The Magician.

Spider World.

by Colin Wilson.

Introduction.

In the waterless desert of North Khaybad, a small family of humans lives in an underground cave. At this time, the earth is dominated by giant telepathic spiders who breed human beings for food. They scour the skies in spider balloons, seeking to bring under their control the few human beings who remain at large. These include Niall, a youth who daydreams of one day finding a way to destroy the spiders and restore men to freedom.

A hundred miles to the west is the country known as the Great Delta, perhaps the most dangerous place in the world. And it is on a trip to the Delta, in search of healing drugs, that Niall's uncle and cousin are killed by one of the man-eating plants.

Ingeld, the dead man's widow, longs to return to her family home in the underground city of Dira, near the great inland lake, and Niall and his father, Ulf, agree to escort her there. It is in Dira that Niall loses his heart to the beautiful Princess Merlew, daughter of King Kazak, and is tempted to remain in the underground city. But when he overhears Merlew describing him as "that skinny boy," he is disillusioned, and decides to return home with his father.

It is during the journey home, driven to take refuge from a sandstorm in a ruined city, that Niall kills a giant spider, and unintentionally seals the fate of Dira, which is overrun by the spiders soon after. And while Niall is away from home, his own father is killed and his family taken captive by spiders.

Niall sets out to follow them, but is himself soon taken prisoner.

On a sea journey to the spider city, Niall is instrumental in saving the life of one of the spiders, which has been washed overboard in a storm. The result is that on his arrival in the spider city, he and his family are treated with a certain consideration, and are assigned to live in the palace of King Kazak, who has become an ally and accomplice of the spiders. It is there that Niall learns that the spiders are engaged in a breeding experiment to reduce human intelligence and to prevent men from ever again becoming a challenge to the spiders.

It is when Niall discovers that Kazak is betraying his own people that he runs away, and takes refuge in the mysterious white tower that dominates the center of the spider city. This proves to be a time capsule, built by earlier men to inform their descendants of how they fled from the Earth to avoid a strike by the radioactive comet Opik.

Inside the white tower, in a sleep-learning machine, Niall is taught about the history of mankind before the Opik catastrophe. He also learns that the center of the living force that created giant insects lies in the Delta; the spiders worship this force as the goddess Nuada.

When he leaves the white tower, Niall takes refuge in the slave quarter, most of whose inhabitants have been turned into imbeciles by selective breeding.

Appointed overseer to a squad of slaves, Niall finds his way to the nearby city of the bombardier beetles, and renews his acquaintance with the explosives expert Bill Doggins. The beetles adore explosions, and Doggins has been appointed to satisfy their immense appetite for this form of entertainment.

Niall has arrived on "Boomday," when Doggins is Master of Ceremonies at an immense firework display. But an accident results in a tremendous blast that destroys the whole remaining stock of explosives. Doggins decides that he has no alternative but to lead an expedition to the spider city, seeking a legendary stockpile of explosives in the abandoned barracks known as the Fortress.

They are successful beyond their most optimistic dreams, discovering crates full of "reapers," an atomic blaster which is one of the most awesome weapons ever invented.

Surprised by the spiders, they shoot their way out of trouble, steal spider balloons, and return to the city of the bombardier beetles, which is already being besieged by spiders.

Again, the reapers save the day. But when Niall is ordered by the Master of the bombardier beetles to destroy the reapers, he decides to disobey, and to travel instead to the Delta, in a bid to destroy the force that has created the giant insects.

Niall quickly discovers that the Delta deserves its reputation as the most dangerous place on Earth. One by one, their party is reduced, until Niall and Doggins are the only ones to reach the foot of the great hill that they have identified as the center of the force. But it is Niall who finally scales the hill alone -- to learn that the "goddess Nuada" is actually a giant plant, which has been carried to Earth from another galaxy in the tail of the comet Opik.

On his return to the city of the beetles, Niall is placed under arrest, and handed over to the spiders. In a horrific encounter with the Spider Lord, he comes close to being destroyed, both physically and mentally. But at this point, the goddess herself intervenes, filling the room with her strange blue light. Now convinced that Niall is the chosen of the goddess, the Spider Lord accedes to his demand that human beings should be set free.

