DOCTOR MUFFET’S ISLAND
                             by Brian Stableford

Brian Stableford’s recent works include the novel The New Faust at the
Tragicomique and the anthology News from the Moon and Other French
Scientific Romances, both from Black Coat Press. Routledge published his
mammoth reference book Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia
in 2006. One does not have to be familiar with the remarkable events that
occurred in Brian’s tale about “The Plurality of Worlds” (August 2006), to
follow the further exploits of Francis Drake and his adventures on...
                                        ****
                                           1
       The island’s only hill was so shallow that it would have posed no challenge at
all had it been a Devon moor, nor was its vegetation unduly thorny, but the
thin-boled trees were parasitized by so many sticky vines that it was difficult for
Francis Drake and Martin Lyle to climb it, even with the aid of a machete.
       The island seemed to have little in the way of animal life except for birds, of
which there were many brightly colored kinds, which seemed quite unintimidated by
their visitors. Whenever Drake was not fully occupied in clearing a path he attempted
to watch the birds more attentively, but the only result of his cursory study was a
conviction that a few of the larger parrots were studying him with equal intensity. It
was easy to imagine that the endless avian chattering was conversation.
       When Drake and his young cousin finally got to the top of the rise it was
necessary for the boy to climb a coconut palm with the captain’s best telescope
clutched beneath his arm. Drake watched him anxiously, afraid for the instrument. It
was one of John Dee’s finest, designed with the aid of the theory of optics Dee and
Tom Digges had worked out in happier days and constructed by a lens-grinder from
Strasbourg, who had fled to Protestant England to escape the gathering storm of the
continental wars of religion. In theory, it was a capital offense for anyone outside the
Queen’s Navy to possess a telescope, but Drake had long been an exception to that
rule. The ethership fiasco had reduced his reputation as Queen Jane’s favorite
privateer, but he ought to be able to recover his prestige if his present expedition
went well.
       As soon as Martin had attained an adequate height, Drake demanded to know
whether the large island of which he desperately wanted news was visible. Its real
existence was a point he desperately needed to prove, for the benefit of his belief in
his own sanity.
       Martin uncapped the telescope’s objective lens, and put it to his eye. “I can
see two isles to the west, captain,” he reported. “The nearer is tiny, no bigger than
this one, but the other—God’s blood!”
       There had been a time when Drake’s automatic reaction would have been to
warn the boy against taking the Lord’s name in vain, but they were in the middle of
the mis-named Pacific Ocean now. Although Drake had prayed as fervently as he
ever had in his life during the storms that had driven them back to Peru when they
had first emerged from the Magellan Straits, cursing did not seem so dire a sin when
the nearest church was a thousand miles away and papist.
      “What is it, boy?” Drake asked, anxiously.
        “It’s a ship, captain,” Martin reported. “She’s heading straight toward us with
full sail. She’s bigger than the Pelican.”
       Drake did not trouble to remind his kinsman that the Pelican had now been
the Golden Hind for more than fifty days. “Is she flying Spanish colors?” he asked,
filled with sudden dread.
      “The cross of Saint George!” Martin reported, excitedly. “She’s English!”
      Drake could not share his cousin’s enthusiasm. The remainder of his crewmen
would doubtless be as glad as Martin to discover Englishmen on the far side of the
world, but to him it signified that he had been forestalled. He could not imagine by
whom, but the fact was obvious—unless the red cross were a treacherous ploy,
intended to deceive. That seemed unlikely, though. The Spanish ships plying the
nascent navigation-paths west of the Americas were cargo vessels, not warships;
they had no fear yet of pirates or privateers and no incentive to display false colors.
        Although the Hind was anchored to the south of the islet, with no headland to
shield her from view, there was no way that the captain of this mysterious vessel
could tell what she was unless the man in his crow’s-nest was equipped with a
telescope at least as good as Drake’s own. Even if the Spanish navy had such
instruments, they would not have been given to explorers of this ocean. As good
Romanists, the Spaniards were supposed to believe that the Pacific had no land in it
at all, with the possible exception of Dante’s mount of Purgatory. The existence of
the Americas had already proved Cosmas’ geography ludicrously false, but the
Roman Church always let go of its mistakes by slow degrees.
      “Has she gun-ports in her sides?” Drake demanded.
        “Can’t tell,” Martin replied. “She’s front-on, and all I can see for sure is her
sails. But she’s English, captain—English for sure.”
       “Come down now!” Drake commanded. The boy made haste to obey. Drake
remembered as soon as he had spoken that he had not asked for details of the more
distant island that Martin had seen—but there would be time enough for that when
more urgent matters had been settled.
        Drake did not wait for Martin’s feet to touch the ground. He set off down the
hill, cursing himself for not having cleared a better trail as they came up it. Running
was direly difficult, and it seemed to Drake that the vines had become positively
malevolent, lying in ambush to catch his feet and trip him. To avoid any impression
of panic, though, he waited until he did not have to yell at the top of his voice to
order William Ashley, his second mate, to regather the landing-party and get the
pinnace afloat.
       The wind was blowing from the west, almost directly contrary to the course
Drake had been endeavoring to follow. That was why he had consented to put in at
such a unpromising island, which would surely have been inhabited had it nursed the
free-standing pools and streams of fresh water he needed to replenish his casks.
Given that the other ship was under full sail, and had been close enough for its
colors to be identifiable at first sight, it would likely reach the island within the hour.
It would be politic for the Golden Hind to be in deep water when she arrived, with
sail enough aloft to out-maneuver her. Even if her colors were true, that could not
guarantee that her crew were loyal subjects of Queen Jane. It was darkly rumored in
Plymouth that the Elizabethans had enough ships and captains of their own to form a
shadow navy of sorts, and that they had secret bases in the far-flung corners of the
globe, from which they ceaselessly plotted rebellion. Drake thought such tales highly
unlikely, but the appearance of the ship was so improbable in itself that he dared not
discount any possibility.
       Drake had no fear of being outgunned, let alone of being outsailed, by
Spaniards, Elizabethans, or the Devil himself. The tightness in his chest and the
nauseous feeling in his gut arose entirely from frustration, not from some God-given
presentiment of disaster. As he made what haste he could to reach the strand with
his dignity intact, all he could think about was the folly that had caused him to be
seduced by Tom Digges and John Dee into volunteering for the crew of the
ethership instead of making his present expedition three years before, in 1577. That
three-year delay, it seemed, had cost him his priority. Even knowing the position of
the island he had selected as his target—the sole advantage he had obtained from the
ethership’s disastrous voyage—had proved inadequate. Someone had got here
ahead of him.
       There was confusion on the beach as men hurried back toward the pinnace
from every direction, bearing whatever natural booty they had been able to
gather—coconuts, for the most part, with a few turtles and baskets of eggs laid by
ground-nesting birds. There was need of a sharp mind and a commanding voice, but
Drake was careful to give his orders in a level voice, rather than barking or howling
them, forming the words with precision. No one asked him what the matter was; the
crew did as they were told, as quickly and efficiently as they could. Once Martin had
arrived in his wake, though, still carrying the precious telescope, the sailors were
quick to seek better enlightenment from the boy.
      The mate was the one man who guessed why Drake was so anxious in the
face of seemingly good news. As soon as the pinnace was afloat and headed back to
the Golden Hind Ashley made his way to Drake’s side and murmured in his ear:
“How did they come here, captain? Who else knows what you know about the isle
at seventeen?” He meant seventeen degrees south—the latitude that Walter Raleigh
had estimated while he had hastily sketched a series of maps during the ethership’s
initial ascent.
       “Why, no one,” the captain replied, grimly. “Who would believe it, if anyone
did, since I am mad, and everything that happened aboard the ethership was mere
Devil-led delusion?”
       Drake spoke sarcastically, as he had learned to do, but it was the truth. So far
as he knew, no one else did know of the island’s existence, save for the Golden
Hind’s officers—and none of them had been told until they had left the Magellan
Straits. He had told no one in England—not even Tom Digges—while he tried in
vain to convince the ethership’s master that their experiences within the moon and
among the stars had most certainly not been a dream.
       Only three of the Queen Jane’s five-man crew had survived the break-up of
the ship, although the bodies of the other two had never been found, presumably
having fallen into the Kentish marshes or the Thames estuary. Of those three, John
Field had embellished his own experiences with such a surfeit of imagined devilry
that no one in the world—with the possible exception of his master, Archbishop
John Foxe—could have believed his testimony. Tom Digges, to Drake’s utter
astonishment, had claimed that it had all been a hallucination caused by the
intoxicating effects of the ether. The combination of those two testimonies, set
against his own, had made Drake seem a monumental fool when he insisted that it
had all been real, and that the Devil had not come into it at all. Drake had been forced
to abandon that insistence, and by virtue of that abandonment, he had kept Walter
Raleigh’s sketch-map a very close secret indeed. He had taken care not to show it to
Master Dee, let alone to Northumberland or any other member of the Privy Council,
reserving it for his own future use.
        In truth, he could not know how trustworthy the map was. Had he not had his
own duties to attend to while the ethership was in flight—he was the only true
crewman aboard, save for Digges—he would certainly have made his own maps as
best he could, or at least graven the sight of the world’s far side more securely into
his memory, but he had had work to do. Raleigh had been trained in navigation and
mathematics by Dee, just as Drake had, so his eye ought to have been trustworthy,
but Raleigh had stuffed most of his drawings and scribblings into his own doublet
before leaping to his death. Drake had only picked up a single sheet, dropped in the
confusion, and he had no reliable way of knowing how good its scrawled estimates
of latitude and longitude were, or whether the island really was the largest landmass
in the vast Pacific east of the Austral continent and its companion isles.
       If even he could not be sure of anything, what reliable information could any
other shipmaster have had? If he had been beaten to his target by pure chance, it was
a cruel blow. Had he set out in 1577 to explore the Pacific, as he had originally
planned, he might have found the isle by chance himself.
       Drake had to pause in his thoughts to bark further orders to the men aboard
the Golden Hind as the pinnace came alongside. By the time the landing-party was
back on board, with the pinnace lifted up and its meager cargo unloaded, the ship
was already putting on sail and the anchor was ready to be raised. Drake snatched
the telescope from his kinsman and began to climb the rigging himself to use it to
best effect.
       The vessels were coming together rapidly now, although the Hind was merely
waiting, and Drake was able to take the other vessel’s measure. She was bigger than
the Hind, but not as well-crafted. She was moving swiftly, but that was because she
was riding high in the water, evidently carrying very little cargo. The Hind was
fully-laden, as she had had to be for an expedition into unknown waters, with
landfalls likely to be very few and far between.
       Martin had confirmed that there was another island beyond the tiny one he had
seen. If the other captain was sailing without a full complement of necessary
supplies, Drake reasoned, he must have come from that isle, and must have a secure
base there—but there was no need for further speculation. Whether its lookout had a
telescope or not, the master of the other ship had to know by now that the Golden
Hind was heavily armed; even so, the vessel kept sailing dead ahead, intent on a
rendezvous.
      Damn you! Drake thought, bitterly. Damn you to Hell, whoever you are! He
knew, though, that it was a thought he would have to keep to himself.
                                       ****
                                         2
       “What vessel are you?” cried a voice from the prow of the other vessel. None
of the men gathered there was wearing a naval uniform.
       “The Golden Hind, out of Plymouth,” replied Edward Hammond, Drake’s
first mate. “Sir Francis Drake her master. What ship are you?”
      If the other vessel had been away from home for several years, Drake thought,
his name might still strike the right resonance, identifying the most glorious of all
Queen Jane’s privateers: the man who had mustered the Cimaroon army to attack the
Spanish in Panama and Mexico, rather than the madman whose mind had been
addled by contact with the interplanetary ether.
      “The Fortune, out of Southampton,” was the ritual reply. “Sir Humphrey
Gilbert her master.”
      Gilbert! Drake repeated, silently. He had never met the man, but knew the
name. Gilbert was not so much a mariner as a tradesman, but it was said that he had
gone exploring—like many a pioneer before him—for the north-west passage. If so,
he was half a world away from where he should be—and where he was very likely to
have perished, if precedent signified anything. Until John Dee had built his ethership,
the only thing in the world more dangerous in than seeking the north-west passage to
the Indies had been seeking the north-east passage thereto. The tropics were terrible
regions for disease, drought, and piracy, but Drake had always preferred hazards of
those sorts to the implacable enmity of limitless ice.
        One thing of which Drake could be gladly certain, though, was that Sir
Humphrey Gilbert was no enemy, for all that he must now be reckoned a successful
rival in the navigation of the Pacific. When the invitation came for him to come
aboard the Fortune, he agreed immediately. The pinnace was lowered again, after the
inevitable delay caused by the necessity of bringing the two ships on to the same
course, carrying just sail enough to match their progress. Drake took no one with
him but half a dozen oarsmen. He climbed up to the Fortune’s deck alone.
      Gilbert was waiting for him, in company with two mates. One of the mates
and fully half the crew bore far more resemblance to Patagonians or Peruvians than
Europeans, although they were distinct in kind. Gilbert was stout and grey-haired,
looking far more the tradesman than the mariner. He appeared to be at least fifty
years old—a very ripe age for the latter vocation. He also appeared to be anxious
and apprehensive, although he seemed sincerely joyful to see his visitor.
      “I’m delighted to meet you, Captain Drake,” the old man said. “Your arrival is
so timely that it’s surely a gift from God.”
      “Timely?” Drake repeated. “How so?”
      Gilbert’s answer was somewhat evasive. “It’s more than two years since
we’ve had news from home,” the tradesman said. “We never expected to see
another English ship in these parts—nor a Spaniard either, since Magellan failed to
complete his own crossing.”
       “Your astonishment must be less than my own,” Drake replied, carefully, “for
I had no inkling that any Englishman had come here before me. If you were
commissioned by the Queen or her Privy Council, I wish that they had warned me
that others might have gone through the Straits of Magellan before me.”
       “There was no one who could warn you, Captain,” Gilbert said. “Even had
they known that you might come here instead of hunting Spanish gold in Peru.”
Gilbert had obviously guessed that Drake had not been entirely honest in revealing
his true plans to the authorizers of his own voyage.
      “Have you founded a colony on the large island yonder?” Drake asked.
      “I wouldn’t call it a colony,” Gilbert said, “but it’s long been our base.”
      “And why are you so glad to see the Golden Hind?” Drake asked, bluntly. “Is
your base under threat?”
     “We’ve feared so in recent weeks,” Gilbert confessed. “The island provides
abundant resources, in terms of water, food, and wood, but we’ve run short of
gunpowder—and the guns we have would be of little use were hostile tribesmen to
attack us in force. The arrival of so many Englishmen, as fully armed as your ship
seems to be, will surely reduce that probability dramatically. You’ll accept our
hospitality, I hope? The contrary wind will make it a slow passage, for we’ll have to
tack very broadly, but I think you’ll find the destination congenial if you’ve run low
on water and fresh food—as you must have done, there being no sizeable island
between here and the Land of Fire.”
      “I was blown back to the South American coast the first time I set out to
make the ocean crossing,” Drake admitted. “We made landfalls in Chile, but the
natives took us for Spaniards and reacted accordingly. We had to go as far as Peru
before we found a Spanish port we could take, in order to make repairs and take on
adequate supplies of water and food.”
       “It’s a bad coast,” Gilbert agreed. “No Cimaroons there with whom to make
alliance. You’ve done exceedingly well, Captain Drake, to get this far—and you’re
fortunate to find us. Tahiti is large enough, and has more than a hundred satellite
islands, but this ocean is very large indeed, and the cluster would be easy enough to
miss.”
      “Tahiti?” Drake queried.
      “It’s the native name for the isle. We were able to establish friendly relations
when we first arrived, but matters have deteriorated somewhat since then. I hope that
won’t deter you from accepting our invitation to visit.”
       “Of course not,” Drake said. “The invitation is most welcome, and if we can
be of service ... might I recognize the names of anyone else included in your we?”
      “Very likely. Some of our men might conceivably have sailed with you in the
Caribbean, since we recruited seasoned ocean sailors, but you’ll doubtless identify
them in your own time. Among the patrons of the voyage, you’ll certainly have heard
of Thomas Muffet.”
      “Muffet?” Drake echoed, amazed to hear the name. “Muffet the physician,
who turned the Royal College upside-down? The silkworm man?”
      “Indeed. A man not unlike yourself, in that he was somewhat
underappreciated in his own land, although he’s not a man of action: a physician, as
you say, whose new ideas were not at all welcome when he returned home after his
continental studies.”
      “A Paracelsian,” Drake observed.
