Colin Wilson - Spiderworld 03 - The Fortress

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The Fortress
Spider World, Book 03
by Colin Wilson
a.b.e-book v3.0 / Notes at EOF
Back Cover:
Eight legs good -- two legs bad
Under the bleak 25th Century desert Niall and his family eke out a meagre
existance, hidden from the predatory eyes of the giant spiders that float silently
overhead in their silken death balloons.
For Niall has committed the ultimate crime -- he has killed a Death Spider,
and now it seems only a matter of time before the invincible spiders take their
revenge.
However, Niall has one advantage of which the spiders are unaware -- he
shares their gift of telepathy. And when his family is captured, he turns his mind to
the task of liberating humanity from the Spider Lord.
Grafton Books
A Division of the Collins Publishing Group
8 Grafton Street, London W1X 3LA
Published by Grafton Books 1988
Reprinted 1988
First published in Great Britain by
Grafton Books 1987
Copyright © Colin Wilson 1987
ISBN 0-586-07288-8
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Collins, Glasgow
Set in Aldus
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of
trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated
without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover
other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent
purchaser.
The cold wind against his face restored him to a sense of normality. He was in
almost total darkness. A few moments later, the moon emerged briefly from behind
flying black clouds, so that he could take his bearings. The grass underfoot was wet
and slippery; it had evidently been raining heavily. He had to walk carefully to avoid
losing his footing. He held the metal rod by its narrow end, using it as a staff, and a
few minutes later felt the hard pavement under his feet. The clouds parted again, and
the moon revealed the avenue that stretched northward towards the bridge. He turned
left and walked in the direction of the women's quarter of the city.
As he crossed to the far side of the square, the wind was so powerful that he
had to lean into it. It was a relief to be in the shelter of tall buildings. According to his
map, this section of the city was deserted, forming a kind of no-man's-land between
the southern part and the slave quarter. He paused in a doorway to shelter from the
wind, which made his teeth chatter, and to wait for the moon to emerge. When it did
so, he saw something that made his heart contract with fear. The white tower was
gleaming in the moonlight, looking as if it was shining with its own inner
phosphorescence. And around its base, clearly visible against its whiteness, there was
a movement of heaving black shadows. For a moment, he convinced himself that they
were cloud shadows; then, as the moon was isolated for a moment in a calm space of
unclouded blue, the light strengthened, and he knew they were living creatures. As
the light dimmed again, the shadows seemed to be moving across the grass towards
him. His immediate response was to run, but he knew at once that this would be an
error. He was already using all his self-discipline to repress the panic; fleeing would
amplify it beyond his control. His next impulse was to take refuge in the nearest
building. This he also rejected; sooner or later, every building in the city would be
searched. The spiders possessed the thoroughness of endless patience. His hiding
place would soon become a prison. The correct solution was to keep on the move and
hope that the darkness and the wind would delay the search.
He began moving westward, towards the women's quarter, but turned north at
each intersection so that he was also moving towards the river. In these narrow, man-
built canyons, the darkness was so complete that he had to walk like a blind man, the
metal rod stretched out as a feeler, the other hand groping at railings or the walls of
buildings. The pavements were cracked and uneven. At one street corner -- he could
tell it was a corner because the wind converged from two directions -- he stumbled
over the kerbstone into the gutter, and the rod shot out of his hand. As he groped
around on all fours, he had to wrestle with rising panic; the thought of losing the rod
filled him with despair. Then he recollected the thought mirror. He reached inside his
shirt and turned it on his chest, then sat down in the roaring darkness and
concentrated his attention. There was a momentary pain in the back of his skull; then
he experienced the sense of power and control. He stood up and spread out his hands
within a foot of the ground, walking forward slowly. A tingling feeling in the
fingertips of his right hand guided him to the object of his search. Now his mind was
calm, it was as if he was able to pick up some faint signal from the metal rod. A
moment later, he found it lying in the gutter. He turned the disc again away from his
chest, aware of how much this kind of concentration drained his energy.
