by D Des Anges
As one they leapt away from him.
“Our friends here are curious about the world and inventions of mankind,” El Alacrán said. “You must understand, we have had little contact with your kind for centuries and everyone is in the dark as to your capabilities.”
He left a moment for this to sink in, and before he could finish with including the physical, the fair male spoke.
“How are you doing that? Talking, I mean.
“It’s very complicated,” El Alacrán said impatiently, “I don’t fully understand it, and it involves… internal origami… that is probably the best way for you to understand it. And there is a parasite.”
“Ah, well,” said the dark male in unfriendly tones that did not appear to be directed at El Alacrán. “Our friend here has a parasite within him also. Does yours control you?”
“No,” said El Alacrán, mystified, “I control it.”
“Benjon’s parasite has the ownership of his mind,” said the dark female. “If our eight-legged keepers wish only for an exchange of knowledge we are happy to oblige them in return for safe passage home – I am an engineer, I can provide them with many useful insights into—”
“Shh,” said the dark male, “do you really want them to—”
“Their intent,” El Alacrán said, interrupting the conversation, “is to derive information via other means. A little more … hands-on, you men would say.”
“He means they want to cut us up and look at our inside bits,” said the fair male, “which we would rather avoid. Is there some way to avoid this fate?”
El Alacrán said, “My General controls the use of one of the few boats the arthropod lands have. Accompany me to my home faction, and you shall be returned to whichever dominion of Albion is yours.”
They did not look impressed. Alone, the fair male seemed content enough with this.
“And how should we trust you not to simply imprison us to the same end?” asked the dark woman.
“My faction has no interest in the affairs of mankind,” said El Alacrán, who was still on his return journey from a twelvemonth of intensive information-gathering on every aspect of the human kingdoms that he had been able to glean. “We are too busy fighting the factions to the south, as we have been for decades. It is a depressing truth, Gooddaughter of Albion, but arthropods are as quarrelsome as crows.”
They seemed to accept this. El Alacrán was startled, almost, with the ease with which they bought the explanation. They had no choice, he supposed, and mankind had no teaching in the supposed treachery and deviousness of his kind. Humans learned only of the man-eating habits of the arthropod phyla and the terrible danger of crossing the Wall.
These men had crossed the Wall, and therefore it seemed already disbelieved some of what their own kind had taught them.
“Could we not only return ourselves whence we came?” asked the dark male.
“The way is long and hard to any segment of the Wall,” El Alacrán assured him, “and alone, there is nothing to stop your inquisitive friends here from retaking you and hauling you back for their experiments to be completed. You would require escort, else be taken either by our fine keen-minded friends, or by bear.” He thought even as he said so that this persistence in what John had always called ‘irony’ was like as not another Albionman’s habit he had acquired from John.
“Then would you not—?” began the dark female.
“I must return to my faction and my General,” said El Alacrán, honestly, “and I must consider my duty to them above any care for the well-being of mammals, must I not?”
Within his armour he almost laughed. This ‘duty’ wash would hardly take on any arthropod seeing his curved tail and claws. It would even more ill-convince them should any but he learn of precisely whose well-being, which mammal’s safety he favoured over the health of the whole endlessly-fighting Continent.
“I can protect you if you will come with me to my General, and I can ensure you passage by sea to your homes; or you can remain, and at least one of you will become fodder for dissection. Perhaps two; they will want to see a male and a female exposed to the organs of regeneration at least.”
Their horrified and disbelieving expressions were a painter’s study in stark terrors, and El Alacrán considered this a job well done. While they wracked their private miseries against each other and turned their minds to weighing their choices in the balance between ‘certain’ death and uncertain survival, he squatted and with forbearance wearing thin, began to unFold once more.
I’m taking them back to the Northmost with me, El Alacrán told the spiders the moment he was able, without preamble. His body hurt now from chest to back, across every curve, and the intake of air pained him most dearly of all, for his spiracles were twisted and untwisted now several times. The General will require them.
No, hissed several of the spiders.
One said: This is not the arrangement. You purchase worked orgone; we buy our safety with cooperation in invention, not with prisoners and demands. No.
Cooperation with the Northmost brings you great benefit, El Alacrán wheezed, his legs and tail tensed, and you will learn little from these that you will not learn from a corpse washed up on the shores of the Black Sea. Wait for the next storm to give you your study subjects; I must take these north.
To what end? asked the smallest spider.
To the end of that’s not how the arrangement works, give me your prisoners, El Alacrán hissed, raising his tail. O, you will deny me these because I am a scorpion—
Backstabber.
—call me by my right order-name or I will open your body and leave you to dry out in the winds at the top of your stupid fucking hive, El Alacrán snapped, keeping his tail from the smallest spider’s eye by only the meanest of distances: the little male leapt back and curled up, his legs wrapped under him. Hand over the prisoners. They will not flee me, and I will give no word to my General of your obstreperous pissing about. It will be as if you had cooperated in the first instance.
