The Man of Bronze

by James Alan Gardner

  Silence fell as the others contemplated that thought. Then Ilya whispered to Lord H., “Lara likes the word ‘tomb,’ does she not? Do you think she uses it because ‘temple raider’ doesn’t sound nearly so respectable?”

  I gave him a dirty look. Teresa laughed. With a flick of her machete, she sliced through the vine she’d been toying with. “Enough jabber. If there’s a temple near here, we should start searching for— What’s wrong?”

  She was staring at me. I was staring at the vine she’d just cut. One end had dropped down to dangle in front of me, close enough that I could see it more clearly than before. “Back to the boat,” I told the others. “Now.”

  “What’s wrong?” Lord Horatio asked.

  “That’s not a vine. It’s a spiderweb. Run.”

  The benefit of having a zoologist companion is that when you’re attacked by giant spiders, she can tell you their Latin name. I don’t recall what the name was—just that this species was highly venomous, even at normal size.

  These monsters were not normal size. The first one that dropped from the trees looked as big as a Clydesdale, with equally hairy legs. Its fangs reminded me of the saber tooth in Siberia except that the saber tooth had clean white ivories, while the spider’s fangs dripped with frothy black fluid. The stuff looked like Guinness but probably wasn’t.

  Four obsidian eyes glinted above the spider’s fangs. I popped off a shot into their midst on the off chance I’d hit something vulnerable. Even at these magnified dimensions, however, the spider’s brain was probably as small as a walnut and equally difficult to hit. Furthermore, creatures so low on the evolutionary ladder don’t rely on gray matter as much as we lofty mammals; if I puréed the spider’s brain with bullets, the beast might keep on coming—legs, teeth, and claws working purely on reflex. Still, I might get lucky and take the brute down. If I didn’t, I was buying time for my companions to get back to the airboat and rev up the fan.

  Normal bullet. Bang. No effect.

  Silver bullet. Bang. No effect.

  Incendiary. Bang. No obvious damage . . . but the flash of fire in the spider’s face provoked a built-in reflex. The monster backed up a step with an instinctive fear of fire. In doing so, the spider bumped into the moai statue—bumped into it hard. The statue rocked on its base: a base that once must have been solidly rooted but had been unbalanced by centuries of monsoons, tunneling insects, and other destabilizing factors. If I pushed it in the right direction, the statue would squash the spider like a . . . spider.

  Just one problem. Mr. Eight-Legs-and-Fangs stood between me and the statue. How could I reach the moai? How could I get behind the statue and find enough leverage to topple it onto the spider before I became an arachnid’s appetizer?

  “Hey, ugly,” I said, taking off my sunglasses. “Catch.”

  I lobbed them high in a lazy arc. As I’d hoped, the sight of them triggered some hunting instinct in the spider’s poor excuse for a cerebellum. It lashed out a foreleg, trying to spear my specs with the single dagger-length claw on the end of its foot. I waited until the animal’s attention was entirely focused on the glasses. Then I ran forward, up one of the spider’s other legs, using its squishy body as a springboard and jumping up high to grab the moai. My arms wrapped around the statue’s head, level with its nose.

  For a moment, the moai and I nearly fell the wrong direction, away from the spider. I threw my body weight backward, pulling to correct the giant carving’s imbalance. We still might have gone over the wrong way if not for a conveniently located tree branch that caught the top of the statue’s head and prevented us from tipping too far. Almost immediately, the statue rocked back like a pendulum reversing its swing. I heaved as hard as I could, using my weight—top-heavy on the stone pillar—to increase the moai’s momentum. Below me, the spider hissed and snapped at my leg as the statue leaned over. I could tell exactly when the leaning reached the point of no return: the statue tilted, tilted, tilted, then suddenly started its plunge. I leapt aside as the heavy stone fell, but I didn’t jump far enough—I wasn’t crushed under its massive weight, but when it slammed down on the mutant arachnid, I was close enough to get caught in the splatter.

  “Euu,” I said. “Spider spew. Gross.”

