Flinx Transcendent_ A Pip & Flinx Adventure - Alan Dean Foster [22]
He waited for his enemy to increase the pressure on his throat. He waited for him to claim the right to inflict a ceremonial injury. He waited for a rush of hissing laughter from hidden, unseen mouths. What happened next unnerved him completely.
The tall, lanky figure released the grip on his throat, carefully straightened the leg that had locked itself around Kiijeem's tail, rose, and stepped back to look down at him. Lying on the ground, Kiijeem let the fingers clutching the bengk loosen as he stared dazedly up at his opponent.
“I attacked with weaponss. You have the right to claim damage.” He waited stoically. As the tailless shape came slowly toward him he closed his eyes and tensed.
A soft, pulpy hand made contact with his own right one. Five digits wrapped around his four. Not to break, not to dislocate, but to pull. The strength in those spongy fingers was as surprising as the figure's agility. As they helped him upright, Kiijeem could detect nothing of artifice about the gesture. Breathing hard, he stared up at his infuriatingly phlegmatic opponent.
“You inflict no injury.” Even an actor, he knew, would leap at the opportunity to acquire that germane bit of status, if only as a bonus in addition to whatever payment he had been promised. Kiijeem looked around. The night was still calm, the exclusive residential neighborhood still quiet. No shapes emerged from the darkness to laugh, to chide, or to admonish him. His lower jaw dropped to reveal sharp teeth, and his tongue lay flat and numb against his palate.
“It's a human thing,” Flinx told him, careful not to show any teeth of his own as he smiled back.
“You…,” Kiijeem searched for appropriate words. “You really are a human.”
“Truly,” Flinx replied, this time without even a trace of an offworld accent.
“How can thiss be? How can you be?” Aware that he was still gripping the bengk, Kiijeem realized that the figure standing before him was within easy stabbing range. The tip of his tail twitched, instinctive preparation for whipping around and striking. The appendage seemed oddly heavy. Looking around, he saw that something had attached itself to the very tip.
The small flying creature had wrapped its coils around the end. Staring at the brightly colored blue and pink creature, Kiijeem took in the slitted eyes, the scaly body, and reflected that it was the one he would have been comfortable conversing with. Alas, while the winged thing was somewhat perceptive it was just as obviously not sentient.
“If I cannot be,” Flinx replied gently as he took a seat on the sandstone and crossed his long legs, “then who are you talking to?”
“I wass being literal, not solipssisstic.” Kiijeem squatted down into a resting crouch. After a moment's indecision he laid the bengk aside. But not out of reach. That would have been foolish. And un-AAnn-like. “What I meant wass that you, a human, should not be on Blasussarr.” Double eyelids blinked in succession. “You are not an operative attached to the Commonwealth diplomatic corpss?”
“No.” Flinx chuckled. “They would be as upset to learn that I'm here as would your own officials.”
“Then what are you doing here?” a genuinely curious Kiijeem inquired. “To my knowledge, no human hass ever managed ssuch a thing.”
“I'm here because,” Flinx explained thoughtfully, “to my knowledge, ‘no human has ever managed such a thing.’” He looked away from the now intensely interested young nye, toward the night sky. “I seem to have a propensity for doing things none of my kind have done before. My own ship thinks I'm crazy.”
Two revelations to ponder in one short phrase, Kiijeem decided. “I'm crazy” and “My own ship thinks.” He determined now was not the time or place to probe more deeply into either claim.
“You are lying. There cannot be a human sship near Blasussarr. Any incoming vessel