by Paul Dueweke
Elliott was only four doors away when the thing sprang. He was only four doors away when he reached that last door handle to give one last tug, when he felt that door suddenly yield to his tug. He swung the glass door open and fell inside. The spider landed in front of the door, reached one tentacle through the closing crack, and grabbed Elliott’s ankle. It was an uneven tug of war. Elliott pulling with all his might on the crash bar with both feet braced against the doorframe. The spider, with the strength of a weight lifter and a mechanical blind will, pulled Elliott’s foot relentlessly away from its hold. There could be but one winner in this unfair match.
But as clever as this spider’s attack program was that guided its every response to Elliott, it lacked the defiance of Elliott’s mind. It was engaged in a situation for which it had not been programmed. It failed to see that the key to victory was not Elliott’s leg that it grasped so rigidly, but the door that barred it from the rest of Elliott. With such a simple concept, it would’ve had no trouble prying the door open with its superior strength. But the instruction set it continually executed denied it this simple solution. The match was not as uneven as Elliott had feared.
Summoning his last reserve of strength, Elliott yelled and pulled the door shut and locked. The crushed tentacle still grasped his ankle as before, but Elliott now had a locked door between himself and his assassin.
His back was propped against a railing and both legs stretched out against the doorframe. For the first time he was able to examine the menace outside, just inches away. He studied its limb, which kinked through the crack between the distorted door and the frame. The tentacle still held tight to his ankle. Elliott stared at the spider, then at his leg. It was a stalemate. Each analyzed the situation in his or its own way.
Elliott now had time to think, to fear. The fact that this thing was not just a killer, but also a spider, now came to the front. He looked into eyes that he’d dreaded for over a half-century. If this was his final test, why did it have to be against such a thing? Why not a lion, or a rattle snake? He could deal with those. Why this thing?
“That’s it,” he said. “You’re not really a spider, just look like a spider.” He stared into its eyes, seeing his own minute reflection. “You’re just a goddamned machine.”
Its small size surprised him. From what he’d heard, he expected a much larger, and more formidable looking thing. Its size didn’t suggest its physical or intellectual power. Up close, it was a simple-looking machine, not as heinous as he’d conjectured. He almost expected a wicked mouth-full of jagged teeth dripping blood. “Wait a minute,” he mumbled. “What’s that thing?” He lowered his head to get a better view. There it was, the long, slender stainless steel tube was just visible on the creature’s belly. It slowly pulsed just perceptibly, in and out, in and out. Elliott’s eyes narrowed as he realized this was the killing device, a needle full of venom meant for him, venom that would be coursing through his own body if it weren’t for the single sheet of glass separating them. “You’re ready, aren’t you? You want to use that on me. And all because my name is on some list. You don’t hate me, don’t even know me. But you want to stick me with that thing.”
Elliott’s attention then refocused on his ankle as he felt its grip tighten. He strained at the oppressive grasp, but it wouldn’t budge. Its skin was smooth and cool, unlike his own. The spider had decided it was time for action. It began pulling with all its might on Elliott’s leg once more. It was dragging Elliott’s leg closer and closer to the crack between the door and the frame. As it performed this simple act of power, the door and the frame continually stripped away material from its leg since there simply wasn’t enough room in that crack for the tentacle. As the spider single-mindedly persisted in this, it was slowly destroying its leg.
After a short time, the power and control lines in the leg began to break, and Elliott could feel its grip loosen. He again tried prying the grasp from his leg, and this time it worked. He heard the carbon and plastic shell splinter. He embraced the wires snapping and delighted in the scrapes and grinds as the spider ripped its leg free, leaving a limp piece draped over Elliott’s leg.
It stood inches from Elliott, reconfiguring its motor commands to accommodate just seven legs. Elliott watched this exercise as he rubbed life back into his raw leg. He wished that the thing could experience the kind of pain he had in his own leg. “That’ll slow you down. But you don’t hurt, do you? You just ripped your leg off, and all you care about is reconfiguring some controls.”
He wished it pain, not to make it less effective, but to make it suffer. “God damn you! Why can’t you suffer? You just lost a leg!” As he examined it and hated it, he noticed another injury, one that might have prevented it from catching him as he fled through the door. The spider’s right eye was smashed. “So you’re half-blind, lost your depth perception. Too bad, you son-of-a-bitch. If I could get your other eye, I’d yank it out with my bare hands.”
Elliott tried to stand up, but every part of him ached at once, and he slumped back to the floor. “Got to get up,” he said through short bursts of breath. “Got to get up,” he said again as he used the railing to try to pull himself up. He fell back to the floor with a grunt. “Well, you half-blind, lame bastard, now what—” A pain shot up his side before he could finish the question.
As if in response, the spider began walking from door to door, testing each one. Since there were a dozen doors across the entrance, and Elliott had found one of the four he tried to be ajar, there was no way to tell if any others might be open. He watched with exhaustion and hatred as it moved down the line.
The spider grasped the handle of the second last door and pulled. Tight. It walked to the last door. Elliott squinted as one of the spider’s legs reached for the door handle. It shook the door, and it creaked, but it was locked. The spider returned to where Elliott and its leg lay on the floor.
“Can’t figure out what to do, can you? I’m right here, and you’re right there.” Every muscle in Elliott’s body ached. Both legs were bloodied and his left shoulder throbbed. He didn’t want to move.
