by John Wyndham
“Or build boats?” I suggested.
“No. I’m perfectly serious. They learnt to build webs in order to catch flying insects. Spider silk is wonderful stuff. It could be woven into nets that would catch fish.”
“Oh, come,” I said. “Think of the strength of a flapping fish.”
“Think of the strength of woven silk or silk cord – it’s the same stuff basically.”
She shook her head. There’s no reason against it – in fact, from what we’ve seen today it’s very likely – it, and a lot of other things…
“I don’t suppose you’ve grasped the full implications of what we’ve been seeing. But you can take it from me, revolutionary is a mild word for it. You see, spiders are very old. They’ve been here for many millions of years. They developed so early that their ancestry was obscure until recently; it seemed as if they had always been here, unchanged and unchanging. They are prolific, but so utterly repetitive that naturalists ignored them. With their origins so far back they held little interest because they seemed to lead nowhere; they had completed their course, a finished species, with no power of evolution left in them. They lived in isolation from the main stream of evolving life. Relics of an earlier world, somehow still about. They kept on surviving and reproducing from the remote past, through the rise and fall of the dinosaurs, into the age of mammals, still they remained unchanged, still they were capable of finding a living and carrying on their race, no matter how the world changed round them.
“Yet, the curious thing about them is that they are not outdated. They show no signs of atrophy, or senescence, as a species. It now occurs to me that it is not warrantable to assume that they cannot evolve further simply because they have not. Could it not be that there was no need for them to evolve? After all, their lives impinge so little on other species – except those of the insects, and they easily hold their own against them. No major threat has evolved to challenge them, so why should they evolve? They are almost perfectly adapted to their environment; there is no incentive to evolve. They do very well as they are.
“Now, most species either have to evolve to avoid being superseded, or, if they cannot, they become degenerate. But spiders have not degenerated. Might one not argue from that that they have not lost the power to evolve, but that simply because they are so well adapted that there had been no necessity to change, the power remains unused but may still be dormant?”
“I don’t know enough about it,” I said. “It sounds a feasible argument. The chief thing against it that strikes me is any evidence that these spiders have evolved. You yourself told us that they appeared to be perfectly normal.”
“So they do,” she agreed. “A man also appears to be a perfectly normal mammal – on the dissecting table. It is in his behaviour that he differs from other mammals. It is in their behaviour that these spiders differ from other spiders.”
“You mean hunting in packs?” I asked.
“Exactly. Your normal spider is not a sociable creature. It is an individualist. As such, its first concern is to protect itself from its enemies which it does chiefly by hoping to remain unnoticed. Its second is to feed itself. For this purpose it catches insects, but it does not share them, in fact its disposition is to attack any other spider that approaches, and, if successfully, to eat that as well. Also, in many species the male gets eaten after mating unless he makes a quick get-away. No, a far from sociable creature – and yet, here we have them co-operating. Hunting in packs, as you said. Now, that is so abnormal as to mean a major change of behaviour pattern.”
She broke off, and reflected for a moment.
“That,” she went on, “is immensely significant – just how significant remains to be seen. I should say it’s more important than a visible change – like developing better fangs, or even growing wings. It is a sudden manifestation in one species of an attribute which has always been associated with other species – in this case with the ants or the bees. It’s the equivalent of finding that a type of monkey, or a breed of dog had suddenly been gifted with the power of reasoning – a characteristic which we have always associated exclusively with the human species.”
“Oh, come,” I objected. “Isn’t that going a bit far?”
“I don’t think so. I believe there is a known genus of spiders in which one or two species have learned to live communally, but they are very rare, and insignificant. Nothing on this scale has ever been heard of. If it had, it would certainly be well-known. No, it’s a new development – and, to judge from the look of it, a highly successful one…”
Before we left we pulled down our veils and sprayed one another with insecticide once more, then we set out on the return journey.
By this time I had gained confidence in our precautions and felt less inclined to run from every band of spiders we encountered among the undergrowth. True, they never failed to swarm to the attack when we approached them, but they seldom climbed further than our knees before they dropped off and scuttled away.
After about a quarter of a mile we found a rocky cleft in the cliffs down which a stream tumbled on its way to the shore below. We turned inland along the side of it in order to find a convenient place for crossing. After a few yards Camilla stopped.
“Just a minute. I want to see this,” she said, and pulled out the glasses. I looked where she pointed.
On the other side of the ravine, on some bushes which crowned a rocky point was a cluster of spiders. They appeared to be doing nothing, just waiting inactively. Then one’s eye caught a gleam reflected from a strand of silk which floated in the scarcely moving air. Through the glasses it was possible to see the momentary glistening of several such strands as they wafted in slow, lazy loops.
