Phylogenesis (31 page)

“Tell it yourself,” Cheelo spat, his anger making him thoughtless.

Hapec’s hand started to come up, but he was restrained by his companion. “Don’t give him any excuses. And we really don’t want to upset our prize pretty if we can avoid it.” Leaning close, Maruco stared hard into the snugly manacled thief’s eyes. “You, on the other hand, I don’t mind upsetting. Behave yourself, and you’ll end up with a nice, free, private suborbital ride. Make trouble and we’ll just have to sell the bug without an interpreter.” Straightening, he turned to regard the thranx, which was presently engaged in a detailed examination of the kitchen facilities.

“What does it eat? Is it hungry?”

Subdued and unhappy, Cheelo replied in a reluctant mumble. “It’s strictly vegetarian: hates the sight of meat. It can digest a lot of terrestrial plants. I don’t know what kind are the most nourishing. I’ll have to ask it.” He held up his bound wrists. “Of course, I can’t talk to it with my hands tied.”

Maruco’s expression twisted. It was clear neither poacher had thought of that when they’d secured him. With a knife, he slit the wrist bindings. “Okay, but as soon as you get the answers we need, you get tied up again. And no tricks.”

Cheelo spread his palms wide. “What am I going to do? Tell it to call the rangers? Remember, it’s here covertly, too.” Turning his attention to Desvendapur, he began an elaborate wiggling and twisting of his fingers.

The poet paid dutiful attention to these meaningless gestures before replying with truhand and foothand gesticulations of his own. What he said with his hands was that Cheelo was a
pontik
, a particularly slow and stupid kind of grub. The two antisocials were
pepontiks
, or
pre-pontiks
, an even lower class of intelligence not bright enough to be classified as stupid. None of the three humans had the slightest idea what his complex gestures meant, of course, but it amused him to respond so.

Determining how best to reply not to Cheelo’s meaningless inquiry but to the antisocial’s actual query was a bigger problem. Since he could not speak, he would have to establish his dietary requirements in some other fashion. Turning away, he embarked on an up-close examination of the sink, leaving Cheelo to fend for explanations himself.

Deprived of support, Montoya improvised. “It’s not hungry right now, and when it’s not hungry it doesn’t like to talk about food.”

Maruco grunted. “We’ll thaw out a selection of fruits and vegetables. It can pick out what it wants or needs. Meanwhile, I’ve got a sale to advertise. Hapec, you unload the truck.” His partner nodded and headed for the access corridor that linked the two main buildings. The other poacher’s gaze narrowed as he considered his one bound prisoner. “You bounce around enough to make me think you’re trying to slip out of those seals, and I’ll put a couple of ’em over your face.” His smirk widened. “You can tell the bug it’s part of the ritual.” He glanced in Desvendapur’s direction.

“I’m not going to check its pack, or container, or whatever that thing is riding on its back, because I don’t want to upset it. I know it’s not carrying any weapons because if it was it would have tried using them by now.”

Cheelo nodded. “Like I told you: It was doing research. That’s why it has cooperated so far. It’s not armed.” This, insofar as Cheelo knew, was the actual truth.

“Fine. We’ll leave it at that—for now, anyway.” Reaching down, the poacher slapped another self-sealing strap on the other man’s wrists. In seconds they were tightly bound again. “That’s so you can’t ‘talk’ to it behind my back while I’m working.”

Turning, he walked to a desk near the rear of the room and settled himself into a chair. Within minutes he was communicating with faraway places and the representatives of an orderly succession of individuals whose ethics were as impoverished as their bank accounts were expansive.

While a helpless Cheelo sat and fumed silently, the ever-inquisitive Desvendapur continued his exploration of the poachers’ quarters. The temperature and humidity had risen to levels the poet found tolerable, if not entirely comfortable, and he was thoroughly enjoying a respite that he knew could not last. As he continued his examination of the room and its contents, Cheelo’s expression underwent an extraordinary succession of contortions. None of them held any meaning for the poet, though it was clear by their frequency and urgency that the human was urging him to do something.

