Colin Wilson - Spider World 01 - The Desert

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The Desert
Spider World, Book 01
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.
For Sally, Damon and Rowan
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My chief debt of gratitude is to my friend Donald Seaman, with whom this book was originally
planned as a collaboration. The idea was abandoned at a fairly early stage, but I had the benefit of his
suggestions and advice throughout. I am also deeply grateful to Professor John Cloudsley-Thompson,
England's leading expert on deserts, for his invaluable advice on the first section of this book. It also
owes a great deal to the warm encouragement of my editor John Boothe.
CW
Cornwall, 1986
As the first cold whisper of the dawn wind blew under the flat stone that covered the burrow,
Niall placed his ear against the crack and listened with total concentration. Whenever he did that, it was
as if a tiny point of light glowed inside his head, and there was a sudden silence in which every noise was
amplified. Now, suddenly, he could hear the faint sound of a large insect moving across the sand. The
lightness and speed of its movements told him that this was a solifugid, or camel spider. A moment later,
it crossed his field of vision -- the barrel-like, hairy body glistening in the sunlight, the immense jaws
carrying the remains of a lizard. In a moment it was past, and there was no sound but the wind in the
branches of the euphorbia cactus. But it had told him what he wanted to know: that there was no
scorpion or tiger beetle in the area. The camel spider is the greediest of creatures; it will eat until its
stomach is so distended that it can hardly move. This one had looked only half-fed. If there had been any
other sign of life in the area, it would have abandoned its half-eaten prey to attack.
Cautiously, he brushed aside the sand with a double movement of his hands like a swimmer; then
he slid his underfed body through the gap. The sun was just beginning to show above the horizon; the
sand was still cold from the frost of the night. His objective lay fifty yards away, at the edge of the cactus
grove: the waru plant whose green flesh, as thick and almost as yielding as an earlobe, formed a cup to
capture the dew. For the past hour he had lain awake, his throat burning, and conjured up the joy of
dipping his lips into the icy liquid. There was water in the burrow, water gathered by the slave ants fifty
feet below the surface of the desert; but it was red in colour, and tasted of mineral salts. By comparison,
the cold dew of the waru plant was like champagne.
Its cup, formed of two curling leaves, was half full, and there were crystals of ice at the edges.
Niall knelt on all fours, lowered his face into the cup and took a long, deep draught. The pleasure made
his muscles tingle and relax. For the desert dweller, icy water is one of the greatest of all luxuries. He was
tempted to drink every drop; but his training forbade it. The shallow roots of the waru needed this water
to live; if he drank it all, the plant would die, and one more source of water would be gone. So Niall
stopped drinking while the cup was still half full. But he continued to kneel there, staring into the cold
liquid as if drinking its essence, while a chilly wave of delight ran from his shoulders down to his feet. In
the depths of his being, strange racial memories stirred: memories of a golden age, when water was
plentiful, and men were not forced to live under the floor of the desert like insects.
That mood of deep quiescence saved his life. As he raised his eyes, he saw the balloon against
the pale eastern sky. It was about half a mile away, and moving swiftly towards him. Instantly and
instinctively, he controlled the reflex of terror. The inner-calm of a few moments ago made it easier. At
the same moment, he realised that he was kneeling in the shade of the immense organ-pipe cactus, whose
fluted trunk stretched up seventy feet above his head. Against the dark western landscape, with its pools
of shadow, his brown body must have been totally invisible. Only the reflex of terror could betray him.
And this was difficult to control as the balloon swept towards him, as if the creature inside had marked
him for its prey. He thought of the others, lying below in the burrow, and prayed that they were fast
asleep. Then the balloon was bearing down on him, and for the first time in his life, he experienced that
enormous sense of menace transmitted by hunting spiders. It was as though a hostile willpower was
sweeping the desert like a searchlight beam, probing every area of shadow with an almost tangible force,
trying to provoke a reflex of terror that would rise towards it like a scream. Niall deliberately averted his
eyes to the cup of the waru, and tried to make his mind as still as the clear water. It was then that he
experienced the odd sensation of being aware of the soul of the waru, the passive vegetable soul whose
only purpose was to drink, absorb sunlight, and stay alive. In that same moment, he was also aware of
the prouder soul of the giant cactuses, soaring above him like a challenge to the sky. The ground itself
seemed to become transparent so that he could sense the presence of his family, his parents and his
brother and two sisters, all lying fast asleep, although his father stirred as the beam of malevolent will
swept across him.
