INTERVIEW WITH A MAGICIAN
"IT is a long while," the magician said, "since you were here. I had supposed that your last adventure had been enough, even for you."
Marguerite Cranleigh, who, whether the time had been long or short, looked little older than when she had bargained first for the acquaintance of distant days, gave a smiling reply: "It was exciting enough. But I cannot live in past days. must ask you this: When I went into a far time, there was one whom I knew well. If I should go again into some distant time, could I meet him again?"
"It would not be beyond possibility."
"And could it be at a future day, rather than one which is past? You can see that I should prefer that, if it would not be beyond your power to control."
"Why should it? Between past and future there is no difference at all."
"You mean that they are equally easy for you?"
"I mean what I say. Past and present and future - they are all one. They are like the rotundity of the earth, which is not limitless, but has neither beginning nor end. You can move upon it, as I have moved you in time, but you cannot properly say that you go forward or back."
"All the same, you know what I mean."
"So I do. Some things are harder to explain than to understand."
"Then it is for that I will ask. And I should prefer a less primitive time than I had before."
"You mean a less primitive place. There have been no periods in the whole history of civilized or semi-civilized man when they have not been both orderly and savage parts of the earth, as there are today, although movement is the special development, as it must be the disintegrating factor, of the civilization to which we belong"
"A time when movement will be less worshiped would please me well. But there is another thing I would ask, though with little hope."
"Few things are beyond hope. What is it?"
"It is that, when I am in that far time, I may remember what I am here."
"You ask much. Have you other desires, beyond that?"
"I would ask to remain, if the one of whom I speak should be there."
"So you could, while that life will last. But, after that, you must return here, and find that you are in the same time as before."
"But it will not be the same, for another memory will be mine."
"You see gain in that? Well, so perhaps it may be. It is with yourselves."
"Yes. I see that."
"Even so, you may be asking more than I can certainly pledge. When you were translated before, you went into the past, and returned with memories which were easy to keep. But, if you are resolved to enter a future time, I cannot promise that you will bring back a memory of that which will not have occurred."
"But I thought you said - " she exclaimed, in some natural astonishment, and was interrupted by: "I have said too much." He became practical, remembering the rent of the Bond Street suite in which this interview was taking place, and that the present was the only tense which its landlord would understand. He asked: "Have you brought a check?"
Yes, she had done that.
CHAPTER ONE
ANTICIPATION OF A GOOD MEAL
SHE lay on her side. Her wrists were tied tightly behind her back. Her ankles were tied also, painfully. That was the one clear consciousness in a mind that was confused by two conflicting memories, and only dimly aware of the seated figure before her, in the gloom of the fire-lit room.
For the magician had kept his word. She could still remember that she was Marguerite Cranleigh - a memory still clear, but strangely remote. But she was Gleda now, and she could also remember the violence which that young woman had suffered in the last hour - the useless struggle against a strength far greater than hers; the binding of hands and feet; the rough tumbling into the bottom of the canoe, which, in the next moment, had been loosed from the bank, and swept down the swift current of the river toward the falls, and the sight of the strained face of the man who paddled desperately to escape a danger which, she supposed, must otherwise bear her to unavoidable death, bound as she was. (But what better had she to hope now, beyond the delay of a few hours?)
There had been the sound of the falls, louder and nearer with every stroke of the frantic paddle. And then the grating of the keel, as the canoe grounded, just as she thought that all hope had gone.
After that he had pulled her out, and flung her over his shoulder, and brought her here, for a purpose which she did not know, and could only fear - the man who was sitting before her now.
The magician surely could not have meant this - that she - Marguerite - should come here only to die in a few hours, and that in a most repugnant way, and for a use which no one would wish to serve. He must have made a mistake. Perhaps, when dealing with enormous distances of time, it was possible, even for his art, to be a few years, or a few centuries, wrong. Or a single hour might mean that the rolling earth would receive her at a widely different point. (Or was that nonsense, or not?) Or perhaps she was to have some miraculous escape, for which her ingenuity would be enough. But that was hard to think, for she - Gleda - was now on the side of the river far from any friend. And to recross it would be, for her, an impossible thing. She would have said impossible for anyone a few hours before.
She looked at the man. He was the largest, best-made man that she (as Gleda) had ever seen. Now he wrote as though he had no other interest on his mind; a student, rather than the man of action that she had seen him to be, to her own cost. He wrote as one who works against time, as, in fact, he did.
He wrote from right to left, using his left hand, which did not seem strange to her, though her dual memories conflicted. Would the old memory become weaker, and the newly acquired one stronger, as the days passed? That seemed likely enough, but, then, what days would there be? The consciousness of present peril, dimmed at intervals by the strangeness, the unreality, of the whole event, became acute. If there had been no mistake, and if she were to make no nearer acquaintance with the black caldron which stood by the great kitchen fireplace which could be seen through the half-opened door, she must exert her ingenuity to avert her impending fate. Could she break her bonds? It seemed hopeless to try as they now were. Could she induce him to ease them? Anything may be asked. She said: "The ropes are too tight. They are cutting my flesh."
He looked up. Speech was different on her side of the river, but not so much so that he failed to understand. She met eyes that were not hostile, but unconcerned. He said: "You must be safely tied. I do not mean you to wriggle free. If I should have to catch you again, you might get more hurt than you are now. You will not feel it for long. You must find comfort in that."
"It is no consolation at all. Could I not be of better use?"
"Not for us. We need food. Would I have risked so much for anything else?"
It was to continue the conversation, rather than from any acute discomfort in the fire-warmed room, that she went on: "I am cold, being uncovered. Is there any profit in that?"
The man did not answer, but he got up, showing a tall and muscular form. He wore a fur cloak, loose from his shoulders, open in front. He had no other garment at all. At need, he could draw it closely, fastening it with thongs.
Seeing his height and girth, she understood how he had been able to cross the great river below the peninsula, without being carried over the falls, which she had been taught to regard as beyond human capacity. From the point where the two rivers joined, there was no more than a half a mile of swift, smooth water. He had crossed it by launching his canoe at the highest possible point, and had been carried down the very verge of the falls before he could reach the opposite shore.
Then he had carried the canoe as far as would be of any avail up the opposite bank, lain in wait for one he could capture without rousing alarm, and had been fortunate enough (as he saw it) to get someone who was young and well-fed.
It had been a bold adventure, with extreme perils, both from the flood and from human foes. Yet his face was rather that of one who thought than of one who lived by physical deeds. Now it had no expression at all, as he took down a fur cloak from a wooden peg and threw it over her with a careless but accurate cast.
She saw that furs were everywhere. They hung on the walls. They made soft coverings for the floor. On her side of the river, this would be a certain sign that he was a man of high rank.
She might have said more, but at that moment a woman entered the room. She was young, and well, though rather heavily formed, yet with the gauntness that came from some weeks of scanty feeding.
She had a blunt-featured, unattractive face - particularly so to Gleda, as she licked her lips, and said: "What is the catch like?" adding: "I've not had a real bite since yesterday."
"You can judge that for yourself," he said, and already she had twitched off the fur, and was looking down on the bound form with greedy anticipation, hard to be endured.
She knelt down for closer examination, prodding here and there. She said, grunting with satisfaction: "She should be fit for the knife now. There's some meat there!"
She stood up, and walked round to her victim's back, pushing her toes into a well-shaped buttock. She said: "We owe Relf a ham. I suppose we must send it back. It's a better one than we had from him."
"Yes," the man replied. "I dislike a debt. I shall be glad for it to be cleared."
The woman left the room, followed by Gleda's warmest hatred.
Gleda said: "I should make a better wife for you than she."
The man gave her a glance which seemed both speculative and amused. He said "Well, so you might," but did not appear to regard the proposition seriously, and the woman was back before the idea could be developed further.
She came with a burden of wooden logs, which she piled on the fire. She asked: "You have all you need in the pen?"
He rose, saying: "I am not sure. Shall we go to see?"
She looked surprised, and made no motion to follow him as he moved toward the door. She said, while he opened it, and the light of the setting sun shone inward, relieving the gloom of the low-ceiled room: "You don't need me out there."
"Yes. Come on. There may be things to arrange."
She looked puzzled, but followed, being eager in her hunger that the details of slaughtering should not be delayed.
Gleda was left alone in the stillness of the fire-lit room. The shadows leaped on the walls. There was noise, and a scatter of sparks when a log fell, but she was unconscious of that. Her mind was on the terror of what must be in the next hour. Fundamental customs were the same on both banks of the river, on neither of which was cannibalism a frequent practice, as indeed, for economic reasons, it never has been, in the history of the human race, Supplies would fail. But if an enemy, a criminal, or a lunatic, had to be destroyed, who would waste good meat? There would be plain folly in that.
But now there must be a condition of abnormal famine, of which she had not been aware, so completely did the river separate communication. It was a division which had also secured her people from the same privations, for the epidemic which had destroyed the swine had not crossed the barrier of the flood.
Here was a civilization at once high and simple. Sources of food were few, but they had been normally reliable, and involved little toil. In the summer men fed largely on nuts and fruits, which the forests gave. During winter, which was sharp, though short, they relied mainly on stores of nuts, which would have been gathered on warmer days. And through all the year they had ample supplies of flesh from a species of swine, herding in half-wild condition in the great woods, which spread far in a level land. There were many clearings sufficient for the spacious wooden houses of a large population, but, instead of their being surrounded by wide open spaces of arable or pasture land, here which bore many varieties of nuts and fruits, edible in their seasons, or fit to be stored for the winter months. And, if they fell ungathered - well, there were the fattening swine below that would avert waste.
The trees gave abundant material for building. They provided fuel and food. Some of them supplied a thread from which strong cloth could be woven. Here was a civilization which had become simple and self-sufficient; which had rejected the worship of mechanical power, that had brought its predecessors to servitude, and then to destruction. Almost the only trade was with distant hillmen, who sold them furs in exchange for the food which they had always been able to spare abundantly. To use these skins was the privilege of the only aristocracy - an aristocracy of intellect - which their social order recognised or required. And the right to these skins was the only privilege which that aristocracy had. It had no power - unless that of persuasion - at all.
But now calamity had come. Fatal infectious disease was destroying their herds of swine in such great numbers it seemed that in a few further weeks there would be nothing left to destroy. It had followed months of drought, which were over now, and there was fresh green in the rain-drenched woods. But damage had been done which was quite as serious as the fever that killed the swine. For the nuts had fallen before they filled.
Loss of the nut crop would not have meant absolute famine, nor would loss of swine - but the two at once were bringing starvation upon the land.
Left alone, Gleda began a desperate, futile effort to loosen her bonds. She caused herself some additional pain, but otherwise did nothing, and it was only for a few brief moments that she had strained and wriggled when she was startled by a shrill and surprising sound.
