While Doggins told the story of what had happened to them, Simeon boiled the leaves of the suva bush in water, and bathed Manetho’s eyes. Manetho groaned with pain as the liquid ran into his eyes; but after a few moments, he sighed deeply, and smiled with relief. Simeon then made a poultice of the suva leaves, and bound it across Manetho’s eyelids. A few minutes later, Manetho’s deep, calm breathing revealed that he was asleep.
Doggins asked quietly: “Do you think he’ll see again?”
“I don’t know. If it’s like the venom of the spitting cobra, then it won’t cause blindness provided it’s washed out immediately.”
Doggins looked pityingly at Manetho’s grotesquely swollen face. “I hope you’re right.”
In the blackness overhead, the first stars were beginning to appear. A cool breeze blew up the valley from the sea, and although they were protected by the trees, they could hear it sighing and roaring in the branches.
Niall asked Simeon: “Why are there no moths?”
“Because it’s too dangerous for them down here. They prefer the higher slopes, where the plants don’t eat them.”
“Do the plants go to sleep at night?”
“Probably. You notice that the grass has stopped moving?”
“No, I hadn’t.” Niall pulled up a handful of the thick grass and held it up against the firelight; the tiny white legs were motionless. When he threw it back on the ground, it made no attempt to re-root itself.
“So the Delta’s safer at night then during the day?”
“It would be if there were no animals.”
Doggins said: “We’d better take it in turns keeping watch.” He yawned.
“I’m afraid so. I was going to stay awake all night. So I’ll take first watch.”
They ate the remainder of the lobster meat with dried biscuits; but Niall was too tired to feel hungry. He ate only a few mouthfuls, then pushed his plate aside and lay down, intending to eat the remainder when he had rested his eyes. Within moments he was fast asleep.
It seemed only a few seconds later that Doggins was shaking him. He said sleepily: “All right, I’ll finish it in a moment.”
But when he opened his eyes, he saw that the fire had burned down into a pile of white ash and red embers, and that Simeon and Milo were asleep.
Doggins whispered: “Time for your watch.”
“What time is it?”
“About two hours before dawn.”
Niall yawned and sat up, shivering. The wind was still roaring in the trees, and the air was chilly.
Doggins pointed into the blackness. “There’s something wandering around out there. But I don’t think it will dare to come closer.” He tossed another dry branch on to the fire — Simeon had collected a pile of them, and cut them into convenient lengths with the Reaper — and within a few moments it was beginning to burn. “I’m going to get some more sleep.” He wrapped himself in his blanket, lay down beside the fire, and in less than five minutes was snoring gently.
Niall stared uneasily into the darkness. The sound of the wind made it impossible to hear anything else, but he thought he could see the gleam of two eyes among the trees. He raised the Reaper, then changed his mind; if it was a large animal, then its bellowing would awaken the others. Instead he threw another branch on to the fire, wrapped himself in his blankets, then sat down with his back against the trunk of the fallen Judas tree, nursing the Reaper between his knees.
The knowledge that he was being watched roused him to full alertness. He reached inside his tunic and turned the thought mirror towards his chest. This instantly increased his concentration; but it also made him aware that, sitting with his back against the tree trunk, he was vulnerable to attack from behind. He attempted to use his mind to reach out into the darkness around him, to sense the presence of potential danger; but the concentration induced by the thought mirror made this difficult. Reluctantly, he reached inside his tunic, and turned the thought mirror again. Then, by inducing the glowing point of light inside his skull, he created an inner silence in which his awareness reached out into the darkness like a spider’s web. Now, suddenly, he became aware of the nature of the beast that was studying them from the darkness. It seemed to be neither reptile nor animal, but a mixture of the two. It was small and extremely powerful; Niall sensed that it could reach him in one single bound. It was attracted by their smell, which filled it with a consuming hunger. But it also sensed that these strange, appetising creatures were more dangerous than they looked, and that it would be stupid to surrender to its hunger and attack.
Niall felt no alarm or sense of danger; because he was so intimately aware of the creature’s needs and desires, he felt as if its identity had blended with his own. It was difficult to realise that he was leaning back against a tree trunk, and not crouching behind a bush, his clawlike hands resting on the ground in front of him. At the same time, he experienced a strange feeling of suffocation and of pity. This animal was trapped in its desires and instincts as if locked in a prison cell; it was little more than a killing machine.
Niall was becoming tired of being a mere observer; he wanted to see if he could influence the animal. But his state of receptivity was entirely passive, as if he were little more than a spider in the heart of its web. Very slowly, maintaining this receptive awareness, he reached inside his shirt. As his fingers touched the thought mirror, his receptivity wavered; but an effort of concentration brought it back again. Then, with infinite patience, he turned it until the concave side was facing his chest. For a moment there was conflict as the surge of vitality induced by the mirror threatened to tear the spider web of pure perception. Again, he relaxed, and used his breathing to control the surge of tension. Then, quite suddenly, the two were perfectly adjusted; the power of the thought mirror no longer threatened to destroy the spider web of receptivity.
The result of this adjustment was so astonishing that he lost interest in the creature that was lurking in the darkness; it became a peripheral part of his perceptions. What amazed him was that these two aspects of his being — will-power and receptivity — could be brought into such perfect balance, and that the willpower could control the receptivity without destroying it. Without ever consciously considering the matter, he had always taken it for granted that the two were mutually exclusive opposites. Receptivity was for understanding the world; will-power was for controlling it. Now, in this blissful state of harmony, he saw that this was a crude fallacy. Receptivity was simply a way of descending into his own inner world.
It was a breathtaking sensation. He felt as though he was standing on the threshold of his own inner-domain, looking down on it as he had looked down on the land of Dira from the top of the citadel on the plateau. The whole of his past life was there before him, as real as the present moment. And if he raised his eyes, he could become aware of even more distant horizons — of other lives beyond the present one, and of the lives of all other human beings. It was the same sensation he had experienced as he sat in the brook a few hours earlier, but raised to a far higher degree of reality.
Now, at last, he could see the answer to the problem that had been troubling him ever since he arrived in the Delta: why man has always been so dissastified with his own life. The answer was obvious: because every man possesses within himself the power to transcend the present and to take possession of the vast domain of his inner being. Man was intended to be the lord of this mental kingdom, not a miserable exile trapped in the ever-changing present. And because all men are born with this instinctive knowledge, no human being can ever be satisfied with the present moment, no matter how completely it seems to fulfil his desires.
This insight also brought a sense of deep sadness. It began, oddly enough, with a feeling of pity for the slavering creature that was now crouching behind a bush, longing to leap on them and tear them limb from limb. It possessed no mental kingdom; it was trapped in the material world, like a prisoner behind bars. That was why the Delta was so full of violence and cruelty. It was the frustration of starving prisoners.
Of course, life on earth had always been like this. Left to themselves, living creatures would relax blissfully and sunbathe in the mud. The force behind evolution had learned the trick of goading them with misery and starvation. Man, at least, had been allowed to evolve slowly, over millions of years — and even that was too fast. But these creatures of the Delta were being forced to evolve a hundred times too fast. That was why life in the Delta had become a sickening, horrifying joke. This evolutionary melting pot was like a sadistic dream. Those creatures were being forced to evolve merely so they could destroy one another. Just as the spiders had evolved until they could destroy human beings. . .