Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [98]
“Why would I tell you that?”
Why indeed? Cheelo mused. Not that the information was vital. The aliens might have particularly vulnerable points that were not obvious, but he could see that in a fight it would be best to strike at anything soft and unprotected by chitinous body armor. The eyes, for example, or the soft under-abdomen. A tug on one of those feathery antennae would probably make an attacker let go, too. Not that he was anticipating a fight, but it was always better to be prepared for one. That was how it was on the streets of Gatun and Balboa and San José. Why should it be any different in the jungle?
All he knew about the thranx was the little, the very little, he had picked up while absently listening to media. This one, this Desvenbapur, might be friendly, might be harmless, might be merely suspicious and sarcastic, or it might be some kind of giant arthropod alien schizo, agreeable one moment and eager to cut his throat and suck out his organs the next. Hope for the former and plan for the latter had always been Cheelo’s motto. Proof of its efficacy was that he was still alive and, except for a few scars and a couple of missing teeth, reasonably intact.
“Okay. You’ve got a tough outside, and you smell good. Those I’ll grant you.” His mouth split in a nasty grin. “But you’re still ugly.”
“Ugly?” The vee-shaped head cocked sideways as compound eyes studied the human. “What a profound observation coming from a representative of a species whose bodies are raised up out of jelly. Not only do you all wobble when you walk, you can practically see through the thinner patches of your skin. You look at the world out of a single lens which, if damaged, practically renders that organ blind. Your sense of smell is primitive and relies on olfactory organs set in the middle of your face, where they have to strain to detect even a hint of a scent.” By way of illustrating the superiority of thranx design, feathery antennae wagged back and forth.
“You have only four limbs instead of a much more sensible eight, and those four are restricted in their function.” Foothands rose from the ground in a demonstration of how the second set of thranx appendages could be utilized either as feet or hands. “Your skin is exceedingly vulnerable to even the slightest cut or puncture, you can’t make any music worthy of the designation by rubbing any of your limbs together, and you’re not even properly symmetrical.”
“Who’s not symmetrical?” Using the fingers of his right hand, Cheelo pointed to the appropriate portions of his anatomy. “Two eyes, two ears, two arms and legs. Where’s the asymmetry in that?”
“Look at your hands.” Desvendapur nodded in their direction. “Are the number of digits divisible by two? No. There should be six fingers—or four, like mine. Additionally, you need to look deeper.”
“Deeper?” Shifting his pack higher on his shoulders, Cheelo frowned uncomprehendingly.
“Within your pitiful self. How many hearts do you have? One, shoved off to one side. The same is true for all other major human organs, except your lungs, of which you have, by what mysterious quirk of nature I cannot fathom, the proper division.” A foothand ran down the front of the poet’s thorax to his abdomen. “Two hearts, two livers, two stomachs, and so forth. A proper body design for an advanced species, symmetrical and serene. Whereas yours is a mess of internal nonsense, with lonely, vulnerable organs struggling for space and pushed all out of proper position.”
Out-argued, not to mention a bit overwhelmed, Cheelo could only mumble, “So you’re saying that you guys have two of everything inside you?”
Finding the equivalent, appropriate human gesture amenable, Desvendapur nodded. “Not only is such an arrangement aesthetically pleasing, it makes us more durable. Thranx can lose any major organ secure in the knowledge that another just like it will keep them alive. Humans have no such luxury. You must live every day of your existence