A few seconds later, it was gone; the balloon was already a quarter of a mile away across the
desert, moving towards the great inland plateau on the horizon. The will-force was sweeping the desert
ahead of it, and he could feel its presence as clearly as if it were a beam of light. He sat perfectly still,
watching the balloon dwindle into the distance and observing with interest that it swerved aside to avoid a
needle-like pinnacle of rock.
When it was gone he hurried back to the burrow, moving swiftly and silently as he had been
taught since childhood. His entrance awakened his father, who leapt instantly into a crouching position,
his right hand closing on a bone dagger. As he recognised Niall, he also sensed there was something
wrong. "What is it?"
Niall whispered: "A spider balloon."
"Where?"
"It's gone now."
"Did it see you?"
"I don't think so."
Ulf allowed his tension to escape in a long breath. He climbed up to the entrance, listened for a
moment, and peered out. The sun was now above the horizon, and the sky was a cloudless blue still
tinged with white.
His elder brother, Veig, spoke out of the darkness. "What is it?"
"They're hunting," Ulf said.
There was no need for Veig to ask what he meant. "They", used in that tone of voice, could only
mean the death spiders. And when the death spiders were hunting, it was the most serious thing that
could happen to this small band of human beings who spent most of their lives underground. For as far
back as they could remember, men had been hunted: by scorpions, by tiger beetles, by striped scarabs
and saga insects -- but most of all, by the death spiders. The beetles and the mosquitoes were natural
enemies; sometimes, they could be killed. But the spiders, who were the lords of the earth, were
unconquerable. To kill a spider was to invite appalling revenge. When Niall's great-grandfather, Jomar,
had been a slave of the spiders, he had seen what happened to a small colony of humans who killed a
spider. An army of thousands was mobilised to hunt them. A line of spiders more than ten miles long
marched across the desert, with hundreds of balloon spiders overhead. When the human beings were
finally captured -- about thirty of them, including children -- they were brought back to the city of the
Death Lord, paraded before the whole populace, and then ritually injected with a nerve poison that
brought paralysis. The victims remained fully conscious, yet were unable to move anything but their eyes
and eyelids. After that they were slowly eaten, the whole process taking a matter of days; the leader
continued to live for almost two weeks, until he was only an armless and legless trunk.
No one knew why the spiders hated men so much: not even Jomar, who had spent his whole life
among them until he escaped on a spider balloon. All Jomar knew was that there were thousands of
hunting spiders who spent their lives searching for human beings. Perhaps it was because they regarded
human flesh as the supreme delicacy. Yet this explanation seemed illogical, since the spiders bred their
own human beings for food. Apparently they liked them fat -- so fat that they could scarcely walk. So
why should a spider prize the flesh of the underfed humans of the desert? There must be some other
reason why the spiders regarded humans with such single-minded hatred.
The others were now awake -- his mother, Siris, and his two younger sisters, Runa and Mara.
Ulf said little within the hearing of the girls; yet they could sense that something was wrong, and their fear
was like an unpleasant vibration, or a sweet-sickly smell.
From the entrance stone, Veig beckoned his father. Niall also crept to the mouth of the burrow,
and before the two heads blocked the daylight he glimpsed the white balloon, moving fast over the tops
of the organ cactus, more than a mile away.
Ulf said softly: "The little ones must be put to sleep."
Veig nodded and disappeared into the depths of the burrow where the ants were stabled. Ten
minutes later, he returned with a gourd full of the sweet, porridge-like substance that the ants secreted in
their craws. Siris scraped portions of this on wooden platters and the girls ate hungrily, unaccustomed to
such generous helpings. When Niall accepted his platter, he smelt the heavy, flowery scent of the ortis
plant that came from the forest of the Great Delta. But he had no desire to sleep; he was confident now
that he could control his fear reaction. To satisfy his father, he swallowed a mouthful but as soon as no
one was looking, pushed the plate under a pile of alfa grass used for bedding. Five minutes later, the little
girls were fast asleep again. Niall also felt a pleasant heaviness from the narcotic, a warm glow that
soothed the feeling of hunger; but his mind remained alert.
Siris had waited until the girls were asleep before she ate sparingly of the honeydew porridge.
Like Niall, she wanted to remain awake. But this was not so that she could help defend the burrow. It
was so she could kill the children, then herself, if the death spiders detected their presence.
She was swallowing the first mouthful when the fear-probe invaded the burrow. It was literally an
invasion, as if one of the enormous spiders had leapt into the midst of their underground home. For a
moment, Niall almost lost control; but his mind instantly grasped that this invisible terror was bodiless and
impersonal. Siris was not so lucky. Niall felt as well as saw the fear that poured out of her like a shriek.
