Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [94]
“Our outside’s tougher than it looks.” By way of demonstration, Cheelo pinched up a fold of skin on the back of his hand. Simultaneously fascinated and repelled, Desvendapur could not turn away from the incredible sight. It was at once ghastly and captivating to behold. Grossly descriptive, the burgeoning verses that hurtled through his mind skittered on the very edge of possible censorship.
“Here.” Walking toward the thranx, Cheelo rolled up one sleeve and held his naked arm out to the alien. “Try it yourself.”
“No.” The boldness that had brought Desvendapur this far wavered at the sight of the exposed, almost transparent skin, with its components of deeply tanned muscle, tendon, and blood clearly visible beneath. Mushy and resilient, the soft mammalian flesh would deform beneath his fingers, he knew. Envisioning this threatened to bring up what remained unprocessed of his previous meal.
Steeling himself, he forced a halt to his mental flight. If it was safe, unthreatening inspiration he wanted, he should have stayed on Willow-Wane, ascended through the customary methods of promotion, and accepted a conventional academic post. Instead, he was here, on the homeworld of the humans, illegal and alone. Raising a truhand, he reached out.
All four of the delicate manipulative digits came together. They were of equal length and shorter than a human thumb. Making contact with the exposed flesh, Desvendapur felt the heat rising from within. No wonder humans had to eat so much, he thought. Without a proper exoskeleton to provide insulation, they must lose enormous quantities of energy in the form of heat to the surrounding air. How they spent as much time in water as they did without instantly freezing was one of those exotic physiological mysteries best left to the xenobiologists.
When the skin and flesh of the human’s arm compacted and rose between his fingers, he nearly gagged. The compression did not seem to hurt or harm the biped at all, though surely if pressure was increased it would ultimately do so. Utilized for extraordinarily delicate manipulation, a truhand was incapable of exerting that kind of force. A foothand could do so, but the poet had no desire to put the hypothesis to the test.
When the human deliberately moved his arm slightly, the flesh and skin in the thranx’s grasp flexed with the motion but did not tear. Cheelo grinned, enjoying the alien’s discomfort. When it released its grip, he rolled his sleeve back down.
“See? No harm done. We’re flexible. It’s a much better physical design.”
“That is an assertion very much open to debate.” Dipping his head, Desvendapur searched the surrounding ground until he found a small rock with an edge. Holding it in one truhand, he extended a foothand and, to Cheelo’s surprise, deliberately drew the sharp edge of the stone across the upper portion of the smaller limb. A pale white line appeared in its wake. “Try this on your ‘better design.’” He chucked the rock.
Cheelo caught it reflexively. The ragged, splintered stone edge was sharp enough to slice easily through skin, leaving exposed flesh raw and bleeding. Tight lipped, he let the stone fall from his fingers. He didn’t like being shown up, never had, whether it was by some street punk or a sassy well-dressed citizen or a visiting alien.
“Okay, shell-butt. So you made a point. It doesn’t make you any less ugly. You smell nice, sure, and I guess you’re sort of smart, but to me you’re still nothing but a big, bloated, overgrown bug with brains. My people have been stepping on your kind since we could walk.”
Open hostility! Where virtually any other thranx would have been dismayed and appalled by the grimy human’s response, Desvendapur was elated. Such primal social interaction