Spider Legs (11 page)

CHAPTER 17

Population

B
ACK IN THE
store, Martha Samules was ashamed of herself. Not for making the scene in the restaurant, but for alienating a potential friend. Natalie Sheppard seemed like a decent sort, despite her profession. Martha seldom admitted it, even to herself, but she would have liked to have a friend or two. But somehow she never could resist the temptation to make others uncomfortable. She even did it to her brother, when she wouldn't hurt him for the world. And to their mother.

There it was. Elmo had called her and told her that Mom was in a coma after surgery. She should have gone with him to see her. Yet she couldn't. Her alienation had been too deep, too long. Even if it didn't make a lot of sense.

From the beginning, Elmo had been the ornery one. He had fought those who tried to tease him, and he had learned the art of fighting well. Let a boy say “finger” in that sneering tone, and he might soon enough feel that finger, curled with the others into a surprisingly solid fist, against his flesh. Let him curl his lip back to emulate too long a tooth, and he might find his own teeth loosened. No, boys had not teased Elmo for long! But that did not make them like him. Neither did the teachers, some of whom seemed to think he was a sending of the devil. More than one school had found pretexts to discipline him repeatedly, isolating
him from his classmates. Their mother had protested, but it kept happening, and Elmo's fighting attitude didn't help his case.

She remembered the trouble when he severely hurt another boy. It didn't seem to matter that three boys, all larger than he, had jumped him and pummeled him mercilessly, and neither classmates nor the teacher had come to his rescue. He had finally, in desperation, managed to throw one clear, grab another around the waist, and heave him into the third with such force that their two heads cracked together, rendering both unconscious. That had been lucky and unlucky for him. Lucky because he hadn't been trying for anything so effective; unlucky because of the consequence. One boy had a concussion; the other wound up in the hospital for stitches. Elmo was expelled for violence.

After that Mom had tutored Elmo at home. Martha, who tended to internalize, rather than externalize in the manner of her brother, remained in school, keeping her fingers folded and her mouth closed, literally, so that her teeth didn't show. She got along despite the jeers. She didn't give anyone any concussions, though she did take some licks. And gradually her confusion and doubt congealed into the realization that she wasn't inferior, just different, and that she would never be accepted by others. All her efforts to conform, to be nice, had been wasted; she could do her very best for a century and still be a target of ridicule. Just because of her hands. Because of her teeth. Because.

Today some of her acquaintances asked her why she didn't get corrective plastic surgery. Why didn't they just mind their own business? When she was growing up, plastic surgery in her town had not been sufficiently advanced, and in any case was too costly. And although today doctors could make some improvement, Martha had an acute phobia toward dentists, hospitals, and the like. That was part of what had stopped her from going with her brother to see their mother. Even if she were to have all her teeth removed and wear dentures, her jaws would be very
misaligned and would require even more surgery with no guarantee of the results. No way. All that surgery was not for her.

Martha continued to reminisce. It took her some time to make her internal adjustments, but by the time she finished school her heart had, as it were, become a crystal of ice. Only occasionally did she encounter someone with the potential to be liked, and then it always went wrong. Just as it had with Natalie Sheppard. Something in Martha just couldn't allow an artifact as dangerous as friendship to hatch from its reptilian egg. So her emotional censor cut in and broke it up before it could spread. Sheppard would avoid her like the plague, after that scene in the restaurant. Yet one faint, lonely vestige of Martha's original longing to be liked felt the pain of that necessary surgery. If only, that vestige thought, there could be just one exception. A faint thread, a tie to someone who was a friend. But the solid majority of her feelings were disciplined, knowing that in friendship was ruin. Only in complete emotional alienation from all human beings could she be what she had to be, and accomplish what she had to accomplish. Alienation from all except Elmo.

