time was short. “My brother is ill and I must seek a remedy.”

This brought a silence, followed by the reply: “But humans need to sleep. It is safer to sleep here than aboveground.”

Niall explained: “But we sleep when we are tired. I am not tired.”

“That is because you are among us.” They were speaking to Niall as if they were one person. “When you are alone, you will feel tired.”

Niall knew this to be true. Nevertheless, he had never felt more wide awake.

The problem, as far as Niall could see, was that the chameleon men never felt sleepy. When they were fatigued, they simply rested, and drank some of their amazing green-colored water. And then their interest in one another, in what each one had to communicate, simply kept them wide awake.

Niall had never realized so clearly that human beings fall asleep because they are cut off from one another.

The chameleon men said: “Show us how you fall asleep.”

It seemed a strange request, but Niall attempted to oblige.

He closed his eyes, and sank into himself, like someone turning off the lights before getting into bed.

He was surprised to find that sleepiness came easily. The normal length of the human day is about sixteen hours, and it had been more than that since Niall had slept. So now the physical rhythms of his body took over naturally. It seemed odd to be falling asleep with a dozen other people inside his head.

The result was that although his body sank into a pleasant drowsiness, his consciousness remained wide awake.

When Niall was normally on the point of falling asleep, thoughts and impressions ceased to pursue their own purposes, and began to wander around freely, with no sense of direction. It was as if the director of consciousness went off duty and left them to their own devices, at which point dreams took over. But now, supported by the chameleon men, Niall’s consciousness remained on duty and watched his mind falling into disarray. His thoughts ran around like headless ants, and often collided with one another. It was all strange and rather amusing, like watching a slapstick comedy.