For some little time nothing apparently happened. Then suddenly a spider ran out from the bush, supported in the empty air. Evidently one of the floating strands had made contact on our side of the ravine, and the spider came across on it speedily and unhesitating. No sooner was he (or she) down on our side than another started on the crossing, then another. After about seven or eight had crossed it the strand of silk became visible. Presently there were three or four spiders making the crossing at the same time, and the single strand had become a definite thread, strong enough now to bear ten or a dozen spiders at once. The rest began to follow, the intervals between them growing shorter, the bridge stronger. We watched until they were all across, perhaps four or five hundred of them, and saw them move off in a clump. Then Camilla lowered her glasses.
“Wonderful stuff, silk,” she said. “Well, that about puts paid to Charles’s plan for an impassable zone, doesn’t it?”
We continued on our way thoughtfully.
I made one more discovery just before we got clear of the infested area. A patch of fur caught my eye between stems just to the right of the path we had hacked out. I parted the lower leaves of the bushes, and looked more closely. It was a sizeable rat – at least, it had been; now it was no more than the husk of a rat. Dried, furred skin, empty, and shrivelled over a skeleton that had been picked quite clean…
We looked at it for some time without speaking.
Six
That evening we foregathered with Walter and Charles, and gave an account of our findings. Charles was troubled by our account of the spiders’ method of crossing the ravine, but not to the extent of abandoning his plan for a barrier zone.
“Crossing it by that direction would depend on the wind being in the right direction,” he pointed out. “It’s worthwhile as a ground defence. The prevailing wind here appears to be easterly. When there is a change of direction we could keep a special watch.”
Camilla nodded, but doubtfully.
“It depends on numbers,” she said. “We could probably deal with a few roving bands – particularly if you can contrive some kind of flame-thrower – but if they come in thousands and line up along your perimeter we can’t watch every yard of it at once. There aren’t enough of us.”
Charles nodded.
&n
bsp; “In that case we must clear the ground of bushes and trees well back on the other side of the actual zone,” he suggested. “If they have no elevation to start from, they can’t drift their webs across to make a beginning. But,” he went on, “your talk of a flame-thrower reminds me. I was thinking today that the best method would be to burn off a belt of land just this side of the infested area to stop them spreading further this way. How effective that would be one can’t say, of course, but I imagine it would hold them back for some time, besides killing off great numbers of them. The west wind would be in our favour for that. As a matter of fact, if we got a good enough line of fire going I don’t see why it shouldn’t spread on and burn off the whole infested side of the island. After all, the first colonists burnt off most of Madeira by accident, and the fires went on for seven years.”
“Madeira,” said Camilla, “was full of sub-tropical trees. I don’t see this place burning like that. Still, it might be worth trying. Even if it did peter out, it ought to clear a zone that would discourage them.”
Eventually it was decided that Camilla and I should go out the following day to prospect a suitable line along which the fires could be started. The idea was, roughly, that we should start out on the path cleared by the exploring party, and then after a mile or so, if the terrain was suitable, or at any rate at some point safely short of that where the exploring party had encountered the spiders, we should turn off to the left and start cutting a new path roughly parallel to the coastline, and later extend it to the right.
“I’m sorry I can’t let you have help yet,” Charles told us. “But the number one priority just now is getting the mess-hall building up and finished. When everybody knows that there is a safe retreat available in case of need it will calm them down a lot. Half of them are afraid to go to sleep at present for fear of waking up to discover they’ve been overrun by spiders. But once that is done we shall be able to relax a little and spare some of them. In any case, this seems to be a settled calm spell, and it wouldn’t be any good starting fires until we have a wind – and the right kind of wind – to get them to take hold. But if you’ll start to cut the tracks it will mark out the line, ready for when the time comes.”
There was a slight smile at the corners of Camilla’s mouth.
“What Charles really means,” she explained, “is that everyone is anxious to go no nearer spider territory than he can possibly help.” She shook her head. “Men like gods – well, well,” she muttered. Then she turned to me. “What about you, Arnold?”
“I don’t mind admitting that it wouldn’t have taken much to make me cry off this morning. But as far as getting to know our enemy is concerned this has been an educational day. Yes, I’ll come,” I told her.
Early the following morning we set off, equipped as we had been on the previous day. Two hundred yards or so along the beach we turned off on to the track that the exploring party had followed. It was rough going. The party had cleared enough width to allow them a passage, but no more. We were closed in by bushes and trees that were nameless to me, so that visibility was never more than a foot or two to either side, and little more ahead. No place for anyone with a tendency to claustrophobia. Occasionally there were thickets of strong, tall grasses which showed me for the first time the literal meaning of the word bamboozled. The short range of vision made it difficult to judge distance. We just seemed to go on and on until we had a feeling that we must be traversing the same ground again and again. It all seemed to be flat, too, although one knew that the ground must be gradually rising. After three-quarters of an hour of it, I paused. We still had not encountered any signs of spiders.
“How much further?” I asked.
“I should say we’re over halfway,” Camilla judged.
“Oh,” I said. We went on.
