Glorfin asked cautiously:
“Do you wish us to consider that as a concrete proposal?”
Doggins nodded. “I do.”
Glorfin rose to his feet.
“Then unless someone has something further to say, I suggest we conclude this discussion until I have had a chance to speak to the Master.” No one spoke. “Good — the meeting is ended.” He gave Doggins a smile of genuine friendliness. “Thank you for being so candid with us.”
As they left, several council members paused to shake hands with Doggins; it was obvious they felt they were saying goodbye, and experiencing sentimental regrets. Niall watched them ironically; he could see that Doggins was impatient to see the last of them.
Only Milo, Ulic and Simeon remained behind. While Doggins was seeing the council members off the premises, Niall could sense that they were contemplating the strange and frightening prospect of leaving the community in which they had lived all their lives, and hoping secretly that some other solution could be found.
Doggins said: “Shall we move to somewhere more comfortable?”
In the room in which Niall had eaten lunch, Lucretia and two of the other women were carding flax; when the men came in, they stood up without speaking and left. Doggins took his place in an armchair.
“Simeon, you haven’t said a word all evening.”
Simeon grinned mirthlessly: it made his hard old face look like wrinkled teak.
“You did very well without me.”
Milo said: “I don’t know how you did it. They’d already made up their minds before the meeting began. Pybus wanted to order you to destroy the weapons, then hand you over to the spiders.”
Doggins shrugged. “They’re all fools and cowards.”
Simeon said mildly: “That’s not quite fair, Bildo. They had got a point. Think what might have happened if you hadn’t found the Reapers. You might all have been killed, and our city would have been starved into submission.”
Doggins said soberly: “Do you think I don’t know that? When I think of what might have happened it makes my hair stand on end. But it didn’t happen, and that places us in an entirely new position. And these fools on the stadion won’t see that. They can’t see that there’s no going back.”
Simeon nodded. “Which is why I have decided to join you. But that still leaves us with the main problem. Which way do we go forward?”
Doggins said: “Before we discuss that, there’s something you all have to know.”
At that point, the door opened; two children came in carrying trays, which they placed on the table. One contained food, the other a large earthenware jug with five earthenware goblets. When Doggins tilted the jug, Niall was delighted to see that it contained the clear, golden liquid he had drunk on the boat. But as he tasted i it, he was overwhelmed with sadness at the thought of Odina. Suddenly, he felt many years older.
Ulic asked: “Were you serious about going to another country?”
Doggins nodded; he was tearing at a leg of roast pheasant.
“If necessary. But it may not be necessary.”
Ulic’s eyes gleamed with hope. “Why not?”
“Because of something I learned only just before the meeting.” He turned to Niall. “Tell them.”
Once again, Niall repeated his story of the white tower, and this time he also described what had happened as he lay under the peace machine. As he spoke, he felt again that strange sensation of being in two places at once: in this pleasant and comfortable room, and in the colder and yet more exciting world of reality. He experienced the overwhelming conviction that human beings live in a world of sensory illusions, but that their minds are capable of penetrating through to the objective reality behind them. He was so absorbed in this inner vision, and in his new understanding of it, that he scarcely noticed the effect he was having on his hearers. It was only when he finally stopped, and moistened his dry throat, that he realised that he had been speaking for half an hour, and that no one had interrupted him with so much as an exclamation.
Doggins was the first to break the silence.
“Now you see why I don’t want to leave. We can’t leave all that knowledge behind.”
Simeon started, as if waking from a dream.
“My grandfather used to say there was a time when men were the masters of the earth, but I thought it was just a fairy-tale.”
Niall regarded him curiously. “Why? The spider city proves that men were once far greater than they are now.”
“True. But the beetles and spiders must also have existed in those times, and I find it hard to believe that they were once the size of my finger-nail. As a doctor, I find the idea absurd.”
“But the comet Opik was radioactive. . .”
Simeon nodded. “I know all about radioactivity. It might cause a few minor variations. But it wouldn’t create a world full of giant insects.”
Niall asked: “Then how do you explain it?”
Doggins interrupted impatiently: “What does it matter how we explain it? The spiders exist, and we’ve got to decide what to do about them.”
Milo said hesitantly: “May I speak?”
“Of course.”
“I take it that our real aim is to gain free access to the white tower?” Doggins nodded. “In that case, we surely have no choice? We have to drive the spiders out of the city.”
Doggins said: “How?”
“There are many possibilities, but the simplest way would be to use the Reapers.”
Niall observed the touch of grim satisfaction in his voice as he said this; Milo was obviously thinking about his dead comrades.
Doggins said: “I agree. With the Reapers, we could blast the city into the ground in half an hour. But we’d also kill a lot of people.”
In the silence that followed, the force of his objection sank home.
Ulic said: “Suppose we destroyed only the part of the city around the tower? There are few human beings in that area.”
Simeon intervened. “Whatever you do, you’d have to kill a lot of human beings. The spiders would order them to attack us if we tried to invade the city.”
Milo said thoughtfully: “Suppose we tried to win over the human beings? We all have many friends among them. If we explained that we only want to give them their freedom, surely they would not be foolish enough to throw away their lives?”
Niall shook his head. “That is impossible. The commanders are completely loyal to the spiders, just as you are loyal to the beetles. And the others do what they are told. They would never disobey orders.”
There was a silence. Then Milo said:
“In that case, we have to decide which is the most important: the death of a few human beings, or the destruction of the spiders.”
Simeon shook his head violently; Niall could see the idea appalled him.
Niall said: “I think there may be one other way.” All looked at him. “To destroy the Death Lord himself.”
Doggins frowned. “And what about all the other spiders? We’d still have to fight them.”
“Not necessarily. You have seen what happens when the spiders are attacked. When they taste defeat, they panic. They are used to being the masters. If we destroyed the Spider Lord, it would like cutting off the head of a serpent. The rest would be harmless.”
He could see that they were unconvinced.
“Let me explain why I think so. When I arrived in this country a week ago, I knew nothing about the spiders, except what my grandfather Jomar had told me. He told me the legends about Vaken the Wise and Skapta the Cunning and Ivar the Strong, and how they fought against the spiders.” Their expressions told him that they had never heard these names before. “And he also told me the story of the Great Betrayal — how the traitor Prince Hahat went to the Spider Lord Cheb, and offered to teach him the secrets of the human soul in exchange for Cheb’s help in capturing the Princess Turool. My grandfather told me how Cheb had human prisoners brought in front of him, and how he read their minds until he knew every detail of their lives. After this, Cheb ate them, because he felt that this was the only way to truly understand them.
“Now, although I failed to realise it at the time, my grandfather had given me the key to understanding the spiders. We know that eating someone doesn’t help you to understand him. But the whole instinct of a spider is directed towards eating. They spend all their lives sitting in a web, waiting for food. Now the death spiders no longer have to worry about food. But they still spend their lives sitting in their webs. You see, the spiders have no imagination. And this is something that I failed to understand until I first encountered a spider — it was a wolf spider, in fact. I found it hard to understand how a creature can be so dangerous — in some ways so intelligent — and yet so stupid. Then, little by little, I began to understand. Spiders have never had any purpose except to catch food. So they have never had any need to develop imagination.