Asimov's SF, March 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  The southern stars always seemed sparse to him by comparison with those that crowded northern skies, but the weakness of their light was offset by a bright full moon, whose pock-marked silver face was now a stark reminder of the extent and strangeness of the universe. Drake stared at it for a minute or more, resentfully. Digges, he knew, had been promised that the earth would be let alone, but that did not mean that compound eyes were not staring down at the world of men, nor that the multitudinous insect species who thronged the satellite's cavernous interior might not send tiny cousins to the surface to make observations on their behalf.

  He looked away deliberately, unwilling to offer himself up as a passive lunatic. The tall wooden fence, some fifteen paces away from his present position, made it impossible for him to see more of the forest than the tops of its trees. The island's birds were mostly silent now, but there was wind enough to sustain a considerable whisper in the foliage, so the wilderness of the island's interior seemed loud and insistent in its presence.

  When he felt more composed, Drake turned to go back to Gilbert's house. Just as he turned his head, though, he saw something move from the corner of his eye. It was very close to the wall of the stockade, almost totally enclosed in shadow; had it remained still he could not possibly have seen it, but the fact and quality of the movement were just about discernible. As soon as he stared at it attentively, though, the movement stopped, leaving him with nothing but the impression of something the size of a man, whose movement was not at all manlike.

  Drake could not help the idea of a giant spider—a true giant—springing forth from his imagination. Instinctively, he froze, cursing himself for his reflexive terror. He stared hard into the shadows, but he could not make out any shape within the darkness. He tried to force himself to take a step toward it, purely and simply to prove that he had command over his limbs, but his legs would not move.

  When he tried to take a step in the other direction, toward the house, he found it far easier—but in taking that step, he turned his head again, and caught a hint of movement from the corner of his eye for a second time. He froze again, and looked back—and then he felt something brush against his calf, above the rim of his boot.

  He was immediately seized by the idea that something had already crawled up his boot, unheeded, and was now ascending his leg. Again, he could not help but imagine a spider, albeit a much smaller one than the one he had imagined moving in the shadows.

  He dared not reach down with his bare hands. Instead, he shook his leg furiously, hoping to dislodge the creature he supposed to be there. He knew, even as he did it, that it was the wrong thing to do. If there was a spider on his leg, the last thing in the world he ought to do was agitate it.

  It was the wrong thing to do; he felt the sting that told him so—but that only made his agitation more frenzied. He would have called for help had he not been so utterly ashamed of himself—but the one thing he dreaded more, at that moment, than being killed by a spider-bite, was the possibility that he might be wrong: that the whole incident, including the bite, was a product of his imagination. He could not countenance the thought that he might be found hallucinating, especially if the hallucination involved a giant invertebrate.

  He felt a second bite, and a third. He was possessed by the thought that there must be more than one spider, and that there might be an entire tide of spiders flowing around his feet. Still he did not dare reach down with his hands. Still he kicked madly in his panic, while trying all the while to stay silent.

  Drake began to feel numb in his lower limbs, and dizzy in his fevered brain, and felt that he was losing contact with reality in more ways than one. Then, he did begin to hallucinate.

  He dreamed that he had suddenly acquired the ability to see into the shadows, and to distinguish what was there. He did not see man-sized spiders but spiderlike men: three of them, clad like the Tahitian indigenes in loincloths and feathered head-dresses. They were far darker in complexion than the Tahitians, though, and far hairier, with faces that were not human faces at all but monstrous arachnid faces, staring at him and waiting for him to fall.

  He dared not look down to see whether he was, indeed, being devoured from beneath by a flood of spiders. He could not look down—but he could fall down, and he felt himself doing so.

  As he tumbled, the three spider-faces worn by the violators of the stockade drew closer. He told himself that they must be masks, but then lost the thread of his dreams and thoughts alike.

  * * * *

  6

  Drake woke up with a start, and found himself fighting to open his eyes against the glare of bright sunlight. Eventually, he managed it. He was on the ground, not lying where he had fallen, but rather in dense undergrowth, which mostly consisted of fern-like fronds and broad prickly leaves. He was lying in a shallow ditch, which might have been a watercourse in the rainy season; it snaked away through the vegetation in two directions.

  He raised his head cautiously, but the foliage was too dense to allow him to see more than a few feet without standing up. He paused before doing that, in order to collect himself and decide what to do next. Since his eyes told him so little about where he was, he made an effort to listen carefully, but all he could hear was the clamor of a brisk wind rustling the branches of the trees, mingled with the calls of strange birds and various humming and clicking sounds that were presumably made by unfamiliar insects.

  He tried to rise to his feet, but his legs were still numb and he had to pause in an awkward sitting position. He reached down to rub his thighs. He was wearing hose, but there were tears in the thin cloth above the rims of both his boots, and bloodstains. The flesh beneath was itching, and the sensation flared into pain as he brushed the wounds with his fingertips. He had apparently been bitten four times, around and above his knees. He continued rubbing his legs, and felt the flesh respond to the urging. He breathed a sigh of relief as he took further stock of himself, and concluded that any damage done had been temporary.