CHAPTER TWO
SLAUGHTER
THE man led the way to a low-walled sty, where it was customary to confine captured swine, until they were slaughtered there. It was thickly strewn with a species of dried grass.
The woman asked: "What do you want me to do?"
"You might give the stone a turn."
She protested rather than asked "Couldn't you have done that?"
So he could. It was not a large stone. Such stones in that land were precious and few. But she gave it a few turns while he pressed the blade of a knife against it, which, she thought, was sufficiently sharp already.
Then he said: "That will do. But we'd better leave her a few hours yet," to which the woman gave a grunt of unwilling assent. She added: "There's nothing more to be done here?"
"No," he said. "Except this."
She had turned to go out of the sty, and he was immediately behind her. As he spoke, his left arm came round her, under her breasts, and his right, holding the knife, rather lower down. The point touched her navel, and he drove it in upward with a firm thrust.
As he pulled it out, she gave the shrill scream which Gleda had heard, and which caused her to pause in her useless wriggling.
The man's arm loosed her, and she stumbled forward, her hands pressing her belly in the vain, instinctive effort to hold back the spurting blood.
The man watched her for a moment, but there was no use in standing there. Everything which was necessary had been done. He went in.
Gleda saw him coming toward her, with the knife, which he had wiped on the grass, still in his hand. She gave so desperate a struggle that she actually felt her ankles loosen, at which he smiled.
He said: "I can do better than that." He bent over her and cut the cords. "You said you could make a good wife?"
She answered, with a sudden bewildered hope: "I could try."
"Then get on your feet. You'll be able to walk after a bit. It'll be dark in the next hour. There's a job to be done outside before that."
She got up, with little care for stiffness and pain, feeling that the price of life might have been much greater, and yet nothing to grudge. He took a good fur from the wall, and threw it over her shoulders, and then, on somewhat unsteady feet, she followed her new lord (if such he were to be) out to where a sky, which she might never have seen again, was rose-coloured with sunset light.
They came together to where the woman lay, face down on blood-soaked grass, her hands still under her belly.
The man looked at the grass. He said: "She must have run round for a bit" Gleda felt no surprise at that. She knew that the swine did so, which it was the custom of her land to slaughter in the same way. She could not be expected to feel dissatisfied by the event. She saw that she had come into the hands of a man of good judgment. One who could take a hint, and act promptly.
He picked up the dead woman's fur, which had fallen from her shoulders as she had stumbled about, looked at its condition critically, and hung it over the fence. Then he stooped down, caught her by an ankle, and twitched her over. He said: "You had a good thought. . . she is heavier than you. . . But she will take longer to boil. . . I will have no mess in the house. We must hang her here. . . You will bring the largest platters that you can find."
Gleda made no reply, but she went back to the house alone. She had never previously (in either life) been involved in the killing of anything larger than a wasp, but the closeness of her own escape modified her reactions now. He seemed to have no fear that she would attempt flight. Well, it would not be possible to recross the river; and to be caught would mean to be back where she was before. She would be a fool to try that.
She went into the kitchen where she found some large flat dishes, which she carried out. While she had been away, he had hung the carcass against a wall. In the new personality which she had assumed she had certainly had no previous experience in the disembowelling of women; neither had it been a customary occupation in the civilization from which she came. If she did not find it unendurably repulsive now, it must not be overlooked that she was dealing with one who would have considered squeamishness incomprehensible. The hatred that she had felt as the woman had prodded her, licking anticipatory lips, had not left her mind, and the thought that the positions would certainly have been reversed but for the man's sound judgment in preferring herself, dominated the revulsion which she might otherwise have experienced when the still-warm carcass was slit open and its contents distributed upon the dishes which she had brought.
When he said, as the light failed: "We'd better finish inside. Go ahead, and get a pot on the fire," she went willingly, noticing with satisfaction that he assumed her cooperation, and that she would find the kitchen utensils she might require.
It was some minutes before he followed, and then it was with a half-carcass under each arm, for he had considered that, had he hung it inside, there would have been insufficient space to wield the axe in the low-roofed kitchen. But there was an in-built shelf or table at one end, of its entire breadth, on which he laid his burdens, and proceeded to quarter them, as had doubtless happened to numerous swine before.
Gleda considered him speculatively as he did this. She sought to penetrate his character, which it had become very important for her to know. She reflected that a number of murderers of her previous existence must have treated their wives in the same way. There was Crippen - but she supposed that he had been urged by hatred in what he did. Probably he had had anticipatory pleasure in imagining what he might do, when he had been treated with indifference or contempt. Possibly the memory of indignities inflicted ultimately upon organs which had not been sufficiently complaisant to him had been consolation, even when he passed to the hangman's hands. But this man must have acted on sudden impulse in what he did, on the suggestion which she had made, and now he showed no satisfaction, nor did he appear revolted by his occupation. Beyond a remark upon the size of her kidneys, which he was evidently comparing with those which he more frequently saw, he said nothing, and showed no emotion at all.
This absence of tension was restful to her own nerves, which had been overexcited in the last hours. She did not entirely avoid speculating upon the possibility that she might be on the same table at a near date, but she had no acute or immediate fear.
For the moment, there was food enough. And she felt sure that the cannibalism which she was to share was not customary. The fact that he had taken so extreme a risk for her capture showed how desperate the need for food must have become; it also showed that his people were not adopting the easier expedient of slaughtering the weak or friendless among themselves.
It was true that, having obtained what he sought, he had substituted his own wife in what might be considered a most casual, and was certainly an unemotional, manner, but she could not doubt that it had been a sensible thing to do. She could never, surely, criticize him for that!
She thought also the event showed that the wizard who was primarily responsible for her presence there had not made the mistake that she had been inclined to lay at his door. But, all the same, she must not forget a warning which he had given her at an earlier time - that her safety in the new life into which she would be launched must depend on her own wits. He could have no continuing control over what might occur. . . She became conscious that the man was gazing at her, with the knife still in his hand, and a look in his eyes which she did not like. But then he said, as though she had spoken: "Yes, I see it's boiling. Take it off. We'll have fry tonight. But it won't be wasted. We both need a good wash."
CHAPTER THREE
LEMNO SETTLES A DEBT
GLEDA shared a meal during which little was said. She was cautious, lest she might say the wrong thing, which it would have been easy to do, and he did not appear to observe the silence, nor were his eyes directly upon herself. Had they been married partners for twenty years he might have acted naturally in the same way.
When they finished, he rose, saying: "I will pay a debt before I am asked. Relf shall hear of this first. He might think - You can clear while I am gone. But no. You shall come with me. It will make it all plain."
He went to the kitchen door (it was there that they had had the meal) and opened it to the cold air. She saw that it was now quite dark outside, though there were stars. She wondered whether those stars would show any difference from their order in her own time. But, if they did, she would be unlikely to see it. Her knowledge of the constellations was too vague for that.
The long fur garment hung loosely from his shoulders. Now, feeling the cold air, he drew it closely together, tying it down the front. Seeing this, she fastened her own in the same manner.
He said: "It s a short way to go. Can you carry a ham?"
"I can carry hers."
He did not appear to observe the tone. But she had learned already that his thoughts were not easy to read. Her predecessor (if she were really destined to take the vacated place) had certainly not been more successful in this. That belly-thrust must have been quite a surprise! It was a pleasant thought, which would have been more pleasant still could she have been quite sure that she would not be surprised in the same way.
They went by a narrow, tree-shadowed path, he going ahead, and she following closely behind. In a few minutes they came to a clearing, with a low-roofed house in its midst, similar to that which they had left. There was no fence or garden round it, as she was vaguely aware, her eyes having become used to the darkness beneath the trees. They went up to a door which opened at once, showing a fire-lit interior similar to that from which they had come.
A man faced them, with his back to the light, so that his features were not easy to see, but in build and height he was so nearly alike to the one who stood beside her that Gleda wondered whether there were a single pattern for all the men of that land.
When he saw who was there, he stood aside, saying, in the same toneless manner of speech: "Come in, Lemno, come in."
Lemno took Gleda's burden from her. He handed it to the man, saying: "I have brought you the ham I owe."
"That is good to hear. How did you get it?"
"It is Destra's."
"Destra is dead?"
"Well, I owed you a debt. . . And I may have got a new wife."
This remark turned their host's eyes upon Gleda. He grunted, then returned to the more urgent consideration. "Is it cooked?"
"No. She was only dead in the last hour."
"Then it soon will be. We have had no more than ten nuts today. We scrape in the forest mud for that which we seldom find. . . Plera," he raised his voice, "here is food. We must stoke the pot."
Plera came from an inner room. She was a more lithe better-featured woman than Destra had been. She asked "What is it?" There was eagerness in her voice.
"It is the ham that was owed to us. Destra's ham."
There was a note of incredulous merriment in the reply: "Destra's ham? Her own leg? Then she is dead! It is too good to be true."
There were no more words while, for the next few minutes, man and woman were busy about the hearth. Then Plera looked at Gleda for the first time. She said bluntly: "What are you? You must have been tied by the legs."
Lemno said: "I fetched her from the other side of the river."
There were two cries of surprise. Relf asked: "How could you do that?"
"Well, I did. Hunger drives hard."
Plera looked at her with more appreciative eyes than before. "So there will be more meat to come?"
Lemno shrugged. Gleda was not sure that she liked that. Yet it might have been worse. And it might mean no more than that he would keep his own counsel from those whose whom it did not concern. He said: "I must get back. I have been away from my work all day. When I think of the books that are still unread!"
"Yes, I have been busy. What are you reading now?"
"I am no further than the middle of the twentieth century of what was known as the Christian era during its own time. Others. who built on its ruins, gave it a worse name. It was a time foul beyond any words which are easy to find. Much of its records are unfit for the reading of decent eyes. Even though we starve, we may be of grateful heart that we live in a better day."
There was animation in their voices which Gleda had not heard before. She saw that they spoke of matters of greater interest to themselves than even a fat ham.
Well, she could tell him more about them than he would be likely to guess. He would be surprised if he knew how much!
But she had been puzzled by his remark that it had been so much fouler than his own time. It seemed a queer boast to make while his friends were putting his wife's ham into the pot - a wife who had been murdered by him. And it must be such an ordinary thing that the question of penalty or concealment did not arise! It must be no more than daily routine, And yet the dual memories which she had did not support the idea without most important qualification. She knew that cannibalism was not the custom of her side of the river, and had not thought it to be on this. Of course, there was the famine, of which she had not heard till she had been brought here. It might go far to justify her capture. But his own wife! She saw that it was no argument to observe that it had been fortunate for her. She must think it out. Or perhaps ask. But she spoke with caution on any matter. Her captor might have many virtues - she hoped he had. But, so far, he had not seemed to be of a chatty kind.
As she thought this, they were returning through the trees, and could already see the light of their own - home? She wondered what sort of home it would be for her.
