Shadowland. Spider World 06 by Colin Wilson

“Of course.”

When they were alone, the captain said: “You realize that something strange is going on?”

“Strange?” Niall’s thoughts had been preoccupied with Veig, and with his meeting with the Magician. “In what way?”

He was speaking aloud, and the captain said: “It might be best to speak with our minds.”

“Very well. But what makes you suspicious?”

“To begin with, I am sure we were expected.”

“I think it possible. But why are you so sure?”

The captain hesitated. He did not find it easy to express his thoughts on the human wavelength; it was obviously like speaking a foreign language.

“In this city, no one has seen a spider before. To them, we are legendary monsters who might eat them alive. Yet no one has shown any surprise at seeing me — except one woman in the factory.”

“Yes, I noticed that. But there may be some other explanation. Perhaps she was simply startled to look round and find us there.”

The captain projected a sense of polite skepticism.

“And does it not strike you as strange that, when you have come so far to see the Magician, he keeps you waiting a whole day? If an ambassador arrived in the spider city, he would be received immediately. The Magician could have cured your brother today if he had wanted to — Typhon said he could do it from a distance. So why is he keeping you waiting? What does he hope to gain?” He broke off. “They are coming back.”

The spider must have been able to pick up their physical vibrations from some distance, for it was at least half a minute before Typhon and Gerek returned. By that time, Niall had poured himself another tumbler of wine, and had dismissed from his mind the mood of doubt, which would otherwise have lingered like an unpleasant smell. But he was aware, from the lingering traces of their own mood, that Typhon and Gerek had been discussing something that had disturbed them.

Typhon said: “Would you like to look over the palace?”

“Very much.” Niall had been hoping for this invitation. Aware that his own palace was basically a commercial building, he was curious to know what a real palace was like.

He found it deeply impressive. The floors were tiled with wooden bricks, and the corridors were covered with carved panels of fine workmanship. Having supervised some repairs in his own palace, Niall was aware that this one had been created by skilled craftsmen who must have devoted years to the task.

One thing aroused Niall’s curiosity. On either side of the corridor, at regular intervals, beads of green glass were set into the paneling, and as they walked past, these glowed like the eyes of a cat.

“What are these for?”

“They are mechanical eyes. Through them, the karvasid can see whoever is in the palace.”

As they walked through a labyrinth of corridors, Niall was struck by the variety of the styles. Some rooms and passageways were decorated in nature motifs, others in an abstract style full of curves, others with patterned tiles whose style he recognized as Moorish. It was as if the karvasid had changed his mind periodically and ordered a different mode of decoration. Many of the rooms had walls of the original green stone — or artificial stone — and dark, heavy furniture; Niall found them impressive but slightly gloomy. In other parts of the palace, the green stone was invisible under paneling.

Niall remarked on this variety of style; Typhon’s reply was: “It would be pointless to build a palace without variety.” Niall was not convinced. His own palace was simply a comfortable place to live in, like a home. This was more like a museum.

The next room, in fact, was a museum, with glass cases. Niall was struck by a case that contained a lay figure wearing a suit of fine chain mail over a black leather jerkin; the trousers were also made of a kind of wrinkled leather.

Typhon said: “This is the armor worn by the karvasid when he was Captain Sathanas. And these are the leggings he wore during the winter journey to Shadowland.”

Niall stared with deep interest at the face, but it might have been a tailor’s dummy. It had a forked black beard.

The next case immediately drew Niall’s attention. It contained another figure in chain mail and black leather jerkin, taller and more heavily built than Sathanas. The face looked oddly lifelike, although the skin might have been polished wood; the brown eyes were obviously made of glass.

“This is the karvasid’s comrade in arms, Vosyl, who discovered the entrance to Shadowland.”

“A statue?”

“No. The body is mummified.”

Niall stared at it with morbid fascination.

“Are his other comrades here?”

“Not of the original Faithful Band. But that is Darvid Grubin, the grandson of Vosyl, who was commander of the strike force at the time we expected Cheb to invade. He is known as the Hero of Cibilla.” Niall gazed at a massive figure that looked as if it was about to stride out of its glass case. “And those are his favorite weapons.”

Niall stopped to point. “Isn’t that a Reaper?”

The atomic blaster looked oddly out of place among broadswords, battle axes, and other items of medieval weaponry.

“Why, yes.” Typhon seemed surprised. “You know about Reapers?”

But before Niall could reply, Gerek had interrupted: “I told him they were invented by the karvasid.”

Niall decided that it might be tactful not to pursue the subject, and so simply did his best to look impressed.

The figure in the next case was quite clearly a mummified human being, but was shockingly grotesque. The head was wider at the bottom than at the top, with a huge, flat nose spread out across it as if it had been hit by some heavy object. The thick lips looked as if they were made of rubber, while the tiny eyes, with large bags under them, had difficulty peering out of layers of obesity. The fat body sagged, like a balloon full of water, and the bow legs filled the black leather trousers so tightly that a seam had split apart. It was probably the ugliest human being Niall had ever seen.

Typhon said: “Yes, that is the karvasid’s chief steward, Zamco. He served him for thirty years — the best steward he ever had.”

Gerek chuckled. “And he couldn’t keep his hands off the maids. He got every single one of them pregnant.”

“But what was wrong with him?” Niall assumed he was suffering from some disfiguring ailment.

“Oh, nothing. He was one of the karvasid’s most successful experiments.”

“Experiments?”

“It was once called genetic engineering. But the karvasid made a great discovery — that the genes can be influenced by the unconscious mind, and that the unconscious mind can be accessed by means of vibrations. Have you ever heard of sleep-learning?” Niall nodded. “This is a similar principle.”

“But why did he make him so ugly?”

“Because he was testing a theory that ugly people may become the most intelligent. Vosyl was the ugliest member of the Faithful Band, yet the most intelligent and hardworking. He felt he had to compensate for his ugliness by developing other qualities.”

Niall looked with distaste at the mummified Zamco.

“I think this was going too far.”

Gerek, staring at the mummy, said: “I’m inclined to agree.”

“Ah, but it worked. Zamco was the best of servants.”

Niall began to wander along the exhibits, but felt no inclination to pause for more than a moment before any one of this gallery of freaks, some fat, some thin, but all deformed or misshapen. He asked: “Why are they all so ugly?”

“Because at that stage the karvasid was working on simple genetic variations, and individual variations tend to be unattractive.” He gestured at an exhibit with a nose like a giant strawberry. “Beauty is harmony of many different parts. Introduce one misshapen nose and it turns to ugliness.”

“But did he ever create anything that wasn’t ugly?”

“Oh, many things. In fact, at the risk of sounding immodest, he was responsible for me and Gerek. Both our mothers went through the process of unconscious conditioning.”

Gerek smiled. “But Typhon’s mother wasn’t as suggestible as mine.”

Typhon pretended to hit him in the stomach.

As they passed a case containing an object like a short, flesh-colored snake with a half-developed human face, Niall averted his eyes; he preferred not to ask about it.

Only one of the remaining exhibits aroused his interest, a large brain in a container of transparent fluid. Typhon spoke with real enthusiasm:

“This is one of his most remarkable achievements. This brain was grown outside a body. The karvasid believed that it should be possible to provide all the stimuli through currents of energy. The person to whom this brain belonged — a paralyzed child called Rufio — never realized that he did not possess a body. By stimulating the neural circuits, the karvasid was able to make him believe that he did all the things that a normal child does — eat, drink, go for walks, mix with other people, even learn to swim.”