Aaron Elkins - Little Tiny Teeth

“Did you hear that? The damn thing just hissed at me!” Scofield cried. As, inarguably, it had.

“No, no,” Duayne said, “not really. It’s not a hiss. He does that by rubbing the bristles on his legs together.” He pointed. “See? He’s doing it now. He does that when he feels threatened.”

“ He feels threatened! How do you think I feel?” Like everyone else, Scofield had his eyes fastened on the creature, which was still in its reared-up position, its upper body swaying slightly. “Tim, go get a broom and mash the damn thing.”

“Yuck,” said John.

“Me?” Tim asked woefully.

He was saved by Duayne, “No, you don’t want to frighten him any more than he already is.”

“The hell I don’t,” Scofield growled.

“Believe me, you don’t,” Duayne said, asserting himself. “He’s not particularly poisonous, but he defends himself by using his legs to flick off the hairs on his abdomen. He can send them five or six feet through the air” – everyone other than Duayne moved back another step – “and they’re barbed, you see, more like thorns than hairs, so they’re very irritating, like a nettle rash. And if they happen to get in your nose or mouth, they can swell the mucous membranes enough to choke you. Look, you can see the way his hair is standing on end right now.”

“He’s not the only one,” John muttered.

Osterhout, clearly enchanted, moved gingerly forward for a better look. The spider dropped down on all eight legs and ran with amazing rapidity to the far end of the table, its feet making an unsettling skittering sound. There it turned to face them again.

“Jesus, it’s fast,” marveled Phil.

“It certainly is,” affirmed Duayne. “It eats birds, you know. Did I tell you that? And it doesn’t need a web to catch them. It sneaks up on them, and then… bam! It’s got them.”

“That’s all very fascinating, doctor,” Scofield said. He was beginning to take command again, having largely collected himself by this time. “Now, perhaps you’d like to tell us how we get rid of the thing?”

“Oh, I’ll take care of it. I have to get some equipment. It’ll take just a minute.” He trotted to the door. “Don’t let it get away,” he called over his shoulder.

“Right,” John said to Gideon. “And how are we supposed to stop it again?”

“I didn’t hear that part,” Gideon said.

But the creature cooperated, remaining at the very edge of the table, immobile except for its moving mouth parts. (Were they slavering, or was that just Gideon’s imagination?) Duayne returned with a large, open, plastic jar – it looked like the sort of thing you’d get five gallons of peanut butter in at Costco – which he slowly set down a foot behind the spider.

“If someone would come very slowly back here and hold the jar steady…?”

Gideon volunteered, holding it with both hands and leaning as far as possible away from the spider, while Duayne, who had slipped on a long-sleeved shirt, had put on thick work gloves, and had gotten a dust mop somewhere, went around the table to the spider’s other side. The spider turned with him, presumably to keep its two rows of eyes on him, and began to hiss again.

“He can’t really see me, you know,” Duayne said softly. “Even with all those eyes it only sees differences in light levels. It relies on those hairs to feel the slightest vibration…”

While he spoke he very slowly slid the working end of the mop toward the spider, then, tongue between his teeth, very gently nudged it. The spider obliged by immediately leaping backward directly into the jar. It seemed to Gideon he saw a few of its eyes widen in surprise, but he put that down to his imagination as well. In the meantime, with more speed than he would have judged possible, Duayne rammed a large rubber stopper into the neck of the jar, sealing it. Everybody, Gideon included, heaved a sigh.

“Now what?” Maggie said. “Don’t tell me you’re going to keep it.”

“Of course, I’m going to keep it. It’s a Theraphosa blondi, for God’s sake!”

“Alive?” John asked.

“Ah, no, unfortunately. They can live for twenty-five years in the wild, but they don’t do well in captivity, and, sad to say, they tend to be a little aggressive. They don’t make very good pets.”

“Oh dear,” Maggie said. “That must be sad for you.”

But Duayne was impervious to sarcasm at this point. He was holding the jar proudly aloft for all to see, at the same time slowly rotating it in front of his face. The spider turned in reverse as the jar turned, looking steadily back at him from six inches away. “I brought along some alcohol, of course,” Duayne said dreamily, “and this will do for a killing jar.”

“Duayne, are you sure the Peruvians will let you take something like that out of the country?” Phil asked.

“I would have thought the Peruvians would be more than glad to have it taken out of the country,” Maggie said. “I’d think your problem would be with the United States letting it in.”

“Not to worry, they don’t much care about dead specimens. Anyway, I’ll have filled-out copies of FWS 3-177 all ready for them, just in case. Will you just look at those pedipalpae go!”

He lowered the jar and looked at his fellow passengers, smiling. “I have an insect and arachnid collection that covers one whole wall of my living room. It’s excellent, really, but what a showpiece this little fellow is going to make.” He wrapped both arms around the jar to hold it to himself and left smiling.

Gideon turned to John and Phil. “You know, I think I just might have a clue,” he said, “as to why his wife left him.”

Once the excitement of the spider episode had died down, the regular passengers, all of whom except Scofield had spent the night in the Lima Airport, trudged off to their cabins to recuperate. Phil, who had had a good night’s sleep in Iquitos, but who rarely passed up the chance for a snooze when he was traveling, did the same. Gideon and John went back to their cabins to unpack to the extent that the closetless, drawerless accommodations allowed, then came back downstairs to the open-air salon at middeck, pulled a couple of chairs up to the boat’s starboard railing, and, in the shade of the upper deck and the soft breeze from the ship’s motion, settled back to watch the jungle go by.

There wasn’t much to watch. In the middle of the afternoon, with a blazing sun hanging motionless overhead, the jungle was hazy and still, seemingly without inhabitants other than an occasional darting swift or flycatcher or swallow along the shore. The already slow-moving river seemed to have slowed down even more. The two men did a lot of yawning, maybe even dozing, for a pleasant half hour, and then their desultory, sporadic conversation, which had mostly concerned giant spiders, turned to their shipmates.

“So what do you think of our companions?” Gideon asked lazily. “Interesting bunch, wouldn’t you say?”

“Not too bad, all in all. And yeah, this ethnobotany stuff could be interesting. I don’t know about Scofield, though. I mean, maybe the guy’s a big-time expert, but he’s a phony right down to his toenails. All that chuckle-chuckle crap and that cutesy business with the pipe.” He dug an imaginary pipe stem into his cheek. “The others can’t stand him. I don’t know if you noticed. Even Duayne’s got something against him, and he never even met the guy.”

As it often did, John’s perspicacity caught Gideon by surprise. Not that he thought John was dumb – far from it – but the man didn’t show much, and even when he seemingly wasn’t paying attention he was taking things in.

“I noticed.”

“And what about the Cisco Kid?” John asked. “Oh, that’s gonna be great, following him into the jungle.”