When the moon came out again, he saw that he had reached a broad avenue.
His memory of the map told him that the river was two blocks to the north. He
stopped in a doorway and scanned the avenue for moving shadows; it seemed empty.
Overhead, a vast spiderweb heaved up and down in the wind; but in such a gale the
spider would be crouched in the shelter of some windowless room. Niall hurried on
up the avenue; now his eyes were becoming accustomed to the darkness he could
move more quickly. In the freezing wind, his face and bare arms were beginning to
feel numb. But the cold also brought him comfort; he knew the spiders disliked it
even more than he did.
While still a block away from the river, he halted on a street corner to rest.
Overhead an immense black cloud covered the moon; he judged that it would take at
least ten minutes to pass. He was unwilling to venture on to the embankment in total
darkness; if the spiders were guarding the bridge, then it also seemed likely they
would be patrolling the river.
He sat on the pavement with his back against the railings of a basement area.
Something yielded, and he realised he was leaning against a gate. The thought of
sheltering from the wind, even for a few moments, was tempting. He pushed the gate,
and it opened with a creak of rusty hinges. Groping on his knees, he felt worn stone
steps, slippery with rain. He descended cautiously until he was below street level.
There was an unpleasant smell, like rotting vegetation, but at least he was sheltered
from the wind. Now his skin was no longer exposed, he experienced an illusion of
warmth. He sat there shivering, his arms folded round his knees, and wondered why
the smell of decaying vegetable matter seemed to grow stronger.
There was a light touch on his arm, and he started with fear. Since his first
assumption was that a spider's fangs were poised to plunge into his bare flesh, he
became immobile. The touch groped upward to his shoulder and, at the same time,
something brushed the calf of his left leg. As he sprang to his feet, a cold softness
closed round his ankle, and the stench of decay was suddenly nauseating. He tore his
foot free and felt the same cold softness groping at his arm. Then, as he shrank away,
it closed round his upper arm, pulling him against the railing.
In spite of the fear and nausea, it was a relief to know he was not dealing with
a spider. These cold, damp feelers moved slowly and deliberately; another was
slipping between his legs and winding round his right knee. When he reached down,
his hand encountered something cold, soft and slimy; as he squeezed, it seemed to
ooze between his fingers. It might have been a cold-blooded worm.
Another of the wormlike fingers tried to pull the metal rod out of his right
hand. Niall gripped it tightly and thrust between the railings; he felt it plunge into
something soft. Again and again he thrust with all his strength; each time he felt it
sink home. Yet the feelers continued to move, groping round his body with unhurried
deliberation.
As he felt a cold touch against his face, his loathing turned to cold fury; once
again he gripped the end of the rod and thrust between the bars to the full extent of his
arm. His hatred seemed to convulse his brain like a shock, and he felt its power
rippling through the muscles of his arm and into the rod. He gripped tighter,
clenching his teeth, and again felt the shock run down his arm. Suddenly, the feelers
released their hold. Niall staggered back against the wall, then clawed his way up the
steps and fell out into the street. Coughing and retching, he stumbled forward across
the road, then recovered his balance and ran. The cold wind was as welcome as a
caress. Before he had run a dozen yards, self-control returned. He withdrew into a
doorway and stood there, eyes closed, resting the back of his head against the wall
until his heartbeat returned to normal. His flesh felt sore where the tentacles had
gripped him. Finally, to assist his concentration, he again turned the thought mirror on
his chest. The pain in the back of his head made him feel sick for a moment; then it
passed, and he experienced once more the satisfying sense of being in control of his
body and mind.