       “In a broad sense, yes,” Gilbert agreed, “although the aspect of Paracelsus’
creed that appealed to him most was its irreverence for received authority and its
determination to make medical theory anew. As a friend of Tom Digges and John
Dee, you must surely sympathize with the revolutionary thrust of the new New
Learning.”
       Drake pursed his lips slightly at the mention of Digges’ name, but all he said
aloud was: “Master Dee taught me navigation and figures, as he did for many an
English captain, but I couldn’t presume to call him a friend—although you must
surely have that privilege.”
      “We knew one another quite well at one time,” Gilbert admitted, blandly, “but
we drifted apart.”
       Drake knew that there were rival camps within English learning, whose
nuances he did not understand. Even Dee’s determination to build a national library
had embroiled him in a surprisingly fervent rivalry with men like Stephen Batman; his
more adventurous explorations in mathematics, alchemy, and astrology were
regarded as intellectual follies even by some who did not think them frankly heretical.
The revisionist alchemy that had underpinned Dee’s construction of the ethership
would have been labeled Paracelsian by some, but Drake knew Tom Digges well
enough to understand that its theory had far outstripped that of Paracelsus. Was it
possible, he wondered, that Thomas Muffet had made similar advances in the
medical field? But if so, why on earth would he have taken ship for the remotest
reaches of the southern ocean? Unorthodox medical practice had never been a safe
business in England, even before Foxe’s puritans gained such a stronghold within
the established Church and the Royal College had obtained its monopolistic warrant,
but men of that sort forced into exile could easily find safe havens on the continent.
      When Drake made no reply to his observation, Gilbert said: “Will you stay on
the Fortune while we make our way to my pleasant harbor, Captain Drake? I’ll be
happy to supply you with a good meal.”
      “I’d rather not dine well while my men are on short rations,” Drake told him,
although he knew few ships’ masters who would have been so squeamish. “I’ll go
back to the Golden Hind and follow you to your harbor. Once we’re all able to
come ashore and enjoy a feast, I’ll be more than happy to join you, and to meet
Doctor Muffet.”
       “Splendid!” said Gilbert, enthusiastically. “It will give us all great pleasure to
entertain guests, and to receive news of home. It will be a fine night, from every
point of view!”
       Except, thought Drake, from the viewpoint of the man who hoped to be this
isle’s discoverer, and who hoped to redeem his battered reputation by claiming it
for England and Queen Jane. It was not much consolation to him that the island Sir
Humphrey Gilbert called Tahiti was exactly where he had expected to find an
island—which is to say, exactly where poor Raleigh had marked it on the map he
had sketched while the Queen Jane was orbiting the earth. In itself, that could not
prove that everything else Drake had experienced in the course of the ethership’s
journey had been real. It still remained a possibility—as he had to admit even to
himself—that his memories of being seized by the Selenite horde and dispatched by
cosmic cannon to the center of the universe, where insects and sea-slugs ruled
supreme over a hitherto-unimaginable Creation, were the produce of some
remarkable delusion.
       “Yes, Sir Humphrey,” he said to Gilbert. “I’m sure that my crewmen will
rejoice in the opportunity.”
                                       ****
                                          3
       When Drake saw that Humphrey Gilbert had three smaller ships anchored in
the natural harbor where he had constructed his “base,” he realized that the
expedition that had discovered Tahiti must have been large and well-planned. When
he was able to judge the extent of the constructions that the Englishmen had erected
around the bay he realized, too, that their settlement here was no temporary affair,
intended merely as a barracks where men might be housed until they had made
repairs and gathered provisions for a long journey home. This really was a
colony—and one that had been built from the outset with a view to defense, for the
Englishmen’s enclave was surrounded by a stout stockade, with sentry posts and
loopholes for muskets.
       Although there were several buildings within the central stockade that seemed
big enough to serve as dormitories for a ship’s crew, there was also a surprisingly
large number of smaller huts. From the Golden Hind’s anchorage, Drake could see
with the aid of his telescope that the great majority of the Englishmen were lodged in
the huts, many of them having apparently coupled themselves with women of the
same kind as the men he had seen on the Fortune. It was evident that not all of the
island’s tribesmen were hostile, but there was no way for Drake to estimate what the
total population might be, or what proportion of that total could be counted friendly.
       Drake was careful to divide his men into two parties, and to explain his
reasons for doing so. “There’s some kind of trouble brewing outside that stockade,
lads,” he told them, having assembled them on deck. “Gilbert has promised us a
feast tonight, but he’s fearful, and was exceedingly glad to see an English ship so
well-armed as the Hind. The men who remain on board tonight will eat as well as
those who go ashore, and there’ll be plenty of opportunity to trade places, but the
ship must be guarded very carefully, and its supplies of black powder kept safe.
We’ll take no guns with us tonight, but I want every man who goes ashore to keep
his eyes and ears open and his wits about him. Find out everything you can about
the situation here. If we have to defend ourselves, or our fellows ashore, I need to
know how many enemies we’re likely to face, and what sort.”
       “Will you try to make friends with the natives, Captain?” Hammond asked,
not so much for his own benefit as to give Drake the opportunity to inform his crew
of a matter of policy.
      “As ever, Ned,” Drake said. “It’s always best to make allies instead of
enemies, if we can—and if we’re forced to face enemies in the end, it’s best to do
so with allies by our side.”
       When the shore party landed and moved through the settlement, Drake was
struck by the extent and complexity of the marketplace that had been established
within the stockade. He was not surprised to see that the Englishmen had established
a forge and a glass manufactory as well as a carpentry shop, but he was astonished
to see a brewery, a bath-house, and a candle-factory, and by the industry that was in
process in all these places. Relations between the Englishmen and the natives
appeared entirely harmonious on this side of the defensive wall, but he knew how
unlikely it was that the wall was maintained merely to keep up appearances.
      Gilbert did not hurry his guests as he led them through the town. He took
pleasure in allowing Drake to savor his achievements. Gilbert’s own house was
undoubtedly the most finely crafted in the settlement, but it was not the largest.
When the outbuildings crowded around its larger neighbor were taken into account,
Gilbert’s dwelling was somewhat overshadowed.
       “That’s Doctor Muffet’s house,” Gilbert said, in response to Drake’s
inquisitive stare. “The accessory buildings are his specimen-houses and his
laboratory.”
       All physicians, Drake knew, could be reckoned alchemists of a
sort—Paracelsians more than most—but there were few who kept laboratories. On
the other hand, a herbalist must surely be able to find all kinds of exotic specimens in
a place as foreign as this, whose properties might warrant careful examination. Drake
had had an opportunity while the Hind was laid up in Peru to appreciate the extent to
which the local vegetation differed from what he had seen on his Caribbean
adventures, let alone the forests and meadows of England. He recalled, as that
thought crossed his mind, that Muffet was one of the few Europeans to have made a
study of imported silkworm cocoons, and wondered if there might be more factories
here than he had so far seen.
      “The doctor and his daughter will join us for dinner, of course, and my
chaplain, too,” Gilbert said. “How many of your officers will be joining us?”
      “Mr. Hammond and Mr. Ashley, if that suits you, Sir Humphrey,” Drake said,
“and my kinsman Martin Lyle, if that is also agreeable.”
       “Of course,” Gilbert said, as he ushered Drake over the threshold of his
house. It had only a single story, but its shallow-pitched roof had a number of
storage attics. The ground floor had a dining-room that was almost a
banqueting-hall, a reception-room, three bedrooms, and a kitchen, into which a
cast-iron stove had been transferred from one of the smaller vessels in Gilbert’s
fleet,
      “I would be honored if you would accept my hospitality, Captain Drake,”
Gilbert said. “I’ll find quarters for your mates with their peers among my own men,
and for your crewmen with theirs. I think you’ll all find the accommodations
comfortable, after such a long time at sea. How long have you been voyaging,
exactly?”
       “It’s thirteen months since we left England,” Drake told him. “Thirty-seven
days since we last spent a night ashore. Did you say just now that Doctor Muffet has
his daughter with him?”
       “I did,” Gilbert confirmed, as he invited Drake to sit down on a wicker
armchair and offered him a cup of fresh water. “A remarkable thing, I know, but he
didn’t want to leave her in England while he was away for several years. Her
mother’s dead. She was only four years old when we set out, but she’s seven now.
She wasn’t the only child on the expedition, although the others had mothers to care
for them.”
       Drake suppressed the exclamation that sprung immediately to his lips, but
could not help making a more considered observation. “Then this was a colonial
enterprise!” he said. “But how did you end up here instead of the Virginias?” He
accepted the proffered cup of water, and found it extremely sweet by comparison
with the dregs of the Golden Hind’s barrels.
     “No,” Gilbert said, “it wasn’t a colonial expedition in the sense that you mean.
The Doctor’s associates and servants brought their families with them, though.”
      A native servant brought in a huge basket of fruit, from which Gilbert invited
Drake to take his pick. Drake was hesitating between the familiar and the unfamiliar
when a movement in the doorway caught his eye. It was a blonde girl-child in a
cornflower-blue dress. Drake had not seen her like for a very long time.
      “Come in, Patience,” said Gilbert. “Captain Drake was just asking about you.
Is your father coming?”
     “Ten minutes, he said,” the girl replied, staring at Drake with a frankness that
would have been educated out of a girl her age in England.
       “Captain Drake is one of the most famous sailors in England,” Gilbert told the
girl. “There’s no Englishman the Spaniards fear more, or the Cimaroons like better.”
      “What’s a Cimaroon?” the girl asked.
       Gilbert merely laughed, so Drake took it upon himself to explain. “A
descendant of runaway slaves,” he said. “The Spaniards and the Portuguese
imported large numbers of Africans to work in their American colonies, but there’s a
whole continent into which the rebels among them may run away, and many do.
Those that have settled among the Indians become embroiled in local tribal conflicts
but they remain a hybrid race, distinctive enough for me to be able to unite them. I
rallied them by means of the argument that England, as the great rival of their worst
enemy, was potentially their best friend. Sir Humphrey flatters me by calling me
famous, though. Even in England, there are some who reckon me a dangerous pirate,
ever likely to precipitate open warfare between England and Spain.”
       “Is that why the queen sent you away in Master Dee’s ethership, and
afterward called you mad?” the little girl asked, taking her frankness to a remarkable
and rather distressing limit.
      “Perhaps it is,” Drake replied, more honestly than he could have wished. He
looked at Gilbert, and added: “It was polite of you not to mention that circumstance
before. I had begun to wonder whether you knew it.”
      “You’re among friends here,” Gilbert was quick to say. “We know that you
were not mad.”
       Drake’s astonishment increased by a further increment. “Do you, indeed?” he
said. “You know better than I do, then.” What he was thinking, though, was that if
Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Thomas Muffet knew that he was not mad, it could not
have been chance that had brought them here. He had told Hammond that no one
else could possibly know about the island whose position Walter Raleigh had
marked, but that was not strictly true. Tom Digges might know, even though he
claimed—or at least pretended—that everything he had experienced outside the earth
had been a dream. John Field might know too—but the more important possibility
was that John Dee might have had the information from Tom Digges. Dee was a hero
to every master mariner in England, even those from whose acquaintance he had
drifted apart, and if he had said to anyone that there was a sizeable island at
approximately seventeen degrees south and somewhere near one hundred and fifty
degrees west, they would have trusted him, even if they knew that he had read it in
the stars.
      “We’re very glad to see you here, Captain Drake,” Gilbert assured him,
“whatever your commission may have been when you left home. If, perchance,
you’re so far from home because you no longer feel entirely welcome there, you’d
be very welcome to make a home here, temporarily or permanently.”
       “Permanently!” Drake repeated, in surprise. “Do you intend to stay here
permanently, then, though you refuse to call your settlement a colony and fear a
native uprising?”
      “Not I,” Gilbert replied, “but...”
       “But there are some among us who might, if we’re granted leave,” said a new
voice. Another person had appeared in the doorway through which the
blonde-haired girl had come. “I’m Thomas Muffet, physician,” the newcomer
continued. “I have a certain reputation for madness myself, among the Galenists of
the Royal College, but I can assure you that I’m as sane as you are, Captain Drake.”
He extended his hand to Drake, who shook it willingly.
      “I know your name,” Drake said, “and I’m acquainted with wiser people than
I who’d gladly swear to your sanity, including Philip Sidney and his sister.”
      “Good friends,” Muffet said. “Have you news of them?”
      Drake shook his head, and Gilbert put in: “Captain Drake has been away from
England thirteen months.”
      Muffet frowned. “Were you delayed?” he asked.
       Gilbert was quick to speak again, saying: “The captain wasn’t commissioned
to follow us, Doctor. I may be reading the situation wrongly, for I was hesitant to
speak openly too soon, but I’d guess that he left home with the ostensible purpose
of harassing the Spaniards and the Portuguese up and down the coasts of South
America, and that his expedition to Tahiti was something of a private venture. I think
he’s more than a little disappointed, as well as surprised, to find us here.” Gilbert
had the grace to seem slightly discomfited as he spelled this out.
        “You’re right,” Drake conceded, readily enough. “I had reason to believe that
this island, and the others in its group, were here, but I was very wary of confessing
those reasons to others in England.”
       “You saw them from the ethership, of course,” said Muffet. “When your
other testimony was so cruelly discounted, you dared not declare your intention of
confirming what you had seen as a formal objective of your voyage. I
understand—indeed, I understand perfectly, as you’ll know soon enough.”
      “I hadn’t expected to be anticipated,” Drake said. “You must have acted very
quickly indeed, to fit out an expedition on this scale within months—perhaps
weeks—of the ethership’s destruction. I confess that I can’t understand what kind
of game Master Dee is playing.”
      “Dee?” said Muffet. “What has Dee...?” He stopped abruptly, perhaps in
response to a signal from Gilbert that Drake had not been able to see.
       Gilbert made haste to change the subject, perhaps to give Muffet some hint of
the reason for his caution. “Captain Drake’s vessel, the Golden Hind, is
uncommonly well-armed,” he said. “We’ll be grateful of that, Doctor, if relations
with the islanders continue to deteriorate. If we can persuade him to stay for a while,
his presence will surely make us secure. He might be invaluable to us in other ways
too, given his reputation as a diplomat. If he can win over the Tahitians as he won
over the Panamanian Cimaroons, we may yet achieve the state of harmony that was
our first ambition. I don’t think his men will take it too hard if they have to rest up
here for a while—they’ll find our little paradise very comfortable.”
      Drake almost frowned then, perceiving a slight hint of threat in the
tradesman’s final comment, but he dismissed the suspicion along with the
expression. “If I can be of service to you,” he said, as smoothly as he could, “I’ll be
glad of the opportunity. I can stay for a month, at least.”
      “I hope you’ll stay a great deal longer than that,” Muffet said, in spite of any
gesture Gilbert might have made. “I can think of no one better to serve as our
ambassador to England, when the time comes to explain to the queen and her
council exactly what we’ve been doing here.”
      “Indeed,” Drake said. “What have you been doing here, Doctor Muffet?”
       “Nothing less than beginning a revolution in medicine, Captain Drake,” Muffet
said. “After three thousand years of my forerunners groping in the dark, I believe
I’ve found the key to the health, happiness, and future advancement of humankind.”
       Doctor Muffet was obviously a Paracelsian in more ways than one; the
founder of the school had been renowned for his immodesty. Drake could not help
raising his eyebrows at the scope of the claim, but he refused to assume that
Thomas Muffet was mad; he knew full well that the universe contained far stranger
things than he had ever been able to imagine in his youth. “That’s excellent news,”
he murmured. He took a fruit he did not know from the basket and peered at it. “Is
this good for scurvy?” he asked.
       “Not as specific as some,” Muffet said, “but you need have no fear of any
symptoms of that sort while you are here. You’ll find that breadfruit quite palatable, I
think, and much other local produce too. There’ll be roast pork for dinner; the local
swine are delicate creatures by comparison with our wild boar, but they’re succulent.
There’ll be fresh eggs, too. You’ll have time enough to sample new fish and fruit by
the dozen, if not by the hundred.”
      “May I have another cup of water?” Drake asked. “And might I ask you to
send some casks of water and baskets of fruit out to the ship without delay, for the
benefit of the watchmen who must remain aboard?”
      “It’s already done,” said Muffet. “Patience, will you fetch the captain another
cup of water, please.”
      “Yes, father,” said the little girl, who seemed far meeker in the presence of her
parent than she had before.
      “If you have men sickening with scurvy, or anything else,” Muffet said,
“you’d best bring them ashore as soon as it’s convenient. I’ll be glad to administer
what treatments I can. I think you might be surprised by the efficacy of my
medicines. Do you have any sickness yourself ?”
      “Nothing that a warm bath wouldn’t cure,” Drake said.
      “I’ll have the servants prepare one,” Gilbert was quick to say. “I can have
your clothes washed too, and I’ll send for a barber.”
