The Hour of the Gate

  They continued studying each other. "That's beautiful silk," the man commented. "Did you make it yourself?"

  "do you mean, did i spin the silk or manufacture the scarf? in truth i did neither." He waved a leg at the others, "we differ even more in size than you seem to. some of our smaller cousins produce far finer silk than a clumsy oaf like myself is capable of. they are trained to do so, and others carefully weave and pattern their produce." He reached down and unwrapped a four-foot turquoise length and handed it to Jon-Tom.

  A palmful of feathers was like lead compared to the scarf. He could have whispered at it and blown it over the side of the boat. The dye was a faint blue, as rich as the finest Persian turquoise with darker patches here and there. It was the lightest fabric he'd ever caressed. Wearing it would be as wearing nothing.

  He moved to hand it back. Ananthos' head bobbed to the left. "no. it is a gift." Already he'd refastened two other long scarves to compensate for the loss of the turquoise. Jon-Tom had a glimpse of the intricate knot-and-clip arrangement that held the quasi-sari together.

  "Why?"

  Now the head bobbed down and to me right. He was beginning to match head movements to the spider's moods. What at first had seemed only a nervous twitching was becoming recognizable as a complex, highly stylized group of suggestive gestures. The spiders utilized their heads the way an Italian used his hands, for speech without speaking.

  "why? because you have something about you, something i cannot define, and because you admired it."

  "I'll say we've got something about us," Talea grumbled. "An air of chronic insanity."

  Ananthos considered the comment. Again the whispery laughter floated like snowflakes across the deck. "ah, humor! humor is among the warmlander's richest qualities, perhaps the most redeeming one."

  "For all the talk of hostility our legends speak of, you seem mighty friendly," she said.

  "it is my duty, soft female," the Weaver replied. His gaze went back to Jon-Tom. "please me by accepting the gift."

  Jon-Tom accepted the length of silk. He wrapped it mufflerlike around his neck, above the indigo shut. It didn't get tangled in his cape clasp. In fact, it didn't feel as though it was there at all. He did not consider how it might look sandwiched between the iridescent green cape and purpled shirt.

  "I have nothing to offer in return," he said apologetically. "No, wait, maybe I do." He unslung his duar. "Do the Weavers like music?"

  Ananthos' answer was unexpected. He extended two limbs in an unmistakable gesture. Jon-Tom carefully passed over the instrument.

  The Weaver resumed his half-sit, half-squat and laid the duar across two knees. He had neither hands nor fingers, but the eight prehensile claws on the four upper limbs plucked with experimental delicacy at the two sets of strings.

  The melody that rose from the duar was light and ethereal, alien, atonal, and yet full of almost familiar rhythms. It would begin to sound almost normal, then drift off on strange tangents. Very few notes contributed to a substantial tune. Ananthos' playing reminded Jon-Tom more of samisen music than guitar.

  Flor leaned blissfully back against the mast, closed her eyes, and soaked up the spare melody. Mudge sprawled contentedly on the deck while Caz tried, without success, to tap time to the disjointed beat. Nothing soothes xenophobia so efficiently as music, no matter how strange its rhythms or inaudible the words.

  An airy wail rose from Ananthos and his two companions. The three-part harmony was bizarre and barely strong enough to rise above the breeze. There was nothing ominous in their singing, however. The little boat made steady progress against the current. In spite of his unshakable devotion to his job, even Bribbens was affected. One flippered foot beat on the deck in a futile attempt to domesticate the mystical arachnid melody.

  It might be, Jon-Tom thought, that they would find no allies here, but he was certain they'd already found some friends. He fingered the end of the exquisite scarf and allowed himself to relax and sink comfortably under the soothing spell of the spider's frugal fugue…

  It was early in the morning of the fourth day on the Scuttleteau that he was shaken awake. Much too early, he mused as his eyes opened confusedly on a still dark sky.

  He rolled over, and for a moment memory lagged shockingly behind reality. He started violently at the sight of the furry, fanged, many-eyed countenance bending over him.

  "i am sorry," said Ananthos softly, "did i waken you too sharply?"

