Spider Legs Read online

  Garth stopped suddenly, too full of sorrow and shock to continue. He heard the radio squawk a bunch of meaningless noise. After a few minutes he went back on deck, gazed into the sea, and called again: “Kalinda?”

  Don't look behind the cabin, she willed him.

  He heard a sound, but did not see what made it. Something flicked forward and landed on the nape of his neck. Everything went dark as he fell into the cabin below.

  The last thing he heard came from above. It was the endless cries of seagulls. He was trapped on a ship in a prison of ice and sea.

  But perhaps he would survive. The spider hadn't actually killed him. It might forget him by the time it was through with her.

  Kalinda, suspended in the absentminded grip of the spider legs, finally let her consciousness ebb. Her one remaining regret, oddly, was that she knew she would never get to tell him the content of his dream.

  PART II

  Phantom

  Hunting

  The sea sheltered ample dragons to fuel the nightmares of the entire human race.

  —PETER BENCHLEY, Beast

  CHAPTER 6

  Head

  ELMO SAMULES, ONE of the fisheries officers for Trinity Bay, always told visitors that the Island of Newfoundland was a rough coast to make a living on. Recently, however, offshore oil had begun to offer a promise of employment for thousands. Elmo had seen many changes to the area around Bonavista Bay since his boyhood. When he was only three years old, his parents emigrated from Milan to Canada after his father joined an unsuccessful fishing business. After that, the elder Elmo prospered in Bonavista Bay as a shingle manufacturer and later in the lumber business. The younger Elmo's formal schooling was limited to a year, followed by five years of instruction by his mother. He was an entrepreneur at age 17, leading fishing and whale watch boats in Bonavista Bay.

  Elmo always loved the sea and had an early and avid interest in fish and other sea life. His interest and exploration of the nearby oceans was helped by his minimal requirement for sleep. Since his teenage days, he acquired the habit of going for long periods of time with little sleep, sometimes requiring a few hours each night to be fully refreshed. Elmo was not unlearned in science; his prodigious reading had carried him through numerous scientific and popular articles on the sea.

  Today Elmo was taking Nathan Smallwood, curator of fishes from the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, on a tour of the eastern coast in a fiberglass patrol boat that hopped between wave crests like a flying fish. Smallwood was determining the extent to which oil companies’ submersible catamaran drilling rigs and the huge towers of Petro-Canada drill ships were damaging the local food chain. He was also here to enjoy the beauty of Newfoundland's coasts and rivers.

  Physically the two men were very different. Elmo was a large man with muscular arms wedged into a black T-shirt. He could throw a football like a cannon shot, despite an unusual configuration for his fingers. Behind the athletic facade was an encyclopedic mind, a dynamic force. Smallwood, on the other hand, was adjutant in appearance, tall, thin, quiet, swarthy. His light brown walrus mustache complemented his gray-brown hair. He wore stonewashed cotton twill trousers and a tan cotton-canvas workshirt.

  They flew past trap skiffs, the traditional 25-foot Newfoundland inshore boats. Elmo waved to a group of young fishermen who hand-hauled gill nets from Trinity Bay. Orange-brown crabs clung tenaciously to the wet nets as they were pulled from the water.

  “Let's go see some icebergs,” Smallwood shouted to Elmo.

  “Sure.”

  They headed out to sea. Elmo pointed upward. Above was a flock of raucous northern gannets, goose-sized birds that were themselves fantastic fishers. Occasionally a gannet plunged into the sea after prey.

  Elmo turned off the engine. “You might think that Newfoundland seems a bit primeval, but it has a rich history,” he said. They were now in the area of the iceberg floes. “Maritime Archaic Indians arrived 5,000 years ago to hunt seals and walruses. In 1610, the first Europeans settled on the Avalon Peninsula. Later Britain and France disputed the sovereignty of Newfoundland. I think that was in the 1700s, but today 95 percent of Newfoundland's 582,000 people trace their ancestry to Britain.”