If the spiders were advancing towards the river, there was no time to lose. He
approached the embankment with caution and waited for the moon to emerge. When
it did so, it revealed that the great arch of the bridge was surprisingly close, the road
that led towards it empty. He waited for the moon to disappear behind the clouds,
then crossed the road. A low stone wall, about four feet high, ran along the
embankment. He groped his way along this until he encountered a gap. The metal rod,
used like a blind man's stick, revealed a recess with a flight of descending steps. He
crouched behind the wall until another interval of moonlight enabled him to take his
bearings and revealed that the steps were unguarded, then made his way down to the
path that ran by the river. Here he became aware of the need for haste. If there were
guards on the bridge, a sudden shaft of moonlight could betray him. He hurried
forward until the moon showed through a break in the cloud, then halted and pressed
himself tightly against the wall; as soon as darkness returned, he went on. Advancing
in this way, it took him more than half an hour to reach the bridge. While still fifty
yards away, he took refuge behind a buttress and waited until a longer interval of
moonlight allowed him to study it carefully. There was no sign of spider guards; but
at either end of the bridge were rectangular structures that might have been some form
of sentry box. About to move from his hiding place, he obeyed some instinct that
urged him to stay still. After a long interval of darkness, moonlight flooded the river,
and illuminated the nearest rectangle; it enabled him to see a square window that
looked out towards him. And, as he watched, there was an unmistakable movement
behind. A moment later, it was blank. But it had told him what he wanted to know:
the spider guards commanded a clear view along the river, as well as along the avenue
that led to the white tower.
The wind that blew across the river was so cold that he was no longer able to
feel his hands or feet. If he remained there much longer, he would probably be unable
to move. So as soon as a particularly dark cloud crossed the moon he ran, crouching,
until he found himself under the shelter of the bridge. There, concealed by its black
shadow, he was finally able to sink down with his back against the wall, huddled into
a recess that gave some shelter from the wind, and clasp his knees tightly against his
chest in an effort to keep out the cold.
Now, at last, he was able to allow the metal rod to contract and stow it away in
one of the pockets of the grey smock. As he did so, he felt the tube that contained the
baggy, metallic garment and experienced a glow of gratitude towards the
Steegmaster. This, at least, should provide some kind of defence against the wind.
Very cautiously, he extracted it and pressed the end with his thumb. As it unrolled,
the wind caught it and tried to tear it out of his hands, making a loud, flapping sound.
Quickly, he thrust it under his body and sat on it. For the next ten minutes, he groped
in the darkness, flattening the garment against the ground, holding it down flat with
his frozen feet while his numb fingers tried to unfold it. Eventually, his fingers
located a slide fastener and he realised, to his relief, that he understood its purpose;
the sleep-learning device had stocked his memory with many such useful items of
information. He opened the front of the garment down to the waist, then slipped his
feet inside. A few moments later, his arms were encased in the strangely thin material,
and the slide fastener had been pulled up under his chin. The effect was astonishing.
Although the wind continued to press the material against his bare flesh, none of its
cold seemed to penetrate. He might have been wearing a garment of thick animal fur.
Now only his hands, feet and head were exposed, and the arms and legs were
sufficiently long for him to be able to retract his hands and feet. Investigation of a
lump at the back of his neck revealed a tightly-rolled hood; when his fingers had
learned the secret of unrolling it, he discovered that it covered his head completely,
and that a draw-string enabled him to close it until only his nose and eyes remained
exposed. Further investigation revealed similar rolls at the wrist and ankles, but he
decided to leave examination of these until the daylight. It was easier to exclude the
wind by holding the ends of the sleeves with his fingers and folding the last six inches
of the legs under his feet.
When he once again turned the thought mirror away from his chest, he was
overwhelmed by a wave of fatigue which was transformed into a delicious weariness
by the warmth that now encased him. Even the wall behind him failed to
communicate its coldness through the paper-thin material. A few drops of water
pattered against the suit and made him aware that it was raining; when the moon came
out again, he could see the rain falling steadily onto the dark moving surface of the
water. But his eyes were unable to focus for more than a few seconds. His eyelids
closed and his consciousness merged with the darkness.
When he awoke, the sky over the eastern reach of the river was turning grey.
