Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [90]
The thought of allowing someone else to haul his gear through the hot, steamy rain forest was a tempting one. His back and legs were wholly in favor of the notion, but his brain vetoed it outright. Surviving alone in the vast rain forest was hard enough. Trying to do so without blanket, electronic insect repeller, food supplements, water purifier, and other gear might prove well nigh impossible. So he would suffer on. Time enough to figure out if he could trust something with eight limbs, twin antennae, and eyes like shattered mirrors.
It sure did smell good, though.
That night he had the opportunity to see how a thranx not only ate, but slept. As it sipped liquids from a narrow-spouted utensil and chewed compacted food with its four opposing mandibles, he wondered what it thought of his own dining habits. The fact that it kept its distance could be considered significant. Cheelo took some of the fish he had caught the previous day out of his pack. The thranx studied the process of consuming with obvious interest, chattering and whistling into its recording device without pause.
Finally Cheelo could stand it no longer. “I’m just having supper. No big deal. Where’s the poetry in that?”
“There is verse in everything you do, because it is all exotic to me. Presently I am much taken with the contrast between your exceedingly civilized behavior and your lingering barbarism.”
“Excuse me?” Breaking off a small fillet, Cheelo scaled it with his fingernails before shoving it into his mouth and biting off a piece. He chewed slowly.
“You utilize the tools and knowledge of a contemporary civilization to eat the flesh of another creature.”
“Yeah, that’s right. Are you guys all vegetarians?” He held out the pungent fistful. “This is just a fish.”
“A water-dwelling animal. It has a heart, lungs, nervous system. A brain.”
Cheelo squinted through the gathering darkness. “What are you trying to tell me? That a fish thinks?”
“If it has a brain, it thinks.”
“Not much it don’t.” He chuckled and bit off another chunk.
“Thought is an absolute, not a matter of degree. It is a question of morality.”
The human gestured back the way they had come. “How’d you like to go find your creative inspiration elsewhere? So now I’m immoral?”
“Not by your own standards. I would not presume to judge a member of another species by standards that were developed to apply to my kind.”
“Smart boy.” Cheelo hesitated with the remaining fish halfway to his mouth. “What kind of poetic inspiration are you getting out of me eating a fish, anyhow?”
“Crude. Powerful. Alien.” The thranx continued chattering into its scri!ber.
“Shocking?” Cheelo inquired thoughtfully.
“I would hope so. I did not come all this way and go through a great deal of trouble to find inspiration of a cloying, puerile kind. I came in search of something radical and extreme, something dangerous and unsafe. Ugly, even.”
“All that from a guy eating a fish,” Cheelo murmured. “I’m not much on poetry myself, but I wouldn’t mind hearing some of what you’ve written. As your source of inspiration, I think I have that right.”
“I would be glad to perform it for you, but I am afraid much of the subtlety and nuance will be lost. You don’t have the necessary cultural references to understand, and there are concepts that simply cannot, given its innate restrictions, be rendered in your language.”
“Is that so?” Taking a long swig from his purifier, Cheelo leaned back against a tree, knees apart, and gestured commandingly at the oversized arthropod. “Try me.”
“Try you?” Confusion impregnated the thranx’s response.
“Let me hear what you’ve done,” Cheelo clarified impatiently.
“Very well. I dislike performing without proper rehearsal, but since you are not going to understand very much of it anyway, I suppose that doesn’t matter. I cannot translate into your language and properly follow through, but I hope that you will get some sense of what I am trying to accomplish.”
“Wait. Wait a minute.” Rummaging through his pack, Cheelo produced a compact flashlight. A glance at the canopy showed