The Tar-aiym Krang by Alan Dean Foster Read Free Book Online Page A

closely again.
    “You are an outstanding guide and a cheerful companion,” the thranx said, “and I for one count myself fortunate to have you with us.” They had moved along until they were now quite a distance from the city’s center. Truzenzuzex gestured ahead to where the tower homes of the very wealthy stretched away in landscaped splendor. “Now we would wish to see the manicured grounds and hanging gardens of Drallar’s inurbs, of which we have both heard so much.”
    “I’m afraid I cannot manage that, sir. The grounds of Braav inurb are closed to such as I, and there are groundkeepers—with guns—who are posted by the walls to keep the common folk from infesting the greens.”
    “But you
do
know the ways within?” prodded Tse-Mallory.
    “Well,” Flinx began hesitantly. After all, what did he really know of these two? “At night I have sometimes found it necessary to . . . but it is not night now, and we would surely be seen going over the walls.”
    “Then we shall go through the gate. Take us,” he said firmly, shutting off Flinx’s incipient protests, “and we will worry about getting past the guards.”
    Flinx shrugged, irritated by the man’s stubbornness. Let them learn their own way, then. But he mentally added an expensive dessert to the evening’s meal. He led them to the first gateway and stood in the background while the large, overbearing man who lounged in the little building there came over toward them, grumbling noticeably.
    It was now that the most extraordinary event of the day took place. Before the obviously antagonistic fellow could so much as utter a word, Truzenzuzex put a truehand into a pouch and thrust under the man’s eyes a card taken from somewhere inside. The man’s eyes widened and he all but saluted, the belligerence melting from his attitude like wax. Flinx had never, never seen an inurb guard, a man widely noted for his cultivated rudeness and suspicious mannerisms, react so helplessly to anyone, not even the residents of the inurbs themselves. He grew even more curious as to the nature of his friends. But they remained basically unreadable.
Damn
that beer! It seemed to him that he had heard the name Tse-Mallory somewhere before, but he couldn’t be certain. And he would have given much for a glimpse of the card Truzenzuzex had so negligently flashed before the guard.
    The way was now quite unopposed. He would at least have the opportunity of seeing some familiar things for the first time in the light of day. At leisure, too, without having to glance continually over his shoulder.
    They strolled silently amid the emerald parklike grounds and tinkling waterfalls, occasionally passing some richly dressed inhabitant or sweating underling, sometimes startling a deer or phylope among the bushes.
    “I understand,” said Tse-Mallory, breaking the silence, “that each tower belongs to one family, and is named thusly.”
    “That’s true enough,” replied Flinx.
    “And are you familiar with them?”
    “Most, not all. Since you are curious, I’ll name the ones I do know as we pass them.”
    “Do that.”
    It seemed silly, but they were paying, so who was he to argue the practicality? A fine wine joined the dinner menu. . . .
    “. . . and this,” he said as they drew abreast of a tall black-glazed tower, “is the House of Malaika. A misnomer, sir. As I understand, it means ‘angel’ in a dead Terran language.”
    “No Terran language is ‘dead,’ ” said Tse-Mallory cryptically. Then, “He who is named Maxim?”
    “Why, yes. I know because I’ve performed here for parties, several times past. This next, the yellow. . . .”
    But they weren’t listening, he saw. Both had halted by the black tower and were staring upward to where the rose-tinted crystal proto-porches encircled the upper stories and overhung the lush greenery of the hanging vines and air-shrubs.
    “It is fortuitous,” he heard Truzenzuzex remark, “that you know each other.