And Niall, to his own bewilderment, suddenly finds himself appointed ruler of the spider city.

Part One.

The Assasins.

Shortly before dawn he was awakened by a cold so intense that it reminded him of the desert night. He lay there, the bedclothes pulled around his face, and his breath formed moisture on the blanket as he exhaled. He had chosen this room because it faced east, and he liked to be awakened by the sun. Today there was no sunlight; the dawn came like gray mist until the room was filled with a cold, even light. No birds sang.

Something about the strange silence disturbed him. He crossed to the window, treading on the soft woolen rugs, and found himself looking out on a white landscape.

White rooftops seemed to blend into the pearl-gray sky, and the great square was carpeted in the same featureless whiteness. It had even found its way into the corners of the window frames, and a few fine flakes had frozen onto the outside of the glass.

Niall had heard about snow and read about it, but this was the first time he had ever seen it. Nothing had prepared him for this cold, beautiful whiteness that seemed to blanket the universe. He was suddenly filled with a magical excitement which, although he was unaware of it, had filled thousands of generations of children at the first sight of the winter snow.

Possessed by a longing to touch this strange substance, he pulled on a sheepskin mantle over his tunic, thrust his feet into shoes lined with rabbit fur, and hurried out of the room. The palace was silent and its corridors empty; Niall was usually the first awake. He mounted the staircase to the top floor, passing the sleeping chamber shared by his cousin Dona and his sisters Runa and Mara, then climbed the narrow stairs that led up to the roof. As soon as he opened the door, a rampart of snow tumbled in and deluged his bare legs. He jumped back with an exclamation; he had not realized snow would be so cold. Then he took off his shoes one by one -- the snow had fallen into them -- and shook them out; the fur now felt cold and wet to his ankles. Yet the morning air seemed surprisingly warm; this was because there was not the faintest breath of wind. The space between the parapet and the steep roof was deep in snow; it crunched underfoot as he trod in it. He picked up a double handful and molded it into a ball; but it froze his fingers, so he threw it away. With the sleeve of his mantle he carefully brushed the snow from the parapet, then stood leaning on it, gazing out over the milky whiteness that extended as far as the distant hills. In the center of the parkland on the far side of the square, the white tower rose like a finger of ivory, but now that the surrounding grass was white, it was no longer the most striking feature in the landscape. This distinction belonged to the river, whose blackness split the cold plain like a current of ink; it made him feel colder merely to look at it.

The city seemed empty; there was not a living thing in sight. Then, as he turned to go indoors, his attention was caught by a movement in the square below. Something black was lying in its northeastern corner. From this distance it might have been an uprooted bush. Then he looked more closely, and saw the red stains in the snow; at the same time, another faint movement made him aware that he was looking at a badly injured spider.

He hurried back down the stairs, holding the balustrade because the snow on his shoes made the marble treacherous. For a moment he was tempted to return to his room to put on warmer clothes; but his sense of urgency overruled the discomfort. He pulled back the bar that locked the main door, and tramped out into the deep snow, ignoring the cold wetness that ran down inside his shoes. The snow had turned the steps into a smooth ramp, so that he had to tread with extreme care; at one point he fell and plunged in up to his elbows. But as he struggled to his feet and waded unevenly across the square, choosing a route where the snow lay thin, his mind was obsessed by a single problem: how a death spider could have met with serious injury in such a wide open space.

As he approached, the spider saw him, and it made a convulsive attempt to rise; but its jointed legs were not strong enough, and buckled under its weight. The black, hairy body was covered in snow; evidently it had been lying there for some time. Niall found this puzzling; spiders are telepathic, and can send an instant distress call to others of their kind. And since this one lay within a few hundred yards of the headquarters of the ruling directorate, on the far side of the square, its presence should have been sensed the moment it was injured.

When he came close enough to see the far side of its body he saw why it had been unable to rise. Three of its legs had been smashed to a pulp; the bottom joint of one of them, with its black claw, was almost completely detached. A trail of blood smears, partly obliterated by snow, showed that the spider had dragged itself for about fifty feet before it collapsed. It was obviously dying.

