Spiderlight

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Lief addressed the vast woman and made some request of her, sliding over some pieces of metal—no, coins, came the unwanted knowledge. This was commerce, where the metal served as a memory for past services in some way, so that Lief’s historical actions were somehow remembered to the woman, to be rewarded with the two wooden mugs of Something Suspect that he had now been given. Nth struggled with the concept, trying to understand why it worked and whether anyone wanted the metal for itself, or just for what it represented. The thought reminded him irresistibly of his own predicament: a thing that had value to these humans without them finding in him any inherent worth. He was a cipher, a means to an end, to be spent and forgotten.