For Love of Mother-Not - Alan Dean Foster [35]
Flinx settled into a steady run. He was an excellent runner and in superb condition, on which he had always prided himself. He resolved to follow the flying snake until one or the other of them dropped.
Any moment he expected the snake to pause outside one of the innumerable faceless structures that peppered the commercial sections of Drallar. But while the minidrag twisted and whirled down alleys and up streets, not once did it hesitate in its steady flight. Soon Flinx found his wind beginning to fail him. Each time he stopped, the snake would wait impatiently until its master caught up again.
Drallar was the largest city on Moth, but it was a village compared to the great cities of Terra or the underground complexes of Hivehom and Evoria, so Flinx was not surprised that when Pip finally began to slow, they had reached the northwestern outskirts of the metropolis. Here the buildings no longer had to be built close to one another. Small storage structures were scattered about, and individual homes of blocked wood and plastic began to blend into the first phalanx of evergreen forest. Pip hesitated before the trees, zooming in anxious circles, soaring to scan the treetops. It ignored Flinx’s entreaties and calls until finally satisfied, whereupon the snake turned and dropped down to settle once again on the familiar perch of his master’s shoulder.
Turning a slow circle, Flinx fought to pick up even a fragment of lingering emotion. Once again, his efforts met with failure. It seemed clear that whoever had carried off Mother Mastiff had taken her into the forest and that the olfactory trail that had led Pip so far had finally dissipated in the steady onslaught of mist and rain. On a drier world or in one of Moth’s few deserts, things might have been different, but here Pip had come to a dead end.
After a moment’s thought, Flinx started away from the trees. In addition to the storage buildings and homes, several small industrial complexes were visible nearby, including two of the ubiquitous sawmills that ringed the city and processed Moth’s most prolific crop. Flinx wandered among them until he located a public corn station on a service street. He stepped inside and slid the spanda-wood door shut behind him. Even after curing, spanda retained a significant coefficient of expansion. When he closed the door, it sealed itself against the elements, and only the ventilation membranes would keep him from suffocating. He took out his battered credcard and slid it into the receptacle on the unit, then punched the keyboard. A pleasant-looking middle-aged woman appeared on the small viewscreen. “Yes, sir. What can I do for you?”
“Is there a Missing Persons Bureau in the Drallar Municipal Strata?”
“Just a moment, please.” There was a pause while she glanced at something out of range of the pickup. “Human or alien?”
“Human, please.”
“Native or visitor?”
“Native.”
“You wish connection?’
“Thank you, yes.” The woman continued to stare at him for a moment, and Flinx decided she was fascinated by the coiled shape riding his shoulder. The screen finally flashed once and then cleared.
This time, the individual staring back at him was male, bald, and bored. His age was indeterminate, his attitude barely civil. Flinx had never liked bureaucrats. “Yes, what is it?
“Last night,” he declared, “or early this morning”—in his rush through the city streets he’d completely lost track of the time—“I—my mother disappeared. A neighbor saw some people running away down an alley, and our house was all torn apart. I don’t know how to start looking for her. I think she’s been taken out of the city via the northwest quadrant, but I can’t be sure.”
The man perked up slightly, though his voice sounded doubtful. “I see. This sounds more like a matter for the police than for Missing Persons.”
“Not necessarily,” Flinx said, “if you follow my meaning.”
“Oh.” The man smiled understandingly. “Just a moment I’ll check for you.” He worked a keyboard out of Flinx’s view. “Yes, there was a number of