"What happened to you?" Niall spoke the words aloud, but knew that his meaning would be carried directly to the spider's brain.

The reply that sounded inside his chest made him wince; it was a blur of pain, and the directness of the communication made Niall experience its misery and exhaustion, so that he himself felt drained and nauseated. It was impossible to distinguish what the spider was saying, but the "voice" was one that Niall instantly recognized. It was Skorbo, the captain of the guard. Now Niall understood why its communication was an incomprehensible chaos of feeling. The ability to communicate with human beings was a difficult art -- the equivalent of a human being learning to read. In spider terms Skorbo was an illiterate peasant, a creature whose chief value to his masters was a certain brutal strength and the ability to dominate others. Niall had always found him repellent; yet now that Skorbo was injured and dying, he felt overwhelmed with pity.

He said: "I'll go and get help."

It was impossible to hurry through the snow; each step plunged him in up to the knee, and if he tried to withdraw the foot too quickly, he left his shoe behind. To avoid discouragement, he deliberately averted his eyes from the expanse of snow that stretched in front of him, and treated each step as an individual effort. It was a pleasant surprise to find himself suddenly at the foot of the steps in front of the headquarters building. Two wolf spiders would normally have been on guard outside its great double doors; the cold had evidently driven them inside. Niall beat on the door with his fists, not because it was locked, but because he knew he would risk being attacked if he rushed in without warning. There was a movement inside and the door opened; Niall found himself looking up into the enormous black eyes of a brown wolf spider, whose height was at least two feet greater than his own. The chelicerae (or pincers) were extended, so he could see the folded fangs. A moment later, the spider recognized him, and sank down in a gesture of homage, lowering its belly to the floor.

Niall turned and pointed. "Quick. Skorbo has been injured. Go and fetch him."

Again, the words conveyed his message direct to the spider's brain. Followed by the second guard, it loped across the square toward Skorbo, its enormous strength unaffected by a mere foot of snow. Niall knew there was no point in trying to follow; his whole body felt drained. Instead, he sank down on a bench outside the door, and watched as the guards gently lifted the injured spider. As they approached, he observed the way the legs dragged in the snow, and knew that Skorbo was dead.

They placed the body on the floor, scattering snow on the black marble. Skorbo was still bleeding; his blood was thicker, more viscous, than human blood, and it spread slowly, like a pool of oil. It was running from the spider's head, which lay sideways on the floor, and now Niall was able to see that there was a hole in the skull, about a foot above the single row of eyes that extended in a band around its head. Unlike human beings, spiders have no internal bone structure; the armored shell is itself an external skeleton. Skorbo's skull had been shattered by a blow. What puzzled Niall was that there seemed to be fragments of broken armor in the hole, as might have been expected if some tremendous blow had been delivered from above. A large segment seemed to be missing.

Blood oozed from the hole as from the socket from which a tooth has been pulled.

The wolf spiders were standing there, too respectful to ask questions. Niall said: "Please notify Dravig of what has happened. Tell him I shall be at home."

But as he plodded back through the snow, curiosity overcame his weariness. What had happened struck him as completely incomprehensible. The hole in the skull made it look as if Skorbo had been attacked. By whom? Another spider? That seemed unlikely.

Unlike human beings, spiders seldom fought among themselves. Yet it was equally difficult to envisage some accident that might have caused the damage.

The obvious way to find out was to go and look. Niall retraced his steps, and took the diagonal route across the plaza, where the forward rush of the wolf spiders had churned up the snow like some enormous plough. When he came to the place where the injured spider had lain, he realized that Skorbo had lost a great deal of blood; his life had oozed away into the snow as he lay there, his brain too damaged to send the signal that would have brought help. In front of Niall, along the eastern side of the square, there were a number of empty houses in various states of disrepair. The city was full of such houses; spiders often made their homes in the upper stories. But they preferred houses on either side of the street, so they could weave their webs between them; this is why the houses bordering the square had remained empty. The trail of blood had been obliterated by falling snow; but by bending until his face was within a few inches of the surface, he was able to make out the darker patches.

