Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [116]
Cheelo nodded. “Ay, I can see similarities.” His expression darkened. “Just a minute. If nobody except these covert friends of your colony are supposed to know about its existence, and you’ve just told me all about it, then I’m compromised. You’ve compromised me.” His eyes widened. “Shit, what’ll they do to me if they find me in your company? I ain’t going off to no bug world with you!”
“Obviously not. I imagine that either my people or yours will have to kill you to ensure your silence on the matter.”
“My silence on the…?” At that moment Cheelo wanted to reach out and choke the alien, except that constricting its neck would not result in a reduction in the supply of air to its lungs. It might be subject to suffocation in the coils of an anaconda, but not by any human. He could, however, by exerting diligence and all his strength, possibly break its neck. “Why’d you have to tell me all this? Why?”
“You deserved to know. If that disguised scanner had discovered us and we had been picked up, you wouldn’t have known the reason for it. Now you do. I did not have to tell you about the colony to compromise you. Simply being found in my company by searchers from the hive would be enough to doom you.”
The biped stiffened. “Who’s doomed? Not Cheelo Montoya! I’ve been hiding from searchers all my life! I’ve slipped safely in and out of places nobody else would go near. Unless I want them to, no bunch of goddamned illegal sweet-stinking bugs is going to find me, either!”
A thranx could only smile inwardly. “An intriguingly aggressive response for a self-proclaimed naturalist.”
Cheelo started to shout something more, only to find himself strangling in mid-declaration. His lower jaw closed and his voice changed to a dangerous, angry mix of accusation and admiration. “Why you ugly, burrowing, big-eyed, toothless bug bastard. You think you’re pretty clever, don’t you?”
“That is a proven fact, not hypothesis,” the thranx replied calmly. “Why not tell me what you are, man?”
“Sure. Ay, sure, why not? It doesn’t matter. You can’t exactly walk into the nearest police depot and turn me in, can you? Sure, I’ll tell you.” He gestured at the alien’s thorax pouch. “Why don’t you get out that scri!ber of yours and take it all down? You might get a goddamn poem or two out of it.”
Oblivious to the human’s sarcasm, an excited Desvendapur hurried to comply. Holding the compact instrument out toward the biped, the poet waited eagerly.
“I take things from people,” Cheelo told him pugnaciously. “I was born without anything, I saw my mother die without anything, and I had a baby brother who died before he had a chance to know anything. I grew up learning that if you want anything in this world you’ve got to go out and get it, because nobody’s going to give it to you. This is a pretty advanced planet. Lots of nice new technology, good medicine, easy to get around, a lot cleaner than it used to be. That much I learned from history. I do read, you know.”
“I never doubted it.” Desvendapur was absorbing not only the human’s words, but his attitude, his posture, his wonderfully distorted facial expressions. Truly, the biped’s ranting was a veritable fount of inspiration.
“Humankind’s managed to get rid of a lot of things, a lot of the old troubles. But poverty isn’t one of them. Not so far, not yet. I hear the sociologists argue about it a lot: whether there’ll always be poor people no matter how rich the species becomes. Somebody always has to be on the bottom, no matter how high you raise the top.” He shook his head sharply. “Me, I ain’t going to stay on the bottom. When I found out I’d never be able to rise any other way, I started figuring out methods to take what I needed to lift me up. I’m not the only one, not by a flicker, but I’m better at it than some. That’s why I’m standing here talking to you right now instead of licking my hospital dressings waiting to go in for a court-ordered selective mindwipe.” There was something deeply gratifying about spilling