The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [26]
It was not yet quite dark again when he felt safe in leaving the temporary refuge, but he was anxious to be on the move. The sooner he was out of the surrounding slough and swamp preserves the sooner he would be back in the developed, civilized surrounds of the city where he could get something to eat and find out what had happened to that bastard Jiminy. Peering cautiously out from among the trees and undergrowth he could see no sign of police or mobile scanners. All would be well if he could continue to evade their notice until he could make his way back to town. A quick manip, just enough to fool the omnipresent pickups emplaced on numerous corners and shops, and he would be free to walk the streets again. The manip was vital. Once your features appeared in the continental Wanted database they were immediately accessible to every cop from Moose Jaw to Managua.
But the database could be fooled. In a time when anyone could opt for a complete and even radical body meld, a simple facial could be performed in thousands of qwiclinics, or even one of the hundreds of mobile surges that plied every continent’s byways, highways, and flyways.
He was about to step out into the shallows when he heard the growl.
In early times the only dangerous large animals one had to keep an eye out for on the southeast coast of the old U.S. of A. was the occasional alligator and poisonous snake. Migrating north along with hundreds of other alien plants and animals were far more venomous New World serpents like the fer-de-lance and bushmaster, big crocodilians like the caiman and the Orinoco, dendrobates poison arrow frogs (kids were especially—and sometimes fatally—attracted to their bright, clownish colors) and a posse of exotic felines: ocelot, jacarundi, margay, and most conspicuously the one an unknowing Whispr had just roused from its morning meal.
As he stood frozen in place and staring he was able to view at close range the jaws and teeth that gave the jaguar the most powerful bite in proportion to its body size of any of the big cats. As hefty as an African lioness at a hundred and fifty kilos, the mature male lay alongside its recent kill panting like a steam engine. Stocky and incredibly powerful, the cat had dragged the young bull from the farm or feedlot where it had been slain to this island of rainforest in the midst of the coastal preserve. Though it was quite capable of utilizing the throat-bite and suffocation killing technique of its cousins the lions and tigers, unique among them the jaguar preferred to bite down into the skull directly between the ears, piercing the brain of its prey and terminating it more quickly.
As he slowly backed out of the last of the tall trees and toward the water, a wide-eyed Whispr knew that the big predator would scarcely have to exert itself to perform a similar operation on him. Maybe it would ignore him, he thought fearfully. After all, it had a whole young steer to consume.
The piercing yellow eyes never left his as it growled a second time and started to get up.
Whispr couldn’t help himself. He was no action hero and this was no vid documentary. Screaming, he turned and threw himself into the shallows, flailing at the water as he tried to get away, managing in a single moment to do three absolutely wrong things simultaneously. He screamed louder when he felt a sharp, searing pain tear across his upper back. Eyes bulging, he looked in terror over his left shoulder only to find himself almost eye to eye with the big cat. But for the water that surrounded him, he would have fainted. Instead he did something entirely predictable and entirely involuntary. His bowels let loose and he soiled himself. Taken aback by the spasmodic intestinal eruption, the jaguar backed off.
Continuing to swim and kick at the muddy