Adrian Tchaikovsky - Children of Time

Then there is a bright flash from one of Viola’s spotters, palps signalling a clear message.

A party is on its way out of Great Nest, twenty or more strong. At their head is the male emissary Viola sent in.

Fabian feels a gripping tension leach out of his limbs. Great Nest wants to talk.

He does not recognize the bulk of the enemy delegation. Certainly none of the females now apparently in control are familiar. There are a handful he does recall, Portia’s cronies from her peer house or from the temple. They are hobbled with silk and herded out by their erstwhile political opponents. They are being given over to the enemy.

The story spills out swiftly. There has been a changing of the guard in Great Nest. There has been fighting within the city, spider against spider, at the highest level. The priesthood has been broken and cast down. Some remain in hiding, sheltered by those who still believe in the sanctity of the message. Some are believed to have fled. The balance are here, as a token of goodwill.

Of Portia, there is no word. Fabian imagines her alone and on the run. She is resourceful enough to survive and now, without the infrastructure of the Great Nest Temple, she is not the threat to the world’s peace she once was. No doubt Viola and the others will hunt her down, or her former fellows in Great Nest will, but he hopes that she survives. He hopes that she escapes to find some quiet living somewhere, and does something good.

Terms are then negotiated, punitive but not impossible. The new clique ruling Great Nest treads a delicate line between defiance and acquiescence; Viola knows the game and plays along. It is only in watching the Seven Trees female throw herself into negotiations that Fabian realizes how much she, too, had wanted to avoid taking that final, unthinkable step.

This is not the end of the war of doctrine, but it is the beginning of the end. The fall and conversion of Great Nest is both the catalyst and a model for the future. Fighting continues in various parts of the world but those who still believe that the Messenger’s message is all-important only lose ground.

This does not mean that nobody is talking to God, of course, but they no longer listen with the same single-minded purpose that Portia and her fellows did. Progress on the Messenger’s machine loses its original frantic fervour, although it does not grind to a halt. There will always be scientific minds willing to take up the challenge, who continue to speak in guarded, monitored terms to the Messenger and try and reduce the complex, technical language into something fitting spider technology. The irony is that in now taking a layman’s view of the instructions, some progress is being made that the faithful might never have achieved with their more doctrinal approach.

And, quite soon after Great Nest capitulates, Fabian finds himself crouched before the leading females of Seven Trees: a very similar gathering to the one he faced during the war. Viola is dominant, her war-heroine status confirmed, and they all remember the deal they signed in adversity. He has been expecting this moment, when the great and good try to go back on their word.

Has he allies? Perhaps. Bianca is there, one of the lowliest of the great, but great nonetheless, and as much through her connections with him as due to her own scientific achievements.

The female magnates shuffle and settle, murmurs passing around the web. Viola brings them to order neatly.

Of course, Seven Trees and our allies owe a great debt to your discoveries , she allows. Our own chemical architects are already considering all the other aspects of daily life that could be improved by such fine control as you can offer.

I never intended my work to be used as a tool of violence , Fabian confirms calmly. And, yes, the possibilities are near endless.

Perhaps you will share your plans with us?

They all become very still, waiting for his first wrong move.

I have my own peer house , he tells them, reminding them right at the start of one of their major concessions. He feels the dislike and the unease ripple out and then vanish back into their accomplished composure. I have my peers, who have shared in my Understandings. As you say, there is so much that can be revolutionized. I have already begun.

He remembers Bianca in Great Nest, calling him a dangerous little monster. They all see him that way now. More, they fear him, and perhaps this is the first time females have ever feared a male, in his world. They must wonder whether, if he called, an army would come against them, slaved to his will and his new architecture.

This is not his intention, however, and Fabian suspects that if he makes them too fearful of him, they will kill him and all his followers outright, whatever the loss to posterity. He must make up ground quickly. My peer house will help make our city the greatest the world has ever seen. Whilst it is true that my discovery must eventually spread to the wider world, whoever has first use of it will always remain its mother, and thus need never fear the armies of those who lack it.

Much muted messaging vibrates around the edge of the web. Hard, calculating female gazes study Fabian, a mere morsel before them. He can see that most of them want to put him in his place, to take back what was previously given under duress. Probably they would do it with the best intentions, under the long-ingrained assumption that a male simply could not be allowed responsibility for such weighty matters. Probably there are a dozen separate equivocations ongoing in the minds around him, to justify their now withholding what was promised to him. They will offer him Portia’s deal: Let us feed and value and protect you; what else can you want?

I would prefer that city to be Seven Trees , Fabian taps out, and hunches against the possible response.

A twitch of Viola’s palps prompts him to continue.

I cannot hold you to our bargain , he says simply. I have asked more of you than the Messenger Herself. I have asked you to extend to me and my whole gender the freedoms that you yourselves live and breathe by. It is no small request. It will not be easily made real. Generations from now, there will still be those for whom these reforms rankle, and places where a matter of gender still determines whether one may be killed out of hand. The concepts themselves are hard to phrase, since gender is integral to so much of their language, so Fabian must tread the long way round to explain his meaning. All I can say is this: that city which extends to me and mine these basic rights will have my service and that of my peers, and will gain all the profit that ensues. If Seven Trees will not, then some other city, more desperate, shall. If you should kill me here, you will find some of my peers already outside the city, carrying my Understanding with them. We will go where we are made welcome. I would like you to make us welcome here.

He leaves them arguing fiercely over his fate. The decision, he hears later, is close, almost as many against as for. Seven Trees nearly has its own schism there and then. Respected matriarchs resort to measuring legs against one another like juvenile brawlers. In the end, solid mercenary interest outweighs outraged traditional propriety – but only just.

Fabian himself does not live to see the world he has helped create. Two years after Great Nest’s surrender, he is found dead in his laboratory, drained to a husk by parties unknown. Many believe that resentful traditionalists from Seven Trees are responsible. Others claim that Temple fanatics from some defeated city had tracked him down. By that time the war is won, though, and the spiders are not normally given to exacting vengeance for its own sake. Their nature tends towards the pragmatic and constructive, even in defeat.