      “That’s very kind,” Drake said. “Will there still be time for me to see your
laboratory before dinner, Doctor Muffet?”
      Yet again, Gilbert did not seem overly enthusiastic about that prospect, but
the doctor smiled, as if he had been paid a great compliment. “Certainly,” he said.
“We’ll make such time as we may need. I think you’ll find my work exciting,
Captain Drake—in fact, I’m certain of it.”
       Drake could not help wondering exactly what the source of that certainty was.
It was one thing, he thought, for a man like Muffet not to credit the rumor that he
was as mad as a March hare, but quite another for him to be enthusiastic to display
his wondrous wares to a man who was—setting all issues of patriotism and
derring-do aside—most famous of all for the prodigious quality of his thievery.
                                        ****
                                           4
      Doctor Muffet’s laboratory was not what Drake expected, but as he had
hardly known what to expect, there was no surprise in that. The only workshop he
had ever seen that might be entitled to such a name was Tom Digges’ establishment
in Greenwich, and that had been more like a jeweler’s manufactory than an
alchemist’s lair.
       Muffet, as a physician, was fully entitled to be more interested in potions and
powders, and there were plenty of those on display, along with the alembics and
mortars necessary to their preparation. What Drake had not expected to see, though,
was the great assortment of live creatures mustered in the doctor’s outhouses, in all
manner of cages and glass vivaria. He had thought the islet he had visited that
morning abundantly stocked with parrots and other kinds of birds, but Tahiti itself
must have a dozen native species for every one he had seen there, and Muffet
appeared to have captured representatives of a substantial fraction of them. It was
the large and brightly colored birds that caught Drake’s attention first—especially the
ones that were not caged, which flew toward them when Muffet, Drake, and Patience
stepped across the threshold of the first laboratory.
       Patience put up her arm to provide a perch for one of the parrots: a blue and
yellow macaw, which seemed even larger than it was in juxtaposition with the slender
girl. “Hello, Agamemnon,” she said, gaily.
      “Hello, Patience,” the bird replied.
     Drake laughed. He had seen a dozen trained birds in the Caribbean, especially
among the Cimaroons, although no man in his own crew had ever tried to tame one.
      “Is all well?” Patience asked, taking care to enunciate the words clearly.
      “All’s well!” the bird squawked—and two or three of its companions repeated
the phrase, almost in unison; “All’s well!”
      “Remarkable!” said Drake—but he was already beginning to look past the
birds as the macaw left its makeshift perch for a sturdier one mounted beneath the
outbuilding’s slanted roof. As he advanced further into the room he saw that the first
vivarium he came to was occupied by a company of small lizards—but they could
not hold Drake’s eye for long, when he perceived that the next one was tenanted by
half a dozen spiders. They seemed like giants, until he looked at the next vivarium,
which held two specimens of even greater dimension.
       It was then that he began to look around more rapidly, in frank alarm, as he
realized that among more than fifty glass vessels and twenty wicker cages contained
in the room—which only constituted a third of Muffet’s research establishment—at
least forty contained spiders.
       Drake had seen large spiders before, in Panama and Peru, but not like the ones
that Thomas Muffet had accumulated in his various enclosures. Their bodies ranged
in size from the dimensions of a man’s closed fist to the full capacity of a man’s
head, and the length and sturdiness of their legs increased in proportion. Most were
colored in shades of brown, sometimes striped with red, but a few were golden
yellow and more elaborately patterned with black and blue.
       Patience, who had observed Drake’s reflexive reaction, was quick to say:
“Don’t be afraid, Captain. They’re very friendly, although the Indians are terrified of
them.” She was not merely parroting Thomas Muffet’s reassurances, for it was
obvious to Drake that the little girl was completely comfortable with the spiders. She
moved from vivarium to vivarium and cage to cage, extending her tiny hands toward
their various inhabitants without showing the slightest sign of fear or repugnance.
Indeed, she was more than willing to take the lids off glass-fronted boxes or unhook
the latches of cages to reach into them, allowing specimens that she could not
possibly have held in her tiny hands to climb her arms and sit upon her shoulders.
      “Hello, Achilles,” she said to one, and “Hello, Hector,” to another.
     For a split second, Drake almost expected Achilles to say hello in his turn,
and Hector to declare that all was well.
      Drake had always reckoned himself a brave man, but when Patience extended
one of these huge spiders toward him, offering to let him accommodate it on the
sleeve of his jerkin, he shook his head in flat refusal.
       “You’ll get used to them, Captain,” Patience assured him. “They never bite
unless they feel threatened.”
      “I’d heard that there was no Englishman more interested in insects than
yourself,” Drake murmured to Thomas Muffet, making an effort to keep his voice
perfectly calm. “I hadn’t realized that the interest in question was so closely
connected with your medical endeavors.”
       “Spiders are arachnids, not insects,” Muffet told him. “They’re entirely
distinct, not merely in the number of their limbs and the articulation of their bodies,
but in their modes of nourishment. All spiders are predators, but they’re only able to
consume their food in liquid form. They have no larval stages, as insects have, and
the silk they produce has very different properties and uses. The so-called silkworm
produces fiber to make the cocoon in which it awaits metamorphosis into its adult
form—fruitlessly, when human cultivators intervene—but spidersilk is a versatile
construction material used to build cable-like strands, complex webs and exotic
funnels. We humans may think all crawling creatures much alike, but from their own
viewpoint there’s as much difference between insects and spiders as there is
between insects and men.”
       That struck a chord in Drake’s mind. Although he had not been present when
the incident took place, he had been told that Walter Raleigh had been attacked by a
spider on the moon. Digges had mentioned in relating the incident that the multitude
of insects and molluscs, which made up the populace of the stars, seemed to look
upon spiders with the same horror and repulsion that many humans did.
      “Is that creature not poisonous?” Drake asked, unable to prevent his unease
becoming manifest as he watched a particularly repulsive specimen crawl out of a
capacious cage and along Patience’s welcoming arm.
       “Not dangerously so,” Muffet said. “It’s true that many hunting spiders use
venom to paralyze their prey, and that humans sometimes react badly to such
injections, but in functional terms, spider venom is no more akin to the crude stings
of wasps or the toxins secreted by snakes than the species themselves are. Most
natural venoms are defensive weapons, but spider secretions need to be a great deal
more versatile than that. They have not merely to immobilize their prey but to
transform the various flesh of many different species to prepare it for ingestion in
liquid form. It’s a kind of alchemy of the flesh, whose potential extends far beyond
mere murder and digestion.”
       The monster was sitting on Patience’s head now. She moved her head slowly
from side to side, her eyes taking on a quizzical expression much like those worn by
the parrots that were studying Drake and the spiders, equally warily, from the safety
of their perches. Drake felt a sudden and rather absurd sense of fellow-feeling with
the birds—who must, he supposed, have had plenty of time to get used to the
company of their fellow guests, but seemed not to have taken the trouble to become
very closely acquainted.
      “Are you saying that some spider secretions might have curative value?”
Drake asked.
      “There’s no might about it,” Muffet replied, serenely. “Is that so surprising?
There are a thousand plant species whose juices have curative value, as well as a
much lesser number that are deadly poisons. Galenists and Paracelsians alike use
leeches to draw blood. Like the chemical realm whose treasures were exposed by
Paracelsus, the animal kingdom is a vast untapped resource of medical science,
which might produce abundant rewards even if one were compelled to explore it
blindly, with no other method than trial and error.”
       Drake knew little enough about Paracelsian medicine, but there had been
controversy in abundance when Muffet had initially been refused entry into the Royal
College of Physicians, and every educated man in England—not excluding
playwrights, choristers, and marine officers—had heard something of the manner in
which Paracelsus had determined the propriety of his new chemical cures by means
of occult analogies. All occult scientists—alchemists most of all—were holists, who
considered that the universe was host to many secret patterns of analogy and
influence. If such patterns could be identified linking human illnesses to the new
chemical substances that were inflating the traditional lists of metals, salts, and
essences, similar patterns could presumably be found linking the same illnesses to
different animal species and substances. Drake inferred that Muffet was on the track
of some such guiding pattern.
       “They say in the Caribbean and Panama,” Drake observed, drawn into a
tangential train of thought, “that the natives were perfectly healthy until the Spanish
came, importing diseases that became terrible plagues. The Cimaroons gave
elaborate testimony of their ravages—but I’m told that there are rumors of a different
sort in every port in Europe, which say that sailors returning from the Americas
brought back plagues of their own.”
       “Including the one for which Paracelsus pioneered the mercury treatment,”
Muffet said. “We’ve had an opportunity to see something similar ourselves. The
Tahitians appear to have been relatively free of disease before we arrived, living an
idyllic existence in a land whose bounty is more closely akin to the Garden of Eden
than anything else on earth—but, after our arrival, sicknesses began to spread. Some
among the tribesmen are inclined to blame us for that, although our own people were
as healthy as anyone could expect when we arrived here. I’ve had a good deal of
success in treating the sicknesses, and I’m developing new cures at a rapid rate, but
the Tahitians’ gratitude is understandably dilute. They have much the same attitude
to spiders as Englishmen have, and the good example my daughter sets has no more
effect on them than it has on you—for I can see that her familiarity in handling my
allies adds to the discomfort of your attitude rather than soothes it.”
       Drake was, indeed, very glad to see Patience divest herself of the huge spider
that she had been entertaining for the past ten minutes and replace it gently in a cage
whose latch seemed quite secure. He found that his enthusiasm to see Doctor
Muffet’s laboratory had waned considerably since he had crossed its threshold, and
that an insistent desire had slowly accumulated within him to leave and not come
back. “I’m sorry,” he said to Muffet. “This is very strange to me, and there’s a great
deal to take aboard.”
      “Of course,” the doctor said, suavely. “I believe that dinner must be ready by
now. Shall we rejoin Sir Humphrey? We have plenty of time, do we not?”
      Do we? Drake wondered. He had not yet had time to think about remaking his
plans, now that his ambition to be the first European to reach these islands had been
thwarted. He had no idea where he ought to go next, or when—but the Austral
continent still lay to the west, and two islands in close proximity, each larger than
Tahiti. They, at least, might still be awaiting a first visitation by ocean-borne
adventurers.
       As they went back into Gilbert’s house, however, Drake was struck by
another thought. “I can understand why you didn’t go to the Caribbean or Brazil in
search of exotic spiders,” he said, “if those which live in England are too small to be
of much use to you—the Spanish and the Portuguese would not be good neighbors,
no matter how peaceful your intentions. But how did you know that there would be
material to suit your purposes here? Even though you knew about the island’s
existence, you might have found it utterly devoid of spiderkind.”
       “Spiders are very efficient travelers,” Muffet told him. “They’re far more
widely distributed than you can probably imagine—and in the tropics, they very
often grow to generous proportions, as do the insects that provide their primary
prey.”
      “What other kinds of prey do they hunt?” Drake asked, since the question
seemed to have been left dangling, and because all sailors had heard travelers’ tales
about giant spiders that preyed on humankind.
      “The largest species can trap small birds and mice,” Muffet told him. There
was a slight hint of amusement in his voice, which testified to his familiarity with the
same travelers’ tales. “Nothing bigger—so far as I know.”
                                        ****
                                            5
       The feast proved too much for Drake’s stomach, although he could not help
over-eating after such long privation. If he had confined himself to drinking
water—as he knew full well that he ought to do—he would probably have kept his
appetite in better check, but he was readily persuaded to try some palm wine. Once
mild intoxication had taken hold he became too self-indulgent—though not as
self-indulgent as the crewmen who were eating in the open air, around a group of
cooking-fires, amid a crowd that included numerous young Tahitian women.
      As he watched his men through the wide window of Gilbert’s dining-room, it
occurred to Drake that the natives might have more reasons than their new-found
vulnerability to fevers to have taken a dislike to the invaders of their island, but the
combination of drunkenness and the gripe soon drove all such serious thoughts from
his mind.
      In response to polite requests, Drake and Hammond told tales of their
adventures in Panama, in which all their fellow guests seemed very interested. No
one took the risk of asking him about the far more dramatic adventure he had
experienced after the ethership’s ascent, even though they had already told him that
they did not agree with those who thought the experience delusional. Drake was
grateful for that, although he was aware of the apparent inconsistency. Ashley—who
had not sailed with Drake before this present expedition—willingly took on the
burden of recounting their recent capture of the Peruvian port, and waxing lyrical
about the treachery of the natives of Chile.
     Patience Muffet, who was sitting next to Drake, asked him whether he had
encountered any monsters like those described in myths and travelers’ tales. She
seemed sincerely interested.
        “The tales that mariners bring back home of terrible islands inhabited by
cunning monsters, head-hunting savages, and avid cannibals are mostly lies intended
to amuse,” Drake told her. “I’ve never encountered cannibals, or savages who make
human sacrifice of all unwary visitors to huge monsters they worship as pagan gods.
There’s no need, mind, for such fancies as that to express the danger of a seaman’s
trade; it’s a fortunate ship that returns home from an ocean crossing with more than
half its crew alive and well. Disease and deprivation claim more lives than violence.
The world isn’t as hospitable to humankind as we could wish, alas.”
       “Why do people bring home such terrifying tales, if there’s no truth in them?”
the girl asked, in a manner whose maturity belied her frail appearance. “Why make
the world out to be worse than it is?”
       “Travelers exaggerate,” Drake said. “In making the world seem stranger, they
seek to increase their own apparent importance and bravery.”
       “The world is a sore trial to humans because we’re doing penance for original
sin,” Gilbert’s chaplain put in, having been eavesdropping on their conversation
from the other side of the table. He seemed to disapprove of Patience’s
curiosity—or, at least, of her choice of an instructor.
        “If that’s so,” Drake opined, with reckless honesty, “we’re paying very dear
for a trivial error. Dante claimed that there was no land in all this ocean but the mount
of Purgatory, but you’ve proved him wrong, haven’t you? Another strike against
papism!”
       The chaplain was not a Puritan of John Field’s stripe but a broad churchman.
“It might be,” the chaplain opined, “that Dante guessed wrongly about the shape and
extent of Purgatory.”
       “You’ll find that Tahiti isn’t Paradise, Captain Drake,” Patience Muffet said,
“but it isn’t Purgatory either.” The judgment seemed bizarrely ominous, from the
mouth of such a young child.
      “No,” Drake agreed. “It’s just an island, where there are neither head-hunters
nor cannibals nor pagan savages. Even the monsters are friendly, and your father is
hopeful that their bites might work benign miracles.”
      This time it was Muffet who interrupted to say: “There’s nothing miraculous
about it, Captain Drake. It’s merely science.”
      He would undoubtedly have gone on, but Gilbert put a hand on his arm.
“Tomorrow, doctor,” he said. “Tonight, let’s rejoice in a fortunate meeting of
friends and countrymen.” He raised his cup as if to signify a compact.
      Drake raised his own readily enough, knowing that he had already drunk too
much to pay proper attention to, or make proper sense of, any discourse on the
technicalities of alchemical medicine.
      The feast continued in a hearty mood; even the chaplain relented in the
expression of his disapproval.
      Drake had no idea what time it was when he took himself off to bed, but
darkness had fallen some time before. His hosts would willingly have carried on
drinking and chatting for at least another hour, and the party outdoors went on for
some while longer, the cooking-fires having been fed further wood in order to serve
as central sources of illumination, but the captain was exhausted.
      He fell asleep while there was still a great deal of noise and flickering light
outside. That did not assist his troubled sleep, which was shallow and dream-filled
from the very start. By the time his belly finally settled, however, silence had fallen
and the fires had burned down to a sullen red glow that seemed impotent to
penetrate the darkness of the tropic night. His stomach’s quiescence was, alas, soon
displaced as the center of his internal attention by the development of a fierce
headache.
       There was a nightlight by his bed, so Drake did not have to blunder around in
search of the water-jug, but he felt very clumsy as he groped for it. He drank deeply,
but that only served to increase the magnitude of yet another problem.
       He got up again, wishing that he had paid more attention to the exact position
of the latrine that was situated some distance behind the house, not far from the
fence, when he had used it in earlier in daylight. He did not bother to put on his
jerkin, but he was careful to pull on his boots, not knowing what dangerous creatures
might be swarming on the ground behind the house.
        He made his way outside, and was glad to find that there was light enough to
enable him to find the raised rim of the latrine-pit without overmuch trouble. He still
felt rather unsteady on his feet; when his immediate discomfort had been relieved, he
moved away from the stinking trench to lean against the bole of a tall palm, intending
to gather himself together before he returned to his bed. He looked up at the sky,
although he did not expect to find any sense of stability or promise of peace in its
celestial majesty.
