With slow grace, the spider stepped off the mouse and turned to face Reuben, two front legs held high as if to defend itself. Reuben backed up against a rough board fence, eight or nine feet away, twenty feet from the street. He glanced to his left, ready to run.
Silver flashed on the fence boards behind him. Reuben screamed and pushed off with his arms and shoulders but the flash followed, sitting on his shoulder where he couldn’t see it clearly. He brushed it away and felt its heavy, resisting sharp legs let go of his shirt. The spider fell into the slush with a splash and leaden clunk.
“Oh, Jesus, help!” Reuben screamed. The street beyond the alley was empty of pedestrians. A car drove by but the driver didn’t hear him. “Help!”
He ran. Two spiders ambled into his path and he tried to stop, feet sliding out from under him in a patch of wet ice. He fell on his back in the dirt and slush. Moaning, he rolled over, the wind knocked out of him, and lifted his head. A spider waited with front legs raised not a foot from his face, a small line of green luminosity drawn between the legs where its eyes might have been. Its body was smooth, a single elongated egg shape. Its legs were jewel-fine.
No joke.
Nobody makes things like that.
He faced the thing, breath coming back in sharp jerks, his arms tingling from the fall. Something moved along his back, gently pinching, and he could not reach up to grab it or brush it off. He could not scream again; there wasn’t enough air in his lungs. Then the weight and the legs were in his hair. Something sharp brushed his scalp. Pricked.
Reuben moaned and lay his head down in the slush, his eyes closed, his face masked with a rictus of fear. After a few minutes, he felt himself getting up and lying back against the fence, his movements poorly coordinated. Nobody came by, or if they did, they did not stop. He was still behind the liquor store. He was dirty and wet and he looked like a filthy drunk. A cop might come along to investigate, but nobody else.
He was very cold but not frightened anymore. There was a high vibration in his skull that reassured him. Reuben suddenly decided to fight the reassurance and his whole body stiffened, slamming his head against the fence so hard the wood cracked.
That sobered him. What parts of his head could still think, urged caution. He could taste blood in his mouth. This is how an animal feels in the wild when the zoo people come, he thought.
The vibration continued, waxing and waning, lulling him even through the bone-chilling cold and damp. He tried several times to get up, but he had no control over his limbs; they tingled as if asleep.
He felt a crawling behind his head. A spider delicately climbed down the front of his coat, legs prodding and lifting the edge of his hip pocket where it lay rucked up in his lap. The thing disappeared into the pocket, legs folding as it entered. The bulge it made was barely noticeable.
His legs stopped tingling. With some effort, Reuben stood, wobbling back and forth uncertainly. He checked himself over and found no injuries, no blood or evidence of abrasions, and only a few tender bruises. When his hand went toward his pocket, he thought better of it — or rather, something else urged caution — and slowly withdrew his arm. Hand held idly out, shivering and puzzled, Reuben looked around the alley for more of the spiders. They were gone.
The mouse lay still beside the dumpster. Reuben was allowed to kneel and examine the tiny carcass.
It had been neatly dissected, its purple, brown, and pink shiny organs laid out to one side, incisions made here and there, as if samples had been taken.
“I have to go home,” Reuben said to nobody or nothing in particular.
He was allowed to finish his walk home.
32
Arthur was delayed three days unexpectedly in Las Vegas to speak informally with three congressmen from the House Judiciary Committee. His first evening back home, back with his family and the river and the forest, he sat on the living room throw rug, legs curled into a lotus. Francine and Marty sat on the couch behind him. Marty had laid the fire in the grate all by himself, lighting the carefully placed tinder with a long match.
“Here’s what’s happening, really, as much as I know,” he said, raising himself on his arms and sweeping his locked legs around to face them. And he told them.
The heater came on at midnight and blew warm air over Arthur and Francine as they lay in bed in each other’s arms. Francine’s head rested on his shoulder. He could feel her eye movements as she stared into darkness. They had just made love and it had been very good, and against all his intellectual persuasions, he felt good, at home, at rest. Not a word had been said between them for fifteen minutes.
She lifted her head. “Marty—”
The phone rang.
“Oh, Christ.” She rolled out of his way. He reached across her to pick up the phone.
“Arthur, Chris Riley here. I’m sorry I woke you up—”
“We’re awake,” Arthur said.
“Yes. This is a bit of an emergency, I think. There are some guys in Hawaii who’d like to talk with you. They heard I knew your home number. You can call them now or I—”
“I’d like to be incommunicado, Chris, at least for a couple of days.”
“I think this could be very important, Arthur.”
“All right, what is it.”
“From the little they’ve told me, they might have found the — you know, what the press is talking about, the weapon the aliens might use against us.”
“Who are they?”
“One is Jeremy Kemp. He’s a conceited son of a bitch and hell to deal with, but he’s an excellent geologist. The other two are oceanographers. Ever hear of Walt Sam-show?”
“I think so. Wrote a textbook I read in college. He’s pretty old, isn’t he?”
“He and another fellow named Sand are with Kemp in Hawaii. They say they saw something pretty unusual.”
“All right. Give me a phone number.” He switched on the light over the nightstand.
“Samshow and Sand are on board a ship in Pearl Harbor.” Riley enunciated the number and name of the ship for him. “Ask for Walt or David.”
“Thanks, Chris,” Arthur said, hanging up.
“No rest?” Francine asked.
“Some people think they might have found the smoking gun.”
“Jesus,” Francine said softly.
“I’d better call them now.” He got out of bed and went into the den to use the extension there. Francine followed a few minutes later, wrapped in her robe.
When he had finished with the call, he turned and saw Marty standing beside her, rubbing his eyes.
“I’m going to San Francisco this weekend,” he said. “But I’ve still got a couple of days with you guys.”
“Show me how to use the telescope, Dad?” Marty asked sleepily. “I want to see what’s going on.”
Arthur picked the boy up and carried him back to his bedroom.
“Were you and Mom making love?” Marty asked as Arthur lay him down in the bed and pulled the covers over him.
“You got it, Big Ears,” Arthur said.
“That means you love Mom. And she loves you.”
“Mm-hm.”
“And you’ll go away but you’ll come back again?”
“As soon as I can.”
“If we’re all going to die, I want you both here, with me, all of us together,” Marty said.
Arthur held his son’s hand for a long moment, eyes moist, throat gnarled with love and a deep, inexpressible anguish. “We’ll start with the telescope tomorrow, and you can look tomorrow night,” he finally said in a harsh whisper.