  Jon-Tom couldn't decide if the Weaver was being polite and offering a diplomatic way out or if it was an honest question. In either case, he was grateful for the understanding it allowed him.

  "No. No, not too sharply, Ananthos." He squinted into the sky. A few stars were still visible. "But why so early?"

  Bribbens' voice sounded behind him. As usual, the boatman was first awake and at his duties before the others had risen from beneath their warm blankets. "Because we're nearing their city, man."

  Something in the frog's voice made Jon-Tom sit up fast. It was not fear, not even worry, but a new quality usually absent from the boatman's plebian monotone.

  Pushing aside his blanket, he turned to look over the bow, matching Bribbens' gaze. Then he understood the strange new quality he'd detected in the boatman's voice: wonderment.

  The first rays of the sun were arriving, having mounted the mountain shield soaring ahead of the boat. In the distance lay a range of immense peaks more massive than Zaryt's Teeth. Several crags vanished into the clouds, only to reappear above them. Jon-Tom was no surveyor, but if the Teeth contained several mountains higher than twenty thousand feet then the range ahead had to average twenty-five.

  More modest escarpments dominated the north and south. Swathed in glaciers and clouds, the colossal eastern range also displayed an additional quality: dark smoke and occasional liquid red flares rose from several of the peaks. The towering range was still alive, still growing. The sparks and smoke that drifted overhead came from a massif much closer than the eastern horizon, however. Quite close a black caldera rose from surrounding foothills to a height a good ten thousand feet above me river, which banked to the south before it. Ice and snow crowned the fiery summit.

  Snow gave way to conifers and hardwoods, they in turn surrendered to the climax vegetation of the variety which flanked the river, and that at last to a city which crept up and clung to the volcano's flanks. Small docks spread thin wooden fingers out into the river.

  "my home," said Ananthos, "capital and ancestral settlement from which the first weavers laid claim to the scuttleteau and all the lands that abut it." He spread four forearms, "i welcome you all to gossameringue-on-the-breath."

  The city was a marvel, like the scarf. The similarities did not end there, for like the scarf it was woven of fine silk.

  Morning dew adhered to struts and suspensions and flying buttresses of webwork. Roofs were hung from supports strung lacily above instead of being supported by pillars from beneath. Millions of thick, silvery cables supported buildings several stories high, all agleam with jewels of dew.

  Other cables as thick as a man's body, spun from the spinnerets of dozens of spiders, secured the larger structures to the ground.

  On the lower, nearer levels they could discern dozens of moving forms. It was clear the city was heavily populated. Spreading as it did around the base of the huge volcano and climbing thousands of feet up its sides, it appeared capable of housing a population in the tens of thousands.

  There was enough spider silk in that single city, if it could be unwrapped to its seminal strands, to cocoon the Earth.

  Once Jon-Tom had spent an hour marveling at a single small web woven by one spider on an ocean coast. It had been speckled with dew from the morning fog.

  Here the dew seemed almost choreographed. As the first rising rays of the sun struck the city, it suddenly turned to a labyrinth of platinum wires and diamond dust. It was too bright to look at, but the effect faded quickly as the dew evaporated. The sun rose higher, the enc
hanting effect dissipating as rapidly as the sting fro.m a clash of cymbals. Left behind was a spectacle of suspended structures only slightly less impressive.

  Gossameringue was all spheres and ellipses, arches and domes. Jon-Tom could not find a sharp angle anywhere in the design. Everything was smooth and rounded. It gave the city a soft feeling which its inhabitants might or might not reflect.

  As the sun worked its way up into the morning sky, the little boat put in at the nearest vacant dock. A few early morning workers turned curious multiple eyes on the unique cargo of warmlanders. They did not interfere. They only stared. As befitted their historical preference for privacy, these few Weavers soon turned to their assigned tasks and ignored the arrivals. It troubled Clothahump. A people fanatic about minding its own business does not make a ready ally.

  Under Ananthos' escort they left the boat and crossed the docks. Soon they had entered a silk and silver world.