His neck felt stiff where his cheek had pressed against the wall; but the recess had
kept him from rolling sideways. In spite of the awkwardness of his position, he felt
relaxed and rested. The only discomfort was a cramp in his right leg and the stinging
sensations where the tentacles had gripped his flesh.
His stomach was rumbling with hunger; he was just beginning to regret his
failure to provide himself with food when he recalled the brown tablets; he unzipped
the garment -- letting in a wave of cold air -- and extracted the box from his pocket.
The tablets looked pathetically small, and he was tempted to swallow a handful. He
took one and placed it on his tongue. It had an agreeable lemony flavour and quickly
dissolved as he sucked it, creating a pleasant sensation of warmth. As he swallowed,
the warmth increased until it ran down his throat like liquid fire. A few moments later
it reached his stomach; suddenly, the hunger vanished and was replaced by a glowing
sensation that felt exactly as if he had eaten a hot meal. He was now glad that he had
resisted the temptation to swallow several; more than one would undoubtedly have
made him feel sick.
Now it was time to take his bearings. First, he removed the metallic garment,
shivering in the dawn wind that blew up the river. He carefully flattened it on the
ground, then folded it lengthwise; a touch on the button made it roll itself up into a
tube that felt as hard as solid metal. Niall slipped it into the pocket of the grey smock.
Next, he tiptoed cautiously to the west side of the bridge and looked upward.
From that position he could see the rectangular guard box; but without moving farther
from the bridge, it was impossible to obtain a clear view through its window. He
decided that the risk of being seen was too great.
On the other side of the bridge, there was no guard box. Here he discovered a
flight of steps leading up to street level. He climbed these warily, pausing for at least
half a minute on every step. When his head emerged above the top step, he could see
across the damaged bridge to the opposite bank. The guard box was a small, open-
fronted building which contained only a stone bench; in the days when this city had
been inhabited by men, it had evidently been a pedestrian shelter. The wolf spider
inside it was crouched against the wall, and was so completely immobile that Niall
had some difficulty in detecting its presence. As Niall watched it, he induced in
himself a sense of deep calm; he was more likely to betray his presence by the
movements of his mind than by those of his body. He deliberately made himself as
immobile as the spider, ignoring the cold wind that numbed his arms and legs.
Half an hour later, the sun rose above the eastern horizon; its warmth was as
delightful as a caress. As he sighed with relief and pleasure, he experienced an
overwhelming sense of pure wellbeing. It was accompanied by a curious sensation, as
if something inside him was dwindling and contracting to a point. As this happened,
the pleasure became almost intolerable, and he had to close his eyes to prevent
himself from being swept away by it.
As he did this, the feeling of inner-contraction came to a halt, leaving him in a
condition of deep calm such as he had never experienced in his life. It was then that
he became aware of the thought processes of the wolf spider on the other side of the
road. Its awareness was also as still as a candle flame on a windless night. A man who
stood in that draughty sentry box would experience boredom and impatience. The
wolf spider would have regarded such feelings as a kind of mild insanity. It knew that
it had to wait there until its relief arrived, and impatience would have been irrelevant.
The sun filled it with a drowsy delight; yet its underlying vigilance remained
unaffected. To his surprise, Niall realised he experienced no hostility or fear towards
the spider; only a friendly sympathy with a strong overtone of admiration.
The warmth caused a pleasant tingling sensation in his bare shoulders and the
calves of his legs, and this again seemed to lift his mind like a wave and move it
gently towards some deep source of peace. Now it was as if his hearing had suddenly
been sharpened a hundredfold, and as if he could hear a kind of whispering sound.
For a moment, this puzzled him; then he identified its source. It was coming from a
great elm tree standing fifty yards away along the riverbank. With a shock, he realised
that the elm was alive: not simply alive in the negative sense of burgeoning wood and
leaves, but in the sense of a being of flesh and blood. The tree was waving its arm in
welcome to the sun, and exuding a feeling of gladness that had a totally human
quality. All its leaves were rippling with pleasure as they absorbed the golden light, as
if they were children shouting for joy.
