The flesh in the furnace

he took his lunch alone, in an Italian automat.
        
        When, at suppertime, he could still find no puppets, he began to worry. Suppose something had happened to them and he was now alone, forever? Alone in this huge place with its moving stairs and softly murmuring maintenance robots. He forced himself to cling to at least a small degree of calm. If something had happened to the puppets, he need only re-create them in the Furnace.
        In Belina's rooms, he found the Furnace. It appeared to be undamaged, the Olmescian amoeba drawn to the rear where it trembled slightly. He wondered if he should forge a puppet to determine if the machine worked properly, then rejected such an idea. If, the little people were in some kind of danger, he should be on his way to find them not wasting his time here at these controls.
        He searched the familiar parts of the city. The puppets could not be more than a thousand yards from the Furnace. Yet there were so many levels to the city that three thousand feet could encompass a great deal of actual space. By three in the morning, he had begun to remember some of the places he was searching. He knew he had covered every nook and cranny and that he would not find them here.
        He returned to his own room to think.
        He felt miserable. After all, he was the big one here, the full-grown man. It was his job to see they came to no harm. And now they were gone.
        While he was sitting there, the first of the spiders came through the grill over the air-conditioning duct. It was black with white markings, as large as a thumbnail. It hung there, its legs kicking, then slowly came down the light wooden paneling toward the floor.
        Sebastian did not see it.
        By the time it was halfway down the paneling, three other spiders followed it. They were all brown and twice as large as the first. They were intent, actually, upon attacking the first and devouring it. But the effect was of four spiders trying to reach the idiot.
        He could not see them because they blended so well with the color of the wood panels.
        What would Pertos have done? Sebastian wondered. He was sure the puppet master would not have sat here, elbows propped on his knees, undecided. And yet, what was there to do but wait?
        The carpet in the room was beige, almost white.
        The black spider touched it, hesitated. Behind it, the three large brown spiders came after it, running silently along the wood. The black spider skittered into the beige fibers, stumbled over them, mastered their pattern and rushed across the room.
        Sebastian stood up. He did not know where he was going, but he knew he couldn't just bide his time.
        The three brown spiders reached the carpet and started after their black prey. Because they were so much larger, they had less trouble with the fibers and made better time, closing the gap.
        It was then that Sebastian saw the spider parade and froze where he stood, unable-for a long moment-even to draw a breath.
        He had been thinking that Pertos would know what to do about the missing puppets, and he had been wishing that Pertos was here now to solve the current problem. But he had forgotten why Pertos was absent. Pertos was dead and had been killed by his assistant.
        And now, in answer to the foolish wish silently issued seconds ago, Pertos had returned.
        And he had brought three friends to help him against the idiot. Three friends: Jenny, Alvon Rudi and Ben Samuels The black spider ran for the cover of the idiot's boot, only inches from him. Its long, wiry legs pumped in and out, up and down, flailed at the carpet and propelled it onward.
        "No!" he whispered.
        He seemed to hear a giggling noise nearby. He looked around but could not see anyone.
        The spider came closer.
        Sebastian turned and ran.
        It seemed to require an eternity for him to open the door into the corridor. The knob weighed at least a thousand pounds and turned as if it had never been oiled. The door itself weighed more than a ton as he shouldered it open. When he was in the hall at last, the door seemed to cling to him as if it were alive and had chosen to side with the spiders. Either his hand would not leave the knob-or could not.
        When he had freed himself and run twenty feet down the hall, he remembered that he should have shut the door to prevent them from following