Spider Legs by Piers Anthony Read Free Book Online Page A

warranted.
    “Someone's coming,” he said, relieved.
    Martha glanced at the door. “That's only Lisa. She works for me.”
    Evidently giving up his mission here as a bad job, Elmo moved for the door, passing Lisa, who gave him a quick smile. Lisa thought he was a customer, and it was part of her job description to smile winningly at customers. Sometimes it made a difference in a sale, for she was a pretty girl. Of course the effort was wasted in this instance, but Martha wouldn't tell her that; she was glad he was going.
    Yet her emotions were mixed as she heard the door close after him. She always fought with Elmo, and he fought with her. But they were two of a kind, for all that, and he was perhaps the one human being she cared for. Naturally she wouldn't tell him that. If only he weren't such a straightlaced conventional man. Wise use, indeed! Elmo had a fine brain, but it remained firmly in human-chauvinist channels. If only he had seen and learned what she had.
    For Martha had observed, firsthand, the extinction of many species of freshwater fish in Africa and Asia, the decline in bird populations in the United States, and the rapid disappearance of the Brazilian rain forests by cutting and burning. She hadwatched the Brazilian fires spew out millions of tons of carbon dioxide and monoxide into the air. She had clenched her fists when she had seen the great plumes traveling eastward across the Atlantic. The forests were being destroyed at the rate of a football field every second, or the size of Florida every year. Those weren't mere trees; they were a vital component of the world's system of atmospheric restoration. The rainfall pattern was changing, bringing more deserts, and the globe was warming. When it reached a certain unknown trigger point there could be a drastic change in climate, causing agricultural havoc on land and turmoil in the seas. It had happened before, from natural causes; this time it would be unnatural. The extinction of the dinosaurs had been an extreme example, though not the most extreme.
    Her most recent trip to Cebu in the Philippines had pushed Martha over the edge. When the forest was completely logged, she found that nine out of ten bird species unique to the island were made extinct. She considered incidents like this as miniature holocausts. Like a hemorrhaging of the earth. Harvard zoologist Edward O. Wilson, her mentor and hero, estimated that the number of rain forest species doomed each year was 27,000. Each day it was 77, and each hour 3. Human actions had increased extinction between one thousand and ten thousand times over its normal background level in the rain forest.
    Martha was continually depressed by the fact that the richest nations presided over the smallest and least interesting biotas, while poorest nations with exploding populations and little scientific knowledge had the largest number of animal species and incredibly intricate, vast ecosystems. If only she could make Elmo see, recruit him to her Earth-saving mission. He was just about the only person she could trust, if he were on her side. But he wasn't. He wasn't against her, exactly; he was just one of the apathetic throng who chose to believe that there wasn't a looming crisis. The absolute fool!
    Now, belatedly, it occurred to her that if she had been moreaccommodating in the matter of their mother, her brother might have been more receptive to her own interests. She had missed a golden opportunity. Because she was just as pigheaded as he was. What a pity.

CHAPTER 8
    Nathan
    S T. JOHN'S, THE capital of Newfoundland, was a few miles south of Bonavista Bay. It was a port, a commercial and cultural center, and it served a population of 170,000. After Elmo and Nathan reported the grisly death on the schooner Phantom to the St. John's police, Elmo had the film in the camera developed.
    Nathan paced back and forth around a large oak table in the corner of a mahogany-paneled police conference room. Elmo sat on a