After another half-hour I began to see occasional strands of web among the bushes beside us. I was about to draw Camilla’s attention to them when the matter settled itself. She was in the lead then, and her shoulder brushed a frond as she passed. Immediately, a stream of spiders rushed from it on to her. Simultaneously, a clump of them dropped from the branch above. For a moment her head and shoulders were almost obscured under them. Then they hurriedly began to drop off. They did not like the insecticide any more than the others had. In a few moments they were all on the ground, scurrying away.
Camilla stopped and looked around. The foliage was too dense to show whether there were other bands lurking in it.
“We’ve found their frontier. I’d rather not go further,” she said.
At the thought of what must lie in the undergrowth not far ahead, I agreed.
We decided to go back along the track for twenty minutes, and then, if that brought us to a spot where the way looked passable, to make a start on our fire line in a northerly direction. That, we thought, should give a wide enough strip of country to make it pretty certain there were no spiders behind us.
As luck would have it the twenty minutes did bring us to a likely place where the bushes, though thorned, were light and easy to clear with our machetes.
“This’ll do,” Camilla said sitting down on a fallen tree-trunk.
“We can make a start here,” I said, cautiously. “By the look of it we’re bound to meet thickets whichever way we go. It’ll be slow work.”
She pulled out a packet of cigarettes and offered me one. I took it and sat down on the trunk beside her.
“From your tone I gather you don’t think much of Charles’s plan?” she said.
“Oh, I think it’s a good idea,” I told her. “But I hadn’t seen all this then.” I waved my hand at the surrounding growth. “Two of us aren’t going to make much impression on it, are we?”
“We can try. It hasn’t got to be a straight line. We can stick to the easier patches as long as we keep the general direction right.”
We sat and smoked in silence for some moments. Presently she said: “I was thinking about this spider thing last night. It could be much bigger than we imagine, you know. Something has happened to these spiders, something inside them. Outwardly they are just normal spiders, but they are spiders plus something other spiders don’t have…”
“That’s practically what you said after you’d examined the first one,” I pointed out.
“Yes, I know, but I hadn’t thought out the possible implications then. The thing that suddenly struck me last night is their power of adaptation, of employing the resources they have.
“One supposes that the original purpose of spider silk was simply to make a cocoon to keep the eggs safe. But then, when the insects learnt to fly, the spiders found a new use for the silk. They began to weave webs to catch the flying insects. Having discovered one use of their silk they went on to employ it in all sorts of ways – and to make specialized silks. They built nests of it, with trapdoors to close them, they spun sheet webs into which passing insects fell, and the more advanced types evolved the orb web. They used it for tying up their prey, for stitching leaves together to make a home, they bound leaves to their webs to hide them as they waited. They even used it for building bridges, and for flying with – as we saw yesterday.
“Well, bearing in mind what they could do with the power to make silk, I began to wonder what they could do with this new power, to co-operate. It’s quite frightening, really. It has already brought them into conflict with species which were right outside their orbit, and apparently with such success that they have practically cleared this island of most other forms of animate life. It has even brought them into conflict with us – and the first blood went to them. I got to wondering whether we aren’t seeing the beginning of a revolution; the beginning of a takeover of power…”
“That,” I said, with restraint, “was surely rather a small-hours nightmare. A takeover of a small isolated island where everything is in their favour is one thing. On the mainland they could be efficiently tackled.”
“How would you do that? You can’t burn off all the forests in the world. A
species continues to exist by outbreeding the checks that its natural enemies impose on it. That is what gives the illusion of ‘the balance of nature’ belief. Once the natural enemies cease to be a threat its fecundity becomes terrifying. Look what has happened in a generation or two to our own population, largely because a few diseases have been overcome. Find a way of conquering the natural enemies, and the only limiting factor is the food supply. Well, these spiders have found a way, and clearly their fecundity is formidable. The need for food and their ability to tackle new sources of food is driving them on. As long as they can find food and so continue to breed it is difficult to see what can stop them.”
“But it’s fantastic to consider them as a serious threat,” I protested, “I’ll accept your thesis that something has happened inside them which has changed their habits – made them social instead of individual – and that conditions here were favourable for them. But that isn’t enough to turn them into a major threat.”
“I don’t know. Becoming social may have implications we haven’t seen yet. It has had immense implications with the ants and the bees. They are now the original spiders plus something, as I said. It remains to be discovered just what that plus is.”
“I still don’t see – ”
“No? Let me tell you a Cinderella story,” said Camilla. “Once upon a time there was a timid lemur-like creature that lurked in the forests, just as a lot of the other animals did. It wasn’t strong, it had no claws, quite unformidable teeth. It survived by keeping out of trouble. But in the course of time something happened to it that changed it. It remained still a mammal, but it was plus something indefinable inside it…And because of that mysterious plus it rose to be Lord of the animal creation, Master of the World…