Mid-Flinx by Alan Dean Foster Read Free Book Online

comforting and reassurance. Something within him was crying out for help, and try as he might, Bateleur had no idea what it might be.
    He didn’t have the chance to offer further. They were already at the back door and his visitor was bidding him good-bye. As expected, the rear serviceway was quite deserted.
    “Follow this for several blocks. You’ll come to a door which opens into the lower level of a major financial complex downtown. It’s always crowded there and you should be able to lose yourself easily. I’d keep your pet under cover to avoid attracting attention, but I suppose you’re used to doing that.” Flinx nodded.
    “If you change your mind and see your way to staying awhile longer,” Bateleur added, “my wife and I have room in our home. It sits on an island upstream and—”
    “Thanks,” Flinx replied warmly, “but I need to be on my way. I’m more comfortable when I’m moving around.”
    Bateleur found himself watching the tall youth until the shadows enveloped his lanky form. Then he shut the door and started back to his office, barely acknowledging the greetings and comments of colleagues and coworkers along the way. As he walked, an unaccustomed contentment flowed through him, the mental equivalent of sunning oneself beneath a heat lamp. Once, he looked around sharply, but there was no one there.
    Taking a left turn, he found himself in the sanctuary. There he knelt and began to pray. Not only for the continued safety of his recent visitor, as he’d promised he would do, but for guidance.
    When he was done he returned to his office and activated the nearest monitor. It automatically saved to memory everything that transpired within range of its pickup. There was the young man’s arrival, the ensuing confrontation with the hostile Coerlis and his minions, and his visitor’s subsequent eccentric dissertation. Bateleur had to smile as he saw for a second time the young man insisting he had visited a place impossibly far away.
    What was intriguing was that instead of speaking in generalities, his visitor had chosen and chart-sequence-searched a specific point in the sky. The honestly deluded were not usually so precise.
    As an amusing curiosity, Bateleur referred it to local Church headquarters, which in turn dutifully catalogued and filed it via space-minus tight beam to Church science headquarters in Denpasar, on Terra. There it shuttled around in the company of a hundred thousand similar low-key reports, passing the notice of a number of researchers who understandably ignored it.
    Except for a certain Father Sandra. She picked it out of a large study file, did some cross-checking on the accompanying visuals, and decided to share the result with Father Jamieson, with whom she’d had an ongoing relationship for nearly a year.
    “Shiky, I’ve got something here I’d like your opinion on.”
    Shikar Banadundra turned to smile up at her as she handed him the hardcopy. He took a moment to flip through the folder, frowned, scanned it a second time more carefully.
    “You sure about this, Misell?”
    “Of course not, but a lot of it checks out. The resolution on some of the old visuals is pretty bad. The computer says there’s a good chance it’s a match. I had to do some scrambling around.”
    “Voiceprint?”
    “Only the new interview with this Father Bateleur on Samstead. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything similar in the earlier references.”
    “Pity. Can you get enough enhancement to do a retinal match?”
    She shook her head sorrowfully.
    Banadundra eyed the hardcopy afresh. “That’s not very encouraging.”
    “I think the interview itself is encouraging. He’s supposed to be dead.”
    “He may be. Computer opinion or not, this is pretty inconclusive.” He concentrated on the last page of the report. “I don’t see anything remarkable here. This individual had a run-in with a small-time local merchant. So what?”
    She pulled a page from the folder. “What do you think