Asimov's SF, March 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "If you reached the ground safely when the ethership broke up,” Drake said, angrily, “why didn't you return to London? I was in dire need of your testimony to support the story I told. Had you been there to support my testimony, it would have been manifest that it was poor Digges, not I, who was deluded about the nature of our adventure."

  "You may be giving our fellow Englishmen too much credit for credulity,” Raleigh replied. “I didn't know what would happen to you, and I regret that it did, but I had more urgent things to do. In truth, I wasn't entirely displeased when news reached me of the trick that the ethereal had played on Tom Digges. There are good reasons for maintaining secrecy in regard to the work that Muffet and I must do—for some years, at least. You, though, are one of the few men who might understand. I really am glad to see you, Francis, for there's no man on earth who might make us a better ally, and we're direly in need of one just now. I know that the celestial spiders didn't bring you here, but since you are here, they must have Providence on their side."

  "Did celestial spiders bring you here?” Drake asked.

  "Yes,” Raleigh replied unequivocally. “Walk with me, and I'll show you what you need to see while I tell you what you ought to know. We've no shortage of hapless instruments, but to have another free man in our innermost company will be an immense advantage."

  As he spoke, Raleigh beckoned Drake to follow him deeper into the valley, then made a signal to the leader of the company that had brought Drake from the settlement. The natives were as silent now as they had been since Drake first saw them, and they made no audible response to the signal, but merely retreated to the huts surrounding Raleigh's.

  Drake was in a mulish mood now, though, and he stayed where he was. “You sent those men to kidnap me,” he said, darkly, “and you sent some monster with them to render me unconscious. Why?"

  "It was the simplest way to bring you here quickly—perhaps the only way. Had my emissaries come openly, the rebel islanders would have been alerted, and Gilbert would have done his best to keep you inside the stockade. He may think of you merely as heaven-sent reinforcements for the defense of his petty fort, but he might be hatching other schemes. Muffet still has confidence in him, but I cannot. Gilbert's plans might be agreeable to me, in the right circumstances—but that depends on you, and on the Tahitians’ response to your arrival."

  "The islanders seemed friendly enough last night,” Drake observed.

  "Everyone is friendly while gathering intelligence,” Raleigh said. “It's possible that your arrival will inhibit the natives from attacking the settlement, but it's also possible that it will increase their sense of urgency. If they imagine that more ships are likely to arrive in future, bringing more guns..."

  "We must talk to them,” Drake was quick to say. “We must reassure them that we can co-exist peacefully."

  "We did that when we first came,” Raleigh told him, bluntly. “The islanders believed us, and all went well ... but many of the islanders now consider that our promises were false, and they know that there's dissent among the ranks of Gilbert's men. Sailors are a superstitious breed; many of them can't understand what we're doing here, or why, any better than the natives. You will—if you'll allow me to show you. Will you come?"

  This time, Drake consented to go where the strangely transformed Raleigh led him. By the time they had taken a dozen steps the huts were out of sight again, screened by the luxuriant bushes. The air was still abuzz with insects, though, drawn to the gigantic blooms that dressed the bushes in such awesome profusion. Their nectar-collection was not unhazardous, though; now that Drake had become accustomed to the rich confusion of colors he was able to make out predatory spiders lurking in the foliage of the bushes, ready to seize prey that settled in the alluring blossoms.

  "Beautiful, are they not?” Raleigh said, as he followed the direction of Drake's gaze. Drake knew that he was not referring to the flowers.

  The trail they followed was neither wide nor straight, but the mossy ground was gentle underfoot, and Drake was able to stroll in perfect comfort.

  "So the spider-bite you suffered on the moon was no superficial scratch,” he deduced, “and our insect hosts were wrong to believe that they had countered its effects."

  "The colonists of the moon's interior think themselves extremely wise and capable,” Raleigh said, “and the fleshcores that rest in perfect peace within the shells of planetary crusts in the central regions of the sidereal system are even more given to self-satisfaction. They consider themselves rulers of the galaxy and the forefront of evolution's thrust, but they're blind to all manner of other possibilities. They know relatively little about the remoter regions of the galactic arms, let alone the vast realm of the ethereals. They know almost nothing about the imperium of spiderkind."

