Medusa's Web by Tim Powers Page B

cousins may be the biggest termites of all.”
    â€œBecause they looked at that one of your mother’s?”
    â€œExactly. That’s the big one, and I think that’s the one that’s really crumbling our local chronology. That’s neat, I must say,” he added, and paused to rummage in the bedside table drawer for a minute. “Damn. Do you have a pen? No? Well, remind me of ‘crumbling our local chronology,’ will you?”
    â€œIt’s not iambic.”
    â€œIt’ll do as anapest. And I think our cousins, or one of them, will look at the big spider again, soon, and that is—has been, will be—the stress that’s really fragmented everything here. Everywhen.”
    â€œLet’s make them leave. I never wanted them here again in the first place. Can’t we make them leave?”
    â€œNo. Can’t violate the terms of my mother’s provisional will until it’s disallowed. And what would that change? It doesn’t have to be one of them that looks at the Medusa spider next time. If it happens in this house, then all this . . . chronological erosion will have been caused no matter who it happens to be that looks at it. And I don’t think we’d be having these incidents unless somebody is going to look at it here.”
    Claimayne shrugged, and it occurred to Ariel that her cousin’s airy detachment was a pose.
    â€œ You want it,” she said. “You want to be the one. Why? Why did your mother save it without looking at it? Retirement check? What the hell is it?”
    Another boom from the roof rattled the window behind the velvet curtains. Ariel stepped sideways to keep her balance.
    Claimayne had winced at the sound, and his pale fists clenched on the bedspread. “There she goes again,” he said quietly. “Does it occur to any of you that my mother died last week? And it was only four days ago that we buried her? That was my mother; are you sure you’re all quite clear on that?”
    Ariel bit her lip but made herself go on: “Will it—I’m sorry—will the Medusa spider bring her back?” For a moment she thought of her own parents, bohemian amateur mycologists who had died from eating misidentified Amanita phalloides mushrooms in a salad; seven-year-old Ariel and fifteen-year-old Claimayne had been present, but neither one had liked mushrooms.
    â€œCan it,” she said, “do that?”
    Claimayne laughed now, but not pleasantly. “Bring her back . Yes. Me too, ideally. As opposed to intolerable forward .” He slumped against the cushion and closed his eyes. “I don’t think I’m destined to outlive her by very long. So—backward it is, as richly as possible.”
    â€œWhat do you mean? Are you sick?”
    He gestured toward his unnaturally smooth face and said, “I’m still full of youth, obviously—ill gotten though it may arguably be. But there have been—chest pains, angina! Shortness of breath, pains in my jaw and arm. Trifles of that nature.” He coughed. “And I don’t get overlaps from my future anymore. I look at spiders, intending to look at them again when I’m fifty, sixty, seventy—and I get no after-visions at all, not even hallucinations. I’ve never had a flashback from myself much older than I am right now. You’d think I’d have got through once .”
    Ariel nodded, and then was a little surprised to find that she felt no sorrow or alarm at all at the prospect of Claimayne’s death. I should, she told herself. I should be at least as nostalgically saddened as I’d be if . . . oh, if the Medusa mosaic wall were to fall down in the next rain. I grew up with these things, after all, ugly though they may be.
    Why don’t I mind? she asked herself.
    She summoned up a frown and a tone of concern. “But the clogging effect—after a while, and you’ve definitely been at it for a