He slowly became entombed in a scene he’d suppressed for over fifty years, a scene he’d claimed he couldn’t remember, a scene of a teenage boy in a far away garage. He was blond and freckled and not enthusiastic about his task. He climbed a stepladder and pulled a tire down, and a cloud of dirt fell onto him. He spat it out and rubbed his eyes. When he tugged on the second tire, another cloud fell onto his head, but this dirt was alive and crawled over him with a thousand legs. He screamed and began flailing at the sea of life as venomous jaws sought retribution, their red-hot needles piercing his skin. The pain and the terror had continued for half a century.
Elliott opened his eyes. He’d denied that vision for a lifetime, yet it lurked beneath his consciousness every day. Now, just a short spider jump from him, stood the Godzilla of spiders—with only a thin sheet of glass between them. He faced his ancient foe magnified a million times.
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 gl
ass 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.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Guinda’s Demise
Elliott arrived at the entrance gate of the Lab in the back seat of a taxi, and the guard waved the car in when he showed his ID. Once at the main science building, he paid the driverless cab, and it sped away. He was glad to have met no one in the hall, for his sorry appearance would have led to unwanted attention. He collected the printed files on his way to his office and plopped himself with a loud sigh on the sofa.
He was on excellent terms with this sofa. It had been with him for nearly a quarter century, during which time he’d napped on it when he’d chosen the comfort of his work over his old family. It provided comfort all those years, and now he needed that comfort more than ever. The day’s events had exhausted him so much that everything seemed to dissolve into the background as he sprawled there. This was his first chance to relax in several hours. And those hours had been the most demanding of his life.
His thoughts began drifting aimlessly as in the final stage before sleep. But he sat up with a start. “Guinda!”
A cold hand gripped his stomach with the fear that it might be too late. He reached for his phone and caught himself in mid dial. What would he say to her? What if another spider had already gotten to her? Her only safety would be to join him here at the Lab, but how could she do that if a spider was waiting for the right time to strike?
I have to get her back here. We can study the rest of those files … and plan what to do next. He uneasily completed her phone number. As it rang, he prepared himself for the worst. He clenched the receiver and bit his lip.
“Hello,” came the response finally.
“Guinda! Thank God you’re okay! COPE knows everything. We’re both in danger! Can you talk?”
“Yes.”
“I found some really wild stuff in those Halvorsen files last night. I think there’s a plot going on to substitute holographic images for the real candidates. I think the networks are trying to control the candidates.”
“Yes?” came the less than enthusiastic response from Guinda.
“Not only that, they tried to kill me this morning. And I’m sure they know about you, too.”
“Are you okay now?” Guinda asked.
“Yeah, but I had some really close calls with this spider thing. I guess I was pretty lucky. It died and I didn’t.”
“Where are you?” Guinda asked automatically.
“At my office at the Lab. Security is pretty good here, and I think I’m safe … at least for a while. But I don’t think you are, Guin. In fact this call is probably being monitored. I think you’re in very great danger.”
“I don’t think I am, Elliott. I’m okay. I don’t think I have to worry.”
“You don’t understand, Guin. They know about you and me, and they tried to kill me. You may be next.”
“Don’t worry about me, Elliott. I can assure you that I’m all right. Just stay where you are, and I’ll come to you in about an hour. We need to talk about what’s going on and figure out what to do next. Just stay where you are, okay?”
Elliott paused for a long time and then responded, “Okay.”
He stood motionless beside the telephone. The words comforted him, but her voice boiled in him like an inferno. The conversation didn’t make sense. She’d seemed almost drugged when they first met at her office. He’d decided that her humanity was probably just repressed by the inhuman environment. He could taste the oppression of the setting himself and thought it must have an even more devastating effect on Guinda, working there day after day. But now at her home, she aired the same detachment. What’s going on? I wonder if COPE is there.
He imagined a spider or a spy car outside her house. Maybe she was too frightened to have him come to her now. Maybe a spider had gotten into to her house and was holding her prisoner. Maybe it wasn’t even her he just talked to. They might’ve killed her and installed a surrogate on her phone. Could be, he thought. COPE must have recordings of her voice and her telephone manner at work, and a computer simulation would sound like what I just heard. Elliott replayed the conversation in his mind and played it against his recall of their first meeting. She called him Townsend then, but COPE would know they were on a first
name basis now and would expect her to call him Elliott. “That’s it,” he muttered, “she never called me Ted this time. She would have called me Ted … after what we … she would have called me Ted. They got her. I know those bastards got her.”
Elliott pictured one of those terrible spiders clutching her with its sinuous evil, pressing itself close to her delicate breasts, not to embrace her, but to exterminate the life in her young body. The vision of Guinda being strangled or poisoned by one of those monsters poisoned his mind. He saw the creature with its eight menacing legs breaking into her patio door from her upstairs deck. “No,” he said outloud, “the skylight … she keeps that skylight open in her bathroom. It would be easy for one of those things to climb up her roof and drop through the skylight … and kill her in her sleep. Those cowards are probably great at that. They probably killed her like they killed Halvorsen. And like they tried to kill me. How else can you explain that phone call? That wasn’t her. Somebody tried to make it sound like her—someone who didn’t know the real kindness in her voice.” His voice broke off to a whisper and then died on his lips. “How else can you explain it?”
He sank into a chair, staring at the phone. “It wasn’t her, so it must have been them.” He rose on his uncertain legs. “I have to find out, and if she’s dead …”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Sherwood Lays it Out
Guinda hung up the phone, turned to her visitor, and said, “They tried to kill Townsend this morning. Did you have anything to do with that?”
Her visitor stared unwaveringly at her.