Phylogenesis (28 page)

“The revelation that an illegal colony has been established here, in a part of the world where an alien presence is not officially authorized, could cast a serious pall on future as well as current relations between our respective species. In another ten or fifteen years, when the population of Earth has had a reasonable period of time in which to become used to your existence and appearance, the long-term existence of the colony will officially be made public. Realizing that your kind has lived among us in harmony and without friction for a studied length of time should, our psychologists tell us, greatly facilitate the formalizing of relations.”

“But not yet,” the female concluded. Jhywinhuran thought she looked tired, as if she had not slept in several days. “It is too soon—much too soon. The consequences that could result from premature disclosure are alarming.”

The sanitation worker did not hesitate. In spite of any personal feelings she might retain for the engaging individual whose true name it appeared was Desvendapur, she was a dutiful and conscientious member of a hive. As such, she knew that the security and integrity of the community could not be compromised.

“I understand that he must be found and brought back before his existence is discovered by any passing humans. I will help in any way I can.” She gestured sharply with a truhand. “Knowing him and being somewhat familiar with his nature, I can say that having gone to the trouble and extremes you have described, he may prove reluctant to comply.”

It would have been better had one of the supervisors responded, but with the abruptness for which they were noted, it was the male human who replied first.

“If that proves to be the case, then of course we’ll have to kill him.”

19

A
n irritated Cheelo was about to respond to the alien’s question, but before he could, a muted hum began to tickle his ears. Scanning the surrounding rain forest, he found his gaze being drawn to the tributary from which the striking anaconda had erupted. Ignoring the thranx’s queries, he walked to the water’s edge and squinted upstream. The hum grew no louder, but neither did it disappear.

“What are you doing?” Putting tentative pressure on his splinted middle leg, Desvendapur eyed the silent human curiously. “If you think after all this time that you’re now going to persuade me that you are a naturalist by pretending to be engaged in some kind of profound observational behavior of the local fauna, you are—”

“Shut up!” Cheelo snapped. His tone more than the curt human words induced the poet to hold his peace. Or perhaps it was the hand gesture that accompanied the admonition; a sharp, downward chopping motion that Desvendapur had not encountered before.

The poet waited until he could stand the continuing silence no longer. Mindful of the human’s warning, he kept his voice low as he moved forward to stand alongside the biped. The human’s aspect and attitude were indicative of a sudden wariness.

“What’s going on?”

“Don’t you hear it? That vibrating sound?”

Desvendapur gestured affirmatively, then remembered to nod. “Certainly. While our sense of hearing is not as acute as yours, it is perfectly adequate.” He tested the air with his antennae, seeking some radical new aroma, but caught nothing. “Some local animal, a forest dweller.”

“Like hell it is.” Putting out a hand, Cheelo urged the alien back into the undergrowth. Together they concealed themselves as best they could behind and beneath houseplants that here in their natural habitat grew to the size of small trees.

Wordlessly, he pointed at the eagle as it came gliding down the creek, its head panning slowly from side to side. Putting aside the queasiness that arose as a consequence of contact with soft, flexible mammalian flesh, Desvendapur indicated that he understood the situation. Only when he was certain that the eagle had passed well out of sight did Cheelo emerge from the brush and indicate that the thranx could do likewise.

“I do not understand.” Antennae dipped and weaved balletically as Desvendapur gazed down the streambed, then turned back to the still-watchful human. “That was a particularly dangerous creature? Poisonous, perhaps, or stronger than it appeared?”

“That wasn’t no damn bird at all. Eagles
scream
. They don’t hum.” Single-lensed brown eyes regarded the alien. “It was a machine. I’ve seen it before, or another one like it. I’m hoping it was nothing more than a routine, preprogrammed forest service overflight. I don’t know what their inspection and censusing schedule is like. Didn’t realize until I came here that the forest service used such sophisticated scanners. I guess they disguise them like the local critters so as not to alarm the fauna.”

“This forest service you speak of may in fact not do that.” Desvendapur eyed his human companion evenly.

Cheelo frowned. “Bug, is there something you’re not telling me?”

Truhands crocheted the atmosphere. “There might be. Just as there is something you are not telling me. If I explain myself, will you reciprocate?”

“
Ay.
Yeah, sure.” Still listening for any indication that the camouflaged scanner might be returning, Cheelo crossed his arms over his narrow chest and settled himself back against a tree.

“I suspect that cloaked device does not belong to any recognized human agency.”

The perplexed human’s expression contorted. “What do you mean, ‘recognized’?”

“I think I know why it was so well disguised. It was not meant to be identified by your local authorities. It was designed to blend in with the local life-forms. And I think it was looking for
me
.”

