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

The bartender, an orphan himself, shrugged massively. "You're an idealistic misfit, Flinx."
"And you're an even bigger one," the boy shot back, "which is why you're going to help me."
Symm muttered something unintelligible, which might have been a curse. Then again, it might not. "Where did he get out?"
Plinx indicated the hidden doorway, and Symm walked over to the spot and leaned against the metal panel experimentally. The hinging collapsed inward with surprising ease. Beyond, they discovered a short corridor, which led to a small private lift that conveyed them rapidly to the base of the luxarions tower.
"How did you get in, anyway?" Flinx asked his friend.
Symm Switched. "I told the security people I met that I had an appointments pass, the usual procedure in an inurb like this."
"Didn't anyone demand to see it?"
Symm didn't crack a smile. "Would you? Only one guard did, and I think he'll be all right if he gets proper care. Careful now," the giant warned as the lift came to a stop. Crouching to one side, he sprang out as soon as the door slid open sufficiently to let him pass. But there was no ambush awaiting them. Instead, they found themselves in a ground-car garage, which showed ample sign of having been recently vacated.
"Keep your monumental ears open," Flinx advised quietly. "See if you can find out where Challis has fled. I'm going to work my own sources...."
When they left through the open doorway of the-garage, no one challenged their departure, though hidden eyes observed it. But those behind the eyes were grateful to see the pair go.
"You're sure they're not still here?" Symm wondered aloud. "Someone could have taken the car as a diversion."
Flinx replied with the kind of unnerving assurance Symm didn't pretend to understand, but had come to accept. "No, they're no longer in this vicinity."
The pair parted outside the last encircling wall of the inurb. There was no formality, no shaking of hands-nothing of the sort was required between these two. If you learn anything get in touch with me at Mother Mastiff's shop," Flinx instructed the giant. "Whatever happens, I'll let you know my plans."
As he made his way back through the market's concentric circles, he clutched his cloak tightly about him. The last drops of the morning rain were falling. In the distance an always hopeful sun showed signs of emerging from the low, water-heavy clouds.
Plenty of activity swirled about him. At this commercial hub of the Commonwealth, business operated round the clock.
Flinx knew a great many inhabitants of this world- within-a-world oil sight. Some were wealthy and great, some poor and great. A few were not human and more were less human than others though all claimed membership in the same race.
Passing the stall of the sweets vendor Kiki, he kept his attention resolutely ahead. It was too early and his stomach was too empty for candy. Besides, his innards still rocked slightly from the aftereffects of Challis' seemingly harmless jewelry. So, at Chairman Nils he bought a small loaf of bran bread coated with nut butter.
Nils was a fortyish food vendor with an authoritative manner. Everyone called him the Chairman. He ruled his comer of the marketplace with the air of a dictator, never suspecting that he held this power because his fellow sellers and hawkers found it amusing to humor his gentle madness. There were never any delusions in his baked goods, however. Flinx took a ferocious bite out of the triangular loaf, enjoying the occasional crunch of chopped nuts woven into the brown butter.
A glance at the sky still hinted at the possibility of the sun breaking through, a rare occurrence in usually cloud-shrouded Drallar.
His snack finished, Flinx began moving through a section filled with handsome, permanent shopfronts-a section that was considerably different from the region of makeshift shacks and stores in which he had been raised. When he'd first proposed shifting the ancient stall from the noisome depths of the marketplace
Mother Mastiff had protested vociferously. "I wouldn't know how to act," she had argued. "What do I know about treating with fancy customers and rich folks?"
"Believe me, Mother"-though they both knew she wasn't his real mother, she acted as one to half the homeless in Drallar-"they're the same as your old customers, only now the idiots will come with bigger bankrolls. Besides, what else would I do with all the money Malaika pressed on me?"
Eventually he had been forced to purchase the shop and thus present her with a fait accompli. She railed at him for hours when he told her-until she saw the place. Though she continued muttering dire imprecations about everything he showed her-the high-class inventory, the fancy living quarters upstairs, the automatic cooking devices-her resistance collapsed with unsurprising speed.
But there were two things she still refused to do. One was to change her handmade, homemade attire- as esoteric a collage of beads, bells, and cloth as could be imagined. The other was to use the small elevator that ran between the shop proper and the living quarters above. "The day I can't climb a single flight of stairs," she remonstrated, "is the day you can have me embalmed, stuffed, and put in the window at a curio sale." To demonstrate her determination, she proceeded at once to walk the short stairway on all fours.
No one knew how old Mother Mastiff was and she wasn't telling. Nor would she consent to submit to the extensive cosmetic surgeries Flinx could now afford, or to utilize any other artificial age-reduction device. "I've spent too long and too much effort preparin' for the role of an aged crone, and I'm not about to give up on it now," she told him. "Besides, the more pitiful and decrepit I look, the more polite and sympathetic the suck-the customers are."