       The southern stars always seemed sparse to him by comparison with those
that crowded northern skies, but the weakness of their light was offset by a bright
full moon, whose pock-marked silver face was now a stark reminder of the extent
and strangeness of the universe. Drake stared at it for a minute or more, resentfully.
Digges, he knew, had been promised that the earth would be let alone, but that did
not mean that compound eyes were not staring down at the world of men, nor that
the multitudinous insect species who thronged the satellite’s cavernous interior might
not send tiny cousins to the surface to make observations on their behalf.
       He looked away deliberately, unwilling to offer himself up as a passive lunatic.
The tall wooden fence, some fifteen paces away from his present position, made it
impossible for him to see more of the forest than the tops of its trees. The island’s
birds were mostly silent now, but there was wind enough to sustain a considerable
whisper in the foliage, so the wilderness of the island’s interior seemed loud and
insistent in its presence.
       When he felt more composed, Drake turned to go back to Gilbert’s house.
Just as he turned his head, though, he saw something move from the corner of his
eye. It was very close to the wall of the stockade, almost totally enclosed in shadow;
had it remained still he could not possibly have seen it, but the fact and quality of the
movement were just about discernible. As soon as he stared at it attentively, though,
the movement stopped, leaving him with nothing but the impression of something the
size of a man, whose movement was not at all manlike.
      Drake could not help the idea of a giant spider—a true giant—springing forth
from his imagination. Instinctively, he froze, cursing himself for his reflexive terror.
He stared hard into the shadows, but he could not make out any shape within the
darkness. He tried to force himself to take a step toward it, purely and simply to
prove that he had command over his limbs, but his legs would not move.
        When he tried to take a step in the other direction, toward the house, he found
it far easier—but in taking that step, he turned his head again, and caught a hint of
movement from the corner of his eye for a second time. He froze again, and looked
back—and then he felt something brush against his calf, above the rim of his boot.
      He was immediately seized by the idea that something had already crawled up
his boot, unheeded, and was now ascending his leg. Again, he could not help but
imagine a spider, albeit a much smaller one than the one he had imagined moving in
the shadows.
       He dared not reach down with his bare hands. Instead, he shook his leg
furiously, hoping to dislodge the creature he supposed to be there. He knew, even as
he did it, that it was the wrong thing to do. If there was a spider on his leg, the last
thing in the world he ought to do was agitate it.
       It was the wrong thing to do; he felt the sting that told him so—but that only
made his agitation more frenzied. He would have called for help had he not been so
utterly ashamed of himself—but the one thing he dreaded more, at that moment, than
being killed by a spider-bite, was the possibility that he might be wrong: that the
whole incident, including the bite, was a product of his imagination. He could not
countenance the thought that he might be found hallucinating, especially if the
hallucination involved a giant invertebrate.
      He felt a second bite, and a third. He was possessed by the thought that there
must be more than one spider, and that there might be an entire tide of spiders
flowing around his feet. Still he did not dare reach down with his hands. Still he
kicked madly in his panic, while trying all the while to stay silent.
       Drake began to feel numb in his lower limbs, and dizzy in his fevered brain,
and felt that he was losing contact with reality in more ways than one. Then, he did
begin to hallucinate.
       He dreamed that he had suddenly acquired the ability to see into the shadows,
and to distinguish what was there. He did not see man-sized spiders but spiderlike
men: three of them, clad like the Tahitian indigenes in loincloths and feathered
head-dresses. They were far darker in complexion than the Tahitians, though, and far
hairier, with faces that were not human faces at all but monstrous arachnid faces,
staring at him and waiting for him to fall.
      He dared not look down to see whether he was, indeed, being devoured from
beneath by a flood of spiders. He could not look down—but he could fall down,
and he felt himself doing so.
      As he tumbled, the three spider-faces worn by the violators of the stockade
drew closer. He told himself that they must be masks, but then lost the thread of his
dreams and thoughts alike.
                                       ****
                                         6
       Drake woke up with a start, and found himself fighting to open his eyes
against the glare of bright sunlight. Eventually, he managed it. He was on the ground,
not lying where he had fallen, but rather in dense undergrowth, which mostly
consisted of fern-like fronds and broad prickly leaves. He was lying in a shallow
ditch, which might have been a watercourse in the rainy season; it snaked away
through the vegetation in two directions.
       He raised his head cautiously, but the foliage was too dense to allow him to
see more than a few feet without standing up. He paused before doing that, in order
to collect himself and decide what to do next. Since his eyes told him so little about
where he was, he made an effort to listen carefully, but all he could hear was the
clamor of a brisk wind rustling the branches of the trees, mingled with the calls of
strange birds and various humming and clicking sounds that were presumably made
by unfamiliar insects.
     He tried to rise to his feet, but his legs were still numb and he had to pause in
an awkward sitting position. He reached down to rub his thighs. He was wearing
hose, but there were tears in the thin cloth above the rims of both his boots, and
bloodstains. The flesh beneath was itching, and the sensation flared into pain as he
brushed the wounds with his fingertips. He had apparently been bitten four times,
around and above his knees. He continued rubbing his legs, and felt the flesh
respond to the urging. He breathed a sigh of relief as he took further stock of
himself, and concluded that any damage done had been temporary.
      When he stood up he was able to look over the densest vegetation, but he
could only see a few yards further than before, although the forest was not as dense
as some he had experienced. To judge by the height of the sun, it had to be nearer
noon than dawn.
       I must make haste, Drake thought, glad to be able to organize a coherent
sentence. The settlement was on the south-eastern coast of the island, so it ought to
lie...
      He was interrupted in mid-decision when he suddenly found himself gripped
from behind and pulled back down to a sitting position. When he twisted his neck to
look over his shoulder he found himself staring into the face of a man.
       Drake was so glad to see that the man did not have the face of a spider that
three seconds passed before he realized that the other did have skin much darker
than the natives he had seen in Gilbert’s compound, and that he had considerably
more body hair. He was, moreover, exceptionally barrel-chested and muscular. He
did not seem to belong to the same race as other Tahitians. He was not alone; there
were at least three others, all crouching down and huddling around. They were
breathing hard; he inferred that they had hurried back to him following some alarm.
       Drake opened his mouth to speak, but a hand was urgently plastered over it.
Another hand reached out to part the vegetation obscuring their position, and a
stabbing finger bid him look in that direction. He could just make out the feathery
head-dresses of a party of lighter-skinned men making their way along a course that
ran more or less parallel the dry stream-bed. He could also see the tips of spears and
bows carried by the lighter-skinned Tahitians; they were moving smoothly and
silently, as any hunting-party would.
       When the other party had vanished, Drake’s captors allowed him to stand up
again. He tried a soft-voiced greeting in English first, on the assumption that any
islanders living in close proximity to the settlement, whatever their physical type,
were highly likely to have learned a little. When that overture met with blank
incomprehension, he made an elaborate mime of displaying his obvious lack of arms
and declaring his peaceful inclinations. He had grown accustomed to the elements of
sign language, having always been exceptional among his own people for his
enthusiasm to meet exotic specimens of humanity and make alliances with them.
      The dumb-show elicited no more reaction than his speech. He was now able
to count the number of his captors as seven, but none of them was armed and they
did not seem to mean him any harm, Indeed, it was possible that they had protected
him by preventing him from attracting the attention of the lighter-skinned islanders.
Before looking back at the man who had dragged him down and muffled his mouth,
who seemed to be the leader of the party, Drake made a tour of the group with
curious eyes. The expressions on their staring faces seemed far more curious than
ominous, but Drake had the impression that if he were to try to leave the company he
would be restrained.
      “You’re not local, are you?” he guessed. “Neither servants nor traders. So
what do you want with me?” He took care to speak in a soft and amicable tone.
      There was no verbal reply, but the first man he had seen gestured with his
hand. It was an invitation rather than a command, but Drake did not take the trouble
to wonder what the consequences might be of a refusal. He bowed, and immediately
went in the direction indicated by the invitation. So far as he could judge, that course
would take him in the opposite direction to the settlement, but it could not be helped.
The leader of the party fell into step with him, walking by his side, while the others
arranged themselves in single file behind.
       The trail they followed was not straight, but it was clear enough to permit swift
progress until they were diverted on to a narrower sidetrack, where they made slower
headway. The leader of the party had to go in front of Drake to guide him. After that,
they changed direction so frequently that their course was more reminiscent of a ship
tacking into the wind than any journey overland that Drake had ever taken. When
they had been moving for two hours they stopped to drink from a stream. Drake
realized that they must be carefully avoiding contact with other islanders. Although
he had caught the odor of cooking-fires more than once, he had not seen a single
human habitation.
      “You know that I’m a stranger here, don’t you?” Drake said to the leader,
without any expectation of receiving a reply. “You know that I came aboard the
Golden Hind. Do you know that I’m her master, or were you merely intent on
picking one of us at random?” Voicing the questions helped him to settle in his own
mind what the answers might be—but he knew that there was no point in seeking
enlightenment by that means as to where the dark men might be taking him, or why.
       Eventually, their course became straighter again, and by late morning they did
come into a village, where his captors paused to hold discussions with the
inhabitants. These were lighter-skinned people who resembled the islanders he had
seen in the settlement, not his present companions, but they did not seem to be
hostile to his captors. There was no argument, and scant evidence of overmuch
curiosity regarding his presence, although some of the villagers studied him
surreptitiously while pretending to ignore him.
      “Is there anyone here who speaks English?” Drake asked, plaintively, issuing
another general appeal. If anyone did, they were not prepared to admit it.
       The march resumed. Drake presumed that they were heading ever-deeper into
the island’s interior, getting further away from the settlement. He spared time from
contemplation of his own predicament to wonder what Gilbert would think when he
found that his honored guest had vanished—and, for that matter, what Hammond
and Ashley would think when they found themselves devoid of a captain.
       They went through two more villages before noon, and a third not long after.
Drake was offered fruit to eat and water to drink, but he ate sparingly. The
expedition had become tedious now, and he began to wish that it might be over—or,
at least, that he might be able to ask when it might be over.
       There did not seem to be nearly so many birds hereabouts as there had been
on the small islet where Martin had climbed the coconut palm—perhaps because the
birds here were much more inclined to steer clear of humans, for reasons to which
the natives’ feathered head-dresses offered more than adequate testimony. There
were, however, large parrots visible in the crowns of the trees, which paused to
watch the party of travelers as they passed by rather than taking immediate
flight—except for one, which was actively following them. At first Drake thought
that he must be mistaken about that, but once he began to keep the bird within view,
it soon became obvious that he was right. The bird was definitely tracking them.
Drake could not tell whether his companions were aware of the fact or not, but if
they were it did not worry them.
       For the first time, it occurred to Drake to wonder why the Fortune had set off
from Gilbert’s harbor, heading directly for the island where the Hind had dropped
anchor, before anyone could possibly have caught sight of her. Was it possible, he
wondered, that news of her arrival there had been carried from one island to another
by a bird? He had not paid much attention to the birds in Muffet’s laboratory, even
though Patience had talked to one of them, once his attention had been claimed by
the spiders. Now he began to wonder whether he had been distracted from
something significant, and cursed himself for his carelessness.
       Travelers’ tales featuring intelligent birds were by no means as common as
those involving giant spiders, but they were not unknown. Perhaps, Drake thought,
there was more truth in such tales than he had ever been able to credit. Given that the
caverns of the moon were host to vast throngs of philosophical insects, the notion
of whole nations of talking birds no longer seemed as silly as it would have done in
his days as the scourge of the Carib Sea.
      For at least six hours he had not seen a single spider, but that changed quite
suddenly when the terrain underwent a marked change of aspect. They had been
going up-slope for some time and the forest had thinned out considerably—not
because trees had been deliberately cleared, as they had around the villages, but
because the trees that grew on this higher ground had massive superficial
root-systems than monopolized the soil for some distance around, permitting no
competitors. These roots formed complex networks of ridges and deep grooves,
and were host to elaborate populations of fern-like plants, mosses, brightly colored
fungi, and swarms of insects. Here, for the first time since his strange awakening,
Drake was able to see spiders prowling in broad daylight, though none were as large
as the ugliest specimens in Muffet’s collection. He saw webs, too, although they
were not like the webs spun by garden spiders in England; they were built on the
ground and extended in mazy tunnels and strange spirals.
       The walls of these tunnels were sufficiently substantial that they might almost
have served as the sleeves of garments, but they were slightly translucent, so that it
was sometimes possible to see dark shapes confined within them, which might have
been the spiders themselves, or the corpses of the kinds of animal prey that Muffet
had mentioned: small birds and mice. Despite his booted feet, Drake took great care
not to step on any spiders. The natives seemed far less careful, although they went
barefoot.
       The terrain changed again as the party finally went over the crest of the
shallow hill they had been climbing, and came down more precipitously into a valley
whose vegetation was quite distinct from any they had yet traversed. There were no
palm trees here, although there were trees that bore fruits that Drake had never seen
before; they did not grow as tall as palms, but their foliage was more prolific. Many
of the bushes bore huge flowers, of very various colors, and the air was alive with
the buzz of insects. Drake had been badly bitten in the swamplands of Panama, and
he was initially apprehensive of the swarms of flies, but they did not seem inclined to
molest him.
       The going became much harder once they had descended into the valley, but
there was a trail of sorts, which Drake’s guide followed unhesitatingly, and the
seaman followed without too much difficulty. There seemed to be no villages here,
and Drake had persuaded himself that it was merely a margin to be crossed when he
suddenly emerged into a clearing where there was a group of huts. He knew
immediately that some European hand had been involved in their design and
construction, although he did not recognize the half-human figure that came out of
one of the huts to meet them as a European.
       The man seemed, at first glance, to be similar in type to Drake’s companions;
his skin had the same dark coloring, although it seemed somewhat coarser in texture,
and it was also very hairy. Like them he was ugly, in a straightforwardly human
fashion, although his features seemed more considerably distorted. His forehead was
bulbous and his jaw unusually narrow. He was not dressed as the natives were,
though; he had canvas trousers, a cotton chemise, and a broad-brimmed hat.
Clothed as he was, it was easy to determine that he had the same exceptional
development of the torso and thighs.
       It might have been the narrowness of the jaw that imparted a flute-like quality
and a slight lisp to the voice that said: “It’s good to see you, Francis, old friend. I
had a presentiment that you would come—and it seems that you’ve arrived in the
nick of time.”
       “Old friend?” the astonished Drake repeated. “I’d surely remember if I’d ever
seen a man like you before, let alone numbered one among my friends.”
      “I’ve changed more than a little since you saw me last,” the other admitted.
“Perhaps I’m being presumptuous, though, in addressing you as friend rather than
shipmate. It was three years ago that you saw me last, as the calendar counts, but it
was in another life as well as another world.”
      “God’s blood!” Drake exclaimed, not knowing exactly how he had jumped to
the conclusion. “You’re Walter Raleigh!”
                                      ****
                                         7
       “I knew that Gilbert would be discreet,” the much-changed Raleigh remarked,
“but I thought Muffet might have found an opportunity to say something. I told him
long ago that you were mariner enough to have taken full note of what you saw from
the ethership’s portholes. Given that you’d already looked on the Pacific from
Panama, I suspected that you’d come exploring if you could.”
       “If you reached the ground safely when the ethership broke up,” Drake said,
angrily, “why didn’t you return to London? I was in dire need of your testimony to
support the story I told. Had you been there to support my testimony, it would have
been manifest that it was poor Digges, not I, who was deluded about the nature of
our adventure.”
       “You may be giving our fellow Englishmen too much credit for credulity,”
Raleigh replied. “I didn’t know what would happen to you, and I regret that it did,
but I had more urgent things to do. In truth, I wasn’t entirely displeased when news
reached me of the trick that the ethereal had played on Tom Digges. There are good
reasons for maintaining secrecy in regard to the work that Muffet and I must do—for
some years, at least. You, though, are one of the few men who might understand. I
really am glad to see you, Francis, for there’s no man on earth who might make us a
better ally, and we’re direly in need of one just now. I know that the celestial spiders
didn’t bring you here, but since you are here, they must have Providence on their
side.”
      “Did celestial spiders bring you here?” Drake asked.
      “Yes,” Raleigh replied unequivocally. “Walk with me, and I’ll show you what
you need to see while I tell you what you ought to know. We’ve no shortage of
hapless instruments, but to have another free man in our innermost company will be
an immense advantage.”
       As he spoke, Raleigh beckoned Drake to follow him deeper into the valley,
then made a signal to the leader of the company that had brought Drake from the
settlement. The natives were as silent now as they had been since Drake first saw
them, and they made no audible response to the signal, but merely retreated to the
huts surrounding Raleigh’s.
       Drake was in a mulish mood now, though, and he stayed where he was. “You
sent those men to kidnap me,” he said, darkly, “and you sent some monster with
them to render me unconscious. Why?”