Now that he was aware of the "voice" of the tree, Niall began to recognise a
still deeper undertone of communication. It took him some time to realise that this
was coming from the earth beneath his feet. He had to make a mental effort to deepen
his inner calm still further; as he did this, he could sense waves of energy rippling
past him, like the ripples on a pond when some child has thrown a stone into the
water. The tree was receiving this energy and was, in turn, transmitting its own
personal response. Suddenly, Niall understood why the city was surrounded by green
hills and woods. They focused the waves of energy that flowed through the earth and
gave back their own vital response. The result was that this city of concrete and
asphalt was pervaded by an aura of living energy. Now he could understand why the
wolf spider could wait so patiently for hour after hour. It was not, as he had assumed,
simply that spiders are born with the gift of patience; it was because it was aware of
itself as a part of this pulsating pattern of vitality.
What intrigued Niall was the sheer intensity of this vital pulse. Now he had
become aware of it, it reminded him of the rhythmic bursts of rain-carrying wind he
had experienced in the storm at sea: curtains of rain blowing across the boat in
explosive gusts. But unlike the wind, whose gusts were due to the motion of the ship
in the waves, these surges of vital energy produced an impression of purpose, as if
generated by some intelligent agency. For a moment, he even speculated whether its
source might be the Spider Lord himself.
At this point he became aware of a change in the pattern of consciousness of
the wolf spider. With a feeling like waking from deep sleep, he returned to his
superficial level of everyday awareness. The spider had been stirred into activity by
the approach of its relief. Niall noted with interest that the guard was still inside its
sentry box, so that its relief was beyond its field of vision; yet without moving out of
the box, it was aware of another wolf spider proceeding along the avenue that led to
the white tower. By once again relaxing his attention, he became aware of the nature
of this awareness. The approaching relief caused small subsidiary "pulses" in the
larger pulsation, disturbing its natural rhythm.
Now there was no time to lose. It was broad daylight and further delay would
be dangerous. He slipped quietly back down the stairway and under the bridge. The
river lay about four feet below the path on which he had spent the night. A bank of
grey mud, about six feet wide, shelved down into the water. Niall slipped off his
sandals -- they were the ones he had brought from Dira -- and tucked them into the
wide pockets of the smock. Then he lowered himself off the stone ramp and down
onto the mud. It was hard, and his feet scarcely made an indentation. A moment later,
he was wading slowly into the water.
Here the mud was softer, and had an unpleasant, slimy consistency; unused to
wading, Niall experienced a flash of alarm as his feet sank into it. At each step, his
feet squelched down into the mud to a depth of almost a foot. Some small living
creature writhed between his toes, and he had to suppress a gasp of alarm. He stood
still, trying to control the pounding of his heart. What alarmed him was the realisation
that the bright sunlight would make him visible to any creature on the bank of the
river, and that the longer he spent wading across, the greater the chance that he would
be noticed. For a moment, he was tempted to return and spend the day hiding in the
recess; then he saw that this would be even more dangerous, since he would be
clearly visible from the opposite bank. He waded on steadily until the water came up
to his armpits. Here the current was stronger than he expected, and he was forced to
lean sideways to maintain his balance. Suddenly, the bottom was no longer under his
feet, and he was floundering. His first impulse was to try to go back, but he saw this
would be pointless; safety lay in going forward. He dog-paddled a few feet, then felt
himself sinking; as the water entered his nose and mouth, he panicked for a moment,
then struggled to the surface, coughing and choking. What terrified him was the
thought that the current might carry him out beyond the shelter of the bridge and
leave him totally exposed. He thrashed forward a few yards further, then, with relief,
felt the slimy mud under his feet again. He stood there for perhaps a minute, simply to
regain his breath and to try to get the panic under control, then again plunged forward
towards the bank. A few moments later, he was crossing the hard mud that sloped into
the water. But he was aware that he had lost the battle against panic.
