Phylogenesis

by Alan Dean Foster

  “Willow-Wane,” Desvendapur murmured softly. “I suppose they must, but I do not really know. I don’t know any more about what goes on within the project than what the Grand Council chooses to disseminate. They might have soothers there, or they might not.”

  “Is that what it’s called? Soothing?” In the poor light, Cheelo nodded thoughtfully. “Listen, I know I’m not much of an audience—not knowledgeable or anything like that—and I can’t exactly return the favor with constructive criticism, but anytime you want to practice a new piece or a part of one, I’d be real pleased to look at and listen to it.”

  “You did actually enjoy it, didn’t you?” Desvendapur stared at the biped.

  “Damn right I did. Tell you what. Tomorrow night I’ll eat something different, just to give you fresh inspiration. Maybe I’ll try and kill an agouti or something.”

  Desvendapur gagged, and his antennae flinched reflexively. “Please do not cannibalize a living creature on my behalf.”

  “I thought you wanted radical, extreme stimulation.”

  “My mind does. My digestive system is a different matter.”

  Cheelo crossed his legs and grinned. “Okay. We’ll build up the inspiration gradually.” Leaning over and reaching into his pack, he extracted a stimstick and unwrapped the vacuum tip. On contact with the air, it flashed alight.

  Desvendapur watched the human place one end of the burning shaft between its lips and inhale. This was more than he could have hoped for. Every moment spent in the biped’s company was a source of unprecedented enlightenment. What whimsical pleasure the creature gained from placing combusting organic matter in its mouth the thranx could not imagine, but the inscrutable activity proved to be the source of not one but two complete, condensed compositions before the evening bored its way into night and they were compelled to retire.

  15

  It was not the howlers that woke Cheelo the following morning. A sharp, cawing call caused him to roll over and sit up, the lightweight blanket falling away from his neck and chest and down to his hips. The bird that was pecking at some fallen, rotting fruit nearby was grotesque in the extreme. Outsized red eyes peered from a narrow, blue-skinned face that was lined and surmounted by a crest of stiff, yellow-black feathers. His rising startled the creature and it flew, awkwardly and with undisguised effort, into a nearby tree. The size of a small turkey, it rocked on a branch while contemplating the odd duo resting on the ground below.

  As he rubbed at his eyes and climbed to his feet, Cheelo tried to remember names from the guideware he had bought in Cuzco and installed in his card. The bird was big enough to be a raptor, but its short beak and small claws, not to mention its awkwardness in the air, marked it as belonging to some other family. Still blinking away sleep, he opened his pack and took out the card. A few adjustments called forth the guidebook and the section on birds.

  The clumsy flier with the prehistoric mien was a hoatzin. If there ever was a bird that looked like a dinosaur, he thought, here it was. His attention shifted from the red-eyed forest dweller to the far more alien figure slumbering nearby.

  Having found a suitable fallen log, the thranx had straddled it. Three legs hung on one side, three on the other, with the first set of arms tucked neatly up against the insectoid’s chest, if that’s what the forward-facing portion of its anatomy could be called. Since it had no opaque eyelids, but only a very thin, transparent membrane that sometimes slid down to protect those golden orbs, it was impossible to tell by looking at it whether it was awake or asleep. The absence of any movement or reaction as Cheelo cautiously approached, coupled with the steady bellows-like pumping of its thorax, was enough to convince him it continued to occupy whatever unimaginable region such creatures visited when they turned off their consciousness for the night.

  What kind of dreams did aliens dream? he wondered. For the first time, he found himself within touching distance of the creature. Up close, the ambrosial fragrance of its body odor was even stronger. Bending over, he was able to see himself reflected dozens of times in the multiple lenses of one golden eye. A line of small openings in the blue-green chitin of the thorax pulsed rhythmically, showing where the creature siphoned air. The sensitive, feathery antennae described twin limp, forward-facing arcs on the otherwise smooth curve of the skull.

