"Colin Wilson - Spiderworld 05 - The Magician" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilson Colin)

same time, another faint movement made him aware that he was looking at a badly
injured spider.
He hurried back down the stairs, holding the balustrade because the snow on his
shoes made the marble treacherous. For a moment he was tempted to return to his room
to put on warmer clothes; but his sense of urgency overruled the discomfort. He pulled
back the bar that locked the main door, and tramped out into the deep snow, ignoring the
cold wetness that ran down inside his shoes. The snow had turned the steps into a smooth
ramp, so that he had to tread with extreme care; at one point he fell and plunged in up to
his elbows. But as he struggled to his feet and waded unevenly across the square,
choosing a route where the snow lay thin, his mind was obsessed by a single problem:
how a death spider could have met with serious injury in such a wide open space.
As he approached, the spider saw him, and it made a convulsive attempt to rise;
but its jointed legs were not strong enough, and buckled under its weight. The black,
hairy body was covered in snow; evidently it had been lying there for some time. Niall
found this puzzling; spiders are telepathic, and can send an instant distress call to others
of their kind. And since this one lay within a few hundred yards of the headquarters of the
ruling directorate, on the far side of the square, its presence should have been sensed the
moment it was injured.
When he came close enough to see the far side of its body he saw why it had been
unable to rise. Three of its legs had been smashed to a pulp; the bottom joint of one of
them, with its black claw, was almost completely detached. A trail of blood smears,
partly obliterated by snow, showed that the spider had dragged itself for about fifty feet
before it collapsed. It was obviously dying.
"What happened to you?" Niall spoke the words aloud, but knew that his meaning
would be carried directly to the spider's brain.
The reply that sounded inside his chest made him wince; it was a blur of pain, and
the directness of the communication made Niall experience its misery and exhaustion, so
that he himself felt drained and nauseated. It was impossible to distinguish what the
spider was saying, but the "voice" was one that Niall instantly recognized. It was Skorbo,
the captain of the guard. Now Niall understood why its communication was an
incomprehensible chaos of feeling. The ability to communicate with human beings was a
difficult art -- the equivalent of a human being learning to read. In spider terms Skorbo
was an illiterate peasant, a creature whose chief value to his masters was a certain brutal
strength and the ability to dominate others. Niall had always found him repellent; yet now
that Skorbo was injured and dying, he felt overwhelmed with pity.
He said: "I'll go and get help."
It was impossible to hurry through the snow; each step plunged him in up to the
knee, and if he tried to withdraw the foot too quickly, he left his shoe behind. To avoid
discouragement, he deliberately averted his eyes from the expanse of snow that stretched
in front of him, and treated each step as an individual effort. It was a pleasant surprise to
find himself suddenly at the foot of the steps in front of the headquarters building. Two
wolf spiders would normally have been on guard outside its great double doors; the cold
had evidently driven them inside. Niall beat on the door with his fists, not because it was
locked, but because he knew he would risk being attacked if he rushed in without
warning. There was a movement inside and the door opened; Niall found himself looking
up into the enormous black eyes of a brown wolf spider, whose height was at least two
feet greater than his own. The chelicerae (or pincers) were extended, so he could see the
folded fangs. A moment later, the spider recognized him, and sank down in a gesture of
homage, lowering its belly to the floor.
Niall turned and pointed. "Quick. Skorbo has been injured. Go and fetch him."