For Love of Mother-Not - Alan Dean Foster [62]
Flinx regarded the immense carcass slung alongside the jet boat in light of her words. “I know there are bigger lakes than this one, but I didn’t know they held bigger penestrals.”
“Oh, the penestral’s a midrange predator,” she told him conversationally. “On Hozingar you don’t go fishing for penestral. You fish for oboweir.”
“What,” Flinx asked, “is an oboweir?”
“A fish that feeds regularly on penestrals.”
“Oh,” he said quietly, trying to stretch his imagination to handle the picture her words had conjured up.
Quite a crowd was waiting to greet them as they tied up at the lodge pier. Lauren had moored the inflated penestral to a buoy nearby. The carcass drew too much water to be brought right inshore.
Flinx slipped through the oohing and ahhing guests, leaving Lauren to handle the questions. Several of her employees fought their way to her and added questions of their own. Eventually, the crowd began to break up, some to return to their rooms, others to remain to gawk at the fish bobbing slowly on the surface.
Flinx had collapsed gratefully into a chair on the porch that encircled the main building. “How much do you want for the use of the skimmer and a tracker?” he asked Lauren when she was able to join him. “I’ll need you to show me how to use it, of course.”
She frowned at him. “I’m not sure I follow you, Flinx.”
“I told you, I’m going after them. You’ve made it possible for me to do that, and I’m very grateful to you.”
She looked thoughtful. “Management will scream when they find out I’ve taken out the skimmer for personal use. They’re a lot more expensive than a jet boat or mudder. We’ll have to be careful with it.”
He still wasn’t listening to her, his mind full of plans for pursuing the kidnappers. “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you for this, Lauren.”
“Don’t worry about it. The lodge’s share of profit from the disposal of the penestral ought to defray all the operating expenses. Come on, get yourself and your snake out of that chair. We have to gather supplies. The skimmer’s usually used for making quick runs between here and Attock. That’s where we pick up our guests. We’ll need to stock some food, of course, and I want to make sure the engine is fully charged. And if I don’t take ten minutes to comb my hair out, I’m going to die.” She tugged at the tangles of black ringlets that the action on the lake had produced.
“Just a minute.” This time it was Flinx who put out the restraining hand as he bounded out of the chair. “I think I’ve misunderstood. You don’t mean you’re coming with me?”
“You don’t know how to use the tracking equipment,” she pointed out.
“I can figure it out,” he assured her confidently. “It didn’t take me long to figure out how to handle the boat, did it?”
“You don’t know the country.”
“I’m not interested in the country,” he responded. “I’m not going on a sightseeing trip. That’s what the tracker’s for, isn’t it? Just loan the stuff to, me. I’ll pay you back somehow. Let me just have the tracker and a charge for my mudder, if you’re worried about the skimmer.”
“You’re forgetting about my wervils. Besides, you can’t track a skimmer with a mudder. What if you hit a canyon?”
“Surely you’re not giving up your work here,” he said, trying another tack, “just so you can seek revenge for the deaths of a couple of pets?”
“I told you, wervils are an endangered species on Moth. And I also told you how I feel about animals.”
“I know,” he protested, “but that still doesn’t—”
He broke off his protest as she reached out to ruffle his hair. “You know, you remind me of another wervil I cared for once, though his fur wasn’t quite as bright as yours. Near enough, though.” Then she went on more seriously. “Flinx, I don’t like these people, whoever they are. I don’t like them because of what they’ve done to you, and I don’t like them because of what they’ve done