No, insisted the largest of the spiders. We will have sacrifice from you, not threats. You may have the prisoners – if we are in agreement, all – but you must give us some sign of your true devotion, Backstabber. Show you are acting for the General of the northernmost and not in your own interest.
What exactly—? El Alacrán asked, weary down to his most minute bristle hairs.
A limb, squeaked the smallest spider in some aggression, from his curled-up ball of alarm. He extended a leg which he jabbed at El Alacrán’s much wider limbs. A limb, a leg, a limb. Take one. A lop-sided scorpion cannot strike as a balanced one can—
Shows what you know, El Alacrán thought, but he only hissed, And supposing I give up a perfectly good leg for your good faith, and you vote in your numbers to continue defying the wishes of El Miriápodo and the Political-leader?
Tough shit, squeaked one of the median spiders, that’s how things are done. It’ll grow back.
El Alacrán braced himself against the planks and raised his tail in case they sought to enact this policy themselves. Seven years was a long time to wait for a leg’s return, for he was three years since last moult, but there was profit in it.
El Alacrán eyed the humans. If El Miriápodo had his John – and for now he could not conceive who else might, though the end to this endeavour still vexed him – for matters in which some other Albionman might serve, then these would serve better.
He recognised the dark male’s voice from the Wireless, which suggested him well-placed to carry information of import, and the dark female claimed to be an engineer, which would be of interest in the furthering of the Northmost against their southern enemies.
And if El Miriápodo was done with keeping John, or mistaken, and wanted no Albionmen, then John might return them to Albion as their rescuer, and stand himself in better stead against their prying authority. This course still had El Alacrán uneasy, for he was acquainted with the mindset of the Albionmen and their Secure Guardi
ans. They held the set of thought that mere contact with an unenslaved arthropod constituted automatic treachery, as if ‘arthropod’ were a contaminant to the mind.
Regardless the call, El Miriápodo would be better-pleased if he came with these captives than without, and news reached him of their presence. A better-pleased General was more amenable to negotiation over either the return of El Alacrán’s human or the release of him to search for his human.
El Alacrán eyed the humans again. They seemed strong enough: the fair male was scrawny but had an unnatural energy to him, and if he died of his parasite then he died of his parasite and El Alacrán could not be blamed. The neutral faction should confirm that he had been ill to begin—
Leech, he hissed, unmoving. One of the humans is parasitised?
Yes, whistled the leech querulously, It is peculiar and not before seen of, it appears to affect him as—
Shut up. Enough. You will confirm to future envoy that he was parasitised?
Should any come I will tell the truth as I always do, the leech whistled, indignant once more.
It was no real matter, El Alacrán told himself. What was seven years? He had spent longer than that in the Great Locust Desert. It was only one leg.
Seven years was nothing, and it benefited these greedy little tinkerers nothing to have it. They sought only to inconvenience him, in their pettiness, and had no doubt the moults or carcasses of enough of his kind of have made good their studies. El Alacrán stared at the six spiders with renewed dislike; they doubtless had enough carcasses.
And there was profit in it for him.
He selected the second leg on his left and gripped it at the uppermost shaft with his right claw. The spiders, like crows, leaned to his motion and chattered an agreeable chorus.
El Alacrán released the shaft of his leg. There was a better way than pulling, and a way which would, he thought, place in their minds a due seed of fear against his kind once more. Better that it was fear, for they were as determined as everyone else to refuse mere courtesy towards his order.
He bent his claw to the very spot at which his second-left leg entered his carapace, and with delicate precision positioned the jaws of this great serrated pincer over the join that came here. He hoped they were watching the claw. He hoped the little similarity between it and the jagged claw of the all-feared Mantid women was clear to their minds.
The spiders made, as chorus, a sound of impatience.
El Alacrán opened his claw very wide, and caught brief sight of the confused clutch of humans watching the events unfolding of which they had no explanation or foreknowledge. With no further delay he brought it closed again, as hard and as swift as his body would allow.
It hurt, but he had seen the agonies of humans deprived of limbs, and this pain surely bore nothing on their jerking and bleeding.
The leg fell to the planks and its fall was muffled by the silken cradle which bound those same planks into place.
His flank oozed ichor only temporarily instead of the great unceasing dribble which must be ordinarily staunched through external means at first. El Alacrán knew, though the spiders did not, that the gelatinous ooze had properties beyond mimicry of flesh.
Take your vote, El Alacrán hissed, raising the fallen limb with his claw.
In the morning, they assured him.
The grey light that seeped through the multitude of silken strands had dimmed and soon even the last low glimmerings would be extinguished, leaving the web in the early night of winter.
In the morning we will debate your request and grant it or not.
He was at last too tired to enter into further aggressive dispute. The unsleeping race from Albion-of-the-Britons to this faction via the most circuitous of routes, the exertions of his self-mutilation, and the grind of insoluble mystery had all taken their toll upon his reserves.
El Alacrán only squeaked a graceless agreement, and as the spiders retreated, climbed into the mesh of strands in order to rest what was left of his body.
