Spider Legs

by Piers Anthony

  She turned to him. “Pardon?”

  “Sorry,” he said, embarrassed. “I was remembering a poem.”

  She smiled. “Will you quote it for me?”

  “Why certainly, if you wish,” he agreed, surprised. He focused his memory, and recited:

  "I'd like to carry this moment of time on forever . . .

  Hanging on to joys which spring out into misty airs . . .

  “That's lovely,” she said.

  Shadows sprang up about them as if they were living creatures. Tidewater seeped into their footsteps, and they heard the sounds of water crashing on the nearby jetty. He finally made what seemed like a supreme gamble, and took her hand. She did not withdraw. The silence was broken by nothing louder than the fragile chirps of shorebirds. The only illumination came from the green and red light emitted by the bioluminescent bacteria coating the wet rocks sticking out of the sea. It was if they were standing in an ice and rock cathedral of stained glass.

  It reminded him of Christmas.

  PART III

  Phantom

  Loving

  The first great step towards progress is for man to cease to be the slave of man; the second to cease to be the slave of the monsters of his own creation—of the ghosts and phantoms.

  —ROBERT G. INGERSOLL,

  The Ghosts and Other Lectures

  CHAPTER 14

  Fish Store

  THE LITTLE CARD on the wall read:

  The average person

  sheds one-and-a-half

  pounds of skin a year.

  Martha Samules was fond of such curious facts and had dozens of notecards containing trivia taped to the back wall of her fish store. Another read:

  If continually suckled,

  a lactating woman will produce

  milk for several years.

  Indeed, in some primitive tribes even today women nursed their children for up to five years, and could go longer if circumstances warranted. Nursing was one reason that third world children often did better than those in “advanced” nations—until they got off the breast and started eating degraded western foods. Similarly, babies in poor regions who slept with their mothers had lower rates of sudden death than those who had to sleep alone. Wherever man interfered with nature, man suffered. But not enough for Martha's taste.

  Today she was in a small, lightly soundproofed laboratory. Inside there was an array of aquarium filters, air pumps, and various tubes leading to a water-filled tank against a wall of the lab. The tank looked big enough to hold a large shark. On a dissecting table in front of her was a fist-sized pycnogonid. It lay dead on its back in a metal pan with a cork lining. The sea spider's legs were pinned to the cork to stabilize the body.

  “Here goes,” Martha said as she cut a small square opening in the body's hard exoskeleton using a dissecting scissor. The long legs reminded her of her own fingers. In some strange way, Martha felt that the bony sea spider was a kindred soul.

  “Careful,” she said to herself as she attempted to complete the cuts without damaging the underlying tissues. Finally she removed a postage-stamp-sized plate of shell from the creature's belly.

  “That's interesting,” she said to herself. After placing the square hatch to the side, she probed at the white, fleshy interior of the sea spider with her long finger and found a cavity, an air pocket, big enough to fit a sugar cube. Perhaps the air pocket aided in buoyancy when the animal rose to the surface of the water, she thought. Did it contain air or some other gas when the spider was submerged under the sea? Or did the body tissues simply shift into the cavity when the pressure of the sea compressed the pycnogonid's body?

  This was of course not the first time she had made this discovery, but she liked to verify it in different species. She wanted to know as much about sea spiders as possible, and sometimes a routine dissection could lead to a significant breakthrough. The pycnogonid was a truly remarkable creature in its own right, and with her help it was becoming more so.

  Martha Samules was born into a comfortable, happy household in a rural town in Prussian Silesia, about twenty miles south of Warsaw. She was the only daughter and third child of Ismar Samules, a respected but somewhat eccentric Jewish distiller, innkeeper, and tropical fish hobbyist. She inherited her father's characteristics—excitability, intelligence, and deformities of the hands. At the age of six, Martha entered the local primary school, and at the age of eleven she went to the St. Maria Magdalena Humanistic Gymnasium in Breslau. Her favorite subjects were biology and Latin. She was always near the top of her class, despite the cruel teasing she suffered from the children as a result of her long fingers and teeth, and her sometimes strange behavior. At times she felt she was living with dark tormenting clouds around her. The clouds were the bullies, the teasers, and the embarrassed looks of her few friends.

