Spiderlight

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

At first the new body they had imprisoned him within had dominated his attention. The world had become a shrieking, blinding whirl of unfamiliar senses. He was denied the voice of the ground, that had spoken to him of every twitch and motion within his world, and carried the speech of his people as well. Instead there was a raucous cacophony of sound that battered in through his unwanted ears, out of which, somehow, he could still parse the gibbering that was the way that these Men communicated among themselves. Of all the new abilities that had been forced on him, that comprehension was the one he would most do without. He had never wanted to discover that Men, the destroyers and the prey, could speak, even if their speech was such a painful din. And his eyes! His eyes had been pleasantly dim things, that could tell day from night, and movement from stillness. Now they were his world, gaping holes that let all of reality in, raw and bright-colored. He wanted to shut them, but they would not shut—they lacked even the fleshy covers that the true Men had, to blot out the searing, garish world. Instead he was forced to stare and stare and stare, to know his surroundings by the uncompromising medium of light and not the comforting subtlety of vibration. After that, once whatever they had done to him had forced him to come to terms with his sensorium, there had been the body. No more the comfortable scuttle of many legs, secure and low to the ground. Instead, every step these M...