Phylogenesis (30 page)

“I’m on my way up to Golfito, Costa Rica, to see Rudolf Ehrenhardt,” Cheelo declared importantly. “He’s expecting me on a matter of real importance.”

“Too bad,” responded the other poacher mirthlessly. “You’re not going to make it.”

He had wanted to lose himself, Cheelo reflected, and had done so. If these
ninlocos
didn’t recognize the name of Rudolf Ehrenhardt, then he was in the middle of nowhere indeed. In a city, that name would have meant something, would have carried weight. Here, in the vast expanse of the Reserva, it was just a name. Of course, Ehrenhardt could not give a fig whether a hardscrabble lowlife like Cheelo Montoya lived or died. It was nothing to him. The cherished franchise promised to Cheelo would go to someone else. Since this pair did not know the name, it didn’t matter anyway.

“Let us go,” Cheelo pleaded. The second rifle was now pointed at the thranx, but he doubted he could wrestle the first away from its owner before his companion adjusted his aim and got off a shot. “We won’t tell anyone you’re around. What you’re doing here is nothing to us.” He spread his hands imploringly. “You don’t understand. I
got
to make this appointment! It’s my whole life, man.”

“Sure.” The poacher opposite laughed darkly. “We’ll just trust you. That’s how come Hapec and I have managed to bring this off for the past ten years: by trusting people. Now Hapec, he’d just off and shoot you right now. But me, I’m kind of a traditionalist. So I’ll let you have any last words.” He squinted past the thief, swatting away a hovering botfly. “You can ask the bug if it has any last gestures.”

“You
can’t
kill me!” Cheelo argued. “If you do, I won’t be able to make my appointment!”

“Boy, that’s tough. I’m all weepy inside.” A finger nudged a trigger booster, and the hum from the rifle rose audibly.

Cheelo thought frantically. “Also, you’ll have no way to communicate with the thranx.”

The poacher shrugged. “Why would I worry about communicating with a dead alien body?”

“Because—because it’s valuable. Probably valuable dead, but a lot more valuable alive.”

The two wiry forest pillagers exchanged a glance. “Okay,
cabrón
. Talk. What’s valuable about it?”

“You guys collect for the underground animal trade.” He jerked a thumb in Desvendapur’s direction. “Here’s a specimen
nobody’s
got, not even your richest, most private collector. If they’ll buy a spotted tapir or a black jaguar, think what they’d pay for a live alien.”

“Hey,” declared the other poacher, “we know a couple of guys who got a number of aliens in their private zoos, but none of them are intelligent. That’d be pushing the limit.”

“Who’s going to know?”

On the verge of personal and financial triumph for the first time in his life, Cheelo was not to be denied now. He reasoned with all the skill at his command. Somehow, some way, he was going to make it back to Golfito in time to present the payment to Ehrenhardt. As for the thranx, he had ceased to think of it as a person, as a living, intelligent being like himself. It was a commodity, nothing more. He was bargaining with that commodity for his life.

“The bug doesn’t talk, so it can’t object. Nobody but your buyer and whoever he trusts will ever see it again. It can survive on terrestrial plants and stuff, so food’s no problem. Come on, guys, you’re not thinking
big
enough. Imagine what your top buyers would pay for something like this!”

It was evident from his expression that the nearest poacher was giving this heretofore unconsidered prospect careful consideration. Cheelo tried not to give him time to think it through.

“And if nobody bites on the offer, you can still kill us both later.”

“We can kill you right now, man.” Again the rifle bobbed. “We sell it, we don’t need you.”

“Sure you do. Because I’m the only one who can communicate with it. If you want it to come along peacefully, you need me to convince it to do so. You could try and catch it, roll it up in a net, fight with it, but it might get injured. Isn’t an undamaged specimen always more valuable?”

“You stay right where you are,” the poacher warned him. “You move, you try to run, you cross your eyes funny, you’re dead. Understand?” Retreating slightly, he and his comrade entered into a conversation marked by intense whispering. Cheelo listened hard but could not make out what they were saying.

Eventually the discussion concluded, and the first poacher resumed his previous stance. “You still haven’t told us what it’s doing here.”

“It’s a naturalist,” Cheelo informed them without hesitation. “Part of a small survey and study mission. But it’s not authorized. So if this one turns up missing, the others can’t go public for help. They’re probably searching for him right now.”

