Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [142]
His macho bravado instantly deflated, the prisoner looked away. Fingers working uneasily against one another as if he didn’t know what to do with them, he muttered a reply. “First you got to get me my personal belongings.”
Her dyed and striped brows drew together. “What personal belongings? The report on you said you were picked up out in the forest with only the clothes on your back.”
Leaning forward, he lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “When I saw that the rangers had me referenced, I buried my pack. Without what’s in it you won’t believe a word I say.”
“I doubt I’ll believe a word you say anyway, so what’s the big deal? What’s in your miserable pack that you had to hide from the rangers? Illegal narcotics? Gemstones?”
He grinned, this time knowingly. “Proof. Of my story.”
Shaking her head sadly, she turned off the recorder. No point in wasting the cell. “There is no proof of your ‘story.’ Not in some mysterious buried backpack or anywhere else. Because your story’s crazy. It makes no sense.”
The smile tightened but did not disappear entirely. “Then why are you here?”
She shrugged diffidently. “Because it sounded different from the usual run-of-the mill rubbish we use for backscreen fillers. Because I thought you might be good for a new angle or two on how some miscreants try to mask themselves from the attentions of the legal process. So far I’m just annoyed, not enlightened.”
“Go dig up my pack and I’ll enlighten the hell out of you. The contents will enlighten you.”
She sighed heavily. “I skimmed the report. There are no thranx in the Reserva. There are no thranx in this hemisphere. Their presence on Earth, like that of all representatives of newly contacted sentient species, is restricted to the one orbital station that’s been equipped with proper diplomatic facilities. We have occasional closely supervised visits by especially important individuals holding the rank of eint or higher, but they are not allowed outside the official boundaries of Lombok or Geneva. Even if one somehow managed to end up here, it couldn’t survive.”
Inclining toward her again, he dropped his voice so low that she had to lean forward to make out the words. She did not relish the proximity. Despite the treatment accorded any incoming prisoner, he still stank strongly of his time spent in the Reserva and of his own disagreeable self.
“You’re right. ‘One’ couldn’t survive. But a properly prepared and equipped landing party could.”
She rolled her eyes and looked away. She’d had just about enough of this homicidal ninloco and his pathetic fantasies. “Now you’re trying to tell me that there’s not one, but a whole landing party of thranx bashing around undetected inside the Reserva? What kind of moron do you take me for, Montoya? If the rangers can run down one human like yourself who’s trying his damnedest to avoid them, don’t you think they’d find something as alien as a thranx? Much less a whole landing party?”
“Not if it stayed underground and had human help,” he shot back. “And I wasn’t trying to avoid the rangers. Not anymore. I wanted to be picked up.”
She frowned uncertainly, her irritation diminishing just enough for her to sustain a modicum of interest. “Underground? You’re trying to tell me that there’s an illegal thranx landing party operating inside the Reserva and underground?”
His countenance subsided into a complacent smirk. “Not a landing party. A hive. A colony.” His tone had become insolent. “There aren’t a dozen or so thranx in the Reserva—there are hundreds. And they’re not peeking at plants or collecting butterflies—they’re living there. And breeding.”
She stared hard at him, at this slender, vainglorious madrino who sat with arms crossed and smile smug. He did not look away. She wanted to, but could not. Not quite yet.
“So what’s in this pack of yours that would prove a claim as outrageous as that?”
“Then my ‘crazy