  Reaching out, he ran fingertips along the glistening exoskeleton of one wing case. It was hard, smooth, and slightly cool to the touch, like plastic or some highly polished building material. Letting his hand drift downward he felt of a leg, unable to escape the feeling that he was exploring a machine and not a living creature. That perception vanished the instant the thranx woke up.

  Startled by the unexpected human touch, Desvendapur let out a shrill stridulation and kicked out reflexively with all six legs. One caught Cheelo in the thigh and sent him stumbling backward. Scrambling frantically, shocked into wakefulness, the poet slid off the makeshift bed and promptly fell over on his side onto the moist, leaf-strewn earth. He recovered quickly to stand facing the human across the log.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Take it easy,” Cheelo admonished his otherworldly companion. “Nothing weird.”

  “How can I be sure of that? Humans are noted for their peculiar habits.” As he spoke, Desvendapur was checking the length of his body. Everything appeared to be undamaged and where it belonged.

  The human snorted derisively. “Look, it was hard enough for me just to touch you.”

  “Then why did you?” Desvendapur shot back accusingly.

  “To make sure that I could. Don’t worry—I won’t be doing it again.” Cheelo rubbed his fingers together, as if trying to remove dirt or grease from beneath the nails. “It was like rubbing a piece of old furniture.”

  The poet walked over to his pack and checked the seal. It was undisturbed, but he could not be absolutely sure until he checked the contents. “Better than making contact with flesh that flexes beneath one’s fingers.” His antennae quivered. “All that soft, pulpy meat held in check only by a thin layer of flexible epidermis, full of blood and muscle, just waiting to be exposed to the air. It’s indecent. I cannot imagine what nature was thinking when she designed such animal forms and then built them from the inside out.”

  “You’re the one who’s inside out.” Walking back to where he had laid his own gear, Cheelo crouched and pondered breakfast. “Walking around with your skeleton on the outside.”

  “And it is not bad enough that all your support is internal,” Desvendapur continued, “you come in a bewildering variety of colors. There is no harmony, no consistency at all. Our color deepens naturally as we age, a reflection of the natural progression of time. Yours only changes when diseased, some of which you induce voluntarily. And it shrivels.” Truhands were in continual motion as the thranx spoke. Cheelo had no idea what the bug was saying with its eloquent limbs, but he could make inferences from the tenor of its comments.

  “Because of these flaws, which are the unavoidable consequence of defective genetics, I feel an instinctive sympathy for you.”

  “Gee, thanks.” As he prepared his simple morning meal Cheelo wondered if the bug could detect sarcasm and decided it probably could not. “Not that it means anything, or matters, but why?”

  This time a truhand and a foothand on the same side of the smooth body gestured in tandem. “Your epidermis is so incredibly fragile, so easily cut or compromised, that it is outright wondrous you have survived as a species. One would think that mere incidental contact with the world around you would result in the incurring of an unavoidable succession of incapacitating wounds.”

  “Our outside’s tougher than it looks.” By way of demonstration, Cheelo pinched up a fold of skin on the back of his hand. Simultaneously fascinated and repelled, Desvendapur could not turn away from the incredible sight. It was at once ghastly and captivating to behold. Grossly descriptive, the burgeoning verses that hurtled through his mind skittered on the very edge of possible censorship.

/>   “Here.” Walking toward the thranx, Cheelo rolled up one sleeve and held his naked arm out to the alien. “Try it yourself.”

  “No.” The boldness that had brought Desvendapur this far wavered at the sight of the exposed, almost transparent skin, with its components of deeply tanned muscle, tendon, and blood clearly visible beneath. Mushy and resilient, the soft mammalian flesh would deform beneath his fingers, he knew. Envisioning this threatened to bring up what remained unprocessed of his previous meal.

  Steeling himself, he forced a halt to his mental flight. If it was safe, unthreatening inspiration he wanted, he should have stayed on Willow-Wane, ascended through the customary methods of promotion, and accepted a conventional academic post. Instead, he was here, on the homeworld of the humans, illegal and alone. Raising a truhand, he reached out.

