Flinx in Flux by Alan Dean Foster Read Free Book Online

pieces of driftwood the river cast up during the rainy season. Scrap continued to bump anxiously against the front window as Flinx set the engine to idle. Pip rose from her seat to settle on his shoulder.
    He cracked the dome, letting the hot, humid air swirl around him for a moment before climbing down to the beach. A narrow track such as a turtle might make returning to the sea had been gouged in the sand. It led from the river’s edge to the prone figure’s feet, showing the route the refugee had taken from water to dry land. His eyes flicked over the slow-moving stream. There was no sign of a boat, nor did he expect to see one.
    Reaching the body, he rolled it over on to its back and unexpectedly found himself recalling the line
“Diese ist kein Mann”
from the ancient Wagnerian tridee. She was no Brunhilde, however, and he was certainly no Siegfried. Beneath the dirt, scratches, bruises, and millimite bug bites lay the battered shell of a very attractive woman.
    She was still alive. If she had not been, his mind would not have reacted as it had. Her demise might have saved him a headache, but for the moment at least he did not mind having endured the brief pain. Her pulse was weak but not dangerously so—clearly she was in the last stages of exhaustion. The trail leading back to the river indicated she had made it this far on hands and belly. She only looked dead.
    What he could not fathom were the shorts and short-sleeved shirt. Nice attire for a sealed hotel, but potentially fatal anywhere else on Alaspin. Her arms and legs were striped with millimite bug trails, and deep red splotches showed where drill beetles had been mining. They were bad enough, but he could understand them. The bruises were more cryptic. They did not look like the kind a drifting log would make, and there were no rapids anywhere along this stretch of river.
    Her blond hair was cut short on top, sides, and front save for a single tail that trailed six centimeters from behind her right ear and ended in a soggy knot. A star had been shaved above each ear. He did not recognize the style, but then, style was not something he usually concerned himself with.
    He felt her clothing. Thin, lightweight. Cool and utterly useless against Alaspin’s rapacious insect life. You wore either jungle drill or two sets of something else. How the hell had she ended up here like this?
    A dumb tourist determined to see the backcountry on her own, most likely. Tried to walk or float out when her vehicle broke down instead of staying with it and waiting for help. An infrequent bit of stupidity, but not unheard of. Birding or snake watching or taking tridee chips.
    Then he reminded himself she might have come upriver in an enclosed boat. If it had sunk she would have had no choice but to swim or walk. That scenario made some sense. The water would also mute any emergency beacon signal. Maybe she was more unlucky than dumb.
    He had no trouble picking her up and carrying her back to the crawler. Getting her inside was another matter. She was not that heavy, but he had to rig a lift with some rope and haul her up hand over hand. If not for the added muscle he had put on this past year, he could not have done it. Pip kept clear, watching, while Scrap darted anxiously around the limp body, no doubt curious as to why a living human being should be devoid of emotion.
    The four passenger seats could be folded flat, making beds for two riders. He put her in the back of the crawler, then punched up the location of the first-aid kit.
    As would be expected for a rental vehicle, the instructions on the self-injecting ampoules in the kit were simple and self-explanatory. Some looked pretty old, but none had reached their official expiration dates. The bites were easy enough to treat. Salve for the millimite scars, iofluorodene to kill the eggs the drill bugs had laid in her muscles. He also pumped her full of general antiseptic and fungicide. None of the ampoules lit up during