Flinx Transcendent_ A Pip & Flinx Adventure - Alan Dean Foster [49]
From where he was lying in a pool of heated sand, Eiipul IXb whipped around to stand bolt upright. Both ocular membranes fully retracted, he stared wide-eyed at an image that had appeared off to one side. Flinx needed no special visual equipment to grasp the meaning of the three-dimensional projection. It showed a trio of adults entering the complex via the main entrance.
“Quickly!” the brother hissed, gesturing toward Flinx and Kiijeem with one clawed hand. “The matriarch and companion coussinss have returned home early. We musst hide you until tonight.”
“Why?” wondered Kiijeem even as he hurried along in his friends' wake. “Flinx-friend'ss fanciful facade fooled all of uss. Why sshould it not deceive your matriarch as well?”
“Well it might—but that iss not a chance my brother and I dessire to take,” the sister retorted as they rushed hurriedly down a corridor. “A rissk not taken iss one whosse conssequencess need not be contemplated.”
Flinx was not happy when the corridor became a steep ramp that descended one and possibly two levels underground. While neither claustrophobic nor fearful of subterranean realms, he didn't like it when he found himself confined to a place with no apparent escape route. Sealed with his thoughts in the dimly-lit storage room where his hosts left him, he felt trapped. It hardly improved his mood or his confidence when Kiijeem chose to depart along with the Eiipul siblings.
He was left with only Pip for companionship. Unlike her master she had no compunction about exploring the multitude of storage containers that surrounded them. The one advantage to his enforced isolation was that it gave him the opportunity to unseal the simsuit's headpiece. The touch of dry, fresh air on his face, the chance to respirate without having to suck air in through filters, was invigorating. He felt he was relatively safe in exposing himself. Kiijeem's friends would not have chosen the storage room for a softskin's hiding place if they felt it was likely to see any traffic.
Imprecisely, he could sense alien emotions overhead. They were mixed now. More aggressive, more challenging, than those that would have been generated by a comparable gathering of humans. Though he did not know the young Eiipuls well enough yet to unequivocally differentiate their feelings from the group of recently arrived adult females, he was able to easily pick Kiijeem's out of the considerable emotional haze. As always, it was strange to be able to perceive the emotions of other sentients while at the same time being unable to hear or understand a single word of what they were saying.
“What if the ssoftsskin iss lying?” While the family matriarch held domestic court at the far end of the eating chamber, Eiipul IXc challenged her brother and her friend with an anxious whisper.
Kiijeem looked up from his drink, confident that the newly arrived adult nye were too far away to overhear. “I believe he iss telling the truth.”
“We know what you believe,” Eiipul IXb responded with becoming curtness. “Your 'belief iss insufficient to abrogate the prosspect.”
His friend set his drink aside, which was the proper reaction when challenged. “Are you thinking of divulging his pressence to the authoritiess?”
“I do not know what to think to do, Kiijeem.” With a slightly dulled claw the brother picked nervously at the lower edge of his chin. “My insstinctive inclination iss to think all hiss talk of some vasst myssteriouss threat to the entire galaxy iss nothing but the ravingss of an adverssary who hass ssuccumbed to madness. Hiss inssisstence that he iss ssomehow essential to confronting ssuch a colossal danger makess even less ssensse.”
“Yet in hiss actionss and hiss wordss he appearss entirely rational and normal. For a human,” his sister added hastily. “Which leadss