These, he could now see, led back toward the second house from the corner, a tall building whose rusty balconies suggested that it had once been a hotel. Like the others, its windows had been boarded up and its door was closed -- all houses in this square had been forbidden to human beings. Niall tried the door; it seemed to be locked. Yet when he brushed aside the snow on the doorstep with his shoe, a damp bloodstain told him that this was the house in which Skorbo had met his injury. He rammed the door with his shoulder; it seemed completely immovable. But a sheet of plywood covering a window proved to be less solid, and caved inward when he pushed it with both hands.

He leaned in with caution. If something -- or someone -- powerful enough to kill a spider was lurking inside, he was going to take no risks. In fact, he found himself looking into a bare hallway whose wooden floor was covered with plaster and rubble; it smelled of decay and damp. Recognizing that his tension was blocking his perceptions, he deliberately relaxed, exhaling deeply and closing his eyes; then, as he achieved inner stillness, concentrated intently. A point of light glowed inside his skull, and the silence seemed to deepen. In that moment, he knew with absolute certainty that no concealed enemies were lying in wait; the building was deserted. Yet this deeper perception also made him aware of another odor, musky and slightly sweet. It was familiar, yet its significance escaped him.

He pushed the plywood violently; the nails that held it to the window frame tore loose, and it fell into the building. Niall clambered inside. By now he was regretting that he was not wearing warmer clothes; his hands and feet were frozen. But since he was here, it seemed pointless not to explore. The light from the window gave him a clearer view of the hallway. He observed rat droppings among the dust and plaster on the floor.

That indicated clearly that no spiders used the building; they regarded rats as particularly appetizing delicacies, and would wait for hours in the hope of catching one.

As he expected, there were more bloodstains on the floor, and clear signs in the dust and rubble that a wounded spider had dragged itself across the floor. The marks continued across the hallway to an open door beyond a collapsing staircase; this admitted light and a draft of air. Beyond this, a corridor led down to an open space that had once been a garden; there were more bloodstains on the floor. The door at the end, which stood half open, had obviously been forced; its lock had been smashed, and marks on the outside woodwork made by a chisel or a crowbar looked fresh.

Niall peeped cautiously into the weed-grown garden, then looked upward at the wall above the door; it rose vertical and windowless to the roof, where the guttering was still intact. This disposed of his theory that the spider had been struck by some heavy object -- perhaps a piece of masonry -- dropped from above. Yet when he brushed aside the snow on the threshold, he saw signs of blood. This garden clearly held the secret of the spider's death.

To Niall's untrained eye there were no obvious clues. The layer of snow on the ground had covered any footprints. The garden, which extended as far as the rear wall of the next building, was divided from the gardens to the right and left by high walls. A dozen feet from the door stood a young palm tree; beyond this, there was a tangle of weeds and shrubbery which offered a great deal of concealment. When Niall studied this more closely, he observed a number of freshly broken twigs which indicated that someone had been there recently. But the hard ground had retained no other indications.

He penetrated the shrubbery as far as the rear wall; here the overgrown grass convinced him that no one else had been here for months. But as he was about to turn back, he noticed something that made him pause. In a corner of the garden wall there lay a heap of palm leaves, some of them spreading out from a common center. They looked so natural in that setting that he almost failed to notice them. But why should there be palm leaves lying in a corner? Then he looked up and saw that the young palm tree had no leaves. In fact, someone had hacked off its top, leaving a bare trunk. And within a foot of the top of the truncated palm, there was a length of rope.

Now at last he understood. The tree was about twice the height of a man -- precisely the distance from the foot of the tree to the rear door of the building. A further search of the shrubbery revealed the stunted tree to whose base the other end of the rope had been tied. The young palm had been bent backwards like a catapult. When the spider had stepped out of the doorway, hesitating as it faced the dark garden, someone had cut the rope, and the tree had snapped over like an immense spring. Skorbo had evidently been standing slightly to one side, or had started to move at the last moment; the tree had smashed his legs and battered him to the ground. . .

