Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [121]
“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.”