Flinx.

Tar Aiym Krang.

Alan Dean Foster.

About the Author.

Born in New York City in 1946, Alan Dean Foster was raised in Los Angeles, California. After receiving a bachelor's degree in political science and a Master of Fine Arts in motion pictures from UCLA in 1968-69, he worked for two years as a public relations copywriter in a small Studio City, California, firm.

His writing career began in 1968 when August Derleth bought a long letter of Foster's and published it as a short story in his biannual Arkham Collector Magazine. Sales of short fiction to other magazines followed. His first try at a novel. The Tar-Aiym Krang, was published by Ballantine Books in 1972.

Foster has toured extensively through Asia and the isles of the Pacific. Besides traveling, he enjoys cla.s.sical and rock music, old films, basketball, body surfing, and karate. He has taught screenwriting, literature, and film history at UCLA and Los Angeles City College.

Currently, he resides in Arizona with his wife JoAnn (who is reputed to have the only extant recipe for Barbarian Cream Pie).

Chapter One.

The Flinx was an ethical thief in that he stole only from the crooked. And' at that, only when it was absolutely necessary. Well, perhaps not absolutely. But be tried to. Due to his environment his morals were of necessity of a highly adaptable nature. And when one is living alone and has not yet reached one's seventeenth summer, certain allowances in such matters must be made.

It could be argued, if the Flinx were willing to listen (a most unlikely happenstance), that the ultimate decision as to who qualified as crooked and who did not was an awfully totalitarian one to have to make.

A philosopher would nod knowingly in agreement. Flinx could not afford that luxury. His ethics were dictated by survival and not abstracts. It was to his great credit that he had managed to remain on the accepted side of current temporal morality as much as he had so far. Then again, chance was also due a fair share of the credit.

As a rule, though, he came by his modest income mostly honestly. This was made necessary as much by reason of common sense as by choice. A too-successful thief always attracts unwanted attention.

Eventually a criminal law of diminishing returns takes over.

And anyway, the jails of Drallar were notoriously inhospitable.

Good locations in the city for travelling jongleurs, minstrels, and such to display their talents were limited.

Some were far better than others. That he at his comparatively slight age had managed to secure one of the best was a tribute to luck and the tenacity of old Mother Mastiff. From his infancy she had reserved the small raised platform next to her shop for him, driving off other entrepreneurs with shout or shot, as the occasion and vehemence of the interloper required. Mother Mastiff was not her real name, of course, but that was what everyone called her. Flinx included. Real names were of little use in Drallar's market-places. They served poorly for identification and too well for the tax-gatherers. So in more appropriate ones were rapidly bestowed upon each new inhabitant. Mother Mastiff, for example, bore a striking resemblance to the Terran canine of the same name. It. was given in humour and, accepted with poor grace, but accepted, nevertheless. Her caustic personality only tended to compliment the physical similarity.

The man-child had been an orphan. Probably involuntary, as most of his ilk were. Slill, who could tell?

Had she not been pa.s.sing the slave coops at that time and glanced casually m a certain direction, she would never have noticed it. For reasons she had never fully understood she had bought it, raised it, and set it to learning a trade as soon as it was old enough. Fortunately his theatrical proclivities had manifested themselves at quite an early stage, along with his peculiar talents. So the problem of choosing a trade solved itself. He proved to be a keen if somewhat solemn observer, and so his own best apprentice. Fine and well, because the older performers always became more nervous in his presence than they cared to admit. Rather than admit it, they p.r.o.nounced him unteachable, and left him to his own devices.

She had also taught him as early as was practical that in Drallar independence was ever so much more than an intangible thought. It was a possession, even if it would not fit into one's pocket or pouch, and to be valued as such. Still, when he had taken to her word and moved out to live on his own, the sadness lingered with her as a new coat of paint. But she never revealed it to him for fear of communicating weakness. Not in her words nor in her face. Urged oil affectionately but firmly he was, much as the young birds of the Poles. Also she knew that for her the Moment might come at any time, and she wanted it to brush his life as lightly as possible.

