The glittering bodies clustered in already–found places were motionless as if carved from metal. Burl watched them. And then he saw motion overhead.
A slender, brilliant shape appeared, darting swiftly through the air, enlarging into a needle–like body with transparent, shining wings and two huge eyes. It circled and enlarged again, becoming a shimmering dragonfly, twenty feet and more in length. It poised itself abruptly above the pool, and then darted down, its jaws snapping viciously. They snapped again and again. Burl could not follow their slashings. And with each snap the glittering body of a fly vanished.
A second dragonfly appeared and a third. They swooped above the golden pool, snapping in mid–air, making their abrupt and angular turns, creatures of incredible ferocity and beauty. In that mass of buzzing creatures, even the most voracious appetite must soon have been sated, but the slender creatures still darted about in frenzied destruction.
And all this while the loud, contented, deep–bass humming went on as before. Their comrades were slaughtered by the hundreds not forty feet above their heads, but still the glittering rows of red–eyed flies gorged themselves upon the fluid of the pond. The dragonflies feasted until they were unable to devour even a single one more of their chosen prey. But even then they continued to sweep madly above the pool, striking down the buzzing flies though their bodies must perforce remain uneaten.
Some of the dead flies, crushed to pulp by the angry dragonflies, dropped among their feasting brothers. Presently, one of them placed its disgusting proboscis upon the mangled creature. It sipped daintily from the contents of the broken armor. Another joined it and another. In a little while a cluster of them pushed against each other for a chance to join them in a cannibalistic feast.
Burl turned aside and went on, leaving the dragonflies still at their massacre and the flies absorbed and ecstatic at their feast. The feast, indeed, was improved by the rain of murdered brethren from overhead.
Only a few miles farther on, Burl came upon a familiar landmark. He knew it well, but had always kept at a safe distance from it. A mass of rock had heaved itself up from the almost level plain over which he traveled to form an out–jutting cliff. At one point the rock overhung, forming an inverted ledge—a roof over nothingness—which had been preempted by a hairy monster and made into a fairy–like dwelling. A white hemisphere clung to the rock, firmly anchored by long cables.
Burl knew the place as one to be feared. A clotho spider had built itself a nest there, from which it emerged to hunt the unwary. Within the silken globe was a monstrosity, resting upon cushions of softest silk. The exterior had been beautiful once. But if one went too near one of the little inverted arches seemingly closed by panels of silk—it would open and out would rush a creature from a dream of hell.
Surely Burl knew this place. Hung upon the walls of the fairy palace were trophies. They had a purpose, of course. Stones and boulders hung there, too, to hold the structure firm against the storm–winds that rarely blew. But amid the stones and fragments of insect–armor there was a very special decoration: the shrunken, dessicated skeleton of a man.
The death of that man had saved Burl's life two years before. They had been together, seeking a new source of edible mushroom. The clotho spider was a hunter, not a spinner of webs. It had sprung suddenly from behind a great puffball as the two men froze in horror. Then it had come forward and deliberately chosen its victim. It did not choose Burl.
Now he looked with half–frightened speculation at the lair of his ancient enemy. Some day, perhaps….
But now he passed on. He went past the thicket in which the great moths hid by day, past the slimy pool in which something unknown but terrible lurked. He penetrated the little forest of mushrooms that glowed at night and the place where the truffle–hunting beetles chirped thunderously during the dark hours.
And then he saw Saya. He caught a flash of pink skin vanishing behind a squat toadstool, and he ran forward calling her name. She emerged, and saw the figure with the horrible bulk of the spider on its back. She cried out in horror, and Burl understood. He let his burden fall, running swiftly to her.
They met. Saya waited timidly until she saw who this man was, and then she was astounded indeed. With golden plumes rising from his head, a velvet cloak about his shoulders, blue moth–fur about his middle, and a spear in his hand—and a dead spider behind him!—this was not the Burl she had known.
He took her hands, babbling proudly. She stared at him and at his victim—but the language of men had diminished sadly—struggling to comprehend. Presently her eyes glowed. She pulled at his wrists.
When they found the other tribesmen, they were carrying the dead spider between them, Saya looking more proud than Burl.
5
Meat of Man's Killing!
In their climb up from savagery, the principal handicap from which men have always suffered is the fact that they are human. Or it can be said that human beings always have to struggle against the obstacle which is simply that they are men. To Burl his splendid return to the tribe called for a suitable reaction. He expected them to take note that he was remarkable, unparalleled, and in all ways admirable. He expected them to look at him with awe. He rather hoped that the sight of him would involve something like ecstasy.
And as a matter of fact, it did. For fully an hour they gathered around him while he used his—and their—scanty vocabulary to tell them of his unique achievements and adventures during the past two days and nights. They listened attentively and with appropriate admiration and vicarious pride.
This in itself was a step upward. Mostly their talk was of where food might be found and where danger lurked. Strictly practical data connected with the pressing business of getting enough to eat and staying alive. The sheer pressure of existence was so great that the humans Burl knew had altogether abandoned such luxuries as boastful narrative. They had given up tradition. They did not think of art in even its most primitive forms, and the only craft they knew was the craftiness which promoted simple survival. So for them to listen to a narrative which did not mean either food or even a lessening of danger to themselves was a step upward on the cultural scale.
But they were savages. They inspected the dead spider, shuddering. It was pure horror. They did not touch it—the adults not at all, and even Dik and Tet not for a very long time. Nobody thought of spiders as food. Too many of them had been spiders' food.
But presently even the horror aroused by the spider palled. The younger children quailed at sight of it, of course; but the adults came to ignore it. Only the two gangling boys tried to break off a furry leg with which to charge and terrify the younger ones still further. They failed to get it loose because they did not think of cutting it. But they had nothing to cut it with anyhow.
Old Jon went wheezing off, foraging. He waved a hand to Burl as he went. Burl was indignant. But it was true that he had brought back no food. And people must eat.
Tama went off, her tongue clacking, with Lona the half–grown girl to help her find and bring back something edible. Dor, the strongest man in the tribe, went away to look where he thought there might be edible mushrooms full–grown again. Cori left with her children—very carefully on watch for danger to them—to see what she could find.
In little more than an hour Burl's audience had diminished to Saya. Within two hours ants found the spider where it had been placed for the tribe to admire. Within three hours there was nothing left of it. During the fourth hour—as Burl struggled to dredge up some new, splendid item to tell Saya for the tenth time, or thereabouts—during the fourth hour one of the tribeswomen beckoned to Saya. She left with a flashing backward smile for Burl. She went, actually, to help dig up underground fungi—much like truffles—discovered by the older woman. She undoubtedly expected to share them with Burl.