Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [96]
He’d taken two steps when all four feet slammed into his belly, knocking the air out of him. Losing his grip, he stumbled backward, tripped, and sat down hard on his backside, curled over and clutching at his stomach. When he released the thranx, it fell on its side. All four legs churning, it scrambled back onto its feet and came toward him. This time all four hands were extended.
He waited until they grabbed his shirt. Reaching up, he wrapped his fingers around the foothands, the unyielding chitin smooth and slick beneath his fingers. Bringing up his right foot, he planted it in the middle of the alien’s abdomen and rolled backward, pushing with his leg as he did so. The thranx went flying over his head to land hard on its back.
Rolling, breathing hard, he staggered to his feet. Lying on its back and kicking with all eight limbs, the alien’s resemblance to an upturned crab or spider was unnerving. Finally succeeding in getting a couple of legs under its body, it pushed, straightened, and once more stood confronting him. A truhand reached up to groom flexible antennae. It did not look like it was hurt, but it was hard to tell. Rigid chitin did not bruise in the manner of soft flesh.
“Had—had enough?” Cheelo gasped, bending over and bracing one hand against his right thigh.
Though quite familiar from training with the techniques of hand-to-hand combat, Desvendapur was unfamiliar with the consequences. Execution and practice in a polite, scholastic setting was one thing; being thrown around on hard, unyielding, alien ground was quite something else. He was sore from head to foot. But if the transliteration of the extraordinary experience from reality to exposition did not win him a major prize in composition, then he truly might as well give up trying to be an innovative poet and remain a food preparator for the rest of his life. The experience was exhilarating, rousing, and yes, inspiring.
“A time-part fraction, if you will. Please. I have to get this down!” Removing the scri!ber from its padded pouch, the poet once again spewed a stream of elegantly embellished alien rhetoric into its pickup.
“Sure,” Cheelo responded graciously. “Take your time.” Approaching cautiously, he gave the device a curious once-over before bending to wrap both arms quickly and tightly around the alien body and lifting it for a second time off the ground—but this time from behind.
Flailing arms and legs could not reach him. The thranx was not flexible enough to reach behind its back. The head, however, could swivel almost a hundred and eighty degrees. The face was expressionless as always, but the rapid movement of mandibles coupled with the anxious writhings of all eight limbs succeeded in conveying the creature’s distress.
“Kick me in the gut now, why don’t you?” Cheelo was not a big man, and the bug was as much of a load as he could handle, but he was determined to fulfill his earlier threat. Bending slightly backward to manage the weight, he staggered toward the stream.
Despite his helpless position in the human’s grasp, Desvendapur continued to compose until they stood at the water’s edge. The stream meandered rather than flowed into a pool and was no more than a meter or so deep.
“You have proven your point,” he declared as he slipped the scri!ber back into its pouch. “I accept that you can throw me into this unpretentious river. Now you may put me down.”
“Put you down?” Cheelo echoed stiffly. “Sure, I’ll put you down.” Swinging both arms, he flung the thranx forward. All eight legs kicking in surprise and alarm, it landed noisily in the water—in the center of the pool.
It resurfaced immediately, flailing violently. A grinning Cheelo watched from shore. At any moment, the creature would come staggering out onto dry land, dripping water and weeds, its dignity more bruised