Flinx Transcendent_ A Pip & Flinx Adventure - Alan Dean Foster [3]
“Your bite lackss sspirit. With ssuch ssmall biting one would sstarve. It would be a mercy to kill you before you die of hunger.”
Though he badly wanted out of the confrontation, Flinx knew he could not concede so readily. To show such weakness would be to invite even greater insults—or worse, an actual beating. Under those circumstances he knew he would have no choice but to respond physically, though he might have difficulty restraining Pip from working her way clear of the simsuit in her eagerness to defend him.
“Otherss have tried. Otherss have died.”
Bold words. The AAnn did not have to believe them, or try to test the truth of them. It was enough that the slightly awkward taller male sliding sideways across the sand had spoken them. Similar ritualized confrontations occurred by the thousands on the hundreds of identical Middle Paths that threaded their way through Krrassin, its suburbs, and across the length and breadth of Blasusarr. Their purpose was to provide a (usually) nonlethal means of regulating and fine-tuning status among energetic, upwardly mobile individuals, not to generate dozens of unproductive deaths.
Flinx could not fully display the simsuit's orthodontics, but he could at a touch of two sensors fully extend its synthesized claws. He did so now. But even as he revealed the simsuit's offensive bodyware he kept moving to his left and trying to circle around his opponent. How would the AAnn react? What degree of status did he seek to gain from the confrontation?
To Flinx's relief his adversary responded only with more words. Well-chosen words, to be sure, but far less dangerous than the headlong charge or scything hand swipe the simsuited human was preparing himself to counter.
“I do not resspond to sspittle with sslassh.”
“Sso you ssay.” Flinx reacted with acceptable neutrality.
The big male hissed once more and turned away. Without speaking another word he resumed striding down the Middle Path, looking for another fellow city dweller to confront. Flinx sensed his opponent's satisfaction. By being the one to state the initial challenge and subsequently forcing the other “AAnn” to choose between a fight or evading it, technically the nye had won the encounter. Flinx was more than happy to allow the combative male his triumph. The important thing was that actual combat had been avoided.
Busily making their way north and south along the properly paved flanking walkways, the rest of the pedestrian traffic had completely ignored the whole hissing, spitting, tooth-and-claw-displaying confrontation. As Flinx continued on his way, careful after his earlier unforeseen bump to hug the walls of low-lying buildings and avoid the Middle Path, he himself passed dozens of other, similar, Middle Walkway altercations. On one occasion he saw two females locked arm in arm, leg in leg, and tail in tail on the sand. Blood stained the intricately raked patterns on the ground beneath them. Along with his fellow preoccupied strollers, Flinx ignored the fight, which was far more serious than the one he had been involved in earlier. Such battles were routine.
In many ways this frequent daily physical conflict in search of standing and status was more honest than comparable confrontations among his own kind, he reflected as he strode along beneath the blistering sun. Which was more honest: gossiping and sniping about an enemy behind his back, or trying to rip the skin off said body part? The intended end was the same; only the cultural approach was different. Using both his eyes and his Talent he continued to investigate the AAnn who surrounded him.
Blasusarr. As dangerous a place in the galaxy as a representative of his species could find himself in. What he had already accomplished, by deliberately placing himself among humanxkind's mortal enemies and successfully surviving in their presence, was as far as he knew an unprecedented achievement.
When he had first voiced his intent to the Teacher, his ship had been