Flinx felt the cottony pain of a sugar-coated probe again in his mind; the knowledge that Mother Mastiff was his mother by dint of sympathy and not birth. Coincidence was his father and luck his inheritance. Of his true parents he knew nothing, nor had the auctioneer. His card had been even more than usually blank, carrying not even the most elementary pedigree. A mongrel. It showed in his long orange-red hair and olive complex ion. The reason for his orphanhood would remain forever as obscure as their faces.

Pic let the life flood of the city enter his mind and submerge the unpleasant thoughts.

A tourist with more insight than most had once remarked that strolling through the great central marketplace of Drallar was like standing in a low surf and letting the geometrically patient waves lap unceasingly against one. Flinx had never seen the sea, so the reference remained obscure. There were few seas on Moth anyway, and no oceans. Only the uncounted, innumerable lakes of The- Blue-That-Blinded and shamed azure as a pale intonation.

The planet had moved with unusual rapidity out of its last ice age. The fast-dwindling ice sheets had left its surface pock marked with s glittering lapis-lazuli embroidery or lakes, tarns, and great ponds. An almost daily rainfall maintained the water levels initially set by the retreating glaciers. Drallar happened to be situated in an exceptionally dry valley, good drainage and the lack of rainfall (more specifically, of mud) being one of the princ.i.p.al reasons for the city's growth. Here merchants could come to trade their goods and craftsmen to set up shop without fear of being washed out every third-month.

The evaporation-precipitation water cycle on Moth also differed from that of many otherwise similar humanx-type planets. Deserts were precluded by the lack of any real mountain ranges to block off moisture-laden air. The corresponding lack of oceanic basins and the general unevenness of the terrain never gave a major drainage system a chance to get started. The rivers of Moth were as uncountable as the lakes, but for the most part small in both length and volume. So the water of the planet was distributed fairly evenly over its surface, with the exception of the two-great ice caps al the poles and the hemispheric remnants of the great glacial systems. Moth was the Terran Great Plains with conifers instead of corn.

The polyrhythmic chanting of barkers hawking the goods of a thousand worlds formed a nervous and jarring counter-point to the comparatively even susurrations and murmurings of the crowd. Flinx pa.s.sed, a haberdashery he knew and in pa.s.sing exchanged a brief, secret smile with its owner. That worthy, a husky blond middle-aged human, had just finished selling a pair ofdurfarq -skin coasts to two outlandishly dad outworlders ... for three times what they were worth. Another saying trickled lazily through his mind. 'Those who come unprepared to Drallar to buy skin, inevitably get.'

It did not offend Flinx's well-considered set of ethics. This was not stealing. Caveat emptor. Fur and fibres, wood and water, were Moth. Can one steal seeds from a tomato? The seller was happy with his sale, the purchasers were pleased with their purchase, and the difference would go to support the city in the form of welfares and grafts anyway. Besides, any outworlder who could afford to come to Moth could d.a.m.n well afford to pay its prices. The merchants of Drallar were not to any extent rapacious. Only devious.

It was a fairly open planet, mostwise. The government was a monarchy, a throw back to the planet's earlier days. Historians found it quaint and studied it, tourists found it picturesque and frozepixed it, and it was only nominally terrifying to its citizens. Moth had been yanked abruptly and unprepared into the vortex of interstellar life and had taken the difficult transition rather well. As won id-be planet-baggers rapidly found out. But on a planet where the bulk of" the native population was composed of nomadic tribes following equally nomadic fur-bearing animals who exhibited unwonted bellicosity towards the losing of said fill's, a representative government would have proved awkward in the extreme. And naturally the Church would not interfere. The Counsellors did not even think of them-selves as const.i.tuting a government, therefore they could not think of imposing one on others. Democracy on Moth would have to wait until the nomads would let themselves be counted, indexed, labelled, and cross-filed, and that seemed a long, long way off. It was well known that the Bureau of the King's Census annually published figures more complementary than accurate.