Niall returned to the doorway and looked down at the bloodstains. They showed clearly that his reconstruction was correct. The blow had caused blood splashes which were some distance from the original stain, and other splashes had struck the wall at an angle so they were elongated, with tadpole-like tails. And a few feet away, half-buried in the snow, there was a triangular fragment of the spider's skull, with brain fragments still adhering to its underside. But the original blow had shattered the legs, not the skull. This could mean only one thing: that while the spider was stunned, someone had deliberately smashed the top of his skull, with the intention of penetrating the brain and destroying his capacity to send out a distress signal.

Niall shivered. He had no liking for Skorbo, but the sheer savagery of the attack horrified him; he felt as if he had been there to witness it.

His shiver reminded him of how cold he was; his facial muscles had lost all feeling and his eyelids felt as if they were frozen. He retraced his steps back through the empty building. The front door had been wedged shut with a balk of timber. He heaved it loose and went out into the square.

As he plodded back through the snow, walking in the deep footprints he had left earlier, he recalled his excitement on first seeing the snow from his bedroom window. It had made the world look like fairyland. Now it was merely cold and uncomfortable, and somehow too real.

Someone had lit a fire in the great fireplace that faced the main door; the sight of flames leaping up the chimney brought a glow of delight, and made him realize why the men of old had regarded fire as a god. But as he stood before the blazing logs, watching the snow melt from his garments, he was surprised by the pain in his limbs as the blood began to circulate again.

In the chamber adjoining his bedroom, his personal servant Jarita had lit the stove and laid out his breakfast on a low table: cold meats, preserved fruits, honey, sweetened milk, and newly baked bread. Before he ate, he changed into dry clothes: a baggy woolen suit, in which he felt comfortable, and slippers lined with down. Then he sat cross-legged on the silken cushions, tore a crust from the hot loaf, and spread it with butter and honey.

This was usually the time of day that he enjoyed most, the hour before work began, when he could eat good food, and reflect on the incredible twists of fortune that had brought him from a cave in the desert, and made him the ruler of fifty thousand human beings. It was an important hour of the day, for he was still stunned by the swiftness of the change, and his unconscious mind needed time to absorb it; he still woke up in the middle of the night and imagined that he was in the underground den surrounded by his family.

But this morning he was unable to relax or to enjoy the food. He could only brood on the problem of why Skorbo had been killed, and who had carried it out. Both questions left him baffled. It was true that the city was full of human beings who loathed the captain of the guard and would be delighted with the news of his death. But none of them possessed the kind of courage or determination to lure him into a trap. They had been the slaves of the spiders for so long that they no longer had any will of their own; they were conditioned into total obedience. And there would have been no point in harboring thoughts of hatred or revenge, for the spiders could read their minds more easily than Niall could read a book.

The men who had been captured from Kazak's underground city were a different matter. Their minds were still unviolated, and they had a long tradition of hostility to spiders. But now that they were no longer slaves, they had no motive for killing a spider.

Most of them were now overseers and supervisors, and contented with their lot. They were delighted to be living in the open air, instead of in an underground fortress. Besides, even they lacked the kind of cunning and ruthlessness necessary to have set the trap. . .

There was a light tap on the door, and a tall, dark-haired girl looked in. This was Nephtys, the commander of Niall's personal guard; because she knew he hated to be disturbed at breakfast, she spoke with her eyes averted.

"The Lord Dravig is here."

"Ask him to come in." He smiled at her, wishing that his servants were not so afraid of him. But they had all been trained to fear and respect those who were above them. Their fear of the spiders was like that of a slave for some ruthless tyrant. So they found it awe-inspiring that Niall should speak on equal terms with the tyrants. The point was reinforced when Dravig entered the room, and Nephtys prostrated herself in front of the spider at the same time that Dravig made a ritual gesture of obeisance before Niall.

Dravig was probably the oldest spider in the land, with the exception of the ancient female spider who presided over the ruling council of the city. He stood more than seven feet tall, but was thin and gaunt, and the hairs on his body were turning gray.

Insofar as it was possible for a spider to understand a human being, and for a human being to understand a spider, these two understood one another.

Niall moved away from the table and sat on a cushion on the dais. It would have been impolite to continue his breakfast. For some reason, the spiders were profoundly disturbed by the sight of human beings eating or drinking -- perhaps in the same way that a human being would be disturbed at the sight of a spider eating a fly or a rat.

