Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [97]
His smug expression faded to uncertainty. The fluttering of blue-green limbs was slowing. It was almost as if the alien was in some kind of trouble. But how could it be in difficulty, with its head and neck well above water? And if it was hurting, why didn’t it cry out, in its own singular combination of clicks and whistles and words if not in Terranglo?
It could not cry out, he realized, because its lungs were filling with water. Even as he met its resilient, reflective gaze, it was drowning before his eyes. The thorax, he remembered. The damn things breathe through holes in their thorax—and all eight of those vital openings were submerged beneath the surface of the pond.
Leaping forward, he plunged into the water. At its deepest point, the pond came up to his neck. No wonder the alien was having trouble. Unlike many of its smaller terrestrial cousins, it had negative buoyancy. It might not sink like a stone, he reflected, but sink it obviously would.
He half carried, half dragged it out of the pool. Once safely back on land he stepped back and watched as it convulsed in great heaves, exuding water through a spasming thorax that expanded and contracted like a blue-green bellows. When the last drop had been expunged from the anguished lungs, it stumbled sideways until it found support against the buttress roots of a nearby strangler fig. The bulbous, red-streaked, golden eyes turned to face him.
“That lethal a demonstration was not necessary. I would not have done the same to you.” A hacking cough convulsed the aquamarine-hued body, emerging from the sides of the thorax and not the alien’s mouth.
“You couldn’t do the same to me,” Cheelo could not resist sneering.
“Don’t be so sure. My kind learn quickly.” A truhand gestured at the human’s lower limbs. “That was a clever trick, that earlier move with the leg. I think I could do it. After all, I have four or six to your two. It would not work on me a second time.”
Cheelo shrugged. He’d gone mano a mano with his share of street punks and thugs, though never before with an alien. Maybe he was the first, he thought. “Doesn’t matter. I know more than one trick.” He stared unblinkingly at the contentious thranx. “Maybe next time I won’t pull you out.” An edgy, mildly contemptuous snicker born of hard life on the streets emerged from his lips as he nodded at the still convulsing body. “Eight limbs and you bugs still can’t swim?”
“Regrettably, no. We tend to sink. Not immediately, but all too soon. And no thranx can kick hard enough to hold its entire upper body out of the water. So we drown. Thank you for pulling me out.”
“I’m beginning to wonder if that was such a good idea.” As he mumbled the rest of a reply, Cheelo saw that the alien neither drip-dried nor shook. Instead, it inclined its head downward and used its mandibles to squeegee water from its body and limbs. Its large supply pack lay on the ground nearby, but the thorax pouch had gone into the pond with it. He wondered if it was watertight. It contained everything the insectoid had composed since their fractious first encounter.
“Look,” he proposed condescendingly, “if you want to write about me, or compose, or whatever the hell it is that you’re doing, go ahead. Just don’t provoke me for the sake of your art, okay? You want to tag along, fine, but keep out of my way. I can be—I have a temper, and I’ve been known to lose control of myself on occasion, see? Next time I might not be able to get to you in time—or want to. Or I might hit hard enough to break one of your limbs.”
The head paused in its grooming to look up at him. “That I do not think you can do. You would be more likely to damage your own appendage. You may be more flexible, but I am physically tougher.”
“Says who? Maybe we should just…” Hearing his own words, Cheelo calmed himself. “This is stupid shit, what’s going on here. It doesn’t matter who’s stronger, or tougher, or whatever. What am I—in a competition