Flinx Transcendent_ A Pip & Flinx Adventure - Alan Dean Foster [40]
Or he was telling the truth, preposterous as it seemed.
Kiijeem felt a tightening in his throat. The entire galaxy under threat of destruction. Perhaps not in time to imperil himself, but possibly his descendants, his extended family. The Imperial realm at risk. Or—nothing at all. Quite likely what he was hearing was little more than the imaginative ravings of a demented softskin.
There was one thing he could not bring himself to dispute. In the course of his life it was apparent that this Flinx had been compelled to make some difficult decisions. The human was brave or foolhardy or both. Which begged the question.
What then was Kiijeem AVMd?
One more time he allowed his eyes to meet the unnaturally round ones of his visitor. He thought he saw something there. Or perhaps his imagination was also far-reaching.
“I think I know jusst the nye who can help.”
Kiijeem was not permitted to travel outside the family compound after a certain hour lest he find himself challenged by an older youth—or worse, an adult urgently in search of status. That meant they would have to cross part of the city in the daytime. The dense crowds among which they would find themselves would help to shield Flinx from the attention of security monitors, but the same concerns that had prevented him from trying to reach his desert touchdown site on his own still applied. Before they could go anywhere, they somehow had to change his appearance.
“The simsuit that allows me to pass as one of your kind is not malleable,” Flinx explained the following day. He held up the sophisticated skin so that his young host could marvel at the detail. “It allows me to do many things: simulate tail movement, flex claws, even operate both eye membranes. But I can't alter its appearance.”
“Truly, you have ssaid sso before.” Turning, Kiijeem reached back and dug around in the depths of the container that he used for hiding the rations that he had been smuggling out to his guest. “That iss why I have brought thiss.”
Kiijeem unfolded a square of plain brown, gauzy material. The lower edge was hemmed with a strip of heavier, darker brown that was almost bronze in color. Eyeing it dubiously, Flinx was not impressed.
“What am I supposed to do with that?” he wondered aloud. “Put it over my head?”
“Exactly.” Kiijeem held it out to the human. “It iss transslucent enough to ssee through, breathess well, and will completely massk your featuress from patrolling ssecurity perssonnel as well as automatic sscannerss.”
Taking the synthetic material, Flinx eyed it suspiciously. It weighed very little. “Won't I look silly walking around with this over my head?”
“Not ssilly.” Kiijeem corrected him somberly. “Pathetic.”
“Pathe …?” Flinx set the material aside. Pip immediately commenced an investigation of the intriguing soft folds. “Why? What does the wearing of this signify? Come to think of it, I don't remember seeing it on any other nye.”
“Not all who are allowed to wear the ijkk choosse to do sso,” Kiijeem explained. “You ssee the metallic hem? The ijkk itsself ssignifiess a dessire for privacy. The color of the metal band indicatess that the wearer iss impotent.”
Flinx nearly smiled. “I mean no offense, Kiijeem, but I didn't know you were mature enough to be familiar with the concept.”
“Mature enough, ssoftsskin, to kill you if you continue to mock me.”
“Truly.” Flinx readily conceded the point even as he repressed a diffident smile. “Please accept my groveling contrition.” For good measure he added a second-degree gesture of apology.
Kiijeem was appropriately mollified. “No one will challenge the wearer of an ijkk that iss thussly hemmed. Indeed, painss will be taken to avoid you. Obsscured within, you may draw more attention than you are accusstomed to receiving from my sspeciess, but it will only be of the sstaring kind. Unless we happen to encounter a physsician who happenss to sspecialize in the treatment of ssuch biological dissorderss,