Chapter Eight

The wolf spider was perky and sharp in a black coat with white stripes and neat dots, like an aristocrat in a historical holovid dressed for a night on the town. Jin could clearly count all eight eyes in its fierce little face, two bright black buttons looking back at him, crowned by four more above, and another on each side of its head. Beneath its-no, beneath her abdomen clung a bundle of fine white fluff, like a tiny cotton ball-an egg case? Was she going to be a mama spider? Prone on the floor of the musty garden shed, Jin stiffened with excitement, then drew slowly backwards, careful not to startle her into scuttling into the cracks in the floor or walls before he could find something to capture her in. She was a good size for her breed, over three centimeters, quite as long and wide as the end joint of Jin's thumb, so she was certainly a grownup spider. She seemed to wait patiently for him.

Jin stared around the shed in some frustration. It was taking a lot longer to walk from his aunt and uncle's outlying northwest suburb to the near south side of the city than he had imagined. It was partly from Mina lagging and complaining as soon as she'd grown tired, just as Jin had expected, but mostly he was afraid he'd got turned around and lost during their long trudge last night. Streets curved unexpectedly, mixing him up, and the towers of the city center, glimpsed now and then from a hill or clear space, looked much the same from any direction.

This shelter had been a splendid find, early this morning. They'd stopped to buy half-liters of milk in a corner store of a neighborhoody area, then spent the next few blocks looking for a place to hide out during school hours. One house had a For Sale sign out front, and a peek through the windows revealed it cleared of furniture and empty of people, safe. It had been locked up tight, but the door to the shed around back proved unlatched. The garden was high-walled and full of sheltering bushes and trees, good to hide them from prying busybodies. Better yet, they'd found an outdoor spigot with the water still turned on. Mina's lunch bars were holding out, if getting boring, but finding water had been more of a problem, though during the long march yesterday they'd twice lucked out with city parks that offered not only drinking fountains, but bathrooms. Mina had proved very cranky about going behind a bush, even in the concealing dark.

The shelves of this shed had been cleared of likely containers, unfortunately, as well as of garden tools except for one bent and rusty trowel. Jin's eye fell on his sleeping sister, curled up with her jacket folded under her head, her zippered yellow backpack beside her, decorated with smiling but anatomically mis-drawn bees. He squatted down and began rooting through it. Ah, there!

"Hey!" mumbled Mina, sitting up and yawning. Her sleep-pale face was marked with creases from her makeshift pillow, and her hair hung every which way. What was it about sleeping in the daytime that made people so hot and rumpled? "Are you stealing my money?"

Jim popped open the clear plastic box she kept her coins in and dumped the contents back into the pack. "No! I just need the box."

"What for?" asked Mina, enduring this rummage, but at least not theft, of her possessions with no more than a frown.

"Spider house."

"Eew! I don't like spiders. Their webs stick in your mouth."

"She's a wolf spider. They don't spin webs."

"Oh." Mina blinked, considering this. She didn't look altogether convinced, but at least she didn't set up any stupid shrieking. She did keep her distance till Jin had snuck up on and captured his prey. But once the lady spider was safe behind the transparent barrier, Mina was at least willing to take a closer look, as Jin pointed out the manifold, if miniature, splendors of fur and eyes and mandibles, and the promising egg case.

"She really does have eight eyes!" said Mina, crossing her own as if trying to imagine the spider's view of her. Emboldened by her brother's example, she tapped on the plastic lid.

"Hey, don't. You'll scare her."

"Will she be able to breathe in there?" asked Mina.

Jin regarded the box in new doubt. It was certainly secure, but it did seem rather airtight. The wolf spider scratched futilely at the walls of her prison with fine claws. "For a while, anyway."

"What's her name?"

"I haven't named her yet."

"She needs a name."

Jin nodded full agreement. All right, sometimes Mina could be sensible. It was said there were thousands of wolf spider species back on old Earth, but the Kibou terraformers, stingily, had only imported half a dozen or so for their new ecosystem. But with no comlink here, he couldn't look up his new pet's real scientific name. He hoped it would turn out to be something as sophisticated as the spider herself.

"You could call her Spinner. Except you said she doesn't spin. Wolfie?"

"Sounds like a boy's name," Jin objected. "It ought to be a lady's name, to fit her. Something from old Earth."

Mina scowled in thought a moment, then brightened. "Lady Murasaki! That's the oldest lady's name I know of."

Jin, about to pooh-pooh her idea in brotherly reflex, paused. He eyed his spider. The name did fit. "All right."

Mina grinned in triumph. "What does she eat?"

"Littler bugs. I should catch her some in the garden before we leave. I'm not sure how much longer it will take us to get, um. Home."

Growing more interested after all this, Mina said, "Can I help feed her?"

"Sure."

Mina stretched, and, perhaps reminded of food, dug in her pillaged backpack for another lunch bar. "Maybe we better split this. To make them last."

"Good idea," Jin admitted. He set the spider box aside and went out to rinse and fill their milk bottles with water from the garden spigot.

When he slipped back inside the shed, closing the door with a creak, Mina asked, "What time is it out there?"

"I'm not sure. Afternoon, anyway."

"Do you think school's out yet? Can we go on the streets again?"

"Pretty soon."

They divided the lunch bar and the water.

"Maybe you should put Lady Murasaki in one of our water bottles, instead," said Mina, draining hers and holding it up to the light falling through the shed's one grimy window. "We could poke breath-holes through it."

"I was going to rinse those out and fill them up with water to take with us. You know how you were yammering you were so hot and thirsty yesterday afternoon."

"My feet were so sweaty inside my shoes," Mina said. "They felt nasty." She looked up at him, still a bit puffy-eyed from their uncomfortable day's sleep. "How much longer is it going to take to get to your place?"

"Hard to say." Jin shrugged uneasily. "I've been gone way longer than I'd planned. I sure hope Miles-san is taking care of all my creatures."

"That's your galactic friend, right?"

During their winding journey, the past day and a half, Jin had slowly unburdened himself of what he suspected were far too many of his secrets to Mina, partly to shut up her incessant questions, mostly because, well, he hadn't had any other kids to talk to for so long.

"Yah."

Jin's own abysmal failure as a courier troubled his mind. Would Miles-san believe Jin hadn't stolen his money? How was he getting along with Gyre? You had to be gentle but firm with the bird. The chickens were easier, except for the part about climbing down and carrying them back up the ladder or the stairs when they fluttered over the parapet. With that cane, could Miles-san manage both an indignant chicken and the stairs?

"Does Miles-san have any children?" Mina asked.

Jin frowned. "He didn't say. He's pretty old-thirty-something, he said. But he's kind of funny-looking. I don't know if he could get a girl." Once the drug effects had worn off Miles-san had been a nice enough fellow, with that face where smiles seemed at home. Plus, he had seemed to understand Jin's creatures, which made him quite smart, for a grownup. Jin wasn't sure whether to wish him a short, understanding bride, or not.