Elmo. He had thrived on the home tutoring, and learned a phenomenal amount. He had been able to keep his illusions about the decency of the human kind, because he was no longer subjected to the refutation on a daily basis. There might have been some justified bitterness in him, but it was overmatched by the constant overflowing love of their mother, who lavished her attention on him. Elmo, in withdrawing from human society physically, had been returned to it emotionally. Martha, remaining among humans, had become completely alienated from them. It was in its fashion a paradox. But it had allowed her to draw from the human society all the intellectual things she needed to accomplish her purpose.

For she, with the objectivity of alienation, had come to comprehend the fundamental problem of the world. It was being overrun by a single species. Like rabbits breeding without predation in Australia, and in England before that, humans were thoughtlessly consuming the resources needed for the future.

The notion turned her stomach, and so she had continually searched for a way to stop mankind's destruction of the environment. Wouldn't it be nice, she had thought, if she could devise some way to limit the number of humans on earth. If she could somehow craft a “Purple People” monster like that of the old humorous popular song, that did not confine its appetite to purple people. Something that liked to eat people, and could not readily be stopped. Perhaps a million or so such monsters would exert the necessary population control on human beings, particularly if they could be engineered to selectively destroy humans and invade above land for brief excursions before they had to return to the sea for their own survival.

For of course she thought in terms of the sea. That was her specialty, the home of the best the natural world had to offer. Something once confined to the sea, but freed from it so that the job could be done. Maybe she could enlist an army of ecomonsters—but no, no natural creature could be as smart as the humans were, and so any such monsters would soon be destroyed. They had to have human intelligence and know-how, and that would be possible only by having them work with selected humans, ecosoldiers, one soldier to guide each monster, perhaps through nerve and muscle stimulation. It should work if the monsters were always hungry, so they would gladly cooperate with their human hosts because they would always lead them to food—nice, fresh, raw, delightfully squealing humans.

“Mmmm,” Martha moaned in pleasure at the image of armies of monsters descending on coastal cities. Even with no humans with them, they could probably kill millions of people.

Martha grinned as she fantasized. As the monsters foraged in the sea and responded to guidance from the advisors because such guidance normally led them to food, they could explore the ocean depths as no mechanical contraption might. What mechanical subs or robots could crawl through crevices and hug the ocean floor with the agility of natural creatures? She, along with a few dozen hand-picked ecosoldiers, could build dome-cities under the sea by using the monsters. The ecosoldiers could monitor
sea pollution as they patrolled the sea and the coastlines and attack the offenders wherever they found them. If more than one passenger could ride a monster, each could ferry several passengers under the sea to faraway dome-cities and coasts. She supposed that the ecosoliders could also carry weapons which would protrude from tiny holes in the monsters’ bodies, but too many protruding objects would give away the fact that the monsters were under human guidance. She preferred that the origin of the monsters remain a mystery.

She imagined hiding her team of ecosoldiers in Terra Nova National Park. Their monster hosts would remain in Bonavista Bay until they were summoned by the ecosoldiers in diving suits giving the proper arm signals. She and her teams would link up in the shallow waters and fan out south and west to Channel-Port aux Basques and then set up another base at Gros Morne National Park on the western coast of Newfoundland. They could perform a few test runs on the small coastal towns of Newfoundland, and by the summer they could spread south to Nova Scotia and finally her main goal: New York City, a major source of pollution, overcrowding, and environmental cruelty.

The human-monster hybrids could be unparalleled opportunity for science and humankind, but her only goal now was to destroy humans. She would continue to engineer enormous monsters that could take on humans when they entered the sea and also for short periods of time in their own technological habitats—oil drilling rigs, ships, and coastal towns.

Martha paced around her store, dreaming on. The need was great; the human population simply had to be reduced, one way or another, and there seemed to be a poetic justice to the notion of having monsters eat people, instead of people eating all other creatures. And think of the good it would do the world, getting those bunny-breeders under control at last! Because there literally wasn't room in the world for unlimited humans. Many researchers knew that, but none of them were taking the kind of action that was needed.

