9780345460738: The Web
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0345460731 ISBN 13: 9780345460738
Verlag: Ballantine Books, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

Psychologist Alex Delaware receives an all-expenses-paid trip to the South Pacific in return for helping Dr. Moreland organize some paperwork, but secretive houseguests, midnight visitors, and Dr. Moreland's elusive personality soon reveal a shocking truth. Reprint.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jonathan Kellerman is one of the world’s most popular authors. He has brought his expertise as a clinical psychologist to more than thirty bestselling crime novels, including the Alex Delaware series, The Butcher’s Theater, Billy Straight, The Conspiracy Club, Twisted, and True Detectives. With his wife, the novelist Faye Kellerman, he co-authored the bestsellers Double Homicide and Capital Crimes. He is the author of numerous essays, short stories, scientific articles, two children’s books, and three volumes of psychology, including Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children, as well as the lavishly illustrated With Strings Attached: The Art and Beauty of Vintage Guitars. He has won the Goldwyn, Edgar, and Anthony awards and has been nominated for a Shamus Award. Jonathan and Faye Kellerman live in California, New Mexico, and New York. Their four children include the novelists Jesse Kellerman and Aliza Kellerman.

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He led us past the first two rows and stopped at the third.  "Some sort of classification system would have been clever, but I know where everyone is and I'm the one who feeds them."

Turning left, he stopped at a dark tank.  Inside was a floor of mulch and leaves, above it a tangle of bare branches.  Nothing else that I could see.

He pulled something out of his pocket and held it between his fingers.  A pellet, not unlike Spike's kibble.

The wire lid was clamped; he loosened it and pushed, exposing a comer. Inserting two fingers, he dangled the pellet.

At first, nothing happened.  Then, quicker than I believed possible, the mulch heaved, as if in the grip of a tiny earthquake, and something shot up.

A second later, the food was gone.

Robin pressed herself against me.

Moreland hadn't moved.  Whatever had taken the pellet had disappeared.

"Australian garden wolf," said Moreland, securing the top.  "Cousin of your Italian friend.  Like tarantula, they burrow and wait."

"Looks as if you know what it likes," said Robin.  I heard the difference in her voice, but a stranger might not have.

"What she likes--this one's quite the lady--is animal protein.  Preferably in liquid form.  Spiders always liquefy their food.  I combine insects, worms, mice, whatever, and create a broth that I freeze and defrost.  This is the same stuff, compressed and freeze-dried.  I did it to see if they'd adapt to solids. Luckily, many of them did."

He smiled.  "Strange avocation for a vegetarian, right? But what's the choice? She's my responsibility....Come with me, perhaps we can bring back some memories."

He opened another aquarium at the end of the row, but this time he shoved his arm in, drew out something, and placed it on his forearm.  One of the vertical bulbs was close enough to highlight its forrn on his pale flesh.  A spider, dark, hairy, just over an inch long.  It crawled slowly up toward his shoulder.

"Is that what your mother found, dear?"

Robin licked her lips.  "Yes."

"Her name is Gina." To the spider, now at his collar: "Good evening, senora." Then to Robin: "Would you like to hold her, dear?"

"I guess."

"A new friend, Gina." As if understanding, the spider stopped.  Moreland lifted it tenderly and placed it in Robin's palm.

It didn't budge, then it lifted its head and seemed to study her.  Its mouth moved, an eerie lipsynch.

"You're cute, Gina."

"We can send one just like her to your mother," I said.  "For old time's sake."

She laughed and the spider stopped again.  Then, moving with mechanical precision, it walked to the edge of her palm- and peered over the edge.

"Nothing down there but floor," said Robin.  "Guess you'd like to go back to Daddy."

Moreland removed it, stroked its belly, placed it back in its home, walked on.

Pulling out his doctors' penlight, he pointed out specimens, illuminated details.

Colorless spiders the size of ants.  Spiders that looked like ants.  A delicate green thing with translucent, lime-colored legs.  A sticklike Australian hygropoda.  ("Marvel of energy conservation.  The slender build prevents it from overheating.") A huge-fanged arachnid whose brick-red carapace and lemon-yellow abdomen were so vivid they resembled costume jewelry. A Bomean jumper whose big black eyes and hairy face gave it the look of a wise old man.

"Look at this," he said.  "I'm sure you've never seen a web like this."

Pointing to a zigzag construction, like crimped paper.

"Argiope, an orb spinner.  Custom-tailored to attract the bee it loves to eat.  That central 'X' reflects ultraviolet light in a manner that brings the bees to it.  All webs are highly specific, with incredible tensile strength.  Many use several types of silk; many are pigmented with an eye toward particular prey.  Most are modified daily to adapt to varying circumstances.  Some are used as mating beds.  All in all, a beautiful deceit."

His hands flew and his head bobbed.  With each sentence, he grew more animated. I knew I was anthropomorphizing, but the creatures seemed excited, too.  Moving more, emerging from the shadows to show themselves, wiggling and .  .  . waving?

Not the panic I'd heard before.  Smooth, almost leisurely motions.  A dance of mutual interest?

".  .  .  why I concentrate on predators," Moreland was saying.  "Why I'm so concerned with keeping them fit and well fed."

A brilliant pink, crablike thing rested atop his bony hand.  "Of course, natural predation is nothing new.  Back in nineteen twenty-five, levuana moths threatened the entire coconut crop on Fiji.  Tachinid parasites were brought in and they did the job beautifully.  The following year, a particularly voracious destructor scale was done in by the coccinellid beetle. And I'm sure you know gardeners have used ladybugs on aphids for years.  I breed them to protect my citrus trees, as a matter of fact." He pointed to an aquarium that seemed to be red carpeted.  A finger against the glass made the carpet move.  Thousands of miniature Volkswagens, a ladybug traffic jam.  "So simple, so practical.  But the key is keeping them nutritionally robust."

We moved further up the row and he stopped and breathed deeply.  "If it weren't for public prejudice, this beauty and her compatriots could be trained to clear homes of rats."

Shining the penlight into a dark tank, he revealed something half covered by leaves.

It crawled out slowly and my stomach lurched.

Three inches wide and more than twice that length, legs as thick as pencils, hairs as coarse as boar bristle.  It remained inert as the light washed over it.  Then it opened its mouth wide--yawning?--and stroked the orifice with clawlike pincers.

As Moreland undid the mesh I found myself stepping back.  In went his hand; another pellet dangled.

Unlike the Australian wolf, this one took the food lazily, almost coyly.

"This is Emma and she's spoiled." One of the spider's legs nudged his finger, rubbing it.  "This is the tarantula of B-movies, but she's really a Grammostola, from the Amazon.  In her natural habitat, she eats small birds, lizards, mice, even venomous snakes, which she immobilizes, then crushes.  Can you see the advantages for pest control?"

"Why not use her own venom?" I said.

"Most spider venom can't do harm except to very small prey.  You can be sure spoiled Madame Emma wouldn't have the patience to wait for the toxin to take effect.  But despite her apparent indolence, she's quite an impatient lady when she gets hungry.  All wolves are; they got their name because they chase their prey down.  I must confess they're my favorite.  So bright.  They quickly recognize individuals.  And they respond to kindness.  All...

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Verlag
Ballantine Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2003
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0345460731
ISBN 13 
9780345460738
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
448
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Buchpark GmbH
gpsr@buchpark.de

Krügerweg 1
Trebbin
Brandenburg
14959
Deutschland

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