CHAPTER FOUR
A QUESTION IN THE NIGHT
WHEN they had regained the inner room, Lemno turned and looked at her in a speculative way, and there were some silent moments before he asked: "You would be my wife?"
"Have I a choice?"
"You would prefer me to the pot?"
"Yes, I would." As she said it, a fear came. Suppose he should think her to be too cold, too reluctant in her replies? Might he not reject her for that? Suppose he should say at last: "But I am now of another mind. It is to the pot you shall go." Yet to profess desire for him, after the circumstances which had brought her there, might be going too far. She might be unable to give it a genuine sound. She said: "It is more than that. I am alone in a strange place. Who have I to look to but you? I might be of more use than you can yet see."
"A strange place?" he repeated. "I should say the difference is much less than that." She saw that he followed her words with a mind that was keen and alert, and that there had been something puzzling, less perhaps in the word than the tone in which it had been said. The partial consciousness of her earlier existence which had been allowed to remain had a treacherous side, which had nearly betrayed her now. Yet how dare she explain? She said weakly: "There are differences between the way I lived and what I have seen here."
He conceded, fairly enough: "Well, there are some," with no belief in his voice.
She thought it well to add: "There is the fact that I am here."
He took this better. He said: "Where you will remain." They both knew that a return to her own land would be most difficult to contrive. At the best, it would mean going far up the river, or below the falls, seeking a means by which it could be safely crossed, and her way, even before the main difficulties would be reached, would be through hungry and hostile men, who might think of her as a good meal, but, at the best, would spare nothing for her.
He went on, after a pause: "We will give it thought. For tonight, you can sleep here." He pointed to a corner of the room, where there was a small heap of folded furs. He added: "I must work late, having wasted much time for you. If I move about, it will be to make up the fire, which is kept alight. It will not be to disturb you."
She saw that that might be taken as a considerate remark, as perhaps it was, though it could be meant in another way. It was in an effort to establish a more personal contact that she asked: 'Why must you work so late? Is it so urgent that it should not have been left?"
He answered readily enough: "You do not guess what I do. It is my toil to inspect, and largely to read, all the books which have been written upon the history of men just as Relf studies religions, and Rakna, philosophy; and then I reduce them to what is reasonable to retain. Before the making of books was checked, men had accumulated more than it was possible for them to know, until they lost the ability to choose between a basic principle and a mere detail. Now we proceed in a wiser way, discarding much, and retaining only what can be coordinated on each subject by the mind of a finite man."
She said doubtfully: "Well, it has a sensible sound."
"It may be," he answered, "that the changes we have been able to make will save us from the wreck which has ended all previous civilizations, of which the records are many."
"Did the civilization of which you spoke tonight come to disaster?" she asked.
"So it must have done, or it would continue now. It was, in fact, succeeded by a time of very primitive barbarism, though of superior moral decency; but I have not yet come to that point. I examine all the records we have, going forward from year to year in an orderly way. . . It was a state of life which was monstrous beyond easy belief, so that its end, by whatever violence, must have been a blessing to those who survived."
He turned away as he said this, and she became discreetly silent, but she thought, as she lay awake, that she had found a way of establishing a possible intimacy such as Destra might not have tried, or, perhaps, been competent to sustain. Her knowledge of the times which he was now studying would be of the greatest value to her in making discussions of intelligent interest to him, though she would have to be careful; it would be easy to reveal too much, and who could foresee what this strong, strange man might do then?
She thought that it was a coincidence of almost miraculous quality that she should have been captured by one whose studies were so engaged, and he being, if she had understood rightly, the only one who was occupied precisely in that way.
Yet was it coincidence? Might not even this have been of the magician's design?
She tried to remember what her conversation with the magician had been, and was both annoyed and frightened to find that it could not be clearly recalled. Was the memory of the past (about which some bargain had been made: she was sure of that) to be no better than the recollection of a dream which a man may be unwilling to lose, but which becomes fainter even while he strives to recall it to waking thoughts?
She must endeavour to retain those memories, if necessary by deliberate recollections, when solitary opportunities might allow. . . But why should Lemno speak with such contempt of the civilization from which she came? She knew that it had developed some evil features: that its records, both of wickedness and folly, were black enough, especially in the incidence of its wars, but surely it had shown better qualities also? Vaguely, she had always thought of her own time as superior even to the centuries immediately preceding. . . And for him to talk so, with a steak from his wife's haunch already cut for his morning meal!
From these interesting abstract reflections, her mind returned to the immediate future - a dubious prospect of very limited attractions. The position was not one which she could accept passively as beyond her control. Its issue might depend entirely upon her own conduct and her own wits. She had saved herself already by the opportune suggestion that she would be better used as a wife than a meal, but for which she had little doubt that her joints would be distributed now, as those of Destra already were. For the rest, she saw that everything must depend upon the success with which she could fulfil the duties of the job she had taken on.
There came a time when he rose to build up the fire, and as he went back to his place, he looked at her and their eyes met. She knew then, unmistakably, that his train of thought had been close indeed to hers.
Seeing that she was awake, he asked abruptly, though still in the toneless voice which she felt to be no compliment to her: "You are virgin?"
The question was more complicated than he could reasonably have been expected to understand. For a moment it reduced her to silence. Then she replied fatuously: "Yes, I suppose I am."
He showed no sign of observing any ambiguity in this reply, and went back to his books.
Turning her mind to what we may call the left hand of her dual memories, she was glad to conclude that she had probably made a correct reply.
After that, she began to speculate upon what they would eat when Destra had done her part. She did not like the idea of ten nuts a day. It would be no better if she knew that those around her might be considering improvement of their own diet at her expense - and perhaps arguing the prudence of doing so before the meagre ration reduced her weight. She decided that she must aim to become a most desirable wife before that question should become acute. . . And, for the moment, the empty frying pan witnessed that she had had a good meal; on which thought she slept.
CHAPTER FIVE
MARRIAGE
SHE waked to find that daylight had come, and that Lemno sat at his table as though he had not moved during the night. Did he never sleep?
Her mind went back to the thoughts which had preceded her own response. Was she a virgin? As a physical fact, as applied to the body which she now had, she was disposed to think that she had given the right reply. Was it what he had wished to hear? That seemed likely too.
He was studying the history of her own time. She wondered with what parts of her world he was becoming familiar. It had been a crudity of the scientists of her time that they had inclined to presume that conditions had been similar in past ages over the whole earth. There might be evidences of a stone age in Nevada or Natal, but why should there not have been a civilization in Tibet at the same time, perhaps superior to anything which had been known subsequently? Even in her own day, in spite of its abnormal development of communications, to which it had sacrificed its prosperity if not its existence, there had been differences between Paris and Central Africa and the interior of Brazil. There was a talking point there, which could be developed without disclosure of what she must not reveal.
Lemno rose, yawning. He stretched his arms upward, so that they were near to reaching the low ceiling of the room. He came over to where she lay. He said: "You lie late." And then, as one who would be just in rebuke, he added: "But we will say there was cause."
She rose at once. She had supposed it to be an early hour. And she had wondered what would be expected of her when she was on her feet what her duties would be.
He gave her a first direction without delay: "You shall heat water first. You shall rub me down."
As the water warmed, he threw off his fur, and strode into the kitchen, a figure of vigorous masculine nudity which was not hard for her to admire. He stood erect and silent on a part of the floor which was slightly beneath the main level, of somewhat different and harder material than its polished boards, with a gutter along the edge. She stood hesitant, and he said, with more impatience than he had yet shown: "Well, will you begin?"
She said "I will do what you wish. It is strange to me."
"It is strange that you do not know where a sponge would be - a sponge which is in your sight now."
As he spoke, she knew; and became aware of a danger she had not realized before. She had two sets of memories, and she had thought that she must use care that those of her distant self - of her real self, she would have said - must not be allowed to fade. She had been dwelling on them, and had not realized that the two sets of memories could not be active at once.
Instantly, but none too soon, she became the girl he had captured the day before. She knew what to do now.
She took a sponge which was made of absorbent leaves, sewn together in a flat way, such as she had used all her life, and rubbed him down with warm water from head to foot as he stood motionless there, while a towel of somewhat similar material warmed at the fire. While he dried himself, she dealt with her own body in the same way.
His eyes were on her as she did this, in a fashion that she was not sure she liked, nor yet sure that she would not have. But he did not speak, and the short silence had seemed long by the time she put the towel down, and was conscious of the nervousness in her voice as she asked: "Shall I get breakfast now? Are there no nuts at all?"
"That can wait," he said. He caught her in a strong grasp. "Do you not know what a wife does - or is done to? Well, you are near to learn."
And in the next moments she did.
CHAPTER SIX
EVILS OF AN OLD TIME
THEY sat at the evening meal, about which they had agreed that Destra's liver was good.
Gleda ate with relish, the repulsion she might otherwise have felt at the consumption of human entrails being controlled by her hatred of the woman who had felt her own buttock with such greedy anticipation, prodding her like a pig. And the position might have been so precisely reversed! Her liver might have been on the dish, and Destra eating it now. It was impossible not to feel some satisfaction at that. And Destra's liver was good.
It had been a wonderful day. After the morning consummation, they had talked freely together, and found affinities of mind which (it was easy to guess) Destra had not possessed.
Indeed, a remark he had made during the day - that it was a good thing he hadn't put his knife into the wrong belly - was proof enough that he was contented with her, not only in herself, but in comparison with what might have been.
Now she was asking: "If it's true you've not been cannibals till now, any more than we are on the other side of the river, how did you owe Relf a ham?"
"Relf had a man at his house who fell off a tree gathering nuts."
"Not really?" Everyone was so at home in the trees! And the trees were the safest of all.
He did not resent her exclamation of incredulity. He explained: "The only nuts left hanging were on the extreme outer boughs, such as we had never had occasion to gather before."
"Yes. . . I see. Was he killed?"
"No. But it was unlikely that he would have lived. He was badly hurt. And we were starving men."
"Will you tell me why the times about which you are reading were so bad? Were they worse than these?"
"There could be no reasonable comparison. These are probably the best that have ever been. Those were indescribably bad."
"Did they eat each other?"
"I have come on no evidence that they did, so I cannot say. But it is a point of little importance It is not what they did to the dead, but to the living."
"Do you mean that they had horrible wars?"
"They did. Very horrible ones. But I did not mean that. The worst wars have a heroic side. It was not what they did to their enemies but to their friends by which their values were shown. Can you believe that they used to kill children so that they could move about quickly?"
"But not intentionally."
"You said that as though you know something about them yourself."
"But how could I?"
"No. But, in an unimportant way, what you said was right. They knew that large numbers of children would be killed every week by what they did, though not which children, nor which of themselves the killers would be. And, so far as I have been able to find the facts, they had no reason for speed. They were not frightened of anything. They were not running away."
"As you put it, it certainly has a strange sound. I suppose they would have made it appear in another way."
