Running from the Deity by Alan Dean Foster Read Free Book Online Page B

beneath emerged from their burrows and began to hungrily scour the ceramic bowl. When they had finished, they would retire swiftly to their nest to quietly await the next bounty from the sky.
    Straightening, Ebbanai moved toward his mate until they were touching Sensitives as well as all four upper limbs. “You can feel my self like none other,” he told her softly but intently. “All I ask is that you spend a little of one morning with me. If I am wrong, if I imagined what I saw, I will perform a whole quarter’s worth of abasements.”
    “You will, too,” she told him—but tenderly. Then she sighed and pulled away, her Sensitives unwinding from his. “The lunacy one has to endure for the sake of maintaining a relationship.”
    “It is not lunacy,” he assured her. “It is a giant machine and an alien that dwells inside. Two aliens,” he corrected himself.
    She made a spitting noise. “You came in here swollen with fear. Are you no longer afraid of what you think you saw?”
    “Of course I am still afraid. But I will go back nonetheless.”
    He did not add that he would do so because he was more afraid of her continuing disdain than anything he might encounter. Besides, nothing could be as menacing in the bright light of day as it was at night. And this time he would not be alone.
    His matchless, strong-willed mate, he was certain, was spirited enough to stand up even to oddly jointed, thick-bodied aliens.

    Flinx estimated each leap covered half a dozen meters. One such jump might not be considered exceptional by a good athlete. Making such leaps in rapid succession, one after another, was another matter entirely. The low gravity allowed him to cover considerable distances with far less effort than usual. Though he was firmly rooted to the ground, the exuberant bounds conveyed something of the feeling of flying. By combing a short run-up with a strong jump, he discovered he was also able to soar over obstacles that on a t-normal world would have forced him to scramble over them or find a way around.
    For her part, Pip dipped and plunged through a succession of aerial acrobatics that would elsewhere have seen her dangerously close to crashing. Anyone watching them would have been hard-pressed to tell who was having the better time: man or minidrag.
    Then something stepped out from among the plant-laced dunes to confront him directly.
    The size of a small bear, it had a low-slung jaw that made up fully a third of its length. Four squat, stumpy legs separated at the midjoint into pairs that terminated in a total of eight blocky feet. Hairless, earless, and colored a splotchy blue-black, it sported a smooth pair of fleshy appendages that protruded from the top of its head. Though the teeth in the extraordinary mouth were flat and designed for masticating vegetation, the two short horns that tipped both the upper and lower jaw looked sharp enough to do real damage.
    As startled by the sight of the taller but lighter human as Flinx was by the sudden appearance of the bulky herbivore, the creature’s large eyes contracted in their bony sockets. Uttering a cross between a snort and a whistle, it started toward him: slowly at first, but rapidly gathering momentum.
    Flinx knew it was startled because he could sense that particular emotion emanating from the oncoming animal. Could sense it without even having to try. It was among the clearest emotional projections he had ever received at any time in all his many travels. He did not have to extend his perception at all, as he often did at such moments of stress. Proper perceiving was even more difficult when the subject was nonsentient. But this charging creature was laying its emotions out in his mind as clearly as if they had been printed to hard copy and handed to him for his leisurely perusal.
    Above, Pip sensed her master’s sudden stress, folded her wings, and dove. Her intervention was not necessary. Exerting only a minimal effort, and without even trying to focus