Walking over to the tool rack, Cheelo snapped the rifle into an empty charging cradle and turned to ponder the silent airtruck. "I can try to start this big bastard up, but unless these guys were completely confident in their isolation here, or were total idiots, there are probably about two million possible key codes." His gaze rose to the nearest of the one-way windows. "You saw the country around here on the way in. This place is really isolated. There's nothing nearby but some automated farming projects. We can try for one."
"I do not think so." Desvendapur argued.
"Why not?" His respiration slowly returning to normal, Cheelo stared at the thranx.
"While you were fighting with our captors I was hearing voices from their communicator. Someone with an especially authoritative voice was demanding to know where the one called Maruco had gone. When no response was forthcoming, the transmission was terminated with the words 'See you soon you little shit.' While I do not interpret that to mean that the speaker's appearance is imminent, it struck me as a promise to arrive in a finite period of time."
"You're right. Dammit!" Cheelo thought furiously. "I forgot about their bug buyers. We'd better not be around when they show up." A look of distaste on his face, he calmly contemplated the human debris staining the floor. "Help me with these two." Moving off, he searched for the manual door opener he knew had to exist.
"What are we going to do? Carry out some kind of formal burial ritual?" Despite his dismay at the carnage that had occurred, it would not prevent the poet from recording the details of what promised to be a particularly fascinating human rite.
"More like an informal one." Locating a control panel, Cheelo brushed touchplates, activating lights, servos, and an automatic washer before finding the one that operated the garage door. Cold, intensely _dry_ air swept in from outside as the barrier rattled upward.
Working together, they hauled the bodies of the two poachers one at a time to the rim of the nearest obliging precipice and shoved them over the edge, watching as each limp lump of dead meat rolled and bumped its way into cloud-swathed oblivion. Desvendapur was disappointed by the lack of ceremony, having anticipated a certain amount of exotic alien chanting or dancing. But the biped who had become his companion mouthed only a few words, and none of them struck the poet as especially complimentary to or respectful of the deceased.
That onerous duty done, they returned to the deserted outpost where Desvendapur did his best to assist the human in cleansing the garage floor of blood. When he was satisfied, Cheelo stepped back to survey their work, wiping sweat from his forehead. Though the exudation of clear fluid by the biped's body as a means of maintaining its internal temperature was a process Desvendapur had already observed in the forest, he never ceased to be captivated by it.
"There!" Cheelo sighed tiredly. "When their buyers arrive, they won't know where their favorite _ninlocos_ have hopped off to. They'll see that the airtruck is still here-we can't do anything about that-but that won't automatically lead them to assume that something's happened to them. They'll start a search, but one that's considered and unhurried. By the time they find the bodies, _if_ they find the bodies, and figure out that maybe they ought to be looking for somebody like us-or like me, anyway-we'll both be safe and out of sight back down in the Reserva. I know if I follow the river it'll take me into Sintuya, where I can book a flight back to Lima. I still have enough time to make it to Golfito." Walking back to the wall, he yanked the sonic rifle free from the charging bracket.
"Expensive little toy, this." He rotated the sophisticated weapon in his hands. "So our trip up here wasn't a total loss. Let's help ourselves to the pantry and get out of here before nanny shows up."
"I cannot."
Cheelo blinked at the alien. "What d'you mean, 'you cannot'? You sure as hell can't stay here." He indicated a window that revealed the barren plateau outside. "Whoever comes looking for those two _ninlocos_ won't hesitate about shoving you in a cage." Nobody'd make any money off it, either, he reflected.
"I will explain matters to them. That I wish to study them." Antennae bobbed. "Perhaps a mutual accommodation can be reached."
"You can take your goddamn studying for inspiration and ... !" Cheelo calmed himself, remembering that the visibly flinching thranx was sensitive to the volume of the booming human voice. "You don't understand, Des. These people who are coming, they're gonna be nervous and on edge because they're unable to contact their two guys here. They'll come in fast and quiet, and if the first thing they see is a giant, big-eyed bug wandering around loose instead of properly caged up, they might not stop to smell the roses-or the alien that smells like one. They're liable to blast you into half a dozen pieces before you get the chance to 'explain matters' to them."
