Phylogenesis by Alan Dean Foster Read Free Book Online

anything so ugly!” agreed his companion. Turning slightly in his chair, he jabbed a finger hard into the side of his neighbor. “Hey, Cheelo, take a look at this, man!”
    The false promises of his voluble drink lingering in his ears, the third drinker turned reluctantly to gaze at the tridee. The image presented therein, in unstable three dimensions, only barely impacted on his liquor-sedated consciousness.
    His tormentor, an ostensible friend, poked him again. “Are they gruesome lookin’, or what?” An unpleasant frown creased the man’s dark face. “Hey, Cheelo—you getting any of this?”
    “Look at his eyes,” the heavyset drinker urged his companion. “He’s right on the edge. Push him again and I bet you five credits he passes out. His chair ain’t strong enough to hold him.”
    The words stung worse than the liquor. Cheelo Montoya sat a little straighter in his seat. It took a sustained effort, but he forced himself. “I ain’t—I’m not going to pass out.” He struggled to focus on the tridee image. “Yeah, I see ’em. So they’re ugly. So what?” He looked sharply at his “friend.” “You just have to look at ’em, not sleep with ’em.”
    This observation struck the two other men as uproariously funny. When the coughing and hooting had died down, the larger man wagged a fat finger at the diminutive Montoya.
    “Sometimes I can’t never figure you, Cheelo. Sometimes I think you’re as stupid and ignorant as the rest of these sorry-ass poachers and
grampeiros
around here, and then you’ll go and surprise me by saying something almost intelligent.”
    “Thanks,” Montoya muttered dryly. He nodded in the direction of the tridee image. Feeling the familiar, irresistible glaze spreading over his eyes like heavy honey, he determinedly blinked it back. “What are they, anyway?”
    The other men exchanged a look, and the one nearest Montoya replied. “You mean you don’t know, man?”
    “No,” Cheelo mumbled. “I don’t know. So shoot me.”
    “Waste of a bullet,” the heavyset drinker husked, but too softly for Montoya to overhear.
    “They’re bugs, man.
Bugs.
” The speaker waved his arms wildly in front of Montoya, though the visual emphasis was unnecessary. “Giant, gross, filthy, stinking, alien bugs! And they’re here! Right here on Earth, or at least at the two official contact locations.”
    Leaning back against the bar, the heavyset drinker gazed dully at the tridee. “Actually, I hear they smell kind of nice.”
    Visibly outraged, his lanky friend whirled on him. “What? Smell nice? They’re
bugs
, man! Bugs don’t smell nice. Especially alien ones.” His tone fell threateningly, bursting with false courage. “I wish I had a size fifty shoe, so I could step on ’em and squish every one of ’em.” Glancing down at the floor, he promptly slid off his seat and landed feet first on a large tropical roach. The insect tried to dodge, failed, and crunched audibly beneath the pair of heavily scored jungle boots. “
That’s
how you treat bugs, man. I don’t care if they do make speeches and build starships.”
    The bartender leaned slightly forward to peer over the bar. A look of mild distaste soured his expression as he evaluated the fresh black smear on the floor. “Did you have to do that, Andre?”
    “Oh, right,” the bug smasher replied sarcastically. “Like it seriously impacts the elegant décor of your fine establishment.”
    The eyebrows of the beefy individual behind the bar rose. He did not blink. “If you don’t like it here anymore, there’s always Maria’s down the street.”
    The heavyset drinker choked melodramatically. “Maria’s? This dive is Ambergris Cay compared to that hole. Hey, hey—” He prodded his friend. “—I bet if you paid enough you could get one of Maria’s whores to sleep with a bug.” He chuckled at his own debased humor. “They’ll sleep with any
body
. Why not any
thing
?”
    “Ay—they build starships?”