Ulf and Veig felt it too -- the searching will of the death spider seemed to have some quality that
amplified their feelings and also released involuntary bursts of fear. Niall alone remained perfectly
controlled and calm. He had contracted his mind to a point, so the light seemed to glow inside his head,
and he felt strangely detached from his surroundings and from his own personality.
The fear-probe seemed to hesitate, as if it had stopped to listen. But now all the humans had their
fear under control, and the inside of the burrow seemed full of a throbbing silence. The two girls breathed
peacefully. As the fear-probe faded, like a sound dying away in the distance, Niall experienced a brief
glow of satisfaction. If the children had been awake, their terror would have announced their presence in
waves of hysteria, betraying them to the spiders as hundreds of other human children had involuntarily
betrayed their families. The juice of the ortis plant was a great blessing, even though it had cost the lives
of his uncle Thorg and his cousin Hrolf. Both had been overcome by the plant and eaten. Five times more
that day, the fear-probes invaded the burrow; but the minds of the human beings were still as their
bodies; no echo of fear betrayed their presence. Propped against the smooth wall of the burrow, a wall
made of sand grains cemented by the saliva of the tiger beetle, Niall felt as if he had been turned to stone.
As the day advanced, the temperature in the burrow rose steadily. Under normal circumstances,
they would have sealed the entrance with branches and stones, and the wind would have completed the
work by filling the cracks with sand. But Ulf wanted to be able to see the approach of the spider
balloons; it was easier to resist the fear-probes when they were expected. So the aperture under the flat
stone was left open, and the hot desert wind blew into the burrow, carrying sand that was allowed to
form a carpet on the floor. The children perspired as they slept. The adults were indifferent to the
temperature; tension kept them at a high level of alertness. Twice during the day, Siris brought food --
prickly pears and the dried meat of desert rodents -- but they ate sparingly, their eyes fixed on the strip
of electric blue sky.
At mid-afternoon, Niall was keeping watch when he saw a balloon on the horizon. Minutes later,
another appeared to its left, then a third to its right. Soon the sky was full of balloons -- he stopped
counting when he reached twenty. The sheer number made his heart contract. He hissed to the others,
and they joined him, standing back a few feet from the aperture so that all could see.
Ulf said softly: "Why are there so many?"
Niall was puzzled that his father failed to see the answer. The spiders knew they were being
scanned by human eyes. It must have been infuriating for the Death Lords to know that down there in the
desert, their prey was watching them from some hidden shelter, and that there was no way of driving
them into the open. This armada of balloons was designed to cause terror. It might have succeeded in its
purpose if it had come from another direction, so as to approach unseen. But in the five minutes or so
that it took the balloons to pass overhead, the watchers had time to control their fear. The wind had now
risen, so the balloons passed over quickly. The fear stabbed at them for a moment, seeming to illuminate
them like a searchlight beam; then it had moved on.
From his vantage point at the side of the aperture, Niall could see that the balloons were spread
out in a symmetrical zigzag pattern. He knew instinctively why this was so. A solitary balloon had no
chance of getting an exact bearing on its prey. Its powers of observation extended downward in a kind of
cone, and unless a spider's attention was focused on the precise point from which it received an echo, it
had no way of knowing exactly where that echo had come from. It might be anywhere within a square
mile. But if two spiders received the echo simultaneously, each could judge its direction, and their prey
could be located at the point at which the two echoes converged. And if more than two balloons
received the echo, its source would be even more obvious.
Strangely enough, this insight gave Niall a curious satisfaction. It meant that he was beginning to
understand the minds of the spiders, that they no longer represented the terror of the unknown. But an
instinct warned him against too much self-satisfaction.
In the late afternoon, the two children stirred. Their faces were flushed from the heat, and their
throats were dry -- the usual after-effect of the ortis juice. Siris gave them water, and then, as a special
treat, the succulent fruit of the opuntia cactus, with its astringent flavour. After that, they were given more
of the drugged porridge and fell asleep again. Mara, the youngest, breathed quickly and her long hair was
damp with sweat. Her mother sat with her arm extended over her in a protective gesture. Mara was
everybody's favourite, and their protectiveness had grown stronger since they had almost lost her. Three
months ago, playing among the euphorbia bushes one evening, she had been attacked by a big yellow
scorpion. Niall, who had been gathering prickly pear, had heard Runa's screams and arrived in time to
see the scorpion disappearing into its lair under a rock, clutching the child's body in its enormous pincers.