A fifth or more of the species of plants and animals could be
made extinct by the year 2020, Martha thought, unless she personally made efforts to save them. But if she and her monsters could be ready to gobble up the surplus human population of the world—ah, then it would be different. The monsters would be a little like wolves in the woods which prevented deer and rabbits from overrunning the forest and then starving en masse. The presence of wolves was better than the alternative of uncontrolled reproduction and the ensuing pain of starvation for the deer. Humankind had no predator to stop it from overrunning the planet and starving. Unless she made one.

By the year 2002, there would be 21 “megacities” with populations of greater than 10 million or more. Of these, 18 would be in some of the poorest nations in the world. Calcutta already had 12 million people and Mexico City 20 million people. Some African cities were growing at a rate of 10 percent a year. Perhaps, whenever they were ready, the monsters could be sent to Calcutta and Mexico City to stem the rising tide of humanity.

During her summer years at Harvard, Martha had made it a point to tour some of the troubled megacities of the world. As she traveled through some African countries, such as Zaire and Egypt, she found conditions ghastly. Five-year-old children dug through clots of ox dung for undigested kernels of corn. Newborn babies were dropped into garbage bins by drug-addicted mothers. Many of the cities were kleptocracies, with looting a common occurrence.

A year after the African trip she traveled to Europe. In Upper Silesia, Poland, she discovered indiscriminate dumping of toxic wastes poisoned the water to such an extent that 10 percent of the region's newborns had birth defects. When she decided to take action and make a fuss with local officials regarding the pollution, she was jailed for a week. So much for working within the system.

Mexico City was the worst for her. The fumes of three million cars and 35,000 industries became trapped by the high ring of mountains that surrounded the city. It was then she decided that she would someday have to help the planet and somehow control
the rising population and ensuing degradation of the environment.

In the early 1990s the number of people on earth was about six billion. If the birth rates remained what they were, with accompanying small declines in death rates, by 2025 the world would have nearly 11 billion people, double the number in 1992. Of course this increase in population would come at the cost of most other species. Martha hated this most of all. She cared about the animal species and the environmental disasters more than the continued poverty of most of the world. What had the burgeoning human population ever done for her, anyway?

Yet another doubling of population would take around twenty-five years. At that rate, by 2175, there would be around 700 billion people! This meant that there would be 12,000 people for every square mile of land—or 3,500 people for every square mile of Earth's surface including the oceans. Bunnies galore!

Martha sighed as she began cleaning some of the glass on nearby aquaria. Her mind continued to race with environmental facts and figures. Sometime she found it hard to stop the barrage of thoughts. She now began to think of the latest hunger estimates from Brown University. Their World Hunger Program had recently estimated that the world could permanently sustain either 5.5 billion vegetarians, 3.7 billion people who got 15 percent of their calories from animal products or 2.8 billion people who derived 25 percent of their calories from animal products, as in the wealthy countries. Of course, those snotty Americans and Canadians and most of the world's elite continued to insist upon eating animal meat. So the human population was already beyond the carrying capacity of the world. Now it was their turn to be eaten.

But she had strayed from her initial line of thought: her relationship to her brother and her mother. Elmo she could forgive, to a degree, for he was a child of the same arena she was. He was flesh of her flesh, sharing her unusual physical attributes. She still had some hope of recruiting him to her grand design. But
their mother—she was of the “normal” human kind, incapable of understanding. She was expendable, along with most of the rest of her species. So it was pointless to go to see her; it would just make things more difficult. It was time for the old woman to go.

Martha shook her head. There was still some lurking emotional weakness. But if she could make it past her human mother's death, she should be secure against all else. She intended to make it.

CHAPTER 18

Come By Chance

N
ATALIE
S
HEPPARD PACED
the floor of her efficiency apartment. Normally she appreciated her days off, using them to explore the neighboring countryside for special plants or simply to catch up on sleep. This time she was unsatisfied with anything she contemplated.

“What's the matter with me?” she asked herself rhetorically. It was a way she had of getting to the root of a problem, interrogating herself as if she were a suspect. “What's bugging me? The big spider? Yes, but I don't think that's it. That scene with Martha in the restaurant? That, too, but it doesn't account for this. My date with Nathan Smallwood?” She paused. “Bingo!”

