Niall said: “I saw one when we came back from Dira.”
“Where?”
“Not far — perhaps two hours away.”
“I will come with you.”
Ulf shook his head. “We shall need you here, Veig. There is much to be done if we intend to leave tonight. Niall is old enough to go alone.”
So Niall set out as soon as he had finished eating. He carried a woven basket for the leaves, a small gourd of water, and his metal spear. This, fully extended, served as a staff. The sensation of its weight in his right hand gave him a feeling of confidence. With this, he could defend himself against most predators.
There were still at least five hours before midday. If he encountered no problems, he should be home before then.
Niall maintained constant vigilance throughout the ten-mile walk, surveying the ground for the convex hump that indicated the lair of the trapdoor spider, and the sky for spider balloons. He also made a wide detour around large rocks, knowing that scorpions liked to make their homes underneath them. Periodically he concentrated his mind, checking for subconscious warnings of danger. When he was fully alert, a sixth sense would warn him of most dangers in advance. But he encountered nothing more menacing than a big camel spider, which came close enough to see whether he was a rodent or a lizard, decided he was neither, and went on its way. Niall had never understood why solifugids were uninterested in human beings.
A mile beyond the clump of trees where they had once encountered the saga insect, Niall found the gereth bush he had noticed earlier. It stood about four feet high, and its broad, shiny leaves had small red shoots at the upper end, shoots that would turn into pointed flowers. To Niall’s surprise, the whole bush was now covered in a silken web, fastened round it like a tent. Peering inside, through the close-woven mesh, he saw dozens of baby spiders, each no more than an inch in diameter. When he touched the web gently with the point of his spear, the mother spider came out of concealment to see what was happening. She was light brown in colour and had a big, fat body and very long forelegs, covered with small bristles that looked like thorns. She was about a foot in diameter, and had tiny black eyes that seemed to look at Niall with a kind of intelligence.
Niall had never encountered the tent spider before, and had no idea whether they were poisonous. In order to get at the leaves, he would have to cut the web with his knife. A mother spider defending her young might well decide to attack.
They contemplated each other for several minutes; then the tent spider lost interest and retreated behind one of the broad leaves. Niall sat down where he could see the tip of the forelegs protruding and emptied his mind. It took him only a few seconds to clear his mind of thought and induce the sense of timelessness that was so important to this type of contact. When this happened, he felt for a moment as if he was looking down on the spider from a great height. Then, suddenly, he had become the spider.
This surprised him. When he had attempted to attune his mind to that of the grey desert spiders, he had been aware of them as separate identities. It was as if they had some kind of instinctive defence against his probing. The tent spider seemed to lack such defence. It was as if she recognised no difference between his mind and her own. His consciousness blended naturally with hers. With the grey spiders, there was no blending; they were like oil and water. And with the death spider, there had been active rejection, an attempt to penetrate his mind.
He found this fascinating. It meant that his relation to the tent spider was like the relation of the death spider to himself.
There was a whining sound as a dew fly plunged past his head and into the web. It was attracted by the scent of the red flowers and failed to see the thin, clear strands of web. Instantly, the tent spider was in motion, and Niall became aware that she was hungry. The last few insects that had blundered into her web had escaped, being too large and powerful. But the dew fly, shiny and black, was no more than three inches long, and its feet were entangled in the sticky droplets. In two bounds, the tent spider had approached the fly from the other side of the web and struck with her fangs. The venom was a quick acting nerve poison, and within seconds the fly had begun to struggle in slow motion. With her long forelegs, the tent spider reached through her web and hauled him inside. By this time, she had totally forgotten the intruder watching her; Niall was too big for her to take in. Her mandibles crunched into the soft underbelly of the dew fly, which was still alive but unable to react.
For Niall, it was a disgusting sensation — to be inside the spider’s mind as she wolfed down the living flesh. It made him feel sick. Yet he continued to be fascinated by the clarity of the sensations. He was aware of the spider’s visual field, which extended all the way round her head, and of her satisfaction as she filled her stomach with the first meal in a day. He had to look at his own arms to convince himself that they were not long legs covered with spiky bristles. He even felt a protective warmth for the baby spiders which clambered around among the leaves and looked for a hole in the web through which they could investigate the blinding sunlit world outside.
He was also aware of a certain instinctive conflict that was taking place inside the spider. She was hungry, and while she was protecting her young, she was unable to hunt for food. (Niall was aware that this primitive spider hunted her prey, lying in wait for passing insects rather than using a web to trap them.) She was also a mother, and knew her children were hungry; she ought to offer them the remains of her feast. But her own hunger overruled the desire to feed her children. She had no real choice; she was wholly ruled by instinct.
Niall deliberately controlled her will, to make her stop eating. Then he made her drop the remains of the dew fly down to her children, who instantly swarmed over it, biting one another in their anxiety to get at the flesh. And, as he felt the mother’s unappeased hunger, Niall felt a pang of regret for the joke he had played on her.
It was the strangest — and in some ways the most exciting — sensation he had ever known: to be in control of the will of another creature. He felt a strong affection for this spider who had, in a sense, become a part of himself. At the same time he recognised that this was akin to the emotion he had experienced towards Merlew — this desire to mingle his mind with hers and take possession of her will. This, he realised, was why he had found it so exciting when she had kissed him, and when she had nibbled his ear: it had seemed to be an admission that she was willing to subjugate her will to his. That was why he was so shocked and angry to hear himself described as “that skinny boy”. He felt that she had set out to cheat him, merely for the pleasure of feeling that his will was subjugated to hers. . .
His emotions were troubling the tent spider, which had never experienced jealousy, and found it a bewildering and frightening sensation. In spite of her venom and her predilection for eating living creatures, she was fundamentally innocent and vulnerable. This was perhaps the strangest realisation of all. He was experiencing a sensation like love for a creature that lived by eating live insects.
Niall carefully parted the strands of the web at the top of the bush and began to gather the leaves. The smallest and thickest made the best medicinal poultices. He was so preoccupied with the sensations of the spider, wondering what was happening to her web, that he failed to notice the shadow that floated past a few feet away. His attention was attracted by the next one, which was like the shadow of a small, swiftly moving cloud. But the sky was cloudless and there was only a light breeze. That was why the spider balloons were drifting past so slowly, and so close to the ground.
As on the previous day, his total absorption allowed him to suppress the fear-reaction before it began. The balloons were so low that it seemed inevitable that he would be seen within moments, and he accepted this with the calm of a man who sees there is no escape. He was standing in the open, with no concealment. He made no movement, looking down on the bush, and allowing his consciousness to merge with that of the spider. They were aware of his presence; of that he was certain. They were aware of the life-field of every living thing on the ground below them. Five minutes passed, and he raised his eyes. The last of the balloons was already floating away from him; he could see clearly the outline of the spider in the semi-transparent bag underneath, its legs folded into a knot.