"Alan Dean Foster - Flinx 3 - Orphan Star" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

home. A different kind of sensation was inspired by his own anger, anger directed at himself for
not detecting the inimical emanations his attackers must have been putting out before he entered
the bathroom.
Suddenly he noticed another sensation missing, too. The comfortable weight of Pip was absent from
his shoulders.
"Hello," ventured a tiny, silvery voice.
Spinning, Flinx found himself eye-to-eye with an angel. He relaxed, swung his feet off the couch,
and regarded her in surprise. She could not have been more than nine or ten years old, was clad
.in a powder blue- and-green fringed pantsuit with long sleeves of some transparent lacy material.
Long blond hair fell in manicured ripples to the backs of her thighs. Baby-blue eyes looked out at
him from the high-boned face of a sophisticated cherub.
"My name's Mahnahmi," she informed him softly, her voice running up and down like a piccolo trill,
"what's yours?"
"Everybody calls me Flinx."
"Flinx." She was sucking on the knuckle of her big finger. "That's a funny name, but nice." A
smile showed perfect pearly teeth. "Want to see what my daddy brought me?"
"Daddy," Flinx echoed, looking around the room. It was dominated by the great curve of the
transparent wall and balcony and the sparkling panorama laid out below. It was night outside ...
but was it that same night? How long had he lain unconscious? No way to tell ... yet.
The room was furnished in late Siberade: lush cushions, chairs and divan mounted on pencil-thin
struts of duralloy, with everything else suspended from the ceiling by duralloy wires so thin that
the rest of the furniture appeared to be floating in air. A massive spray of luminescent spodumene
and kunzite crystals dominated the domed roof. They were surrounded by circular skylights now open
to the star-filled night sky. Climatic adjusters kept the evening rain from falling into the room.
His captor was a very wealthy person, Petulant-rich with nonattention, the girlish voice
interrupted his inspection. "Do you want to see it or not?"
Flinx wished the throb in his upper arm would sub- side. "Sure," he said absently.
The smile returned as the girl reached into a suit pocket. She moved closer, proudly opened her
fist to reveal something in the palm of her hand. Flinx saw that it was a miniature piano,
fashioned entirely from filigree gold and real pearls.
"It really plays," she told him excitedly. She touched the tiny keys and Flittx listened to the
almost invisible notes. "It's for my dolly."
"It's very pretty," Flinx complimented, remembering when such a toy would have cost him more
credit than he ever thought he would possess. He glanced anxiously past her, "Where is your daddy
right now?"
"Over here."
Flinx turned to the source of those simple, yet some- how threatening words.
"No, I already know you're called Flinx," the man said, with a wave of one ring-laden hand. "I
already know a good deal about you."
Two men emerged from the globular shadow. One had a sunk-in skull half melted away by some
tremendous heat and only crudely reconstructed by medical engineers. His smaller companion
exhibited more composure now than he had when he'd held the syringe on Flinx in the bathroom at
Symm's.
The merchant was talking again. "My name is' Conda Challis. You have perhaps heard of me?"
Flinx nodded slowly. "I know of your company."
"Good,"" Challis replied. "It's always gratifying to be recognized, and it saves certain
explanations." The uncomfortable pulsing in Flinx's shoulder was begin- ning to subside as the man
settled his bulk in a waiting chair. A round, flat table of metal and plastic separated him from
Flinx. The half-faced man and his stunted shadow made themselves comfortable-but not too
comfortable, Flinx noted-nearby.