  When he stood up he was able to look over the densest vegetation, but he could only see a few yards further than before, although the forest was not as dense as some he had experienced. To judge by the height of the sun, it had to be nearer noon than dawn.

  I must make haste, Drake thought, glad to be able to organize a coherent sentence. The settlement was on the south-eastern coast of the island, so it ought to lie...

  He was interrupted in mid-decision when he suddenly found himself gripped from behind and pulled back down to a sitting position. When he twisted his neck to look over his shoulder he found himself staring into the face of a man.

  Drake was so glad to see that the man did not have the face of a spider that three seconds passed before he realized that the other did have skin much darker than the natives he had seen in Gilbert's compound, and that he had considerably more body hair. He was, moreover, exceptionally barrel-chested and muscular. He did not seem to belong to the same race as other Tahitians. He was not alone; there were at least three others, all crouching down and huddling around. They were breathing hard; he inferred that they had hurried back to him following some alarm.

  Drake opened his mouth to speak, but a hand was urgently plastered over it. Another hand reached out to part the vegetation obscuring their position, and a stabbing finger bid him look in that direction. He could just make out the feathery head-dresses of a party of lighter-skinned men making their way along a course that ran more or less parallel the dry stream-bed. He could also see the tips of spears and bows carried by the lighter-skinned Tahitians; they were moving smoothly and silently, as any hunting-party would.

  When the other party had vanished, Drake's captors allowed him to stand up again. He tried a soft-voiced greeting in English first, on the assumption that any islanders living in close proximity to the settlement, whatever their physical type, were highly likely to have learned a little. When that overture met with blank incomprehension, he made an elaborate mime of displaying his obvious lack of arms a
nd declaring his peaceful inclinations. He had grown accustomed to the elements of sign language, having always been exceptional among his own people for his enthusiasm to meet exotic specimens of humanity and make alliances with them.

  The dumb-show elicited no more reaction than his speech. He was now able to count the number of his captors as seven, but none of them was armed and they did not seem to mean him any harm, Indeed, it was possible that they had protected him by preventing him from attracting the attention of the lighter-skinned islanders. Before looking back at the man who had dragged him down and muffled his mouth, who seemed to be the leader of the party, Drake made a tour of the group with curious eyes. The expressions on their staring faces seemed far more curious than ominous, but Drake had the impression that if he were to try to leave the company he would be restrained.

  "You're not local, are you?” he guessed. “Neither servants nor traders. So what do you want with me?” He took care to speak in a soft and amicable tone.

  There was no verbal reply, but the first man he had seen gestured with his hand. It was an invitation rather than a command, but Drake did not take the trouble to wonder what the consequences might be of a refusal. He bowed, and immediately went in the direction indicated by the invitation. So far as he could judge, that course would take him in the opposite direction to the settlement, but it could not be helped. The leader of the party fell into step with him, walking by his side, while the others arranged themselves in single file behind.

  The trail they followed was not straight, but it was clear enough to permit swift progress until they were diverted on to a narrower sidetrack, where they made slower headway. The leader of the party had to go in front of Drake to guide him. After that, they changed direction so frequently that their course was more reminiscent of a ship tacking into the wind than any journey overland that Drake had ever taken. When they had been moving for two hours they stopped to drink from a stream. Drake realized that they must be carefully avoiding contact with other islanders. Although he had caught the odor of cooking-fires more than once, he had not seen a single human habitation.

  "You know that I'm a stranger here, don't you?” Drake said to the leader, without any expectation of receiving a reply. “You know that I came aboard the Golden Hind. Do you know that I'm her master, or were you merely intent on picking one of us at random?” Voicing the questions helped him to settle in his own mind what the answers might be—but he knew that there was no point in seeking enlightenment by that means as to where the dark men might be taking him, or why.

  Eventually, their course became straighter again, and by late morning they did come into a village, where his captors paused to hold discussions with the inhabitants. These were lighter-skinned people who resembled the islanders he had seen in the settlement, not his present companions, but they did not seem to be hostile to his captors. There was no argument, and scant evidence of overmuch curiosity regarding his presence, although some of the villagers studied him surreptitiously while pretending to ignore him.

  "Is there anyone here who speaks English?” Drake asked, plaintively, issuing another general appeal. If anyone did, they were not prepared to admit it.

  The march resumed. Drake presumed that they were heading ever-deeper into the island's interior, getting further away from the settlement. He spared time from contemplation of his own predicament to wonder what Gilbert would think when he found that his honored guest had vanished—and, for that matter, what Hammond and Ashley would think when they found themselves devoid of a captain.

  They went through two more villages before noon, and a third not long after. Drake was offered fruit to eat and water to drink, but he ate sparingly. The expedition had become tedious now, and he began to wish that it might be over—or, at least, that he might be able to ask when it might be over.

