Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [132]
“Pretty much,” Cheelo lied. “Close enough so that anybody interested could find it within a week.”
“Well come on then, man! Don’t waft this off. We can be partners. All of us, we’ll be rich.”
“First you were going to kill me,” Cheelo reminded him, his tone chilly. “Then you were going to sell me as a talking accessory to a bug.”
“Heyyy,” the poacher demurred, “it was nothing personal.” They were approaching the garage. “That was just business. You’re a businessman, chingón. That was business then; this is business now. You need our business contacts; we need what you know.”
Cheelo found himself growing confused. The poacher’s insinuating spiel was beguiling. “What about the bu—about Des. He may be an outcast among his own people, but he’d never agree to the premature exposure of the colony.”
“Chinga the bug,” Maruco snapped. “If it has a problem with this, blow its stinking guts out. We don’t need it no more. What do you care? It’s just a big, ugly, alien bug.”
“It’s intelligent. Probably more so than either of you two. Probably…probably more than me. It’s…it’s an artist.”
Maruco laughed madly as they entered the garage. The airtruck rested where it had been parked, sleek and silent, its propulsion system fully recharged and awaiting only coded reactivation. With it at his disposal Cheelo knew he could reach Golfito. Or at least Gatun, where he had friends and could safely refuel.
His finger tightened imperceptibly on the rifle’s trigger. “It’s not funny. I used to think it was, but I’ve changed my mind. So now what the hell am I supposed to do? Trust you?”
“Yeah, you can trust us. Can’t he, Hapec?”
“Sure. Why should we do anything? We need you to show the site to whoever buys the story,” the other poacher observed. As he spoke, he was drifting to his left, toward a wall lined with tools.
“Don’t even think about it.” The muzzle of the rifle flicked sideways so that it was aimed straight at the bigger man’s back. As soon as it shifted away from him, Maruco whirled. A compact, high-strung bundle of muscle and furious energy, he threw himself at Cheelo.
21
As he tried to bring the rifle around to bear on his attacker, Cheelo’s finger contracted reflexively on the trigger. A tiny, very intense, and highly localized sonic boom echoed through the building. Hapec gazed down in disbelief at the small but lethal hole that the sonic burst had punched through him from stomach to spine. Even as he clasped both hands over the perforation, blood began to gush forth between his fingers. Mouth gaping in a silent “O” of surprise, he staggered toward the two combatants before sinking to his knees and then toppling languidly forward, like a brown iceberg calving from the face of a glacier, to the floor of the garage.
Maruco managed to grab the muzzle of the rifle before Cheelo could bring it around for a second shot. They struggled violently and in complete silence for possession of the weapon—until a second boom rattled the diminutive oneway windows that lined the walls of the enclosure.
Thorax pumping, Desvendapur pressed back against the airtruck and contemplated the bloody panorama spread out before him. Two humans lay dead on the floor, their body fluids leaking from their ruptured circulatory systems. Only one remained standing, the weapon dangling loosely from a hand. Heart pounding, chest heaving, Cheelo stood staring down at the body of Maruco lying at his feet like a broken doll.
Desvendapur had of course read of such violence, and he knew of it from the evidence of his own family history. Here was the sort of confrontation that harked back to the time when the AAnn had attacked Paszex and wiped out most of his ancestors. But despite holding the weapon earlier himself he had not really expected to have to use it. This was the first time he had ever witnessed such savagery in person.