He resisted the temptation to pause and regain his breath by leaning on the
stone parapet; instead, he scrambled up and made straight for the flight of stairs at the
side of the bridge. He had already mounted the first half dozen steps when he became
aware that it was too late. The wolf spider was waiting for him at the top, its fangs
fully extended. The enormous black eyes were staring down at him without
expression.
As he obeyed his impulse to flee, the force of its will struck him in the back,
knocking him breathless. He had some vague thought of taking refuge in the river,
hoping the spider would not dare to follow him. But even as he reached the edge of
the parapet, the spider's fast-moving body struck his own and hurled him down on to
the mud. His knees and elbows sank in, making movement impossible. As the spider's
weight landed on his back, time seemed to move into a lower gear, and he felt himself
struggling in slow motion, observing the terror of his physical being as if watching a
stranger. Then his face was pressed into the mud and he felt himself losing
consciousness.
He woke as if from a nightmare and realised that he was lying on his back. His
eyes were blinded by the sunlight. As he thought of the spider, he flung up his hand to
defend his throat, then realised he was alone. He looked up, expecting to see the
spider watching him from the parapet; there was no living creature in sight. He
struggled to his knees, then to his feet, fighting off waves of nausea. It cost an
immense effort to drag himself up on to the stone ramp. Still fighting the desire to
retch, he crawled across to the wall and collapsed with his back against it.
It was then that he remembered the thought mirror. He reached inside his shirt
and turned it round. The effect was instantaneous: that curious sense of concentration
and wellbeing that was like being reminded of something. But by now, he had
become sufficiently accustomed to its properties to observe them with a certain
precision. First, it was as if his heart contracted with a feeling not unlike fear. Yet
because this contraction was accompanied by a feeling of increased control, it
produced a flash of joy, of strength. This seemed to spread instantaneously to the
viscera, where it blended with a more physical form of energy. Then the brain itself
seemed to unite these two, exactly as if it had turned into a hand that was compressing
some tough but yielding material. If he was tired, this action of the brain lacked force
and he experienced a twinge of pain behind his eyes. This is what now happened.
Then the power of the brain -- which he recognised as the mind itself -- increased its
control, and the headache vanished. And now it felt as if three beams of energy, from
the heart, the head and the viscera, were converging on the mirror, which reflected
them back again, redoubling their intensity. He could also see -- in a brief flash of
insight -- that the mirror was not necessary. It was merely a mechanical substitute for
self-consciousness.
As strength and vitality were summoned from his own depths, he tried to
understand what had happened. Why was he still alive? Probably because the Death
Lord had given orders to capture him alive. Then where was his attacker? Could it
have gone to summon the other guard? But he was immediately struck by the
absurdity of this explanation. What would be easier than to bind his hands and feet
and carry him away on its back?
He stood up and felt the back of his neck. It felt sore and bruised, but there
was no puncture mark there. Hope began to dawn. For some reason beyond his
comprehension, the wolf spider had left him unharmed. Could it be through the
intervention of the Steegmaster?
Cautiously, he mounted the steps again, this time to street level. Wet marks
from his previous ascent were still on the stone, revealing that he had been
unconscious for only a brief period. He raised his head and peered out across the
bridge. It was deserted; so were the streets of the slave quarter. He was about to make
a run for the nearest building when he caught a glimpse of the caked mud on his arms
and changed his mind. His present state made him too conspicuous. He stood there for
perhaps a minute, scanning the street and embankment for any sign of movement;
when he had assured himself that they were deserted, he hurried back to the river.
There he waded in up to his knees and washed off the mud from his arms, legs and
face. It was as he was wading back on the foreshore that an absurd idea flashed into
his head. He was looking at the marks made by the impact of his own body when he
fell from the ramp; the indentations produced by his knees and elbows were clearly
visible. Also imprinted in the soft mud were the claw marks of the spider as it had
stood above his body. On the left hand side, four marks were visible; on the right,
only three. His attacker was a wolf spider with a missing front claw.