Because there was no getting around it: she liked that man, and had enjoyed the time she had spent with him. She liked Nathan for the humor that glinted behind his eyes. Most of the men she met seemed rather superficial, whereas Nathan's passion for his work and his obvious kind manner had immediately attracted her to him.

Yet she had resolved not to get involved with a man that way, unless she knew him for years beforehand. Well, for months, anyway. She had met him just this week, in the middle of an ugly situation. It was way too soon to judge his real nature, and failure
to do so could be as bad a mistake as not frisking a suspected assassin for weapons.

Yet again, how could she get to know him better, when he might return to Harvard at any time? She could not depend on him remaining in Newfoundland for two months just so she could study him like a species of plant and see how he blossomed. So this was a foolish fancy best dismissed.

“Damn,” she muttered. “I'm going to do something I'll surely regret.” She reached for the phone.

Maybe, she thought as she dialed, he wouldn't be in. The chances of catching him immediately were not great. And if he were in, he would probably be busy. He was not here, after all, on vacation. And if he was in and not busy, why would he care to spend any time with an off-duty policewoman who was neither beautiful nor eager to rush into bed with any man? She was not exactly bargain entertainment. So maybe it would be just as well if she got no answer.

She heard the emulations of the phone ringing. Three, four five. He wasn't in. Six. Time to hang up. Seven. So why wasn't she doing it? Eight. This was inane. Nine. Her hand wasn't answering to reason. Ten.

Then he picked up. “Sorry, I was in the shower. I mean, this is Nathan Smallwood.”

She had to laugh. “At least put a towel on, stupid!”

He was silent a moment. Oh, no—had she ruined everything by her impulsive impertinence? This really wasn't like her. Somehow she was stumbling over her own feet when she least wanted to. Messing up like a teenage schoolgirl. “Uh, I'm sorry,” she said haltingly. “I didn't mean to—uh, this is Natalie Sheppard, and—”

“Sure, Natalie, I recognized your voice. I was just putting on that towel, so as not to embarrass you further.”

“You mean you
were
—?”

Then he laughed, and she laughed too, and her feeling for him surged. “This isn't business,” she said after it subsided. “Not
even a stupid pretext.” She took a breath, gathering her nerve. “I—I liked walking with you the other day, and—” She couldn't quite say it.

“I liked it too,” he agreed. “I wanted to call you, but I know you're busy.”

“I have two days off now,” she said quickly. “I—I was wondering whether you might—” She stalled out again.

“Are you asking me for a date?” he asked.

She felt herself blushing. “Yes.”

“And to think I didn't have the nerve to ask you!” he said. “Natalie, I'd love to spend some time with you, no pretext necessary. You are the one bright spot in a somewhat trying excursion.”

“Thank you.” This seemed inane, but she didn't trust herself to say more.

“Shall I come to your apartment? I mean, to meet you, of course, so we can go somewhere.”

“But you don't know where my apartment is,” she protested.

“Yes I do. You pointed it out to me. The one you shared with the older woman, before she died.”

Had she done that? Pointed it out to him? She must have. “Yes, that will be fine. You—you are free now?”

“Yes, as it happens. We are waiting for some test results, and there's not much for me to do until something new breaks. So I have time on my hands. But even if I didn't, I would try to make some for you.”

The man was trying to charm her, and succeeding. “Thank you,” she repeated.

Soon he was there. He was wearing jeans and jacket, evidently preferring informal wear even on a date. She liked that. She went down and out to meet him.

“Do you have anything in mind?” Nathan inquired as they came together. “I enjoyed our walk, but I think we may have seen most of the town already.”

She wrestled with her discretion, and lost. “Well, normally I
go out of town in my time off. I like to explore for plants, and sometimes I pick up interesting stones I might use for a rock garden. I thought we might, um, see the natural sights.”

