Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [78]
More than a little surprised itself, but equally intrigued, the jaguar inclined its head upward and sniffed curiously. Recognizing the quadruped from his studies, the poet halted where he was standing. One foothand reached up and back to remove the kitchen cutting tool he had appropriated from the food preparation section. It was the nearest thing to a weapon Desvendapur had been able to expropriate and bring along. Food preparators did not have access to stunners or projectile devices. Not that it mattered. Even if he had been allowed open and free access to the colony’s stores he doubted if such appliances were extant. Even the rogue humans who had assisted in helping the colony to get started might balk at the unregulated importation of alien weaponry.
Taking care not to make any sudden movements that might agitate the big carnivore, Des transferred the cutting tool from his foothand to a truhand. The foothand was stronger, but the truhand was more dexterous and agile. Also, it could reach high enough to protect his face. Thranx and jaguar stared, each one utterly foreign to the other.
When the big cat took a deliberate step forward, the poet fought down the urge to turn and run. Thranx were not noted for their sprinting ability, and he didn’t doubt for a moment that the terrestrial predator could overtake him with little effort. Approaching, the jaguar lowered its head and commenced a thorough olfactory inspection of this unprecedented prowler, beginning at the excessive number of limbs and working its way upward. The scent it was inhaling was not unpleasant, but neither did it correlate with anything in the jaguar’s experience. Ears inclined sharply forward, it worked its way along the length of the thranx’s body.
Was this peculiar creature alive? Was it something good to eat? A thick pink tongue emerged to take a lick of Desvendapur’s hind left leg. Finding this foray inconclusive, the jaguar employed the only sampling means left at its disposal. Opening massive jaws, it placed them around the poet’s leg just above the middle joint and bit down.
Desvendapur winced at the pain and lashed out with the cutting tool. It was not the resultant shallow incision that caused the jaguar to leap up and backward, however, but the reflex stridulation generated by the wing cases on the thranx’s back. Sharp, piercing, and unprecedented in the big cat’s experience, the reflexive distress cry hurt its sensitive ears. With the alien vibration ringing in its head, it landed on all fours, whirled, and disappeared into the forest.
Breathing hard, Desvendapur hung onto the cutting tool with one truhand while he used the truhand and foothand on his other side to explore the injury. Though oozing blood and body fluids, the wound was not deep. Unpacking his improvised medical kit, he disinfected and then patched the hole, filling it with quick-drying synthetic chitin. Fortunately, the jaguar had not bit down with its full strength, or it might have cracked the limb. That would have posed serious problems indeed, though less so for a six-legged thranx than for a two-legged human. He could have rigged a splint, but it was just as well that the attack had not been more serious.
He could not really call it an attack, he decided. The bite had been more in the nature of a tasting. But for purposes of dramatic composition, he would remember and render it otherwise. Exaggeration was as much a tool of the poet as accent and cadence. Like everything else he had experienced since escaping the hive, the encounter with the big cat would be turned to creative profit. Unlike nearly everything else, it was one experience he had no desire to repeat.
The next large predator might decide to see if the eight-limbed alien was edible by taking a bite out of his head instead of a leg.
13
Increasingly confident of his ability to elude the attentions of whoever was probing this portion of the rain forest, Cheelo finished the last of his supper and prepared to retire