“For
you
?” Cheelo hesitated, then nodded knowingly. “Oh, right. Your fellow expedition members are looking for you. What is it? Past time for you to rejoin them?” Though still hopeful of finding some way of making money off the alien, Cheelo remained ambivalent about its presence and realized he wouldn’t exactly be averse to its departure, either. It was slowing him down.

“Truly. But it has been time for me to rejoin them ever since I left.”

The human shook his head impatiently. Explanations were not supposed to further confuse. “I don’t get it.”

“I am not supposed to be here.”

“What? You snuck off on your own?” Cheelo chuckled softly. “How about that? A bug with balls.”

“Since I have yet to master your extensive catalog of colloquialisms I will not comment on that observation. What I am saying is that I am not supposed to be here at all. In this place. On this planet.”

This time Cheelo did not laugh. He stood away from the tree, his expression turning serious. “You mean your research expedition is an illegal one?”

Desvendapur hesitated only briefly. “How much can I trust you, Cheelo Montoya?”

“Completely.” Expression blank, the human waited patiently.

“There is no research expedition.” Turning his upper body slightly, the poet pointed eastward. “With the aid of certain select representatives of your own kind, a colony has been established in this part of your world.”

“Colony? Of
bugs
?” Cheelo digested this, then shook his head sharply. “That’s crazy! Even in a place as isolated as the Reserva Amazonia something like that would’ve been spotted before it got started.”

Desvendapur begged to disagree. “Everything was done below the surface. Research, design, excavation, construction: everything. The colony’s human sponsors provided and continue to provide the necessary cover to maintain our seclusion. Once the initial excavating was completed, expansion was not difficult. Or so the history that I studied of the colony declaims. I was assigned here. Unauthorized egress from the hive is strictly forbidden.”

“This ‘colony’ of yours…” Cheelo hesitated uncertainly. This was bigger than he’d suspected. Much bigger. “It hasn’t been authorized by the government, then? I mean, I don’t exactly scan the media every day, but the big things, the major stories, you hear about them from other people. I’ve heard about your kind, but never anything about a bug colony.”

“It is not authorized by your
visible
government,” Desvendapur admitted readily. “Apparently only a few individuals from certain departments are involved. They have moved forward with this project on their own.”

Like a child’s building blocks, a crude but recognizable structure was assembling itself in Cheelo’s brain. “So if this colony’s been planted here on the sly, and nobody’s supposed to know about it, and nobody from inside is supposed to go outside, then you’re illegitimate twice over.”

“That is correct.”

Cheelo stood stunned, gaping at the calm, composed alien. Here he thought
he
was the one who had to be wary of discovery, and all along he had been traveling in the company of someone who had committed an offense beside which Cheelo Montoya’s entire lifetime of minor misdeeds and infractions paled into insignificance. Every felony the part-time resident of Gatun and Golfito had committed had been provincial in nature, even the accidental killing in San José. Standing quietly before him was malfeasance on an interstellar scale.

He frowned. “Why’re you telling
me
this?”

“To observe your reaction. I collect reactions.” The thranx shifted on its trulegs, trying to spread his weight away from the injured, splinted limb. “I am not a researcher any more than you are a naturalist. I am a poet who seeks inspiration. I arranged to come here, to your world, in search of it. I illegally exited the colony in search of it.” Like accusatory fingers, twin antennae were pointed directly at the biped. “It was in hopes of finding it that I went in search of humans who had not had prior contact with my kind.”

Cheelo’s thoughts swirled and collided. All the time the bug had been tagging along, it hadn’t been studying the forest—it had been studying
him
. Not for scientific purposes, either. His bug was a goddamn artist, all right.

In his comparatively short lifetime Cheelo had thought of himself, envisioned himself, imagined himself as many things. A source of poetic inspiration was not one of them.

“What’ll they do to you if they find you out here?” he asked pointedly.

“Take me back to the hive, to the colony. Debrief me. Ship me offworld as soon as proves feasible. Punishment will follow. Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless my unauthorized sojourn here results in composition the likes of which has never been beheld before. I do not know how it is among humans, but among my kind great art excuses a multitude of transgressions. Additionally, all eminent artists are presumed to be at least partly mentally deranged.”

Cheelo nodded. “Ay, I can see similarities.” His expression darkened. “Just a minute. If nobody except these covert friends of your colony are supposed to know about its existence, and you’ve just told me all about it, then I’m compromised. You’ve compromised me.” His eyes widened. “Shit, what’ll they do to
me
if they find me in your company? I ain’t going off to no bug world with you!”