  They watched the icebergs gleam intensely blue. “You really can't appreciate the beauty of the ice and snow until you see this for yourself,” Smallwood said in pleased surprise.

  They heard roaring and booming from some of the snowy mountains that lined the coast, punctuated by the explosive sounds that the larger icebergs made. Baffin Bay and Greenland were the factories that produced the icebergs of the North Atlantic. Ice sliding down the valleys constantly shoved the preceding ice masses out into the paleo-crystalline seas.

  “It's been estimated that some of the ice may be over two hundred thousand years old, having accumulated until it is two miles deep,” Elmo said. “The Labrador Current carries them down past Newfoundland where they encounter water and winds which blow them toward England. The life journey of a Greenland iceberg is about two thousand miles and lasts two years.”

  “Now I've seen some of Newfoundland's coast, which is fantastic,” Smallwood said. “But I've had little time to explore the mainland. What's the interior of the Island of Newfoundland like?”

  “Well, with the settlements clustered on the coasts, our inland areas are pretty much wilderness solitudes. Lots of nice forests. Caribou often cross our highways.”

  They neared Bonavista Bay and had a close encounter with two humpback whales which splashed their small craft with water as they slapped the sea with their tails. They were curious creatures and protected by Canadian law.

  “That happens often,” said Elmo. “They seem to take a perverse pleasure in getting us wet.”

  “Did you see that big scratch near its tail?”

  “No, missed it.”

  “I wonder what could have caused it?”

  “Ship propeller?”

  “The cut looked too straight and narrow to have been made by a propeller.”

  Elmo resolved to watch more closely for tails hereafter, because his guest was right: an unusual scratch on a whale could signify something going on in the deep water, and it was his business to know about it. It was probably nothing, but he preferred to be sure. If, for example, some pleasure craft operator was experimenting with a power harpoon, something would have to be done.

  They continued to travel among towering iceberg mountains of white glory. “You know, things live on those icebergs,” Elmo said. “Inch-long ice worms—Mesemchytraeus solofiugus—feed on algae and pollen in the tiny air pockets in the ice. The worms were once thought to be mythical.”

  “Didn't know you were such a fine biologist, Elmo.” Small-wood was obviously impressed with the big man's zoological knowledge.

  “We fisheries officers study a lot,” Elmo said, smiling. Both men seemed to be thoroughly enjoying their time together. They admired a reddish iceberg tinted crimson by a summer-blooming algae. Suddenly something floating nearby caught their attention.

  “Look over there,” Smallwood said. “It's a boat. A schooner. Looks damaged.”

  “Let's take a look.” As they got closer they could make out the schooner's name, Phantom.

  “What kind of name is that?” Smallwood asked.

  “It does seem a bit eerie. You know what the most common boat name is?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Serenity.”

  There were scratches all over the vessel. Some were just an inch long, others a foot or two in length. When they were alongside the schooner, Elmo put down an anchor, threw a rope, and jumped onto the other boat. “Anyone here?” he called.

  There was no answer. “Surely not a derelict vessel?” Nathan called, smiling. “I thought those existed mainly in ghost stories.”

  “They do,” Elmo agreed somewhat tersely. His eyes tracked grooves in the deck that led to the hatch. A wave of grayness passed over him, a kind of dark premonition. “I see a lot more scratch mar
ks here,” he yelled to Smallwood. Then he stooped to pick up a camera which rested on the wooden deck. Perhaps it held some clues as to the former occupants of the schooner.

  For a few minutes there were no sounds from the schooner. Just silence. The more Elmo studied this, the less he liked it.

  “Anything the matter?” Smallwood called from the patrol boat.

  “Something's wrong here. Dead wrong.”

  “Don't keep me in suspense, Elmo. What do you see?”

  But Elmo was not eager to tell what he saw. Not immediately. This was real mischief.

  There was blood on the deck. The railing was torn off in places. There were signs of struggles. Heroic ones. A broken mast. A torn off engine. More blood. Something resembling an esophagus.