"They might not shoot first," Desvendapur argued.
"No, that's right. They might not." He pushed past the thranx, striding toward the corridor that led to the outpost's living quarters. "I'm going to start packing. You want to stay here and put your life in the hands of a bunch of senior _nin locos_ who aren't exactly experienced in the formalities of unanticipated interspecies contact, you go right ahead. Me, I'd rather put my trust in the monkeys. I'm heading down into the forest."
Left behind in the garage to meditate on his limited options, Desvendapur soon turned to follow the biped into the other part of the station.
"You don't understand, Cheelo Montoya. It is not that I _want_ to remain here. The fact is that I have little choice in the matter."
Cheelo did not look up from where he was stuffing hand-fuls of concentrates from the outpost's food locker into his backpack. "Ay? Why's that?"
"Did you not notice that I was barely able to help you remove and dispose of the two cadavers? It was not because their weight was excessive. It was because the air here is far too dry for my kind. More importantly, the temperature is borderline freezing."
Pausing in his scavenging, Cheelo turned to regard the alien. "Okay, I can see where that could be a problem. But from here it's all downhill into the Reserva. The lower we go, the hotter and more humid it'll become and the better you'll feel."
The heart-shaped head slowly nodded acquiescence while truhands and antennae bobbed understandingly. "I know that is so. The difficult, and critical, question is: Will it become hot and humid enough soon enough?"
"I can't answer that," the human responded evenly. "I don't know what your tolerances are."
"I cannot answer it myself. But I fear to try it. By the wings that no longer fly, I do."
From hidden, long-unvisited depths Cheelo dragged up what little compassion remained in him. "Maybe we can rig you some kind of cold-weather gear. I'm no tailor, and I don't see an autogarb in this dump, but I suppose we could cut up some blankets or something. Your only alternatives are to wait here and hope you can talk faster than the people who are coming can shoot, or to strike out across this plateau and try and find another place far enough away that they won't search it."
The thranx indicated negativity. "If I am to walk, better to aim for a more accommodating climate than one I already know to be hostile." Turning, he gestured at the terrain beyond a window. "I would not make it across the first valley before my joints began to stiffen from the cold. And remember: I have one bad leg."
"And five good ones. Well, you think about it." Cheelo returned to his foraging. "Whatever you decide to do, I'll help you if I can-provided it doesn't cost me any more time."
In the end, Desvendapur decided that despite his increasing mastery of the human's language, he was neither confident nor fluent enough to risk an encounter with the dead poachers' customers. Already he had experience of the volatile nature of human response and its reaction to unforeseen events. Not knowing what to expect within the outpost that now failed to respond to their queries, whoever was coming in search of the absent poachers might well unload a rush of lethality in his direction before he could explain himself.
Whatever the chasti
sement meted out to him upon his return to the colony, it would not include summary execution. The question was, could he make it all the way down to the salubrious surroundings of the lowland rain forest? It seemed he had no choice but to try. Certainly the biped thought so. Having made the decision, the poet fell to scrounging supplies of his own from the outpost's stores, relying on the human to elucidate the contents of the bewildering variety of multihued food packages and containers.
When their respective packs were bulging with supplies, human and thranx turned their attention to the question of how to insulate someone whose anatomy did not remotely resemble that of an upright mammal. Utilizing the clothing of the deceased proved impossible: None of it would fit over Desvendapur's head or around his body. They settled for wrapping his thorax and abdomen as best they could in several of the high-altitude, lightweight blankets that covered two of the station's beds. Unfortunately, these relied for their generous heating properties on picking up waved energy from a broadcast coil located in the floor of the single bedroom. Outside the buildings and beyond the coil's limited range, the caloric elements woven into the blankets would go inert.
