Shadowland. Spider World 06 by Colin Wilson

Sensing the unanswered question, Niall added: “Ask me what is in your mind.”

“How did you — a human being — become the master of the spider city?”

“By the decree of the goddess.”

“You have spoken to the goddess?”

“Yes.”

Just as the captain’s insight into Niall’s mind would have made any dissimulation impossible, so Niall’s present contact with the spider’s mind meant that he could assess exactly what he was feeling. He recognized that what he had just said aroused a mixture of incredulity and superstitious awe.

This reminded him of something else that he had often noticed in his contact with spiders: that while they could be remarkably intelligent, their intelligence was less subtle than that of human beings. The reason had to do with their evolution. Humans had evolved over more than a million years of conflict with other humans, so they had achieved a high degree of psychological insight into other minds, which served them well in playing games of bluff and double-bluff, such as Niall had just played with the captain. By contrast, spiders had never had to fight for survival against other spiders; their lives had consisted mainly of waiting patiently in the corner of a web for the tug that told them that a fly or an insect had been ensnared.

The captain’s attitude toward humans had been simple. They were a conquered people who were good to eat. That is why he and Skorbo had been so angry when told they could no longer eat their favorite food, but had to content themselves with farm animals and the occasional bird. When told that this order came from the Great Goddess, they were inclined to disbelief, for neither Skorbo nor the captain had been present when the goddess had manifested herself through Niall. But now that he had heard it from Niall’s own lips, the captain had no alternative than to believe. Besides, had not Niall proved that he was more than an ordinary human when he had broken free from the grip of the captain’s will?

Soon the valley along which they were traveling widened enough for them to walk comfortably side by side. Although the captain had to walk at half his usual speed, the pace was still a great deal faster than Niall would have preferred. At least they were covering a great deal of ground. Then they were traveling through foothills whose slopes were covered with woodland. To their west lay a mountain range which, Niall seemed to recall, overlooked the coastal plain and the ruined town of Cibilla, once the summer retreat of Cheb the Mighty, who had conquered the human race.

Niall asked the captain: “Have you traveled this way before?”

“Only once on the ground, but many times with the aerial survey.”

“How far is the Valley of the Dead?”

“Perhaps half a day’s journey.”

Niall found that encouraging, until he reflected that half a day for a spider meant at least a full day for a human being — perhaps forty miles. He preferred traveling with a companion who knew the road. Traveling with the captain had only one disadvantage: Niall was obliged to wear the thought mirror turned toward his chest. If he turned it the other way, the captain would sense his loss of will-drive. That meant that, whether he liked it or not, he had to live at a higher level of tension and purpose.

In fact, by midafternoon he was beginning to feel the beginning of the headache usually caused by the thought mirror, but he resisted it, and hoped that it would not increase. He also noticed that contact with the spider’s vitality increased his own energy. It struck him that maintaining a high level of energy depended upon refusing to entertain the thought of tiredness.

As they walked, there was very little conversation between them. Unlike humans, spiders do not feel the need to maintain contact by speech — even telepathic speech — for their sense of one another’s presence is far more palpable than with men. Even walking beside the captain, Niall soon began to know more about him than if they had talked all the time.

The captain had been born in a ruined city that was much like the spider city, except that it was smaller, and was surrounded by desert. In the days when humans had ruled the Earth, it had been a flourishing seaport. After the Great Exodus it had been virtually deserted, and an earthquake had reduced much of it to rubble, killing the few humans who still lived there. But it was still swarming with huge rats, and soon became the home of a colony of intelligent Death Spiders, who found its impressive buildings and tall palm trees ideal for their giant webs. Gray wolf spiders preferred the ruined buildings of its old slum quarter. And So a kind of two-tier society had developed, in which the Death Spiders were the aristocrats.

When contact by sea had been established with the realm of the Death Lord, human servants and slaves had been imported to farm the giant rats, which were particularly prized by the spiders.

The captain’s grandfather, then his father, had been members of the ruling council, and his two elder brothers had also been prominent. The captain, because of his smaller size, had always had a sense of inferiority, and had spent much of his time with the wolf spiders in the slum quarter. Regarded with admiration by the young wolf spiders, the captain had led a small group of them in raids on the rat farms. On one occasion they had been opposed by the humans who ran it, and had killed and eaten them, including some babies. They found human meat so superior to rat flesh that they began to make a habit of eating slaves whenever the opportunity presented. This was not against the law, but when they killed a highly regarded overseer, the council of Death Spiders was outraged, and the miscreants were sentenced to death.

Through family influence, the captain escaped, and was sent by ship to the spider city, where intelligent officers were always in demand. Strict discipline brought out his best qualities, and he soon became a member of the Death Lord’s entourage. But his small size continued to engender a sense of inferiority. He became friendly with Skorbo, the captain of the Death Lord’s guard — strictly speaking, the captain’s social inferior — who was feared by humans for his brutality and short temper. Skorbo was impressed by his intelligence and aristocratic background, while the captain was impressed by Skorbo’s courage and sheer willpower.

The Great Revolution, when human beings regained their freedom, made no difference to Skorbo — except for depriving him of human meat — or indeed to most of the other spiders. Life in the spider city went on much as usual; men continued to work as before, under the surveyance of female overseers, who in turn were answerable to spiders. But to the captain, this change came as a profound shock, further undermining his self-esteem. He was intelligent enough to grasp its long-term implications: that when the spiders stopped trying to breed intelligence out of human beings by killing the clever ones while they were still in the nursery, the human race would begin to overtake the spiders. Skorbo and his kind had been too stupid to see human beings as a challenge, but the captain knew better.

The death of Skorbo had come as another enormous shock, particularly with its implication that Skorbo had been a traitor. The captain had never tried to probe Skorbo’s mind, any more than Skorbo had tried to probe his; their mutual respect made it unthinkable. But now Skorbo was dead, and the captain had been banished from the realm of the Death Spiders. Overnight, everything he had struggled for had been destroyed.

Now Niall was able to understand why the captain had fought so grimly to stay alive. He must have felt that life had treated him with outrageous unfairness. For the spiders, his refusal to accept death made him contemptible. But for the captain, it was a gesture of rebellion against fate itself.

And now, for the first time, there was a glimmer of light in the darkness. By pure chance, the captain had allied himself to the human being who was the emissary of the goddess. Perhaps the fates had not turned against him after all.

As Niall absorbed this knowledge by a process akin to osmosis, he ceased to feel guilty about making the captain walk at half his usual pace. He understood that this was nothing compared to the sacrifices the captain would be prepared to make to regain his position and self-esteem. Niall represented the possibility of his becoming again a leader among spiders, respected and admired. To gain his support, the captain would cheerfully have walked on his knees.

The captain, for his part, was fascinated by the information he was able to absorb from Niall — his childhood in the desert, his journey to the underground city of Dira, his capture by the spiders, his encounter with the goddess in the Delta, and his confrontation with Skorbo’s assassins. The human beings whom the captain had known had all been slaves or servants, so it was a new experience to be in contact with a human whose intelligence was at least equal to his own.