  "This mission had best be successful," said Caz as they began to climb. He placed his broad feet carefully. The roadway was composed of a fine checkerboard of silk cables. They were stronger than steel and did not quiver even when Jon-Tom experimentally jumped up and down on one, but if one missed a rung of the gigantic rope ladder and fell through, a broken leg was a real possibility.

  After a while caution gave way to confidence and the party was able to make faster progress up the side of the mountain.

  "I'll settle for just getting out of here alive," Talea whispered to the rabbit.

  "Precisely my meaning," said Caz. He gestured back the way they'd come. The river and docks had long since been swallowed up by twisting, contorting bands of silk and silken buildings. "Because we'd never find our way out of here without assistance."

  It was not all silk. Some of the buildings boasted sculptured stone or wood, and there was some use of metalwork. Windows were made of fine glass, and there was evidence of vegetable matter being employed in sofas and other furniture. Though the Weavers were not arboreal creatures, their construction ignored the demands of gravity. The whole city was an exercise in the aesthetic applications of geometry. It was difficult to tell up from down.

  Caz was right, Jon-Tom thought worriedly. Without Weaver help they would never find their way back to the river.

  They climbed steadily. Wherever they passed, daily routines ground to a halt as the populace stared dumbfoundedly at creatures they knew only from legend. Ananthos and his two fellow guards took an aggressive attitude toward those few citizens who tried to touch me warmlanders.

  The only ones who weren't shoved aside were the curious hordes of spiderlings who swarmed in fascination around the visitors' legs. Most of these infants had bodies a foot or more across. They were a riot of color underfoot; red, yellow, orange, puce, black, and more in metallic, dull, or iridescent shades. They displayed stripes and spots, intricate patterns and simple solids.

  It was difficult to make sense of the extraordinary variety of colors and shapes because the predominant sensation was one of wading through a shallow pond made of legs. With remarkable agility the youngsters scrambled in and between the feet of the visitors, never once having a tiny leg kicked or stepped on.

  They reserved most of their attention for Talea, Flor, and Jon-Tom. Bribbens and Clothahump they ignored completely. Nor were they in the least bit shy.

  One scrambled energetically up Jon-Tom's right side, pulling thoughtlessly at his fortunately tough cape and pants. It rode like a cat on his right shoulder, chattering breathily to its less enterprising companions. Jon-Tom tried hard to think of it as a cat.

  The adolescent displayed a cluster of painted lines that ran from its mandibles back between its eyes and down the back of its head. The cosmetics did not give Jon-Tom a clue as to its sex. He thought of brushing it away, but it behooves a guest to match the hospitality of his hosts. So he left it alone, resolutely ignoring the occasional reflexive flash of poisonous fangs.

  The spiderling sat there securely and waved its foot-long legs at disapproving adults and envious brethren. It whispered in a rush to its obliging mount.

  "where do you come from? you are warm, not cold like me prey or the creatures of the forest, you are very tall and thin and you have hair only atop your head and there very dense." The youngster's partly clad abdomen brushed rhythmically against the back of Jon-Tom's neck. He assumed it was a friendly gesture. The fur on the spiderling's bottom was as soft as Mudge's.

  "you have funny mouths and your fangs are hidden, may i see them?"

  Jon-Tom patiently opened his mouth and grimaced to show his teeth. The spiderling drew back in alarm, then moved cautiously closer.

  "so many. and they're white, not black or brown or gold. they are so flat, save two. how can you suck fluids with them?"

  "I don't use my fangs-my teeth-to suck fluids," JonTom explained. "What liquid I do ingest I swallow straight. Mostly I eat solid food and use my teeth to chew it into smaller pieces."

  The youngster shuddered visibly, "how awful, how gruesome! you actually eat solid, unliquified flesh? your fangs don't look up to the task. i'd think they'd break off. ugh, ugh!"

  "It can be tough sometimes," Jon-Tom confessed, recalling some less than palatable meals he'd downed. "But my teeth are stronger than yours. They're not hollow."

  "i wonder," said the spiderling with the disarming honesty common to all children, "if you'd taste good."

  "I'd hope so. I'd hate to think I've lived all these years just to give some friend an upset stomach. I'd probably be pizza-and-coke flavored."