The sight paralysed him with shock. He had often watched with morbid fascination as a scorpion
paralysed some creature with that overarching swing of its tail, then shredded and tore the carcase with
its chelicerae, the short, powerful claws below the mouth; after that, the wounds would be injected with a
digestive enzyme that reduced the tissues to a liquid so the scorpion could drink them. Now his first
impulse was to rush in and try to grab his sister; but the sight of that moist sting, still poised above the
creature's back, warned him that this would be suicide. He ran back to the burrow, shouting for his
father. Ulf acted with the control of a man whose life has often depended on his coolness. He called to
Veig: "Quick, bring fire." It seemed an unbelievably long interval of time before Veig emerged from the
burrow with a burning torch of grass. With arms full of the dry, straw-like esparto, they rushed and
stumbled through the cactuses to the scorpion's lair. This was underneath a large, flat stone. The creature
was waiting for them; they could see its row of eyes gleaming in the darkness, behind the huge pincers.
The torch had almost burned out; Ulf blew on it to light the esparto, then rushed unhesitatingly at the
entrance to the lair. The scorpion gave its dry, menacing hiss, and retreated before the flames and the
smoke. Ulf kicked the burning fragments into the lair, then gave a leap sideways as the scorpion rushed
out, its sting poised to strike. The giant pincers, like those of an enormous lobster, made it clumsy
compared to the man. Veig rushed forward with more burning grass, which he hurled between the
pincers, swerving aside to avoid the top-heavy rush. It hissed with agony, tried to turn instinctively
towards its lair, and was headed off by Ulf waving a burning torch. Niall knew what he had to do. He
plunged into the lair, paused a moment amongst the empty shells of beetles, then snatched up his sister
and ran with her into the daylight. The scorpion saw its prey escaping and made a rush at him; Veig
jumped forward and hurled his spear between its pincers. Niall handed the cold, still little body to Siris,
and turned in time to see their enemy scuttling away across the desert. Veig said later that his spear had
destroyed two of its eyes.
It looked as if Mara was dead. The naked, white body was cold and had the peculiar smell of
the scorpion's lair. There was no sign of heartbeat. Yet after two days she began to breathe again, and a
week later was able to drag herself across the floor of the burrow. It took another month for the effects
of the poison to vanish completely. A raised black welt on her shoulder was the only sign of her
encounter with the scorpion.
The fourth wave of spider balloons came an hour later. His father touched his shoulder lightly,
and he realised he had fallen into a light doze. Still secure in the quiescence of drowsiness, he felt the fear
pass over him like a cold wind, and noted that it made the hairs on his arms stand on end. And when the
fear had passed, he reflected that it was stupid of the spiders to do it so often. It allowed the human
beings to become accustomed to it, and taught them how to resist it. The spiders could not be as
intelligent as he had always thought.
The last time was the worst. It happened as dusk was turning the sky a deeper blue. The wind
was dropping, and it seemed unlikely that the spiders would mount another reconaissance. Overhead,
through the roof of the burrow, they heard the scrabbling noise of some large insect; it could be a
scorpion or a tiger beetle, even a camel spider dragging some heavy prey. The sound was a welcome
distraction after hours of silence, and they listened as it moved towards the entrance of the burrow.
Suddenly Veig, who was standing on watch, started. Looking past his head, they saw the balloons, now
within a dozen feet of the floor of the desert, drifting towards them. At the same moment, sand cascaded
through the aperture and the huge lobster claws of the scorpion came into view. This alarmed no one;
they assumed it was passing by in its search for food. But the scorpion stopped, and more sand fell into
the burrow. The flat stone moved, and Niall realised with incredulity that the creature was trying to force
its way in. With the balloons almost overhead, it was the worst thing that could have happened. He could
feel the alarm of the others, amplified by fear that their fear would betray them. For a moment, it looked
as though the spiders had won.
Niall acted involuntarily, without thinking. Ulf's spear was propped against the wall, its head
made of a needle sharp jackal bone. Neither Ulf nor Veig would have dared to use it, in case the burst of
aggressiveness betrayed their presence to the hunters. What Niall did, naturally and spontaneously, was
to close his mind, as if drawing a shutter over his thoughts and feelings. Then he took a long step towards
the entrance, pushed Veig to one side, and struck with all his force between the claws that were enlarging
the entrance. There was a hiss and a blast of a sickening smell. With a lightning reflex, the thing withdrew,
and they could see the nearest balloon, only about a hundred yards away, drifting towards them. Niall
stood there, freezing into stillness, and continued to shield his mind from the probing beam of will-force. It
brushed over him, now so close that he had the illusion he could feel the creature's breath, and its
physical presence. A few seconds later, it was gone. They remained there for another ten minutes or so,
all experiencing the same fear: that the spiders had detected them and would land in the desert and
surround their burrow. As the minutes dragged past, the anxiety receded. Niall thrust his head out of the
burrow and saw the balloons far away, outlined against the red and purple sunset behind the mountains.
