For Love of Mother-Not - Alan Dean Foster [100]
“I was hoping you’d say that.” Cruachan smiled to himself. He was intimately familiar with the theories that attempted to explain the special bonds that could spring into being between a catalyst creature such as the minidrag and one of the Talented. Certainly the link that existed between this creature and the boy known as Number Twelve was as powerful as any of the imperfectly recorded cases he had studied. It was not unreasonable to suppose that it could be stronger than the affection bond between the boy and his adoptive mother.
They came at him without warning during his final period of REM sleep, when he was defenseless. They sprang into existence out of emptiness, laughing at him, tormenting him with feelings and sensations he could not define or understand.
Nightmares.
Someone was twisting a wire around his brain, compressing it tighter and tighter until it seemed certain that his eyes would explode out of his head and fly across the room. He lay in his bed, twitching slightly, his eyelids quivering, as they did their work on him and took advantage of his helpless, unconscious mind.
This batch was worse than most; twisting, abstract forms, dark swirling colors, and himself somehow in the middle of them all, racing down a long, ominous corridor. At the end of that corridor lay his salvation, he knew, and almost as important, answers. Understanding and safety.
But the faster he ran, the slower he advanced. The floor that was not a floor dissolved beneath his feet, dropping him like some relativistic Alice down a rabbit hole of space-time distortions, while the far end of the corridor and its promises of light and comprehension receded into the wastes overhead.
He woke up with a silent start and glanced rapidly around the room. Only after he convinced himself of its reality did he begin to relax.
It was the right room, his room, the one he had lived in most of his life: tiny, spartan, comfortable. The patter of morning rain was music on the roof, and faint daylight filtered through the window above his bed. He swung his legs out clear of the blanket and rubbed both throbbing eyes with his fingers.
The fingers abruptly ceased their ministrations, and he looked back to the bed. Something was wrong.
“Pip?” The flying snake was not coiled in its familiar position at the top of the pillow, nor was it underneath. Flinx pulled back the blanket, then bent to peer under the bed. “C’mon boy, don’t hide from me this morning. I’m worn out, and my head is killing me.”
There was no familiar hissing response to his confession. He prowled the room’s meager confines, at first puzzled, then concerned. At last, he stood on the bed and shouted toward the air vent overhead.
“Pip, breakfast!”
No comforting hum of brightly hued wings reached him from beyond. He found a piece of wire and used it to probe the vent. It was clear to the outside.
He left his room and frantically started an inspection of the rest of the living quarters. Mother Mastiff stood by the convection stove, cooking something redolent of pepper and less exotic spices. “Something the matter, boy?”
“It’s Pip.” Flinx peered beneath recently righted furniture, moved bowls, and dropcloths.
“I gathered as much from the hollering ye were doing in your bedroom,” she said sardonically. “Disappeared again, has he?”
“He never stays out through morning when he takes a solo night flight. Never.”
“Always a first time, even for monsters,” Mother Mastiff said, shrugging and concentrating on her cooking. “Wouldn’t upset me if the little nastiness never did come back.”
“Shame on you, Mother!” Flinx said, his tone agonized. “He saved my life, and probably yours, too.”
“So I’m an ungrateful old Yax’m,” she snorted. “Ye know my feelings toward your beast.”
Flinx finished inspecting her room, then resolutely stormed back to his own and began dressing. “I’m going out to look for him.”
Mother Mastiff frowned. “Breakfast ready soon. Why bother yourself, boy? Likely it’ll be back soon enough, more’s the pity. Besides, if it has got its slimy little self stuck someplace, you