The screen moved in on the dark brown form, crouched ominously at the bottom of the smooth-sided pit. The length of the body was divided into two main sections connected by a narrow bridge between head and body. Eight bristly legs grew from the front section, and near the mouth were another two pairs of shorter appendages. Eight pearly eyes were distributed along the dark back of the upper body.
Dougal MacDougal aimed his pointer at the head section. “Here’s the place to hit her, in the cephalothorax. Most of the nervous system is here, so that’s the best place to shoot. It’s also the most dangerous place to be, because the jaws and poison glands are here, too. Don’t forget that your simulacrum is as vulnerable to venom as a real organism. You’ll be completely disabled — and in real agony — if there is even a small injection of poison. So watch out for the fangs, and stay well clear of them.” He moved the pointer farther to the rear. “This is the pedicel, the place where the cephalothorax joins the abdomen. If you can get an accurate hit here, do it. The body is very narrow at this point and it’s even possible to blow the two pieces completely apart. But you have to be very accurate, because the exoskeleton is as tough as hell there.
“What else? Well, you can see for yourself what the legs are like. Four pairs, each one seven-jointed. A hit where a leg attaches to the cephalothorax might do some damage, otherwise forget them. The breathing spiracles and lung slits are on the abdomen, on the second and third segments. There are two pairs of lungs, but you may as well ignore them. Even if you got a hit, the spider can breathe for a while through its tracheal tubes, more than long enough to finish you off. “The heart is in the abdomen here. See the four spinnerets, back on the fourth and fifth segments? Keep an eye on those, too. You’ll never break free of the silk if once you’ve been wrapped in it, and it dries instantly as soon as it’s in contact with air. The spider can squirt silk at you, too, so you’re not safe unless you stay at least your body length away from her.”
MacDougal turned to look at the audience. “That’s all I have to say about the spider. Any questions before we go into Adestis mode and head down there to look at the trap? Better ask now. We won’t have time for it once we’ve started.”
“I’ve got one.” A skinny man two seats in front of Brachis nodded at the screen. “Those eyes look as though they ought to be vulnerable. Should we be shooting at them?”
“Good question.” MacDougal aimed the pointer at one of the eyes. “See their locations? They’re all up on the carapace. That’s like a thick shield, protecting the top of the cephalothorax. And that raises another point: the carapace is tough. Your weapons won’t penetrate it. The eyes look like a weak point, but it won’t be easy to get a good shot at more than one eye at a time, and if you miss you’ll waste your ammunition on the carapace. So my recommendation is that you save your shots for the underside, or for the maw and joints.
“There’s another reason why I don’t think it’s worth making the eyes your target. This sort of spider doesn’t rely much on eyesight. It goes largely by touch. Even if you got all the eyes, you wouldn’t put it out of action. And that has another implication: Don’t assume it doesn’t know where you are, just because you are out of sight. The legs are terrifically sensitive to vibration patterns. If you get into trouble but you’ve not actually been seized, lie perfectly still. The spider will sometimes ignore anything that doesn’t move. You may get lucky. Anything else?”
“Yes.” A woman near the front stood up abruptly. “You can count me out, Dougal. I’m leaving. I’m not going to fight that thing.”
“The Adestis group won’t refund your payment.”
“That’s the least of my worries.” The woman turned to the others. “You’re all crazy if you stay. That’s nothing but a goddamned bug in there, and anyone in his right mind would be happy to swat it.”
She left rapidly. Dougal MacDougal watched her go with a fixed smile on his face. “No nerve,” he said as soon as the door had closed. “Good riddance — she’d have been nothing but trouble. Now, any more questions? Otherwise, let’s get on with it.”
The audience stared uneasily at each other. There was a slow shaking of heads, but at last one man rose and followed the woman out of the room. He would not meet anyone’s eye. Finally, at a signal from MacDougal, those remaining picked up their Monitor sets and placed them over their heads.