The scorpion had also disappeared. The point of the spear was tinged with blood mixed with a white
substance like pus.
Ulf placed one arm round his shoulder and hugged him. "Good boy." The compliment, which Ulf
had always used to praise some childish piece of obedience, sounded absurdly inappropriate; but Niall
understood the gratitude behind it, and felt a surge of pride.
Ten minutes later, with the suddenness of tropical nightfall, they were immersed in darkness as if
in black water. Ulf and Veig blocked the entrance with rocks and stones. Then Veig lit a rush light that
burned insect oil and they ate a meal of dried meat and cactus fruit. Niall sat propped in his corner,
watching their shadows on the wall and filled with the contentment of fatigue. He knew that his action had
saved their lives, and that the others were aware of it too. But he also knew that he was probably
responsible for what had happened today. Niall had also killed a death spider.
It had been almost ten years since Niall's family moved into the burrow. Before that, they had
lived in a cave at the foot of the great inland plateau, some twenty miles to the south. Even with the cave
entrance blocked with stones and rock fragments, the temperature had often reached a hundred during
the day. Food was scarce, and the men had spent much time on foraging expeditions. The spider balloon
on which Jomar had escaped provided silk for makeshift parasols, which enabled them to survive the
midday heat. In a nearby dried-up watercourse there were barrel cacti, whose juice was drinkable. (That
of the organ cactus was poisonous.) Yet for the small band of human beings -- in those days, Thorg and
his wife Ingeld, and their son Hrolf lived with them -- life was a continuous misery of thirst, starvation and
burning heat.
Early one day, farther from home than usual, the hunters had seen a big tiger beetle disappear
into its underground burrow. By comparison with their home at the foot of the plateau, this area seemed a
paradise. The waru plant gave promise of fresh water, while the distinctly green colour of the alfa grass
revealed that the night brought moisture in the form of fine mist. Alfa grass meant rope for traps; it could
also be woven into baskets and mats. Moreover, the shell of a blister beetle promised a source of oil.
The men were weary, exhausted by the heat and it may have been this that decided them on the
rash enterprise of attacking a tiger beetle. The mandibles of the tiger beetle could sever a man's arm or
leg; they were feared for their swiftness and for their incredible voracity -- Niall had once seen one
capture and eat twelve enormous flies in less than half an hour. But if the beetle could be driven out of its
burrow and attacked while it was struggling in the narrow entrance, they stood a chance of killing it
before it could make use of its speed.
The first step was to collect a pile of creosote bushes, hacking them out of the ground with their
flint knives. With its brittle wood and rank, tarry-smelling leaves, the creosote bush would blaze like a
torch after a few hours drying in the sun. They also collected piles of alfa grass, and prevented it from
blowing away by weighting it down with stones. Then they collected the largest rocks they could find and
piled them in heaps near the beetle's lair. Aware of all this activity, the creature watched them from its
burrow, but made no attempt to emerge; there were too many of them. When Hrolf went too close, a
pair of claw-like mandibles were thrust out menacingly from under the stone over the entrance.
As the sun rose higher, it became impossible to work for more than a few minutes at a time; even
in the shade of the organ-pipe cacti their sweat dried and evaporated before they were aware of it. With
the sun directly overhead, they crouched in the shade of their parasols and sipped sparingly of the water
to prevent dehydration.
They had retreated into the cactus grove to give the beetle a sense of security. Then, in the early
afternoon, Jomar decided it was time to attack; no desert creature expected danger at this time of day.
He made fire, using chips of dried bark, then ignited a pile of the alfa grass. The sun was so blinding that
the flames were invisible; but when the creosote bushes caught fire, the black smoke billowed into the air.
This, they knew, was the most dangerous moment; some distant patrol of spiders might see the smoke.
Swiftly, they seized the burning bushes by their roots and dragged them across the sand. With a single
powerful movement of his spear, Ulf levered aside the stone that covered the entrance; all prepared for
the beetle's swift rush. Then, when nothing happened, Jomar thrust his creosote bush into the hole; the
rest of them did the same, and staggered away, eyes streaming and their faces damp with bitter sweat.