  All four of the delicate manipulative digits came together. They were of equal length and shorter than a human thumb. Making contact with the exposed flesh, Desvendapur felt the heat rising from within. No wonder humans had to eat so much, he thought. Without a proper exoskeleton to provide insulation, they must lose enormous quantities of energy in the form of heat to the surrounding air. How they spent as much time in water as they did without instantly freezing was one of those exotic physiological mysteries best left to the xenobiologists.

  When the skin and flesh of the human’s arm compacted and rose between his fingers, he nearly gagged. The compression did not seem to hurt or harm the biped at all, though surely if pressure was increased it would ultimately do so. Utilized for extraordinarily delicate manipulation, a truhand was incapable of exerting that kind of force. A foothand could do so, but the poet had no desire to put the hypothesis to the test.

  When the human deliberately moved his arm slightly, the flesh and skin in the thranx’s grasp flexed with the motion but did not tear. Cheelo grinned, enjoying the alien’s discomfort. When it released its grip, he rolled his sleeve back down.

  “See? No harm done. We’re flexible. It’s a much better physical design.”

  “That is an assertion very much open to debate.” Dipping his head, Desvendapur searched the surrounding ground until he found a small rock with an edge. Holding it in one truhand, he extended a foothand and, to Cheelo’s surprise, deliberately drew the sharp edge of the stone across the upper portion of the smaller limb. A pale white line appeared in its wake. “Try this on your ‘better design.’” He chucked the rock.

  Cheelo caught it reflexively. The ragged, splintered stone edge was sharp enough to slice easily through skin, leaving exposed flesh raw and bleeding. Tight lipped, he let the stone fall from his fingers. He didn’t like being shown up, never had, whether it was by some street punk or a sassy well-dressed citizen or a visiting alien.

  “Okay, shell-butt. So you made a point. It doesn’t make you any less ugly. You smell nice, sure, and I guess you’re sort of smart, but to me you’re still nothing but a big, bloated, overgrown bug with brains. My people have been stepping on your kind since we could walk.”

  Open hostility! Where virtually any other thranx would have been dismayed and appalled by the grimy human’s response, Desvendapur was elated. Such primal social interaction was all but unheard-of among the thranx, whose close-quarter, underground society was necessarily founded upon an elaborate hierarchy of courtesy and manners. Here was inspiration indeed! Drawing forth his scri!ber, he directed a rapid-fire stream of clicks, whistles, and wordings at its pickup.

  Cheelo frowned. “What are you jabbering about now?”

  “I am just trying to capture the moment. Outright anger is rare among my kind. Please, sustain that tone of voice and those urgent syllables.”

  “Sustain…? What the hell do you think I am, some kind of archetype for you to capture in verse?” His voice rose. “D’you think I was put here just for your stinking benefit, to give you something to compose about?”

  “Wonderful, marvelous!” the thranx breathed in his whispery Terranglo. “Don’t stop!”

  Cheelo folded his arms over his chest and set his jaw. Seeing that the human had finished, or at least terminated his current rant, a disappointed Desvendapur paused the scri!ber. Might there be some way he could induce the biped to resume? Proceeding against nature, in direct contravention of everything he had been brought up to believe in and act upon, he unhesitatingly hostiled back. The larval adolescent within him rebelled violently at his tone, but there was no one else around to overhear or to be shocked.

  “I am not your tiny, primitive insect pest. Try stepping on me, and you’ll slide off. Or I will throw you into the nearest river.”

  Cheelo’s gaze narrowed. “You and what bug army? If there’s any throwing to be done, I’ll do it.”

  “Come on, then.” Astonished at his audacity, his mind storming with inspired verse that burned and crackled, Desvendapur turned to face the taller, heavier human head-on. He adopted a defensive posture; truhands folded back, stronger foothands extended, eight digits splayed in grasping position, antennae erect and alert. The thranx might be excessively polite, but they were not helpless. “Let’s see you try.”

  The pistol weighed heavily as Cheelo Montoya mulled the challenge. He was bigger and heavier than the bug, but outlimbed eight to four. Since all its musculature was internal, hidden beneath the chitinous exoskeleton, he could not get an idea of its strength from looking at it. He knew that small insects like ants and fleas could lift many times their own weight, but that did not mean such physical ability would scale up proportionately to something the size of a thranx. In their brief time together he had not seen it throw any logs around or push trees out of its way.

