Flinx Transcendent_ A Pip & Flinx Adventure - Alan Dean Foster [126]
“It was also, I hoped, an opportunity to encounter once again the singular young human with whom I had shared so much trauma and travail so long ago.” The valentine-shaped head looked him up and down. “You are less young. In many ways, I think.”
“We're all a lot less young, in many ways,” he commented somberly.
She indicated third-degree concurrence. “While I had no difficulty making contact with my Eighth, I was disappointed to learn from him and his companion that you had left Nur to engage in vital research. I was told you had departed under difficult and rushed circumstances.” She indicated the struggling bodies littering the floor of the chamber. “Conflict was alluded to, but this Order was not mentioned.
“More time passed. Then I was informed by Truzenzuzex that you had finally returned in advance of resuming your important research.” As she declaimed the latter she gestured with a truhand and a foothand to where Clarity was continuing to play with Scrap. “And other matters.”
“If Tru told you I was back,” Flinx murmured, “then he must have also told you where I was staying. Why haven't you come to see me?”
“Believe me, cr!!akk, I was eager to do so, but my Eighth suggested that I remain in the background for at least a little while. In order to give you time to recover from your long journeying and”—she gestured in Clarity's direction—“to mate.”
Flinx had the grace to blush. “Remind me to have a word about semantics with a certain elderly thranx.”
Sylzenzuzex continued. “Once these and other issues had been satisfactorily dealt with, the intention was to surprise you with an unanticipated appearance on my part, chlakkt. I waited for my Eighth to announce a time. Alas, he is old and older, and I think my eagerness to see you again kept slipping his mind. Tiring of his continued unresponsiveness, I chose to set aside his plan and decided on my own initiative to reunite with you today.
“I went to your hotel intending to do this, only to discover that you were away. Oddly, the attendant gave the impression I was expected. My initial reaction to this was that my Eighth had finally told you of my presence on Nur without so informing me. Though somewhat confused, I took the information splinter you had left behind for a ‘friend.’ When I perused the contents, it provided me with your intended destination. Nothing more.” She gestured second-degree regret. “Had I known of the circumstances, I would have brought half a dozen police skimmers with me.”
So that was what had happened. Nodding to himself as much as to Syl, Flinx remembered leaving the memory splinter “for a friend.” When she had identified herself as such, the clerk had passed to her the coordinates that had been intended for Bran and Tru. With their full attention occupied by the Order, they had been unable to get to the hotel earlier to check up on him and retrieve the splinter. Not that the mix-up on the hotel clerk's part had worked out badly in the end.
But—after waiting so long at Truzenzuzex's behest, why had Syl finally decided to go to the hotel to make contact with him today?
When he asked, she gestured second-degree bafflement. “I could not say, Flinx. As I told you, I was tired of waiting for my Eighth to settle on a date for a reunion. All I can tell you is that today the time felt right.”
Standing nearby, Clarity reflected on their close escape as she continued to caress Scrap. The youthful minidrag was finally winding down from the excitement of being freed and reunited with his master and his mother. She shook her head knowingly.
“You don't see it, do you, Flinx? You project your emotions even when you don't