For Love of Mother-Not - Alan Dean Foster [25]
“Now you stay there, Pip,” he whispered, “and in the morning we’ll see about scrounging something for you to eat.” He watched the snake for several minutes before fatigue returned with a rush. Yawning, he pushed his own clothes off the bed, set his boots on the drypad, and climbed back into bed. A few droplets of water had crawled under the edge of the slickertic. He brushed them from his hair, sighed deeply, and lapsed into a rich, undisturbed sleep.
Once the flow of mental energy from the human in the bed had smoothed out and the snake was certain its new symbiote was not about to enter a disturbing REM period, it quietly uncoiled itself and slithered out of the closet. Silently, it worked its way up one of the bed legs, emerging next to the single battered pillow.
The animal rested there for a long moment, gazing through double lidded eyes at the unconscious biped. Inside itself, the snake was warm and comfortable. The hunger was still there, but it had received an indication of sorts that it would soon be fed.
The bed was very warm, both the thermal blanket and the symbiote’s mass exuding comfortable, dry heat. The snake slithered across the pillow until it was resting against the back of the human’s head. It stretched itself once, the wings flexing and retracting. Then it coiled itself tightly into the convenient pocket formed by the symbiote’s neck and shoulder. Soon its own brain waves matched those of the human as it drifted into its own variety of sleep.
Chapter Five
Mother Mastiff was careful not to wake the boy as she slowly began backing out of his room. Her eyes, alert and fearful, remained fixed on the alien thing curled up against his head. There was no telling what it might do if startled into wakefulness.
How the invader had penetrated her tight little home, she had no idea. No time to worry about that now. Her thoughts went to the little gun, the delicate, ladylike needler she kept under her pillow. No, too chancy—the snake was much too close to the boy’s head, and she was not as good a shot as she had been twenty years ago.
There was also the possibility the invader might not even be dangerous. She certainly did not recognize it. In the ninety plus years she had spent on Moth, she had seen nothing like it. For one thing, there was no hint of fur anywhere on its body. Only scales. That immediately identified it as a non-native. Well, maybe. Moth was home to a few creatures—deep-digging burrowers—that did not sport fur. This didn’t look like a burrower to her, but she was no zoologist, nor had she ever traveled far outside the city limits.
Yet she felt certain it came from offworld. Something she couldn’t put a mental finger on marked the beast as alien, but that didn’t matter. What did was that it had somehow penetrated to the boy’s room, and she had better do something about it before it woke up and decided the matter for her.
Get it away from him, she told herself. Away from his head, at least. Get it away, keep it occupied, then wake the boy and have him make a run for the gun under her pillow.
The broom she hefted had a light metal handle and wire bristles. Taking it out of storage, she re-entered Flinx’s room and reached past his head with the broom’s business end. The metal bristles prodded the invader.
The snake stirred at the touch, opened its eyes, and stared at her. She jabbed at it again, harder this time, trying to work the bristles between the snake’s head and the boy’s exposed neck. It opened its mouth, and she instinctively jerked back, but it was only a yawn. Still sleepy, then, she thought. Good, its reactions would be slowed. Leaning forward again, she reached down and shoved hard on the broom. Several of the snake’s coils went rolling over to the side of the bed, and for the first time she had a glimpse of its brilliant coloring.
Again, she shoved with the broom, but the snake was no longer on the bed. It hovered in midair, its wings moving so rapidly they were no more than a blue-pink