  There was a knock on her lab door. Irritated, Martha set down her scalpel, rinsed her hands, and went to it. There was the teenage girl whom Martha hired to work for her in the store during the week. “Lisa, I told you I don't want to be disturbed for less than an emergency,” she snapped at the girl.

  “The people—they—they want a refund,” the girl stammered.

  “Well show them the damn sign!” Martha snapped. “You know the policy. I do not give refunds.”

  “I—I know. But—”

  Martha looked more closely at the girl. Lisa was too young and pretty for her own good, but she did have a certain talent for inducing smiles and sales, and she didn't make many mistakes. At the moment her eyes were puffy as if she'd been crying. Something was going on. Maybe she had lost a boyfriend, been foolishly distracted, and made a mistake in the store. This required a direct investigation.

  Martha pushed by her and went into the store proper. There was a plump woman and a brat of a boy. “What's the problem?” Martha demanded.

  “My son bought a fish here, and it ate our other pet fish and then died,” the woman said.

  “Where's your sales receipt?”

  The woman produced it. Martha saw that it had been issued to one Brenda something or other, and that Lisa had handled it. It was for a lovely but predatory fish that had to be isolated from smaller species. An Aruana, a long silver fish resembling a snake or eel with a pair of barbels projecting from the mouth. It was cute in its fashion when small, but would quickly consume other fish and attain lengths of several feet if the aquarium was large enough. “You put this in with your others?” Martha inquired grimly.

  Brenda nodded. “And it—”

  “I know what it did. Weren't you warned not to do that?”

  Both Brenda and her son shook their heads.

  And Martha couldn't prove that Lisa had told them. The girl had probably been thinking of something else, so could have overlooked that vital detail. She was stuck for it, because she just might have been placed in the wrong.

  She went to the cash register. “What was the value of the other fish you lost?”

  Brenda told her. Martha dug out the money and paid for the refund and the other fish.

  Brenda was evidently amazed. She surely had expected a hassle. “Well, thank you—” she started.

  “Just get out of my store,” Martha said tersely. “And don't come back.”

  “But we didn't know what would happen.”

  “You should have asked.” Martha turned her back and stalked away.

  She spied Lisa. “That will come out of your pay, you know.”

  Lisa gulped. “I know. I'm sorry I—”

  “Don't be sorry. Just see that it never happens again.” Martha went to the lab and closed the door.

  The problem with Lisa was that she was typical of her generation and indeed the human kind. She just didn't think far enough ahead. As far as Martha was concerned, the whole lot of them could be dispensed with. There were just too damned many ignorant, thoughtless, garbage-generating hairless apes in the world, ruining it for all the natural creatures. She had to do business with them, because she needed
money to finance her researches, but she was disgusted by the necessity.

  Martha put the matter aside, and returned to her work. This was what she lived for: research, discovery, creation. It had taken her time to get here, but now she was making real progress.

  After receiving her Ph.D. in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Harvard as a result of her studies on the invertebrates in the North Atlantic oceans, Martha had been unsure where to go next. After some soul searching, she decided not to pursue an academic career with the accompanying pressure of fighting for tenure and grants. Instead she set up a small private laboratory in a rented flat near Bonavista Bay in Newfoundland. This was an incredible change of life for her, but she enjoyed it. The variety of fishes and invertebrates in the bay were a source of constant pleasure.

  After a few years of research and teaching at the local high school, Martha had a touch of the entrepreneurial spirit and opened a tropical fish and aquaria store. She still maintained a small marine biology laboratory in a room in the back of the fish store where she dabbled in a variety of breeding and other small-scale research projects. Of course she kept this quite limited, because the store wasn't sufficiently private. She knew better than to risk the disaster of premature discovery. Her most significant work was scrupulously hidden elsewhere. She couldn't afford to have Lisa make a stupid mistake and let someone in there.