“That appeals to me,” he agreed. “Where do you have in mind?”

“I have been gradually exploring outward from here,” she said. “We're on the Avalon Peninsula, which I have pretty well covered in the past year. But there are some interesting formations and lakes in the main part of the Island of Newfoundland. The edge of that is about ninety miles away by road, so about as much time would be spent driving as exploring, but—”

“I'd like to see it. This entire region is far more interesting than I anticipated, and of course I'm interested in any fish there might be in those little lakes.”

“There's an inlet of Trinity Bay that comes right up between Sunnyside and Come By Chance. There could be fish there.”

He spread his hands. “I'm afraid you lost me. The inlet comes accidentally to where?”

She had to smile. “Small towns along the route, just north of the isthmus connecting the Avalon Peninsula to the main island. Sunnyside, and about two miles south, Come By Chance. I'm not sure how it got named.”

“Oh. Come By Chance. I like it. It pretty well symbolizes our encounter.”

“Between a policewoman and a specialist in fish?”

“Don't say it! I get so tired of those ‘something's fishy’ jokes. Between two people who ordinarily would never meet.”

“Well, every encounter between people might be taken as a random event,” she said. “Still, I agree, and if you don't mind the distance—”

“I am satisfied with the distance, and the company.”

“Then I'll rent a car for the day,” she said, gratified.

“Rent a car? Oh, I didn't realize—but I should have. Of course you would use a police car on duty, and wouldn't have a lot of use for a regular car. But you know, I have already rented
a good motorcycle for the duration of my stay here. If you cared to trust my driving—”

Ride double on a sports motorcycle? Natalie had never cared to try anything that chancy. But this seemed to be a day for throwing caution to the winds. “I'd love to.”

So it was they rode out on the cycle. Nathan handled it competently, and soon Natalie didn't feel as insecure as she had anticipated. In fact she was rather enjoying it. Her rump was wedged on the seat behind his, her spread thighs embracing his, and she was holding on around his torso. It was a way to be much closer to him, physically, than would have been acceptable in any other circumstance, without implying any sexual interplay. In fact, considering her present state of attraction and diffidence, it was ideal. She laid her helmeted head against his back, sheltering it from the wind of their velocity, and was marvelously content.

The road wound southwest, then west, crossing the peninsula. Then it vectored northwest, heading into the narrow connection to the “mainland.” This was the bridge of land between Trinity Bay and Placentia Bay, hardly more than five miles thick. Newfoundland was a world in itself, fascinating in its convoluted detail.

It took about three hours to reach Come By Chance, because Nathan was a careful driver, not trying to push any limits. She appreciated that. In fact she appreciated just about everything about him. They passed through the town, deciding to start at a lake and work their way back. Nathan found a suitable place to pull off and park the cycle.

They dismounted. Natalie found that her legs were stiff; the ride had stretched her thighs in unaccustomed ways. As if, she thought naughtily, she had just had endless sex with a monster. The shaking of the motorcycle had also put her kidneys into gear; she had to find a bathroom. Naturally she had not considered that before guiding him here to the uninhabited countryside. They could so readily have stopped in Sunnyside.

But he understood well enough. “Let's take a brief break,” he said. “Apart. Choose your region.”

She chose a gully with good bushes for concealment. He went somewhere else. It was a great relief.

In due course they met again at the parked motorcycle and commenced their exploration. “There should be a small lake up this way,” she said, pointing the direction. “I believe I saw it from the road once, but couldn't pause then to explore it. I'll look for stones and you can look for fish.”

“Fair enough.”

Natalie had an immediate problem: there were stones all over. Quartz, mica, marble—she wanted to take it all, but considering their carrying capacity on the cycle, she had to limit it to only the very smallest, choicest fragments.

Nathan saw her hungry glances. “We should have rented the car,” he said, smiling.

“No, I have to practice economy anyway,” she demurred. “I don't want to crowd myself out of my apartment.”

“I had heard that little girls like pretty stones. I guess big girls do too.”

