Flinx Transcendent_ A Pip & Flinx Adventure - Alan Dean Foster [65]
He remembered to fold his tail as Eiipul preceded him into the private family vehicle. The interior was far more luxurious than that of the various public transports he had ridden in the course of his stay on Blasusarr. Rare woods and lustrous concaves of tactile glass lined the walls. Powerfully rhythmic AAnn music, all drums and bells and atonal electronics, emanated discreetly from an unseen source.
As the automated craft rose, rotated, and smoothly accelerated through a waiting gap in the residence's security barrier, Flinx stared out the tinted canopy at the surrounding synthetic desert. After a while, the expensive pseudo-canyons and faux buttes gave way to more utilitarian structures of poured and molded walls and domes. These prosaic edifices jumped through no aesthetic hoops in expensive attempts to disguise their function.
Though traveling at maximum altitude on a level reserved for VIPs, the AAnn aircar still had to negotiate a bevy of traffic. This was Krrassin, after all. The capital, the economic and military hub, the heart of the AAnn interstellar Empire. The homeworld of the Commonwealth's most dynamic and cunning adversaries.
Flinx felt no anxiety, experienced no discomfort at this knowledge. Having never felt quite at home anywhere, not even on Moth, he was therefore equally at ease everywhere in the galaxy. Vagabond and chameleon that he was, home was wherever he happened to be at the moment.
That realization did not entirely squelch the rising trepidation he felt as the nearly silent vehicle drew within sight of the central administrative compound. Here decisions were made that affected not only Krrassin, but Blasusarr and all the worlds of the Empire. The lives, the futures of billions of intelligent beings ebbed and flowed according to judgments rendered within the complex by a hundred or so of the most noble AAnn. Actual choices and preferences were discussed, debated, fought over, and finally voted upon within a single structure known as The Eye of the Nye.
That impressive mass now loomed directly ahead. Analogous constructions on Earth consisted of clusters of needle-like towers or immense domes. On Hivehom, several substantial artificial caverns had been deftly hollowed out of the ground to serve the needs of the greater hive.
In contrast to both, The Eye of the Nye took the form of a single immense rock several square kilometers in extent. Rust red in hue, it had been skillfully shot through with ornamental streaks of azure and silver. In keeping with the traditions of those it had been built to accommodate, it was only five stories high. As always and especially in this sacrosanct place, the AAnn had built outward and not upward. If tradition held true throughout, Flinx knew, the hall would have an internal configuration like an iceberg, with the preponderance of its extensive chambers and corridors situated belowground.
Matte-flat in the morning sun, the red roof was perfectly level and utterly unadorned; devoid of antennae, signs, drifting decorations, spires, or any kind of architectural fillip. In contrast, the building's streaks of silver and slashes of bright blue exploded against his retinas.
He was going in there. Essentially alone, to try to influence an entire alien polity. One that would regard him, as Lord Eiipul originally had, with ingrained suspicion or worse. The Teacher was right: surely he was mentally unbalanced. Pip stirred uneasily against his side in the suit's internal pouch. He struggled to prepare himself mentally. Maybe it was better if he was a little