The other poacher reflexively glanced skyward. “If it’s part of some alien science project, why would it come along quietly with us?”

Cheelo took a deep breath. “Because it wants to learn about humans. It trusts me. If I tell it we’re going to go someplace where it can learn a lot about humankind, it’ll take my word for it. Its cooperation will spare you a lot of trouble. By the time it catches on to what’s going on, you’ll already have it sold, crated, and shipped. Then it won’t matter what it thinks.”

Desvendapur listened to this exchange in silence. It was clear that his human companion was making up his story to forestall these two exceedingly antisocial types from shooting them. In this he so far appeared to be succeeding admirably. Meanwhile the poet kept silent and, as Cheelo had explained to the poachers, devoted himself to learning about humankind, a subject that was at present forcefully on display. He did not have to worry about either of the antisocials interpreting his hand movements because they were wholly unfamiliar with their meaning. As for them reading an expression, the inflexibly faced thranx had none to give away his true feelings.

“Why are you offering to be so helpful,
cabrón
?” The nearest poacher was studying him shrewdly. “What makes you think we won’t kill you after we’ve sold the bug?”

Cheelo did his best to affect an air of disinterest. “I’d rather live for as long as possible. Besides, maybe whoever buys it will want to talk to it. That’d mean including me as part of the deal.”

“You’d go along with that?” The other poacher was openly dubious.

“Sure, why not? The police are after me anyway.”

“No shit? What’d you do, man?”

“Killed a tourist I was skragging. Bad luck, but that’s not much of a defense in court. So you see, I’m probably on more wanted lists than you guys.”

“And you think that maybe makes us some kind of brothers or something?” the nearer poacher asked.

Cheelo eyed him coldly. “No. If you thought that, I’d think you were pretty stupid.”

For the first time, the poacher’s expression softened. “You’re okay, man. Twitch the wrong way and I’ll still blow your stinking head off, but you’re okay. All right. Explain to the bug that we’re, um, collectors authorized to cull certain Reserva species that have bred to excess. We’re carrying weapons to protect ourselves from dangerous forest predators. Tell the bug that we sympathize with its aims, that we’ve no love for the Reserva rangers who sometimes interfere with our work, and that we’re going to take him to a museum.” He glanced over at his colleague and chuckled. “A museum where he can learn a
lot
more about humans. Explain that it’ll be well looked-after, and that you’re coming along to translate. Tell it that after a couple of days we’ll bring it back here so it can rejoin its colleagues. It’ll have lots of swell stories to tell.” He gestured with the rifle. “
Tell
it.”

Turning, Cheelo stared into those expressionless compound eyes and began making snaky motions with his fingers. Would the bug understand? It had heard everything, but would it comprehend the need to keep silent and go along with the story? If not, at least one of them wasn’t going to leave this patch of rain forest alive, and it would in all likelihood be the one with the fewest appendages.

He need not have worried. Desvendapur understood the situation quite well. He had no intention of speaking out. Clearly his human acquaintance had something in mind, a plan that would result in their salvation from these two virulently antisocial representatives of his own species. What that might be he did not know and could not imagine, unfamiliar as he was with the myriad mysterious workings of the human mind. Meanwhile he was delighted to observe and to listen. Already the experience had generated raw material enough for an entirely new suite, one that he would hopefully live long enough to render.

After several minutes of aimless, meaningless writhing, Cheelo turned around to confront their captors. “It has accepted my explanation and wants to know when we’re going to leave.”

“Tonight, man.” The poacher gestured at his companion. Setting his rifle aside, Hapec moved off into the undergrowth. “I’m not going to tie you up because that might give your bug friend the wrong idea. Just don’t do anything stupid.”

Cheelo raised both hands, palms facing the poacher. “We’ve got an arrangement. Why should I risk it? If you can get me out of this hemisphere I’ll be better off than I would if we’d never met.” His gaze wandered to the patch of forest that had swallowed the other poacher. “We’re going to walk at night? A GPS will show you the right way, but it won’t light it for you.”

