Spiders' War. S. Fowler Wright

is good to hear. How did you get it?”

      “It is Destra’s.”

      “Destra is dead?”

      “Well, I owed you a debt. And I may have got a new wife.”

      This remark turned their host’s eyes upon Gleda. He grunted, then returned to the more urgent consideration. “Is it cooked?”

      “No. She was only dead in the last hour.”

      “Then it soon will be. We have had no more than ten nuts today. We scrape in the forest mud for that which we seldom find. Plera,” he raised his voice, “here is food. We must stoke the pot.”

      Plera came from an inner room. She was a more lithe, better-featured woman than Destra had been. She asked “What is it?” There was eagerness in her voice.

      “It is the ham that was owed to us. Destra’s ham.”

      There was a note of incredulous merriment in the reply: “Destra’s ham? Her own leg? Then she is dead! It is too good to be true.”

      There were no more words while, for the next few minutes, man and woman were busy about the hearth. Then Plera looked at Gleda for the first time. She said bluntly: “What are you? You must have been tied by the legs.”

      Lemno said: “I fetched her from the other side of the river.”

      There were two cries of surprise. Relf asked: “How could you do that?”

      “Well, I did. Hunger drives hard.”

      Plera looked at her with more appreciative eyes than before. “So there will be more meat to come?”

      Lemno shrugged. Gleda was not sure that she liked that. Yet it might have been worse. And it might mean no more than that he would keep his own counsel from those whose whom it did not concern. He said: “I must get back. I have been away from my work all day. When I think of the books that are still unread!”

      “Yes, I have been busy. What are you reading now?”

      “I am no further than the middle of the twentieth century of what was known as the Christian era during its own time. Others who built on its ruins gave it a worse name. It was a time foul beyond any words which are easy to find. Much of its records are unfit for the reading of decent eyes. Even though we starve, we may be of grateful heart that we live in a better day.”

      There was animation in their voices which Gleda had not heard before. She saw that they spoke of matters of greater interest to themselves than even a fat ham.

      Well, she could tell him more about them than he would be likely to guess. He would be surprised if he knew how much!

      But she had been puzzled by his remark that it had been so much fouler than his own time. It seemed a queer boast to make while his friends were putting his wife’s ham into the pot—a wife who had been murdered by him. And it must be such an ordinary thing that the question of penalty or concealment did not arise! It must be no more than daily routine, And yet the dual memories which she had did not support the idea without most important qualification. She knew that cannibalism was not the custom of her side of the river, and had not thought it to be on this. Of course, there was the famine, of which she had not heard till she had been brought here. It might go far to justify her capture. But his own wife! She saw that it was no argument to observe that it had been fortunate for her. She must think it out. Or perhaps ask. But she spoke with caution on any matter. Her captor might have many virtues—she hoped he had. But, so far, he had not seemed to be of a chatty kind.

      As she thought this, they were returning through the trees, and could already see the light of their own—home? She wondered what sort of home it would be for her.

      CHAPTER IV: A QUESTION IN THE NIGHT

      When they had regained the inner room, Lemno turned and looked at her in a speculative way, and there were some silent moments before he asked: “You would be my wife?”

      “Have I a choice?”

      “You would prefer me to the pot?”

      “Yes, I would.” As she said it, a fear came. Suppose he should think her to be too cold, too reluctant in her replies? Might he not reject her for that? Suppose he should say at last: “But I am now of another mind. It is to the pot you shall go.” Yet to profess desire for him, after the circumstances which had brought her there, might be going too far. She might be unable to give it a genuine sound. She said: “It is more than that. I am alone in a strange place. Who have I to look to but you? I might be of more use than you can yet see.”

      “A strange place?” he repeated. “I should say the difference is much less than that.” She saw that he followed her words with a mind that was keen and alert, and that there had been something puzzling, less perhaps in the word than the tone in which it had been said. The partial consciousness of her earlier existence which had been allowed to remain had a treacherous side, which had nearly betrayed her now. Yet how dare she explain? She said weakly: “There are differences between the way I lived and what I have seen here.”

      He conceded, fairly enough: “Well, there are some,” with no belief in his voice.

      She thought it well to add: “There is the fact that I am here.”

      He took this better. He said: “Where you will remain.” They both knew that a return to her own land would be most difficult to contrive. At the best, it would mean going far up the river, or below the falls, seeking a means by which it could be safely crossed, and her way, even before the main difficulties would be reached, would be through hungry and hostile men, who might think of her as a good meal, but, at the best, would spare nothing for her.

      He went on, after a pause: “We will give it thought. For tonight, you can sleep here.” He pointed to a corner of the room, where there was a small heap of folded furs. He added: “I must work late, having wasted much time for you. If I move about, it will be to make up the fire, which is kept alight. It will not be to disturb you.”

      She saw that that might be taken as a considerate remark, as perhaps it was, though it could be meant in another way. It was in an effort to establish a more personal contact that she asked: “Why must you work so late? Is it so urgent that it should not have been left?”

      He answered readily enough: “You do not guess what I do. It is my toil to inspect, and largely to read, all the books which have been written upon the history of men, just as Relf studies religions and Rakna philosophy; and then I reduce them to what is reasonable to retain. Before the making of books was checked, men had accumulated more than it was possible for them to know, until they lost the ability to choose between a basic principle and a mere detail. Now we proceed in a wiser way, discarding much, and retaining only what can be coordinated on each subject by the mind of a finite man.”

      She said doubtfully: “Well, it has a sensible sound.”

      “It may be,” he answered, “that the changes we have been able to make will save us from the wreck which has ended all previous civilizations, of which the records are many.”

      “Did the civilization of which you spoke tonight come to disaster?” she asked.

      “So it must have done, or it would continue now. It was, in fact, succeeded by a time of very primitive barbarism, though of superior moral decency; but I have not yet come to that point. I examine all the records we have, going forward from year to year in an orderly way. It was a state of life which was monstrous beyond easy belief, so that its end, by whatever violence, must have been a blessing to those who survived.”

      He turned away as he said this, and she became discreetly silent, but she thought, as she lay awake, that she had found a way of establishing a possible intimacy such as Destra might not have tried, or, perhaps, been competent to sustain. Her knowledge of the times which he was now studying would be of the greatest value to her in making discussions of intelligent interest to him, though she would have to be careful; it would be easy to reveal too much, and who could foresee what this strong,