"Alan Dean Foster - Flinx 11 - Running from the Deity" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

facility.

тАЬAre you finished yet?тАЭ The voice of the Teacher тАЩs ship-mind reached him through the stimulating
vertical bath.

тАЬAlmost. Why? Are you going to suggest that after I finish bathing I take another тАШvacationтАЩ?тАЭ

тАЬIt is interesting how sardonicism tends to shed efficacy over time,тАЭ the ship-mind replied tartly. Having
suggested that Flinx spend a while resting and recuperating on the out-of-the-way world of Jast, only to
see him nearly murdered by one of the expatriate AAnn officials residing on that world, the AI was
understandably disinclined to discuss the subject. Knowing this, Flinx lost few opportunities to bring it
up.

тАЬI take your point, by which I assume that youтАЩre not going to make such a suggestion. Good.тАЭ

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...20Flinx%2011%20-%20Running%20from%20the%20Deity.html (6 of 175)19-2-2006 3:44:41
 Running



As he stepped out of the shower, the ready and waiting dryer scanned his dripping body.
Preprogrammed to his specified level of individual comfort, it set about evaporating from his skin the
water and the dirt it had englobed. Standing there, alone in his personal hygienic facilities within the
ship, Flinx contemplated his immediate future and regarded it as fraught with uncertainty, danger, and
confusion.

Not that it had ever been otherwise.

Some days he chose to dress while at other times he moved about the Teacher тАЩs interior quite naked. As
the only human on board, there was no need to concern himself with violating nudity taboos. Pip
certainly did not mind. Rising from the resting place where she had dozed in utter indifference to her
masterтАЩs peculiar habit of immersing himself in gravity-defying liquid, she landed on his bare right
shoulder and settled down. Her slender serpentine shape was warm against his freshly scoured skin.

Pulling on lightweight pants and a feathery comfort shirt, he made his way to the Teacher тАЩs bridge.
Around him, the product of the Ulru-UjurrianтАЩs creative engineering genius functioned smoothly. It
would have been dead silent inside the ship, except that dead silence smacked too much of death itself.
So at present, and in response to his latest request, the hush was broken by the soft sounds of a Sek-
takenabdel cantata. Like many of his kind, Flinx was quite fond of the often atonal yet oddly soothing
traditional thranx music, which in this particular composition sounded like nothing less than lullabies
sung by angry, but muted, electrified cimbaloms.

As the ship sped at unnatural velocity through the nebulosity of higher mathematics colloquially known
as space-plus, Flinx settled into the single command chair to gaze moodily through the sweeping, curved
forward port. Though shifted over into the ultraviolet by the shipтАЩs KK-drive posigravity field, the view
of the distorted universe surrounding him was, as always, still spectacularly beautiful. Pulsars and novae
illuminated nebulae while distant galaxies vied for prominence with nearby suns.

Meanwhile, out beyond it all, in the direction of the constellation Bo├╢tes, something unimaginably vast
and malevolent was coming out of a region known as the Great Emptiness, threatening not merely the