The poacher hesitated uncertainly, then laughed anew. “You think we’re going to walk? Man, if we had to rely on our feet the rangers would’ve caught us
years
ago. We’ve got an airtruck back in the trees. Mesyler two-ton carrying capacity, stealth construction, heat-signature-masked engine. Paid for, too. Not many people know this country like Hapec and me or how to get around the Reserva security net. We’re
good
, man. We’ll
fly
out. In an hour we’ll be at a little place we keep just outside the Reserva boundary. You get to rest there while we put the word out to our regular people that we’ve got something special for sale.” He grinned again. “You didn’t think we were going to march you into Cuzco and stick you in a street stall with a price tag on your forehead, did you?”

Cheelo shrugged, trying to appear neither too smart nor unreasonably ignorant. “I don’t know you
vatos
. I don’t know how you operate. I wasn’t assuming anything.”

“Good, that’s good.” Extracting a smokeless stimstick from a shirt pocket, the poacher waited for it to ignite before slipping the aromatic mouthpiece between his lips. “Just don’t assume that I won’t fry your head the first time you piss me off.”

20

W
hile the poacher named Hapec busied himself breaking down the camp and carefully obliterating any memory of its existence, his colleague, whose name was Maruco, kept a watchful eye on their two prisoners. He concentrated his attention on the fidgety Cheelo, allowing Desvendapur to roam freely through the evaporating encampment. Whenever it looked as if the thranx might be wandering too far afield, Maruco directed his human prisoner to “call” the alien back. This Cheelo proceeded to do with much meaningless flailing of fingers. Desvendapur continued to fulfill his part in the masque by waiting for Cheelo to finish each charade before complying, not with the human’s gestures, but with the directives the poet had already perfectly comprehended.

In this manner the two poachers remained ignorant of the alien’s cognizance. Had Desvendapur possessed a weapon, he could simply have shot both of them. But all he had was the small cutting tool in his improvised survival kit. Granted complete surprise, he might have employed it successfully to incapacitate one of the two antisocials, but not both of them. They were too lively, too alert, too attuned to a life of imminent threat and danger. Additionally, while not directly suspicious of the alien in their midst, neither were they especially comfortable in the thranx’s presence. Consequently, he was never able to get within a few meters of either of them before they began acting uneasy.

One such experimental advance caused Maruco to comment. “Tell the bug to keep its distance, man. God, but it’s repulsive! Smells good, though. Myself, I think you’re personally bent, but your suggestion is straight: Somebody
will
pay plenty for it.” He shrugged, holding his rifle casually—though not casually enough. “Me, I wouldn’t keep another intelligence in captivity, but I never understood the people who do keep animals. Hapec and I, we don’t even keep monkeys.”

“Why do you guys stick with this?” Cheelo was genuinely curious. His attention wandered without ever entirely ignoring the poacher’s weapon. Given a reasonable chance of success, he’d make a grab for it. Such an opportunity had not yet presented itself. “Rangers and security scanners must be all over the Reserva. Is poaching a few skins and feathers that profitable?”

“Hapec and me, we do all right. But it’s more than that. Our ancestors lived free here, hunting and fishing all over this country. They took what they wanted, when they needed it. When the Reserva was drawn up and its boundaries formalized, everybody who lived here was kicked out and resettled on the borders of their former homelands. All in the name of preserving a lousy bunch of plants and animals and a natural CO
₂
exchanger for the atmosphere. Like the planet was going to run short on oxygen, anyway.” His tone was bitter. “This is Hapec’s and my way of getting a little back, of reasserting our ancestral claims to this land.”

Cheelo nodded somberly. “I can understand that.” Privately he thought the poacher’s explanation was a facile rationalization heavily layered with pretentious bullshit. Their two captors kept slipping into the Reserva not to honor their ancestors but because they were making a nice, cushy, illicit living, and for no other reason. Taking revenge for some long-forgotten, sketchily remembered great-grandpa had nothing to do with it. He’d known small-time
ninlocos
like Hapec and Maruco all his life, had grown up with them. Maybe it made them feel a little better to conduct their miserable, self-serving offenses under the cover of an agreeable fiction. Cheelo Montoya didn’t buy it for a minute. What the ingenuous insectile in his company thought of the situation he couldn’t imagine. Nor could he find out if he wanted to, at least not for a while. To ensure that Cheelo’s captors kept him alive it was necessary for the bug to continue to play mute.

Rustling noises rose from behind the encampment, back among the denser undergrowth. Cheelo strained to see. “So, this little place of yours: Where is it?”