  "You're some kind of chimera now, I suppose?” Drake guessed. “The spider must have laid eggs inside your body, which took possession of your flesh much as the ethereal took possession of poor Digges’ intelligence, albeit in a slower manner."

  Raleigh laughed. “You see that I'm changed,” he said, “but you mistake the reason. No, I'm not possessed by one of Field's ingenious extraterrestrial demons. The spider laid no eggs within my flesh. The spiders that rode down to earth with me traveled as passengers on the ethership, just as we humans did. They played their part in saving all of us, slowing the leak with spidersilk long enough for us to reach an altitude at which the parachutes could save our lives. Had it not been for them, you'd likely be dead, although you never suspected their presence. They had to be discreet, you see, for they had been spies within the moon for many years, always in hiding from the insects. They took a considerable risk, in order to make use of an unexpected opportunity to descend to the surface of the Earth. They would have come eventually, of course, but they knew that the ethership's journey would provoke a response from the selenite host, and they had to be bold. They're few in number, and their work is patient by nature—my own optimization has been a slow process, and not painless—but they needed to act, lest an unprecedented opportunity be lost."

  "Optimization?” Drake queried. “Is that what has happened to you, Walter? And to the men who brought me here, I presume? They're not a different race at all—merely islanders who've been bitten by celestial spiders.” It occurred to Drake, as he said this, that he too had been bitten, four times over, by spiders whose origin and nature he could not specify—but he reassured himself with the thought that Muffet appeared to be as tightly bound in this conspiracy as Raleigh, without him or his daughter having been transformed.

  "Sentient spider species are despised fugitives within the fleshcores’ galactic empire,” Raleigh told him, “as humans and other vertebrate intelligences are bound to become, if the insects and their masters have their way. The celestial spiders have survived and flourished regardless, their evolutionary impetus enhanced by the necessity of their eternal struggle. They're our natural allies, Francis—far more so than the ethereals, whose penchant for trickery and treachery is obvious in what they did to Digges. The celestial spiders haven't attempted any deception since they had to make their first move under extremely difficult circumstances. They've been honest with me, and with Muffet—with Gilbert too, although he's never been able to overcome his instinctive revulsion. That instinct is a direly unfortunate thing, although we humans—some of us, at any rate—seem better able to overcome it than the insect races that comprise the dominant galactic civilization."

  "If God engraved a fear of spiders in our instinct,” Drake observed, “there might be a reason for it.” As he spoke he had his eye on an unusually brightly colored specimen that was not in hiding, but hanging from a thick thread from the branch of a tree, apparently ready to drop from above on some unsuspecting prey.

  "That kind of fear is not God's work,” Raleigh told him. “It's a phantom of the imagination. The intelligence of Earthly spiders, like that of Earthly insects, remains undeveloped, while that of vertebrates has flourished, by vi
rtue of some unfathomable quirk of local circumstance—but the celestial spiders are rivals of a powerful enemy of humankind, and will be exceedingly valuable allies in times to come. I'd have thought that the man reputed to have turned the Cimaroons into a fledgling nation ready to aid the English against the empire-building Spaniards might understand that."

  "You mistake me, Walter,” Drake told him. “I never set out to be a diehard enemy of the Spaniards. I wouldn't have attacked them so violently in Panama had I not been so cruelly betrayed at St. John de Ulua. I'm a peaceful man, who would far rather deal honorably with everyone."

  "But that's exactly what Digges attempted to do with the insects and the fleshcores,” Raleigh pointed out. “They promised him safety and honorable dealing, but they sabotaged the ethership, intending to kill us all."

  "Did they?” Drake countered. “I don't know that."

  "But you do know that the ethereal—the vaporous creature that Digges breathed in—betrayed him by persuading him that our experience was all a dream. It betrayed you, Francis, in making you seem a fool."