“Obviously not. I imagine that either my people or yours will have to kill you to ensure your silence on the matter.”

“My silence on the…?” At that moment Cheelo wanted to reach out and choke the alien, except that constricting its neck would not result in a reduction in the supply of air to its lungs. It might be subject to suffocation in the coils of an anaconda, but not by any human. He could, however, by exerting diligence and all his strength, possibly break its neck. “Why’d you have to tell me all this?
Why?
”

“You deserved to know. If that disguised scanner had discovered us and we had been picked up, you wouldn’t have known the reason for it. Now you do. I did not have to tell you about the colony to compromise you. Simply being found in my company by searchers from the hive would be enough to doom you.”

The biped stiffened. “Who’s doomed? Not Cheelo Montoya! I’ve been hiding from searchers all my life! I’ve slipped safely in and out of places nobody else would go near. Unless I want them to, no bunch of goddamned illegal sweet-stinking bugs is going to find me, either!”

A thranx could only smile inwardly. “An intriguingly aggressive response for a self-proclaimed naturalist.”

Cheelo started to shout something more, only to find himself strangling in mid-declaration. His lower jaw closed and his voice changed to a dangerous, angry mix of accusation and admiration. “Why you ugly, burrowing, big-eyed, toothless bug bastard. You think you’re pretty clever, don’t you?”

“That is a proven fact, not hypothesis,” the thranx replied calmly. “Why not tell me what
you
are, man?”

“Sure. Ay, sure, why not? It doesn’t matter. You can’t exactly walk into the nearest police depot and turn me in, can you? Sure, I’ll tell you.” He gestured at the alien’s thorax pouch. “Why don’t you get out that scri!ber of yours and take it all down? You might get a goddamn poem or two out of it.”

Oblivious to the human’s sarcasm, an excited Desvendapur hurried to comply. Holding the compact instrument out toward the biped, the poet waited eagerly.

“I take things from people,” Cheelo told him pugnaciously. “I was born without anything, I saw my mother die without anything, and I had a baby brother who died before he had a chance to know anything. I grew up learning that if you want anything in this world you’ve got to go out and get it, because nobody’s going to give it to you. This is a pretty advanced planet. Lots of nice new technology, good medicine, easy to get around, a lot cleaner than it used to be. That much I learned from history. I do read, you know.”

“I never doubted it.” Desvendapur was absorbing not only the human’s words, but his attitude, his posture, his wonderfully distorted facial expressions. Truly, the biped’s ranting was a veritable fount of inspiration.

“Humankind’s managed to get rid of a lot of things, a lot of the old troubles. But poverty isn’t one of them. Not so far, not yet. I hear the sociologists argue about it a lot: whether there’ll always be poor people no matter how rich the species becomes. Somebody always has to be on the bottom, no matter how high you raise the top.” He shook his head sharply. “Me, I ain’t going to stay on the bottom. When I found out I’d never be able to rise any other way, I started figuring out methods to take what I needed to lift me up. I’m not the only one, not by a flicker, but I’m better at it than some. That’s why I’m standing here talking to you right now instead of licking my hospital dressings waiting to go in for a court-ordered selective mindwipe.” There was something deeply gratifying about spilling his guts, even if only to an alien bug. Feeling more than a little reckless, he plunged on.

“I’m here right now because I killed somebody.”

Desvendapur felt a thrill run through him. This was more than he could have hoped for: inspiration taken to and beyond a degree he could not have imagined in his wildest dreams. “You murdered another of your own kind?”

“It wasn’t intentional,” Cheelo protested. “I never meant to hurt nobody. Killing’s bad for business. It just—happened. I needed the money. So I had to get away, to someplace where I could lose myself for a while.” He gestured at the wild, all-enveloping rain forest. “This is a good place for that. Or it was, until I ran into you.”

“You are still ‘lost,’” Desvendapur assured him. “I will not give you away.”

“You don’t have to ‘give me away.’” Cheelo’s tone was accusing. “Like you said, all your brother bugs and their human friends have to do is find me with you and I’m history. Don’t matter anyway. I was on my way out when you found me. I got an appointment. And you ain’t helping me make it.” Quietly, his hand strayed toward his gun.

“One more day.” The thranx glanced skyward. “They haven’t found me yet. I don’t think they will, if I choose to continue hiding, but all I ask for is one more day in your company.”

Cheelo’s fingers hovered. Why wait? he told himself. Kill it now and move on. They’ll find the body or they won’t. Either way, he wouldn’t be connected to it. As far as this unauthorized colony and its allies were concerned, he’d be just another solitary wanderer in the vast reaches of the rain forest.