Luther Brachis waited for the correlator field transients to settle, and the disturbing moments of double sensory inputs to fade. The briefings had told him what was happening. Telemetry couplers in the headset translated sensory inputs from his own tiny simulacrum to electrical impulses within his brain. At the same time his brain’s intention signals, the ones that normally cause activity in his body’s motor control system, were intercepted and translated into cyber-signals in the body of his Adestis simulacrum.
As MacDougal had explained it, “Your actual brain never sees anything, anyway. It’s blind. It can’t see, just as it can’t hear, smell, taste, or touch. All it gets from your senses are streams of electrical inputs, and it interprets them as sensations. Well, now those electrical inputs will be coming from your simulacrum. You’ll see, hear — and feel — what it sends.”
The sensory hold was tightening. Brachis grunted in surprise; or rather, his simulacrum did. He had expected the simulations to be plausible, since although the makers of Adestis admitted that they had imitators, they denied that they had real competitors. Still he was staggered by the uncanny quality of the sensory inputs. They were like life itself. He had no other body. The simulacrum was his body.
He looked down, and saw that he was standing on a damp, pebble-strewn plain. Tiny wormlike animals wriggled away from him as he moved his feet. Fifty paces away a gigantic fly skimmed past on iridescent wings. Brachis stared all around him. Two dozen others stood in a rough circle, all experimentally raising arms, moving feet, and watching each other. The exception was Dougal MacDougal, recognizable by his ease of movement and confident manner.
“As soon as you’re ready,” he said. “Get the feel of the environment, get to know who you all are — your suits are color-coded, just the way they were in the war-room. You ought to learn to recognize each other as quickly as you can. Then you want to practice the feel of your weapon. After that we can get on with it. “Look over there.” He pointed away to the left, through air that seemed dusty, thick, and smoke-filled. “It’s hard to spot from here, but there’s the trap. The spider will be sitting at the bottom of the pit. She already knows that we are here, because she feels the vibrations through the ground. Don’t bother to try to walk lightly. You’ll do that anyway. Remember, you’re only half a centimeter tall and you now weigh only about one five-hundredth of a gram. At this size and mass, gravity isn’t too important. We can all tolerate a fall of many times our height, with no injury. On the other hand, we’re attacking something that’s more than twice as tall as we are, with legs six times as long and a mass that outweighs the lot of us put together. Don’t get over-confident.’
There was a gasp from a green-bodied simulacrum next to Brachis. He has to be joking!”
Brachis shook his head experimentally. It felt perfectly natural. “He’s not joking. He’s just giving what he thinks is good advice. Maybe he’s right, and some people come into Adestis believing that the trapdoor spider is just another bug you could stand up and step on.”
“Not me.” Green tried a shake of his head, too. “If that’s just a bug, the Hyperion Vault is just a hole in the ground. I’m telling you, if I didn’t work in his office, and if he hadn’t put the pressure on me to come along on this …”
The party was slowly becoming more organized. Four of the members had taken part in Adestis on other occasions and they assumed lead roles. Everyone was permitted two practice shots from the projectile weapons, aiming at head-high moss growths fifty paces off to the left. Brachis noted that even with recoil compensation the gun he was holding delivered quite a jolt to his arm. That was a good sign.
He had been wondering if the organizers of Adestis expected them to knock off the spider with weapons like peashooters. He also noticed that his gun pulled a little to the left. He took careful aim, made the adjustment, and put his second shot exactly through the fluffy pink ball of a head of moss-flower.
Halfway to the trapdoor pit the group halted again. MacDougal, who had taken the lead position, turned to them… “After this, each of you is on your own. So one last word. Don’t go down into the pit. Not even if you think we’ve won, not even if you believe the spider is dead. This species has been known to sham, and the floor of that trap is her home territory. Let her come to you, and don’t be afraid to run for it if things get too hot. The rest of us will try to draw her away from anyone who seems to be in trouble. And remember what I said: Don’t shoot at the carapace. You won’t penetrate it, and the ricochet could go anywhere. You’ll be a damned sight more dangerous to the rest of us than you will to her.”
