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

Challis looked doubtful. "No, I don't think that would work out, Nolly-dear. You're familiar with some of my fantasies and likes?" His voice had turned inhumanly calm and empty. "Would you participate voluntarily?"
Nolly looked away from suddenly frightening pupils. In spite of his background, he shuddered. "No," he barely whispered, "no, I don't guess that I would...."
"Hello, lad," boomed Small Symm-the giant was incapable of conversing in less than a shout. "What of your life and what do you hear from Malaika?"
Flinx sat on one of the stools lined up before the curving bar, ordered spiced beer for himself and a bowl of pretzels for Pip. The flying snake slid gracefully from Flinx's shoulder and worked his way into the wooden bowl of trapezoidal dough. This action was noted by a pair of wide-eyed unsavory types nearby, who promptly vacated their seats and hastily made for the rearmost booths.
"I've had no contact with Malaika for quite a while, Symm. I've heard he's attending to business outsystem."
Flinx's wealthy merchant friend had enabled him to quit performing his personal sideshow, having provided him with a substantial sum for his aid in exploring the Tar-Aiym world of the Krang. Much of the money had gone to set up Flinx's adoptive mother. Mother Mastiff, in a well-stocked shop in one of Drallar's better market districts. Muttering at her capriciousness, the old woman had rescued Flinx as a child from the slave-seller's block, and had raised him. She was the only parent he had ever known. She muttered still, but with affection.
"As a matter of fact," he went on, sipping at the peppery brew, "Malaika wanted me to go with him. But while I respect the old hedonist, he'd eventually get ideas about putting me in a starched suit, slicking my hair back, and teaching me diction." Flinx shuddered visibly. "I couldn't stand that. I'd go back to juggling and audience guessing games first. What about you, father of oafs? I've heard that the municipal troops have been harassing you again."
The owner of the bar leaned his two-and-a-half-rneter-tall, one-hundred-seventy-five-kilo frame onto the absorbent wood-plastic counter, which creaked in protest. "Apparently the marketplace commissioner took it as a personal affront when I ejected the first group of officious do-gooders he sent round to close you down. Maybe I shouldn't have broken their vehicle. Now they are trying to be more subtle. I had one in just this week, who claimed to have observed me serving borderline minors certain hallucinogenic liquids."
"Obviously you deserve to be strung up by your extremities," commented Flinx with mock solemnity. He, too, was underage for much of what Symm served him.
"Anyway," the giant went on, "this heckster flies out of a back booth, flashes his municipal peace card, and tries to tell me I'm under arrest. He was going to take me in, and I had best come along quietly." Small Symm shook his massive head mournfully as Flinx downed several swallows.
"What did you do?" He licked liquid from the corners of his mouth.
"I really don't want any more trouble, certainly not another assault charge. I thought an inferential demonstration of a mildly physical nature might be effective in persuading the gentleman to change his opinion. It was, and be left quietly." Symm gestured at Flinx's now empty mug. "Refill?"
"Sure. What did you do?" he repeated.
"I ate his peace card. Here's your beer." He slid a second mug alongside the first.
Flinx understood Small Syrnm's gratification. He had his reputation to uphold. His was one of the few places in Drallar where a person could go at night with a guarantee of not being assaulted or otherwise set upon by rambunctious rovers. This was because Small Symm dealt impartially with all such disturbers of the peace.
"Be back in a minute," Flinx told his friend. He slid off the stool and headed for the one room whose design and function had changed little in the past several hundred years. As soon as he stepped inside he was overwhelmed by a plethora of rich smells and sensations: stale beer, hard liquor, anxiety, tension, old water, dampness, fearful expectation. The combination of thick thoughts and airborne odors nearly overpowered him.
Looking to his left, where the combination was strongest, he noticed a small twitch of a man watching him anxiously. Flinx observed the man's outward calm and felt his internal panic. He was holding an osmotic syringe in one hand, his finger coiled about it as-if it were a weapon. As Flinx started to yell for help, his rising cry was blanketed by the descent of something dark and heavy over his head. A mental cry was aborted by the cool efficiency of the syringe....
He awoke to find himself staring at a tumbled panoply of lights. They were spread out before and below him, viewed as they were through a wall and floor of transparent plastic.
Slowly he struggled to a sitting position, which was accomplished with some difficulty since his wrists were manacled together by two chromed metal cuffs. A long tube of flexible metal ran off from them and disappeared among rich furniture. The chain meandered through the thick transparent carpet like a mirror- backed worm.
Looking out, Flinx could see the lights that were the city-pulse of Drallar, dominated by the glowing spires of the King's palace off to the left. The view enabled him to orient himself. Combining the position of the palace with the pattern of lower lights and the knowledge that he was several stories above ground indicated that he was being held captive in one of the four sealed inurbs of the city. These guarded, restrictive enclaves held the homes of the upper classes, of those native to Drallar and those off-worlders who had commerce here. His assailants, then, were more than gutter thieves.
He was unable to pick tip any impressions nearby. At the moment the only alien sensation he could detect was a slight throbbing in the muscles of his upper right arm, where the syringe had struck 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.
"Mahnahmi, I see you've been entertaining oar guest," Challis said to the girl. "Now go somewhere and play like a good child."
"No. I want to stay and watch."
"Watch?" Flmx tensed. "Watch what?"
"He's going to use the jewel. I know he is!" She turned to Challis. "Please let me stay and watch, Daddy! I won't say a word, I promise."
"Sorry, child. Not this time."
"Not this time, not this time," she repeated. "Yon never let me watch. Never, never, never!" As quick as a sun shower turns bright, her face broke into a wide smile. "Oh, all right, but at least let me say good-bye."
When Challis impatiently nodded his approval she all but jumped into Flinx's arms. Much to his distress, she wrapped herself around him, gave him a wet smack on one cheek, and whispered into his right ear in a lilting, immature soprano, "Better do what he tells yon to, Flinx, or he'll rip out your guts."
Somehow he managed to keep a neutral expression on his face as she pulled away with a disarmingly innocent smile.
"Bye-bye. Maybe Daddy will let us play later." Turning, she skipped from the room, exiting through a doorway in the far wall.