      “It was the simplest way to bring you here quickly—perhaps the only way.
Had my emissaries come openly, the rebel islanders would have been alerted, and
Gilbert would have done his best to keep you inside the stockade. He may think of
you merely as heaven-sent reinforcements for the defense of his petty fort, but he
might be hatching other schemes. Muffet still has confidence in him, but I cannot.
Gilbert’s plans might be agreeable to me, in the right circumstances—but that
depends on you, and on the Tahitians’ response to your arrival.”
      “The islanders seemed friendly enough last night,” Drake observed.
       “Everyone is friendly while gathering intelligence,” Raleigh said. “It’s possible
that your arrival will inhibit the natives from attacking the settlement, but it’s also
possible that it will increase their sense of urgency. If they imagine that more ships
are likely to arrive in future, bringing more guns...”
      “We must talk to them,” Drake was quick to say. “We must reassure them
that we can co-exist peacefully.”
      “We did that when we first came,” Raleigh told him, bluntly. “The islanders
believed us, and all went well ... but many of the islanders now consider that our
promises were false, and they know that there’s dissent among the ranks of Gilbert’s
men. Sailors are a superstitious breed; many of them can’t understand what we’re
doing here, or why, any better than the natives. You will—if you’ll allow me to show
you. Will you come?”
       This time, Drake consented to go where the strangely transformed Raleigh led
him. By the time they had taken a dozen steps the huts were out of sight again,
screened by the luxuriant bushes. The air was still abuzz with insects, though, drawn
to the gigantic blooms that dressed the bushes in such awesome profusion. Their
nectar-collection was not unhazardous, though; now that Drake had become
accustomed to the rich confusion of colors he was able to make out predatory
spiders lurking in the foliage of the bushes, ready to seize prey that settled in the
alluring blossoms.
      “Beautiful, are they not?” Raleigh said, as he followed the direction of Drake’s
gaze. Drake knew that he was not referring to the flowers.
      The trail they followed was neither wide nor straight, but the mossy ground
was gentle underfoot, and Drake was able to stroll in perfect comfort.
     “So the spider-bite you suffered on the moon was no superficial scratch,” he
deduced, “and our insect hosts were wrong to believe that they had countered its
effects.”
       “The colonists of the moon’s interior think themselves extremely wise and
capable,” Raleigh said, “and the fleshcores that rest in perfect peace within the shells
of planetary crusts in the central regions of the sidereal system are even more given
to self-satisfaction. They consider themselves rulers of the galaxy and the forefront
of evolution’s thrust, but they’re blind to all manner of other possibilities. They
know relatively little about the remoter regions of the galactic arms, let alone the vast
realm of the ethereals. They know almost nothing about the imperium of spiderkind.”
       “You’re some kind of chimera now, I suppose?” Drake guessed. “The spider
must have laid eggs inside your body, which took possession of your flesh much as
the ethereal took possession of poor Digges’ intelligence, albeit in a slower manner.”
       Raleigh laughed. “You see that I’m changed,” he said, “but you mistake the
reason. No, I’m not possessed by one of Field’s ingenious extraterrestrial demons.
The spider laid no eggs within my flesh. The spiders that rode down to earth with me
traveled as passengers on the ethership, just as we humans did. They played their
part in saving all of us, slowing the leak with spidersilk long enough for us to reach
an altitude at which the parachutes could save our lives. Had it not been for them,
you’d likely be dead, although you never suspected their presence. They had to be
discreet, you see, for they had been spies within the moon for many years, always in
hiding from the insects. They took a considerable risk, in order to make use of an
unexpected opportunity to descend to the surface of the Earth. They would have
come eventually, of course, but they knew that the ethership’s journey would
provoke a response from the selenite host, and they had to be bold. They’re few in
number, and their work is patient by nature—my own optimization has been a slow
process, and not painless—but they needed to act, lest an unprecedented
opportunity be lost.”
       “Optimization?” Drake queried. “Is that what has happened to you, Walter?
And to the men who brought me here, I presume? They’re not a different race at
all—merely islanders who’ve been bitten by celestial spiders.” It occurred to Drake,
as he said this, that he too had been bitten, four times over, by spiders whose origin
and nature he could not specify—but he reassured himself with the thought that
Muffet appeared to be as tightly bound in this conspiracy as Raleigh, without him or
his daughter having been transformed.
       “Sentient spider species are despised fugitives within the fleshcores’ galactic
empire,” Raleigh told him, “as humans and other vertebrate intelligences are bound
to become, if the insects and their masters have their way. The celestial spiders have
survived and flourished regardless, their evolutionary impetus enhanced by the
necessity of their eternal struggle. They’re our natural allies, Francis—far more so
than the ethereals, whose penchant for trickery and treachery is obvious in what they
did to Digges. The celestial spiders haven’t attempted any deception since they had
to make their first move under extremely difficult circumstances. They’ve been
honest with me, and with Muffet—with Gilbert too, although he’s never been able to
overcome his instinctive revulsion. That instinct is a direly unfortunate thing,
although we humans—some of us, at any rate—seem better able to overcome it than
the insect races that comprise the dominant galactic civilization.”
      “If God engraved a fear of spiders in our instinct,” Drake observed, “there
might be a reason for it.” As he spoke he had his eye on an unusually brightly
colored specimen that was not in hiding, but hanging from a thick thread from the
branch of a tree, apparently ready to drop from above on some unsuspecting prey.
       “That kind of fear is not God’s work,” Raleigh told him. “It’s a phantom of
the imagination. The intelligence of Earthly spiders, like that of Earthly insects,
remains undeveloped, while that of vertebrates has flourished, by virtue of some
unfathomable quirk of local circumstance—but the celestial spiders are rivals of a
powerful enemy of humankind, and will be exceedingly valuable allies in times to
come. I’d have thought that the man reputed to have turned the Cimaroons into a
fledgling nation ready to aid the English against the empire-building Spaniards might
understand that.”
       “You mistake me, Walter,” Drake told him. “I never set out to be a diehard
enemy of the Spaniards. I wouldn’t have attacked them so violently in Panama had I
not been so cruelly betrayed at St. John de Ulua. I’m a peaceful man, who would far
rather deal honorably with everyone.”
       “But that’s exactly what Digges attempted to do with the insects and the
fleshcores,” Raleigh pointed out. “They promised him safety and honorable dealing,
but they sabotaged the ethership, intending to kill us all.”
      “Did they?” Drake countered. “I don’t know that.”
      “But you do know that the ethereal—the vaporous creature that Digges
breathed in—betrayed him by persuading him that our experience was all a dream. It
betrayed you, Francis, in making you seem a fool.”
       “And you didn’t?” Drake retorted. “I was convinced that you were dead, for I
couldn’t believe that you would have deserted me when I needed your testimony to
establish my sanity. If I hadn’t had your map...” He did not break off because he
regretted the revelation that it was Raleigh’s sharp eyes rather than his own that had
guided him to Tahiti, but because he had caught his first glimpse of the wonders that
Raleigh must have brought him here to see.
       They had come into another clearing, where the ground was damp around the
rim of a little pool, whose surface was strewn with lily-pads. On slightly drier
ground, cushioned with moss, a dozen Tahitian natives, of the kind Raleigh called
“optimized”—six of whom were female—were lying fully extended, seemingly
asleep, with their arms extended. Each human body was marked with between five
and ten of what Drake thought at first were dark red tumorous growths.
      After a minute or so, he realized that the objects were not growths at all, but
stout leeches and massive ticks, each the size of a clenched fist, every one of which
must have drawn a generous cupful of blood from its host. He was able to watch
sated parasites withdraw, slowly and sluggishly as they completed their feasts, and
roll on to the ground—but whether they intended to scuttle or squirm away
thereafter, he could not tell, for as soon as they fell they were seized and carried off
by huge spiders, which bore them away into the shelter of the surrounding bushes.
       The bushes and trees on the far side of the pool were lavishly supplied with
spidersilk structures, including webs, domes, and tunnels, intricately distributed
between the undergrowth and the crowns of the trees. Drake was immediately struck
by the notion that here was an entire city spun from spidersilk, extending as far as
the eye could see. The structures became much more voluminous and mazy as they
extended into the distance, drowning the greens of the forest in a vast extent of
shimmering white.
       The spiders collecting the bloodsucking parasites were not as huge as the
largest specimens Muffet had shown him, but very nearly so. If the increasing size of
the tunnels that extended away from the pool’s edge was a reliable indication, Drake
thought, there must be true giants at the heart of the labyrinth.
                                         ****
                                           8
      “Are your celestial spiders in that silken maze?” Drake asked, croaking slightly
because his mouth was dry.
       “Yes,” Raleigh said, “but the products of earthly Creation are far more
numerous. The celestial spiders are not the largest, by any means—earthly spiders
have more scope for physical optimization than I supposed at first. Although our
project is still in its infancy, it’s making rapid and spectacular progress. Ours is a
world with more exotic potential than our friends have ever found before; it will take
them centuries to discover what might be achieved here in Tahiti, let alone the entire
surface of the globe—but you and I might live long enough to see it, if we and they
are granted time enough to complete our experiments.”
       Drake had returned his attention to the languid islanders and their patient
parasites. “And if we were to live for centuries,” he said, grimly, “how much blood
would we have to produce to feed your celestial spiders?”
      “You misunderstand what is happening here,” Raleigh said. “The celestial
spiders have neither any need nor any appetite for human blood, although they
consider it a privilege to share the alchemical potential of our flesh, as we should
consider it a privilege to share the alchemical potential of theirs. Arachnids are
exoskeletal creatures, like insects and molluscs, but they’re very different in other
ways. The blood that you see being taken here is destined to nourish earthly spiders,
not extraterrestrial ones, and it’s transmitted by vectors in order to protect its donors
from excessive traffic in the elixirs of life.”
        While Drake watched, one of the male “donors” rose to his feet, having shed
all his visitors. He seemed steady enough on his feet, but his eyes were dull. He did
not look at Drake before walking into the bushes and being lost to sight.
      “Your optimized friends aren’t very talkative,” Drake observed.
       “They still converse with one another, and with their former brethren, in their
own tongue,” Raleigh said. “They have had no need to learn English to communicate
with me; we have other methods. Spiders are voiceless, of course, nor do they have
the kinds of sensitive palps that the selenite insects used to converse with Tom
Digges, but they have very efficient modes of communication, which humans can
learn—optimized humans, at least. When we first returned to earth, my celestial
companions had no alternative but to use me a trifle brutally, but they were as
discreet as they could be. Once they were able to set me free, they did. I can
converse with them now as one free individual to another.”
       Drake felt free to doubt that—and, indeed, to doubt that Raleigh was anything
more than a mere puppet, set out to seduce co-operation from him as cooperation
had clearly been seduced from Thomas Muffet. He had to begin walking again,
though, because Raleigh was on the move once more, skirting the pond as he went
on into the valley.
       They moved between the spidersilk structures easily at first, because those
clinging to the ground were low-lying and those constructed in the crowns of bushes
and trees were limited to the foliage, but their own relative status as giants was
rapidly diminished as the arachnid city grew in dimension. The silken structures soon
loomed up to chest- and head-height, and they moved into a translucent labyrinth
that confused Drake’s eyes completely.
      “Did Muffet talk to you about his work?” Raleigh asked, as they plunged into
the heart of this bizarre environment.
       “He showed me his laboratories,” Drake replied. “He told me that various
sorts of spider venom have curative powers, and that he’s attempting to refine them,
with the ultimate intention of returning to England equipped with a miraculous
pharmacopeia. I assume that he’ll do everything possible to demonstrate the efficacy
of his cures before revealing their source.”
       “That’s one aspect of our plan,” Raleigh agreed, “and one of our reasons for
doing our work in such a remote location. There were too many spies in England for
there to be any possibility of working there.”
      “When you say spies,” Drake said, “I take it that you’re not referring to
Elizabethans, Frenchmen, or Italians? You mean agents of the lunar insects and their
fleshcore masters.”
      “Yes,” said Raleigh. “Ethereals too, in all likelihood, although they find the
surface of the Earth just as uncomfortable as exoskeletals accustomed to working in
environments where affinity is far less powerful. Earthly insects and spiders are
limited in size by a number of environmental factors, you see—especially the
load-bearing capacity of their limbs and the difficulty of distributing vital spirit to
their tissues.”
      “What vital spirit?” Drake asked.
       “The vital spirit that’s contained in air and ether, deprived of which living
organisms must die. It is the fuel that feeds the fire of life. Organisms heavily
burdened by affinity, as we are, require beating hearts and a sturdy network of
vessels carrying blood, which absorbs vital spirit in the lungs and releases it
throughout the body. Earthly invertebrates are tiny because, by some freak of
chance, their ancestors never developed the appropriate combination of load-bearing
limbs and internal circulatory systems. Physical optimization requires ingenious
compensation in these and other respects. Relatively few intelligent extraterrestrials
can operate comfortably on the surface of a planet like the earth—but the purposes
of espionage are, in any case, best served by tinier agents. Communication is a
problem, of course, but there are means.
       “Humans were under observation before, but since our intrepid band of
companions broke through the envelope of the atmosphere, interest in surface affairs
has increased very markedly. It now extends beyond mere measurement of our
technical works to attempts to comprehend our culture, religion, and politics.
England, especially, is under intensive study, and her rival European nations too.
Tahiti is safely remote, but I dare not offer the same guarantee in respect of China or
Peru. Tell me, Francis, how many people in England knew that you were coming
here when you set off from Plymouth?”
       “None,” Drake admitted. “Being widely considered a madman, I thought it
politic to keep the exact details of my plan to myself at first. I didn’t confide them to
my officers until we reached South America,”
       “That’s good news,” Raleigh said. “I’m glad to find your reasoning so
closely in tune with ours—it makes me even more confident that you’ll understand
what we are doing, when everything has been properly explained. You’ll see that the
celestial spiders are honest, and that you mustn’t let irrational instinctive anxieties
blind you to their benevolence.”
       Drake suppressed a shudder caused by movements glimpsed behind the walls
of spidersilk that now surrounded them. Some of the vague shapes he glimpsed
through their translucent walls seemed as large as sheep—larger, at any rate, than
wolves. He had not yet met any such creature face-to-face, but their reluctance to
come out into the open, while lurking like shadows behind such frail walls, only
made them seem more menacing. It did not seem to Drake that his fears were
dismissible as “irrational instinctive anxieties”; it seemed perfectly rational to doubt
that the extraterrestrial spiders were benevolent in their intentions, and to suspect that
Raleigh and Muffet were their dupes rather than their collaborators.
       “I can’t guarantee, of course, that there are no subtle spies lurking
unsuspected in my holds,” Drake said. “You and Muffet have evidently succeeded
in optimizing birds as well as spiders, and use them to gather intelligence. The
Golden Hind has the usual complement of weevils and flies, any one of which might
have descended from the moon. I have no idea how one of your so-called ethereals
might be able to conceal itself.”
       “It’s not improbable that you have insect spies aboard,” Raleigh admitted.
“You’re probably being monitored as closely as Tom Digges—but we have servants
who could clean your ship of that kind of presence. As for ethereal observers, we
have little more reliable knowledge of their capabilities than you do. All we know for
sure is that the ethereals have internecine struggles of their own to contend with,
which distract them from the affairs of solid creatures and make it unlikely that
they’ll interfere with us. In that respect, at least, the celestial spiders have more in
common with fleshcore society than ours; their vast empire is fundamentally
harmonious. Prepare yourself, Francis—we’re about to...”
       He did not break off his sentence, but the sound of his next few words was
drowned by a loud explosion, which Drake initially mistook for cannon-fire. It was
followed by a cacophony of other sounds and bizarre manifestations. Flaming
missiles of various sorts flew through the air, seemingly converging on their position
from several different directions. Some were circular bundles, some were
spears—but all of them were wrapped in combustible materials that must have been
soaked in some kind of flammable fluid, for they were all burning excitedly.
       The spidersilk making up the structures comprising the vast nest was no more
vulnerable to fire than seasoned wood, but nor was it any more fireproof. Where the
tunnel walls caught fire they began to burn. Some of the fires sputtered out, but
others caught hold, fanned by the steady wind.
       “The fools!” Raleigh gasped, when he had recovered from his initial
astonishment. “The stupid, reckless fools!” Then he grabbed Drake by the arm, and
began pulling him toward a curtain-like gathering of white fabric that was presumably
an entrance into the network of the tunnels. “Run!” he commanded. “Run for your
life!”
                                        ****
                                         9
       Drake had no more than a second to make his decision, and it was instinct
rather than reason that guided him. He wrenched his arm free from Raleigh’s grip,
turned on his heel and ran for his life, heading back the way they had come rather
than following the route he had been urged to take by his former crewmate.