Desvendapur could not let himself be sold, of course. If no alternative presented itself, he was convinced that he could survive and even thrive in human captivity. But it was not the preferred option for the future. In human captivity, his performances would not be properly appreciated. He needed a thranx audience. Therefore, if possible, he had to find a way to return to the colony. Unable to see a way clear to doing that himself, he realized he would need Cheelo’s assistance. That did not mean it was necessary to rush matters, and he had no intention of doing so. While the two antisocial humans desired to profit from his existence, Desvendapur suspected they would not hesitate to kill him if they felt sufficiently threatened. Surely Cheelo understood that.

Hapec soon returned from unloading and stabilizing the airtruck. Establishing himself in the kitchen area while his partner continued his steady stream of secured-transmission intercontinental conversation, the other poacher began meal preparations. For the moment, both captives found themselves largely, though never entirely, ignored.

Faced with a situation for which a lifetime of study and learning had not prepared him, Desvendapur was compelled to fall back on that one aspect of his personality that had never failed him: his imagination. As he pursued his examination of the domicile, he proceeded to lay out in his mind a sequence of actions in much the same way he would design an extended recitation, complete with appropriate revisions and adjustments.

None of this was apparent to the anxious Cheelo, who grew progressively more distraught in his bonds. Thanks to some fast thinking he had managed to buy some time, but, unlike a new communicator or tridee subscription, it was not guaranteed: There was no return policy in place in the event of dissatisfaction. The two poachers were not deep thinkers. Any little thing, any irritation of the moment or insignificant occurrence, might set them off. In that event he knew they might cast careful consideration and practicalities to the tepid wind that seeped upward from the cloud forest below, and blow his head off. He knew this because he and they were of a kind, representatives of that same subspecies of humanity that tends to
react
to awkward circumstance as opposed to thinking about it. Maruco and Hapec were too much like him for him to be comfortable around them. The devil he knew was himself.

Convinced he was at least not in imminent danger of being executed, he switched from watching them to tracking the movements of the thranx. It was impossible to know what the alien was thinking since he could not talk to it without giving away the fact that it understood Terranglo. He had to content himself with imagining. What did it make of all this? Did it care what happened to him? Cheelo knew he didn’t care what happened to
it
, but right now his future prospects rested entirely with the many-legged insectoid. His life was in the bug’s hands—all four of them.

If it forgot the scenario, if it deviated from the play and spoke aloud, then the poachers would quickly realize that they had no need of a translator. He would be rendered instantly extraneous. There were many steep precipices just east of the prefab abode into which a body could be thrown to be swallowed forever by rain forest, gully, and cloud. Silently he importuned the thranx to keep silent. Even if they found themselves sold, at least they would still be alive. Future prospects seemed considerably more promising when viewed from a perspective of abiding survival. Who could tell? With luck he might be able to persuade their buyers to make a brief stopover in Golfito.

He tried to cheer himself up. If the poachers and the bug just kept their heads this wouldn’t turn out so bad. Didn’t he need to hide out for a while? Wasn’t that what he was doing down in the untrammeled rain forest in the first place? What better place to lie low—after he had finalized arrangements for his future with Ehrenhardt, of course—than the private zoo or collection of some incredibly rich patron who had just made a very expensive and very illegitimate purchase? As he had so many times in his desperate, frenetic life, he set about trying to mentally arrange events to his advantage. Even the bug was cooperating, maintaining silence while pretending to examine every object within the building.

He was giving Desvendapur too much credit. The thranx was not pretending. While the poachers ignored him, he took the time to study each individual example of human manufacture in great detail, paying particular attention to how the two humans operated their manifold devices. Once, the one called Hapec caught the thranx peering over his shoulder as he ran the cooker. The human gestured clumsily and ordered him to step farther back. Maintaining the fiction that he could not understand the man’s speech, the poet obediently interpreted the gestures and moved away.