“You’ll see soon enough.” As Maruco spoke, his partner began to remove from their stretchers and carefully fold the partially cured jaguar and margay pelts. When he had finished with that, he resumed breaking camp, reducing everything to a pile of poles, bindings, and disparate organic waste. This was then scattered among the concealing brush, to decay and disintegrate, along with any indication that people had ever spent any time at this particular spot.

“Must be rough.” Cheelo was under no illusion that his attempts at casual conversation would ingratiate him with their captors, but in lieu of any alternative activity, it would have to suffice. “Having to tear down and make a new camp every time you come into the Reserva.”

Maruco was dismissive. “Gets easier with practice. You learn what trees make the best hide stretchers, what vines are the most supple and easiest to work. Why do you give a damn?” He grinned nastily. “Thinking of going into competition?”

“Not me.” Cheelo shook his head. “I’m a city boy.”

“I figured. You skin different game.”

As soon as the airtruck was loaded, the two captives were herded on board. Cheelo found nothing exceptional about the vehicle. He’d seen camouflaged stealth transport before. But Desvendapur was fascinated. It was the first complex piece of purely human technology he had encountered in person, and every facet of it, from the layout of the instrumentation to the design of the climate-controlled interior, was new to him. There was, of course, no place for him to sit down. For thranx purposes, the floor was more accommodating than the seats designed for humans. He chose to stand, balancing himself as the vehicle lifted in virtual silence from its hiding place to rise into the canopy.

Though it took four times as long as a straight flight would have, Maruco followed a course that kept them below spreading crests of the forest emergents, utilizing the canopy for cover whenever possible and only rising above it when the airtruck threatened to leave too expansive a path of destruction in the form of broken branches and snapped lianas in its wake. From time to time the closely entangled rain forest gave way to meandering streams and the occasional
cocha
that allowed him to fly low at higher speeds without leaving a trail behind.

Only when the first foothills hove into view among the mists and low-hanging clouds was Cheelo moved to comment. “I thought you said this place of yours was just outside the Reserva?”

“It is.” Maruco spoke without turning while his partner kept a watchful eye and the muzzle of a rifle trained on their human captive. “If you’re familiar with the area, then you know the western border of the Reserva runs right up this side of the Andes.”

Cheelo watched the foothills give way rapidly to steep, green-shrouded slopes. “I know. I just assumed your place would be down low, where you could hide it in the trees.”

Maruco smiled knowingly as the airtruck, following a gorge, commenced a steady climb. “That’s what any rangers patrolling the fringes would think. So we set ourselves up right out in the open, up where it’s barren and cold and uncomfortable. What stupid
chingóns
would stick themselves out on a treeless ridge for everybody to see? Not anybody running a poaching operation, right?”

“We’ve never had any trouble,” Hapec chipped in. “Nobody checks on us or our little shack.” He revealed a mouthful of gleaming, artificial, ceramic teeth. Light gold was currently a fashionable dental tint. “Anybody asks, we tell ’em we’re running a private bird-watching operation.”

“It’s not a whole lie.” Maruco was in a jovial mood. “We do watch birds. And if they’re rare enough, we also snare and sell ’em.”

As the airtruck entered the zone of cloud forest and the permanent mists that cloaked the mountainsides in lugubriously wandering blankets of gray and white, the poacher switched from manual to instrument driving. Earlier, the dehumidifier had shut down and the vehicle’s internal climate control had switched over from cool to heat. Meanwhile Cheelo continued the meaningless banter that fooled no one. If provoked, either of the two poachers would as soon shoot him as spit on him. He knew it, and he knew they knew he knew it. But it was better than dead silence or trading insults. At least he might learn something.

Desvendapur certainly was. Not only the journey but the edgy conversation taking place between the three humans continued to provide him with an unbridled flow of suggestion, stimulation, and inspiration. Unable to freely utilize his scri!ber for fear that their captors might appropriate it, he concentrated on observing and remembering all that he could. Tenseness and barely concealed agitation were racial characteristics his kind had abandoned in favor of polite communion hundreds of years ago. In a highly organized society that chose to dwell underground in eternally close quarters, courtesy and politeness were not merely encouraged, they were an absolute necessity.

Humans, apparently, fought and argued at the slightest provocation. The energy they expended in such recurrent confrontations was breathtaking to behold: wasteful, but fascinating. It seemed they had stamina to spare. The most excitable thranx was more circumspect and conservative. The knowledge that they intended to sell him into some kind of captivity did not engage him half so much as their constant bickering. Captivity, if it occurred, would not be so bad. It would allow him to continue studying humankind at close quarters. He doubted, however, that his troubled human companion felt similarly.