  "i don't know what is a pissaoke." The infant bared tiny fangs, "i don't suppose you'd let me have a taste? your elders aren't watching." He sounded hopeful.

  "I'd like to oblige," Jon-Tom said nervously, "but I haven't had anything to eat yet today and might make you sick. Understand?"

  "oh well." The youngster didn't sound too disappointed. "i don't guess i'd like you sucking out one of my legs, either." He quivered at the thought, "you're a nice person, warmlander. i like you." Jon-Tom experienced the abdomen caress once again. Then the spiderling jumped down to join his fellow scamperers.

  "luck to you, warmlander!"

  "And to you also, child," Jon-Tom called hastily back to him. Ananthos and several responsible bystanders were finally shooing the spiderlings away. The children waved and cheered in excited whispers, like any others, their multiple, multicolored legs waving good-byes.

  A greater weight pressured his left arm and he looked around uncertainly. It was no disrespectful spiderling, however. Flor's expression was ashen, and she slumped weakly against him. He quickly got an arm under her shoulders and gave her some support.

  "What's wrong, Flor? You look ill."

  "What's wrong?" Fresh shock replaced some of the paleness that had dominated her visage. "I've just been poked, probed, and swarmed over by a dozen of the most loathesome, disgusting creatures anyone could…"

  Jon-Tom made urgent quieting motions. "Jesus, Flor. Keep your voice down. These are our hosts."

  "I know, but to have them touch me all over like that." She was trembling uncontrollably. "Aranqs… uckkkk! I hate them. I could never even stand the little ones the size of my thumb, for all that Mama used to praise them for catching the cockroaches. So you can imagine how I feel about these. I could hardly stand it on the boat." She moved unsteadily away from his arm. "I don't know how much more of this I can take, Jon-Tom," and she gestured at Ananthos, who was marching ahead of them.

  They turned up another, broader web-road. "What matters isn't what they look like," Jon-Tom told her sternly, "but what's behind their looks. In this case, intelligence. We need their help or Clothahump wouldn't have herded us all this way." He eyed her firmly. "Think you can manage by yourself now?"

  She was breathing deeply. The color was returning to her face. "I hope so, compadre. But if they climb over me like that again…" A brief reprise of the trembling. "I feel so… so icky."

  " 'Icky' is a state of mind, not a ph
ysiological condition."

  "Easy for you to say, Jon-Tom."

  "Look, they probably don't think much of the way we look, either. I know they don't."

  "I don't care what they think," she shot back. "Santa Maria, I hope we finish with this place quickly."

  "Oh, I don't know." He noted the way in which the rising sun, bright despite the intensifying cloudiness, sparkled off the millions of cables and the silken buildings and webwork walkway they were climbing. "I think it's kind of pretty."

  "The fly complimenting the spider," she muttered.

  "Except that the flies are here hunting for allies."

  "Let's hope they are allies."

  "Ahhh, you worry too much." He gave her an affectionate pat on the back. She forced a grin in response, thankful for his moral support.

  Jon-Tom's attention returned forward, and to his surprise he found himself staring straight into Talea's eyes. The instant their gazes locked she turned away.

  He decided she probably hadn't been looking at him.

  Probably trying to memorize their path in case they had to try and flee. Such preparation and suspicion would be typical of the redhead. It did not occur to him that the glance might have been significant of anything else.

  They had climbed several thousand feet by the afternoon. Ahead loomed an enormous structure. How many spiders, Jon-Tom wondered, had labored for how many years patiently spinning the silk necessary to create those massive ramparts of hardened silk and interlaced stone?

  The royal palace of Gossameringue was made largely of hewn rock cemented together not with mortar or clay or concrete but layer on layer of spider silk. Turrets of silver bulged from unexpected places. The entire immense structure was suspended from a vast overhang of volcanic rock by cables a yard thick. Those cables would have supported a mountain. Though the wind was stronger here, high up the volcanic flank, the palace did not move. It might as well have been anchored in bedrock.

  They entered a round, silk-lined tube and were soon walking through tunnels and hallways. It grew dark only slowly inside since the glassy silk admitted a great deal of light. Eventually torches and lamps were necessary, however, to illuminate the depths.