"No doubt they would. But I have told you the fact, on which their records are clear. They used to count the dead every month, and compare them with what they had done during the same month of the previous year. It must have been a kind of game. . . But there were other features of that time which were more fantastic, though not worse. There were their laws."
"Did they have many bad ones?"
"It was a question concerning which no man, even though he should give a whole life to their study, could be fully informed. There were too many for that. There was one country, England, where the making of restrictive laws was so excessive that its parliament could not produce new ones quickly enough to suit them, so they delegated authority to many officials who could make laws which their fellowmen must obey, as rapidly as they could dictate or sign them."
"It does sound absurd."
"I have not yet come to the point at which the final result of such a form of civil organization will appear, but some of its consequences in the decade with which I am dealing had been slightly mitigated by the fact that men had largely lost respect for laws which were broken continually, both through ignorance and resentment; and it followed from this that standards of both public and private honour were declining.
"It is particularly curios that while offences against these arbitrary edicts - which, had they not been declared illegal would not have been wrong at all - were punished with increasing severity, sometimes with fines of fantastic amounts; crimes against individuals, whether of violence or greed, were condoned, and, unless they were persistently committed by the same individual, were hardly punished at all.
"In that country, a period of decadence was also threatened by the fact that the products of a man's labour had ceased to be under his own control, a very large proportion of every income being seized by the state, and spent - more or less - for him, as the governing officials might consider his welfare required, after it had inevitably been much reduced in amount by deductions for their own support, and that of the civil armies which they maintained for distribution, regulation, and control."
"But you don't know how it all ended?"
"Not yet. I expect I shall within a year, or perhaps two. That depends upon how soon the end came."
He went on to explain his work, as that of one of those who had undertaken the coordination of human knowledge, his subject being political history. For that purpose, all relevant books, having been already assembled, were submitted in chronological batches for his inspection. Some of these he would entirely preserve. Some he would summarize. From others he would abstract passages of separate value. But always he would retain a clear purpose of reducing the records of the past to a compass which would be within the possible study and comprehension of one man's brain, within the duration of human life.
Large deliveries of these books were made every four months, when there would be removal of those with which he had dealt. One was now due in two days' time, and - which had never occurred before - he would not be completely ready for the exchange. He had been working against time, having been weakened by shortage of food, and delayed by searching for it, before he adopted the desperate expedient which had resulted in her capture, and it had now become necessary for him to send a telepathic message to postpone the delivery.
She asked: "Can you do that?"
He looked surprised. "Have you no knowledge of telepathy on your side of the river?"
The question caused her a momentary confusion. She had been talking to him in the personality of Marguerite Cranleigh, her mind cautiously alert to avoid disclosure of how much she knew of, and how directly she was interested in, the period of which he spoke. And now she had another experience of how hard it was to transfer to another personality with the memories belonging to it.
But the awkward silence ended when she replied: "We know what telepathy is, but do not practice it in such ways."
"By preference or inability?"
"I don't think we could."
"We have always considered that you were savages; but I should not have thought you to be so primitive as that must imply."
"We are not savage at all. We have a gracious and kindly civilization, sufficient for our own contentment."
"Then you must be easily pleased. . . Yet you are an intelligent specimen. I will admit that."
It was a compliment which, in view of the final experience of his previous wife, she was pleased to have, though she had already reached a comfortable conclusion that she was in no immediate danger of a similar fate. She saw also (but must not say) that it might be praise, not of those who were in his thoughts, but of the older civilization which he had condemned in vigorous words.
She revealed another unspoken thought when she replied: "Perhaps, if she'd had more brains, she wouldn't have had such a good liver."
"It is an interesting speculation. Am I to understand that yours would not be worth frying?"
She felt that the subject might be advantageously changed, and replied lightly: "Yes. Too tough to bite, more likely than not." (She remembered a friend of her far-off days saying how much she disliked a man looking at her as though she were naked. But how much worse it was to be looked at with eyes that seemed to go a lot deeper than that!) She went on rapidly: "Can you really use telepathy to communicate with anyone as you wish, or does it work along special lines?"
"It depends upon vacant receptivity; or stimulation of any mind not too explicitly concentrated."
"I see. . . So you don't expect any difficulty?"
"It is most improbable. There would be difficulty if a general referendum were being made."
"Will you do it now?"
"No. Later. When I shall be better able to estimate what further time I still require. But it must be in time to allow of - " He broke off abruptly. He said, with curt emphasis: "Be silent until I speak." And then his eyes changed their focus, as though they looked at a distant thing.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A NATION ASSERTS ITS WILL
NOW they sat very still, while she thought: "If it takes all this time to say that by telepathy, I call it a slow game.
But, after that, she found that foreign thoughts were invading her own mind, which was soon protesting against them, though with consciousness of the futility of opposition to the force of a hundred thousand contending wills that gained each moment in volume and intensity. Then gradually they came to a unity of resolve as to what they would undertake, to overcome the famine conditions which threatened universal starvation before another season's crop of nuts and fruits should be ripe - and which, even then, would be a meagre subsistence unless the epidemic which had already almost destroyed their swine should be arrested while there were still sufficient remaining alive to breed supplies for the coming year.
The resolve which had now been brought to an apparent unanimity was that food should be sought by penetrating, with whatever violence might be necessary, to the resources of other lands. And, that being agreed, there was next a momentous question to be resolved - in what directions, one or more, should they set out?
For those in Lemno's part of the land, there was the choice of going down the river, below the falls; of going far west, leaving the river at their backs, or of going up the river, and crossing, if they could, above the rapids, to ravage Gleda's people.
Gleda realized that the first of these propositions was not seriously regarded. It was only slightly considered, so that its rejection might be clearly agreed upon. Below the falls there were great stretches of malarial swamps.
To turn their backs on the river was a very different enterprise, for there, beyond the wide, well-wooded plain on which they dwelt, the land rose, not in sudden hills, but by gradual arid, treeless and windswept slopes, where there was as little to sustain life as there was life to be sustained. But, beyond that, there were great nations in fertile lands, and there was a difference of opinion as to whether they should proceed by threats of violence or peaceful appeal.
To go up the river was obviously the best course.
Above the rapids, two rivers joined. To continue along the nearer bank would be to go far north through their own land, till they would come at last to the impregnable barrier of the great mountain range in which both rivers rose. There would be no profit in that.
But to cross the two rivers, which were separately less formidable, and gentler in their currents, above the rapids, would mean that they must traverse the intervening peninsula, and come at last to Gleda's own country, where no swine plague had raged, though the arboreal harvests had failed, and where the people themselves might furnish a cannibal banquet for starving men.
But - to cross even the tip of the peninsula between? Gleda knew the doubtful peril of that, and wondered, till her mind was borne down by surrounding wills, that, in whatever extremity, it should be considered at all.
The great mountain range was more than a hundred miles away. The two rivers rose about forty miles apart. The space between was a wooded triangle of about two thousand square miles, which, for almost a generation, had not been invaded by human feet.
In the reason for this lay the explanation of much in the constitution of the life around her which had been puzzling to Marguerite Cranleigh, however commonplace, by familiarity, it might have become to Gleda's mind.
There had been, at a quite recent period, a complex civilization, in which the pursuits of science had been honoured and physical laws (as in the far-distant period which Lemno was now studying) had been exhaustively examined, with a view to their alteration and improvement for the benefit of mankind.
There had been a minority who had been unfriendly to these pursuits, to which they attributed the collapse of previous civilizations, but they had been generally ridiculed. They had been called reactionaries, which was regarded as an obviously conclusive word.
At this time there had been a research worker named Ragli, who, having reason to believe that he had discovered a process which would overcome the natural law restricting the size of insects, could not resist the temptation to prove his theory by experiment, from which he expected to gain the respectful publicity which scientists, being human, do not despise.
That which he sought he gained, to a measure beyond his wildest hopes.
He injected his preparation into a mature aphis of a bisexual species, but without producing the effect at which he had aimed. Being unwilling to accept the verdict of a single defeat, he experimented upon others, with equally negative results. But his disappointment was soon over, for these aphides laid eggs. In fact, they laid from 500 to 600 each, and as these eggs produced others, which grew to the size of an ox in less than two days, and as an aphis can eat its own weight at a single meal, it will be seen that it was not a matter which could pass without observation.
Fortunately, the aphis is not formidable (except for its appetite), even when it is of the size of a large cow. There was a short period of liveliness, and then the stench of a great fire, into which many bodies were cast; and after that there was no remaining sign of what had occurred, except in the desolation of many miles of previously cultivated ground.
The author of this mischief expressed no repentance. He said that the massacre should not have occurred. He argued that they would have proved to be useful cows in other respects than size. Were there not species of aphides which were milked by ants? And should men be less shrewd than they?
But this dispute was interrupted by an unexpected and disconcerting event. Another insect, of more formidable character, the tiger beetle, developed to a similarly monstrous size, as did a species of spider.
How these things occurred was hotly contested, and it is needless to debate the two theories which divided scientific support; but there could be no disposition to doubt the facts.
The tiger beetle is much larger than any aphis, and, having a better start, it went further ahead.
The incidence of the event was different. The tiger beetle does not lay 600 eggs at express speed, and those it does produce have a different process of development. These facts would have allowed more time for dealing with what was to prove a menace to the existence of men, had the danger been recognised at an early stage.
As it was, the warfare that followed was of so desperate a character, and, for a time, so dubious of result, that the spiders, which otherwise would have aroused widespread loathing and fear, received literally no attention at all, except from those who felt the grip of their fatal claws.
The beetles had ravaged half a continent before the last one had been turned on to its back, to kick impotent legs above the boughs of surrounding trees. But when this menace had met its end, people became aware that there was a part of the world where no man could rest in his own house without the fear that a green shadow might fall upon it. Then a door or window would be torn away to make entrance space for a huge, hairy, many-jointed arm to enter and grope about for such soft and succulent things as the sensitive hairs upon it would decide fit for the meal of a creature which fed too delicately to swallow more than the squeezed juice of its living prey. It was a menu on which men came to take a high place, and it was the spider's unpleasant habit to scrape out a house very thoroughly before going on to the next.
The war that followed was not, by this time, easy to win, but it was helped by the fact that spiders do not breed very quickly, and that many species (including that of which an enlarged edition had now appeared) have a frugal custom of eating their own offspring, to which they may consider that they have the first right.
But, as their young do not approve of this prompt and equitable termination of separate life, some have a habit of climbing on to their mothers' backs, where they will not be molested, until they have become sufficiently developed for rapid flight and independent life; at which stage some of them will escape, though, if the devil does not take the hind-most, their mother will.
But this program required the presence of herbage high enough to screen their flight, or roots under which they could creep, and, in their enlarged form, cover was less easy to reach, so that the elder generation fattened more than the younger increased.
To hasten the results of this natural process, attacks upon these active and vicious monsters were directed almost exclusively upon the females, by which means it was calculated that the labour of their extermination would be shortened, though scarcely halved, for the females were far the more formidable antagonists.