  I was wiping off vile-smelling juice when something thudded heavily to the ground behind me. I didn’t even bother to look—it was exactly the sort of thump you’d expect if a second horse-sized spider had dropped from the trees on the end of a web. I threw myself to one side half a second before a sharply clawed foot stabbed through the air where I’d been standing.

  “Speedy devil, aren’t you?” I muttered. Most natural spiders aren’t rapid-attack predators; the whole point of spinning a web is to save you the trouble of outrunning prey. But this mutant was quick enough to become a nuisance. Even worse, I didn’t have room to maneuver: the undergrowth hedged me in. I couldn’t fight my way through the greenery fast enough to escape my new eight-legged foe . . . and the spider was blocking the only clear path to the boat.

  One consolation: Teresa, Lord Horatio, and Ilya weren’t trapped in the same situation. They’d reached the boat and were preparing to cast off. Teresa started the engine, while Lord H. released the mooring rope and Ilya pumped careful rifle shots into the spider’s back. So far, he’d scored a zero on the shoot-something-vital scale, but at least he was giving the spider something to think about. Each time Ilya plugged a bullet into the beast’s body, it squealed angrily and forgot it was trying to eat me. The spider would begin to turn as if it wanted to see what had caused it pain; then it would catch sight of me again and think, “Food!” It would turn back to me, drool a pint more venom, and try to ram a claw through my gut . . . until the next bullet, the next distraction, and the cycle would start again.

  “This is getting tiresome,” I muttered. “New strategy.” I raised my voice. “Ilya! Hold your next shot until I tell you!”

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  I didn’t have time to answer. The spider was gazing at me with hunger in its four beady eyes. Before it did anything I’d regret, I lifted my pistol and fired at the strand of webbing on which the spider had descended. I hit the web exactly where I wanted: at a point just above the spider’s head. The bottom of the strand jerked wildly, shot free from the spider’s spinnerets. “Ilya!” I yelled, “shoot now! Get its attention!”

  Blam! The AK-47 flashed. I didn’t see where the bullet went, but the spider squealed with more than its usual outrage. As the beast whirled in fury toward Ilya, I made my move: running forward, bounding up the nearest hairy leg, and jumping from there to the loose web strand. I clutched it and swung, letting my momentum carry me far past the monster. At the farthest point of my arc I let go, dropping with only a slightly bone-cracking jar onto the trail below.

  The spider, despite its physical speed, had a mental speed slower than paint drying. By the time it figured out what had happened, I was nearly to the airboat, shouting as I ran, “Get moving! Go!” I jumped from the bank to the airboat’s pontoon and Teresa gunned the fan to full. As it happened, the boat was still pointed upstream, heading deeper into the interior; I didn’t care, as long as we put some distance between us and the mutant web spinner.

  The boat moved. The spider did too . . . faster. It raced down the trail with every indication of chasing us to the ends of the earth. Ilya growled, “How can that thing move so quickly? Where’s the square-cube law when you need it? And haven’t I heard there’s an inherent limit on the size of spiders because of their crude respiratory systems?”

  “Stop being a physics nerd,” I told him. “Where’s your katana?”

  “If guns don’t stop the spider, why should—”

  “Give me the blasted sword!”

  He bent toward me. The katana was stored in an over-the-shoulder sheath that left the pommel just behind Ilya’s head. I grabbed it and drew the weapon just as the spider vaulted from the shore.

  The airboat bucked as the sp
ider’s weight struck, nearly throwing us all into the river. The monster had jumped at us from behind, so it landed on the wire mesh that enclosed the boat’s fan. I had visions of a Cuisinart encounter between the arachnid and our fan’s whirling metal blades; but the protective mesh held, at least for the moment. The spider began clambering over the fan housing, venom dripping from its fangs. When the creature’s head poked up within reach, I swung the katana with all my strength at the monster’s furry neck.

  Always thinking like a zoologist, Teresa wanted to keep the spider’s decapitated body as a scientific specimen; but the carcass weighed so much, our boat could barely move under its mass.

  I let her keep the drooling severed head, provided she put it into a plastic rubbish bag so I wouldn’t have to look at it. Sometimes, spiders give me the creeps.