Not surprisingly, the shop prospered. For one thing, many of the better craftsmen in Drallar had come from equally humble origins, and they enjoyed selling their better products to her.
As Flinx rounded the comer, he saw she was waiting for him at the rear entrance. "Out all night again. I don't suppose you've been anywhere as healthy as the Pink Palace or Sinnyville. D'you want your throat cut before you make eighteen?" she admonished, wagging a warning finger.
"Not much chance of that. Mother." He brushed past her, but-not to be put off-she followed him into the little storeroom behind the shopfront.
"And that flyin' gargoyle of yours won't save you every time, y' know. Not in a city like this, where everyone has a handshake for you with one palm and a knife for your back in the other. Keep walkin' about at the depths of the night like this, boy, and one day they'll be bringin' you back f me pale and empty of juice. And I warn you," she continued, her voice rising, "it's a cheap funeral you'll be gettin', because I'm not workin' my fingers to the quick to pay for a fancy send-off for a fool!"
A sharp buzz interrupted the tirade. "So I'll tell you for the last time, boy..."
"Didn't you hear the door Mother?" He grinned. "First customer of the morn."
She peered through the beads in the doorway. "Hub. Tourists, by the look of 'em. You should see the tanzanite on the woman's ring." She hesitated, torn between the need to satisfy affection and avarice simultaneously. "But what's a couple of customers when ..." another hesitation, "still, that's twelve carats at least in the one stone. Their clothes mark 'em as Terrans maybe, too." She finally threw up her hands in confusion and disgust. "It's my punishment. You're a visitation for the sins of my youth. Get out of my sight, boy. Upstairs and wash yourself, and mind the disinfectant. You smell of the gutter. Dry yourself well, mind ... you're not too big or old for me to blush your bottom." She slipped through the screen and a radical metamorphosis took place.
"Ah sir, madam," an oily voice cooed soothingly, the voice of everyone's favorite grandmama, "you honor my small shop. I would have been out sooner but I was tending to my poor grandson who is desperately ill and in need of much expensive treatment. The doctors fear that unless the operation is performed soon, he will lose the power of sight, and-"
Her slick spiel was cut off as the elevator door slid shut behind Flinx. Unlike Mother Mastiff, he had no compunction about using modern conveniences-certainly not now, as tired as he was from the experiences of the night before. As he stepped into the upstairs quarters he did wonder how such disparate tones could issue from the same wrinkled throat.
Later, over the evening meal (prepared by him, since Mother Mastiff had been occupied with customers all day), he began to explain what had happened. For a change, she neither harangued nor chastised him, merely listened politely until he had finished
"So you're bound to go after him then, boy," she finally said.
"I have to, Mother."
"Why?"
He looked away. "I'd rather not say."
"All right." She mopped up the last of her gravy with a piece of bread. "I've heard much of the man Challis-plenty of rumors about his tastes in certain matters and none of them good. There's less known about his businesses, though word is the Challis Company has prospered since he became the head." She granted noisily and wiped at her mouth with a corner of her multilayered skirt.
"You sure you got to do this, boy? You've only been off-planet once before, y' know."
"I think I can handle myself, Mother."
"Daresay, daresay," she replied disparagingly. "Though by all the odds you ought to have been dead a dozen times before your fifteenth birthday, and I don't suppose that grinnin' devil could have been responsible for savin' you every time."
She favored a small artificial tree with a poisonous stare. Pip was coiled comfortably around one of its branches. The minidrag did not look up. The relationship between him and Mother Mastiff had always been one of uneasy truce.
"Before you take off, let me make a call," she finished.
While Flinx finished his dessert and fought to pry the last bits of thick gelatin from his back teeth, he listened to her mutter into the pickup of a small communicator at the far end of the room. The machine gave her a mobility she hadn't possessed for decades. It was one of the few conveniences the shop provided that she'd use. It also made her the terror of every city official in any way responsible for the daily operation of the marketplace.
She was back at tableside soon. "Your friend Challis left on the freighliner Auriga this morning with his daughter and a covey of servants." Her expression contorted. "From what I was told, he left in a real hurry. You and that great imbecile Symm must have thrown quite a scare into him, but then the giant's enough by himself to frighten the polish off a mirror."
Flinx did not return her inquiring gaze. Instead he played with one edge of the tablecloth. "What's the Auriga's destination?"
"Hivehom," she told him. "The Challis Company has a lot of investments on the Mediterranea Plateau. I expect that's what he'll head for once he sets down."
"I'd better get ready." Flinx rose and started toward his room.