For Love of Mother-Not - Alan Dean Foster [11]
“He did take them, he did,” the boy insisted, almost crying. “I know he did.” He was still staring at the bald man. Suddenly, his eyes widened. “He swallowed them.”
“Swallowed—now just a minute,” the visitor began. “This is getting ugly. Am I to wait here, accused by a mischievous child?” He shook an angry finger at Flinx, who did not flinch or break his cold, green stare.
“He took them,” the boy repeated, “and swallowed them.”
“Did you see me take these rings?” the bald man demanded.
“No,” Flinx admitted, “I didn’t. But you took them. You know you did. They’re inside you.”
“Charming, the experiences one has on the slumworlds,” the man said sarcastically. “Really, though, this exercise has ceased to be entertaining. I must go. My tour allots me only two days in this wonderful city, and I wouldn’t want to waste any more time observing quaint local customs. Out of the kindness of my nature, I will not call upon the gendarmes to arrest you all. One side, please.” He shoved past the uncertain shopkeepers and walked easily out into the rain.
Mother Mastiff eyed the man’s retreating back. Her friends and fellow merchants watched her expectantly, helplessly. She looked down at the boy. Flinx had stopped crying. His voice was calm and unemotional as he gazed back up at her.
“He took them, mother, and he’s walking away with them right now.”
She could not explain what motivated her as she calmly told Aljean, “Call a gendarme, then.”
The bald man heard that, stopped, and turned back to face them through the now gentle rain. “Really, old woman, if you think I’m going to wait—”
“Aljean,” Mother Mastiff said, “Cheneth?” The two shopkeepers exchanged a glance, then jogged out to bring the bald man back—if false restraint charges were filed, they would be against Mother Mastiff and not them.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Cheneth, the candy man, said as he gestured with his pistol, “but we’re going to have to ask you to wait until the authorities arrive.”
“And then what? Are they going to haul a free citizen to the magistrate because a child demands it?”
“A simple body scan should be sufficient,” Mother Mastiff said as the three re-entered the shop. “Surely you’ve no reason to object to that?”
“Of course I’d object to it!” the visitor responded. “They have no reason or right to—”
“My, but you’re suddenly arguing a lot for someone with nothing to worry about,” Aljean, the clothier, observed. She was forty-two years old and had run her way through four husbands. She was very adept at spotting lies, and she was suddenly less convinced of this visitor’s innocence. “Of course, if perhaps you realize now that you’ve somehow made a bit of mistake and that we quaint locals aren’t quite the simpletons you believe us to be, and if you’d rather avoid the inconvenience of a scan, not to mention official attention, you’ll learn that we’re agreeably forgiving here if you’ll just return to Mother Mastiff what you’ve taken.”
“I haven’t taken a damn—” the bald man started to say.
“The jails of Drallar are very, very uncomfortable,” Aljean continued briskly. “Our government resents spending money on public needs. They especially scrimp when it comes to the comfort of wrongdoers. You being an offworlder now, I don’t think you’d take well to half a year of unfiltered underground dampness. Mold will sprout in your lungs, and your eyelids will mildew.”
All of a sudden, the man seemed to slump in on himself. He glared down at Flinx, who stared quietly back at him.
“I don’t know how the hell you saw me, boy. I swear, no one saw me! No one!”
“I’ll be blessed over,” Cheneth murmured, his jaw dropping as he looked from the thief to the boy who had caught him. “Then you did take the rings!”
“Ay. Call off the authorities,” he said to Aljean “You’ve said it would be enough if I gave back the rings. I agree.”
Mother Mastiff nodded slowly. “I agree, also, provided that ye promise never to show your reflective crown in this part of this marketplace ever again.”
“My word on it, as a professional,” the man promised