Spider Legs by Piers Anthony Read Free Book Online

remained on the fish, not on her. “Can't you raise enough compassion to let her imagine, before she dies, that—”
    “Compassion!” she snapped. She tried to hang on, but knew that she was losing control. She didn't want to make this scene. So she performed an evasive maneuver. “Do you know how many species are killed each year by humans?” Martha asked him.
    The big man looked away from a tank of neon tetras and back at Martha. “No,” he said, with a slightly quizzical expression on his face. She knew he was momentarily confused by her tack, not certain what she was up to, and no more eager for a confrontation than she was.
    She started to lecture him. “Although it's probably impossible to know how many are killed with any accuracy, because no one knows how many species inhabit the Earth, it is clear that each year two percent of the world's rain forests are destroyed, and at this rate they will be gone in 50 years.” Martha began to ramble a bit, unconcerned with the fact that her brother listened politely but neither cared nor fully understood what she was trying to say.
    Since adolescence Martha had had little regard for ordinary folk, but much regard for other creatures of the planet. She saw humans overrunning the world, blithely extirpating thousands of other species, promising to render just about every other creatureextinct in the next fifty years before her fellow humans finally extinguished themselves in a final orgy of pollutive destruction.
    “Oh, the environment,” Elmo said, recognizing the theme. “That's not—”
    “Humans are destroying the planet,” she yelled at him, as if he were personally responsible. “They pollute. They overpopulate their land.”
    “Look, Martha, we've long since agreed to disagree on this. Okay, so you feel for the animals. So do I. Who doesn't? But I believe in the wise use of the resources of the world—”
    “Wise use! That's an obscenity! That's the buzzword for unfettered exploitation. It's the obliteration of every species except our own.”
    He shook his head. “There may be some that deserve to be obliterated, such as the malaria carrying mosquito or the parasitic blowfly. However—”
    “Deserve it?” she demanded. “What can you be thinking of? Nothing deserves extinction!”
    But Elmo's mouth tightened. She knew he thought she was a nut on this subject. “Something does.” He said no more.
    That aggravated her further. “Animal species are disappearing due to habitat destruction, pollution, and the introduction of exotic species into natural environments where they don't belong. And you think that's all right? Elmo, do you know what an exotic species is?”
    “Of course. But I don't care to—”
    “Didn't think so. Know how many species could be extinct in the next fifty years?” Elmo started to move away, reminding her of a rabbit with part of its nervous system removed, despite his bulk. Yet he wasn't quite ready to leave. He had never been a quitter; she could say that much for him. He wandered down the rows of tanks, as if searching for a few small fish for his own fish collection. She knew he was actually searching for some way to convince her to come to see their mother. She had to head that off.

    “We just got a shipment of beautiful discus fish. Could I interest you in a few?”
    “No thank you,” he replied, troubled. “Martha—”
    “Did you know that about twenty percent of the world's freshwater fish species are in dangerous decline?” Elmo looked back and listened. His eyes grew wide in frustration. She knew she was treating him like an idiot, considering that he was a local fishery officer who probably had such statistics memorized as a matter of business. But she couldn't stop.
    Elmo looked as if he were about to bring up the matter of their mother again.
    “That's why I buy my fish only from fish farms so that the natural lakes are not interfered with,” Martha said, more forcefully than the subject