"That's the best I can do," an impatient Cheelo assured his chitinous companion. "There's nothing else here that'd work any better. It's all tech stuff. Stands to reason they'd bring in the most basic of everything they'd need. In a town we could probably find some old-style, heavier wrappings." He nodded curtly toward the nearest window. "No telling how far it is to the nearest village. I know I didn't see one on the way here."
"Nor did I," conceded Desvendapur. Wrapped in the blankets that the human had clumsily cinched around him with cord, the thranx knew he must present a highly incongruous sight. Contemplating himself in a reflective surface, he removed his scri!ber from the thorax pouch that was now hidden beneath the artificial covering and began to recite.
Cheelo looked on in disgust as he tightened a strap on his own pack. "Don't you ever take a break from that composing?"
Winding up a stanza that oozed systemic emotion, the thranx paused the instrument. "For someone like myself, to stop composing would be to start to die."
The human grunted, one of its more primitive sounds, and activated the doorplate. The composite barrier began to roll upward. Cold, searingly dry air rushed hungrily into the insulated structure, overwhelming any warmth before it. Desvendapur's mandibles clacked shut to prevent the deadly cold from entering his system via his mouth. At such times it was useful not to have to open one's jaws to breathe. The biped had cut two long, narrow slits in the blanket that covered the poet's thorax, allowing his spicules access to the air. Internally, his lungs constricted at the intrusion of the frigid atmosphere. Trying not to shudder, he took a hesitant step forward.
"Let's go. The sooner we start downward, the sooner the air will start to warm and to thicken with moisture."
Cheelo said nothing, nodding curtly as he followed him out of the garage.
There was a path, of sorts, made by what animal or animals Cheelo did not know. It was just wide enough for them to proceed along it in single file. Possibly the poachers themselves had enlarged it to allow access to the cloud forest and the rare creatures that dwelled in the little-visited ecosystem lying between plateau and jungle. Llamas would not have made such a track, but far-ranging carnivores like jaguars or the spectacled bear might have tramped back and forth along the same route for enough generations to have worn a path through the unrelenting greenery.
Far more comfortable in the cool mountain air than his companion, Cheelo would have quickly outdistanced him but for the fact that the thranx, utilizing all six legs, was much more sure-footed on the narrow path. Where the thief was forced to take extra care before negotiating an awkward dip or steep drop, Desvendapur simply ambled on, so that the distance between them never became too great.
At midday they paused to eat beside a miniature waterfall. Huge butterflies fluttered on wings of metallic hue, skating the edge of the spray, while mosquitoes danced among the lush ferns that framed the musical cataract. Cheelo was feeling fit and expansive, but it was plain that his many-legged companion was not doing nearly as well.
"C'mon, pick your antennae up," he urged the thranx. "We're doing good." Chewing a strip of reconstituted meat, he nodded at the clouds scudding along mournfully below them. "We'll be down to where it's revoltingly hot and sticky before you know it."
"That is what I am afraid of." Desvendapur huddled as best he could beneath the thin blankets that hung all too loosely around him. "That it will happen before I know of it."
"Is pessimism a common thranx characteristic?" Cheelo chided him playfully.
Without much success, the poet tried to tuck his exposed, unprotected limbs more tightly beneath him. "The human ability to adapt to extremes of climate is one we do not share. I find it difficult to believe that you are comfortable in these surroundings."
"Oh, it's on the brisk side; make no mistake about that. But now that we're off the high plateau and down in cloud forest there ought to be enough moisture in the air for you."
"Truly, the weight of the air is improving," Desvendapur admitted. "But it's still cold, so cold!"
"Eat your vegetables," he advised the thranx. How many times as a child had his mother admonished him to do just that? He smiled to himself at the remembrance. The smile did not last. She had told him things like that when she wasn't hitting him or bringing home a different visiting "uncle" every week or so. His expression darkened as he rose.
"C'mon, get up. We'll push it until you start feeling better." Gratefully, the poet struggled to his six feet, taking care not to shrug off any of the inadequate blankets or put too much pressure on the splinted middle limb.
But he did not start feeling better. Cheelo could not believe how rapidly the thranx's condition deteriorated. Within a short while after their meal the alien began to experience difficulty in walking.