  “Where did I put the growth hormone?” Martha whispered to herself, as she paced back and forth in the small lab like a caged tigress. This lab was an afterthought, tucked away between a bathroom and a supply closet. The shelves were covered with various scientific paraphernalia: test tubes, litmus paper, large Fluval canister filters, and worm feeders. In one fish tank were African cichlids. Another contained a vat of corrosive goo, the composition of which still eluded her. She was saving that particular challenge for an off moment, when she didn't have more important work to do.

  “There it is.” She grabbed a vial of green fluid and dumped it into a small aquarium filled with plants but devoid of animal life. Since Martha left Harvard she had decided to become an inventor of sorts. After some disastrous attempts to build the world's best fish tank filter, she did receive $30,000 from a prominent filter company for the rights to a canister filter which permitted mechanical, biological, and chemical filtration all in one filter medium for optimum water purification.

  There was another knock at her lab door. She knew what that was for, because of the time. Martha reached for a single light bulb which hung down from the tile ceiling on a cord. She then shut the light off and left her lab, closing the door behind her. On the side of the metal door facing the fish store, stenciled in orange paint, were the words:

  NO ADMITTANCE—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

  “I'm going home now,” said Lisa. Sometimes Martha wondered why she bothered with the stupid girl. But she reminded herself again that Lisa made it possible for Martha to fit in extra research sessions during slow times in the store. Still, she had been a nuisance today.

  Lisa backed up when the smelled the stench of decay coming from the lab. Perhaps it was Martha herself who exuded the pungent aroma, she thought with satisfaction. She liked getting into her work, and the smell didn't bother her at all.

  Lisa was the long red-haired cheerleader type. Hardly the kind one would expect to be working in a fish store, but she clearly needed the money and enjoyed the exotic sea life in the store. Those were motives Martha trusted. She would not have hired someone who could quit with impunity at any time. “See you tomorrow.” Lisa looked at Martha. There was something very fragile in her swollen eyes. That, too: Lisa was the type who could be pushed quite far without resisting. Martha did not want indepence of spirit here. Her brother had entirely too much of that, which was part of her problem with him.

  “See you tomorrow,” Martha said as she grinned. Martha knew that her teeth reminded Lisa of bicycle spokes. “Before you go, did you feed all the guppies?” Martha began to drool slightly as she looked at the splashes of water on Lisa's ivory linen short pants. Lisa followed her glance.

  “I spilled a little water from the guppy tank on my pants,” Lisa said as she gestured to herself. Then she pushed her shiny hair away from her face. Yes, she definitely was distracted today. As if she had any real concerns.

  “Did you feed the guppies?” Martha asked again, stepping a little closer. Lisa opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it.

  “Stop that,” Martha said. “You're beginning to look like a gold fish.”

  Lisa began to recover her composure and smiled a little. “Sure,” she said with a quick intake of breath. “I fed them.”

  Martha grabbed Lisa's hand and gave it a shake. She held the hand in a clammy grasp for about five seconds. Then Martha held out one bony forefinger and tapped it on Lisa's chest for emphasis.

  “Hey,” Lisa said, perhaps noticing for the first time that Martha's fingernails were long and fat and almost brown. Some seemed as sharp as razors. Martha was proud of the effect. Had she had to get really rough with those punks who invaded her store the other day, those nails would have been useful.

  “Be careful of the sea spiders,” Martha told her. Then her voice turned cheerful and she said, “OK, have fun.” Lisa scurried from the store like a rabbit fleeing a fox.