He wasted no time on preliminaries. "Do you know that Skorbo is dead?"

"Yes."

"Have you any idea who did it?"

"No."

During this dialogue, Niall spoke aloud while Dravig communicated telepathically. Niall was also communicating telepathically -- spiders were unable to understand human language -- but he found it easier to speak his words aloud; it seemed to give his thought an added precision.

"Is the Spider Lord very angry?" Although the ruler was a female, she was known to human beings as the Spider Lord.

"Of course. But she will abide by the agreement." Dravig understood the question that Niall had in mind -- this was the advantage of speaking telepathically. While human beings had been slaves, the death of a single spider had been punished with appalling ferocity -- sometimes with the torture and execution of a hundred humans. When the slaves became free, the Spider Lord had agreed that there should be no more killing.

Niall said: "Nevertheless, if the murderers can be found, they must be punished."

"That is your decision. We shall abide by the agreement."

There was a silence between them, but it was the silence of understanding.

Intelligence had bridged the gap between their two species, so that it was as if both were human or both were spiders.

Dravig said: "But I cannot understand how human beings could kill a spider."

Niall stood up. "Come with me and I will show you."

On the spot where the injured spider had collapsed, a platoon of slaves was shoveling the snow into handcarts and washing away the blood with buckets of warm water. It would have been regarded as a kind of sacrilege to leave the spider's blood staining the ground. As Niall and Dravig went past, the overseer cracked his whip and made the slaves stand to attention. Niall averted his gaze; the blank eyes and drooling mouths of the slaves always made him feel uncomfortable.

The door stood half open, exactly as Niall had left it. As they entered the rubble- strewn hallway, the spider paused and his chelicerae unfolded; Niall was aware that something had galvanized him into sudden alertness. But the spider said nothing. After a moment, he followed Niall down the passageway and out into the garden.

Niall pointed at the truncated palm tree. "That was what killed Skorbo."

Dravig failed to understand. Spiders were completely lacking in mechanical aptitude. Niall had to transmit a mental picture before Dravig could understand how a tree could be used as a murder weapon. Even then, he seemed skeptical. Niall had to point out the rope still tied to the top of the tree, and to the bloodspots on the wall, before the spider was convinced.

Niall also pointed out the shape of the blood splashes, with their tadpole-like tails, indicating that they had flown upwards due to the force of the blow. Dravig said with astonishment: "The human mind is amazingly subtle."

Niall pointed to the fragment of bone lying in the snow.

"The blow failed to kill him because it struck him to one side, breaking his legs.

While he was still stunned, someone attacked him with some heavy weapon -- probably an ax -- and shattered his skull. That is why he failed to send out a distress signal."

Dravig said: "Whoever is responsible will pay for this." The force of his anger was so great that it struck Niall like a blow, causing him to step backward. He realized then that he had underestimated the strength of Dravig's feelings. For a human being, the murder of a spider could be regarded with detachment. For Dravig, it was the slaughter of a fellow creature, and it filled him with rage and a desire for revenge.

Dravig was instantly aware of the effect produced by his anger on Niall; he made a mental gesture of abasement and apology, to which Niall replied with a similar gesture indicating that apology was unnecessary. In human language the exchange would have been expressed: "I am sorry. I did not mean to upset (or shock or startle) you;" "Please do not apologize, I understand perfectly." Instead, these meanings were conveyed instantaneously, and with a precision beyond the power of language. It made Niall aware of the crudity and clumsiness of human speech.

Dravig advanced toward the palm tree, and gripped it with his pincers and with his four front legs. Niall looked on with a perplexity that changed to embarrassment; surely Dravig realized that it would take far more than the strength of a single spider to uproot a tree? His embarrassment changed to astonishment as he watched the spider's legs brace and strain, and heard the tearing sound as the roots began to loosen. This was not merely physical strength; it was will power intensified by rage. The spider staggered for a moment as the earth under his feet heaved upwards; he regained his balance and again braced himself. A moment later, the tree was ripped out of the earth. With a gesture of contempt, Dravig threw it away from him, and it crashed down onto the bushes.