For Love of Mother-Not - Alan Dean Foster [36]
“Close to a hundred,” Flinx said, “but quite lively.”
“Not lively enough to be in with the group I was thinking of,” the clerk responded. “Name?”
Flinx hesitated. “I always just called her Mother Mastiff.”
The man frowned, then studied his unseen readout. “Is Mastiff a first name or last name? I’m assuming the ‘Mother’ is an honorific.”
Flinx found himself staring dumbly at the clerk. Suddenly, he was aware of the enormous gaps that made up much of his life. “I—I don’t know, for sure.”
The bureaucrat’s attitude turned stony. “Is this some kind of joke, young man?”
“No, sir,” Flinx hastened to assure him, “it’s no joke. I’m telling you the truth when I say that I don’t know. See, she’s not my natural mother.”
“Ah,” the clerk murmured discreetly. “Well, then, what’s your last name?”
“I—” To his great amazement, Flinx discovered that he was starting to cry. It was a unique phenomenon that he had avoided for some time; now, when he least needed it, it afflicted him.
The tears did have an effect on the clerk, though. “Look, young man, I didn’t mean to upset you. All I can tell you is that no woman of that advanced an age is on last night’s arrest recording. For that matter, no one that old has been reported in custody by any other official source. Does that help you at all?”
Flinx nodded slowly. It helped, but not in the way he’d hoped. “Th-thank you very much, sir.”
“Wait, young man! If you’ll give me your name, maybe I can have a gendarme sent out with—” The image died as Flinx flicked the disconnect button. His credcard popped from its slot. Slowly, wiping at his eyes, he put it back inside his shirt. Would the clerk bother to trace the call? Flinx decided not. For an instant, the bureaucrat had thought the call was from some kid pulling a joke on him. After a moment’s reflection, he would probably think so again.
No one of Mother Mastiff’s age arrested or reported in. Not at Missing Persons, which was bad, but also not at the morgue, which was good because that reinforced his first thoughts: Mother Mastiff had been carried off by unknown persons whose motives remained as mysterious as did their identity. He gazed out the little booth’s window at the looming, alien forest into which it seemed she and her captors had vanished, and exhaustion washed over him. It was toasty warm in the corn booth.
The booth’s chair was purposely uncomfortable, but the floor was heated and no harder. For a change, he relished his modest size as he worked himself into a halfway comfortable position on the floor. There was little room for Pip in the cramped space, so the flying snake reluctantly found itself a perch on the com unit. Anyone entering the booth to make a call would be in for a nasty shock.
It was well into morning when Flinx finally awoke, stiff and cramped but mentally rested. Rising and stretching, he pushed aside the door and left the com booth. To the north lay the first ranks of the seemingly endless forest, which ran from Moth’s lower temperate zone to its arctic. To the south lay the city, friendly, familiar. It would be hard to turn his back on it.
Pip fluttered above him, did a slow circle in the air, then rose and started northwestward. In minutes, the minidrag was back. In its wordless way, it was reaffirming its feelings of the night before: Mother Mastiff had passed that way. Flinx thought a moment. Perhaps her captors, in order to confuse even the most unlikely pursuit, had carried her out into the forest, only to circle back into the city again.
How was he to know for certain? The government couldn’t help him further. All right, then. He had always been good at prying information from strangers. They seemed to trust him instinctively, seeing in him a physically unimposing, seemingly not-too-bright youngster. He could probe as facilely here as in the markeplace.
Leaving the booth and the sawmill block, he began his investigation by questioning the occupants of the smaller businesses and homes. He found most houses deserted,