  There did not seem to be nearly so many birds hereabouts as there had been on the small islet where Martin had climbed the coconut palm—perhaps because the birds here were much more inclined to steer clear of humans, for reasons to which the natives’ feathered head-dresses offered more than adequate testimony. There were, however, large parrots visible in the crowns of the trees, which paused to watch the party of travelers as they passed by rather than taking immediate flight—except for one, which was actively following them. At first Drake thought that he must be mistaken about that, but once he began to keep the bird within view, it soon became obvious that he was right. The bird was definitely tracking them. Drake could not tell whether his companions were aware of the fact or not, but if they were it did not worry them.

  For the first time, it occurred to Drake to wonder why the Fortune had set off from Gilbert's harbor, heading directly for the island where the Hind had dropped anchor, before anyone could possibly have caught sight of her. Was it possible, he wondered, that news of her arrival there had been carried from one island to another by a bird? He had not paid much attention to the birds in Muffet's laboratory, even though Patience had talked to one of them, once his attention had been claimed by the spiders. Now he began to wonder whether he had been distracted from something significant, and cursed himself for his carelessness.

  Travelers’ tales featuring intelligent birds were by no means as common as those involving giant spiders, but they were not unknown. Perhaps, Drake thought, there was more truth in such tales than he had ever been able to credit. Given that the caverns of the moon were host to vast throngs of philosophical insects, the notion of whole nations of talking birds no longer seemed as silly as it would have done in his days as the scourge of the Carib Sea.

  For at least six hours he had not seen a single spider, but that changed quite suddenly when the terrain underwent a marked change of aspect. They had been going up-slope for some time and the forest had thinned out considerably—not because trees had been deliberately cleared, as they had around the villages, but because the trees that grew on this higher ground had massive superficial root-systems than monopolized the soil for some distance around, permitting no competitors. These roots formed complex networks of ridges and deep grooves, and were host to elaborate populations of fern-like plants, mosses, brightly colored fungi, and swarms of insects. Here, for the first time since his strange awakening, Drake was able to see spiders prowling in broad daylight, though none were as large as the ugliest specimens in Muffet's collection. He saw webs, too, although they were not like the webs spun by garden spiders in England; they were built on the ground and extended in mazy tunnels and strange spirals.

  The walls of these tunnels were sufficiently substantial that they might almost have served as the sleeves of garments, but they were slightly translucent, so that it was sometimes possible to see dark shapes confined within them, which might have been the spiders themselves, or the corpses of the kinds of animal prey that Muffet had mentioned: small birds and mice. Despite his booted feet, Drake took great care not to step on any spiders. The natives seemed far less careful, although they went barefoot.

  The terrain changed again as the party finally went over the crest of the shallow hill they had been climbing, and came down more precipitously into a valley whose vegetation was quite distinct from any they had yet traversed. There were no palm trees here, although there were trees that bore fruits that Drake had never seen before; they did not grow as tall as palms, but their foliage was more prolific. Many of the bushes bore huge flowers, of very various colors, and the air was alive with the buzz of insects. Drake had been badly bitten in the swamplands of Panama, and he was initially apprehensive of the swarms of flies, but they did not seem inclined to molest him.

  The going became much harder once they had descended into the valley, but there was a trail of sorts, which Drake's guide followed unhesitatingly, and the seaman followed without too much difficulty. There seemed to be no villages here, and Drake had persuaded himself that it was merely a margin to be crossed when he suddenly emerged into a clearing where there was a group of huts. He knew immediately that some Europea
n hand had been involved in their design and construction, although he did not recognize the half-human figure that came out of one of the huts to meet them as a European.

  The man seemed, at first glance, to be similar in type to Drake's companions; his skin had the same dark coloring, although it seemed somewhat coarser in texture, and it was also very hairy. Like them he was ugly, in a straightforwardly human fashion, although his features seemed more considerably distorted. His forehead was bulbous and his jaw unusually narrow. He was not dressed as the natives were, though; he had canvas trousers, a cotton chemise, and a broad-brimmed hat. Clothed as he was, it was easy to determine that he had the same exceptional development of the torso and thighs.

  It might have been the narrowness of the jaw that imparted a flute-like quality and a slight lisp to the voice that said: “It's good to see you, Francis, old friend. I had a presentiment that you would come—and it seems that you've arrived in the nick of time."

  "Old friend?” the astonished Drake repeated. “I'd surely remember if I'd ever seen a man like you before, let alone numbered one among my friends."

  "I've changed more than a little since you saw me last,” the other admitted. “Perhaps I'm being presumptuous, though, in addressing you as friend rather than shipmate. It was three years ago that you saw me last, as the calendar counts, but it was in another life as well as another world."

  "God's blood!” Drake exclaimed, not knowing exactly how he had jumped to the conclusion. “You're Walter Raleigh!"

  * * * *

  7

  "I knew that Gilbert would be discreet,” the much-changed Raleigh remarked, “but I thought Muffet might have found an opportunity to say something. I told him long ago that you were mariner enough to have taken full note of what you saw from the ethership's portholes. Given that you'd already looked on the Pacific from Panama, I suspected that you'd come exploring if you could."