With time to spare, the spiders preferred to soften their prey by injections of venom, and eat when it was a few days old. But there was no time now; they wanted to return to the spider city. That evening, as the sun set, they began the long journey back. Some of them took advantage of the change in the direction of the wind to travel by balloon; these carried the children with them. But adult humans were too heavy for the balloons; they had to march. It was a long journey of many weeks, for they had to make a great detour round the intervening sea. And the spiders were in no hurry; they were determined to bring back all their captives alive.
But why, Niall wanted to know, were the spiders so keen to preserve their prisoners? He was anxious to discover some less terrifying aspect of the spiders, something that would enable him to feel less afraid. But Jomar’s answer brought him no comfort.
“They wanted them for breeding — especially the women.” Jomar’s breathing was hoarse; the effort of talking had exhausted him. “The men weren’t so important. One man could father a lot of children. But they never had enough women.”
Mara began making whimpering noises in her sleep. Niall realised immediately that it was his fault; his fear and loathing had communicated itself to her. Jomar reached out and laid his hand on her forehead; she sighed and became quiet. Jomar said sadly: “No, never enough women.”
“How did you escape, grandfather?”
The old man smiled. It took him several moments to summon the energy to speak. “In a balloon. We took balloons.” Niall waited. Jomar said finally: “The other two worked for the bombardier beetles. It was their idea. They were intelligent — not like the men in the spider city. The spiders killed all the clever ones. They wanted us fat and stupid. But the beetles didn’t care. All they wanted was explosions. . .”
“Explosions?”
“They liked big bangs — the bigger the better. That’s why they wanted human beings — explosives experts. These two decided to escape — Jebil and Theag. They found out how to make a gas to fill the balloons — hydrogen it was called. They asked me to help. That was the day I found out the spiders meant to kill me. So I had nothing to lose. I showed them where the women made the balloons. . .”
“Women made them?”
“Yes. Under the supervision of the spiders. They had a storehouse with hundreds of balloons. We just walked in and helped ourselves. The guards didn’t try to stop us. They thought we’d been ordered to fetch the balloons. Why should they think otherwise?. . . No human being had ever tried to escape that way. They simply let us walk out.” He laughed, but even his laugh revealed his exhaustion. Five minutes went past, and Niall assumed the old man was asleep. Then Jomar began to speak again. “The other two died. One of them came down in the sea, the other in the delta. Their balloons must have been faulty. But mine carried me to the mountains near the lake. I landed fifty miles from where I’d been captured.”
“Did they come looking for you?”
The old man laughed drily. “They’ve been looking for me ever since.”
Mara began to whimper again. Jomar said: “Hush”, and again laid his hand on her head. A few minutes later, his own regular breathing revealed he was asleep.
Two days later, Jomar died. Runa came in early, while they were all asleep, and said: “Grandfather won’t talk.” And suddenly, they all knew he was dead; it was the kind of instantaneous certainty they all took for granted. Jomar was lying face down on the floor, his hands spread out about his head, as if he had fallen from a great height. But when they turned him over his face was peaceful. It was clear that his last moments had not been haunted by fear of the spiders.
Ulf, Veig and Niall spent all that day digging his grave, at the foot of the euphorbia; they dug deep to try to preserve the body from insects. But when Niall looked at the grave a few days later, it was full of the characteristic holes of the scarab beetle. In the desert, food was seldom allowed to waste.
On the evening of Jomar’s death, Siris tried to make contact with her sister in Dira. She used the inner room — the room where Jomar had died — and the rest of them sat in the next room in total silence, listening to her breathing and waiting for that change of rhythm that would indicate success. They sat there for perhaps half an hour; then she sighed and rejoined them. During the meal that followed, she was obviously worried.
“What is the point of fretting?” Ulf said finally. “In Kazak’s city, only the antherds know when it is sundown. The rest of them lose all sense of time.”
Siris nodded, but said nothing.
She tried again at dawn the next day, hoping to awaken Sefna from her sleep. Again, there was no result. Listening to her breathing, Niall understood what she must be feeling. The first stage of an attempted contact was to clearly picture the other person, and to send out thought-waves. It was easiest if both communicators made the attempt at the same time. But this was not essential; if the two shared a certain basic sympathy, then the sender could attract the attention of the other person, who would suddenly experience a nagging feeling of anxiety. Then, as contact was established, both parties would experience a strong sense of the other’s presence, exactly as in a normal conversation.
If the sender failed to make contact, then a grey and unresponding space developed, with its own peculiar variety of silence — a silence often broken by the echoes of other voices. This usually indicated that the contactee was preoccupied, perhaps involved in some activity. Yet even after the sender had abandoned the attempt to make contact, the other person might suddenly become aware that the attempt had been made. This often happened between the two sisters, and on such occasions each would remain receptive for as long as possible in case the other “called back”.
This is why Siris was worried. Staring into that grey, empty space, with its hint of other voices, she had had a foreboding that something was wrong. And as the days passed without contact, the foreboding became a certainty.
Niall himself was oppressed by a presentiment of evil. Neither he nor Ulf had spoken about the killing of the death spider, but it had never been far from their thoughts. They remembered Jomar’s story of the ritual execution of the small band of desert dwellers who had killed a death spider. And they also remembered that, on the day of the sandstorm, two spider balloons had passed overhead. From the moment Niall had looked into the eyes of the death spider until the moment he watched the life drain out of its jointed limbs, only a short time had elapsed — perhaps half a minute. But that was time enough for the dying animal to send out its message of alarm to its companion.
Kazak believed his city to be impregnable. Niall knew this was wishful thinking. He had experienced the power of the spider’s will as it tried to paralyse him into immobility. Jomar’s story of his own capture told how that power could be used.
A week after the death of Jomar, Niall’s foreboding was confirmed. That was the morning when, drinking the dew out of the waru plant, he became aware of the spider balloon bearing down on him. And in the hours that followed, as the armadas of balloons drifted overhead and the fear-probes invaded the burrow, he tried not to allow himself to reflect that he was responsible for this misfortune. Instead, he comforted himself with the thought that, since the spiders were mounting this large-scale search, they could have no clear idea where their quarry was hiding.
Then, as he was falling asleep that night, a sudden thought shocked him into wakefulness. If Ingeld had been captured by the spiders, she could tell them precisely where to look. . .
Ulf had been struck by the same thought. The next day, as they were eating, he said: “We must leave this place and return to our old home at the foot of the plateau.”
Siris, whose eyes were dull with lack of sleep, said: “When?”
“Tonight at dusk. It would be stupid to delay. They will keep coming back until they find us.”
Niall looked down at his father’s foot, which was still swollen. “Do you think you can walk that far?”
“There is no alternative.”
“We need the leaves of the gereth plant,” Veig said.
The gereth bush grew on the edge of the desert; its leaves had powerful medicinal properties; mixed into a poultice, they could reduce most swellings within hours.