Wood products, furs, and tourism were the planet's princ.i.p.al industries. Those and trade. Fur-bearing creatures of every conceivable type (and a few inconceivable ones) abounded in the planet's endless forests. Even the insects wore fur, to shed the omnipresent water. Most known varieties of hard and soft woods thrived in the Barklands, including & number of unique and uncla.s.sifiable types, such an a certain deciduous fungus. When one referred to 'grain' on Moth. it had nothing to do with flour. The giant lakes harboured fish that had to be caught from modified barges equipped with cyborg-backed fishing lines. It was widely quoted that of all the planets in the galaxy, only on Moth did an honest-to-goodness pisces have an even chance of going home with the fisherman, instead of vice-versa. And hunters were only beginning to tap I hat aspect of the planet's potentialities ... mostly because those who went into the great Forests unprepared kept an unquieting silence.

Drallar was its capital and largest city. Thanks to fortuitous galactic co-ordinates and the enlightened tax policies of a sucession of kings it was now also an inter-stellar clearing-house for trade goods and commercial transactions. All of the great financial houses had at least branch headquarters here, reserving their showier offices for the more 'civilized' planets. The monarch and his civil service were no more than nominally corrupt, and the king saw to it that the people were not swamped by repressive rules and regulations. Not that this was done out of love for the common man. It was simply good business. And if there were no business, there would be no taxes. No taxes would mean no government. And DO government would mean no king, a state of affairs which the current monarch, his Driest Majesty King Dewe Nog Na XXIV, was at constant pains to avoid.

Then too, Drallar could be smelled.

In addition to the indigenous humans, the business of Drallar was conducted by half a hundred intelligent races. To keep this conglomeration of commerce pulsing smoothly, a fantastic diversity of organic fuels was demanded. So the central marketplace Itself was encircled by a seemingly infinite series of serving stands, auto-chefs, and restaurants that formed in actuality one great, uninterrupted kitchen. The resulting comb; nation of aromas generated by these establishments mingled to form an atmosphere unduplicated anywhere else in the known galaxy. On more refined trade stops such exotic miasmas were kept decently locked away. In Drallar t h ere was no ozone to contaminate. One man's bread was another man's narcotic. And one man's narcotic could conceivably make another being nauseous.

But by some chance of chemistry, or chemistry of chance) the fumes blended so well in the naturally moist air that any potentially harmful effects were cancelled out. Left only was an ever-swirling thick perfume that tick led one's throat and left unexpecting mouths in a state of perpetual salivation. One could get a deceptively full and satisfying meal simply by sitting down in the centre of the markets and inhaling for an hour. Few other places in the Arm had acquired what might be described as an olfactory reputation. It was a truth that gourmets came from as far away as Terra and Proycon merely to sit on the outskirts of the marketplace and hold long and spirited compet.i.tions in which the partic.i.p.ants would attempt to identify only the wisps of flavour that were wafted outwards on the damp breeze.

The reason for the circular arrangement was simple. A businessman could fortify himself on the outskirts and then plunge mio the whirl of commerce without having, to worry about being cut down in the midst of an important trailsaction by a sudden gust of, say, pungentprego -smoke from the bahnwood fires. Most of the day the vast circle served admirably well, but during the prime meal hours it made the marketplace resemble more than ever that perspicacious tourist's a.n.a.logy of the ebb and flow of a sea.

Flinx paused at the stand of old Kiki, a vendor of sweets, and bought a smallthisk -cake. This was a concoction made from a base of a tough local hybrid wheat. Inside, it was filled with fruit-pieces and berries and small, meatyparma -niits, recently ripened. The finished product was then dipped in a vat of warmish honey-gold and allowed to harden. It was rough on the teeth, but, ob, what it did for this palate It had one drawback: consistency. Biting into think was like chewing old s.p.a.cesuit insulation. But it had a high energy content, the parma-nuts were mildly narcotic, and Flinx felt the need of some sort of mild stimulant before performing.

Above the voices and the smells, above all, Drallar could be viewed.