His final words were interrupted by a shout from the black-clad simulacrum who had been detailed to keep watch on the trap. The thick lid was being pushed to one side. As they watched the great body of the spider heaved itself out and crouched on open ground.
“She’s going on the offensive,” shouted MacDougal. “Sooner than I expected. Scatter!”
His advice was unnecessary. The simulacra were already spilling away in all directions except toward the spider.
Luther Brachis took a quick look around him. He had worried that their approach to the trapdoor spider’s lair paid too little attention to good ground cover. Now the only place to hide was twenty paces off to his right, where a stand of grey-green moss sprouted hip-high. He ran that way, dived for cover, and rolled up to a kneeling position with his weapon at the ready.
The difference between the spider’s image in the briefing room and the arachnid herself was terrifying. The beast towered three times as high as his head, a gigantic armored tank that could move to the attack with unbelievable speed. Against that mass the weapon in his hands seemed useless. He could pump a hundred projectiles into that vast, glistening side, and have no effect at all.
The spider turned. Brachis had a perfect view of its broad abdomen and splayed legs as the cephalothorax swooped down on a magenta simulacrum and jerked it aloft. In the grip of the chelicerae, the pointed crushing appendages at the front of the spider’s maw, the simulacrum hung dwarfed and helpless. There was a cry of agony, and a projectile weapon dropped uselessly to the ground.
Two others had been foolish enough to run directly beneath the spider’s body. Brachis saw them firing upwards, pumping shots into the soft area of the genitals and the exposed ovipositor. The spider jerked and shuddered as the projectiles penetrated its body, and the two attackers cheered at each spasm and shouted encouragement to each other. They moved to the rear, to take more shots at point-blank range. Dougal MacDougal’s warning shout came too late. A spout of gossamer jetted suddenly from the spinnerets, enveloping both simulacra in an unbreakable net of fast-drying silk.
The spider took a rapid shuffle backward, ducked its cephalothorax close to the ground, and hoisted both the helpless attackers to grind them in its maw.
Brachis scanned the predator from chelicerae to ovipositor. From where he was kneeling he had a choice of three targets. He could aim at a leg, or at the pedicel that connected the abdomen to the cephalothorax, or he could shoot at one of the chelicerae. The legs were the easiest target. They were also the least effective one. The pedicel was a vital area, but it was heavily armored and it would need an exceptionally lucky shot to do any good.
That left the chelicerae. Brachis made up his mind and sighted his weapon. It bucked in his grip and the organ, severed near the base, dropped to the ground in front of the spider.
He moved to sight on the second chelicerae but there was no time for a shot. The spider swiveled to face its new attacker and came scuttling towards him across the pebbled ground. The maw gaped, wide enough to swallow him whole. Brachis recalled MacDougal’s dry comment, that no one would actually be eaten. Spiders did not ingest solid food. They pre-digested their victims by injecting enzymes, then sucked them dry. There was little comfort in MacDougal’s words. The maw looming up on Brachis was more than strong enough to crush him flat. He dropped behind the stand of moss and huddled motionless on the ground. There was a buzzing and a hissing overhead, and a monstrous shape blocked out the light. Brachis turned his head to look upwards. The vast abdomen was directly over him. He could see every detail: the dozen projectile wounds leaking blood and body fluids … the oozing nozzles of the spinnerets, still charged with silk … the colonies of mite and tick parasites, clinging to the coarse body bristles.
Then the spider had charged on. The air filled with a sweet scent of decay.
He rolled over, sat up, and looked around. How in the world were the Adestis manufacturers able to make simulacra that captured and transmitted smells?
But that question had to wait for another day. Brachis glanced to right and left. Two others must have dived for cover at the same moment as he had, and the spider had passed right over them, too. They were both lying motionless.
Still playing dead, even after the spider had gone. They were taking Dougal MacDougal’s advice a bit too seriously.
He hurried over and tapped one of them on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get on with it or we’ll never be out of here.”
