Shadowland. Spider World 06 by Colin Wilson

“I thought you might like to see a little more of Shadowland.”

As they emerged into the blue daylight — which seemed oddly depressing after the bright lights of the Hall of Entertainment — Niall was fascinated to see that the road was cobbled. But there was otherwise no resemblance to the scene of his dream. These houses were strikingly quaint, with steep, red-tiled roofs, and upper stories that projected above the lower; their windows were made of small leaded panes. And the people here bore no resemblance to the white-haired, ghostlike creatures of his dream.

He asked Gerek: “Have you ever seen creatures like this?” And he projected a telepathic image of the white ghosts.

Gerek nodded. “They are called graddiks.”

“And where do they come from?”

“Come from?” Gerek looked at him in astonishment. “They don’t come from anywhere. They don’t exist. They are purely mythical.”

“And what about troglas?”

“Oh, they existed once. They were the original inhabitants of Shadowland, but they were all killed in a volcanic eruption long before men came here.”

“And is it true that their ghosts still haunt Shadowland?”

Gerek shrugged impatiently. “Of course not. Ghosts don’t exist.”

Niall could see that Gerek was of the same mind as Torwald Steeg.

Looking around the corner of another cobbled street with quaint houses, Niall asked: “What kind of people live here?”

“This is a district called Freydig, which is for our better-off citizens. It is based on a city called Krakow in medieval Poland. That’s the Town Hall.” He pointed to a building that might have been a ducal castle. “It also has the best restaurant in the city.”

The people of this quarter certainly looked plumper and better dressed than those in the wooden houses on the far side of the bridge, and one tall, beautiful woman was wearing a cloak of white fur. Niall was curious.

“Why are they better-off?”

Gerek laughed. “A good question. In fact, the karvasid thought that it would be better if our city had different classes, the rich and the poor. A city where everybody was alike would be less interesting than a city with class differences. As it is, the poor dream of moving to this side of the river, near the palace.”

“And what do the rich dream of?”

“To be allowed to travel to the surface. That is why the karvasid wants to make a peace treaty with the spiders.”

Niall said: “You astonish me.”

“Why?”

“Surely real travel would be boring in comparison to the Hall of Entertainment.”

“Ah no. You see, dream machines fail to satisfy the sense of reality.”

They now had walked around the enormous circus tent, and were back in the market square. It was even more crowded than before, and again Niall was struck by the silence.

Their gelbs, which were waiting in the row of stationary carts, looked as if they had not stirred an inch in the past two hours. Niall and Gerek climbed in, Gerek took the reins and turned the cart, and they drove off smartly, turning left along the road that followed the river. Glancing back over his shoulder, Nial saw that many people were staring after them. It seemed they were not as indifferent as they appeared to be.

The captain, with his eight-foot stride, had no difficulty keeping abreast; in fact, they were traveling at about the speed that spiders preferred. Niall therefore settled back in his seat and allowed himself to relax and enjoy the scenery.

Not far beyond the marketplace they passed another enormous square, in which a squad of soldiers was engaged in rifle drill. This was the first time Niall had ever seen soldiers on parade, and he was fascinated by the machinelike precision of their movements as they snapped to attention or presented arms; all of this — since he could not hear the telepathic commands — seemed spontaneous and full of astonishing vigor.

He asked Gerek: “Why do you need soldiers when you have no enemies?”

“The karvasid believes in being prepared for attack. Besides, the training is good for our menfolk.”

This city was larger than the city of the spiders, yet obviously had a far smaller population. This was apparent from the small number of people they saw. Yet its buildings were as impressive as those of spider city, and far more varied in style. One great square building looked like an old-fashioned office block with outside columns that seemed purely for the purpose of decoration, and a flat roof with a parapet. Yet through its large windows Niall could see only one solitary woman sitting at a desk. Another building along the riverfront had a series of arcades, and in a kind of interior courtyard he could see trees — rather squat trees whose vegetation was the dark color of seaweed.

On the far side of the river there were rows of terraced houses looking like those on the outskirts of the spider city. Niall saw a man emerging from one of these, and blinked with astonishment, suspecting that his eyes were deceiving him. The man seemed to have a square head. Niall pointed to him.

“Is there something wrong with him?”

“No. That is one of the karvasid’s experiments. He thought that a man with a different-shaped head could be made more intelligent, but he proved to be wrong. They are very stupid.”

Niall noticed something else — open spaces with great piles of square stone blocks in the center. These piles looked as if they had been tumbled haphazardly from the back of some huge cart. He pointed: “And what are they for?”

Gerek said briefly: “Building blocks.”

“But you seem to have more buildings than you need.”

“That is why they were not used.”

They were crossing another bridge built of stone, with lighted lamps along the parapet. Beyond this, Niall could see the city wall, with its strange hexagonal towers and tall windows, and another city gate — obviously not the one he had entered by, for there were no conical towers in sight.

Niall said: “I don’t understand. Was the population once far greater than it is today?”

He thought Gerek seemed troubled by the question, but in fact, he answered casually: “Oh, yes. Even a century ago there were four times as many people.”

“What happened to them?”

Gerek hesitated before replying: “I was not born then, but I suspect that the karvasid made one of his rare mistakes. He was afraid that the population would outgrow the food supply, and ordered many woman to be sterilized. So the birth rate fell steeply. But then the sterility seemed to spread. Now no baby has been born for twenty years. I was one of the last.”

Gerek seemed disturbed, and Niall felt sorry to have asked an embarrassing question.

A few minutes later they arrived at the gate. The guard who opened it for them stood to attention and saluted Gerek. Niall observed that he watched the spider curiously out of the corner of his eye. Then they were out in the featureless landscape of Shadowland, with its flat, hard surface. Yet the only visible difference from Niall’s approach of the day before was that a smooth gray road stretched ahead of them. In the black earth on either side of the road, Niall observed occasional cracks, from which steam was issuing.

Gerek said: “You promised to tell me how you became the ruler of the spiders.”

And since the road ahead vanished into the unchanging distance, and they were obviously going to be on it for a long time, Niall took a deep breath and began.

“I was born in the desert on the other side of the great sea. . .” If he had tried to tell of his journey to Kazak’s underground city, and how he had killed a spider with the expanding metal rod, it would have taken all day. So instead he compressed it, describing simply how he had returned from a hunting trip to find his father dead, and his family taken captive by the spiders. Gerek listened with total absorption, and so, oddly enough, did the captain, who was becoming increasingly skilled at following human mental imagery.

Niall spoke of his rescue of the spider that fell overboard during the crossing from North Khaybad, and how in consequence he was well treated on arriving in the spider city. To describe the white tower and all he had learned there would again have made the tale overlong, so he spoke only of his journey to the city of the bombardier beetles. He condensed the account of how Doggins had lost his complete supply of explosives on Boomday, and only described how he and a group of young men had set out to find the hidden arsenal in the Fortress. Gerek was clearly fascinated by Niall’s account of the Reapers.

“We have some of these in the castle armory. I understood they were invented by the karvasid.”