      Raleigh howled an objection, but Drake had established a lead of six or seven
paces before the dark-skinned man set off in pursuit.
      The air was already filling with acrid smoke, and there were more fires ahead
of him than there were behind, but Drake was not intimidated by that. He could not
have retraced his steps from memory, but he had only to run between the walls of
spidersilk while the way was clear. Alas, the way was not clear for long, and he had
to cut across one of the tunnels, through a gap cleared by fire. It would have been
easy enough to accomplish had he been unobstructed, but, as he moved between the
flaming edges, a spider the size of a mastiff came hurtling out of the tunnel, similarly
intent on escaping. It made no attempt to bite him, and probably did what it could to
avoid him, but a glancing collision was inevitable.
       The spider’s limbs probably suffered more damage than Drake, but the
creature was only briefly interrupted in its flight, while Drake stumbled and sprawled
on the ground—and when he got up, he had fragments of sticky spidersilk clinging
to his arms, shoulders, and face. In order to protect his eyes from the trailing threads
he closed them—and then tried to open them by the merest crack so that he could
see where he was going.
       He was still running as fast as he could, and was able to see that he had now
won clear of the head-high tunnels into a region where most were no higher than his
waist. Many seemed to be collapsing even where they had not been ripped or singed,
and he was able to hurdle two that sprawled across his path. He tried to do the same
with a third, but could not clear it, and, when his booted feet plunged through the
fragment, its glue-like strands wrapped themselves around his ankles and calves. He
stumbled again, and this time fell upon a white carpet, which caught his arms as his
feet had earlier been trapped.
       As he struggled to free himself, Drake saw a huge black spider scuttling
toward him, and felt certain that he was about to be bitten—but the monster ran
straight over him without pausing. He began to pick himself up and pull himself free,
but he turned as he heard a shout and saw Walter Raleigh behind him, amid a
billowing cloud of white smoke, standing some ten or twelve yards away,
gesticulating urgently.
      “This way, you fool!” Raleigh yelled.
      Drake could not have obeyed the instruction had he wanted to, for his feet
were still impeded by the clinging spidersilk. He was about to signal his refusal,
though, when a spear hurtled out of the smoke. This one was unencumbered by any
burning material, and its sharpened wooden point struck Raleigh in the torso,
apparently passing between his ribs,
      Drake ducked low, expecting the weapon to be the first of a shower, and
brought up his arms to shield his head. No other spears passed over him, though.
Instead, it was a seeming tide of living flesh—bronze flesh, not dark brown or
sunburned white—that seethed out of the surrounding bushes, and a dozen grasping
hands reached out to seize him and pluck him from the ground, dragging him away
from the web that had trapped him.
      It required more than a minute for Drake to realize that he was not in imminent
danger of death, and that the men who had seized him were intent on carrying him
away alive. Once he was sure of that, he wondered whether his new captors might
have mounted their attack in order to rescue him from what they imagined to be
deadly peril—but that seemed too optimistic an analysis.
       As soon as the men carrying him set him on his feet again—which they did
not do until they were clear of the valley that Raleigh and the celestial spiders had
adopted as their home—Drake tried to thank them, but they were not immediately
interested in conversation. One said: “Follow! Hurry!” If that was not the limit of his
English, he was not presently disposed to say any more.
       Having little alternative, if only because there were as many islanders behind
him as before him, Drake followed the man who had spoken, and hurried as rapidly
as his captors. He had lost his bearings completely, and did not know which way he
was being taken. The sun was too close to its zenith for him to make a accurate
judgment of their heading.
       By the time their headlong flight slowed to a walk there were a dozen Tahitians
with Drake, forming a virtual phalanx around him as they strode over the ground, so
rapidly that he could hardly keep pace. Breathless as he was, he tried again to talk to
them, but their only reply was to impress the urgency of the situation upon him with
gestures. It was obvious by now that they meant him no immediate harm, but it
seemed more likely that they had seized him as a hostage than that they had merely
sought to rescue him. Even if that were so, he thought, he was probably better off
than he had been in the heart of the arachnid city.
       When his captors brought him out of the forest into the largest native village
he had yet seen—the first to be surrounded by a defense of sorts, and to show signs
of concerted agricultural endeavor within and without that boundary—he saw that
there were men waiting to receive him. They were all natives, but several were
wearing linen shirts and trews. He was less pleased to observe that two were in
possession of muskets, and several more of machetes.
       He was received with some formality—ceremony, even. The leader of the
party that was waiting for him made an elaborate show of welcome even before he
said: “You are Captain Drake.”
        “I am,” Drake confirmed. and waited politely for the other to reveal his own
name.
        “I am Ruhapali,” the islander told him, gravely. “I speak for many tribes.”
        “I’m honored to meet you,” Drake assured him. “What do you want with
me?”
      “My people saved you,” Ruhapali stated, making an obvious bid for the moral
high ground.
      “I’m grateful,” Drake said. He did not say that the islanders had also imperiled
him by attacking the spiders, because he was not sure exactly what the islanders
were claiming to have saved him from. He had no idea what might have happened to
him had Raleigh actually been able to introduce him to the celestial spiders, although
he suspected that the process of his “optimization” might have been initiated without
much delay.
        “You must go away from here,” Ruhapali said, coming to the point. “Your
ship, and the others too. You must all go. We will kill the spiders. We do not want
to kill your people. We will take you to your ship, but you must give us guns. We
will give you food and fresh water, but you must give us guns. Then you must go.
All of you.”
       The last thing that Drake wanted was to involve himself in a war, especially
one in which he did not know how many sides there might be, and who might rally to
what banner. “Have your people attacked the settlement?” he asked.
       “No,” Ruhapali told him. “Your people are not our enemies—not all. Many
will be glad to go. You have seen the reason.”
       Drake knew that most, if not all, of the Golden Hind’s crew would probably
agree with that judgment, if he told them what he had discovered. He had seen
enough to be almost certain in his own mind that he did not want to stay on the
island—but he could not be certain that he had seen enough to make a fully-reasoned
decision. “Your warriors killed Walter Raleigh,” he observed, playing for time while
he tried to clear his mind and formulate a plan. “Do you know Raleigh? The white
man who became dark—just as some of your own people have become dark?”
       “The man who brought the master-spiders,” the Tahitian chieftain said. “If he
lives, he must go. Better that he dies. The doctor too—but if he goes, that is your
business.”
     “I understand,” Drake told him. “What about those among your own people
who have been transformed? Is that your business?”
       “Yes,” Ruhapali told him. “We will take you to your ship now. Your people
will give us guns.”
       Drake was not about to start bargaining as to how many guns he might be
worth. He nodded his head, to signify that he was content to be taken to his ship. He
believed that he understood what was happening here, although he had only met
Humphrey Gilbert a little more than twenty-four hours ago. The islanders’
discomfort regarding their various exotic visitors must have been growing apace for
some time, as they observed what was happening in the valley where the celestial
spiders had taken up residence. They could understand readily enough that there
would be more and more dark men as time went by, and they presumably
feared—rightly or wrongly—that their entire population might eventually be absorbed
into the converts’ ranks.
       Thus far, they had been biding their time, but the arrival of the Golden Hind
had spurred them to precipitate action. They must have been afraid that Drake and
his crew might have been persuaded to reinforce the spiders’ allies—in which case,
the prospects of any future rebellion succeeding would be considerably more
remote.
       Drake could imagine with what avidity the native servants had eavesdropped
on conversations the night before—not just the tales that Hammond and Ashley had
told at Gilbert’s table, but the boasts of his crewmen to the crewmen of the Fortune
and her fellows. The islanders probably had no notion of the quantity and quality of
Drake’s firepower, but they obviously knew the value of guns, even in a war against
giant spiders.
        Ruhapali had said that many of the settlers would be glad to go, and Drake did
not doubt it, no matter how little they knew about the celestial spiders. Muffet and
Raleigh, rather than Humphrey Gilbert, were presumably the masters of the little
colony, but their authority must have been undermined by their hirelings’ gradual
realization of the true purpose of their adventure. Like Drake, Gilbert’s men would
inevitably have leapt to the conclusion that Muffet and Raleigh might be mere
instruments of the celestial spiders, having been bribed with promises of cures for all
manner of human diseases, from the rheum to the plague—and the curse of aging
too, if Raleigh’s bluster about living for centuries could be trusted.
       Even if their instinctive revulsion could be set aside, mariners were a cynical
and superstitious breed; Gilbert’s seamen would have found it direly difficult to
believe in the benevolence of spiders, and they might find it far easier to suspect that
a physician like Muffet and a petty aristocrat like Raleigh had sold their souls to the
Devil. Raleigh seemed entirely convinced that the kind of “optimization” that he had
undergone was a gift worth bringing to the whole of humankind, but its stigmata
would inevitably seem diabolical to many people—a number by no means restricted
to puritans of John Field’s stripe.
       Drake had no way of knowing whether Field’s account of the ethership’s
journey had been taken more seriously than his own, but John Foxe was the
Archbishop of Canterbury, whose declarations on spiritual matters carried enormous
weight in England. It might, therefore, be extremely hazardous for any Englishman to
side with Raleigh and Muffet in this matter, even if reason did turn out to favor their
alliance.
       Ruhapali had turned to his fellows after Drake’s consenting nod, in order to
talk to them in their own language, but the discussion did not last long before he
turned back to Drake and said: “You will tell your people they must go. We will give
you what you need. You will give us what we need. Then we will kill the spiders.”
       Again, Drake nodded his head, although he did not consider the gesture to
constitute a binding agreement.
       It occurred to him, though, as they set off on the march again, that if the
celestial spiders really did need to be killed, and their schemes aborted, then the
sensible strategy might be for the Golden Hind’s crew to ally themselves with the
Tahitians—just as Drake and another crew had once allied themselves with the
Cimaroons, in order to carry through a mission in which either company would have
failed had they attempted it without the other.
                                        ****
                                         10
       Ruhapali and four other chiefs set out to accompany Drake, with an escort of
thirty warriors. The first stage of their journey turned out to be longer than he had
hoped, but not as long as he had feared. They reached a village on the coast in
mid-afternoon, without having been harassed by any dark men or spiders—or, for
that matter, followed by any over-attentive birds.
       There were a dozen large canoes drawn up on the beach, but they did not take
to the water immediately. Ruhapali had first to enter into negotiations with the village
chieftain, who was evidently not party to his council of war.
        Drake was grateful for the pause, for it gave him time to slake his hunger and
thirst and to rest his weary feet. The village children clustered round him, laughing
and staring. They must have seen other Europeans, but perhaps not at such close
range. He entertained them as best he could with smiles and gestures. Arrangements
were eventually made for the use of one of the canoes; Drake boarded it, along with
eleven other men, including Ruhapali and three other tribal chiefs.
      The fully-laden canoe was not as fast as Drake’s pinnace, even when the
pinnace carried no sail, because the paddles plied by the islanders were less efficient
than English oars. The water was tranquil, though, and the men were experienced.
       Again, the journey was longer than Drake could have hoped, and the sun was
touching the horizon when the masts of the Golden Hind and Humphrey Gilbert’s
four ships finally came in view, although the moon was rising by way of small
compensation. Soon thereafter, Drake saw that there were forty more canoes waiting
in the vicinity of the harbor mouth, apparently ready to mount an attack if the order
were given.
       Were such a meager and disadvantaged force to attack the Hind in daylight,
the result would be a massacre, but Drake was well aware that a night attack might be
a different matter. In any case, he and his crew could not win a war of attrition
fought over weeks or months against the entire population of an island of this size.
       Ruhapali was careful to approach the Golden Hind from the seaward side,
and discreetly. The canoe’s approach was quickly observed by the ship’s
watchman, who had plenty of time to see that Drake was in the canoe and not in any
distress before Ruhapali ordered the paddlers to ease down, some thirty yards from
the ship’s stern.
      “Speak to them,” Ruhapali commanded.
      “Mr. Hammond!” Drake called, seeing the mate come to the stern. “These
men have rescued me from danger and brought me home. They mean no harm, and
no one is to act against them.”
      “I’m exceedingly glad to see you, sir,” Hammond called back. “There was
panic ashore when you were nowhere to be found—more among Gilbert’s men than
your own, since we’ve grown used to trusting you in such situations. I see that
you’ve been making friends, as is your habit. Will you all come aboard?”
      “No,” Ruhapali said to Drake, in a low voice. “You must give us guns. Then
we will go. We will bring food and water. You will give us more guns.”
       “No, Ruhapali,” Drake said, in his turn. “You will let me go aboard my ship. It
will be best if you come too, although that is your choice. Then we will summon
Humphrey Gilbert and Thomas Muffet, and we will talk. I mean you no harm, but I
must hear what they have to say before I decide what to do. The best thing of all
would be for everyone here to agree what is to be done, but we cannot achieve that
if you make threats now. Come aboard my ship, and I will mediate between you and
Gilbert. If Gilbert is persuaded to leave, Muffet will have no choice but to go with
him. If you supply us with what we need to make the voyage, we will trade
guns—but until then, we must keep them for our own defense.”
       Ruhapali did not like these terms, but he had to consider them carefully—and
he decided in the end that the alternative would be worse, given that it would win him
no weapons and might make him some awkward enemies. He agreed to Drake’s
terms, and boarded the Golden Hind with its captain, while the canoe and his fellow
chiefs waited alongside.
     “How many men have we aboard, Ned?” Drake asked, as soon as the two of
them were on the deck.
       “Only two dozen,” Hammond told him, “but everything’s secure. Shall I send
boats to the shore to bring the others back?”
       “Aye,” Drake said. “Send the small rowboat with a single oarsman. He’s to
tell Mr. Ashley to send the pinnace back, with another dozen men aboard. Tell him
to bring Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and Doctor Muffet too, if he’s willing. It’s a polite
invitation, mind—call it a tour of inspection. If they want to know where I’ve been,
or how it comes about that I’m back on board the Hind, your man has no idea—do
you understand?”
      “He won’t have to tell a lie,” Hammond observed. “Will you tell me what’s
going on, captain?”
       “Yes I will, Ned—but not right now. Have we taken enough supplies on board
to offer hospitality to our guest?”
      Hammond ran his eyes over the Tahitian chief. “We’ve water, fruit, and a little
bread that was baked ashore,” he said.
     “Good,” Drake said. He raised his voice to say: “This man is our friend, and
we must offer him the privileges of an honored guest.”
       The rowboat set off immediately, and the pinnace was not long in setting off
on its return journey; Drake’s men were experienced enough to keep it ever-ready to
take to the water at a moment’s notice. Even in the fading twilight, Drake needed no
telescope to see that Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Thomas Muffet had both accepted
his invitation with alacrity, but he did not know what to read into the fact that Muffet
had decided to bring his daughter with him.
       “Before our men come aboard,” Drake whispered to Hammond, “I want them
to be as sure as they can be that they’re not harboring any spiders about their
person. I want the order given to everyone that any man who sees a spider on the
ship from this moment on must kill it immediately, if he can.”
       Hammond looked at him curiously, but nodded his head to signify that these
instructions would be followed exactly.
       When Gilbert and Muffet came aboard, Drake went to greet them
effusively—not forgetting Patience—and immediately asked whether Ruhapali was
known to them.
       “We know Ruhapali very well,” Gilbert said, warily. “Was it to visit Ruhapali,
then, that you left the compound, Captain Drake? I wish you had let us know that
you were going, for we’ve been desperately anxious about you. We heard an
explosion in the interior of the island, and there seem to be fires burning there.”
       “I’ve had quite an adventure,” Drake said, equably. “Had I not known that
I’m a madman, ever-prone to the most extraordinary delusions, I might be rather
alarmed by what I’ve seen—but this is an island in the Pacific Ocean, after all, and
not the interior of the moon or the hub of the Milky Way.” He tried to measure the
quality of the glance that Gilbert and Muffet exchanged, but it was not easy.
      “We’re very glad to find you safe, Sir Francis,” Muffet said, “and in such
good humor.”
      “Ruhapali and I need to talk to you below decks, in the cabin,” Drake said.
“Will you do me the courtesy of accompanying us?”
       “Of course,” said Muffet swiftly, almost as if he feared that Gilbert might raise
some objection. The doctor immediately turned to Hammond and said: “May I
entrust my daughter to your care, Mr. Hammond?”
      “Aye, sir,” Hammond answered.
