Shadowland. Spider World 06 by Colin Wilson

There was a door whose top was pointed like a Gothic arch, and as they approached, a man came out. Niall recognized instantly that he belonged to the same race as Skorbo’s assassins: he had a thin, very pale face, large dark eyes, big ears, a shaven head, and a receding chin. The nose was as beaky as a hatchet. This was a descendant of the original cliff dwellers.

The man glanced at the captain without surprise, as if he was used to seeing giant spiders every day. This made Niall wonder if they were expected, and it gave him an odd feeling of disquiet.

At close quarters Niall could see that the wall was made of metal — presumably iron — and that the parallel lines were joints where it had been welded. There was something rough and crude about the workmanship, which lent it an appearance of menace. In its way, it was as impressive as the Great Wall in the Valley of the Dead. Stretching for about a mile in either direction, it must have involved tremendous labor.

The guard pushed a heavy wooden gate wide open to admit the men with their animals. But it would have been impossible for six of them to enter abreast; the gateway was wide enough only for two. The men unloaded the rolled net, and two of them dragged it through the archway. The beasts were obviously relieved to have their burden lightened, and walked forward eagerly in single file. This was evidently something they did regularly.

When the animals and men had passed through the gateway, the guard glanced impassively at Niall and the captain. His voice sounded inside Niall’s chest.

“What do you want?”

It was harsh and oddly toneless.

Niall replied: “To see the master of this city.”

The guard stared at him woodenly, then turned and went back through the gate. A moment later, it closed. Niall and the captain looked at one another, wondering whether this was meant to be a refusal. It would be absurd to have traveled all this way to be denied entry.

Five minutes went by, ten minutes, a quarter of an hour. Everything was strangely silent except for the occasional crackle of lightning as it struck the wall. Then a door beside the gate opened. The guard was staring at them with a face whose blankness somehow conveyed hostility. Again his voice sounded harshly in Niall’s chest.

“Are you sure you want to come in?”

It was asked as if it were a statement.

Niall said: “Of course.” The question surprised him, until he reflected that it was probably some formal watchword intended for strangers.

The guard stood to one side to admit them. As they passed through the door, Niall thought he observed the flicker of a smile on his face.

On the far side of the archway there was a further door, which was closed. Niall and the captain found themselves standing in a narrow space. To one side of this there was a room, separated from them by a wooden counter that was highly polished. Behind this stood a man with the receding chin of the cliff dweller, but with a fatter face. He was obviously the superior officer of the guard, who now joined him by raising the flap of the counter.

The room was lit by a light on the ceiling, a glass cylinder containing a glowing wire. The men of Shadowland evidently had mastered electricity.

The officer’s voice sounded inside Niall’s chest. “What do you want?” It had a curious quality, as if echoing in an empty room.

Niall repeated: “To see the master of this city.”

“Impossible. The karvasid sees no one.” He looked outraged.

“Then is there someone else I can see?”

The man stared at him, as if about to refuse. Then he said: “Very well. Come with me.”

He raised the counter and emerged. Niall could now see that he was distinctly better fed than the guard who stood behind him.

He opened the inner door, and Niall caught his first glimpse of the city of the Magician. It was disappointing. There was a great empty space — not a square, because it stretched away like a road. A few hundred yards away there was one of the conical buildings like that of his dream. The difference was that this was gray, like the flat plane. There were other conical towers, some tall, some short, some oddly lopsided. The plane between them might have been regarded as a central avenue, except that no buildings defined its sides. There were occasional benches, which looked as if they were made of a dark marble, but they seemed to be set at random among the buildings. In places, steam rose from cracks in the ground.

Lightning struck the nearest conical building, hitting a lightning rod that rose out of its apex. Steam suddenly hissed out of vents close to the top, looking like smoke. For a moment Niall thought it had caught fire, but after a moment, the steam ceased.

Their guide strode on silently, offering no explanation of where they were going. Niall glanced at him; his face seemed impassive. Was it possible, Niall wondered, that in spite of appearances, he was also some kind of robot? Gently, afraid of provoking an angry reaction, Niall tried probing his mind, looking at him as he did so, so that if the man noticed, it might appear accidental, as if he had casually brushed against him. But there was no reaction.

It was strange: although the man seemed unaware of what Niall was doing, his mind was virtually a blank. A normal human mind would have contained a continual flow of feelings and impressions and thoughts; this man’s mind was little more than a reflection of his surroundings. It was almost as blank as some of the minds of the female guards in the spider city. Was this because, like these women, it had been violated so often that he no longer noticed it?

Then Niall observed a reaction of annoyance, and, thinking he had been caught out, quickly withdrew his probe. But when he looked ahead up the avenue, he saw that he was not its cause. Some kind of vehicle, drawn by two of the horselike animals, was crossing the avenue at a great speed, and vanished behind one of the conical buildings. It was the clatter of its iron-shod wheels that had annoyed the officer.

Niall said: “Where are we going?”

He sensed the man’s irritation at being questioned, and for a moment thought he did not intend to reply.

Then the guard said: “To see the prefect.” His voice was flat, almost metallic, in Niall’s chest.

It struck Niall that the man had some of the characteristics of the officers in the Spider Lord’s entourage; he had been trained to behave and think mechanically. So there was a sense in which the regime of the Magician resembled that of the Spider Lord. Usually, when one intelligent creature spoke to another by means of telepathy, the words carried a background of meaning, of feeling. Niall had now come to know the captain so well that his voice in Niall’s head had an individual tone. But this officer’s voice might have been reproduced by some mechanical device.

They had been walking a quarter of an hour, and had seen no one. Then Niall observed two more of the horse-drawn vehicles in the distance. They were proceeding more slowly, and did not provoke their guide’s displeasure. It was hard to see who was in them, but whoever it was seemed to be wearing gray garments.

Partly out of curiosity and partly out of boredom, Niall began probing the mind of their guide again. It seemed incredible that he was unaware of it, for if it had been a normal human being, Niall’s mental probe would have been as intrusive as someone leaning on his shoulder. But there was still that puzzling blankness. In fact, it was worse than blankness. Seen through the eyes of their guide, the street was as gray and featureless as a snowy landscape at dusk. Even the outlines of the conical towers seemed blurred.

Now intrigued, Niall tried increasing his concentration. The effect was immediate: the outline of the cones became clearer and sharper.

The problem, then, was that their guide’s senses were dull and mechanical; he was suffering from a kind of permanent boredom. Niall and the captain looked more distinct; but that, Niall realized, was because they were novelties in a world of perpetual sameness.

Now fascinated by this experiment, Niall made an intense effort of concentration, trying to force their guide’s senses to perceive everything more sharply and clearly. The result startled him. The buildings not only became more sharply defined, but became colored with bright stripes. The same thing happened to the road.

There was a hiss that made him jump, and a cloud of steam issued from a crack in the ground. But now, the warm steamy smell, which had reminded Niall of a laundry, had become sweet and pleasant, like children’s candy.