There came a time when only male spiders remained (or so, at least, it was confidently supposed), and the great majority of these were in the triangular area, bounded by the two converging rivers and the great mountains from which they sprang. By this time, the toll of life had been so heavy, and the destruction of property so great (for it had become habitual for the spiders to tear apart the houses which they searched for victims, after they had been partly frustrated by barricading devices in the lower rooms), that a proposal to terminate the struggle by evacuating the peninsula until, by process of time, the remaining male spiders should die, was favourably received. This procedure had been followed, in the belief that the last female had been destroyed, and that a comparatively short period would be sufficient to clear the land, there being no reason to suppose that increase of bulk would affect the natural process of age and death.
So the great peninsula had been entirely abandoned, and its spiders had been left to find what food they could in the absence of human prey, and to live to whatever age it might have become natural for them to do; and those that remained in the still-inhabited lands, not being numerous, had been exterminated while many houses still stood, and many people remained alive.
Two years later, a number of volunteers had crossed the river in canoes, landing on a bare spit of low land that lay at the junction of the two rivers, and cautiously penetrated for some distance into the interior forest to ascertain whether the spiders still lived.
It was a great hazard for a great stake, for if they were dead there was a wide area, largely of fertile forest land, to be reoccupied by mankind But they did not go far enough to see an adult spider They saw something worse. They saw two young ones, which could not have left their mother's back more than a few days, but which were already of a size to cause a very hurried retreat. It was evident that at least one female had been left alive, and that the pests were breeding anew.
Since then, the great triangle of infested land had been left alone, with the precaution of keeping a lookout higher up the stream, where it rose in the distant mountains, and so far down as it might be possible for a spider to cross, but none had been seen (for this was in a region of ice and snow), and none had appeared in any part of the inhabited lands.
To face them again in the region which they had been left to possess might be a dreadful hazard, but there was the encouragement of alternative possibilities: they might find that the spiders had died out, and that they had come into a land of plenty; or, even though that might be called a poor hope, they might have the good fortune to cross the extreme point of the land without molestation, and find their plunder beyond.
CHAPTER EIGHT
A PLAN AGREED
AS confusions of conflicting thoughts gradually cleared and unified, it became evident that, while the main effort would be directed westward, there were some, particularly in the territories adjoining the river, who would prefer the hazards of the eastern venture
Among those who preferred to explore this outlet, a plan gradually took agreed shape by which they would attempt to cross the nearer river, opposite to the end of the peninsula, and either explore its possibilities, or, if the spider peril should seem too great to challenge, cross the second river, and attempt to find food, of whatever kind, in Gleda's native land.
For this purpose, all available fishing canoes (of which there were many in the upper river, before the two joined) were to be assembled facing the peninsula, where they could make any number of journeys necessary before being dragged across it, and launched on the second river, if it should be decided to go farther.
These canoes were not large. They were laborious to make. and only useful for fishing, as landings on the spiders' bank had ceased during recent years. The whole of them could not convey more than a few score at one time, so that numerous crossings would become necessary should those willing to join the enterprise be adequate for its success.
The chaos of contending telepathies had quietened and unified as the minds of the great majority of the nation, who accepted the western project, withdrew from Gleda's consciousness, and those more nearly around her separated into their own definite and coherent purpose. Now she became aware that Lemno's mind, apart from the impact of its contiguity, had become a directing force to which others were consenting, and that it had proposed that those who wished to join the enterprise should assemble on the river bank by the evening of the next day. Then she realized, with keener interest, that he was asserting that he had already captured one of the people of the opposite bank; and that this might have contingent advantages, should they find the spiders still in possession of the peninsula, and adopt the alternative plan.
When this had received a vague but general approval, he went on to give the idea that he had secured her loyal cooperation by making her his wife in place of Destra, with whom he had dealt in what he represented without concealment as having been an appropriate manner.
This information having produced a confused, indeterminate reaction, through which hostile criticism if not condemnation seemed to be gaining force, he went on to propose that the material result of his homicide should be at the disposal of those who would join the expedition. The transaction had to be considered not merely as the slaughter of an unsatisfactory wife, which he would be reluctant to advocate as a general practice, but as having both provided him with a better substitute, and the community with food which was desperately needed to strengthen them for the expedition.
Looked at in that comprehensive manner, it was clear again. The population was the same as before, and they had some meat, if not much, at extreme need. There was no necessity to suggest the further possibility that Gleda might be of tho same use, for the scale was already down.
As Lemno's will asserted itself to secure a general adoption of this view of the matter, he went on to picture the hazardous exploit by which she had been taken, until he won not merely the admiration which he had earned, but an illogical feeling that it had been adventured rather for the community than himself - a bold hazard to provide meat before the expedition should start, and to obtain a source of information and guidance, if they should adventure the crossing of the farther river.
As the tension of telepathic conflict relaxed, and it became possible to reflect without feeling the pressure of other minds, Gleda said: "It is easy to understand the furs now."
CHAPTER NINE
PRELUDE TO PERIL
SOOTHED by the greater simplicity of Gleda's mind, she fell easily into deep and restful sleep; yet within, the mind of Marguerite Cranleigh busied itself computing and comparing, matching and measuring and analyzing her strange adventure.
Perhaps she had never consciously turned her thoughts to an examination of mankind as a social entity, a single, multicelled creature crawling blindly through history. Mankind had, it seemed, always been complacently certain that its present was necessarily superior to its past, and that its future would surely bring it another step heavenward. It always called itself "civilization." Could this era be called a civilization, when a man could, with impunity, put a knife into his wife's belly and her kidneys upon the grill?
And yet - was not the great telepathic communion she had witnessed a step forward, a truer democracy than that which she had known in her time? The twentieth-century politician was more concerned with popularity than with leadership, and great, obvious trends, like a falling birthrate or a cessation of essential migration would be ignored, or even condoned, if that should serve his popularity. She recalled the case of a strong man called to lead her nation in a death struggle, who, when the fight was won, was rejected in favour of men who easily pledged themselves to what they could not possibly do.
Then perhaps Lemno's was a higher culture after all; for it had both the reverence for the mass mind and the ability to follow a strong leader. And yet - where was the strength in a civilization which possessed, through books, the riches of past great technologies, and yet would undertake an expedition against a stronger, more numerous, better-fed people, and go through a land of monsters in the process, armed with nothing but their wits and perhaps an axe or a bow?
Then she let speculation cease, and her twentieth-century mind sank into that of the sleeping Gleda, and slept restfully with it.
But speculation returned as she sat with Lemno at the morning meal; and when she questioned him as to the adequacy of the resources of his boasted civilization to deal with this animal - no, not animal - with this insect - but they were not insects - say, with this bestial plague, he was frank in reply: "It is certainly true that there was much available in past ages in mechanical equipment and weapons which it might be advantageous for us to have, but which we could not provide, if at all, without too great a delay. But we abandoned these things deliberately, to attain a real civilization, and we must accept the disadvantages which result. The price of their production, in every previous attempt at civilized life, has been individual anxieties and almost universal toil. We have tried for something better than that, which need not have been jeopardized now, had we had sufficient prudence to accumulate a reserve of food. But I suppose that we shall do well enough, if we can return before the cold season comes. We must use the nut bags for our minimum of essential needs. We shall have axes and knives and swine-prodders which may be weapons enough. Men must not over burden themselves, being half-staved, as they are. The habits of slave civilizations are too entirely abandoned - and were too recently known - to be readily adopted again, even at a great need."
The nut bags were a kind of knapsack used when men climbed to gather nuts for winter storage. They were of more than sufficient size to contain the few personal necessities which Lemno thought it useful to take. Their main load, besides their primitive weapons, would be the meat of which they would soon be relieved, and concerning which Relf's wife, Plera, was already at the door to offer the help of Relf s household for its transport to the meeting place on the bank of the upper river.
Being thanked for this, she showed no haste to be gone. Plera was one who was always willing to talk, and she had a most natural curiosity concerning the events which had brought Lemno a wife from a strange land, and transformed Destra into a neat heap of succulent joints.
Gleda told her freely what had occurred, for she had a friendly smile, which was easy to trust, and added: "I am not the one to complain, knowing that I should be lying there on the slab, had not Lemno made the choice which he did. But it is strange to me that the men of your land should be allowed to kill their wives, and that there should be no law which they have occasion to fear."
Plera looked puzzled. "How could a law prevent that?"
"It mightn't exactly prevent it, if a man were resolved to do it at any cost, or if he thought he could conceal it successfully," Gleda admitted. "But it could punish him if he were caught, and would be an example for others who might be tempted. That hardly needs arguing."
"I don't say it does. But I believe there used to be such laws in terms which were far worse than ours."
"That's just what I'm doubting." Gleda recognized that it would be best to avoid assertion of incredible knowledge. But had not Lemno told her so much? And who would check on the exact limitations of that? She went on: "There was a time called the Christian era, which Lemno was telling me about yesterday. He said it was worse than this. But no one could have killed anyone under their law without the probability that he would be caught and hanged."
"Doesn't that prove what he said?"
"Does it? You mustn't think I'm complaining about what happened to Destra. I know I'm not the one to do that. But - "
"I should think not, indeed!"
"Well, that's what I said. But - "
"There's no but about it. It needed doing, whether he'd caught you or not."
"Do you mean she was such a bad woman?"
"I don't mean that she did the kind of things that laws used to punish. There must often have been excuses for them. What they called temptations. But she did worse things. She used to make Lemno's life wretched with her tongue, and in other ways. It went on until Relf made some excuse to get her by herself at our house, and when she went home she had less skin on her buttocks than when we put her across a chair. She was a lot better for that, especially after we made her come next week and thank us for what we'd done."
"Doesn't that just show what good things punishments are?"
The question reduced Plera to a short silence, after which she said frankly: "But it wasn't quite the same thing. You see, we knew what we were doing. It wasn't like strangers butting in, and talking as though a law were something above themselves, without using their own judgment, like serving a god. And when you talk of killing people you've got nothing against, because they killed someone who may have driven them mad - well, I should say that the first killing might have been bad or good, but the second would be bad beyond doubt at all."
"You seem to take no account of its being a warning to other killers."
"Well, as to that, you'd have to prove that there'd be more than twice as many killings if there were no punishments, before you'd have a leg to stand on. And even then there'd be the question of whether it's right to do things that you know are wrong because there may be good results in another way. But that wasn't really the argument that made us decide that no civilization could be any good unless it were without laws. It was the fact that people felt that they'd got to act according to law, even though they might think it bad for the case they tried. They thought law was super-human; and sub-human was what it was."
"I think you have overlooked one thing in what you were saying - that murderers were not usually violent killers of provocative pests. They often had much meaner motives, and their crimes were very cunningly done."
