Un Lun Dun - China Mieville [107]
“That must be where they started all this,” whispered Jones.
Deeba could see black holes around the chamber: the ends of the tunnels that led outside.
“Alright then,” said Jones. “Let’s do this.” He dangled their bait some way below them. Hemi took Jones’s flashlight from his pocket and played the beam on it.
“We’re ready?” said Deeba. She yanked the cord four times to say stop touching the web.
“Here, window window window,” she whispered. Hemi waggled the light a little, and they settled down, very still, to wait.
A few seconds after their companions stopped vibrating the silk, something began to move.
Deeba saw motion. There were swaying beams of dim light, off in the distance of the darkness. She froze.
Out of the tunnels, back into the shadowy chamber, windows were coming.
There were tens, twenties, untold numbers of them. Crawling into view were heavy, painted wooden window frames, filled with thick, mottled old glass, through which Deeba glimpsed strange lights. From every frame splayed eight wooden arachnid limbs, four each side, clenching and unclenching.
They dangled; they scuttled with horrible bursts of spider speed or picked their way tarantula-slow over the floor. Deeba put her hand over her mouth so as not to make a horrified sound. She and Hemi clutched each other.
A Black Window descended out of the darkness, playing out silk. It twisted on the cord as it came, light from behind the glass rotating like the beam of a lighthouse, the same view, it looked like, shining from both sides. Deeba could see faint shapes beyond the panes of glass.
One or two of the windows trailed broken ropes from under slammed-shut panes. That must be where explorers had attempted to attach themselves, Deeba thought.
The Black Windows were not only clambering over every surface, raising their segmented legs high, through every loop and hole of webbing. They were clambering in and out of each other.
In some bizarre social interaction, windows pulled wide open, and in seemingly impossible motion, others would approach with furtive arachnid scurries and wriggle inside, the pane closing behind them. Others would open, and wooden forelegs would waver out from inside, and other windows would emerge and creep away.
All sorts of complicated maneuvers occurred. Windows that had just ingested others themselves climbed into yet others. A window opened and emitted three of its siblings, one of which then climbed into another, while the third spat out a fourth. Deeba saw one window emerge from another, then eat its own regurgitator. It was endless.
The web was dim. Noises were hushed. There was a soft clicking from countless wooden limbs.
Deeba saw glimpses through their glass. Through one window she saw a room full of tailors’ mannequins; through another a pit of darkness; through another, frighteningly close to her, what looked like dark water full of weeds.
“What’s that?” Hemi whispered; then his voice gave out.
A skeleton was floating among the kelp, beyond the glass.
There were other dead, Deeba saw. Bodies lying in empty rooms and corridors beyond some of the windows, rope tied around their waists. So this was what happened to the lost arachnofenestranauts.
If they managed to get out of the window they had entered, it might by then have entered another, which itself had entered another and exited a different one still. Even if they avoided the deadly realms that were beyond some of the panes, treasure hunters might roam helplessly through window after window, hunting for food and drink in a succession of alien rooms, never finding their way back to UnLondon.
“You didn’t see what the one that took Rosa looked like, did you?” Jones whispered. Deeba and Hemi shook their heads. They had no way to tempt that particular window back. Rosa was lost.
74
Spider-Fishing
“Make sure