“I thought I told you all to come out.” The man gazed back blankly with cowlike indifference.
Niall beckoned to Dion. “You’d better come with us.”
Simeon said: “Someone had better watch the rear of the building, in case he tries to escape that way.”
Niall had already been here several times. The ground floor had been converted into a casualty department and maternity ward. It smelled of the chlorinated lime used as a disinfectant. This was a large building, and the man could have gone in one of many directions. As they stood, hesitating, Dion said: “If necessary I’ll get a squad and search the whole place.”
Niall pointed. “Look, he went up there.” He had noticed a fragment of melting snow on one of the stairs.
They climbed the stairs quietly, so as not to forewarn their quarry. The next floor was in the process of being converted into a ward, and they could hear carpenters sawing wood from behind a closed door; it seemed unlikely the man had gone that way. Niall led the way up the next flight. This part of the building was still in its original state, and the floor had not even been swept; it was covered with plaster that had fallen from the walls and ceiling, and with broken glass and fragments of lath. A glance at the floor of the corridor told Niall that no one had been this way recently; but the overseer was already flinging open doors and peering into empty rooms. Niall swore under his breath; the man they were seeking must have heard the noise.
“He may be heading for the roof. Could he get into the next building?”
“Probably.” Simeon opened the nearest door; through the broken window of the empty room, they could see that the building next door was less than six feet away — a distance posing no problem to an agile man.
“We’d better hurry.”
Simeon laid a hand on his arm. “Careful. There’s a spider living in the roof space. It might jump on us and ask questions later.”
His caution was justified; although spiders were now forbidden to attack human beings, the invasion of its personal territory might be regarded as extreme provocation. “A death spider?”
“No, a pink glue spider.” This was the name given to spiders of the species oonopidae, generally regarded as harmless, since they were smaller than the death spiders and had no poisonous sting. But they were many times stronger and swifter than any man, and their tarsal claws were powerful enough to sever an arm.
Niall mounted the stair softly and cautiously and, as he reached the top step, suddenly found himself face to face with the glue spider. It had obviously come to investigate the noise. For a moment, both were equally startled; its immediate reaction was to immobilize him with a concentrated burst of will power. Niall felt exactly as if his whole body had been frozen in a block of ice, so that he was unable to move a muscle. Six months earlier, he would have found such an experience terrifying; now he had become so accustomed to spiders that it hardly caused his heartbeat to accelerate. His passivity and lack of fear convinced the spider that he was harmless, and it released him almost immediately.
Niall had never seen a glue spider at close quarters, and he was struck by the beauty of its coloring; its body, legs, and head were all of the same flesh pink color, like the cheeks of a healthy country girl. But unlike the wolf spiders or death spiders, whose chelicerae resembled tufts of beard, the face of the glue spider entirely lacked the slightest touch of humanity. The great dome of a head, not unlike that of a bald-headed man, surmounted the smooth pink chelicerae with their unfolded fangs; the six eyes were in two rows, with four above and two below, and the end eyes of the upper row were turned outward; since they were also pink, they looked like glass globes rather than eyes. The creature seemed as alien as a Martian.
Yet perhaps because it seemed so totally nonhuman, perhaps because of its warm coloring, Niall felt that he had nothing to fear. He addressed the spider telepathically, also speaking the words aloud.
“We are looking for a man. Have you seen him?”
The spider seemed startled. It shifted uncomfortably on its feet but made no reply. The bulblike eyes — on a level with Niall’s own, since the spider was less than six feet high — seemed blank. Niall repeated the question — this time trying to transmit the image of a man — but there was still no reply. He stepped forward cautiously; the spider stepped back and then moved aside. Niall beckoned to Simeon and Dion to follow him.
He attempted to place himself in the mind of the fugitive. If he had arrived at the top of the stairs, and found that he could go no further, what would he do? This floor, like the others, consisted of a corridor with rooms on either side. The rooms on the right side overlooked the narrow side street, and through the nearest open door, Niall could see the web of the glue spider stretching across the street to the house opposite. The fugitive had almost certainly noticed this before he entered the building, so it was unlikely that he had gone to the right.
And if a man knew there was a spider in one of the rooms on the right, he would move to the left, probably on tiptoe. Niall looked carefully at the dust and rubble on the floor, mixed with the wings and carapaces of dead flying creatures, and saw what he was looking for. The marks would have been unnoticeable to anyone who was not looking for them, mere disturbances of the plaster and debris. The man had, as Niall suspected, been walking on tiptoe, and the slight signs were repeated at regular intervals of about eighteen inches — a man on tiptoe takes smaller steps than a man walking normally. In front of the first door on the left, there was a clear footmark where the man had paused to open the door. Niall did the same, and found himself looking into an empty room with unbroken windows. There was no place of concealment, and this was clearly why the man had continued on tiptoe to the next door. It was unnecessary to open this, for the marks continued on along the corridor, sometimes becoming invisible where there was no dust or rubble, but also resuming further on. Outside the third door the traces ceased; there was no sign of disturbance further along the corridor. Niall raised his hand to halt the others; his heart was beating violently. Cautiously, he turned the handle and pushed open the door. To his disappointment, the room was empty. But its cracked window had been raised. He hurried across the room and peered out. An ornamental ledge ran under the window along the whole length of the building; it was only six inches wide, but would present no problems for an agile — or desperate — man. What puzzled Niall was that there was no accessible window in the building across the alleyway, only a blank wall; to achieve access to such a window, the fugitive would have to move twelve feet along the ledge in the direction of the main avenue. And the window opposite this spot was closed and unbroken. The alternative, it seemed, was to go in the opposite direction, and around the corner at the rear of the building. And looking down at the ground four stories below, Niall had to admit that only desperation could have induced him to make such an attempt.
Simeon said: “What about the next room?”
Niall shook his head. “The footprints stopped outside this one. Wait . . .”He stooped and examined the floor. His nerves tensed as he realized that the signs showed that the man had gone back across the room — back toward the corner, where there was another door. It looked like an inbuilt closet or cupboard. He looked toward it, and the others understood his meaning. Niall tiptoed toward it, and noticed that it had been left open a crack; the man inside had evidently been unable to close it completely. But while he was still several feet away, the door burst open, and a man darted out and ran to the open door of the room. He was so quick that they were all taken by surprise. Niall was the first to recover; he gave a cry and ran in pursuit. The man was already halfway down the corridor, but his run was heavy and awkward, and Niall had always been fleet of foot. Within a few strides, Niall had gained on him, and seized the shoulder of his slave tunic. The man swerved and stumbled, crashing to the wall. For a moment, Niall gazed into his eyes. They were large eyes, and seemed very dark and piercing. But as Niall prepared to grapple, he experienced a sensation that made him drop to his knees. It was exactly as if someone had struck him violently in the face, and at the same time gripped his windpipe to cut off his breathing. For a moment everything became dark, although he had the confused impression that time had gone into slow motion, and that his arms and legs were also moving in slow motion, like those of a swimmer. It was like being half-awake and half-asleep.