"Colin Wilson - Spider World 01 - The Desert" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilson Colin)

the same moment, he realised that he was kneeling in the shade of the immense organ-pipe cactus, whose
fluted trunk stretched up seventy feet above his head. Against the dark western landscape, with its pools
of shadow, his brown body must have been totally invisible. Only the reflex of terror could betray him.
And this was difficult to control as the balloon swept towards him, as if the creature inside had marked
him for its prey. He thought of the others, lying below in the burrow, and prayed that they were fast
asleep. Then the balloon was bearing down on him, and for the first time in his life, he experienced that
enormous sense of menace transmitted by hunting spiders. It was as though a hostile willpower was
sweeping the desert like a searchlight beam, probing every area of shadow with an almost tangible force,
trying to provoke a reflex of terror that would rise towards it like a scream. Niall deliberately averted his
eyes to the cup of the waru, and tried to make his mind as still as the clear water. It was then that he
experienced the odd sensation of being aware of the soul of the waru, the passive vegetable soul whose
only purpose was to drink, absorb sunlight, and stay alive. In that same moment, he was also aware of
the prouder soul of the giant cactuses, soaring above him like a challenge to the sky. The ground itself
seemed to become transparent so that he could sense the presence of his family, his parents and his
brother and two sisters, all lying fast asleep, although his father stirred as the beam of malevolent will
swept across him.
A few seconds later, it was gone; the balloon was already a quarter of a mile away across the
desert, moving towards the great inland plateau on the horizon. The will-force was sweeping the desert
ahead of it, and he could feel its presence as clearly as if it were a beam of light. He sat perfectly still,
watching the balloon dwindle into the distance and observing with interest that it swerved aside to avoid a
needle-like pinnacle of rock.
When it was gone he hurried back to the burrow, moving swiftly and silently as he had been
taught since childhood. His entrance awakened his father, who leapt instantly into a crouching position,
his right hand closing on a bone dagger. As he recognised Niall, he also sensed there was something
wrong.
"What is it?"
Niall whispered: "A spider balloon."
"Where?"
"It's gone now."
"Did it see you?"
"I don't think so."
Ulf allowed his tension to escape in a long breath. He climbed up to the entrance, listened for a
moment, and peered out. The sun was now above the horizon, and the sky was a cloudless blue still
tinged with white.
His elder brother, Veig, spoke out of the darkness. "What is it?"
"They're hunting," Ulf said.
There was no need for Veig to ask what he meant. "They", used in that tone of voice, could only
mean the death spiders. And when the death spiders were hunting, it was the most serious thing that
could happen to this small band of human beings who spent most of their lives underground. For as far
back as they could remember, men had been hunted: by scorpions, by tiger beetles, by striped scarabs
and saga insects -- but most of all, by the death spiders. The beetles and the mosquitoes were natural
enemies; sometimes, they could be killed. But the spiders, who were the lords of the earth, were
unconquerable. To kill a spider was to invite appalling revenge. When Niall's great-grandfather, Jomar,
had been a slave of the spiders, he had seen what happened to a small colony of humans who killed a
spider. An army of thousands was mobilised to hunt them. A line of spiders more than ten miles long
marched across the desert, with hundreds of balloon spiders overhead. When the human beings were
finally captured -- about thirty of them, including children -- they were brought back to the city of the
Death Lord, paraded before the whole populace, and then ritually injected with a nerve poison that
brought paralysis. The victims remained fully conscious, yet were unable to move anything but their eyes
and eyelids. After that they were slowly eaten, the whole process taking a matter of days; the leader