  And there was a human head. A head with carotid arteries still dripping. The head of a woman. A head evidently torn from its missing body with incredible strength.

  CHAPTER 7

  Environment

  MARTHA SAMULES LOOKED up as the door to Martha's Fish Store opened to admit a solid man. She was in the back, but could see the door without being readily seen, because of the shadow. This was no coincidence; she preferred to have better knowledge of her customers than they had of her, especially when they were strangers. This could make a difference, when trouble threatened.

  This man was no stranger; she recognized him. Oh, no! Martha dreaded the coming encounter, for the man was her brother Elmo. They were so similar yet so different. All they ever did was quarrel, yet they couldn't let go of each other. She would have faded to the back room, leaving the store to her hireling Lisa. But Lisa wasn't due to report for another twenty minutes. Martha was stuck for it.

  She stood, approaching him. She was determined to keep things positive, this one time, but knew that she would fail as she always did. She forced a smile. “What can I do for you, Elmo?”

  “There's been some trouble,” he said gruffly. He walked around the store, gazing at the fish tanks, as if he were a customer. By that token she knew that he was not any more comfortable with this meeting than she was. But that gave her scant comfort, because he was not a shy or evasive man. Something was really bothering him, and it was bound to bother her in a moment. “I have a meeting coming up. But that's not why I'm here. Mother's in trouble again. She may or may not make it. Will you come?”

  It was just as bad as she had feared. She knew she had no reason for guilt, yet he made her feel it. “You know I won't, Elmo.”

  “I know how you feel, Martha. But—”

  “Oh, do you!” She stifled the rest, clinging to her resolve.

  “But she is your mother, and she is a human being. She never meant to hurt you, or knew that she was doing it. She may have allowed you to be hurt, but she was blameless in intention. I know it would please her just to see you, even if you don't say a word.” But his eyes remained on the fish, not on her. “Can't you raise enough compassion to let her imagine, before she dies, that—”

  “Compassion!” she snapped. She tried to hang on, but knew that she was losing control. She didn't want to make this scene. So she performed an evasive maneuver. “Do you know how many species are killed each year by humans?” Martha asked him.

  The big man looked away from a tank of neon tetras and back at Martha. “No,” he said, with a slightly quizzical expression on his face. She knew he was momentarily confused by her tack, not certain what she was up to, and no more eager for a confrontation than she was.

  She started to lecture him. “Although it's probably impossible to know how many are killed with any accuracy, because no one knows how many species inhabit the Earth, it is clear that each year two percent of the world's rain forests are destroyed, and at this rate they will be gone in 50 years.” Martha began to ramble a bit, unconcerned with the fact that her brother listened politely but neither cared nor fully understood what she was trying to say.

  Since adolescence Martha had had little regard for ordinary folk, but much regard for other creatures of the planet. She saw humans overrunning the world, blithely extirpating thousands of other species, promising to render just about every other creature extinct in the next fifty years before her fellow humans finally extinguished themselves in a final orgy of pollutive destruction.

  “Oh, the environment,” Elmo said, recognizing the theme. “That's not—”

  “Humans are destroying the planet,” she yelled at him, as if he were personally responsible. “They pollute. They overpopulate their land.”

  “Look, Martha, we've long since agreed to disagree on this. Okay, so you feel for the animals. So do I. Who doesn't? But I believe in the wise use of the resources of the world—”

  “Wise use! That's an obscenity! That's the buzzword for unfettered exploitation. It's the obliteration of every species except our own.”

  He shook his head. “There may be some that deserve to be obliterated, such as the malaria carrying mosquito or the parasitic blowfly. However—”

  “Deserve it?” she demanded. “What can you be thinking of? Nothing deserves extinction!”

  But Elmo's mouth tightened. She knew he thought she was a nut on this subject. “Something does.” He said no more.

  That aggravated her further. “Animal species are disappearing due to habitat destruction, pollution, and the introduction of exotic species into natural environments where they don't belong. And you think that's all right? Elmo, do you know what an exotic species is?”