  Slowly, he slid the pack off his back. A small stream flowed through the woods nearby. It was no river, but it did spread out to form a sizable pool. For purposes of demonstration it would have to do.

  As Cheelo approached, the thranx began weaving slowly from side to side, up and down, forcing the human to deal with a moving target. When he tried to circle around and get behind it, it pivoted on its four legs to keep facing him. Experimentally, he struck out with his right hand, grabbing for one of the extended foothands. It drew back, and the other foothand came down sharply on his wrist. The blow stung more sharply than he expected, and he reflexively jerked his arm back.

  “Come on.” Desvendapur chided the human even as he tried to store as many new stanzas in his head as possible. This was extraordinary! The possibility that the confrontation might end in injury did not enter his mind. “I thought you were going to throw me in the river.”

  Cheelo continued to circle the alien, searching for an opening. With eight limbs blocking his reach, he saw that it wasn’t going to be easy. “You’re quick, I’ll give you that. You can block a grab, and probably a punch—but what can you do about this?”

  Arms outstretched, he rushed forward. When the thranx tried to feint, Cheelo swerved in response. He’d survived too many breathless fights in too many dark alleys and deserted buildings to be easily fooled. As his arms wrapped around the alien’s lower thorax, he tucked his head low and out of reach.

  Perfume exploded in his face. His upper body blocked the weaker truhands from extending and getting a grip, while the foothands clutched at his back and tried to pull him off. They were insistent, but not strong enough. Bending his knees, he lifted the alien off the damp ground and started walking toward the stream.

  He’d taken two steps when all four feet slammed into his belly, knocking the air out of him. Losing his grip, he stumbled backward, tripped, and sat down hard on his backside, curled over and clutching at his stomach. When he released the thranx, it fell on its side. All four legs churning, it scrambled back onto its feet and came toward him. This time all four hands were extended.

  He waited until they grabbed his shirt. Reaching up, he wrapped his fingers around the foothands, the unyielding chitin smooth and slick beneath his fingers. Bringing up his right foot, he planted it in the middle of the alien’s abdomen and rolled backwar
d, pushing with his leg as he did so. The thranx went flying over his head to land hard on its back.

  Rolling, breathing hard, he staggered to his feet. Lying on its back and kicking with all eight limbs, the alien’s resemblance to an upturned crab or spider was unnerving. Finally succeeding in getting a couple of legs under its body, it pushed, straightened, and once more stood confronting him. A truhand reached up to groom flexible antennae. It did not look like it was hurt, but it was hard to tell. Rigid chitin did not bruise in the manner of soft flesh.

  “Had—had enough?” Cheelo gasped, bending over and bracing one hand against his right thigh.

  Though quite familiar from training with the techniques of hand-to-hand combat, Desvendapur was unfamiliar with the consequences. Execution and practice in a polite, scholastic setting was one thing; being thrown around on hard, unyielding, alien ground was quite something else. He was sore from head to foot. But if the transliteration of the extraordinary experience from reality to exposition did not win him a major prize in composition, then he truly might as well give up trying to be an innovative poet and remain a food preparator for the rest of his life. The experience was exhilarating, rousing, and yes, inspiring.

  “A time-part fraction, if you will. Please. I have to get this down!” Removing the scri!ber from its padded pouch, the poet once again spewed a stream of elegantly embellished alien rhetoric into its pickup.

  “Sure,” Cheelo responded graciously. “Take your time.” Approaching cautiously, he gave the device a curious once-over before bending to wrap both arms quickly and tightly around the alien body and lifting it for a second time off the ground—but this time from behind.

  Flailing arms and legs could not reach him. The thranx was not flexible enough to reach behind its back. The head, however, could swivel almost a hundred and eighty degrees. The face was expressionless as always, but the rapid movement of mandibles coupled with the anxious writhings of all eight limbs succeeded in conveying the creature’s distress.