      The four men went below. As soon as a candle had been lit to illuminate the
cabin and the door had been shut behind them, Drake said: “As you must have
guessed, gentlemen, the islanders have attacked Raleigh’s valley. Raleigh was struck
in the torso by a spear, and may have been killed. The tribesmen are determined to
destroy the creatures Raleigh calls celestial spiders and the other creatures they have
transformed. Ruhapali offers us the chance to depart in safety, but he refuses to
answer for our safety if we will not go. Given what I’ve seen today, I can understand
his fears and his determination, and I’m half-inclined to accept his offer—but I told
him that I must hear your side of the story first. What’s your opinion, Sir
Humphrey?”
      Gilbert was evidently ready to reply, but he did not get the chance. “This is
absurd,” Muffet said, pre-emptively. “Ruhapali, you are making a terrible mistake.
We’ve relied on your own people to persuade you of the wisdom and virtue of our
scheme, but they’ve evidently failed. You must listen to us now, and stop your
assault on the valley as soon as you can. You must allow us time to complete our
work, so that its benefits will become fully manifest.”
      “You must go,” Ruhapali replied, adamantly.
        “Perhaps, Dr. Muffet,” Drake said, smoothly, “we might be better placed to
settle the matter if you would explain to us exactly what the purpose of your work is.
I suppose that appearances might be deceptive, but I’ve seen men transformed by
spider-bites, who lie down to let monstrous parasites suck their blood and carry it
away into a spider’s-nest the size of a town, apparently at the command and behest
of invaders from another world—and it seems to me that Ruhapali and his people
have been exceedingly patient in waiting so long to take up their arms. Raleigh
admitted to me that you and he dared not begin this work in England, and I’m
inclined to agree with him that it would have been direly dangerous to do so.”
      “Superstition is a difficult enemy to fight,” Muffet said, “Whether one
encounters it in the Church, the Royal College of Physicians or the prejudices of
ignorant men. You’ve found that yourself, I think, in trying to persuade your fellow
Englishmen that what you discovered in the moon and beyond is real.”
       Drake did not want to waste time pointing out that he would have found that
task far easier had Tom Digges or Walter Raleigh confirmed his story. “Be specific,
doctor,” he said, “and be brief—we have no time for a long discourse.”
       “Very well,” Muffet said. “I doubt that you’re acquainted with the principles
of medicine, but you’ve probably heard mention of four bodily humours analogous
to the four elements of inanimate matter, which must be kept in balance if the body is
to remain healthy. I’ll not attempt to describe all the complications introduced into
that fundamental system as a result of the New Learning, hoping that it will suffice to
say that there are at least as many subsidiary substances making up the components
of living bodies as there are different kinds of solids, liquids, and essences, and that
their various malfunctions defy easy appeasement by the remedies contained in
herbals or those at the disposal of Galenist or Paracelsian physicians. We have but
few defenses against sickness and injury, Captain, and they’re by no means reliable.
        “As I explained to you last night, spiders are unlike most other creatures in
consuming food exclusively in liquid form. Even earthly spiders, which are
exceedingly primitive, have developed complex methods of immobilizing their prey
and transforming the flesh they will consume into liquid form. On worlds in which
spiders, rather than insects and molluscs, have acquired intelligence and have
become dominant species, they’ve become masters of the alchemy of flesh, whose
secretions accomplish far more than mere liquefaction. The most advanced have
become experts in induced transmutation, remolding other species internally and
externally to their own designs. Our own alchemists have long searched for the elixir
of life as well as the secret of transmuting base metals into gold and silver, but
they’ve made even less progress in the former quest than the latter. The celestial
spiders have achieved far more.
        “The insects and molluscs that constitute the vast majority of intelligent
species within the sidereal system do not like spiders, because they consider them
dangerous predators, but that is because the spiders native to their own worlds are
as primitive as the spiders of ours. In a more general sense, too, the masters of the
galaxy have inherited the mentality of prey species and cannot understand the true
logic of predation as a way of life. Humans, being omnivores who owe our own
intelligence, culture, and civilization to hunting and animal husbandry, can
understand, if we will only make the effort to overcome our silly prejudice. That’s
why we’re natural allies of the celestial spiders, and why they’re prepared to
optimize us as a sibling species rather than a subject one.
        “We humans have been alchemists of the flesh ourselves, in transforming all
the species on which we depend: the livestock we keep to supply us with meat, milk,
and eggs, the horses we use for transportation on land, and the dogs we employ in
hunting. We change them to the best of our ability, tailoring them to our needs,
optimizing them for the production of those qualities we desire in them—but we can
only do so indirectly, by selective breeding. The celestial spiders are cleverer by far,
employing all manner of elixirs that work directly upon the flesh of other species.
They’ve used their intelligence very wisely in the investigation and deployment of
their intrinsic abilities in this regard, and have become great experts in the calculated
modification of their various domestic stocks—but they’ve not been content with
that, either in their own worlds or in others they’ve found and visited.
        “Where intelligence has emerged spontaneously among spider species, those
species have never been content to remain alone; they’ve always elected to optimize
intelligence in brethren species. Nor have they usually been content to restrict that
privilege to other arachnids; they’ve been curious enough to offer the gifts of
sentience, speech, and culture to species of very different kinds, including insects
and molluscs. Indeed, many spiders believe that the species currently making up the
dominant culture of the galaxy must have originated from spider alchemy, and then
turned ungratefully against their benefactors, wiping out their makers and attempting
to hunt down and destroy similar species wherever they found them, extrapolating
their fearful prey mentality.
       “There is, as you say, no time for a long discourse, so I shall say only this: the
celestial spiders are willing to be our friends and benefactors. They’re willing to
assist us in the development of cures for very many human diseases, and to help us
become far more robust in resisting injury. They can help us live far longer than our
traditional allotment of three-score years and ten, and they can give us the power to
re-grow lost limbs and damaged organs. They cannot make us immortal, but they
can make us a good deal less mortal than we are. They’re eager to do this because
they’ve not had the opportunity before to work with natural species of our
kind—intelligent vertebrates, that is. They don’t know of any world in which spiders
have contrived to induce intelligence in vertebrate species, but those that have
developed naturally on Earth have far greater natural potential by virtue of their
unusual size.
       “With the spiders’ assistance, therefore, humankind can take a great leap
forward, benefiting from a process of perfection that might require thousands of
years if we had to develop our own knowledge of the alchemy of the flesh by trial
and error—assuming that we’d be let alone in the meantime by the great fleshcores
and their multitudinous subject species. In sum, we need the celestial spiders, and
have a great deal to gain from association with them—if we can only suppress and
master our stupid instincts.”
                                        ****
                                           11
       Drake had glanced repeatedly at both Ruhapali and Gilbert to see what effect
Muffet’s explanatory speech was having on them. Ruhapali, apparently, had not
been able to comprehend more than a fraction of it, and seemed utterly unmoved in
his determination to remove all alien presences from Tahiti, in order that his people
might revert to the untroubled existence they had previously enjoyed. Gilbert must
have heard similar speeches many times over, with appropriate elaborations, and
presumably understood the arguments better than Drake did, but he seemed
distinctly unhappy. It was to him that Drake turned now.
      “What’s your opinion, Sir Humphrey?” Drake asked.
       “If I’d been told all this before I set sail from Southampton,” Gilbert said,
bluntly, “I would not have left England. I’ve been strongly tempted to return more
than once, but have been torn by conflicting responsibilities. Lately, I’ve been
reluctant to leave because it would have meant abandoning Dr. Muffet and his
daughter to a dangerous situation—but now that the situation has become
impossible, I wonder whether my duty might be to save them, and compel them to
come away. On the other hand, I cannot believe that my men will consent to bring
the results of the doctor’s experiments in transmutation with us—except, perhaps,
for the clever birds—and I might face a mutiny merely by virtue of trying to save the
doctor and Patience.”
       “I can understand all that, Sir Humphrey,” Drake said. “But what do you think
of the merits of Doctor Muffet’s scheme itself ?”
       “I no longer know what to think,” Gilbert admitted. “For a time, it seemed that
the potential reward might outweigh any risk, but recent reports we have had from
the island’s interior have made me wonder whether the real intention of these celestial
visitors might be to establish a spider empire on Earth, reducing humankind to the
status of mere cattle. If that is their plan, there might only be a narrow interval in
which it can be nipped in the bud.”
       “Nonsense!” said Muffet. “You’re allowing unreasoning revulsion to overrule
the judgment of reason.”
      “Even if Sir Humphrey’s fears could be set aside,” Drake said, pensively,
“and everything you said were actually true, rather than the result of these celestial
spiders playing you and Raleigh for fools, there’s another danger we shouldn’t
discount.”
      “What’s that?” Muffet demanded.
       “The danger that the great empire whose shores extend even to the interior of
our planet’s moon might not take kindly to an alliance between two kinds of
creatures they dislike. So far as I know, no man in England knows that you are here
or what you are doing—and that ignorance will presumably persist until some of us
return—but that doesn’t mean that your work is secret from the folk that Raleigh and
I met when we went voyaging in Master Dee’s ethership.”
       “We can do nothing about that,” Muffet retorted, “except make sure that,
should the insect hordes decide that humankind is dangerous to them, we’re as well
able to defend ourselves as we can be. That’s a further reason to embrace alliance
with the spiders, and welcome our own optimization. In any case, we’re already
committed. If Ruhapali thinks that he can destroy the celestial spiders, or even the
Earthly creatures they’ve so far transformed, he’s mistaken. If he refuses to abandon
this war he’s begun, his forces will be defeated. He should make a treaty with us
now, else things will go very badly indeed for his people.”
        “You will go,” Ruhapali repeated, yet again. “You will give us guns. We will
kill the spiders.”
       “Stay with us, Captain Drake,” Muffet said. “Help us to defend the stockade
and our work. If you’ll agree to do that, I’m sure that Sir Humphrey will do
likewise.”
      Gilbert was not inclined to confirm or deny that speculation. Instead, he said:
“If you should decide to sail away from here, Sir Francis, I shall be happy to
accompany you, with as many men as may care to come with me, to whatever
destination you might have in mind.”
       Drake was not grateful for this statement, which seemed to place the entire
burden of decision on his unready shoulders. He had no time to figure out a way out
of the impasse, though, because Edward Hammond hammered on the cabin door
just then and said: “You’re needed on deck, Captain—there’s movement on sea and
shore alike.”
       Drake hurried from the cabin, assuming that the others would follow him.
When he and Hammond arrived on the deck the mate pointed out to sea first. The
night was clear, but the moonlight reflected from the sea was not very abundant.
Even so, Drake could see that the waters around the Golden Hind were crowded
with canoes—more likely hundreds than dozens. They were not, however, making
any overtly hostile move toward the ship, and their paddlers seemed to be in a state
of considerable confusion. There was a great deal of shouting, which seemed
indicative of urgent alarm.
       On the shoreward side, the horizon was red with fire and blotched with
smoke, but lights of a different sort showed all along the coast, where there was
more shouting. The settlement was more brightly lighted than the strands to either
side of it, but did not seem quite so full of alarm.
      Martin Lyle was in the rigging, with his eye glued to Drake’s telescope. “The
islanders aren’t attacking the settlement, sir,” he called down. “Indeed, I think
they’re begging to be let in for their own safety’s sake—they’re being attacked
themselves. Everyone who can seems to have taken to the water, but there must be
thousands of natives who can’t.”
      Drake rounded on Muffet, who had come up behind him. “The celestial
spiders have mounted their counter-offensive,” he said. “You can make a better
estimate of their resources than anyone else—can they be defeated?”
      “It’s not the visitors!” Muffet protested. “It’s the earthly giants—they’ve not
yet contrived to set aside their inconvenient instincts, any more than the islanders
have. They’re striking back reflexively. If you’ll give the celestial spiders time
enough, they’ll bring the situation under control.”
       “We don’t know for sure that they’re still alive,” Drake told him. “The attack
was successful enough to wound Raleigh, at least, and it was begun by some kind of
petard loaded with black powder. Mr. Hammond! Set men with muskets to port and
starboard and have the artillerists stand ready—but the musketeers are not to fire on
the islanders unless they’re attacked themselves. Lower the pinnace again and send it
back to shore, ready to evacuate our remaining men—and Gilbert’s too, if they
haven’t enough boats of their own.”
      “Wait!” cried Muffet. “I’ll go back with them!”
      “No,” said Drake shortly. “Ruhapali! Can you judge from the shouting how
things are with your own people?”
       Ruhapali had already called down to the chiefs who were waiting for him in
the canoe that had brought Drake back. “Spiders cannot swim,” he replied, “but
some got into boats—they caused much fear. Many people waded into shallow
water—they are safe, for now. Sire Gilbert’s men must open the gates of stockade
to let my people in. They will fight spiders with your people.”
      “No!” Muffet cried. “They must not!”
      Drake’s opinion was that this was probably the most sensible option for the
men within the stockade—but he knew how difficult it would be for the people
currently locked inside to make the decision, given that some of the spiders would
probably gain access along with the panicked islanders. He was sorely tempted to go
ashore with the pinnace himself, but his own men formed a tiny minority of the
company within the stockade, and he could not be sure that the others would take
orders from him at present—or from anyone, including Sir Humphrey Gilbert.
      There was a sudden clatter of wings and a large macaw hurtled out of the
darkness to land on the arm that Thomas Muffet had hastily raised up.
      “Raleigh’s coming!” the bird squawked. “Stay calm! Raleigh’s coming!”
       “You heard that!” Muffet shouted—unnecessarily loudly, since Drake was still
close at hand.
       “It’s too late!” Drake told him, in a much quieter voice. “There’s no way this
situation can be quickly repaired. If the spiders can be commanded to desist—which
I doubt—that will only give the islanders the opportunity to renew their own assaults.
If Raleigh and his precious celestial spiders have left the valley, they’ll either seem
that much more dangerous, or that much more vulnerable to attack—and I presume
that they’ll defend themselves if they are attacked.” He raised his voice to shout to
the boatswain in command of the pinnace: “Don’t delay, Mr. Stephens! I want
everyone back safe, as quickly as possible!”
      Humphrey Gilbert had also taken matters into his own hands, and was
shouting across the water to the watchmen aboard his own ships, instructing them to
launch what boats they could to fetch men from the shore.
       The sound of gunfire broke out ashore—a disordered crackling rather than
disciplined volleys.
      “What is it, Martin?” Drake called.
     “The islanders have broken into the stockade, sir,” the boy reported. “They
weren’t let in, and some of the defenders have fired on them. They’re attacking the
musketeers now, sir.”
      “Ruhapali!” Drake said. “You must stop your people fighting ours, if you
can! We’re not your enemy!”
       Ruhapali shook his head, to indicate helplessness rather than refusal. Drake
turned around, intending to go up into the rigging to take the telescope from his
kinsman and watch the disaster unfolding, but he stopped abruptly as he almost fell
over Patience Muffet. She looked up at him, and said—in a voice pitched so softly
that no one else could hear—”Please take me ashore, Captain. Hector, Achilles, and
the others will need me.”
       Drake shook his head, to signify bewilderment as well as refusal. His head was
aching, and exhaustion was beginning to inhibit his movements. Even so, he began to
climb, going up far enough to be able to take the telescope from Martin’s
outstretched hand. He focused the instrument on the shore, but lights were going out
now as the struggle within the stockade became evermore chaotic, and it was very
difficult to make out any detail.
      “How many cannon are manned and ready, Ned?” Drake demanded.
      “Three port, three starboard, sir!” Hammond reported.
      “Tell the for’ard gunner on the shoreward side to fire a shot into the
shallows—but make sure it falls harmlessly, well clear of boats of any sort.”
       “Aye, sir!” the mate replied—and disappeared to make sure that the order was
carried out to the letter. Drake hoped that the sound of the cannon firing might bring
about a pause on shore, which would allow the defenders of the stockade and the
islanders alike to realize that they had no quarrel with one another as urgent as their
fear of the fire-maddened spiders.
       When the cannon boomed, Drake saw through the spyglass that there was,
indeed, a pause while everyone looked around—but the moment of stillness was
short-lived. There were screams as well as shouts audible within the stockade now,
and Drake guessed that the islanders’ pursuers had followed them through the
broken gate. He redirected the telescope toward the pinnace, which had reached
shore alongside the much smaller rowboat. He could only hope that his men would
contrive to reach the vessels safely and begin the evacuation.
        He heard the thud of a spear that hit the side of the vessel then, and the whistle
of an arrow soaring over the deck. He groaned, knowing that the missiles must have
been sent forth in blind panic rather than as aspects of an organized attack. He filled
his lungs with air, ready to tell his men to desist from firing for a few moments
longer, but it was already too late; a volley of shots returned the fire from the canoes,
and there was nothing to be done thereafter but scramble down to the deck and fetch
a weapon for himself, ready to repel boarders if the necessity arose. Ruhapali was
still on the deck, shouting orders in his own language, but it was impossible to tell
whether the orders were having any effect.