It was perhaps half a minute before the beetle emerged, bewildered by the flames and the black
smoke. The movement of the entrance stone had made the hole higher and narrower, so the beetle had to
struggle to extricate itself. Standing above the entrance, his arms raised above his head, Thorg waited
until it was almost clear before he dashed down the heavy rock with all the force of his arms. It struck the
thorax just behind the prominent eyes. Another stone, hurled by Hrolf, smashed a front leg at the joint.
The beetle opened its great striped wings in an attempt to fly, and Jomar darted forward and drove his
spear into the segmented abdomen; the creature twisted in agony, and the powerful mandibles gripped
Jomar's leg. Jomar screamed, and tried to pull himself free. Then another big rock crashed down,
destroying an eye and smashing the tough integument that covered the head. The mandibles released
Jomar, who was bleeding heavily from the thigh. Hrolf drove his own spear deep into the flesh where the
wing joined the body. The beetle gave a convulsive jerk that knocked Ulf and Jomar flat, and landed on
its back several yards away. It continued to twitch for perhaps five minutes more.
It was Veig, peering into the burrow, who noticed a movement behind the burning creosote
bushes. There's another in there!" Instantly, they were all alert, prepared for another attack. But none
came. Jomar limped into the shade of a parasol and took a long drink of water. Hrolf tended the wound,
while the others ignited the remaining creosote bushes and threw them into the burrow. Then, suddenly
overcome by the heat, they lay there, panting, and watched to see what happened. Half an hour later,
when the creosote bushes had burned themselves to ashes, there was a movement in the entrance to the
burrow and the long antennae of a beetle emerged. The female beetle, much smaller than her dead mate,
dragged herself out of the hole, followed by half a dozen larvae, each about two feet long. Describing it
later to his younger brother, Veig said that he suddenly felt sorry for the beetles -- although he knew that
if he ventured too close, even the larvae would attack him. The men watched them drag themselves over
the burning sand, moving towards a gulley half a mile away. They behaved as if some terrible natural
disaster had struck; their only instinct was for self-preservation.
When, later in the day, they explored the burrow, they were surprised to find it was so deep.
Jomar's theory was that it had once been the lair of a family of wolf spiders. It was virtually an
underground cave, the walls cemented with a mixture of sand and the beetles' saliva. Two half dead
larvae lay in its deepest recess, overcome by the smoke; the desert wind, blowing direct on the entrance,
had driven the smoke and sparks in like a poison gas. They killed the larvae and threw the corpses
outside -- the flesh of the tiger beetle had an unpleasant flavour that made it unsuitable for food. Then
they sealed the entrance and collapsed into a long sleep in the cool depths of the lair, which still stank
unpleasantly of creosote and smoke.
The next day, two hours before dawn, Ulf, Thorg and Hrolf set out to fetch the women and
seven-year-old Niall from the cave at the foot of the inland plateau. Jomar and Veig remained in the
burrow, in case the tiger beetles made an attempt to repossess their home -- a precaution that proved to
be unnecessary. Later, they discovered that the tiger beetle has a deep antipathy to the smell of burning
creosote, and would not even cross a strip of land where there was any trace of it.
Niall could still remember the excitement when his father came back. His first intimation was
when Ingeld, Thorg's wife, began to shout, then to wail; she had seen only three men and assumed that
the other two had been killed. Then, when the men arrived and described their new home, she became
hysterical with excitement -- she had always been a woman with poor control of her emotions -- and
wanted to set out immediately; it took a great deal of persuasion to make her understand that none of
them would survive if they set out in the midday heat. Even so, she remained fretful and impatient for the
rest of the day.
When they finally left, two hours before dawn, Niall was the most excited of all. They chose this
hour to travel because most of the desert predators hunted by night; as dawn approached, they made
their way back to their lairs. The temperature was around freezing point; even wrapped in a hide made of
caterpillar skins, Niall shivered uncontrollably. But inside, there was a glowing happiness as he peered
over his mother's shoulders -- for part of the time she carried him in a pouch -- and an excitement that
made him feel as if he might float up into the air. He had only once been more than a few hundred yards
from the cave, and that was in the week the rains came. The wind had turned pleasantly cool; black
clouds came from the west, and suddenly water was gushing from the sky. He had stood in the warm rain
and laughed and jumped up and down. His mother took him for a walk, to a point where a dried up
watercourse cracked the edge of the plateau. There he stood and watched with amazement as the
ground heaved and split open and a large bullfrog pushed its way out; half an hour later, it was happening
in a dozen places at once. The creatures hopped down to the pools that were beginning to form, and
soon there was a loud, non-stop chorus of croaks as they called for the females to join them. The sight of
coupling frogs struck Niall as unbelievably funny, and he shrieked with laughter as he splashed in the
stream that had sprung up around his feet. Plants and flowers also began to push their way up from the
sand, which had now turned into oozy mud. There were hundreds of tiny explosions as dried pods sent
their seeds into the air like bullets. Within hours, the surface of the ground had been covered with an
amazing carpet of flowers -- white, green, yellow, red, blue and mauve. Niall, who had never seen any
colour but the yellow-grey of sand and rock and the fierce blue of the sky, felt as if he was in fairyland.
