Medusa's Web by Tim Powers Page A

was mottled brown, but apparently dry, and he lit it and blew a plume of smoke toward the opened window. “So all that horoscope fish-and-bull-and-scorpion stuff doesn’t really apply?”
    â€œI don’t think it ever did, much. The actual plain star charts don’t look at all like the constellations, the pictures you’re supposed to see in them.” She shivered and looked out the window at the green slope of the garden. “But—” She shook her head and stood up. “We should tell somebody—well, you’re the handyman here, now. For a week. You should do something about the mice. If it is mice.”
    â€œBut what?” said Scott. When she gave him a blank look, he went on, “You said they don’t look like the pictures, but—”
    â€œI don’t like to talk about it.”
    Scott shrugged. “Okay.”
    â€œWell,” she began, then went on in a rush: “See, I don’t think it was ever about the stars—not originally, anyway. It was about a big, moving two-dimensional black surface with a lot of little white dots on it. I think the old astrologers connected some of the dots in those goofy ways, insisted on their made-up pictures of bulls and lions and crabs from mythology, to hide the way earlier guys had connected them. Bulls and fishes aren’t naturally two-dimensional, but . . . I think some things are.” She pushed her dark hair back with both hands. “One time I looked at a star chart and tried to connect the dots in different ways, to maybe get more believable pictures.”
    â€œSo what did you—” he began, but stopped when he saw her woebegone expression. “Not . . . more spiders?”
    â€œIt was in my head! It’s been in my head for twenty-three years. I burned the star chart after I saw I had traced a bunch of eight-legged patterns across the stars. None of them were . . . you know, hot, but I think if I’d kept trying, one of them would have been.”
    â€œShit.” Scott drew deeply on his cigarette, and the end glowed. “It hasn’t been in my head, not till I got back to this damned old house, anyway. You think old Babylonians or somebody used star charts to trace your filthy spiders on? How old are these things?”
    Madeline blinked rapidly. “They’re not my filthy spiders, Scott! Who was it looked at one just last night?”
    He took a deep breath and made himself relax. “Well, Ariel, for one,” he said mildly, “if I had to guess, since she looked as racked up as I felt, at dinner.”
    Madeline shrugged. “Anyway, I don’t know how old the things are. Claimayne used to say the Vatican has been trying to suppress them ever since at least the Borgia popes.”
    â€œIt’s weird nobody ever heard of them.”
    â€œWell, obviously a few people have. But they don’t want to call attention to themselves. It’s too likely to be bad attention.” She kicked her valise. “I should go into some other line of work. I saw an ad in the paper for a job that included lighthouse work. I think that would be nice, like in Captain January .”
    Scott thought about that for a moment, then said, “Uh, are you sure it wasn’t light . . . housework?”
    Her face was blank. “Oh. Damn. I bet you’re right.” She sighed. “I wonder if they even have lighthouses anymore. Captain January had to move out of his, and they took Shirley Temple to an orphanage.”
    Scott jumped then at a loud snap, and when he looked at the window, he saw a web of cracks across the glass of the raised frame.
    â€œSomebody threw a rock at our window!” Madeline exclaimed.
    â€œAnd broke the inner pane but not the outer one?” Then Scott stepped between her and the window. “Don’t look at it,” he said sharply.
    He was wearing a long-sleeved flannel shirt, and he gently knocked out the glass with his