The edifices of the marketplace were fairly low, but outside the food crescents one could see ancient walls, remnants of Old City. Scattered behind and among were the buildings where the more important commerce took place. The lifeblood of Moth was here, not in the spectacular stalls below. Every day the economies of a dozen worlds were traded away in the dingy back 'rooms and offices of those old-new structures. There the gourmet restaurants catered to the rich sportsmen returning from the lakes, and turned up their noses and shut their windows against the plebeian effluvia a.s.sailing them from the food stalls below. There the taxidermists plied their noisome arts, stuffing downy Yax'm pelts and mounting the ebony nightmare heads of the horned Demmichin Devilope.

Beyond rose the apartment houses where the middle and lower cla.s.ses lived, those of the poorer characterized by few windows and cracking plaster, and those of the better-off by the wonderful multistoried murals painted by the gypsy artists, and by the brilliant azurine tiles which kept the houses warm in winter and cool in summer. Still further off rose the isolated tower groupings of the rich inurbs, with their hanging gardens and reinforced crystal terraces. These soared loftily above the noise and clamour of the commonplace, sparkling as jewelled giraffes amid each morning fog.

Rising from the centre of the city to dominate was the great palace of the rulers of Drallar. Generations of kings had added to it each stamping a section here, awing there, with his own personality. Therein dwelt King Dewe Nog Na and his court. Sometimes he would take a lift to the topmost minaret, and there, seated comfortably on its slowly revolving platform, leisurely survey the impossible anthill that const.i.tuted his domain.

But the most beautiful thing about Moth was not Drallar, with its jewelled towers and chromatic citizenry) nor the innumerable lakes and forests, nor the splendid and variegated things that dwelt therein.

It was the planet itself. It was that which had given to it a name and made it unique in the Arm. That which had first attracted men to the system. Ringed planets were rare enough.

Moth was a. winged planet.

The 'wings' of Moth doubtless at one time had been a perfect broad ring of the Saturn type. But at some time in the far past it had been broken in two places - possibly the result of a gravitational stress, or a change in the magnetic poles. No one could be certain. The result was an incomplete ring consisting of two great crescents of pulverized stone and gas which encircled the planet with two great gaps separating them. The crescents were narrower near the planet, but out in s.p.a.ce they spread out to a natural fan shape due to the decreasing gravity, this forming the famed 'wing' effect. They were also a good deal thicker than the ancient Saturnian rings, and contained a higher proportion of fluorescent gases, The result was two gigantic triangular shapes of a lambent b.u.t.ter-yellow springing out from either side of the planet.

Inevitably, perhaps, the single moon of Moth was designated Flame. Some thought it a trite appelation, but none could deny its aptness. It was about a third again smaller than Terra's Luna, and nearly twice as far away, It had one peculiar characteristic. It didn't 'burn' as the name would seem to suggest, although it was bright enough. In fact, some felt the label 'moon' to be altogether inappropriate, as Flame didn't revolve around its parent planet at all but instead preceded it around the sun in approximately the same orbit. So the two names stuck. The carrot leading a bejewelled a.s.s, with eternity forever preventing satisfaction to the latter. Fortunately the system's discoverers had resisted the impulse to name the two spheres after the latter saying. As were so many of nature's freaks, the two were too uncommonly gorgeous to be so ridiculed.

The wing on Drallar's side was visible to Flinx only as a thin glowing line, but he had seen pictures of it taken from s.p.a.ce. He had never been in s.p.a.ce himself, at least, only vicariously, but had visited many of the ships that landed at the Port. There at the feet of the older crewmen he listened intently while they spun tales of the great KK ships that plied the dark and empty places of the firmament, Since those monster interstellar craft never touched soil, of course. He had never seen one in person. Such a landing would never be made except in a dire emergency, and then never on an inhabited planet. A Doublekay carried the gravity well of a small sun on its nose, like a bee carrying pollen. Even shrunk to the tiny size necessary to make a simple landing, that field would protect the great bulk of the ship. It would also gouge out a considerable chunk of the planetary crust and set of all sorts of undesirable natural phenomena, like tsunamis and hurricanes and such. So the smaller shuttle ships darted yoyo like between, traveller and ground, carrying down people and their goods, while the giant transports themselves remained in Polyphemian exile in the vastnesses of black and cold.