"Then it must have been very hard to be quite sure they'd got hold of the right man. And very tempting to make a guess, after all the fuss and trouble there'd been; and those who guess may guess wrong.
"Don't you think that if it had been left for general discussion - if anyone wanted that - or for those who knew most about it to deal with it in their own way, or to leave it alone, there might have been better justice, as well as a lot less misery?"
"It does sound reasonable," Gleda conceded readily. "It seems to me that it would depend most upon the characters of those in whose hands it would be left." Perhaps, she thought, laws are good for those who would not otherwise conform to civilized ways, but no civilization can be secure until it has arrived at a higher stage. But it also occurred to her, none too soon, that she might easily reduce her own popularity by too warm a defense of an ancient time, which should be nothing to her. And, beyond that, she was less than sure that these people were wholly wrong.
CHAPTER TEN
A QUESTION ABOUT CHILDREN
PLERA spoke as though she were coming with us," Gleda said, as she and Lemno were packing their bags. "I shouldn't have thought the women would be so keen on it, seeing how dangerous its likely to be. Will there be anyone else from there?"
"I doubt it. There's only Relf's father, who's getting feeble, and his sister, who's rather lame. But as to the women going, you must remember how hungry they are. I don't say they'll all want to go over the river. But there won't be many round here who won't get as far as the bank. And I expect they're hoping for a bit of our meat, which most of them can't possibly get."
"How about leaving the children?" As she asked this natural question, it occurred to her for the first time that she had seen none; but, after all, in two homes only - And yet, Destra's insides had shown signs of -
"The question, he said, "doesn't arise, except at the rearing-pens, where proper arrangements will doubtless be made. But they are too far away for anyone to join our expedition from that district."
"You don't keep your children at home?"
"No. Do you keep yours? But we've no law about that now, and every year there are more people who rear them themselves, although it makes their lives harder in many ways."
"You weren't allowed to before?"
"Not when we were under the curse of law. It wasn't likely that a bureaucracy, when it became well established, would leave people to make their own choice in such a vital matter as that. The law was that every young married woman must contribute three children - one every four years - and if she should fail to do that, she would be removed, and the man provided with a more amenable wife."
"That was hard on her, if she couldn't."
"It was expensive, but not as bad as it sounds. People have been adroit in all ages to avoid the worst effects of the laws they are weak enough to let other men lay on their backs. There were many women who liked to produce children - or who made a trade of it - and they would sell them at the best price they could get. It meant that occasional surplus children had to be destroyed, which everyone regretted, but they argued that it was the law, and that respect for law is the foundation of every civilized state. So it may be; and that was why we blew the foundation up."
"Have you got any children there?"
"Destra had two. She would not keep them here, so they had to go. Their numbers are branded beside the door. In that respect, the old system has been continued, it not being worth anyone's while to object."
"But, if I have a child, I can keep it here?"
"Yes. It's a free country now."
"I don't wonder people came to hate laws."
"Yes. I suppose what they used to call communism in the era I was talking about yesterday will always defeat itself in the end in that way. But it's a hard road. . . I've got to go out now, and arrange for some of our neighbours to take the canoe. We shall be loaded enough, without that."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MAINLY CONCERNING SPIDERS
WHATEVER differences there may have been between Gleda and Marguerite, they were alike in knowing very little about spiders, and, had they been asked, they might have agreed in saying that there was very little to know.
They might have described them as small black creatures (probably as insects) having an excessive number of legs, and a habit of spinning webs in which they caught flies and other small creatures on which they fed. Marguerite would have added that she had been told that female spiders sometimes eat their husbands when they have finished with them for other purposes.
Either of them would have been surprised to learn that they are not insects, but an entirely separate order of creation, and that a list of twenty thousand would not exhaust their known varieties, with differences far greater than those which divide mammals, or birds, or fishes, so that there is more unlikeness between one spider and another than between a cat and an elephant, in size, in structure, in colour, in diet, and in the conditions in which they live.
There are spiders with only two lungs; there are some with four. Their eyes vary in number and in position. They may have essential organs relegated to the lower end of a limb.
They have possessed the whole earth, from Arctic to Antarctic regions. Some species live in the highest mountains, some beneath rivers, some in the sea. Some catch their food in webs, some lie in wait to leap upon it, some chase it and run it down.
In intelligence, comparisons between them and the human race are not easy to make. In adaptability to environment, they have shown superiority. In numbers, they have so great an advantage that it would be an incalculable underestimate to say that they are a hundred millions to one. To a detached observer of our small planet, it might seem evident that men, in comparison, are of no importance at all.
The points on which all their species agree are those which separate them furthest from humankind. They have no heads; their lungs, few or many, are in their hindquarters; their organs of generation are not confused with those of evacuation, but in separate parts of their bodies. Compared with the body of a spider, that of a man may be considered a clumsy experiment, the mistakes of which were not repeated when the next creation was put in hand. Incidentally, they disprove the idea of evolution as a blind force, for there are respects in which nothing but intelligent fore-thinking design could have brought them to what they are.
Could man and spider bridge the immense physical and ethical distances that divide them, so that they could debate their relative positions in creation's scales, the spider might assert with confidence that his bodily structure is superior, and that he has shown at least equal intelligence in the methods by which he has possessed the earth; while ethically man could only hope to avoid an argument that he could never win, for though there may be occasions when the hunger of a female spider will overcome her kindlier impulses, so that she will eat a husband whose use is done, and though there may be some of her race who eat a proportion of young they tend, they practice no cruelties upon one another which can be considered seriously comparable to those which are the continual record of the dealings of man with man.
It is true that the differences among the various forms of sentient life on the earth are so trivial that it might seem futile to any really different being that such an argument should be raised at all. They all pass through a period of growth and immaturity; their organs are similar; they live by feeding; their lives are occupied in providing that food, and producing a new generation in kindred ways; they grow old and die. There are a hundred similarities for every difference which can be found, and these similarities are more fundamental.
But the spiders could argue with some confidence that while they sustain life by slaughtering other species, they do not descend to the crudities and brutalities of the slaughterhouses of mankind, but kill the creatures they require, whether caught by web or chase or a sudden leap, with an injection of poison which is instant in its effects.
They could argue that their method of reproduction - the eggs in the spun cocoon - is immeasurably more civilized than that which retains the fetus in the mother's body, to be expelled at last in an unsightly manner, dangerous and painful both to mother and child.
They might even be indelicate enough to allude to the fact that their organs of copulation are not in the rear of their bodies, which they reserve for inferior purposes, but are centrally situated in the female, and, in the male, at the end of the left arm, so that (should they be silly enough to attempt it) it would be without embarrassment that they would explain the facts of life to the young.
These are points of superiority to which reply would not be easy to make; and it might be added that there is overwhelming advantage in being so much smaller, size only existing relatively, and this difference meaning that they inhabit a planet millions of times larger and more complex than that which must be good enough for mankind.
But this last advantage had been suddenly and completely lost by some members of the Arachnida, which had found themselves in a dwarfed world, in which the giant trees had shrunk, in which movements had been impeded, and in which food had become much harder to secure.
Either Marguerite or Gleda would have said carelessly that spiders are black, though a challenge of that might have brought vague memories of brown or speckled bodies (or were they crane-flies which also have legs which are much too long?), this being one of many matters concerning these creatures on which Gleda had much to learn.
For these enlarged spiders, which, at an earlier time would have been said to be more or less of the family of the Sparassidae, and of the species Micrommata viridissima, were green, with a darker patch, yellow-edged, on the forward abdomen, over the heart; while the male (as with all spiders) was smaller; and its abdomen was splendid with scarlet and yellow bands.
Accustomed to hold with firm feet to the surface of a wind-swayed leaf, to which their colour would blend invisibly till they should leap upon some incautious insect, how should they have adapted themselves to survive in a world which had ceased so radically to be adapted to them?
CHAPTER TWELVE
GOOD CAUSE TO FEAR
IT was late afternoon when Lemno's little party came to what was already a large crowd on the river bank.
They had been met some miles before by a gaunt, hungry gathering, which threatened trouble, until Lemno pointed out to them both that the meat was uncooked, and that he would resist with deadly violence any attempt to take it from him. "If any of you make that kind of trouble," he said, "there'll be more meat for the pots tonight, so you'll please us all if you do."
It was a method of relieving famine which they could not be expected to welcome, and they restrained themselves, from that or other considerations, until the river showed through the trees.
Lemno said afterwards that it was the absence of law which had prevented riot, at which Gleda, who had feared violence from that defect, had expressed surprise. But he explained that law had continually proved unequal to restraining an excited mob. But among these folk, there was the general knowledge that good conduct was a personal obligation to the community, with a constant fear that, should they misconduct themselves, they would be subjected to private justice, and might even be doing something which would tend to lead the whole community back to the hated bondage of law. In that paradoxical sense, it might even be said that the fear of law had been their restraint. But it is relevant to observe that good manners were always more general among those who practiced the private duel.
The canoes made their first crossing as darkness fell. Most of them were small, and the total load was not more than seventy men. Lemno and Gleda were among those who were first to cross. As they went down to the bank, they passed a caldron, hanging over a low wood fire, in which Destra's bones were being boiled, to make a thin soup which was doled out to those who were first to venture - and might be last - for it had been agreed that they should explore the dangers of the peninsula before there would be a general invasion, or a final decision as to whether its interior should be occupied, or if it should be rapidly crossed to exploit the possibilities of the land beyond.
It was a hazardous adventure, and there had been some delay in obtaining the necessary numbers of volunteers. They must enter a land which had been abandoned for many years, and might be occupied by such a multitude of the giant spiders that their weapons would be no more than abortive toys; or they might find that the spiders were dead, in which case the land might have suffered from the same drought as their own - there must be expectation of that - but might still be a reservoir of essential food, abounding with swine which the epidemic had failed to reach.
If the spiders were there, they must attempt to cross the tip of the peninsula without attracting attention, which might be done safely in the night hours, and there were some, for this reason, who would have preferred that nothing should first be tried which might stir attention to what they did. But yet, if the land were empty - no, it was not a doubt they could leave unproved.
Among those who went on this hazardous enterprise, Gleda observed, with correct appreciation of how the distinction arose, that she was the only woman. It had been assumed that other women would not be chosen, and equally so that she should be there.
In the doubt and hazard of what must be done on the next day, it is not surprising that they lay awake, nor that they talked during the night.
Lemno said: "If the spiders have left the land, or are not too many for us to slay, there should be food enough for our needs, so that - "
"You have not thought that other men may have been there sooner than you."
"There could have been none, unless they came from your own land."
"I do not think any will have done that. We are too greatly afraid. Also there has been no shortage of food."
"Well, we shall soon know when the light comes."
"It is coming now," she said, for while they talked the dawn showed dimly above the trees that lined the farther bank of the river they had not crossed.
