by Paul Dueweke
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The Struggle Concludes
A simple action of the spider brought Elliott abruptly back to the present. It began with an exploratory tapping of one leg on the glass of the door between them. Elliott forced his eyes to the spot.
The tapping increased in intensity and was soon joined by two other legs. The door shuddered, but held, under the blows. Elliott’s concern escalated to fear as the glass cracked. Then another crack appeared … and another. The sound of the strikes also changed, from a sharp report on hard glass to the dull thud of something softer. The safety glass was being beaten into a putty of cracked pieces held together by tough plastic films. Elliott winced with each blow, understanding the meaning but unable to convince his body to take action. The cracks were now too many to count, and each blow caused the fractured glass plate to leap inward toward him. Elliott watched; then he crawled to the door and placed both hands on the rebounding glass. “No! No! Stay out!”
A leg poked through the glass next to one hand and cut him. Elliott braced himself for each strike, hardly aware of the pain. Another leg poked through and cut his other hand.
Elliott pulled back from the door, which was being demolished before his eyes. The hole in the center was quickly growing. A human attacker with such single-minded viciousness would now have glared menacingly at Elliott through the hole. But this attacker had no capacity for theatrics, it knew where it was going, and it proceeded efficiently and relentlessly.
The hole was now nearly large enough for the spider to crawl through. There would be no trial entries to test the hole size. When the hole was exactly large enough for it to enter and no larger, it would precisely execute an entry it had been taught by its human masters. It monitored the hole size with each additional blow. It would know when the time was right.
Elliott imagined the swift attack and lethal injection. The sequence flashed through his mind—the monster sinking its teeth into him, standing over him patiently until it was sure of his death, reporting back to COPE on another successful mission, going to a spider shop for repairs, then ready for another mission. “Just a goddamned machine. Following orders, that’s all. Some coward bureaucrat.” He watched the spider tug at a piece of glass. “This is total bullshit!”
As the last word rolled off his lips, he looked down and found himself on his feet. With no thought for his pain, he ran, away from the creature that was now delivering its last blow to the door. His running was a grotesque mixture of stumbling and plunging, but he was moving. As he reached the steps rising into the stands, he looked back. The spider had three legs and the remnants of its fourth inside the lobby and was negotiating its body through the hole. It was just a matter of seconds now.
Elliott limped up the stairway. He heard the clatter of seven legs scurrying across the marble floor toward him. It’ll fly up these stairs in three steps, he thought. Got to get to the top.
At the top of the steps was a wide aisle running all the way around the swimming pool and about twenty feet above it. At this end, there were no seats below the aisle, which was over one end of the pool. A lone jogger in a black swimsuit and earphones was running laps around the aisle as Elliott struggled to the top of the steps. The jogger arrived at the stairway just as Elliott reached that point. He was shocked to see anyone else there, especially the indigent-looking Elliott.
At that moment, the spider surged up the stairway. It took two steps on the stairs and leaped at Elliott just as he reached the top and just as the jogger arrived. The spider landed with all its might on the figure in its site and sank its fang deep into his neck as they both propelled forward with the force of the impact—a force so great that both spider and prey smashed against the railing and flipped over it. The two were locked together, man and robot, as they flew through the air and landed in the pool below.
Elliott looked over the railing from where he’d been knocked down by the jogger. Two bodies were interred below. One, dressed for swimming, had the physique of a swimmer, but made no attempt to move through the blue water. It bobbed in lane five, its arms and legs moving in spastic motions until it ceased altogether. The other body was clearly out of its element. It was a land creature and was sinking slowly with its seven legs thrashing, trying to reestablish its coordinate space in this new environment. No one had ever taught it how to interpret an absence of landmark data. By the time the spider reached the bottom, some bubbles had started rising from it and bright blue flashes emanated from several body and leg positions. The random leg motions continued as flashes and bubbles escaped. It finally became as motionless at the bottom of the pool as the other body was at the top.
Elliott sank back to the floor. Suddenly he remembered why he’d left his house. “Got to get to her before one of them does.”