Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [17]
“What about you, Cheelo?” Andre nodded at the tridee. “What do you think we should do about ’em? Let ’em hang around us or dust the lot of ’em? Me, I’d rather hang out with the lizards. Least they got the right number of legs. Cheelo? Hey, Montoya, you in there?”
“What?” Swaying on his seat, the smaller man’s response was barely audible.
“I said, what would you do about the bugs, man?”
“Forget it,” Morales said. He had turned away from the media image on the tridee and back to the bar. “You expecting a considered opinion on alien contact from him?” He tapped his glass, calling for a refill. “Might as well ask for his opinion on how to retire the world debt. He doesn’t have an opinion on anything, and he’s not going to do anything about anything.” Small, porcine blue eyes glanced contemptuously in Montoya’s direction. “Ever.”
The words penetrated the dark, sweet mist that was slowly creeping through Cheelo’s consciousness. “I am too going to do something.” He coughed, hard, and the man seated next to him hastily backed out of the line of fire. “You’ll see. One of these days I’ll do something. Something big.”
“Yeah, sure you will.” The drinker next to him guffawed. “Like what, qué? C’mon, Cheelo, tell us what big thing you’re gonna do.”
There was no reply from the other seat because it was now vacant, its occupant having slid slowly out of the chair and down to the floor like a lump of diseased gelatin. Overwhelmed, the seat’s internal gyros whirred back to vertical.
Peering over the barrier, the bartender grunted as he gestured to the other pair. “I don’t give a good goddamn if he does something big, so long as he doesn’t do it in my place.” Reaching into a front pocket of his shirt, he removed a handful of small white pills and passed two of them to the heavyset man. “Take him outside and let him do his big thing there. If you’re his friends, don’t dump him in the street.” He glanced at the ceiling. “Coming down pretty hard tonight, and you know it won’t let up again till sunrise. Try and get these down him. It’ll detox some of the alky radicals so maybe when he comes around he won’t feel like his brain’s trying to punch its way out of his skull. Poor bastard.” Having done his duty, he turned back to his liquids and potions and other customers.
Thus co-opted, the two speakers reluctantly hauled Montoya’s limp corpus outside. Tropical rain was plunging vertically into the earth, shattering the night with unrelenting moisture. Beyond the dark row of tumbledown buildings that marked the other side of the town’s single street, rioting vegetation climbed a dark slope, the beginnings of the wild and empty Amistad.
Making ample show of his distaste, the heavyset man forced the pills into Montoya’s mouth and roughly massaged his throat before rising.
“He get ’em?” the other drinker wondered. His gaze turned upward, to the deluge that formed a wet wall just beyond the dripping rim of the porch overhang.
“Who the hell cares?” Straightening, his companion nudged the limp form with one booted foot. “Let’s toss him out in the rain. Either it’ll sober him up or he’ll drown. Either way he’ll be better off.”
Together, they lifted the pliant form off the prefab plastic sidewalk sheeting and, on the count of two, heaved it far out into the downpour. It wasn’t difficult. Montoya was not a big man and did not weigh very much. Chuckling to themselves, they returned to the warmth of the bar, the heavyset man glancing backward toward the street and shaking his head.
“Never done anything, never will.”
There was mud seeping into his open mouth, and the rain was falling hard enough to hurt. Montoya tried to rise, failed, and collapsed face first back into the muck that was running down the imported plastic avenue. Standing up being out of the question, he rolled over onto his side. The tepid rain coursed down his face in miniature cascades.
“Will too do something,” he muttered. “Something big. Someday.”
Got to get out of this place, he heard himself screaming. Got to get away from here. Miners too tough to skrag;