  "And you didn't?” Drake retorted. “I was convinced that you were dead, for I couldn't believe that you would have deserted me when I needed your testimony to establish my sanity. If I hadn't had your map...” He did not break off because he regretted the revelation that it was Raleigh's sharp eyes rather than his own that had guided him to Tahiti, but because he had caught his first glimpse of the wonders that Raleigh must have brought him here to see.

  They had come into another clearing, where the ground was damp around the rim of a little pool, whose surface was strewn with lily-pads. On slightly drier ground, cushioned with moss, a dozen Tahitian natives, of the kind Raleigh called “optimized"—six of whom were female—were lying fully extended, seemingly asleep, with their arms extended. Each human body was marked with between five and ten of what Drake thought at first were dark red tumorous growths.

  After a minute or so, he realized that the objects were not growths at all, but stout leeches and massive ticks, each the size of a clenched fist, every one of which must have drawn a generous cupful of blood from its host. He was able to watch sated parasites withdraw, slowly and sluggishly as they completed their feasts, and roll on to the ground—but whether they intended to scuttle or squirm away thereafter, he could not tell, for as soon as they fell they were seized and carried off by huge spiders, which bore them away into the shelter of the surrounding bushes.

  The bushes and trees on the far side of the pool were lavishly supplied with spidersilk structures, including webs, domes, and tunnels, intricately distributed between the undergrowth and the crowns of the trees. Drake was immediately struck by the notion that here was an entire city spun from spidersilk, extending as far as the eye could see. The structures became much more voluminous and mazy as they extended into the distance, drowning the greens of the forest in a vast extent of shimmering white.

  The spiders collecting the bloodsucking parasites were not as huge as the largest specimens Muffet had shown him, but very nearly so. If the increasing size of the tunnels that extended away from the pool's edge was a reliable indication, Drake thought, there must be true giants at the heart of the labyrinth.

  * * * *

  8

  "Are your celestial spiders in that silken maze?” Drake asked, croaking slightly because his mouth was dry.

  "Yes,” Raleigh said, “but the products of earthly Creation are far more numerous. The celestial spiders are not the largest, by any means—earthly spiders have more scope for physical optimization than I supposed at first. Although our project is still in its infancy, it's making rapid and spectacular progress. Ours is a world with more exotic potential than our friends have ever found before; it will take them centuries to discover what might be achieved here in Tahiti, let alone the entire surface of the globe—but you and I might live long enough to see it, if we and they are granted time enough to complete our experiments."

  Drake had returned his attention to the languid islanders and their patient parasites. “And if we were to live for centuries,” he said, grimly, “how much blood would we have to produce to feed your celestial spiders?"

  "You misunderstand what is happening here,” Raleigh said. “The celestial spiders have neither any need nor any appetite for human blood, although they consider it a privilege to share the alchemical potential of our flesh, as we should consider it a privilege to share the alchemical potential of theirs. Arachnids are exoskeletal creatures, like insects and molluscs, but they're very different in other ways. The blood that you see being taken here is destined to nourish earthly spiders, not extraterrestrial ones, and it's transmitted by vectors in order to protect its donors from excessive traffic in the elixirs of life."

  While Drake watched, one of the male “donors” rose to his feet, having shed all his visitors. He seemed steady enough on his feet, but his eyes were dull. He did not look at Drake before walking into the bushes and being lost to sight.

  "Your optimized friends aren't very talkative,” Drake observed.

  "They still converse with one another, and with their former brethren, in their own tongue,” Raleigh said. “They have had no need to learn English to communicate with me; we have other methods. Spiders are voiceless, of course, nor do they have the kinds of sensitive palps that the selenite insects used to converse with Tom Digges, but they have very efficient modes of communication, which humans can learn—optimized humans, at least. When we first returned to earth, my celestial companions had no alternative but to use me a trifle brutally, but they were as discreet as they could be. Once they were able to set me free, they did. I can converse with them now as one free individual to another."