  12

  CAPE YORK PENINSULA, QUEENSLAND:

  THE TEMPLE

  With both spiders dead, we could have gone back to the moai and searched for a path to the temple. However, where there are two spiders, there are likely more. We decided to stay on the boat, traveling farther upriver and hoping we’d catch sight of the temple without hiking under web-laden trees.

  So: deeper into the interior. At times, the Pennabong grew so narrow I wondered if we’d get through; but it always widened again, until we reached a spot where it opened into a marsh. “Not good,” Teresa muttered . . . and thanks to the radio mikes, we all heard her clearly.

  “Do you think we’ll run aground in shallow water?” Lord Horatio asked.

  “No,” she said. “Airboats are perfect for swamps. But, uhh . . .”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  Teresa winced. “This is an ideal environment for crocodiles.”

  “Bogemoi!” Ilya growled. “Or should I say crikey!”

  Actually, when the giant crocodile showed up, it turned out to be a good thing. We were having a beastly time finding the temple—it might have been anywhere in the swamp, half sunk into the mud and hidden by centuries of overgrowth. The crocodile was like a huge guard dog, posted at the nexus of mystic energy and showing us exactly where to go. All we had to do was get past a carnivorous reptile the size of a train car.

  We first saw it from a distance. It was hard to miss—a colossus lying in the shallow water. The croc may have been trying to lurk in the manner of its normal-sized cousins with just its eyes showing above the surface, but an animal ten feet high can’t hide in six inches of water. It stood out like the Sphinx above the desert. We stood out just as much; the noise of our fan was so loud, every creepy crawly in the swamp knew where we were. But the croc made no move toward us. Its instincts said to wait until prey came close. Crocs are pouncers, not chasers.

  “So what do we do?” asked Ilya. “If our bullets didn’t work on the spiders, we haven’t a prayer against that thing’s hide.”

  He was right. The leathery skin of ordinary crocs can resist low-caliber bullets; the monster in front of us could likely withstand antitank munitions. To play for time while we pondered our next move, we got out binoculars and checked the croc for vulnerabilities. Perhaps like certain fictitious dragons, our adversary would have an implausibly convenient weak spot in the armor over its heart.

  “Nope,” said Ilya. “The plating seems solid everywhere.”

  “It’s built like a warship,” Lord H. agreed. “The good news is I can see a stone building near its belly.”

  “That looks like the temple, all right,” I said. I couldn’t see much with a croc the size of a brontosaurus blocking my view, but bits of gray stone were just visible behind a bank of bulrushes. That was undoubtedly where we had to go. The only difficulty was clearing the way.

  “Maybe we can try an experiment,” I said. “Take us in slowly, Teresa. Straight toward the crocodile’s mouth.”

  “You’re going to dive between its jaws, crawl down its throat, and crush its beating heart with your bare hands?” Ilya asked.

  “Let’s call that Plan B,” I said.

  “What’s Plan A?” Teresa asked.

  “Capitalizing on our available assets.”

  “Ah, good,” said Lord H. “Lara’s acting coy and cocky.” He settled back comfortably in his chair. “She’s thought of something clever that will briefly terrify us but ultimately save the day.”

  “Yes,” said Ilya, also sitting back and affecting an air of composure. “We never have anything to worry about once Lara gets an inspiration.” He crossed his arms like a Disneyland tourist waiting for a show to start. “Too bad we don’t have popcorn.”

  I glared at the men, then waggled a finger at Teresa before she started in on me too. “Just drive,” I told her. “I’ll do the rest.”

  Ilya got out his canteen and took a long loud slurp. Lord H. lit a pipe. Both put on expressions of avid interest.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I grumbled. But I took their mockery as a show of confidence.

  The crocodile watched as we slowly approached. Just another lazy reptile basking in the sun. Each of its teeth was as long as Ilya’s katana.

  “Are we close enough yet?” Teresa whispered.

  “Not quite,” I replied.

  Ilya shifted in his chair. “Larochka wants to wait till she sees the whites of its eyes.”

  “Crocodile eyes don’t have whites,” Teresa told him.

