Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [136]
Cheelo looked on in disgust as he tightened a strap on his own pack. “Don’t you ever take a break from that composing?”
Winding up a stanza that oozed systemic emotion, the thranx paused the instrument. “For someone like myself, to stop composing would be to start to die.”
The human grunted, one of its more primitive sounds, and activated the doorplate. The composite barrier began to roll upward. Cold, searingly dry air rushed hungrily into the insulated structure, overwhelming any warmth before it. Desvendapur’s mandibles clacked shut to prevent the deadly cold from entering his system via his mouth. At such times it was useful not to have to open one’s jaws to breathe. The biped had cut two long, narrow slits in the blanket that covered the poet’s thorax, allowing his spicules access to the air. Internally, his lungs constricted at the intrusion of the frigid atmosphere. Trying not to shudder, he took a hesitant step forward.
“Let’s go. The sooner we start downward, the sooner the air will start to warm and to thicken with moisture.”
Cheelo said nothing, nodding curtly as he followed him out of the garage.
There was a path, of sorts, made by what animal or animals Cheelo did not know. It was just wide enough for them to proceed along it in single file. Possibly the poachers themselves had enlarged it to allow access to the cloud forest and the rare creatures that dwelled in the little-visited ecosystem lying between plateau and jungle. Llamas would not have made such a track, but far-ranging carnivores like jaguars or the spectacled bear might have tramped back and forth along the same route for enough generations to have worn a path through the unrelenting greenery.
Far more comfortable in the cool mountain air than his companion, Cheelo would have quickly outdistanced him but for the fact that the thranx, utilizing all six legs, was much more sure-footed on the narrow path. Where the thief was forced to take extra care before negotiating an awkward dip or steep drop, Desvendapur simply ambled on, so that the distance between them never became too great.
At midday they paused to eat beside a miniature waterfall. Huge butterflies fluttered on wings of metallic hue, skating the edge of the spray, while mosquitoes danced among the lush ferns that framed the musical cataract. Cheelo was feeling fit and expansive, but it was plain that his many-legged companion was not doing nearly as well.
“C’mon, pick your antennae up,” he urged the thranx. “We’re doing good.” Chewing a strip of reconstituted meat, he nodded at the clouds scudding along mournfully below them. “We’ll be down to where it’s revoltingly hot and sticky before you know it.”
“That is what I am afraid of.” Desvendapur huddled as best he could beneath the thin blankets that hung all too loosely around him. “That it will happen before I know of it.”
“Is pessimism a common thranx characteristic?” Cheelo chided him playfully.
Without much success, the poet tried to tuck his exposed, unprotected limbs more tightly beneath him. “The human ability to adapt to extremes of climate is one we do not share. I find it difficult to believe that you are comfortable in these surroundings.”
“Oh, it’s on the brisk side; make no mistake about that. But now that we’re off the high plateau and down in cloud forest there ought to be enough moisture in the air for you.”
“Truly, the weight of the air is improving,” Desvendapur admitted. “But it’s still cold, so cold!”
“Eat your vegetables,” he advised the thranx. How many times as a child had his mother admonished him to do just that? He smiled to himself at the remembrance. The smile did not last. She had told him things like that when she wasn’t hitting him or bringing home a different visiting “uncle” every week or so. His expression darkened as he rose.
“C’mon, get up. We’ll push it until you start feeling better.