  Drake felt free to doubt that—and, indeed, to doubt that Raleigh was anything more than a mere puppet, set out to seduce co-operation from him as cooperation had clearly been seduced from Thomas Muffet. He had to begin walking again, though, because Raleigh was on the move once more, skirting the pond as he went on into the valley.

  They moved between the spidersilk structures easily at first, because those clinging to the ground were low-lying and those constructed in the crowns of bushes and trees were limited to the foliage, but their own relative status as giants was rapidly diminished as the arachnid city grew in dimension. The silken structures soon loomed up to chest- and head-height, and they moved into a translucent labyrinth that confused Drake's eyes completely.

  "Did Muffet talk to you about his work?” Raleigh asked, as they plunged into the heart of this bizarre environment.

  "He showed me his laboratories,” Drake replied. “He told me that various sorts of spider venom have curative powers, and that he's attempting to refine them, with the ultimate intention of returning to England equipped with a miraculous pharmacopeia. I assume that he'll do everything possible to demonstrate the efficacy of his cures before revealing their source."

  "That's one aspect of our plan,” Raleigh agreed, “and one of our reasons for doing our work in such a remote location. There were too many spies in England for there to be any possibility of working there."

  "When you say spies,” Drake said, “I take it that you're not referring to Elizabethans, Frenchmen, or Italians? You mean agents of the lunar insects and their fleshcore masters."

  "Yes,” said Raleigh. “Ethereals too, in all likelihood, although they find the surface of the Earth just as uncomfortable as exoskeletals accustomed to working in environments where affinity is far less powerful. Earthly insects and spiders are limited in size by a number of environmental factors, you see—especially the load-bearing capacity of their limbs and the difficulty of distributing vital spirit to their tissues."

  "What vital spirit?” Drake asked.

  "The vital spirit that's contained in air and ether, deprived of which living organisms must die. It is the fuel that feeds the fire of life. Organisms heavily burdened by affinity, as we are, require beating hearts and a sturdy network of vessels carrying blood, whic
h absorbs vital spirit in the lungs and releases it throughout the body. Earthly invertebrates are tiny because, by some freak of chance, their ancestors never developed the appropriate combination of load-bearing limbs and internal circulatory systems. Physical optimization requires ingenious compensation in these and other respects. Relatively few intelligent extraterrestrials can operate comfortably on the surface of a planet like the earth—but the purposes of espionage are, in any case, best served by tinier agents. Communication is a problem, of course, but there are means.

  "Humans were under observation before, but since our intrepid band of companions broke through the envelope of the atmosphere, interest in surface affairs has increased very markedly. It now extends beyond mere measurement of our technical works to attempts to comprehend our culture, religion, and politics. England, especially, is under intensive study, and her rival European nations too. Tahiti is safely remote, but I dare not offer the same guarantee in respect of China or Peru. Tell me, Francis, how many people in England knew that you were coming here when you set off from Plymouth?"

  "None,” Drake admitted. “Being widely considered a madman, I thought it politic to keep the exact details of my plan to myself at first. I didn't confide them to my officers until we reached South America,"

  "That's good news,” Raleigh said. “I'm glad to find your reasoning so closely in tune with ours—it makes me even more confident that you'll understand what we are doing, when everything has been properly explained. You'll see that the celestial spiders are honest, and that you mustn't let irrational instinctive anxieties blind you to their benevolence."

  Drake suppressed a shudder caused by movements glimpsed behind the walls of spidersilk that now surrounded them. Some of the vague shapes he glimpsed through their translucent walls seemed as large as sheep—larger, at any rate, than wolves. He had not yet met any such creature face-to-face, but their reluctance to come out into the open, while lurking like shadows behind such frail walls, only made them seem more menacing. It did not seem to Drake that his fears were dismissible as “irrational instinctive anxieties"; it seemed perfectly rational to doubt that the extraterrestrial spiders were benevolent in their intentions, and to suspect that Raleigh and Muffet were their dupes rather than their collaborators.