Flinx in Flux by Alan Dean Foster Read Free Book Online Page B

called for a robocab. It delivered them to the modest hotel where he had stayed on arrival two weeks ago. The manager coded his room without questions. He was glued to the tridee and did not even look up when Flinx returned with the limp woman in his arms. In Mimmisompo plenty of people came and went from their rooms in that state.
    The lift carried them to the third and top floor of the hotel. Flinx passed the charged bar across the center of the door, then waited while it read the code and clicked open. Pip and Scrap entered first, Flinx following. He kicked the door shut behind him.
    Marveling at her litheness, he placed her gently on one of the two beds. After checking her vital signs, he treated himself to his first shower in days. When he reentered the bedroom, it was to find her sleeping as soundly as she had in the crawler.
    This morning he had used the last of the crawler’s emergency supplies. Tomorrow he would find her friends or, failing that, a physician. She lay still on the bed, barely illuminated by the moonlight pouring through the single large window on her left. Above her headboard the electronic bug repeller glowed emerald, ready to dissuade any intruder that managed to make it past the hotel’s exterior defenses.
    Flinx checked his own before tossing his towel aside and sliding gratefully beneath clean, cool sheets. The room was Spartan but spacious, dry, and insect-free. Outside the capital city of Alaspinport you could not expect more than that.
    She was breathing easily, and he rolled over to stare at her. Pip assumed her familiar position at his feet while Scrap settled close by.
    If others were searching frantically for her, they would have to wait until he had had a decent night’s sleep, he reflected. He had earned it. Another day would make no difference to her or her colleagues, assuming she had any in Mimmisompo. He did not worry about other unlikely possibilities. Not with Pip resting alertly at his feet.
    At least, he thought lazily as he drifted off to sleep, this was one time he had managed to do a good deed without involving himself deeply in someone else’s problems.
    Morning proved it was not going to be that easy. Somehow it never was. She was still resting peacefully when he awoke, rose soundlessly, and prepared to go out.
    As he dressed, he could not help glancing in her direction. She was lying on her side, and the sheets had draped themselves provocatively over her body. In the light she was not merely attractive, she was beautiful.
    He kept telling himself as he studied the rise and fall of her chest that he was only checking the regularity of her breathing. It was impossible for him to lie to himself, however. Pip’s reactions always truthfully mirrored what he was feeling.
    He left hurriedly, sealing his jumpsuit on the way out. She was not hurting, he was sure of that. Not with all the antibios, specifics, and endorphine analogs he had pumped into her. If anything, she ought to be floating half a meter above the bed. A last pass with the scanner was accomplished without a beep. She was healing rapidly, as much a credit to her own constitution as to his amateur treatment of her injuries.
    Tough little lady, he mused. All the more reason to try to find out how she had come to be beaten up and dumped in the middle of the Ingre.
    This was only his second visit to Mimmisompo, and he did not know the town that well, but he had learned long ago that information was often available in such places in inverse proportion to the actual population. Furthermore, it was not necessary to scour the entire community to find the answers he needed. There were always logical places to make inquiries. The official information booths were at the bottom of any such list.
    Because of her wholly inadequate attire, Flinx went on the assumption that she was a recent arrival to the Ingre region. No half-experienced prospector or scientist would have been caught dead in the kind of clothing she had been