Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [63]
“But there is no reason for more than a very few of them to visit the hive. This is a thranx colony. As such, it is populated by thranx.” A foothand rose to gesture. “By such as you and me.”
It made damning, frustrating sense, Desvendapur knew. Why should any hive, even one located on the human homeworld, require the presence of humans? While the respective projects on Willow-Wane and Hivehom had been designed from the start to explore the ramifications of intimate human-thranx interaction, this colony was different. It was surreptitious, officially unacknowledged by both governments. It was designed to show that thranx could thrive on a human-dominated world. Open interaction here would come later, when both species had become acclimatized to the presence of the other, when humans did not find thranx abhorrent and vice versa.
This much he could understand. He also found many aspects of humankind distasteful. The difference between him and his fellow thranx was that for him, abhorrence was an excellent source of inspiration.
But how to immerse himself in that and its related emotional states if he was denied interaction with its progenitors, in all their billions? He would gladly settle for contact with a dozen or so, but it appeared that even that was to be denied him. He could not wait indefinitely for something to happen, for circumstances to change. His term of service was finite. More than that, he was too impatient to wait around and react. Fatalistic resignation was not a component of his character.
What to do? If he happened to see another human in the distance, walking the fringe of a sector off-limits to him, he could ignore restraint and brazenly confront the visitor. That might work—for a minute or two, until Security forestalled extensive interaction by hauling him away. Too much risk for too little potential reward. Or he could try to isolate a visiting biped, keep it to himself for a while, but even the suggestion of the use of force within the colony would find him shipped offworld faster than he could pack his meager belongings. With his access to vehicular transport, Termilkulis might be of real help—until he became aware of his new friend’s intentions. That would doubtless result in immediate termination of their relationship and the reporting of the food preparator’s eccentric behavior to hive authority.
No, whatever he did, Desvendapur decided quietly, he would have to do it on his own. His choices were decidedly limited. Or at least, the sensible, rational ones were. There remained the option of the insensible and the irrational. These were not available to the average thranx. Had there been anything average about Desvendapur, he would not even have been contemplating them.
The solution was as obvious as it was insane. If he could not find humans to interact with within the hive, then he would have to find a way to encounter them without.
11
As had quickly become his routine, Cheelo was awakened by the gothic choir of howler monkeys greeting the return of the sun. Lying on his back beneath the thin tropical blanket, he gazed up through the dense, featherweight material of the tent. This close to the Earth’s waist, the sun rose and set with equal alacrity. “Lingering twilight” was terminology that belonged to the temperate zone and had no place in the equatorial rain forest.
Yawning, he reached up to scratch an itch—and sat up fast, yelping. Looking down, he saw a rushing river of red-tinged brown flowing across his stomach from left to right. The river entered through a hole in the left side of his tent and exited through a gap of correspondingly tiny dimensions on his right. It went over, around, or through anything and everything in its path. It might have gone through him as well if he had not been tucked into the tough, inedible blanket.
He had gone to sleep without activating the electronic insect repeller in his backpack.
The army ants had eaten through his tent because it was in their path. Able to surmount his sleeping form, they had chosen