Flinx Transcendent_ A Pip & Flinx Adventure - Alan Dean Foster [90]
As always, Barryn refused to refer to the vicious flying creature as a “he.”
“Maybe it senses a threat. You've told me that it responds to your feelings.” Rising from the lounge, he moved to sit down beside her. When he slipped a comforting arm around her now fully healed shoulders, she did not pull away. “Are you feeling threatened?”
“No,” she muttered restively. “I feel fine.” She was staring in the direction of the complex. “I can't see him anymore. It's not like him to fly out of sight.” She started to stand. “I'd better go look for him. If Scrap's sensing a threat where none really exists, he could frighten some people. It's happened before.”
I can't imagine why. Barryn kept his sarcasm to himself. Why would anyone get upset to suddenly find a venomous airborne alien reptiloid darting in front of their face? He couldn't care less about the minidrag or why it had abruptly gone shooting off inland. His real concern, his real interest, lay with Clarity. Anyone else confronted by the flying snake would have to deal with it themselves.
“Just stay here and relax.” He squeezed her bare shoulder a little tighter. “I'm sure your pet will be right back as soon as it determines you're not in any danger. In any event, I'm here.”
She didn't bite on that, but he refused to let it discourage him. If luck was really with him, the flying snake might never come back. As in any large medical complex, there was a security team. Maybe one of them would shoot the little monster.
“Oh.”
Clarity did not shout the exclamation. Her voice remained level and controlled. But the strangest expression came over her face as she sat there beside him. It was one he had not encountered previously and did not recognize. Slipping free of his reassuring, mildly possessive grasp, she rose and started toward the complex.
“Clarity? Clarity, love?” he called after her in confusion. She appeared not to hear him.
Peering in the direction she was walking, he expected to see the flying snake returning to its master. But there was no sign of the minidrag. Meanwhile, ahead of her a single figure had detached itself from the crowd of convalescents, medical personnel, and visitors. It was walking toward her, and she was advancing toward it. Tambrogh Barryn's gaze narrowed.
Though he did not recognize the stranger, Barryn could not escape the certainty that the other man's arrival did not bode well for his hopes regarding Clarity.
Upslope, Flinx halted. She looked exactly as he remembered her. No, he corrected himself quickly. She looked much better than he remembered, because the last time he had seen her she had been enveloped in a halo of sweat and blood, her torso ravaged from behind. Looking at her now, that horrific image finally began to recede into memory. The medtechs and their instrumentation had done their job well. She had been restored to him. Her beauty, her movement, her form intact and unmarred.
Also her full neuromuscular functionality, as evinced by the hard slap she gave him right across his face. She had to reach high to make the necessary contact. Though intimately familiar with her person, Pip still would have reacted to such a hard blow—except that Pip was nowhere to be seen. As soon as they had reached the entrance to the medical complex she had elevated skyward to leave on some unknown errand of her own. Flinx was not concerned. He could sense that she was somewhere nearby. Whatever had drawn her away, she would not pass out of perception range of her friend and master.
Reaching up, he touched his stinging cheek where Clarity had struck him. “I missed you, too.”
“All this time.” She was staring hard at him, so tense that the muscles in her neck were twitching. “One minute we're fighting for our very lives at the shuttleport; the next I wake up immobilized in a hospital chamber. No sign of you, no kind word, no knowing if you're alive or dead. Eventually