Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [144]
Shannon gingerly pushed the length of amputated limb toward the prisoner. “What about this? What’s this?”
Montoya lowered his gaze to the blue-green fingers. His insides knotted and a sharp pain shot through his gut, but to all outward appearances he was unaffected. “That? That was my friend.” He looked up, smiling at Shannon before shifting his attention to the gray-hair who obviously called the shots.
“I’m offering you the biggest story of the last hundred years. You want it, or should I put out the word that I’m ready to talk to another media conglomerate?”
The senior editor retained his unshakable composure, but a hint of a smile toyed with one corner of his mouth. “We want it—if there’s anything more to it. The question is, what do you want?” He nodded in the reporter’s direction. “Ms. Shannon here has apprised me of your petition but did not supply any details.”
All eyes were on him, components of expectant expressions. He reveled in the attention. It made him feel…big. “That’s better! First, I want all charges pending or planning to be filed against me dropped.”
“I understand you committed a murder.” Shannon’s tone was dry as dust. She didn’t like him, Cheelo knew. That did not matter. What was vital was that she saw the opportunity to work on a big story. He was not the only one to whom the word was important. Much of the world still worked that way. “It was accidental, like I told you. The idiot had to go macho and grab the gun and there was a struggle. Nobody could prove premeditation. Scan the wife and you’ll see that I’m telling the truth.”
“Nevertheless,” declared the senior editor inexorably, “you left an innocent man for dead.”
“Fix it.” Cheelo’s tone was harsh and uncompromising. “I know what the media can do. After all charges are dropped, I want my permanent record expunged. I’d like to start over, clean.”
“So you can fill it up again?” The editor sighed. “What you ask is doable. Expensive and awkward, but doable. Especially if what you say about scanning the wife holds up. What else?”
“Some credit in my account. I haven’t settled on a sum yet. We can work that out together.” His tone turned wistful. “You probably won’t believe me, but by letting myself get picked up I sacrificed a lot more money than you can imagine. More than that, I gave up a career.”
“How noble of you.” As the editor spoke, all three reporters were taking notes. Notes, Cheelo thought silently. That’s all any of us are: a bundle of somebody else’s notes. When we die, we’re all dependent on the notes made by others. Unless we take the time to make some ourselves.
“One more thing.” He pushed the alien scri!ber toward Shannon. “I want everything that’s on here published. I don’t know what that means in this case, or how you’d go about doing it, because it’s not like human poetry. But I want it done. I want it all published and disseminated. Among the thranx as well as here on Earth.”
“‘Disseminated’?” Shannon eyed him archly.
“Hey, I’m poor, not stupid. I want Des’s art—out there. For everybody to see.”
“It won’t mean anything to us, to humans,” the second reporter pointed out.
“Maybe not, but the thranx are going to be exposed to it whether they like it or not. Once disclosed, they won’t be able to ignore it. It’s great stuff, important work. Big work.” He squeezed his eyelids together. Hard. “Bigger than anything I’ll ever do.”
For the first time, the open hostility and contempt Shannon had been feeling began to give way to incertitude. “How do you know that, if you couldn’t understand any of it?”
“I know because of the way Des believed in it, the way he talked about it, the way he showed it to me—even if I didn’t understand much of it. I know because he gave up everything to try and achieve something important. I’m no artist—I can’t sculpt, or paint, or weave light, or write real well. But I know passion when I see it.” He brightened. “Yeah, that’s what it was about Des. He was passionate.” He tapped the