He had wanted to s.p.a.ce, but had not yet found a valid reason to, and could not leave Mother Mastiff without anyone. Despite unceasing bellows a.s.serting to her good health she was a hundred and something. To leave her alone simply for a pleasure trip was not a thought that appeared to him.

He tugged his cloak tighter around his shoulders, half-burying Pip in the folds of thick fur. As human-inhabited worlds go. Moth was not an exceptionally cold planet, but it was far from tropical. He could not rein ember the time when lie had not been greeted upon awakening by a wet and clammy fog.

It was a dependable but dampish companion. Here furs were used more to shed water than to protect from bitter chill. It was cold, yes, but not freezing. At least, it snowed only in winter.

Pip hissed softly and Flinx absently began feeding him the raisins he'd plucked from the thisk-cake. The reptile gulped them down whole, eagerly. It would have smacked its lips, if it had any. As it was, the long tongue shot out and caressed Flinx's cheek with the delicate touch of a diamond cutter. The mini drag's iridescent scales seemed to shine even brighter than usual. For some reason it was especially fond of raisins. Maybe it relished their iron content.

He glanced down at the plus window of his personal card meter. They weren't broke, but neither were they swimming in luxury. Oh, yes, it was definitely time to go to work!

From a counter of her variegated display booth, Mother Mastif was pleading amiably with a pair of small, jeweled thranx touristas. Her technique was admirable and competent. It ought to be, he reflected.

She'd had plenty of time in which to perfect it. He was only mildly surprised at the insectoid's presence.

Where humans go, thranx also, and vicey-versy, don't you know? So went the children's rhyme. But they did look s bit uncomfortable. Thranx loved the rain and the damp, and in this respect Moth was perfect, but they also preferred a good deal less cold and more humidity. Paradoxically, the air could be wet and to them still too dry. Every time a new hothouse planet turned up they got ecstatic, despite the fact that such places invariably possessed the most objectionable and bellicose environments. Like any human youngster, he'd seen countless pictures of thranx planets: Hivehom, their counterpart of Terra, and also the famous thranx colonies in the blazon and Congo baisins on Terra itself. Why should humans wear themselves out in an unfriendly climate when the thranx could thrive there? They had put those inhospitable regions to far better use than man ever could or would have - as had humans the Mediterranean Plateau on Hivehom.

Indeed, the Amalgamation had worked out very well all around.

From the cut of their necklaces these two were probably from Evoria. Anyhow the female's tiara and ovipositor glaze were dead giveaways. Probably a hunting couple, hero for some excitement. There wasn't much to attract thranx to Moth, other than recreation, politics, and the light metals trade. Moth was rich in light metals, but deficient in many of the heavier ones. Little gold, lead, uranium, and the like, But silver and magnesium and copper in abundance. According to rumour, the giant thranx Elecseed complex had plans to turn Moth into a leading producer of electrical and thinkmachine components, much as they had Arnropolous. But so Far it had remained only rumour. Anyway, inducing skilled thranx workers to migrate to Moth would necessitate the company's best psycho publicists working day and night, plus megacredits in hardship pay. Even off-world human workers would find the living conditions unpalatable at best. He didn't think it likely. And without native atomics there' d be a big power problem.

Hydro-electricity was a limited servant due to the lack of white water. It formed an intriguing problem.

How to generate enough electricity to run the plant to produce electrical products?

All this musing put not credit hi one's account nor bread in one's mouth.

'Sir and madame, what think ye on my wares? No better of this type to be found this side of Shorttree, and d.a.m.n little there.' She fumbled, seemingly aimless, about her samples. 'Now here's an item that might appeal to ye. What of these matched copper drink-jugs, eh? One for he and one for she,' She held up two tall, thin, burnished copper thranx drinking implements. Their sides were elaborately engraved and their spouts worked into intricate spirals.

'Notice the execution, the fine scroll work, sir,' she urged, tracing the delicate patterns with a wrinkled forefinger. 'I defy ye to find better, yea, anywheres!'