      “Raleigh’s coming!” squawked the macaw, again. “All’s well! Raleigh’s
coming!”
       “He’ll arrive too late,” Drake said, wearily, fixing his eyes on Muffet rather
than the bird. “I’ll take him aboard if he can get here, but I won’t take his accursed
spiders—they must fend for themselves.”
         “They will, Captain,” Muffet retorted. “You may be sure of that.”
                                         ****
                                           12
        Drake snatched a cutlass from one of his musketeers, but there were no more
spears and arrows hurtling on to the deck now; whether that was because of the
volley of musketfire or Ruhapali’s shouted orders he could not tell. He renewed his
instructions to his own men, telling them to desist from any violence unless and until
their lives were under threat. Then he put the telescope to his eye again, searching for
the pinnace. He saw that it was moving away from the shore again, having picked up
a considerable number of passengers. The vessel was moving away from the
remaining lights on shore into deep gloom, but the hectic movement of the shadows
told him that something was badly wrong.
        It seemed at first that the people on the boat must be fighting amongst
themselves, and Drake wondered whether the islanders might be trying to seize the
pinnace for their own purposes—but then he realized that they were actually battling
against two huge spiders that had managed to clamber aboard. Although three or
four of the men had muskets, they had obviously discharged their rounds already
and had not had an opportunity to reload, for they were using the guns as if they
were clubs. Others were using the oars as staves to ward off the spiders—with the
result that the pinnace was drifting in the shallows rather than making significant
headway.
      Drake rounded on Ruhapali. “Can your canoe get me to that pinnace? You
may bring your fellow chiefs up here, if I can take their places with half a dozen
men.”
         “No,” the Tahitian said, immediately. “We will take you. You give us guns to
fire.”
        It seemed to Drake to be a very bad time for haggling, but Ruhapali obviously
felt that he had been cheated of his bargain before and was not about to let an
opportunity to recover it pass him by. “Ned!” Drake called to Hammond, who had
just reappeared on deck. “Bring me four loaded muskets, now!”
       Hammond obeyed, but when he saw what Drake intended to do he begged to
be allowed to go in his stead, or at least to accompany him. “You’re exhausted,
captain!” the mate added, by way of justification.
         “No time to argue, Ned—and no room in the boat!” Drake replied, before
collecting two of the guns and lowering himself over the side. Ruhapali followed,
carrying two more.
       The paddlers were ready, and the canoe shot away from the flank of the
Golden Hind, heading straight for the pinnace. There was no light aboard either
boat, but the larger boat was still close enough to shore for them to obtain some
benefit from the few lanterns still burning in the settlement.
       The passengers on the pinnace had cornered the two spiders at one end of the
vessel, and were holding them back with the oars and the empty guns, but at least
two sailors had fallen down, presumably bitten.
       Drake moved into the prow of the canoe, ready to slash with the cutlass at the
creatures’ legs. He remembered what Raleigh had said about the difficulty of
augmenting the load-bearing capacity of spiders’ limbs, and thought that a likely way
to immobilize them quickly. It might then be possible for the oars to be used as
levers to tip them overboard. Ruhapali had other ideas, though. “Get down, Captain
Drake!” the chieftain called—just in time, for his inexperienced gunners were far too
eager to fire. Four shots went off almost simultaneously, but one islander was
knocked completely off balance by the recoil, only just managing to drop the gun
into the boat before he toppled overboard.
       One of the spiders flinched visibly, presumably having been hit, but the other
bullets seemed to have missed their targets. The monster that had been hit had not
been killed, and it turned to face the approaching canoe. Drake had to stand up again
and carry out his plan, slashing wildly at the legs of both creatures.
       Now that he was within touching distance Drake was able to appreciate the
true enormity of their size and ugliness; they were, indeed, as large as sheep, and as
shaggy too, but their shape was very different and there was something intrinsically
horrifying about the way they moved on eight legs rather than four, with a curious
fluid quality. Drake could barely make out the features of their horrid heads in the
poor light, and could not make out the merest glint of an eye, but he felt an
unexpected surge of revulsion that must have been born of pure imagination.
       But this is the world as it is, he thought. The sky is full of stars invisible to
the naked eye, and the countless stars have worlds where creatures like these think,
feel, and scheme like Earthly men. Whatever happens here, on this remote island,
our entire world is caught in their web, helplessly.
       The injured spider lunged at him as he struck out, and when the two vessels
scraped sides it contrived to scramble from the pinnace into the canoe, where it
fought for balance. Once it had found its footing, the monster would surely have
hurled itself upon its attacker—but the pause was just long enough to allow Drake to
slash cruelly at two of its legs, cutting them simultaneously, with enough force to
break them both. A third leg must already have been injured, for the spider now
found itself quite unable to follow through with its attack. While it floundered on the
floor of the canoe, Drake thrust again with his blade, and then again, making sure that
the monster was dead.
       He felt a surge of triumph then, which overwhelmed the residual effects of his
earlier frisson of terror.
       In the meantime, the islanders had pulled their fellow out of the water, and the
oarsmen in the pinnace had managed to tip the second arachnid invader—which was
also badly wounded by now—into the seething wake of the lighter vessel.
      Drake turned to Ruhapali, intending to order him back to the Golden Hind,
but he felt suddenly giddy, and his limbs seemed about to give out. In any case,
Ruhapali was already giving orders in his own tongue. The canoe turned, and came
alongside the pinnace.
      “Go with your own people,” Ruhapali instructed Drake. “Go now!”
      There was nothing to be gained by argument, and Drake now felt drained of
every vestige of his strength. He allowed himself to be transferred to the pinnace,
leaving the four muskets behind.
       Drake presumed that Ruhapali would find some black powder left behind in
the settlement—but even if he did not, mere possession of the guns would increase
the chieftain’s status among his own people, and his determination to use the
weapons against the celestial spiders. Drake knew that he was in no position to offer
the Tahitian sound advice as to his future policy or strategy.
       With the oarsmen now able to work unhindered, the pinnace sped back to the
Golden Hind and unloaded its human cargo, including the two injured men. Drake
found the strength to climb up to the deck, but Edward Hammond and Sir
Humphrey Gilbert had to grab his arms and pull him over the rail. “Have we any men
left ashore, Mr. Stephens?” Drake muttered to the boatswain.
       “No sir,” Stephens replied. “We have three of Gilbert’s men aboard, but the
rest of ours were taken aboard the rowboat.” He pointed toward the shore, but
Drake could not see the smaller vessel in the darkness.
      “No more spears or arrows have been launched against us, sir,” Hammond
reported. “Your guest put an end to that, I think.”
      “Bring the pinnace aboard but keep the rowboat in the water attached by a
painter, and its oarsmen ready,” Drake ordered, hoarsely. “Keep an armed
lookout—but no more shooting, unless it’s necessary. We’ll sit tight till dawn, and
reappraise the situation when we’ve more light.”
       “May I borrow your rowboat to return to my own ship, Sir Francis, along
with the men the pinnace brought?” Gilbert asked.
      “Aye, Sir Humphrey, if you wish,” Drake said, wearily, “but you might do
better to come back when you’ve delivered your men and issued your orders. We’ll
need to decide what to do tomorrow, and it would be better if some of us, at least,
were prepared to agree on a course of action.”
       Gilbert made a vague promise to return when he could, and lowered himself
over the side. His men did not seem overly enthusiastic to leave the relative safety of
the Golden Hind, but they complied with their master’s orders.
       “All’s well!” proclaimed Agamemnon, who was now perched in the rigging.
He was not alone; a dozen more birds had flown to join him, and the flock seemed
as ready to wait out the night aboard as the ship’s human crew.
      “Let’s hope so,” Drake murmured, as he slumped against the mast. Hammond
and Stephens had to pick him up, and help him below to his cabin. There they laid
him on his bunk and promised that everything would be held secure until morning.
                                        ****
                                         13
     Drake did not wake until some time after dawn, and would have slept longer
had Martin Lyle not crept hesitantly into the cabin.
      “What is it, Martin?” Drake demanded, knowing that the boy would not have
ventured to disturb him unless he was needed.
      “There’s a native canoe off the port bow, sir—but the men in it are
darker-skinned than the islanders. One of them speaks English, and says that you
know him.”
      “Raleigh?” Drake asked, rubbing his eyes. “Get me some water, will you,
Martin?”
      “He didn’t give his name, sir,” Martin replied. He fetched a jug of water, from
which Drake drank avidly.
     “I’ll be on deck directly,” Drake said. “Ask our visitor to wait. Is Muffet
awake?”
       “No, sir. He and his daughter are asleep. The birds are still perched in the
rigging, but Mr. Hammond ordered a search to be conducted for spiders as soon as
it was light. None have been found, of any size.” The boy left after making this
report, and Drake followed him some five minutes later, having made what
adjustments as he could to his appearance, so that he might better play the part of a
gentleman and captain of an English ship.
       The canoe carrying Walter Raleigh and five optimized islanders was idling in
the water some ten or twelve yards from the Hind’s bow. It was being watched by
half a dozen of Drake’s sailors, all armed with muskets, but there was no evident
alarm on either side.
      “I’m glad to see you well, Walter,” Drake said, not having to raise his voice
unduly to be heard. “I feared that you might have been killed by that spear.”
       Raleigh parted his shirt so that Drake could see the wound, which seemed
half-healed already. “It would have killed a man like you, Francis,” Raleigh said.
“I’m glad you can see that it was only a minor inconvenience to a man like me. I’m
sorry that we were interrupted—and sorrier still that Dr Muffet’s work has been
disrupted. That might cost England dear, if you and Gilbert are not inclined to stay
here any longer.”
       “What do you expect of us, Walter?” Drake said, with more than a little
bitterness. “I fought one of your giant spiders last night, at close quarters, and there
can’t be many of Gilbert’s men who haven’t seen them at their worst. If I ordered all
Englishmen ashore, with abundant armaments, to support Ruhapali’s campaign,
they’d probably go—but I surely couldn’t persuade them to stay on any other basis,
and wouldn’t want to. Captains, like kings, reign on sufferance.”
      “If we’d only had time,” Raleigh complained, “Muffet and I could have
helped you see reason. You, of all people, should understand the necessity of what
we’re doing.”
      “If the only way for humankind to escape being held in a menagerie by a
legion of giant ants and slugs is to submit to transfiguration and be held in thrall by
arachnid alchemists,” Drake said, “I think I’d rather choose between the Devil and
the deep blue sea.”
     “John Dee will understand,” Raleigh said. “He knows more of alchemy than
any man in England.”
      “If I ever see him again, I’ll tell him what I’ve seen,” Drake said, glad to find a
concession he could make without effort. “I’ll be exceedingly careful in telling
anyone else, although I can’t speak for others in that regard.”
       “You’d do well to stay here with us, Francis,” Raleigh said. “If your crewmen
won’t, that’s their affair—but you can get down into the canoe now, along with
Muffet and Patience. Were you to call for volunteers to accompany you, I dare say
that you might find a few.”
       “I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to, Walter,” Drake told him. “My first
duty is to my ship and my men. I have to see them safely home, if I can, and to find
them a better reward for their long expedition than I’ve so far contrived to
do—something more easily tradable than potions distilled from spider venom.”
       “Can you really intend to return to South America and raid Spanish ships and
settlements, after what you’ve discovered here?” Raleigh demanded.
      “It’s a trade I know,” Drake told him. “But I also know that there’s an Austral
continent west of here, with two large islands in between, set some way to the south.
Were I to go that way, I could sail around the world before going home, as
Magellan’s crew claimed to have done following his death.”
       “That’s a pity,” Raleigh said. “Will you fetch Muffet and Patience, then? I’m
sure they’ll be anxious to return to shore.”
        “Is it safe for them to do so?” Drake asked.
      “Ruhapali’s people are counting the cost of their adventure at present,”
Raleigh told him. “If they’re wise, they won’t attempt to renew their assault—but if
not, we can defend ourselves. Muffet and Patience will be far safer here than they
would be aboard your ship, whether you decide to sail east or west—and the same
goes for you. Shall I gather supplies for you, and make sure you’re well-provisioned
before you sail?”
       “That’s very kind, Walter,” Drake said, “but there are other islands in the
cluster, where we can make our own arrangements to take on food and water.”
      “Do you suppose that we’d sneak cargo aboard that you’d rather not carry,
under cover of supplying food and water? You mistake us, Francis—we’re honest
dealers. We mean you no harm, and wouldn’t seek to use you unawares.”
       What Drake actually thought was that if the celestial spiders did want to use
the English ships to transport any of their produce, just as they had earlier used
Master Dee’s ethership, they had had plenty of opportunity already to secrete their
tiny agents in Gilbert’s vessels. “I trust your word, Walter,” was what he said aloud,
“but I don’t want to expose you to any risk. I suspect that Ruhapali’s far from
finished, as yet—and you might find him a more difficult opponent than you
imagine.”
      “Within a month he’ll be our staunchest ally,” Raleigh said, confidently, “and
within ten years—twenty, at most—Tahiti will be a nation to compare with any in
Europe, sending diplomats to China and the Americas.”
        Drake looked around then, as Thomas Muffet and his daughter came on to the
deck.
       “Thank you for hearing me out last night, Captain,” Muffet said, “and for
keeping us safe aboard your vessel during the unpleasantness. I doubt that I’ll be
able to return to my laboratory for a while, but I can do my work in the interior.”
      “And will your daughter be safe there?” Drake asked, bluntly. “Are you really
prepared to take her into the spider city?”
        “Of course,” Muffet said. “She has no fear of spiders.”
       Drake looked down at the little girl, who was standing quite calmly behind her
father, living up to her name. He remembered what Muffet had said about the
celestial spiders’ ability to bring about internal as well as external transmutations.
      “Bring the canoe alongside, Walter,” Drake said, calmly. “You may take your
passengers aboard. Your other friends will fly, I suppose.” He glanced upward as he
spoke to where Agamemnon was perched, surrounded by two dozen fellows.
     “Would you like a parrot as a gift?” Muffet asked. “Tame ones that can mimic
human voices are quite popular with sailors, I understand.”
      “No, thank you,” Drake said. “I’m sure your birds would be much happier at
home than they would be aboard ship. We wouldn’t find it easy to care for them
during long periods at sea.”
      Muffet made certain that Patience was safe as she clambered over the rail and
began to descend the rope ladder to Raleigh’s canoe, but he turned to face Drake
again before following her.
       “Perhaps we’ll meet again, Captain,” he said, “in England if not in Tahiti. I
wish you felt able to stay longer—I’m sure you could be persuaded that our mission
here is in the best interests of England, and of humankind.”
       Drake felt sure that he could be persuaded, too, if he were to give the celestial
spiders the opportunity—but it was the means they might use to persuade him that
he feared. Muffet and Raleigh seemed far too sure of themselves for him to believe
that they were guided by mere reason—and Patience was positively uncanny. On the
other hand, he had no firm grounds for deciding that they were other than human, or
direly dangerous. If they were, then it was at least possible, if not likely, that there
were others of their kind among Gilbert’s men.
      “I discovered three years ago, Dr. Muffet,” Drake said, “that the world in
which we find ourselves is very far from what our forefathers believed it to be. I can
only hope that John Field was wrong in his interpretation of it, and that you and
Walter might be right—but I’m beginning to see, now, why Tom Digges might be
more content than any of us, in being able to believe that it was all a silly dream.
Perhaps it was, after all, an angel that accompanied him into a world of multifarious
demonkinds.”
      “There’s no security in illusion, Francis,” Raleigh said, from the canoe. “We
must accept the limitless universe as we find it, and make what alliances we can.”
     “We’re your friends,” Muffet added, as he climbed down to join his
companions. “We always shall be, no matter what you fear or believe.”
      “And I’m yours,” Drake assured them.
      He watched the canoe make its way back to the headland east of the harbor.
There were other canoes visible on the water, further out to sea, but none made any
attempt to intercept it.
       Martin Lyle brought the telescope forward, and Drake turned it on the
settlement. It seemed crowded with islanders, busy making their own arrangements
to settle there.
       “What shall we do, Captain?” Martin asked.
       “We’ll sail west,” Drake said. “We’ll reprovision from other islands in the
cluster, then head for the two larger ones that lie south-east of the Austral continent.
Then we’ll investigate the continent itself. We’ll collect what we can to carry home
to England, but we’ll be sure to take as much information as we can gather about the
remote reaches of the world.”
       “They won’t believe us in England, sir,” the boy said. “There are too many
travelers’ tales already about giant spiders and clever birds. They’ll think us liars.”
      “Aye,” said Drake. “But not for long, I suspect. One way or another, the
people of England will see the Age of Miracles reborn—and we can only hope that
they won’t find it unbearable as an era in which to live and dream.”
       Copyright (c) 2007 Brian Stableford