For Love of Mother-Not - Alan Dean Foster [28]
“Yes, Mother, thank you.” He ran up to give her a kiss. She backed off.
“Don’t come near me, boy. Not with that monster sleeping on your arm.”
“He wouldn’t hurt you, Mother. Really.”
“I’d feel more confident if I had the snake’s word on it as well as yours, boy. Now go on, get out, be off with the both of ye. If we’re fortunate, perhaps it will have some homing instinct and fly off when you’re not looking.”
But Pip did not fly off. It gave no sign of wishing to be anywhere in the Commonwealth save on the shoulder of a certain redheaded young man.
As Flinx strolled through the marketplace, he was startled to discover that his ability to receive the emotions and feelings of others had intensified, though none of the isolated bursts of reception matched in fury that first overpowering deluge of the night before. His receptivity had increased in frequency and lucidity, though it still seemed as unpredictable as ever. Flinx suspected that his new pet might have something to do with his intensified abilities, but he had no idea how that worked, anymore than he knew how his Talent operated at the best of times.
If only he could find someone to identify the snake! He could always work through his terminal back home, but requests for information were automatically monitored at Central, and he was afraid that a query for information on so rare a creature might trigger alarm on the part of curious authorities. Flinx preferred not to go through official channels. He had acquired Mother Mastiff’s opinion of governmental bueaucracy, which placed it somewhere between slime mold and the fleurms that infested the alleys.
By now, he knew a great many inhabitants of the marketplace. Wherever he stopped, he inquired about the identity and origin of his pet. Some regarded the snake with curiosity, some with fear, a few with indifference. But none recognized it.
“Why don’t you ask Makepeace?” one of the vendors eventually suggested. “He’s traveled offworld. Maybe he’d know.”
Flinx found the old soldier sitting on a street corner with several equally ancient cronies. All of them were pensioneers. Most were immigrants who had chosen Moth for their final resting place out of love for its moist climate and because it was a comparatively cheap world to live on, not to mention the laxity of its police force. On Moth, no one was likely to question the source of one’s pension money. For several of Makepeace’s comrades, this was the prime consideration.
The other aged men and women studied the snake with nothing more than casual interest, but Makepeace reacted far more enthusiastically. “Bless my remaining soul,” he muttered as he leaned close—but not too close, Flinx noted—for a better look. Pip raised his head curiously, as if sensing something beyond the norm in this withered biped.
“You know what he is?” Flinx asked hopefully.
“Aye, boy. Those are wings bulging its flanks, are they not?” Flinx nodded. “Then it’s surely an Alaspinian miniature dragon.”
Flinx grinned at the old man, then down at Pip. “So that’s what you are.” The snake looked up at him as if to say, I’m well aware of what I am, and do you always find the obvious so remarkable?
“I thought dragons were mythical creatures,” he said to Makepeace.
“So they are. It’s only a name given from resemblance, Flinx.”
“I suppose you know,” Flinx went on, “that he spits out a corrosive fluid.”
“Corrosive!” The old man leaned back and roared with laughter, slapping his legs and glancing knowingly at his attentive cronies. “Corrosive, he says!” He looked back at Flinx.
“The minidrag’s toxin is, my boy, a venomous acid known by a long string of chemical syllables which this old head can’t remember. I was a soldier-engineer. Biochemistry was never one of my favorite subjects. I’m more comfortable with mathematical terms than biological ones. But I can tell you this much, though I never visited Alaspin myself.” He pointed at the snake, which