The male turned to his mate. 'What do yon say, my dear?' They spoke symbospeech, that peculiar mixture of Terran basic and thranx click-hiss which had become the dominant language of commerce throughout the Humanx Commonwealth and much of the rest of the civilized galaxy besides.

The female extended a handfoot and grasped the utensil firmly by one of its double bandies. Her small, valentine-shaped head inclined slightly at an angle in an oddly human gesture of appraisal as she ran both truehands over the deeply etched surface. She said nothing, but instead looked directly into her mate's eyes.

Flinx remained where he was and nodded knowingly at the innocent smile on Mother Mastiff's face.

He'd seen that predatory grin before. The taste other mind furnished him with further inform a lion as to what would inevitably Follow. Despite a century of intimate familiarity and a.s.sociation with the thranx there still remained some humans who were unable to interpret even the commoner nuances of thranx gesture and gaze, Mother Mastiff was an expert and knew them all. Her eyes were bright enough to read the capital letters flashing there: SALE.

The husband commenced negotiations in an admirably of hand manner, 'Well ... perhaps something might be engendered ... we already have a number of such baubles ... exorbitant prices ... a reasonable level ...'

'Level! You speak of levels?' Mother Mastiff's gasp of outrage was sufficiently violent to carry the odour of garlic all the way to where Flinx stood. The thranx, remarkably, ignored it. 'Good sir, I survive at but a subsistence level now". The government takes all my money, and I have left but it pittance, a pittance, sir, for my three sons and two daughters!'

Flinx shook his head in admiration of Mother Mastiff's unmatched style. Thranx offspring always came in multiples of two, an inbred survival trait. With most things terrene and human there had been little or no conflict, but due to a quirk of psychology the thranx could not help but regard human odd-numbered births as both pathetic and not a little obscene.

'Thirty credits,' she finally sighed.

'Blasphemous!' the husband cried, his antennae quivering violently. 'They are worth perhaps ten, and at that I flatter the craftsman unmercifully.'

'Ten!' moaned Mother Mastiff, feigning a. swoon. 'Ten the creature says, and boasts of it I Surely ...

surely, sir, you do not expect me to consider such an offer seriously'. 'Tis not even successful as a jest.'

Fifteen, then, and I should report you to the local magistrate Even common thieves have the decency to work incognito.'

'Twenty-five. Sir, you, a cultured and wealthy being, surely you can do better than taunt and make sport of an old female. One who has doubtless fertilized as many eggs as you ..." The female had the grace to lower her head and blush. The thranx were quite open about s.e.x ... their's or anyone else's ... but still, Flinx thought, there were lines over which it was improper to step.

Good manners it might not have been, but in this case at least it appeared to be good business. The male harrumphed awkwardly, a deep, vibrant hum. 'Twenty, then.'

'Twenty-three five., and a tenth credit less I will not say!' intoned Mother Mastiff. She folded her arms in a recognizable gesture of finality.

'Twenty-one,' countered the male.

Mother Mastiff shook her head obstinately, immovable as a Treewall. She looked ready to wait out entropy.

'Twenty-three five, not a tenth credit less. My last and final offer, good sir. This pair will find its own market. I must survive, and I fear I may have allowed you to sway me too far already.'

The male wouid have argued further, on principle if for nothing else, but at that point the female put a truehand on his b-thorax, just below the ear, and stroked lightly. That ending the bargaining.

'Ahhh, Dark Centres! Twenty-five ... no, twenty-three five, then! Thief! a.s.saulter of reason! It is well known that a human would cheat its own female-parent to make a half- credit!'

'And it is well known also,' replied Mother Mastiff smoothiy as she processed the sale, 'that the thranx are the most astute bargainers in the galaxy. You have gotten yourself a steal, sir, and so 'tis you and not I the thief"

As soon as the exchange of credit had been finalized, Flinx left his resting place by the old wall and strolled over to the combination booth and home. The thranx had departed happily, antennae entwined.