“It's hard to outgrow,” she agreed, picking up the nearest stone. It was a nondescript aggregate with patches of white, brown, and yellow, weighing close to a pound. Too big to take with her, really; she could take a dozen smaller, purer, and more varied stones for that weight.

She was about to put it down when Nathan spoke. “It resembles Newfoundland. The island, I mean, as seen on a contour map, with colors denoting the elevations and lakes. See, it's roughly in the shape of a right angled triangle. We should be about there.” He touched a spot near its southeast base. “I wonder whether we could see us, in miniature, if we had a magnifying glass?”

She looked at him, trying to keep a straight face. “I think your imagination is dangerous.” But now she found herself unable to put down the stone. It had become special. So she carried it
with her despite its heft, hoping that soon she would find more suitable stones and be satisfied to exchange this for them.

They found the lake. It turned out to be too small to support fish, being hardly more than a wet weather pond. But Nathan was good natured about it. “I can survive for a day without spying a new species of fish. I'm enjoying the exploration.”

But that reminded her of the way Kalinda James had teased Garth about not being able to be away from the water for more than three hours without becoming obnoxious. They had gone back out to sea—and now Kalinda was dead and Garth was raving in a hospital.

“If I said something—” he said, concerned.

“Oh, no, not your fault,” she said quickly. “A chain of thought. I was talking to Kalinda James just hours before—before she died. She had spoken of her husband's need to get out to sea, as if it were an addiction, and your reference to needing to see fish—it was just a foolish connection my mind made, and it dumped me into a mire.”

“I'm sorry. I had forgotten that you knew them. Of course this is a bad time for you. I shouldn't have asked you to come out here today.”

She had to laugh, somewhat weakly. “
I
asked
you
, Nathan!”

“Well, I shouldn't have accepted.”

“You're way too generous. I should have realized that I'd be moody and distracted, and not bothered you.”

“If this is your moody and distracted phase, I'd love to know you when you're cheerful and focused!”

She looked at him, suspecting irony, but there was no evidence of it. He just seemed to be a remarkably easygoing person. She experienced a surge of awkward emotion. “Can we talk?” she asked suddenly.

“Certainly. I enjoy talking with you.”

“Let's find a place to sit down.”

They found a low outcropping of rocks that provided nice places to sit. They faced each other. Natalie hesitated, not sure how to begin. She held the stone in her lap, running her fingers
over its contours. Nathan had the sensitivity not to prompt her. He looked entirely relaxed.

“The other night, you told me a good deal about you,” she finally said.

“I may have talked too much.”

“No, I found it interesting. I liked listening. And that's my problem. I—find myself getting intrigued with you in a male-female way, and it really isn't fair to continue this dialogue if—”

He smiled. “I'm interested. I'm not married. I was once, but it didn't work out. She found me too diffident about practical things, and too interested in invertebrates. I hope you aren't going to tell me that you are married.”

“Not exactly. I—was. Married. And I didn't like it. It was a bad experience that I wouldn't care to repeat. So I really haven't been shopping for a man. But—am I embarrassing you?”

“You are delighting me. I think you are trying to say what I lacked the nerve to say to you.”

“I'm saying that I'm not exactly virginal.”

He laughed. “I should hope not! If you were once married—”

She had to smile. “I mean emotionally. The—the bloom is off. I don't know how my experience would affect my association with another man. It might doom any compatible relationship.”

He nodded. “May I be impertinent, Natalie?”

“Please. I'm nervous about being too serious.”

“There's a song from the musical
The King and I
that came into my head just now. It is titled, if I remember it correctly, “Shall We Dance?” and it describes how a dance can lead a couple to romance by a number of stages.”

“I am familiar with it.”

“It concludes ‘With the clear understanding that this kind of thing can happen, shall we dance?’ So the implication is that they are not going entirely blindly into the possible consequence of the event. I always liked that line.” He met her gaze for a moment. “So with a similarly clear understanding, shall we talk?”