By mealtime Cheelo, though still nervous and worried about the poachers’ state of mind, had resigned himself to his captivity. He cooperated while Hapec fed him listlessly, and he watched with as much interest as the poachers while Desvendapur picked through the assortment of rehydrated fruits and vegetables he was offered. When their prize captive seemed satisfied, the two men sat down to their own meal. Dinnertime conversation on their part consisted of coarse jokes, inconsequential natterings, and an impassioned discussion of how much money they were going to clear for selling the only representative of a recently contacted intelligent species into involuntary captivity. While salt, pepper, and hot sauce played a part in their dining, their conversation was seasoned by neither ethics nor morals.

When Desvendapur had eaten his fill, he stepped back from the exotic but nutritious banquet his captors had laid out before him, ambled over to a far corner, and casually picked up one of their rifles, cradling the lethal device in his right truhand and foothand. It took a moment before Hapec noticed the alien aiming the muzzle of the weapon at him.

“Hey. Uh, hey, Maruco!” The human’s lower jaw descended, and his mouth remained open to no apparent purpose.

“Shit!” His eyes darting rapidly back and forth between his two prisoners, the other poacher pushed carefully away from the table. “Cheelo! Man, you tell the bug to put that
down
. It’s holding a full charge, and the safety is off. Tell it it’s liable to hurt itself. What’s it doing, anyway? We’re its friends, helping it to see and study more of our world. Go on, man: Remind it!”

“I can’t tell him anything,” Cheelo replied tersely. “My hands, remember?”

This time Maruco didn’t hesitate. Rising slowly from his chair and keeping his eyes on the enigmatic thranx, he nervously edged his way over to where his other prisoner was secured. Using his knife, he once again released the captive’s arms.

A relieved Cheelo promptly began rubbing circulation back into his wrists. “Hey, what about my legs?”

“What about your legs?” the poacher growled. “You don’t talk to it with your feet.”

“Free his legs.” Desvendapur gestured with the rifle. Designed for thicker-digited, clumsier human hands, the weapon felt light in his arms. Manipulation and activation would be a simple matter.

“Sure, just be careful with that…” Maruco paused, the knife halting in midswipe, as he stared wide-eyed at the alien.
“Son-of-a-bitch-whore!”

“You can talk!” Both poachers were gazing in open-mouthed disbelief at the suddenly voluble alien in their midst.

“Not very well, but my fluency is improving with practice. His legs?” Again the rifle moved.

Slowly, the poacher knelt and ran the blade across the restraining plastic. With a curt gasp of relief, Cheelo kicked his feet apart.

A thranx did not need to look out of the corner of its eyes to see action transpiring off to one side. Multiple lenses scanned a much wider field than human eyes could see, allowing for considerably greater peripheral vision. He shifted the tip of the weapon significantly in the direction of the larger human, who had risen and taken a step in the direction of the other gun.

“Although I am not familiar with the kind of result it produces, I believe I know how this weapon operates. I also believe that you should move the other way and stand alongside your friend.”

“It’s bluffing.” Maruco began edging away from Cheelo, who had risen from the chair where he had been imprisoned and was now stomping about in an attempt to get circulation flowing to his feet again. “It doesn’t know how to fire the gun.”

“Yeah?” Keeping his hands in plain sight, Hapec slowly and carefully came around behind the table to join his colleague. “Then
you
go pick the other one up.”

As he studied the weapon-wielding bug, Maruco spread his hands innocently wide, ignorant of the fact that the subject of his supplication did not know the meaning of the gesture.

“Okay, so you can talk. There’s no need for this. We mean you no harm.” Smiling ingratiatingly, he nodded at the now-standing Cheelo. “Our tying him up is just part of a special greeting and guest ritual.”

“No it isn’t,” Desvendapur responded in his whispery but increasingly articulate Terranglo. “You forget that while I did not speak, I could listen. I have heard and understood everything that has been said since you first appeared before us in the forest. I know that you meant to kill us until Cheelo convinced you to sell us instead.” He did not need to be familiar with the extraordinary diversity of human facial expression to interpret the one that now dominated the muscles of the poachers’ countenances.

Still rubbing his wrists and flicking out his feet to stimulate the long-restrained muscles, Cheelo walked over to his alien companion. Having resigned himself to being sold as part of a package deal, he now found himself in a position he thought not to experience again for some time.