  “Well then,” Lord H. said, “this could get awkward.”

  “All of you, shush.” I gauged the distance between us and the croc. Half the length of a football pitch; call it sixty yards. “Closer,” I said. “Closer.”

  Teresa gave me a look but eased the airboat ahead. We were moving up a clear stretch of water with reeds on either side. I couldn’t tell if there was enough water beneath the reeds to let us veer sideways or if we were stuck going straight forward.

  Fifty yards. Forty. The crocodile watched. Its eyes seemed brightly interested. I waited for signs of movement; if anything happened, it would happen quickly. But the sun was warm and the croc showed no signs of hunger. It was simply curious about the buzzing water insect coming its way.

  At thirty yards, the croc opened its mouth—maybe preparing to chomp us, maybe just yawning. It was my perfect chance.

  The giant spider’s head lay beside me, still in its plastic rubbish bag. I ripped open the bag, taking care not to splash myself with the creature’s black, foamy venom, and booted the head down the crocodile’s gullet: a perfect goal kick if I say so myself. The reptile blinked in surprise, then swallowed—the proverbial poison pill.

  There were lots of unknowns in what I’d just done. How much venom remained in the dead spider’s glands? Would it affect a giant mutant crocodile? If so, how fast? Might the poison simply leave a bad taste in the crocodile’s mouth, perhaps provoking the animal to attack? What if the croc liked the taste and came after us in hopes of more?

  “Okay,” I told Teresa, “maybe we should just back up . . .”

  The crocodile lifted its head and roared—a thunderous sound of agony. It took two rapid steps toward us, each stirring heavy waves that struck the airboat hard. Then the croc’s head slapped the river’s surface with a force that sent gushers of water flying. For a moment, I was blinded by the spray. When I could see again, the croc had gone absolutely rigid: stiff from head to tail like a huge plastic toy. Its eyes were closed. Foamy black fluid leaked from one corner of its mouth.

  Lord H. favored me with a light round of applause. He was absolutely soaked from the croc’s dying splash—we all were. Carefully, he tapped the sodden contents of his pipe onto his palm. He looked at the wet remains, then muttered, “Ah well . . . filthy habit anyway.” He dumped the damp shreds over the side and put his pipe away. “Shall we proceed to the temple? I believe the way is clear.”

  Teresa took a deep breath. We all did. Then she throttled the boat forward. As she drove to the temple, she stayed well clear of the crocodile’s corpse.

  Many pretechnical civilizations have left impressive relig
ious structures: pyramids in Egypt and Mexico, the Parthenon in Athens, temples in India and China and other parts of Asia. Polynesians constructed their share of holy monuments, but almost nothing has survived to the present. Blame it on the typhoons, tsunamis, and other disasters that plague the Pacific, not to mention property damage caused by small-scale raids and large-scale wars. The upshot is that we seldom think of the South Seas as the site of architectural wonders. Little remains for travelers to see except bare foundation platforms and tumbled stonework.

  But the Pennabong temple was entirely unharmed. It had survived centuries of equatorial rains, spring flooding, and being used as a giant reptile’s backrest. No doubt the bronze foot’s high-tech/magic power contributed to the temple’s preservation, but the architectural style also helped. The overall design was simple: just a single-story stone building shaped like a diamond. No towers to fall over, no grand staircases to collapse. The place was only six feet high, low enough to the ground that tropical storms would pass over without doing much damage. The stonework looked solid—each block fitted perfectly to its neighbors, despite the reeds and other greenery trying to push their roots into crevices. Marsh plants surrounded the temple on all sides and had even seeded themselves on the roof—excellent camouflage for hiding the building in aerial photos. But the temple remained intact, resistant to the forces of nature.

  The temple’s only entrance lay at one point of the diamond shape. Five moai statues stood in a semicircle around the door as if guarding it. These weren’t like the ten-foot-high moai in the jungle; these only came up to my shoulder and were just heads, not bodies. The entrance itself was a low-set opening blocked by a slab of stone. As Reuben’s notes said, the priests locked themselves in when their monsters got out of hand. Unfortunately, the notes gave no hints on how to get the door open.