When the rain stopped, bees appeared from nowhere and burrowed into the flowers. The brown pools,
looking like mushroom soup, were full of tadpoles who writhed and thrashed and devoured one another.
In other, clearer pools, tiny newts devoured fragments of green algae. After four years of living in a
lifeless wilderness, Niall was suddenly surrounded by seething, blossoming life, and the sensation filled
him with a kind of intoxication.
This is why, as he bounced along on his mother's back or trotted by her side, he experienced the
same joy. His father had used the word "fertile" about their new home, and he imagined a place full of
flowers and trees and tiny animals. There awakened in him a sense of boundless anticipation of marvels
to come. If his father, who had spent his whole life in the desert, had been able to read his mind, he
would have shaken his head sadly.
At midday, when the sun became too hot, the men dug deep holes in the sand, covered them
with parasols, then poured more sand on top. A few inches below the surface, the sand was quite cool.
Less than a mile away, there were pillars of wind-eroded sandstone which might have afforded some
shelter; but in the searing heat, they would never have reached them. Niall and his mother and father lay
in one of the holes, sweating and chewing at a succulent tuber to prevent dehydration. Niall slept a little,
and dreamed of flowers and flowing water. Then once more they were on the move.
The wind had changed direction and seemed cooler. Niall pointed in the direction from which it
was blowing and asked his father: "What lies over there?"
"The delta," Ulf said. His voice was tired and indifferent, yet something about the word made
Niall shiver.
When they arrived, an hour before nightfall, they were all totally exhausted. Niall's first sight of his
new home was of acacia trees on the horizon, then of the immense, many-branched organ-pipe cactus.
He had never seen a tree before, although his father had described them. As they came closer, he saw, to
his disappointment, that there were no flowers; neither was there the running water he had been dreaming
about. Instead, there was barren, rocky ground with a thin covering of sand. The ground was covered
with grey-looking shrubs, creosote bushes and alfa grass, and with exposed rocks and stones. Only the
tree-like euphorbia cactus, with its deep green leaves, provided a touch of colour. In the distance there
were more of the strange columns of distorted red rock, while on the southern horizon, behind them, he
could see the inland plateau towering like a mountain range. Yet in spite of its dreariness, this was
undoubtedly an improvement on the endless sand dunes of their former home.
Jomar and Veig came out to meet them; the burrow was not facing the direction from which they
were approaching, but Jomar had sensed their arrival with that natural, intuitive awareness that desert
dwellers took for granted. Even if they had known the word, they would not have described their vague
awareness of one another's presence as telepathy; it was as natural to them as hearing. And it was
possessed in a far more terrifying degree by the death spiders.
Jomar was hardly able to walk; the thigh gripped by the mandibles of the tiger beetle had swelled
like a grotesque black pumpkin. Veig had dressed the wound with the crushed root of the devil plant,
which grew nearby; it had powerful curative properties. But it could not repair the severed muscle, and
Jomar would walk with a limp for the rest of his life.
That night they feasted -- at least, it seemed a feast to beings who had never lived much above
starvation level. Veig had speared a large, squirrel-like mammal and cooked its flesh by exposing it on
hot rocks at midday; for Niall, it was a completely new taste. Then there were the cactus fruits, yellow
and astringent, and the juice of the barrel cactus. Clearly, in spite of its barren appearance, this place
contained far more life than the inland plateau. It was also, they all realised, far more dangerous. There
were the sand scorpions and tiger beetles, the striped scarabs with their poisonous stings, the millipedes
and the grey sand spiders, which were non-poisonous but very strong and swift, and which could truss
up a human being in their sticky silk in less than a minute. Fortunately, these predators also had their
predators. The spiders were a prey to a wasp called the pepsis, or tarantula hawk, a creature not much
larger than a man's hand, which would paralyse them with its sting then use them as a living larder to feed
its grubs. And most of the desert insects and small mammals were regarded as fair game by the
enormous solifugid or camel spider, an ugly, beetle-like creature with immense jaws which could move so
fast that it looked like a ball of thistledown blowing over the desert. Strangely enough, the camel spiders
made no attempt to attack human beings; as Niall watched them, he often had a feeling that they were
vaguely benevolent, as though they regarded human beings as some kind of ally or fellow-creature. It was
just as well; their shark-like jaws could have bitten a man in half.