"I... I am all right," Desvendapur replied in response to the human's query. "I just need to rest for a time-part."
"No." Cheelo was unbending. "No resting. Not here." Even as the thranx started to sink down onto its abdomen, Cheelo was reaching out to grab the bug and pull it back to its feet. The smooth, unyielding chitin of an upper arm was shockingly icy to the touch. "Shit, you're as cold as these rocks!"
Golden-hued compound eyes peered up at him. "My system is concentrating its body heat internally to protect vital organs. I can still walk. I just need to rest first, to gather my strength."
Cheelo's reply was grim. "You 'rest' for very long and you won't have to worry about gathering any strength." Why was he so concerned? What did it matter to him if the bug died? He could kick the body over the side of the narrow trail and into the gorge where the rich friends of the dead _ninlocos_ would never find it. Continuing on alone, he would make better time. Soon he'd find himself down by the river, and then back in the outpost of civilization called Sintuya. Climate-controlled hotel rooms, real food, insect screens, and a quick flight to Lima or Iquitos, then on to Golfito and his appointment with Ehrenhardt. After a rapid electronic transfer of credit, his own franchise. Money, importance, fine clothes, sloe gin, and fast women. _Respect,_ for Cheelo Montoya.
It had been promised to him and was all there for the taking. With all that in prospect, why should he exert himself on behalf of a bug, even an oversized, intelligent one? The thranx had brought him nothing but trouble. Oh sure, maybe it had saved his life up on the ridge, but if he'd never met it, he would never have found himself in that life-threatening situation. As if that wasn't reason enough, the insectoid was a criminal, an antisocial, among its own kind! It wasn't like he would be extending himself to help rescue some alien saint or important diplomat.
Des's limbs folded up against his abdomen and thorax as he sank down and huddled beneath the blankets. Even his upstanding antennae folded up, collapsing into tight curls to minimize heat loss. Cheelo stared. Ahead, the trail beckoned: a
slender, rutted, dirt-and-mud track leading to one paved with gold. With luck-and if the trail held-he'd be down by nightfall and in Sintuya the following evening. He felt good, and as he went lower, the increasing amount of oxygen gave an additional boost to his spirits.
He took a couple of steps down the trail, turning to look back over a shoulder. "Come on. We can't stop here if we want to get out of the mountains by nightfall."
"A moment, just a moment," the thranx pleaded. Its voice was even wispier than usual.
Cheelo Montoya waited irritably as he gazed at the impenetrable, eternal clouds crawling up the green-clad slopes. "Ah, hell." Turning, he walked back to where the alien had slumped to the ground, all blue-green glaze and crumpled legs. Swinging his pack around so that it rested not against his spine and shoulders but across his chest, he turned his back to the poet, crouched, and bent forward.
"Come on. Get up and walk. It's downhill. Let one leg fall in front of the other."
"Fall?" The barely perceptible, protective transparent eye membrane trembled. "I do not follow your meaning."
"Hurry up!" Annoyed, impatient, and angry at himself, Cheelo had no time for stupid questions. "Put your upper limbs over my shoulders, here." He tapped himself. "Hang on tight. I'll carry you for a while. It'll warm up quick as we go down, and soon you'll be able to walk on your own again. You'll see."
"You?you would carry me?"
"Not if you squat there clicking and hissing! Stand up, dammit, before I have any more time to think about how dumb this is and change my mind."
It was an eerie, chilling sensation, the touch of hard, cold limbs against his shoulders, as if a gigantic crab were scrambling up his back. By utilizing all four front limbs the thranx was able to obtain a secure grip on the human's upper torso. Glancing down, Cheelo could see the gripping digits locked together across his chest beneath pack and straps. All sixteen of them. The embrace was secure without being constricting. The thranx was solidly built, but not unbearably heavy. He decided he could manage it for a while, especially since it was downhill all the way. The biggest danger would come from stumbling or tripping, not from collapsing beneath the moderate alien weight.
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