Spiders' War. S. Fowler Wright

when we were under the curse of law. It wasn’t likely that a bureaucracy, when it became well established, would leave people to make their own choice in such a vital matter as that. The law was that every young married woman must contribute three children—one every four years—and if she should fail to do that, she would be removed, and the man provided with a more amenable wife.”

      “That was hard on her, if she couldn’t.”

      “It was expensive, but not as bad as it sounds. People have been adroit in all ages to avoid the worst effects of the laws they are weak enough to let other men lay on their backs. There were many women who liked to produce children—or who made a trade of it—and they would sell them at the best price they could get. It meant that occasional surplus children had to be destroyed, which everyone regretted, but they argued that it was the law, and that respect for law is the foundation of every civilized state. So it may be; and that was why we blew the foundation up.”

      “Have you got any children there?”

      “Destra had two. She would not keep them here, so they had to go. Their numbers are branded beside the door. In that respect, the old system has been continued, it not being worth anyone’s while to object.”

      “But, if I have a child, I can keep it here?”

      “Yes. It’s a free country now.”

      “I don’t wonder people came to hate laws.”

      “Yes. I suppose what they used to call communism in the era I was talking about yesterday will always defeat itself in the end in that way. But it’s a hard road. I’ve got to go out now, and arrange for some of our neighbours to take the canoe. We shall be loaded enough, without that.”

      CHAPTER XI: MAINLY CONCERNING SPIDERS

      Whatever differences there may have been between Gleda and Marguerite, they were alike in knowing very little about spiders, and, had they been asked, they might have agreed in saying that there was very little to know.

      They might have described them as small black creatures (probably as insects) having an excessive number of legs, and a habit of spinning webs in which they caught flies and other small creatures on which they fed. Marguerite would have added that she had been told that female spiders sometimes eat their husbands when they have finished with them for other purposes.

      Either of them would have been surprised to learn that they are not insects, but an entirely separate order of creation, and that a list of twenty thousand would not exhaust their known varieties, with differences far greater than those which divide mammals, or birds, or fishes; so that there is more unlikeness between one spider and another than between a cat and an elephant, in size, in structure, in colour, in diet, and in the conditions in which they live.

      There are spiders with only two lungs; there are some with four. Their eyes vary in number and in position. They may have essential organs relegated to the lower end of a limb.

      They have possessed the whole earth, from Arctic to Antarctic regions. Some species live in the highest mountains, some beneath rivers, some in the sea. Some catch their food in webs, some lie in wait to leap upon it, some chase it and run it down.

      In intelligence, comparisons between them and the human race are not easy to make. In adaptability to environment, they have shown superiority. In numbers, they have so great an advantage that it would be an incalculable underestimate to say that they are a hundred millions to one. To a detached observer of our small planet, it might seem evident that men, in comparison, are of no importance at all.

      The points on which all their species agree are those which separate them furthest from humankind. They have no heads; their lungs, few or many, are in their hindquarters; their organs of generation are not confused with those of evacuation, but in separate parts of their bodies. Compared with the body of a spider, that of a man may be considered a clumsy experiment, the mistakes of which were not repeated when the next creation was put in hand. Incidentally, they disprove the idea of evolution as a blind force, for there are respects in which nothing but intelligent, fore-thinking design could have brought them to what they are.

      Could man and spider bridge the immense physical and ethical distances that divide them, so that they could debate their relative positions in creation’s scales, the spider might assert with confidence that his bodily structure is superior, and that he has shown at least equal intelligence in the methods by which he has possessed the earth; while ethically man could only hope to avoid an argument that he could never win, for though there may be occasions when the hunger of a female spider will overcome her kindlier impulses, so that she will eat a husband whose use is done, and though there may be some of her race who eat a proportion of young they tend, they practice no cruelties upon one another which can be considered seriously comparable to those which are the continual record of the dealings of man with man.

      It is true that the differences among the various forms of sentient life on the earth are so trivial that it might seem futile to any really different being that such an argument should be raised at all. They all pass through a period of growth and immaturity; their organs are similar; they live by feeding; their lives are occupied in providing that food, and producing a new generation in kindred ways; they grow old and die. There are a hundred similarities for every difference which can be found, and these similarities are more fundamental.

      But the spiders could argue with some confidence that while they sustain life by slaughtering other species, they do not descend to the crudities and brutalities of the slaughterhouses of mankind, but kill the creatures they require, whether caught by web or chase or a sudden leap, with an injection of poison which is instant in its effects.

      They could argue that their method of reproduction—the eggs in the spun cocoon—is immeasurably more civilized than that which retains the foetus in the mother’s body, to be expelled at last in an unsightly manner, dangerous and painful both to mother and child.

      They might even be indelicate enough to allude to the fact that their organs of copulation are not in the rear of their bodies, which they reserve for inferior purposes, but are centrally situated in the female, and, in the male, at the end of the left arm, so that (should they be silly enough to attempt it) it would be without embarrassment that they would explain the facts of life to the young.

      These are points of superiority to which reply would not be easy to make; and it might be added that there is overwhelming advantage in being so much smaller, size only existing relatively, and this difference meaning that they inhabit a planet millions of times larger and more complex than that which must be good enough for mankind.

      But this last advantage had been suddenly and completely lost by some members of the Arachnida, which had found themselves in a dwarfed world, in which the giant trees had shrunk, in which movements had been impeded, and in which food had become much harder to secure.

      Either Marguerite or Gleda would have said carelessly that spiders are black, though a challenge of that might have brought vague memories of brown or speckled bodies (or were they crane-flies which also have legs which are much too long?), this being one of many matters concerning these creatures on which Gleda had much to learn.

      For these enlarged spiders, which, at an earlier time would have been said to be more or less of the family of the Sparassidae, and of the species Micrommata viridissima, were green, with a darker patch, yellow-edged, on the forward abdomen, over the heart; while the male (as with all spiders) was smaller; and its abdomen was splendid with scarlet and yellow bands.

      Accustomed to hold with firm feet to the surface of a wind-swayed leaf, to which their colour would blend invisibly till they should leap upon some incautious insect, how should they have adapted themselves to survive in a world which had ceased so radically to be adapted to them?