Below him the confused humans lay in debate across the planking floor. They were weighed down in the inexpertly-shorn pelts of bears that wandered into the path, no doubt, of some hunting spider.
The little group sat deep in discussion, but as El Alacrán relaxed, letting the strong strands take his weight across his belly, and not his remaining feet, he observed that all the talk of the humans there below centred upon ‘what the fuck is going on’.
It was countered with the assertion of not having any more clue than the original speaker, and the insistence upon sleep.
* * *
El Alacrán woke from his turgid stupor with a head as full of cobwebs as those upon which he reclined. The fuzziness was however soon replaced by irritation as the chatter of spiders reached him: they sounded entrenched in their discussion.
He recognised from the endless pitter-patter of voices that they would remain so for as long as their bellies let them. Spiders and talk were symbiotes with powerful bonds.
Fuck this, El Alacrán hissed to himself, scrambling down through the silken strands with resolve. I don’t have the time for this.
He came to the sprung-plank floor and the two neuter-mantid standing their ostensible guard over the captive humans. He offered them greeting they did not return: both bent at the legs until their heads nearly touched the floor, but neither spoke.
I’m not one of those, you don’t have to do that to me, El Alacrán clicked, disturbed.
Their useless display winglets had of course been shorn, which he found sickening at best, but also the delicate forearms and the great thick serrated mid-arms of their sisters and mothers were cut. They were thus left them only one segment of forearm with which to clumsily bear or bar.
He flinched at this, and squeaked quietly, You may talk, if you wish.
But the nearest made some feeble movement of his-its mandibles, and drew El Alacrán’s attention to the way in which these body parts, too, were broken. The tips of his-its jaws did not meet, stifling any click, and beyond them El Alacrán saw the finer inner workings of his-its mouth smashed and stuffed with silk where needed.
There could be no hiss, no click, no squeak. The removal of the neuter-mantid capacity for communication was complete, total, and methodical.
“Arthropod?” asked the dark female, from beyond them.
El Alacrán raised his claws and spread them to the neuters, who only lowered their heads again.
You may leave with me, if you wish, he clicked, knowing that this offer would be as futile as it had ever been.
They would not come, and his ‘kindness’ was all rage at an unjust world.
As El Miriápodo had told him before, there were matters in which the upset of the spiders were acceptable, and there were matters in which the upset of their Mantid allies were acceptable and the latter were none. The sale of the neuters was not his business.
“Arthropod,” repeated the dark female, “do we depart for your confederates or remain here?”
El Alacrán gave one last glance to the neuter-mantid, who pressed their ruined faces to the floor and lifted the stumps of their wings in the pretence of a display whose meaning he could never discern. He with-held his bitterness and began, with greater difficulty and less enthusiasm than the preceding day, to half-Fold, bending inward and outward, backward and forward. At last he had again his artificial tubes for impeded respiration.
“We’re leaving,” he told the humans. “If you have supplies, bring supplies. If not, no matter, I will hunt on the way. You will not starve for your association with me.”
They got to their feet quick enough and the dark male set about scooping up the bear skins and empty bottles with a practicality that El Alacrán praised within his mind. Aloud he said nothing, but herded them past the unmoving neuters, toward the most direct exit.
“Where are the spiders?” asked the dark female, as they passed from the empty space onto delicately-strung planks, and her footsteps briefly faltered.
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“Arguing,” said El Alacrán, shooing her forward. “It is their greatest talent.”
“Have they given leave for our departure?” she asked, suspicion in her voice.
“They have not given refusal,” said El Alacrán, shooing her with his claw. “Step lively, Albionwoman, the way out is not yet upon us and I’ve no stomach for a fight this early in the day.”
The discussion above their heads still raged and ranged far from its original calling, and pursuit was not guaranteed.
They came upon no spiders but this hardly left El Alacrán at much ease. His class-cousins moved with greater agility through their own self-made forest than he ever might, and with three scrambling humans to guide he was slowed still further. Come the open land, he alone might outpace them with luck, or might not, but with humans on foot he was limited to the slowness of their run.
The better it would be if they decided to let him go without interference, for he could hardly collect orgone from Ämblik’s reinfers in the north if he stung one of her sisters. It was true, too, that no matter what captives he brought to the General if he brought no orgone his bargaining power would be non-existent.
When at last the humans came to the exit they stepped out into the uncharacteristically windless plain without hesitation. El Alacrán, however, with eyes that saw up instead of merely forward, saw one of the spiders hunched in her waiting ball inside the web above him.
Typical scorpion, she hissed, her legs wrapped about her.
She did not venture to pay out her silk and attempt to block his exit, and only watched him with anger in her every quiver.
He came to the humans and said, “Away from the web, now. We head north.”
They did so in silence until he judged them to be far enough from the web to be not overheard.
“You have nothing to fear from me.”
“We might wish to judge that for ourselves,” said the dark male, rather arch.
“I mean to see you unharmed and safely back in your own lands,” El Alacrán said, quite truthfully, as they walked on. Each of his captives bore a bear hide in their arms. “I have no fondness for the killing of thinking beasts.”