The point of the peninsula on which they had landed was bare and rocky, giving clear sight over a triangle of ground which was half a mile wide where the forest rose; but the growth was denser than any which they had been accustomed to see. For here the trees had risen at their own will, and there were many saplings and brambles and bush between the boles of those which had been there when the land was left free from human control.
As the light widened, they rose, somewhat stiffened with cold, in spite of their close-thonged furs, and Lemno moved along the forest edge to direct the advance. Gleda followed closely behind.
They were to go forward in parties of two, which, should they all be able to maintain a straight course, would separate them more widely as the breadth of the peninsula increased. They were to aim at reaching a place at which it narrowed again, owing to an eastward bend of their own river; but, in any event, they were not to go forward after midday, so that they would get back before darkness came.
They were cheered, as the light increased, by the sight of a hard-shelled fruit, much like a pomegranate in appearance, which lay thickly scattered under some of the trees. At least they would not starve during the day.
When they had eaten, and were about to start, Lemno threw off his fur.
"We cannot be cumbered with long garments," he said, "having to break through such tangles of untamed growth, even if we do not have to take to the trees."
Gleda did the same with reluctant hands, shivering in the morning breeze.
"You will not feel it," he said, "when you are moving, and out of the wind that vexes the forest edge. We will start at once."
She noticed that he spoke with more animation than she had been accustomed to hear, except when he talked of his work, or had been sporting with her.
She said: "It is strange that when we are nearest death we are most alive."
He understood her at once. He said: "That is only true when men approach death, rather than when it approaches them.
"It may be a reason why men in earlier days approved dangerous living, or even war with their own kind. But such wars cannot be without evils of other kinds. It is ever the best who die. Look at those who are with us now."
That was easy to see. The volunteers had been those who were most virile of mind and body. Quality rather than numbers was staked on their safe return.
She did not answer, for, by now, they had adjusted the knapsacks to their naked shoulders, so that their hands were free to use the knives which might be needed to cut their way. Lemno also had a long pig-spear, at which she looked dubiously.
"It will be awkward if we have to take to the trees. Is it worth while?"
"Perhaps not against the spiders. Hiding may be our best chance, should we see any of them. But if we could get meat - "
"Yes. If there are pigs which will stand still to be killed."
She spoke with knowledge, for the pigs of both their lands were dealt with in the same way, being no more than half wild. They were first driven into enclosures by long lines of beaters, who bore these spears - pig-pokers they were called - which it was seldom necessary to use, and which were only intended to prod them on.
"It is a small chance," he said, "or else none."
It proved to be impossible to make rapid progress. The woods, which had once consisted only of orderly, cultivated trees, with clear, grassy spaces between, where the swine would graze and root, had become choked with saplings and brambles and coarser weeds.
They had calculated that, as they went forward, fanning out as the land widened, though it might not be easy to advance straightly, they would be assisted by the sight of companions on either side. But the thick growth made it impossible to see for more than a few yards, either to right or left. They must depend upon sound rather than sight, and sound was dangerous till they were assured that the woods were clear of menace to them.
"I will go first," Lemno said, after a time. "It is no advantage to break through in a double way."
This was after Gleda had torn her left arm on so large a thorn that the blood dropped to her feet. She said: "well, I can help." She went on, sometimes at his side, sometimes behind. They tried to go straight ahead, rather than avoid obstacles, thinking that any other method would soon bend them aside.
At times they stopped where a few nuts with full kernels might be combed out of the grass, but they saw that, whatever might be in front, either spiders or swine, the drought had been as disastrous here as in their own lands. The only difference was that they appeared to be the first to glean what the drought had spared.
As to the swine, Lemno said, after a time, that there was no more than a poor hope: "They would make aisles through this tangled growth."
But, when hope was low, it was to such an aisle that they came. It was not precisely in the direction at which they aimed, but enough so to induce them to take advantage of it. After a time, it widened into indistinctness, where the ground became rocky and poor, and there were few trees, and insufficient undergrowth to obstruct the movements of pigs or men.
Then they came to a forest pool, where they drank gladly, and beyond that the trees were crowded and the undergrowth dense again, and they came to another of the trampled aisles that the animals made, but while they were still a short distance away, Gleda said suddenly: "Look! Look over there - there are three!"
So there were. Three pigs feeding together on a patch of grass that showed fresh and green from the recent rain. And, as she spoke, as in a flash, they were gone.
Lemno said: "That was queer."
She answered vaguely "Yes. They weren't long about it.
"It wasn't only that," he replied. "I don't know how the pigs behave in your land, but in mine they'd have taken the aisle, and trotted along it in no great hurry unless they were followed up. . . But they dashed into the undergrowth as though a devil were at their tails. . . And there can be no men hunting them here. . . And they are the only three we have seen in two hours - and fruit lying on the ground."
Gleda heard this with a frightened heart, for its meaning was easy to see. The pigs were few. Enemies must be keeping their numbers down. They were frightened, and had learned that to take instant cover was the one method by which life might be prolonged. And she and Lemno were walking without concealment, and with no equal capacity for instant disappearance should danger threaten.
Yet she answered bravely enough: "May it not mean only that they have become unused to the sight of men?"
What could they do but go on with more watchful eyes? As to that, the trouble was that they must have eyes for the way they took, and for the boughs they must bend aside. That would be less the case if they should take the aisle which they could not doubt that the pigs had made, but might yet be the way to a quick death. How did they know that its farther end might not be watched by a huge bulk with eight patient, unwinking eyes, and a hairy arm outstretched, perhaps with a claw which would be instant to snatch, and pinch, and pierce, and lift its victim to the quick death of the poison-prong.
Lemno paused in hesitation. Had they learned enough? Should they go back?
"No," he said. "It is too vague as yet. We must go on. But I will lead, breaking the way. You must have eyes only for any danger ahead, trusting me for the steps you take."
He had a cold fear at his heart, but he was conscious of the obligation of honour. Was he not of the aristocracy of his kind?
"Did you see a spider," he asked, "in the old days?"
"No. I was too young to go to the war."
"I was not. But I was one who survived. I was so near to death at one time that I was touched by the spines of a groping arm, which would have taken me had not a comrade come first into its claw, while I could do no more than to hack at it, as it withdrew. . . The fresh green that the rains have brought will make them harder to see, for that is just the colour they are."
"Is it any use carrying that pig-poker now?"
"Not for the pigs. They are far too wild. But I will keep it for any good it may be.
They went on, but Gleda found that it was easy to shake with fear.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A SPIDER HAS A SURPRISE
WHEN Dullo Ragli had turned his learned attention to aphides, and increased their size, he had not meant them either evil or good. He had not considered very intelligently what the consequences might be for his fellowmen, and for the aphides he had cared just nothing at all.
As for the spiders - they had been a side issue. He had certainly meant no good or evil to them. But, had he been asked, he would probably have replied, and believed, that their increase in size, which had been a curse to mankind, had been a potential blessing to them.
Actually, it had been much the reverse, and had they not belonged to the most adaptable family of all the creatures that contend for life on the earth, their careers would soon have been done.
There was now a spider, ten feet high at the upmost curve of her cephalothorax - a half-grown spider, now in her second year - who would have been emphatic in agreement on this, had it been put to her in the right way.
She was too young to have faced the difficulty of setting up a cocoon (which her mother's ingenuity had surmounted, or she would not have been there), but she was conscious of hunger as a companion which seldom left her, although, being a spider, she had not the mammalian's weakness of needing anything up to four meals a day.
Any time during the last eighteen months, she would have been glad of three meals a week, which she did not get.
The pigs had become few, and those which remained would shoot like lizards from bush to bush, and there was nothing else in the land of size and kind to supply a meal for creatures as large as she. She could wait patiently, hour by hour, day by day, at a chosen point, never moving unless to make a lightning dash at some creature which would come near without observing her in her stillness and blending green, and for whom carelessness would be certain and instant death. But too often the day would pass, and no creature would come.
Having no conscious memory of her ancestors' lives, she had no knowledge of the pleasure of holding on to a swaying leaf, green as her invisible self, and waiting - so short a time! - for the victim that would always come: of the swift outward leap, of her palpi seizing the prey in their deadly claws, of the quick lift to the poison-injecting dagger under her two rows of eyes, and then the sucking of the juices of the anaesthetised victim while it still lived, into a mouth which was formed to take nourishment in no other way.
She would still take her prey more or less in the same manner, unless she should be forced by extreme hunger to search under the trees, pulling bramble and branch aside. But there would seldom be any profit in that.
Her ancestors had had a much better time while there had been men to hunt. Men who had been easier to catch than the pigs, and who had recognized their inferiority by ignominious flight, where the quadrupeds held their ground and had not been entirely unable to exist beside their monstrous enemies. Not that she would have troubled to distinguish between them; and, indeed, from the spider's standpoint, the difference was too slight to be regarded seriously.
That men and pigs had their lungs in the wrong part of their bodies might not be a cause of contempt; the thorax may do well enough for them, though the abdomen is clearly the better place.
But to have no poison fang with which to prepare your meal in a seemly way!
To have to masticate food!
To have only two eyes!
Only two double-jointed legs!
And how could forelegs or arms be compared to palpi, with their flexibility, their sensitive spines, their final claws! (At least, claws for herself, the male palp ending in another way.)
The structures of men and pigs were too closely alike, as seen by a higher type, for them to be regarded otherwise than as very closely allied, or in any other light than as potential meals. . . The green body, which had scarcely moved for two days, became rigidly still, for two humans were approaching now.
They saw when it was too late. The palpi came down with their great claws piercing the man's neck so that he lacked even a moment in which to scream. In one continuous motion she raised him to the fang which was between eyes and mouth, and which would give unconsciousness of his coming death, and the hard plates which were round her mouth closed upon him, to squeeze his juices into that eager receptacle.
But, as she did this, she became aware that his companion had not fled, as he should have been certain to do, but was hacking desperately at a joint of one of her hind-most legs.
She felt pain, which she did not like. She felt her leg giving way, which would have been of greater consequence had she not seven others to bear her weight.
She dropped her dying prey, and swung round with agility, controlling her many legs as easily as a man would have managed two. But, as she did so, she became aware of another foe, and a worse wound. There was a man at her rear side who was driving a pig-poker into her abdomen. Grasping it with both hands, he pushed hard. It went deeply into one of her lungs. She had no pleasure in that, nor any thought of the glory of war. She had too much sense to get hurt for lust of battle, or of revenge. In an instant she clambered upward, and out of reach.
Lemno held on to the poker, which came free, drenching him with green liquid, which had an evil stench. He saw the spider clamber up between trees, grasping the boughs on either side with her many legs. She disappeared at once, running fast over the tree tops. The man she had killed had gone too. She had been too cool and quick, even in the astonishment of attack and the pain of wounds, to forget her meal.
