But Doggins shook his head decisively. “I’m sorry, Kazak. There’s no way in which we’re going to agree to part with the Reapers. If they won’t allow us to leave freely, then we shall be forced to shoot our way out. And if necessary, we could annihilate ten thousand spiders — and I mean literally annihilate.”
Kazak sighed. “In that case, you force me to deliver the second part of the message — and I can assure you that I hate it as much as you will. I am merely the messenger.” He looked squarely at Doggins, and at Niall, who was standing beside him. “They have asked me to point out that they are holding Niall’s mother and brother as hostages. . .” He paused, and Niall could sense his nervousness. “They also ask me to tell you that they have now captured the city of the bombardier beetles, and that all your families are also hostages. If you hand over your weapons, or agree to their destruction, they will all be freed. Moreover, Niall’s mother and brother, and anyone else he wants, will be allowed to move to the city of the beetles.” He lowered his eyes. “That is my message.”
Doggins had gone red, and veins stood out on his forehead. “If those bastards harm a single one of our people, I swear I’ll destroy every spider in this city.”
His eyes were so fierce that Kazak looked away. He cleared his throat. “I can only repeat what I say. They have no intention of harming anyone. They only wish for peace. They will exchange the lives of your families for the Reapers.”
Niall glanced at Doggins. From his look of bafflement and helpless fury, he could see that Doggins felt he had no alternative.
Niall touched his arm. “This is something we need to discuss.”
Kazak smiled with relief. “Please take all the time you like. Would you like me to withdraw?”
Niall said quickly: “Yes, perhaps that might be best.” Kazak bowed gravely, smiled his thanks at Milo for opening the door, and backed out. No one spoke until his footsteps reached street level. In the silence, Niall could sense their shock and dismay.
Doggins said in a flat voice: “Well, I’m afraid that’s it.” But Niall had already turned the thought mirror so it faced inward, and the sudden concentration had dissipated his own sense of defeat.
“You intend to surrender?”
Doggins shrugged. “Can you see any alternative!”
“Yes. To refuse.”
“How can we take that risk? They wouldn’t hesitate to kill our families.”
Niall looked round at the others; he could see they all shared this opinion. He said:
“Listen to me. My own family is also being held hostage, so I understand your feelings. But what good would it do to surrender? You don’t trust the spiders. Try to put yourself in the place of the Spider Lord. You have defied him once. You might do so again. The only way to prevent that from happening is to destroy you and your families. Do you think they would hesitate if you placed yourself in their power?”
He could see that his words had filled them with dejection and foreboding and went on quickly: “But suppose you refuse to surrender. It is true that they may carry out their threat against your families. But if they do, they know you would never rest until you have taken the life of a hundred spiders for every human being. While you have the weapons, you are in a position of power, and they can only take that away by destroying you. Why throw yourselves on their mercy? You are only inviting them to kill you as well.” He turned to Doggins. “And how do you know they are telling the truth? Is the city of the beetles undefended?”
“Of course not. But it could be captured — especially if they launched a surprise attack.”
“And would that be easy?”
Doggins smiled grimly. “No. The beetles don’t trust the spiders.”
“So the spiders may be trying to trick you into handing over your weapons?”
Doggins thought about this, frowning at the floor. He looked at the others. “What do you think?”
This appeal obviously embarrassed them; they were used to being given orders.
Milo said hesitantly: “I think Niall may be right.”
Doggins came to a decision. “Open the door. Take the chair away.”
Daylight streamed in. For a moment they were all dazzled. Doggins strode to the doorway. “Kazak, can you hear me?”
Kazak’s voice shouted: “Yes.”
“Tell them we’re coming out.” He turned to the others. “Keep your weapons ready, but don’t fire unless I give the order. And keep a watch above your heads — don’t forget they can drop out of the sky.”
He advanced into the daylight and mounted the steps. The others followed in a single file; all held their weapons at the ready. As he mounted the steps, Niall glanced upward. There was now a cobweb that stretched across the street between the rooftops, but he could see no sign of an ambush.
As he stepped out of the gate, Niall was shocked to realise how many spiders were waiting for them. There must have been ten thousand, packed closely together in both directions, to the corners of the street and beyond. The only empty space in the road was immediately in front of the area gate. The spiders had withdrawn in a wide semicircle; the nearest were standing with Kazak on the far side of the road. Yet to Niall, even this distance brought an almost uncontrollable sense of being trapped. With a shock, he realised that spiders regard human beings with as much dislike as men regard spiders or poisonous snakes. They saw him as a disgusting, pale-skinned, venomous creature who threatened their lives, and every one of them would have been delighted to plunge its fangs into his throat. Once again, he experienced a sense of physical coldness as their blank eyes stared at him.
Niall could see that the others were badly unnerved. In an effort to prevent his hands from shaking, Milo was holding his weapon so tightly that his knuckles were white. Kosmin looked as if he was about to be sick. Doggins was very pale, his face beaded with sweat. The wall of sheer hostility seemed to drain their vitality. Even with the thought mirror turned inward, Niall felt that his own control was on the point of dissolution. Black patches were drifting across his vision.
Kazak called: “Well, have you decided to accept our terms?”
His voice restored Niall to a sense of normality; the feeling of suffocation suddenly vanished. He stepped forward in front of the others and answered firmly: “I’m afraid the answer is no.”
Kazak was obviously surprised. He asked gravely: “Don’t you think that is a rash decision?”
“No.” Suddenly, Niall knew that the time for words had passed, that this deadlock could only be broken by some form of action. He pointed. “Do you see that building?” He turned his weapon on the ten-storey building on the south-eastern corner of the street and raised it so that it pointed above the heads of the spiders. Then he pulled the trigger.
What happened shocked him, even though he had been expecting it. The gun recoiled so it almost jerked itself out of his hands, and the blinding flash of blue energy struck the building and seemed to turn it into a dazzling blue haze. The recoil swung the barrel through an angle of a few degrees, and even this slight movement was enough to tear a fifty-foot hole in the wall. With incredulity, Niall realised that the blast had cut through the building as if it were made of paper; he could see the blue sky through its far wall. Then the whole building sagged and collapsed, showering slabs of masonry down on to the street.
Niall had released the trigger almost immediately, appalled at the magnitude of the catastrophe he had unleashed, but the collapse continued as if the building had been devastated by some tremendous explosion. A vast section of wall fell directly into the street below and onto the massed ranks of spiders. At the same moment, the spiders facing them surged forward, as the agony of dying spiders battered them like some tidal wave. Niall was aware that their minds had been momentarily destroyed by horror; but his companions, who had no way of realising this, opened fire. Their Reapers, set at a lower level than Niall’s, acted like flame throwers, cutting pathways through the massed bodies of the spiders and filling the air with a sickening stench of burnt spider flesh. Then, suddenly, they were surrounded by fleeing spiders, none of whom made any effort to attack them. All control had vanished. The agony, communicated from mind to mind, had destroyed the living as much as the dead.
Only Niall could understand what had happened. For the others, it was a baffling miracle. They had braced themselves for destruction, and now their enemies had vanished. But for Niall, the defeat of the spiders had left behind a nausea that was spiritual, not physical, in origin.