It was him these antisocial humans wanted, not Cheelo Montoya. Neither did the poet have further need for the self-confessed thief. More than once Desvendapur thought about speaking up, revealing to the two poachers his fluency in their language. The only reason he did not was because he knew it would mean the death of his companion. While that would be, based on what he knew of Cheelo and what the man had told him, small loss to the species, it contravened any number of thranx rules of conduct. Recreant that he was, Desvendapur was not prepared to break with custom and culture to that extent. At least, not yet. For the moment it was more amusing to play the game, to listen to the new humans make comments about him convinced that he understood nothing of what they were saying.

After a substantial interval the airtruck rose out of the clouds and into sunshine so bright and unfiltered it was painful. In the pure, cerulean distance rose peaks that effortlessly crested five thousand meters. Just ahead, a stony, intermittently green plateau rolled off to the west: hills standing atop mountains. The only signs of habitation were a few detached farmhouses and long stretches of mountainside covered with phototropic sheeting to protect the potatoes and other crops thriving beneath.

On the eastern edge of a high ridge stood a modest, unspectacular domicile attached by a pedestrian corridor to a slightly larger structure. A roll-up door retracted as the airtruck approached. Guiding the vehicle in manually—use of its automatic docking system ran the risk of sending out faint but detectable signals curious rangers might pick up—Maruco brought it to a stop in the exact center of the garage when the appropriate telltale on the truck’s console turned green. A flip of one switch and the vehicle settled gently to the smooth, impervious floor. The door rolled noisily shut behind them as the structure’s internal heating panels roared to life.

Flanking their captives, the poachers led them through the access corridor to the main building, which was sparsely but comfortably furnished. Halfway there Hapec frowned at the alien.

“What’s the matter with it?” He nodded pointedly.

Cheelo, who had been paying little attention to the thranx as he tried to memorize every detail of their prison, now turned to see that the bug was quivering. It took him only a moment to realize what was happening.

“He’s cold.”

“Cold?” Maruco let out a snort of disbelief as they passed a wall readout. “It’s twenty-three in here.”

“That’s too cold for thranx. It told me it found the rain forest brisk. And it’s much too dry in here. It needs at least ninety percent humidity and more like thirty-three, thirty-four degrees to be really comfortable.”

“Shit!” Hapec muttered. “
I’ll
die.”

“No you won’t. But it’s liable to.”

Grumbling under his breath, the other poacher addressed the house system, directing it to ratchet the interior climate up to something approaching the reported thranx minimum level of comfort.

“Maruco!” His companion protested as both the humidity and the temperature began to climb.

“Quit your bitching,” the smaller of the two poachers snapped. “It’s only for a little while. Couple of days, until we can finalize a deal. Shouldn’t take any longer, not for something as special as this.” He smiled fatuously at Desvendapur. “You’re going to make us rich, you sickening pile of legs and feelers. So be comfortable for a while. We’ll live with it.” The poet regarded the antisocial human blankly and with perfect comprehension.

“And now you,” the poacher informed his other captive coldly, “get tied up.”

“You can’t do that,” Cheelo protested. “It’ll…it will upset the alien. It’s convinced you two are friendlies. Necklace me and you’ll unsettle it.”

“So let it be unsettled. If we have to, we’ll tie it up as well.” Hapec was already removing fasteners from a drawer.

“You could lose it. It could hurt itself struggling to get free, or even choke to death.”

“We’ll take the chance.” Both poachers were moving toward the apprehensive Cheelo, Maruco with a rifle still aimed at him. “If it protests, we can always untie you. Don’t make this hard for us, or for you.”

“Yeah,” Hapec warned him. “Consider yourself lucky. By rights, the ants ought to be scooping out the last of your eyeballs right now.”

Having no choice in the matter, Cheelo submitted to having the plastic restraints secured around his wrists and ankles. When the poachers judged them tight enough, Maruco removed the safety strips and the plastic sealed itself, melt-welding shut at the joints. Glancing behind him, the poacher noted the alien’s lack of reaction.

“Doesn’t look like your bug buddy is too upset. Make it easy on yourself. Tell it this is all part of some weird human welcoming ritual.”