  Martha started to laugh. Great big laughs. Her voice rose in intensity until it was a high-sonic stiletto. Black mollies in a nearby tank felt the vibrations of Martha's laughter and quickly retreated behind a rock. A tin foil barb floated belly up. Martha took off her “FISH ARE FUN” button and tossed it on the counter. It was closing time at Martha's Tropical Fish Store.

  CHAPTER 15

  Coma

  ELMO'S MOTHER WAS still in a coma. Various plastic tubes in her natural and human-made orifices sustained her life like a parachute slowing the descent of a falling body. But the tubes merely delayed her descent into her oblivion; they did not stop it. She dozed in and out of near consciousness as condensation collected on tubes in her nose. Outside her window bawling winds and continuous rain imprisoned visitors and staff without umbrellas.

  “Any chance she can recover?” Elmo asked Dr. Carter, as he shifted his gaze nervously from his mother, to her tubes, to the rain-spotted hospital window. He was wearing a hospital gown to protect his mother from any germs he carried on his clothing. On his head was a plastic hospital cap.

  “Possible, but unlikely,” Dr. Carter said. “All the signs suggest brain injury.” Her pupils were dilated and did not constrict when Carter shone a light into them. She had no reflexes. “When we tried to take her off the respirator, her body made no attempt to breathe on its own.”

  “What does that mean?” The question was mostly rhetorical; Elmo had enough of a general notion to know that he was likely to be making funeral arrangements before long. He wished again that he could have gotten Martha to come when there had been time. Even a partial rapprochement would have been infinitely better than none.

  “The contraction of the diaphragm for breathing is a primitive brain function orchestrated by cranial nerves three, four, and five. The fact that she could not breathe on her own suggests extensive neurological problems.” Dr. Carter went to a light board and studied a series of head Xrays. Then he bent down again, close to Mrs. Samules's face, and began to examine her unresponsive eyes with an ophthalmoscope, checking for the telltale signs of dangerous intercranial pressure.

  An EKG machine in the corner of the room started to show chaotic electrical activity in the woman's heart. The machine transmitted the electrical status of her heart to the nurses’ station down the hall. Elmo tensed as he gazed at two clear bottles of fluid which hung from a rack by her bed, feeding an IV line in her right arm.

  A nurse came in to take Mrs. Samules's blood pressure. “Her pressure's so damned low . . .”

  “Give her some oxygen. Make it fast,” Dr. Carter said.

  Elmo stayed for a few hours and sometimes there were moments of hope. His mother's e
yes occasionally moved from side to side, although she did not appear to be aware of her surroundings. Her diaphragm started rhythmic contractions, so she could be removed from the respirator. But her favorable progress did not continue. She drifted in a shadow world, straddling life and death like a tightrope walker.

  Elmo gazed at his mother's blood, more brown than red, flowing through a clear exsanguination tube and into a vibrating by-pass machine.

  “It's feeding time,” a nurse said. She turned on an array of halogen bulbs on the ceiling to help her see more clearly, and then she walked past Elmo and funneled liquid food through a feeding tube that ran into Mrs. Samules's stomach through her nose. The nurse then removed the urine that accumulated in a bag attached to a pole by the side of her bed. As she leaned over the woman's face, she began to apply a lubricant to her eyelids.

  “What's that for?” Elmo asked the nurse.

  “It prevents the eyelids from sticking together.”

  “Why is that a problem?” He hated this whole business, but was compelled to learn all he could about it.

  “Comatose patients don't blink. They also secrete fewer tears, even when their eyes are closed.”

  A wave of sadness passed over Elmo like a dark swell of ocean water. He watched as the nurse filled a syringe with a cocktail of free radical scavengers and lazeroids and then injected the solution into a port in her intravenous line. Blood, heated to 99 degrees, moved with phenyl tertiary butyl nitrone though the IV lines and into her body through a vein in her arm.

  The nurse dimmed the lights. Before Elmo's eyes adjusted to the reduced illumination, all he could see was the red blinking bulbs on the cardiac monitors. Mrs. Samules was almost invisible.