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

It might or might not facilitate certain matters. Come, we shall pay a call on your Mister Malaika.”
    Flinx was completely taken aback. Was this why they had hired him in the first place? To come this far to an impossibility? Next to the king and his ministers, the trader families of Drallar, nomads who had taken their talents off-planet, were the wealthiest and most powerful individuals on the planet. And some might possibly be wealthier, for the extent of the great fortunes was not a subject into which even the monarch could inquire with impunity.
    “It is a slight acquaintance only, sirs! What makes you believe he will do anything but kick us out? What makes you believe he’ll even see us?”
    “What makes you think we can enter an oh-so-restricted inurb?” replied Truzenzuzex confidently. “He will see us.”
    The two began to head up the paved walkway toward the great arch of the tower entrance and Flinx, exasperated and puzzled, had little choice but to follow.
    The double doorway of simple carved crystal led to a domed hallway that was lined with statuary and paintings and mindgrams which even Flinx’s untrained eye could recognize as being of great value. There, at the far end, was a single elevator.
    They halted before the platinum-inlaid wood. A woman’s voice greeted them mechanically from a grid set off to one side.
    “Good afternoon, gentlebeings, and welcome to the House of Malaika. Please to state your business.”
    Now they would finish this foolishness! The message was all very nicely put, the surroundings pleasant. Out of the corner of an eye he could see a screen, delicately painted, ruffling in the slight breeze of the chamber’s ventilators. Beyond which no doubt the muzzle of a laser-cannon or other inhospitable device was already trained on them. It was comfortably cool in the hall, but he felt himself nonetheless beginning to sweat.
    “Ex-chancellor second sociologist Bran Tse-Mallory and first philosoph the Eint Truzenzuzex present their compliments to Maxim of the House of Malaika and would have converse with him if he is at home and so disposed.”
    Flinx’s mind parted abruptly from thoughts of making a run for the entrance. No wonder they’d gotten past the gate guard so easily! A churchman and a pure scientist. High-ranked at that, although Tse-Mallory had said “ex”. Chancellor second—that was planetary level, at least. He was less sure of Truzenzuzex’s importance, but he knew that the thranx held their philosophs, or theoreticians, in an esteem matched only by that of the honorary Hive-Mothers and the Chancellor Firsts of the Church themselves. His mind was deluged with questions, all tinged by uncertainty as much as curiosity. What were two such eminences doing slumming in a place like Small Symm’s? Why had they picked him for a guide—a youth, a nothing—when they could have had a royal escort by a king’s minister? That answer he could read clearly. Incognito; the one word said much and implied more. At the moment, what dealings did two such sophisticated minds have with a solid, earthy merchant like Maxim Malaika?
    While he had been dazedly forming questions without answer, a mind somewhere had been coming to a decision. The grid spoke again.
    “Maxim of the House of Malaika extends greetings, albeit astonished, and will have converse immediately with the two honorsirs. He wishes the both of you . . .” there was a pause while a hidden eye somewhere scanned, “. . . the three of you to come up. He is now in the southwest porchroom and would greet you there soonest.”
    The grid voice clicked off and immediately the rich-grained doors slid back. Man and thranx stepped unbidden into the dark-pile interior. Flinx debated a second whether to follow them or run like hell, but Tse-Mallory decided for him.
    “Don’t stand there gawking, youth. Didn’t you hear it say he wished to see the
three
of us?”
    Flinx could nowhere detect malignance. He stepped in. The