Spiders' War. S. Fowler Wright

boughs, such as we had never had occasion to gather before.”

      “Yes…I see. Was he killed?”

      “No. But it was unlikely that he would have lived. He was badly hurt. And we were starving men.”

      “Will you tell me why the times about which you are reading were so bad? Were they worse than these?”

      “There could be no reasonable comparison. These are probably the best that have ever been. Those were indescribably bad.”

      “Did they eat each other?”

      “I have come on no evidence that they did, so I cannot say. But it is a point of little importance. It is not what they did to the dead, but to the living.”

      “Do you mean that they had horrible wars?”

      “They did. Very horrible ones. But I did not mean that. The worst wars have a heroic side. It was not what they did to their enemies but to their friends by which their values were shown. Can you believe that they used to kill children so that they could move about quickly?”

      “But not intentionally.”

      “You said that as though you know something about them yourself.”

      “But how could I?”

      “No. But, in an unimportant way, what you said was right. They knew that large numbers of children would be killed every week by what they did, though not which children, nor which of themselves the killers would be. And, so far as I have been able to find the facts, they had no reason for speed. They were not frightened of anything. They were not running away.”

      “As you put it, it certainly has a strange sound. I suppose they would have made it appear in another way.”

      “No doubt they would. But I have told you the fact, on which their records are clear. They used to count the dead every month, and compare them with what they had done during the same month of the previous year. It must have been a kind of game. But there were other features of that time which were more fantastic, though not worse. There were their laws.”

      “Did they have many bad ones?”

      “It was a question concerning which no man, even though he should give a whole life to their study, could be fully informed. There were too many for that. There was one country, England, where the making of restrictive laws was so excessive that its parliament could not produce new ones quickly enough to suit them, so they delegated authority to many officials who could make laws which their fellowmen must obey, as rapidly as they could dictate or sign them.”

      “It does sound absurd.”

      “I have not yet come to the point at which the final result of such a form of civil organization will appear, but some of its consequences in the decade with which I am dealing had been slightly mitigated by the fact that men had largely lost respect for laws which were broken continually, both through ignorance and resentment; and it followed from this that standards of both public and private honour were declining.

      “It is particularly curious that while offences against these arbitrary edicts—which, had they not been declared illegal, would not have been wrong at all—were punished with increasing severity, sometimes with fines of fantastic amounts; crimes against individuals, whether of violence or greed, were condoned, and, unless they were persistently committed by the same individual, were hardly punished at all.

      “In that country, a period of decadence was also threatened by the fact that the products of a man’s labour had ceased to be under his own control, a very large proportion of every income being seized by the state, and spent—more or less—for him, as the governing officials might consider his welfare required, after it had inevitably been much reduced in amount by deductions for their own support, and that of the civil armies which they maintained for distribution, regulation, and control.”

      “But you don’t know how it all ended?”

      “Not yet. I expect I shall within a year, or perhaps two. That depends upon how soon the end came.”

      He went on to explain his work, as that of one of those who had undertaken the coordination of human knowledge, his subject being political history. For that purpose, all relevant books, having been already assembled, were submitted in chronological batches for his inspection. Some of these he would entirely preserve. Some he would summarize. From others he would abstract passages of separate value. But always he would retain a clear purpose of reducing the records of the past to a compass which would be within the possible study and comprehension of one man’s brain, within the duration of human life.

      Large deliveries of these books were made every four months, when there would be removal of those with which he had dealt. One was now due in two days’ time, and—which had never occurred before—he would not be completely ready for the exchange. He had been working against time, having been weakened by shortage of food, and delayed by searching for it, before he adopted the desperate expedient which had resulted in her capture, and it had now become necessary for him to send a telepathic message to postpone the delivery.

      She asked: “Can you do that?”

      He looked surprised. “Have you no knowledge of telepathy on your side of the river?”

      The question caused her a momentary confusion. She had been talking to him in the personality of Marguerite Cranleigh, her mind cautiously alert to avoid disclosure of how much she knew of, and how directly she was interested in, the period of which he spoke. And now she had another experience of how hard it was to transfer to another personality with the memories belonging to it.

      But the awkward silence ended when she replied: “We know what telepathy is, but do not practice it in such ways.”

      “By preference or inability?”

      “I don’t think we could.”

      “We have always considered that you were savages; but I should not have thought you to be so primitive as that must imply.”

      “We are not savage at all. We have a gracious and kindly civilization, sufficient for our own contentment.”

      “Then you must be easily pleased. Yet you are an intelligent specimen. I will admit that.”

      It was a compliment which, in view of the final experience of his previous wife, she was pleased to have, though she had already reached a comfortable conclusion that she was in no immediate danger of a similar fate. She saw also (but must not say) that it might be praise, not of those who were in his thoughts, but of the older civilization which he had condemned in vigorous words.

      She revealed another unspoken thought when she replied: “Perhaps if she’d had more brains, she wouldn’t have had such a good liver.”

      “It is an interesting speculation. Am I to understand that yours would not be worth frying?”

      She felt that the subject might be advantageously changed, and replied lightly: “Yes. Too tough to bite, more likely than not.” (She remembered a friend of her far-off days saying how much she disliked a man looking at her as though she were naked. But how much worse it was to be looked at with eyes that seemed to go a lot deeper than that!) She went on rapidly: “Can you really use telepathy to communicate with anyone as you wish, or does it work along special lines?”

      “It depends upon vacant receptivity; or stimulation of any mind not too explicitly concentrated.”

      “I see…. So you don’t expect any difficulty?”

      “It is most improbable. There would be difficulty if a general referendum were being made.”

      “Will you do it now?”

      “No. Later. When I shall be better able to estimate what further time I still require. But it must be in time to allow of—” He broke off abruptly. He said, with curt emphasis: “Be silent until I speak.” And then his eyes changed their focus, as though they looked at a distant thing.

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