Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [119]
Lowering the lid on the container, he found himself scanning the surrounding jungle anxiously.
“What strange human activity is this? Some peculiar ritual the local officials are required to perform?”
“It’s a ritual, all right.” Cheelo was already backing carefully out of the small, cramped clearing. “But it has nothing to do with local officials. Just the opposite.” He nodded toward the forlorn skins drying in the heat of early morning. “This is a poacher camp.”
“That is a term I am not familiar with.” Scri!ber out, Desvendapur paralleled the human’s retreat. He could not keep from turning to look back at the hollow-eyed skins hanging forlornly from their crudely rigged racks.
Cheelo’s eyes darted from side to side, tree to bush, as he nervously scrutinized the surrounding forest. “Poachers slip into places like the Reserva to steal whatever they can sell. Rare flowers for orchid collectors, rare bugs for insect collectors, exotic woods for furniture makers, mineral specimens, live birds and monkeys for the underground pet trade.” He gestured at the covert encampment. “Bird feathers for decoration, skins for clothing.”
“Clothing?” Desvendapur lowered his scri!ber as he looked back once more. “You mean, these people kill animals and strip off their skin so that humans can put them on?”
“That’s about right.” Alert for ants, snakes, and saw-jawed beetles, Cheelo pushed through a dense overlay of bright green leaves.
“But humans already have skin of their own. Beyond that, you manufacture what appears to be perfectly adequate artificial outerwear to protect your soft, sensitive exteriors from the elements. Why would anyone choose to wrap themselves in the skin of another living creature? Does the act involve some religious significance?”
“Some people might look at it that way.” His mouth widened in a humorless grin. “I’ve seen rich folk who treat fashion like a religion.”
“And they eat the flesh of the dead animal, too.” Desvendapur struggled to convey his distaste but was not yet fluent enough to do so, having to resort to gestures to properly express his feelings on the matter.
“No. These people throw the rest of the animal away.”
“So each creature is killed only for its epidermis?”
“Right. Unless they sell the teeth and claws, too. You getting enough inspiration out of this?”
“It all sounds vile and primitive. This mystifying mix of the sophisticated and the primal is all part of what marks you as a very peculiar species.”
“You won’t get no argument from me.”
Though Desvendapur had no trouble keeping up, and in fact even with his broken middle leg moved more supplely and easily through the forest than did the biped, he wondered aloud at the human’s sudden desire for speed.
“The people running that camp would shoot you just as casually as they would a representative of an endangered species. Poaching in the Reserva is punishable by extensive mindwipe and a program of enforced social correctness. That’s something I wouldn’t ever submit to, and neither will whoever’s smuggling out macaw feathers and cat pelts. We’ve already got your people looking for us. That’s enough.”
“Not quite enough.”
Cheelo sucked in his breath. He could have kept going, could have tried to go around the muzzle of the weapon pointed in his direction, but that probably would have resulted in a journey of very brief duration.
There were two of them: very short men with very big guns. Their skin was the hue of burnished gold, their long black hair was tied unfashionably back, and they wore jungle mimic suits that allowed them to blend almost seamlessly into the landscape of bush and vine and tree. The tip of one rifle hovered uncomfortably close to Cheelo’s nose.
He might have tried ducking, or slapping the barrel aside or grabbing it, or pulling his pistol if his antagonist had been operating alone. Unfortunately, he was not. His companion stood nearby but too far away to tackle, his own