"Alan Dean Foster - Flinx 4 - End of the Matter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

"Pfagh! I could have gotten that callow stripling up to fifty credits easy. Knew it the second he
set eyes on that bracelet. Then you bad to come along."
"One of these days. Mother, you'll go too far with some knowledgeable offworlder and he'll turn
you in to the Ring's police. I broke in because he seemed like a decent man on his mating flight,
and I didn't want to see him cheated too badly."
"Shows what you know," she snapped back. "He wasn't as ignorant as he made you think. You weren't
there to see his eyes light up when I mentioned the street my shop is on and told him that's where
it was stolen from. He knew what he was about, all right. Did you see him shout for the police?
No, he was cuddling his hot property like any decent good citizen. Here." She stopped and gestured
beyond a gate to tables covered with brightly dyed canopies.
They had entered the last of the concentric rings that formed Drallar's marketplace. This
outermost ring consisted entirely of restaurants and food stalls. "They ranged from tiny one-being
operations with primitive wood-fired stoves to expensive closed-in establishments in which
delicacies imported from the farthest corners of the Commonwealth were served on utensils of
faceted veridian. Here the air currents stalled, weaving languorous zephyrs of overpowering
potency.
They entered a restaurant that used neither wood nor veridian plates and was somewhere between the
opulent and the barely digestible in terms of menu. After taking seats, they ordered food from a
creature who looked like a griffin with tentacles instead of legs. Then Mother Mastiff exchanged
her gentle accusations for more serious talk.
"Now, boy, I know you went off to look for your natural parents." It was a sign of her strength
that she could voice the subject without stumbling. "You've been gone for over a year. You must
have learned something,"
Flinx leaned back and was silent for a moment. Pip wiggled out from beneath the cape folds, and
Flinx scratched the flying snake under its chin. "As far as I know," he finally responded tersely,
"they're both long dead." Pip shifted uneasily, suddenly sensitive to his master's somber mood.
"My mother ... at least I know who she was. A Lynx, a concubine. I also found a half sister, and
when I found her, I ended up having to kill her."
Food arrived, spicy and steaming. They ate quietly for a while. Despite the heavy spices, the food
tasted flat to both of them.
"Mother dead, half sister dead," Mother Mastiff grunted. "No other relatives?" Flinx shook his
head curtly. "What about your natural father?"
"Couldn't find a thing about him worth following up."
Mother Mastiff wrestled with some private demon, and finally murmured, "You've run far and long,
boy. But there's still a possibility."
He glanced sharply at her, "Where?"
"Here. Yes, even here."
"Why," he said quietly, "didn't you ever tell me?"
Mother Mastiff shrugged once. "I saw no reason to mention it. It's an obscure chance, boy, a waste
of time, an absurd thought."
"I've spent a year pursuing absurdities," he reminded her. "Give, Mother."
"When I bought you in the market," she began easily, as if discussing any ordinary transaction,
"it was a perfectly ordinary sale. Still don't know what possessed me to waste good money."
Flinx stifled a grin. "Neither do 1. I don't follow you throuh "


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"Find the dealer who sold you, Flinx. Perhaps he or she is still in business. There's always the