  “Of course. But I don't care to—”

  “Didn't think so. Know how many species could be extinct in the next fifty years?” Elmo started to move away, reminding her of a rabbit with part of its nervous system removed, despite his bulk. Yet he wasn't quite ready to leave. He had never been a quitter; she could say that much for him. He wandered down the rows of tanks, as if searching for a few small fish for his own fish collection. She knew he was actually searching for some way to convince her to come to see their mother. She had to head that off.

  “We just got a shipment of beautiful discus fish. Could I interest you in a few?”

  “No thank you,” he replied, troubled. “Martha—”

  “Did you know that about twenty percent of the world's freshwater fish species are in dangerous decline?” Elmo looked back and listened. His eyes grew wide in frustration. She knew she was treating him like an idiot, considering that he was a local fishery officer who probably had such statistics memorized as a matter of business. But she couldn't stop.

  Elmo looked as if he were about to bring up the matter of their mother again.

  “That's why I buy my fish only from fish farms so that the natural lakes are not interfered with,” Martha said, more forcefully than the subject warranted.

  “Someone's coming,” he said, relieved.

  Martha glanced at the door. “That's only Lisa. She works for me.”

  Evidently giving up his mission here as a bad job, Elmo moved for the door, passing Lisa, who gave him a quick smile. Lisa thought he was a customer, and it was part of her job description to smile winningly at customers. Sometimes it made a difference in a sale, for she was a pretty girl. Of course the effort was wasted in this instance, but Martha wouldn't tell her that; she was glad he was going.

  Yet her emotions were mixed as she heard the door close after him. She always fought with Elmo, and he fought with her. But they were two of a kind, for all that, and he was perhaps the one human being she cared for. Naturally she wouldn't tell him that. If only he weren't such a straightlaced conventional man. Wise use, indeed! Elmo had a fine brain, but it remained firmly in human-chauvinist channels. If only he had seen and learned what she had.

  For Martha had observed, firsthand, the extinction of many species of freshwater fish in Africa and Asia, the decline in bird populations in the United States, and the rapid disappearance of the Brazilian rain forests by cutting and burning. She had watched the Brazilian fires spew out millions of tons of carbon dioxide and monoxide into the air. She had cl
enched her fists when she had seen the great plumes traveling eastward across the Atlantic. The forests were being destroyed at the rate of a football field every second, or the size of Florida every year. Those weren't mere trees; they were a vital component of the world's system of atmospheric restoration. The rainfall pattern was changing, bringing more deserts, and the globe was warming. When it reached a certain unknown trigger point there could be a drastic change in climate, causing agricultural havoc on land and turmoil in the seas. It had happened before, from natural causes; this time it would be unnatural. The extinction of the dinosaurs had been an extreme example, though not the most extreme.

  Her most recent trip to Cebu in the Philippines had pushed Martha over the edge. When the forest was completely logged, she found that nine out of ten bird species unique to the island were made extinct. She considered incidents like this as miniature holocausts. Like a hemorrhaging of the earth. Harvard zoologist Edward O. Wilson, her mentor and hero, estimated that the number of rain forest species doomed each year was 27,000. Each day it was 77, and each hour 3. Human actions had increased extinction between one thousand and ten thousand times over its normal background level in the rain forest.

  Martha was continually depressed by the fact that the richest nations presided over the smallest and least interesting biotas, while poorest nations with exploding populations and little scientific knowledge had the largest number of animal species and incredibly intricate, vast ecosystems. If only she could make Elmo see, recruit him to her Earth-saving mission. He was just about the only person she could trust, if he were on her side. But he wasn't. He wasn't against her, exactly; he was just one of the apathetic throng who chose to believe that there wasn't a looming crisis. The absolute fool!

  Now, belatedly, it occurred to her that if she had been more accommodating in the matter of their mother, her brother might have been more receptive to her own interests. She had missed a golden opportunity. Because she was just as pigheaded as he was. What a pity.