Shadowland. Spider World 06 by Colin Wilson

Niall was surprised when they came to the end of the street with wooden houses, and found themselves approaching a bridge across a river. On its parapet there were lighted lamps on columns. Niall, who knew about the cost of municipal lighting, asked: “Do you keep them lit all the time?”

Gerek gestured at the sky. “We have plenty of electricity.”

Niall was fascinated by the river. It was a light turquoise blue, and was flowing swiftly. With sunlight reflected from its surface, it would have been beautiful. But even in this pale blue light, its flowing wavelets, with their loud rippling sound, were almost hypnotically attractive.

On the other side of the bridge, on top of a hill, there was an impressive building of dark green stone, with rounded towers and buttresses. Niall guessed what it was even before Gerek pointed and said: “The palace of the karvasid.”

Having noted that the rest of the city was completely flat, Niall asked: “Is that a natural hill?”

“No. It took a thousand workmen twenty years to construct it.”

“A thousand men?” Niall was startled. His main impression so far was of a city with a small population.

Gerek understood what he meant. “There were more people at that time.”

Niall was about to ask what had happened to them when the cart halted at the edge of a large open space with a market. Strings of colored lights gave it an atmosphere of festivity, while the stalls were covered in glittering silver cloths that reflected the light. On the far side of the square there was a curious structure that he instantly recognized as the “circus tent” of his dream, with its clumsy multistory shape. It made him wonder for a moment whether he was at present asleep or awake.

Gerek halted the cart on the edge of the square, and they climbed out, leaving their vehicle at the end of a row of stationary carts with gelbs in harness. All these animals stood unmoving; they might have been mistaken for statues made of wood.

There were more people in the market than he had seen so far; even so, it was not as crowded as the market in the spider city. For the most part the men and women seemed oddly pale, like Skorbo’s assassins; sometimes their complexions were a light shade of yellow. And when Niall came close, he noticed that the skin was covered in fine lines, like Katia’s arm.

By far the strangest thing about this scene was that it was so silent. This, of course, was because the people were addressing one another telepathically. But even their feet were almost soundless; the most popular form of footwear seemed to be a shoe made of soft white leather, of the kind that many children wore in the city of the bombardier beetles. The total effect was bizarre: a bustling market with hardly a sound.

All around the edge of the square were striped booths that served food and drink, and the air was full of pleasant cooking smells. The market stalls themselves contained a remarkable variety of goods: clothes, shoes, household articles like wooden buckets, clothes pegs, and stepladders, as well as food such as cheese and butter, apples, pears, plums, and the eggplantlike fruit Niall had seen in Typhon’s garden. There were even one-wheeled cycles for sale.

Niall was suddenly struck by an interesting realization: he had not so far seen a single child. Neither were there animals like dogs or cats. Yet some of the meat on sale looked like large rats.

Niall pointed to the “circus tent.”

“What is that?”

“It contains amusements. Would you like to see inside?”

With a disquieting sense of deja vu, Niall advanced toward the entrance that looked as if it had been created by cleaving the canvas with a knife. Directly beyond this flap there was a gray space that was even more like Niall’s dream. But when another flap was pushed aside, the similarity vanished. The inside of the enormous tent was lit by electric lights that were brighter than the daylight outside. And the people inside were speaking in normal voices, chattering and laughing. There was also soft and pleasant music, played on some kind of stringed instrument. Around the walls there were booths separated by thin walls made of woven strips of wood, and machines with flashing lights.

The bright lights also showed clearly that most of the people had fine wrinkles — so fine that they would scarcely be visible in daylight-while the predominantly dark hair of the men and women was frequently powdered with gray. What was so odd was that their bodies showed no sign of aging; the majority of the women had good figures and firm breasts, while the men looked strong and athletic. No one he had seen so far looked overweight. Niall thought of the woman he had watched from his bedroom window, with her wrinkled face and youthful figure, and was baffled.

Niall’s appearance, followed by the captain, caused a stir; but the tent was so big that the chattering continued unabated. And those who gazed with astonishment at the spider quickly lost interest when they saw Gerek and recognized that he was in charge of the two guests; within a few minutes, no one was paying them any more attention.

Niall asked Gerek: “What is this place?”

“It is the Hall of Entertainment.”

Niall looked around him with interest. His committee had discussed providing something of the sort for the inhabitants of the spider city, and he was on the lookout for ideas.

“What are these machines?” Each booth contained an upright metal box in which there was a circular opening about a foot in diameter, and each one had a comfortable seat of metal tubing attached to its front.

“We call these reality machines. Come and see.”

He led Niall into one of the booths, and said: “Excuse me.” An attractive young woman looked round at them with wide eyes. For a moment, Niall thought she was startled by the sight of the captain, then realized that her eyes were actually circular. Again, Niall experienced a disturbing sense of deja vu, then remembered where he had seen such round eyes: in the white ghostlike creatures of his dream.

The girl smiled charmingly at them, looking at Niall with particular interest, and Niall experienced again the glow of attraction that he had felt when Katia had pressed against him. The women of this place seemed to radiate a kind of erotic energy.

A label on the side of the booth said: “Scene by Moonlight.” Gerek gestured at the circular opening, and Niall sat down and placed his face against it. He found himself looking at a picture of a cobbled road that ran beside a river or canal, with trees on either side, and neat-looking houses. A crescent moon hung in the sky, and was reflected on the water of the canal. A girl in a low-cut dress was walking along the road. A well-built young man who looked like a laborer was walking toward her.

It was a delightful picture, and Niall looked at it with appreciation. Then, as he stared, it became three-dimensional; he was looking at a real road, and the trees were stirring in a cool night breeze. A moment later, he found himself standing on the road and feeling the breeze against his cheeks and looking at clouds drifting past the moon. Everything was real: the rippling water of the canal, which reflected the moon, and a leaf that drifted down from a tree. A cat emerged from a garden gate. The man passed the young girl without even glancing at her.

What was so odd about this was that Niall was conscious of himself in two places at once: standing in front of the machine, and being on the moonlit road. This produced a curious surge of pleasure, a sense of control.

Gerek said: “If you want to restart it, push the orange button.”

Niall did as he suggested. Instantly, the picture reset itself. The man and the girl were again twenty feet apart, the trees stirred in the breeze, the cat slipped out of the gate. Niall wondered why Gerek had suggested restarting it. He looked at the girl’s attractive features, and the bosoms that almost emerged from the neckline of the dress, and it passed idly through his mind that it was a pity that the young man did not ask her for a kiss.

A moment later, as they passed one another, the man turned, slipped his arm round her, and gave her a kiss. The girl seemed to enjoy it.

Niall found it hard to believe that his own spontaneous thought had caused the change. He again pressed the reset button, and watched the two approaching one another. But this time, he changed the scenario in his imagination. And a moment later, as the two drew closer, it was the girl who stepped in front of the man and placed her arms round his neck. The two stood pressed tightly together in the moonlight. Niall felt like a voyeur as he watched them.