Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [125]
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