"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 than its body. It would glare up at him but acknowledge the human as its physical superior. He wondered if it would drip-dry or shake like a dog.
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 inTerranglo?
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 trahand 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 mono_ 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 here with another species? So, educate me: If I'm ever in a life-or-death struggle with a thranx, what do I aim for?"
"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 Jose. 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 Desvendapur, 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." Foot-hands 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 p
roper 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 in fear of organ failure."
"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.
Chapter Sixteen
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 they adapted it to fit a contemporary, star traversing cluster of systems and worlds. Though it rang of history and ancient regimes, it was in reality about as feudal in nature as the programming of the latest massive parallel quantum computers that navigated the ships that darted and plunged through space-plus.
So while Lord Huudra Ap and Baron Keekil YN wore the ceremonial robes of high office, each noble's elegant attire and gem-studded investitures powered individual defensive screens and a full suite of communications gear to keep them in constant touch with both immediate underlings and detached constituencies. Standing with bowed heads and lowered tails as the Emperor retired from the chamber to deal with the mountainous and decidedly unglamorous paperwork of office, they exchanged a glance that signified a mutual need to talk.
Other groups broke away from the assembly to chat informally or to discuss matters of serious import. For Huudra and Keekil it was a matter of both.
Heads bobbed in greeting, and finely manicured claws were courteously sheathed. In addition to their repertoire of other skills, both nobles were masters of manners. Together with several other nobles, they formed one of the dozen or so organized cliques that dominated the politics of the assembly. The matter that Keekil wished to discuss with Huudra, however, had nothing to do with imminent business of state. It was more a matter for mutual speculation that both had made a specialty of theirs. Aware that everyone from the opposition parties to the emperor himself relied on them for the most current information on the matter, they had made it their business to keep in constant communication with those far-flung representatives of the Empire who were in a position to be knowledgeable.
It was in this spirit of curiosity and need that Huudra greeted his friend and ally, whom he would not hesitate to undermine to advance his own status and position. Keekil hissed a warm greeting, quite aware of what his associate was thinking. He was thinking the same thing. There was no animosity involved. It was the natural order of things. Such constant competition strengthened the assembly, and by inference, the Empire.
"It is all sso very peculiar." Keekil favored blue in his robes, in all its most sallow permutations. Even the communicator that hovered patiently several centimeters to the left of his mouth was plated in gleaming pale blue metal. "Thiss business of the thranx attempting to make alliess of the mammalss."
Huudra excused himself long enough to answer a priority call and suggest several alternatives to a disagreeable situation to the technocrat on the other end. "Apologiess, honored Keekil. Then you think the inssectiles are sserious about it?"
The baron gestured assent, adding a supportive hiss. " Yess, I do. The quesstion iss, are these humanss?"
Overhead, hoverators hummed back and forth, scanning for intruders, petitioners, and possible assassins. The temperature in the room was high, the humidity a tolerable 6 percent. Both nobles' personal communicator suites hummed for attention. For the moment, they were ignored.
"My own ressearchess indicate an inherent reluctance on the part of the human population, both on their homeworld and their coloniess. More than that, they sseem to have a vissceral fear of the thranx sshape." He hissed his amusement. "Can you imagine it? Deciding intersstellar politicss on the basiss of sshape? They are an immature sspeciess!"
"There iss nothing immature about th
eir technology," Keekil reminded his aristocratic colleague. "Their weaponry iss the equal of the besst of the Empire's-or of the thranx. Their communicationss are ssuperb. Their sshipss ..." The baron gesticulated admiration mixed with paranoia, a difficult gesture for any but the most accomplished orator to execute eloquently. "Their sshipss are elegant."
Huudra drew back his upper lip to reveal even, sharp teeth set in a long jaw. "I have sseen ssome of the preliminary reportss. There iss ssome dissagreement as to whether they are better than ourss."
"If they do indeed exceed the capabilitiess of ourss, then they are better as well than anything flown by the thranx." Irritated, Keekil waved a ringed hand across his waist. The persistent hum of communications demanding response promptly died.
"That would be reasson enough to sseek them as alliess." Huudra scratched at a loose scale on the side of his neck. Sparkling in the bright artificial light of the throne room, it fell to the floor and was promptly vacuumed away by an unobtrusive remote cleaner built to resemble a four-legged _kerpk._ "Our interesstss would be better sserved by convincing them to become confederatess of the Empire."
"You know our envoyss have had little ssuccess in pers-suading the humanss of the many advantagess that would lie in aligning themsselvess with our interesstss." Raising a hand, Keekil had to wait less than a minute for a drifting sus-tainer to place a filled drinking utensil between his fingers.
"Yess." Huudra was not thirsty. Idly, he wondered if Keekil's drink might be poisoned. It was a natural thought, as was the corollary that the baron would not be so readily consuming the contents of the container if they had not been thoroughly tested by an independent machine prior to arrival. "These mamalss value their independence."
"That will have to change. I am persuaded by our pssych sspecialisstss that the humanss _can_ be convinced. We already know that they are resisstant to pressure. Nor have rational ar-gumentss ssucceeded in sswaying them."