With a clarity amounting to a perception, Niall's mind conjured up an image of
an exhausted wolf spider lying sprawled in the sunlight, a trickle of pale blood
running from its maimed foreleg on to the deck of the ship, and he suddenly knew
beyond all doubt that his intuition had found the answer. Pleasure and gratitude rose
in him like a bubble. The perception that luck was on his side produced a curious
inner calm. He mounted the steps unhurriedly, looked to right and left to make sure
that the road was empty, then crossed the street like a man going about his legitimate
business.
The houses facing the river had been impressive structures, now crumbling
into disrepair; the cracked pavements were covered with a debris of broken glass and
decaying concrete. Here also he saw for the first time the disintegrating shells of rusty
automobiles, many with helicopter attachments that gave them the appearance of dead
winged insects. In the southern part of the city, most windows and doors were still
intact; here the window apertures were empty and the doors that remained hung off
their hinges. The slave quarter looked as if it had been vandalised by an army of
destructive children.
The main avenue, which ran down from the bridge, was overhung with
cobwebs, which in places were so thick that they seemed to form a canopy; an instinct
warned Niall not to venture beneath them. Instead, he entered a building whose worn
façade still carried an inscription: Global Assurance Corporation, and picked his way
across a grimy marble floor littered with lath and plaster, and down a series of
corridors that led into a narrow street. He peered out cautiously and withdrew his
head immediately; about thirty feet above his head, a death spider was repairing its
web. He blocked the flash of alarm before it began and retreated into the corridor.
The nearest room contained some broken furniture and its door had been
propped against a cupboard next to the empty window aperture. By moving into the
space between the door and the cupboard, Niall was able to command a good view of
the street and to watch the spider in its patient work of repair. Half an hour later, he
heard the first sounds of life: voices, the sound of footsteps and the banging of doors.
Across the street, he could see people moving about behind the first-floor window
aperture. A woman with large breasts and grotesquely thick legs strolled down the
street, making soft crooning noises. He noticed that she walked under the spider web
with no sign of nervousness.
The noise increased and as the sun rose high enough to penetrate the narrow
street, children appeared on the pavements, many of them chewing lumps of grey-
coloured bread. Some of them shouted, or ran about, laughing; most seemed to be
quiet and apathetic. Niall observed the prevalence of low foreheads, flat cheekbones
and narrow, slit-like eyes. One heavily-built boy with a club foot approached a small
fat girl and tore her food out of her hand. She began to wail loudly, but no one paid
any attention; the boy leaned against the wall a few feet away, and ate the bread. Then
he approached another child who had just walked into the street, and once again
snatched the food from her hands. This child tried to snatch it back; whereupon the
boy pushed her in the chest with such force that she staggered across the road. Yet
other children sat in doorways or on the edge of the pavement and went on eating
stolidly, making no attempt to hide their food.
One small boy ran down the middle of the street, flapping his arms as if he
were a bird, and making chirping noises. As he ran under the newly-repaired cobweb,
he paused and looked up at it. Then, to Niall's astonishment, he bent down, picked up
a piece of wood, and hurled it into the air. It curved downward again long before it
struck the web. The child threw it again; this time it went slightly higher. Then the
boy with the club foot, who had finished eating, picked up the wood and hurled it
with all his force into the air. This time it struck the cobweb, and stuck there. Then, so
quickly that it made Niall start, the spider fell from the sky on its length of thread and
pounced on the small child. Niall expected to see the fangs sink into the bare flesh.
Instead, the child shrieked with laughter as the spider rolled him on the ground; many
other children joined in. And a few moments later, the spider rose into the air on its
lifeline of web, while the child jumped up and ran away. Niall found it all totally
baffling. The spider had obviously been playing with the child.
Niall's damp clothes were becoming uncomfortable, and when a child peered
in through the window and stared at him with curiosity, he decided there was no point
in further concealment and walked out into the street. No one paid him the slightest
attention. The spider overhead had now started to build another web, apparently
oblivious to what was happening below. Only the boy with the club foot gave him a
glance that made him feel uneasy -- a look that was at once hostile and mocking.
