Phylogenesis - Alan Dean Foster [99]
“If you’ve got two or more of everything,” Cheelo replied thoughtfully as he started off into the forest with the thranx following close behind, “and your bodies run smaller than ours, then everything that’s inside must also be smaller—heart, lungs, everything. Our organs are bigger.”
“Better to have backup than size,” Desvendapur argued.
They ambled along in that fashion, debating the merits of their respective anatomies, until Cheelo’s train of thought was interrupted by a germinating uncertainty. “For a cook, or cook’s assistant, or whatever it is you are, you sure know a lot about humans.”
Though the biped could not interpret his reflexive gestures, Desvendapur instinctively tried to mute them nonetheless. “Those of us who were assigned to this information-gathering expedition were well prepared.”
“Ay, you told me that.” Still dubious, Cheelo was watching the bug closely. Its body language might be throwing off all kinds of suggestive signals, but he wouldn’t know it. The thranx’s complex hand and head movements held less meaning for him than the antics of the monkeys in the canopy overhead. Fellow primates he could relate to: a pontificating alien bug he could not.
The thranx had the advantage. It had been prepared for contact with humans, whereas he knew next to nothing about the eight-limbed aliens. But he was learning. Cheelo Montoya was nothing if not a fast learner.
“Also,” his otherworldly companion added by way of a delayed afterthought, “you stink.”
“I can see why they put you in food preparation instead of the diplomatic corps.” However, Cheelo had no comeback for the thranx’s latest imputation. While it continued to exude an ever-changing panoply of aromatic perfumes, he pushed on through the brush, grime-soaked and sweaty, reeking of mammalian ooze.
As for appearance, he had to admit that the more often the bug strayed into his range of vision, the less alien and more pleasing to the eye it became. There was much to admire in the graceful flow of multiple limbs; the glint of light shining off smooth blue-green chitin that was one moment the color of dark tsavorite, the next that of Paraiba tourmaline; the delicate rustling of twin antennae; and the splintering of sunshine by the bulging, gold-tinted compound eyes. While not the dreamed-of exotic dancer from Rio or Panama City, neither did it make him anymore want to raise a leg and stomp it.
With a bit of a shock, he realized that in appearance it was not so very different from its distant, terrestrial cousins. Did mere intelligence, then, count for so much in altering one’s perception? If ants could talk, would people still find them so disagreeable?
People would if they persisted in trying to eat a person out of house and home, he decided. It’s not a bug, he kept telling himself. It’s not a spider. It’s a recently contacted alien species, intelligent and sensitive. He had some success convincing himself of that—but only some. Ancient, atavistic sentiments died hard. Easier to think of the thranx as an equal and not something to be stepped on when he kept his eyes closed. You couldn’t do that very often in the rain forest. There was too much to trip over or step into.
Perfunctory insults aside, he found himself wondering what the alien really thought about him.
16
The court of the Emperor MUUNIINAA III was designed to impress and overawe, from its profusion of bejeweled robotics and whisper-silent electronic attendants to the luxuriousness of its furnishings. The fact that everything in the throne room was functional as well as decorative was wholly indicative of the AAnn mind-set. While the AAnn were fond of ceremony, it was never allowed to get in the way of operational efficiency. This extended from the lowliest sand monitor to the highest levels of government.
The emperor, of course, had not possessed absolute powers since ancient times. It was an elective position, as were those of lord and baron and the lesser nobles who ruled beneath them. It was simply that the AAnn could not let go of tradition, so