Lemno said to Gleda (who had come up almost as soon as he, though too late, with a bare knife) and to the companion of the dead man: "I can see you can be trusted when the need is great. We saw the beast before you did, and were about to creep quietly away (if we could have done that) when you came on the scene, so that we must alter our plans."
"It was bravely done," the man answered. "I supposed I was near to death."
"Well, you did not flinch. But, for myself, there is no need to say much. For I have known these spiders of old, and she would not have fought, having got a meal, unless she were cornered, or lost her temper, as they are not unlikely to do. And this one was not more than half grown, though I will allow that the females are worse than the males. They grow to a larger size, and have claws which the males lack."
The man said that this was not hard to believe, for though the spider had been big enough, it had been smaller than some in the tales he had heard. He added: "You must have come at a slant to have been so near."
"Yes. . . Or else you. But I think that we should go back now, and that we should keep together now that your companion is dead."
So they agreed to do; and meanwhile the spider, having got well away, had sucked the juice from a crushed victim who might be dead or alive, but was too drugged to know which. So she had her way without protest from him, and dropped the husk through the trees, to be devoured by inferior creatures. Even if she had been starving, she would have had no more use for it.
Her wounds could not be helped. They must heal, as they could, in their own ways.
She met another spider, who had been of her brood, and with whom, as yet, she was friendly enough. She told him what had occurred, in the soundless language which spiders have, leaving nothing out, for it had not the limitation of words.
Her description of the creatures which she had seen for the first time drew attention to their exterior peculiarity. They had loose heads. Even the pigs were not quite like that.
In that particular they were most like the insects that her ancestors had hunted for food. She did not know this, but regarded them in the same way.
She showed also that they were of an extraordinary viciousness, not consenting to be killed in a quiet, natural manner. It was the annoyance with which a butcher might regard a rebellious boar, having been used to the acquiescence of sheep.
Her companion did not wait when he knew the tale. He was too hungry for that. He set off, over the tops of the trees, at a rapid pace, in the direction from which she had come.
The boughs swayed and creaked, and sometimes broke amid the clutching of many legs, which he did not heed at times he must have leaped as much as fifty feet, or perhaps more. But that was easy to do.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LIVELINESS IN RETREAT
THE man whose comrade had perished, Biro, was nervously talkative as they went back together (so far as conditions allowed, for they now kept to the denser growths, and progress was hard and slow), which may have come from the ordeal he had survived.
He assumed that there would be no further attempt to penetrate spider-infested woods, and speculated only upon whether it would be possible to get everyone across the peninsula before they would be heavily attacked by inhuman foes.
Gleda answered him with a divided mind, having no desire for a repetition of what she had seen, but being reluctant to encourage invasion of the land where her kind lived.
Lemno, to her surprise, was not only quick to understand her feeling, but to give it more support than she had expected to hear.
He said: "You can have no wish to return to your own land as one of those who would spoil and slay?"
She felt that a wrong reply would be easy to make, but yet answered frankly enough: "Yes. I had hoped that we should have found this place to be fruitful, and that the spiders would have been dead by now."
"That was natural. I had the same hope. You must not suppose it is settled yet."
She felt that she had done well not to make a more evasive reply, and the more so as he went on: "When food is scarce, there must come a time when some will die, or else all. And, I would rather eat men of another race than my own kin - or to make a meal of those who are wounded or slain, as, if there be fighting enough, both sides may be able to do.
"But I would rather eat pigs than men. And I would rather kill spiders than those of a closer kind. Even at a great risk that would be my choice. But I am not sure that it will be a popular one, so you should be prepared (being one of us, as you now are) to assert your will to its full strength."
"So I will," she said, "having your support beyond what I could hope."
He replied: "You will know me as the days pass," at which she felt closer to him than she had been at any moment since he cut the rope from her legs.
As they talked, they pushed their way through the densest undergrowth they could find near enough to the right way, Lemno going first, as before, though with help from her, and Biro keeping near their side.
They would have said that they were alert for any warning of sound or sight, as they had enough reason to be, but ex-change of thought must distract the mind, and it was Biro who was first aware of the terror above their heads.
He asked in a tense voice, vibrant with fear: "What's that?"
In the next moment they knew. There was a green monster scrambling with many legs over the tops of the trees, and this was at as bad a moment as could have been, for they were crossing a patch of ground which was stony, with little growth.
Then several things happened quickly.
The spider paused for an instant, judging the leap which he must make to pass over the open space. And then he saw the three breaking into the densest thicket on the farther side.
He could leap with a great speed, judging exactly with his many eyes for the limited range of their multiple vision, and having good control of his numerous and very sensitive many-jointed legs. There was a moment when he would not have jumped, knowing he would be too late. But the next, there was something he had not expected to see, and he leaped with a speed and judgment which would not fail.
The fact was that the bushes into which the three fugitives pushed were not what they would have liked them to be. They were dense enough to make progress slow, even to such efforts as theirs, but so scant that, almost at once, they saw light on the farther side. And they found that the narrow shelter was already occupied.
It was a bad day for those pigs.
How could they doubt that they were being hunted by these humans who had disturbed them before? There was a quick sideward scurry, a dash backward to cross the open space from which their enemies came, and, as the foremost bolted out, the spider leaped down with unerring aim.
In the same instant that the pig became aware of the pressure of squeezing jaws, it met the stare of eight unwinking eyes, felt the sting of the poison fang, and lost consciousness.
Its companions swerved madly back to the shelter of the bushes and came upon Biro at a speed which, in that crowded place, he could not have avoided. He advanced his poker at such a height that its point entered the mouth of the first rushing pig. Its impetus transfixed it, while it bore Biro backward into a discomfort of many thorns for his sun-tanned back.
The poker tore down the grunting throat, from which came the changing note of a high squeal, which ceased next moment, as the sharp point went on, in its slightly downward course, till it came out in the hinder part of the animal's belly.
Biro exerted his utmost strength to pull out the spear, alert for flight from the huge green, scarlet-banded monster which could be glimpsed through the swaying of large-leaved boughs. But Lemno, coming to his side, said quietly: "You needn't worry about the spider now. They're not often troublesome when they're well fed. . . There's a bit of luck for us here, in more ways than one."
He caught the shaft of the poker, put his foot on the animal's head, and gave Biro the necessary help to finish pulling it out.
As it drew free, the blood came in steady spurts, both from the pig's mouth and the hole where the points had emerged, and its kicks became rapidly feebler.
Biro obviously felt that he had done a good job; but, if Zeus had been looking on, he might have contrasted the brutal crudities of human methods with the exact and instantaneous execution that the spider had dealt, and given the award of a higher standard of civilization to him of the many legs.
Meanwhile Lemno, after his first confident announcement, had a moment of doubt. The spider was already dropping a flaccid body, which it had squeezed flat and sucked dry.
"We needn't tempt him."
They made off at the best pace they could, the legs of the dying pig around Biro's neck, and his knapsack on Gleda's arm.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
AGREEMENT TO DISAGREE
THE three who came back with the tale of a comrade lost, and the carcass of a dead pig, found that they were the only ones who had anything to report, either bad or good.
The others returned, some sooner, some not till the darkness fell, without having seen any creature larger than a wood pigeon, or heard anything more formidable than a jay's screech. They had found food of kinds, but they had still a very good appetite for the pork which was roasted and shared round the wood fires which they kindled fearlessly, for the green hunting spider is not inclined to activity in the night. The unfortunate animal had been plump, and there was something, if not much, for all.
As they ate, Lemno advanced the idea that they concentrate upon the reconquest of the peninsula, relying upon their ability to destroy the spiders, and calculating that there would be sufficient pigs to lift the shadow of starvation which had fallen upon them.
This was contrary to the resolution of the previous day, which had been a clear decision that they should go forward across the second river, if the spiders should still be living. Now spiders had been encountered, and one man was dead. But - there was the argument of the good meal.
The pig had done its first good office by assembling the hungry men. Round Lemno's own fire, he had invited Relf, and a few others whom he aimed to influence first, to divide the carcass. Gleda was, of course, there to support him. She thought that he put the idea forward in very plausible words, but could see that it was not warmly received.
Relf was most willing to entertain it, but even he gave it no more than cautious consideration. "You will not overlook," he said, "that the whole land must be cleared, or we shall have done nothing. The land is vast, and we have two thousand men at the most, and we do not know how many spiders there may be now."
Lemno shrugged. "They may not be numerous. More than fifty square miles must have been penetrated today, and no more than two young ones were seen. They may have found conditions too adverse for any great increase to have occurred. But what's the alternative? To slaughter men, to pick their bones, and to have their land. And they will have different ideas, and our bones may make soup for them."
"Is that all the reason you have?"
"No. I would rather kill spiders than those of my own kind. I would rather eat pigs than men."
"It is not an argument by which our women would be convinced."
"I suppose not. Though some would. You will consider that there are few women among us. It is not a matter for those who stay behind to decide."
Relf agreed that that would give the proposal a better chance than it would otherwise have. For the best of women would think first of what would be safest for their own men, and last of what would be the more likely to fill their own bellies, and very few would allow altruistic arguments to divert their minds, as is the common weakness of men.
In the end, he said: "Well, it may be worth trying. We could give it up, and still go over the river, should spiders be too many, or pigs too few. But you may find our men hard to persuade, one being dead in the first bout, and the spiders having no loss at all."
So, with this consent, they got together a few who would give support, choosing those of strong wills, and whose minds were active and clear, and they began to think together, in a way which must soon gain access to other minds.
Gleda was among these, being told by Lemno that she should exert her will to the utmost, which might be useful, if she could sustain it.
They fought together for some time in this way, but though they would not yield, they could not prevail, a large majority preferring the hazard of human foes. But when it was realized that neither side was willing to give way, an idea arose, and gained ground, that some might go one way, and some another, as they might prefer; and this was at last agreed upon, the majority giving way to this extent, in a general belief that dissenters would soon be glad to join them when they had experienced the conditions of warfare against the spiders.
While the debate proceeded, the canoes, which had been occupied in fishing during the day, were bringing more people across, at a rate that made it evident that the work would be completed, and transit to the farther bank be in operation, before the dawn.
The night was still dark when Lemno, who was now tacitly accepted as leader in the campaign against the spiders, and who seemed indifferent to rest or sleep, had completed the count of his own forces as 519 men and three women, Gleda having been joined by Plera, and an active young widow named Jalna, who may either have aimed at forgetting the sorrow of a recent bereavement, or of obtaining another spouse by joining herself to this male assemblage.
Being already satisfied that spiders were not numerous at the tip of the peninsula, Lemno, in deciding the procedure of the advance, had two dominant considerations to weigh - that progress through the difficult bush should be as rapid as possible, and that the maximum quantity of food should be obtained.
The first consideration disposed him to make use of the narrow avenues which had been beaten down in the exploration of the previous day, the second required that they should move on the broadest possible front.
Balancing their advantages, he decided that the advance should be made in five parties of 100 each, which would fan o