Flinx's Folly by Alan Dean Foster Read Free Book Online Page B

board it at Reides Port.
    Still, it was nice to be able to settle back in the private charter vehicle and relax as it left Memeluc, accelerating rapidly toward the capital. There had been no sign of his pursuers while he was turning in the repeller and making arrangements for the transport. Nor had he sensed anything suspicious in his immediate vicinity: no hate directed his way, no bloodlust, no anger or killing frenzy, only the soothing emotional babble of town dwellers and country folk, so much more relaxed and less mentally irksome than the frenetic emotional surge projected by the urbanites.
    The transport would deposit him directly at Reides Port. Since he had his own private craft, from there it would take only a few moments to make his way through Emigration. Once aloft, no one could trouble him. If any tried, he had at his disposal a number of means for avoiding interception. So secure did he feel in the privacy of the self-guiding hired transport that he allowed himself to drift into a gentle sleep, the still largely unspoiled landscape of Goldin IV blurring past beyond the single plexalloy window.
    It was a mistake.
    Not a lethal one. Not by any means. No mysterious, far-ranging sources sent his thoughts racing outward beyond the limits of the galaxy to test his perception and his sanity. Instead, his thoughts churned and dreams roiled as he tossed and twisted uneasily on the padded seat. Helpless as always to calm her master at such times, Pip could only lie coiled nearby, tongue flicking anxiously, eyes staring, her triangular head moving nervously from side to side. Her master’s perturbed dreaming was the one persistent adversary she could affect with neither bite nor toxin.
    The vehicle’s pleasant-voiced arrival announcement woke him. He found himself curled up on the floor of the transport, wet under his arms and on his forehead, his neck damp. His head pounded, though not with one of the terrifying, extreme headaches that made him want to run headfirst into a wall and knock himself unconscious just to make the pain stop. He fumbled with his service belt until he found its integrated medipak. Five minutes after swallowing the appropriate capsule, the throbbing at the front of his head began to recede. Ten minutes later, the transport pulled into the shuttleport commuter station.
    The occasions when he unexpectedly and unwillingly found his sleeping consciousness thrust infinitely outward remained infrequent. It was the simpler dreams that had begun to wear on him. More and more often he found it difficult to get a good night’s rest. Nightmares that far exceeded anything he had experienced while growing up on Moth plagued him with disquieting regularity. Unable to exorcise the demons that beset him, suffering from more frequent and stronger headaches, the combination of lack of sleep and stabbing head pain was making him tense, irritable, and unable to think clearly. It was the last he feared the most. With assorted folk trying to arrest, examine, or kill him, mental lucidity was the one defense he could not afford to lose.
    As if to emphasize that he was even now mentally adrift, even as he contemplated his situation, the transport had to remind him that they had arrived at the programmed destination. And unless he was prepared to pay waiting charges, it was time for him to exit the vehicle.
    He did so, making sure both his compact travel satchel and even smaller companion were both with him. Pip remained coiled out of sight, a muscular bulge beneath his tunic, lest the sight of her unsettle other travelers. Highly venomous, she would never have been allowed to travel with passengers on a commercial shuttle. Since Flinx had his own craft, both of them were expeditiously waved through Security. Used to adopting and discarding false identities the way a traditional croupier shuffled cards, one “Sascha Harbonnet,” his unusual but complaisant pet, and their one small article of luggage rapidly and