The thought mirror sharpened his senses, making his observation
preternaturally keen. He noticed that the slave quarter was full of smells, both
pleasant and unpleasant; the smells of cooking mingled with the odour of rotten fruit
and sewage. The gutters were full of abandoned scraps of food as well as all kinds of
domestic rubbish. There were also, he soon discovered, non-human inhabitants of the
slave quarter. As a child threw down a large piece of bread, a bird swooped past his
head and snatched it up. And in a shadowy, deserted alleyway, he saw a large grey rat
feeding on a smashed watermelon. It glanced at him with its sharp little eyes, decided
he could be ignored, and went on eating. A fraction of a second later, a spider plunged
from the sky and landed squarely on the rat; the animal had time only for a pathetic
squeak before the fangs plunged home. A few seconds later, spider and rat had
vanished. It had all happened so swiftly that Niall had no time for fear, or even
astonishment. He glanced up nervously at the overhanging web, into which the spider
had vanished, and hurried on.
Passing an open doorway a few moments later, his nostrils detected a more
sinister smell -- rotting meat. He paused, hesitated, then stepped into the shadowy
interior, treading with caution on broken floorboards. The source of the stench was
immediately apparent -- a decaying corpse lying in one corner of the room. It was
little more than a skeleton, a few disintegrating fragments of grey slave garments
covering the rib cage; maggots crawled out of the empty eye sockets. The cause of
death -- a great block of masonry that had fallen through the ceiling -- lay close to the
cracked skull. Niall repressed a desire to be sick and hastened back into the street.
The slave quarter was dirty, overcrowded and apparently totally disorganised.
Many buildings were burnt-out shells; others looked as if a vigorous push would
bring their walls tumbling down. Inhabited buildings were easy to distinguish because
they were in a less dangerous state of disrepair than the others. He strolled into one of
these, pushing his way among squabbling children, and was ignored. A doorless room
to the right was obviously a bedroom; the floor was covered completely with greasy
mattresses. In another room, people sat on the bare floorboards, or on broken
furniture, and drank soup out of chipped crockery or gnawed rabbit legs or chunks of
grey bread. It was easy to locate the kitchen simply by tracing to its source the
pervading smell of burning fat, woodsmoke, garlic and overripe fruit and vegetables.
An enormous saucepan of soup steamed on the wood stove; the cook, a grotesquely
fat woman whose forearms were thicker than most men's thighs, was chopping up a
mixture of fruit, vegetables and rabbit meat on a large board; as Niall entered, she
poured these into the saucepan, scraping them off with a carving knife. Two late risers
came in, yawning and rubbing their eyes. They helped themselves to unwashed dishes
piled up in a metal sink and, without the preliminary of washing them, dipped them
straight into the cooking pot; neither seemed concerned that their bowls contained a
proportion of raw meat and vegetables. They hacked themselves bread from a loaf
that was more than four feet long, and dipped this into a wooden bowl of half-melted
butter that stood on the windowsill catching the full force of the morning sun. Niall
observed that there was a large metal bunker containing various kinds of fruit: apples,
oranges, pomegranates, watermelons and prickly pears. The slaves were obviously
kept well fed.
A tall, red-headed man entered the kitchen. Niall guessed he was a member of
the servant class condemned to work as a slave. He looked harassed and irritable.
Ignoring Niall, he snatched a bowl from the sink, washed it under the tap and filled it
with soup. Unlike the slaves, he took the trouble to dip the ladle to the bottom of the
摘要：

TheFortressSpiderWorld,Book03byColinWilsona.b.e-bookv3.0/NotesatEOFBackCover:Eightlegsgood--twolegsbadUnderthebleak25thCenturydesertNiallandhisfamilyekeoutameagreexistance,hiddenfromthepredatoryeyesofthegiantspidersthatfloatsilentlyoverheadintheirsilkendeathballoons.ForNiallhascommittedtheultimatecr...

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