There was a miraculous hour when somehow his medication was perfectly balanced, and he felt almost normal, and in this time he cherished Ithaca's presence. He told her he wanted her to marry again and she accepted this unintentional but necessary torture with the calmness he had come to expect and rely on; then he remembered having told her several times before.

"Why worry about it?" she asked quietly. "We'll probably all be gone soon anyway."

Harry shook his head as if disagreeing, but she looked at him with her "Oh, come on" look, one eyebrow arched, and he said, "I'd like to see that. What a show that'll be, if it comes."

"If?" Ithaca smiled ironically. "You're my favorite pessimist. Now you sound hopeful."

"Just barely hopeful," Harry said.

"What did Arthur tell you?"

"Never try to hide anything from my woman." Harry took a moment to remember. "He said the planet is covered by little spiders now."

Ithaca leaned forward. "What?"

"The cavalry is here, but it's probably come too late."

She shook her head, not understanding.

"He showed one to me. A little robot. They're harvesting the Earth before it goes. Trying to save a little breeding population, I'd guess. Like a zoo expedition. And they're destroying the machines that are doing this to us."

"Arthur told you all this?"

He nodded. "I thought he was nuts, then he showed me one of the spiders. He seemed . . . not happy, but he seemed to know he was doing something useful. He thought maybe they were controlling his thoughts, but he said he didn't mind, and he couldn't be . . ." Harry's weakness came on him and he closed his eyes for several minutes. "He said they knew what was best, probably."

Ithaca studied his face closely, leaning forward. "I saw one," she said softly. "I think I did. In the garden."

"One what? Spider?"

"Silver." She held up her open hand. "Big as this. It ran away before I could see it clearly, but when I looked—it had been on the trunk of the old live oak— there were cuts through the bark, knife cuts. I thought I was seeing things, or just mistaken. Harry, should we tell people?"

"What good?" he asked. His thoughts were blurring again, so he said no more and only held her hand lightly in his.

Ithaca called the Gordon house the next evening and received no answer. The last part of Harry had died, finally, at eleven in the morning.

Chapter 53

53

March 10

The Glomar Discoverer, its engines in reverse against a steady surface current and a constant twelve-knot southwesterly wind, drifted at the edge of a vast sea of lime-green and gray and white foam. The air was filled with a constant churning roar. High overhead, peculiar clouds were forming—swirling bands, curving upward as if along the inside of a funnel.