Read Fade Away and Radiate for Free Online

environment of the lab. They floated in a finely-engineered
exploratory vessel, the Arachne, where spiders ironically were
strictly forbidden.
    Clea rubbed her eyes and looked at the
spider again. The spider’s presence violated ship protocol, but
Clea’s spider remained her own little secret. The spider glowed a
delicate spun gold, and Clea had spotted her before, dangling from
silken thread over her work. As if she were studying the intricate
data weaving that Clea herself performed in service to their
ship.
    Given their circumstances and the
pressure bearing down on all of the crew, Clea could use a secret
little sign of life. Of home. But the spider had never spoken
before. That made Clea think maybe the pressure had finally taken
its toll on her sanity.
    “ Hello,” Clea finally
whispered, feeling like a fool even as she spoke. Her grandmother,
who had raised her, had taught her to always remember her manners.
Never knew who you would encounter in the vast frontiers of space.
Gramma also taught her to respect the prophecies that come in
dreams, and to remember that magic lurked everywhere, especially
where a person least expected.
    “ You hear me,” the spider
replied. “I can’t believe it.”
    “ It’s just us, you know,”
Clea said. “The crew is up top, not down here in the lab. Maybe I
can hear you because nobody else is around.”
    She spoke softly, but still the spider
swung wildly around in the wake of Clea’s breath. She folded her
lips and waited for the spider to gain her bearings.
    The spider unwound more silk, came
closer. “If you hear me, heed my message. Before it’s too
late.”
    “ You remember Cassandra,
then,” Clea said with a smile. She only meant it as a little joke,
but the spider choked back a sob. “Yes, yes. Poor girl. Her fate
was worse than mine.”
    Clea’s blood ran cold. She sat hidden
inside the hull of the Arachne, out of Moon Port 3, headed for the
copper mines on Mars. The corporation expected a lot out of this
mission, and Clea stood to make a gigantic pile of money should she
succeed in her quest. But this spider…the name of the
ship…
    It all foretold doom, hubris, the wrath
of the gods. Clea gulped and forced herself to keep
calm.
    “ I am listening, goddess,”
Clea whispered, trying to say the words her grandmother would have
said in these circumstances.
    “ I am no goddess, though I
am immortal,” Arachne replied. “I was once a girl like you, clever
and headstrong and maybe a little arrogant. I was never a goddess.
I offended one.”
    Clea leaned back in her lab chair and
sighed. “I am sorry,” she said. “But we are long past your time,
you know. Thousands and thousands of years.”
    “ But still I weave my webs,”
Arachne replied. “Do not be afraid. I cannot catch any butterflies
here. I’m not here to make you feel my sting. But I can warn you,
that someone weaves a web to capture you.”
    Clea glanced around the lab, the
machinery humming. “Capture me? Who?”
    The spider lowered down to the computer
screen, touched the face of the monitor with a gentle swipe of her
front legs. The computer reacted to that touch, shifted to a face
that Clea knew intimately.
    Her teacher. Her mentor. The woman she
trusted with her fortunes and her life.
    “ No,” Clea finally managed
to stammer out. “Not Elena. I owe her everything, my career, my
position at the Institute, this particular job. I’m sorry, you must
be wrong.”
    The spider actually shrugged. Her laugh
sounded like a little chuff of static. “I did not realize I would
offend Athena so intensely. I presumed that she would take my
triumphs as her own. I presumed that I occupied the same exalted
level as my teacher, the Great Weaver. Do not presume.”
    Clea stared at the image of Dr.Elena
Shivath, and remembered. The long years of apprenticeship, the many
papers and awards they had won together, the letters of
recommendation. “I don’t presume, Arachne. To the contrary, I
appreciate,