For many weeks after they first moved into the burrow, Niall spent his days peering out of the
entrance at the creatures that went past. There were not many of them -- during the heat of the day, most
desert creatures retreated to their dens -- but to a child brought up in a cave with an endless view of sand
dunes, it was like a picture show. He learned to distinguish many of the creatures simply by sound, so
that he could instantly tell the movement of a scorpion or desert spider from that of a tiger beetle or a
millipede. And when he heard the movements of a camel spider, he knew it was perfectly safe to venture
out; most sensible creatures kept out of its way.
During those early days, he was left alone a great deal. The women were delighted with the
variety of their environment and wanted to explore. To the civilised eye, this area of shrub-steppe land at
the edge of the desert would have seemed a desolate wilderness; to human beings who had lived in the
true desert, it was like the Garden of Eden. Many bushes contained spiky, thick-skinned fruit that had to
be picked with caution, but which proved highly edible when the skin was hacked away. Brown,
dead-looking plants often had tuber-like roots that stored water. In some cases, this liquid was too bitter
and unpleasant to drink but could be used for cooling the skin. Guarded by the men, Siris and Ingeld
wandered far afield, carrying baskets woven from alfa grass, and returned with all kinds of strange
delicacies. The men became experts in setting traps, and often caught hares, suricates and even birds.
Ingeld, who had always been greedy, became distinctly plump.
Niall was ordered to stay in the depths of the burrow while the family was away; but the moment
they left, he pushed aside the branches and stones that covered the entrance, and stood on the large rock
that formed a step, peering out at the strange creatures that went past. If, as occasionally happened,
some huge ant or millipede tried to force its way in, he discouraged it by thrusting a spear out of the hole;
as soon as they knew it was occupied, they hurried away.
As with most children Niall's sense of danger was at once exaggerated and unrealistic. To begin
with, he was terrified of anything that moved; later, when he discovered that most desert creatures fear
the unknown and prefer to avoid trouble, he became over-confident. One morning he grew bored with
looking out from the entrance and decided to explore. He carefully closed the burrow behind him, then
wandered among the organ-pipe cacti. Because it was still early, the cup of the waru plant was still half
full of dew, and it was deliciously cool to the throat. He found a prickly pear and tried to detach one of
its fruits, but he had forgotten to bring a flint blade, and it was too tough for his small fingers. He stooped
over a devil plant and was fascinated by its grotesque, claw-like appearance. He walked over to the
euphorbia that stood a few feet from the burrow and, after making sure that no creature was hiding in its
branches, climbed into it and found himself a comfortable perch. It was not unlike being in a cage. This
vantage point was far better than the mouth of the burrow, for he could see for miles. When a big tiger
beetle came and rested in the euphorbia's shade, he almost stopped breathing. Then it struck him that this
might be one of the original inhabitants of the burrow come to reclaim its home, and he had to fight
against panic. A large fly more than three inches long alighted on a drooping branch and cleaned its
forelegs; with breath-taking speed, the tiger beetle had launched itself off the ground and, although the fly
caught the movement and started to rise, it was too late; it disappeared into the beetle's jaws. Niall was
petrified as he watched the beetle chew the fly, with disgusting crunching noises, then swallow it. He
leaned forward to get a better view and his foot slipped. The beetle pushed itself up on to its front legs,
and peered into the tree with its prominent, button-like eyes; Niall gripped the branch, convinced he was
about to be dragged from his perch and eaten like the fly. The beetle continued to stare up for what
seemed an age, its long feelers waving gently. Then it seemed to lose interest and ambled off. Niall had
never experienced such deep and enormous relief. Yet as the beetle had stared into his eyes, the
sensation he had experienced had not been fear, but a curious suspension of his senses as if all the normal
functions of his body had paused in their activity. In that state of mind, it had seemed that everything had
grown very silent, and that he was communicating with the beetle exactly as he might have communicated
with another human being. Nevertheless, he ran back to the burrow as soon as he was sure the beetle
摘要：

TheDesertSpiderWorld,Book01byColinWilsona.b.e-bookv3.0/NotesatEOFBackCover:Eightlegsgood--twolegsbadUnderthebleak25thCenturydesertNiallandhisfamilyekeoutameagreexistance,hiddenfromthepredatoryeyesofthegiantspidersthatfloatsilentlyoverheadintheirsilkendeathballoons.ForNiallhascommittedtheultimatecrim...

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