On their mating flight'? The male, at least, had Seemed too old for that. His chiton had been shading ever so slightly into deep blue despite the obvious use of cosmetics, while the female had been a much younger aquamarine. The thranx too took mistresses. In the moist air, their delicate perfume lingered- 'Well, Mother,' he began. He was not indicating parentage - she had insisted on that years ago - but using the t.i.tle bestowed on her by the folk of the markets. Everyone called her mother. 'Business seems good.' She apparently had not noticed his approach and was momentarily fl.u.s.tered. 'What? What? Oh, 'tis you, cub! Pah!' She gestured in the direction taken by the departed thranx. 'Thieves the bugs are, to steal from me so I But have I a choice?' She did not wait for-an answer. I am an old woman and must sell occasionally to support myself, even at such prices, for who in this city would feed me?' 'More likely, Mother, it would be you who would feed the city, I saw you purchase those same mugspirals from Olin the Coppersmith not six days ago... for eleven credits.' 'Ay? Harrumph,' she coughed. 'You must be mistaken, boy. Even you can make a mistake now and then, you know. Um, have you eaten yet today?'

'A thisk-cake only.' 'Is that the way I raised ye, to live on sweets?' In her gratefulness for a change of subject she feigned anger. 'And I'll wager ye gave half of it to that d.a.m.ned snake of yours, anyway!' Pip raised his dozing head at that and let out a mild hiss. Mother Mastiff did not like the minidrag and never had. Few people did. Some might profess friendship, and after coaxing a few could even be persuaded to pet it. But none could forget that its kind's poison could lay a man dead in sixty seconds, and the antidote was rare. Flinx was never cheated in business or pleasure when the snake lay curled about his shoulder. 'Gentle, Mother. He understands what you say, you know. Nor so much what as why, really.'

'Oh surely, surely! Now claim intelligence for the monster! Bewitched it is, perhaps. I believe it that latter, at least, for I can't deny I've seen the thing react oddly, yes. But it does no work, sleeps constantly, and eats prodigiously. You'd be far better off without it, lad.' He scratched the minidrag absently behind the flat, scaly head. 'Your suggestion is not humourful, Mother. Besides, it does work in the act ...'

'Gimmick,' she snorted, but not loudly.

'And as to its sleeping and easing habits, it is an alien tiling and has metabolic requirements we cannot question. Most importantly, I like it and ... and it likes me.'

Mother Mastiff would have argued further except that they had gone through uncounted variations of this very argument over the years. No doubts dog or one of the local domesticated running-birds would have made a more efficacious pet for a small boy, but when she'd taken in the maltreated youngster Mother Mastiff'd had no credits for dogs or birds. Flinx had stumbled on the minidrag himself in the alley behind their first shack, rooting in a garbage heap for meats and sugars. Being ignorant of its ident.i.ty he'd approached it openly and unfearing. She'd found the two huddled together in the boy's bed the following morning. She had hefted a broom and tried to shoo it off, but instead of being frightened the thing had opened its mouth and hissed threateningly at her. That initial attempt const.i.tuted her first and last physical effort at separating the two.

The relationship was an unusual one and much commented upon, the more so since Alaspin was many pa.r.s.ecs away and none could recall having heard of a minidrag living unconfined off its native world before. It was widely surmised that it had been the pet of some s.p.a.ce trader and had gotten loose at the shuttleport and escaped. Since the importation of poisonous animals was a felony on most planets, Moth included, few were surprised that the original owner had not made noisy efforts to reclaim his property.

In any case it had banned no one (Flinx knew otherewise, and better than to boast the fact) and so none in the marketplace protested its presence to the authorities, although all wished with a pa.s.sion it would go elsewhere.

He moved to change the subject.

'How are you equipped for credit, Mother?'

'Fah! Poorly, as always. But,' and this with a sly, small grin, I should be able to manage for a while off that last transaction.'

Id wager,' he chucked. He turned to survey the chromaticalllly coloured crowd which flowed unceasingly around and in front of the little shop, trying to gauge the proportion of wealthy tourists among the everyday populace. The effort, as usual, made his head ache.