There was no reply. The simulacrum remained totally immobile. Brachis leaned closer, looking for the small green light between the shoulders that showed that the simulacrum was still occupied and in working order. The light was on. He went to the other motionless figure. That light was on, too.
Brachis squatted back on his heels, for the moment oblivious to the frantic battle that went on behind him. This whole thing was crazy. He was sure that the spider had missed all three of them. He had actually seen a blurred image of huge legs scrambling by, a good three paces from all of them. So why were the other two still lying here, just as though the spider had managed to put them out of action? And if they were out of action, why did the simulacra show they were not?
Brachis gave a startled growl of comprehension. He set his weapon to automatic, fired a blind volley at the spider’s belly, and at the same moment bit down hard on his rear molar control.
There was a dizzying moment of disorientation. Then he felt the Monitor headset covering his face. THAT IS THE END OF ADESTIS FOR YOU, said a metallic voice in his ear. REMAIN SEATED IF YOU WISH, BUT -
Brachis ripped the Monitor set off his head with one movement and stared around him.
He was still sitting in the same place in the Adestis battle chamber. Of the two dozen people who had embarked on the Adestis safari, half were already lolling in their seats with their headsets off. Their simulacra had been killed by the spider, and they were now experiencing the vicarious agony of their own deaths.
Another dozen still wore the Monitor sets — but three of them sat slumped forward in their restraining harnesses, their clothes drenched with blood. Brachis saw that their throats had been cut so deeply that the heads were almost severed.
He slapped at his release harness. Before he could rise to his feet a tall figure came looming over him. It was familiar. At the same time as his mind rejected recognition of that tall, cadaverous figure, a skinny arm brought something swinging in towards his unprotected neck. A bright ceremonial sword whistled through the air.
Brachis jerked his right arm upwards. There was a clean, meaty crunch. His hand, severed below the base of the thumb, flew out and fell on the floor on front of him. His uniform reacted even before he had time to feel pain. The shirt sensors recorded the sudden drop in blood pressure and activated a web of fibers in his right sleeve. The knit material on his right forearm tightened to form a tourniquet.
The sword came swinging in again towards his neck and head. Brachis swayed forward, under the swing, and reached out and around with his left arm. He grasped the back of the n
arrow neck and pulled the body forward against his face. He closed his eyes and made a total, reflexive effort. Vertebrae snapped under his twisting fingers. The dropped sword passed over his back and slid harmlessly past his legs.
Still entwined, Brachis and his assailant tumbled together to the floor of the chamber. He landed underneath, gasping at the impact.
He opened his eyes, and gasped again. His first, incredulous impression had been correct. He was staring into the lifeless face of the Margrave of Fujitsu.
Even though Luther Brachis had done his best to persuade her, Godiva Lomberd refused to sit in the room where the Adestis attack would take place. She had listened quietly, smiled, shook her gorgeous blond head, and said: “Luther, my sweet, Nature designed some people for one thing, and some for others. Your life is Security — sabotage, weapons, skirmishes, and violence. Mine is Art. Music, dancing and poetry. I’m not saying my life is better than yours. But I am saying I won t come and watch while Dougal MacDougal satisfies his blood lust trying to kill some poor harmless animal that is only doing what its nature programmed it to do. I don’t have to be there, even if you do.” She placed her fingertips on his lips. “No argument, Luther. I’m not coming — not even into the spectators’ gallery.”
In the end she had relented far enough to accompany Brachis to the main Adestis facility. She allowed him to settle her in the neighboring lounge and order refreshments for her while she waited. She seemed delighted when Esro Mondrian arrived at the same lounge a few minutes later.
“What brings you here, Commander? I can’t believe that you like Adestis.”
“1 don’t.” Mondrian had with him a tiny, dark-haired woman. She was already staring curiously at Godiva. “We came because Luther is here, and we need to talk to him.”
“You can’t do it now. He’s involved in this safari, and they must be right in the middle of it.”
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