Flinx Transcendent Read Online Free PDF Page B

however, was the one thing the implacable, fast-moving scrutinizers would not give him.
    At the next intersection a large public transport paused to unload a trio of passengers. Operating at cross-angles to the curving pedestrian pathways, it traveled on a fixed preprogrammed path. Private transport would have been faster and safer, but now he had no choice. Breaking into a run, he sprint-loped in the transport's direction. Behind him, the scrutinizers had paused to perform bio-interrogation on a mated pair of puzzled pedestrians. Pivoting in midair, one casually turned its secondary scanner in Flinx's direction. Would it be able to identify him from a rear view?
    He leaped through the open portal at the rear of the transport just before it started to close. The interior lighting was muted to suit AAnn visual tastes. Several of the half dozen or so passengers were resting in squatting position while the remainder stood erect. One Elder had to resort to the use of a fixed support brace that protruded from an interior wall. Lest they provoke an early evening challenge, none of his fellow riders looked in Flinx's direction. Not for the first time, he was glad of characteristic AAnn reticence in the presence of strangers. They tended to be much more cautious among themselves than when confronting his kind, or the thranx.
    It was good that they exhibited disinterest or one of them might have been moved to comment on his awkward, ungainly stride. A soft warning stutter sounded from a concealed rooftop synth membrane and the transport accelerated smoothly. Flinx waited as long as he dared before turning ever so slightly to look back the way he had come. What he saw filled him with relief, if not exactly confidence. Behind the departing transport, the two scrutinizers were now interviewing the remaining nye who had stood between Flinx and the public conveyance itself. Had he remained on the walkway, he would have been next to have been interrogated. And he would not have been able to use his abilities to confuse patrolling machines as he had pursuing enforcers and weary food merchants.
    Returning his attention to the center of the egg-shaped vehicle, he tilted his head back slightly and pretended to study the assorted glowing exhortations that formed a drifting nimbus within the concave ceiling. Two of the other passengers were doing likewise. There was no need to worry about his reactions as he perused the highly animated public notices. His AAnn visage masked the human expressions underneath.
    He had hoped to find himself on a transport headed toward the outer rings of the metropolis, or at least parallel to where he had been staying. Instead, he was trapped on a vehicle headed toward the city center. He was accelerating into the very heart of the Imperial environs. There he was likely to find his every move subject to greater scrutiny than ever. As a lone human confronting the Empire, even his singular abilities might not be enough to enable him to escape detection and disclosure.
    Well, he would worry about that tomorrow. One thing humans andAAnn had in common was diurnality. Both species required a certain amount of nighttime rest. The problem of nourishment had been solved, if only temporarily. As for water, though the AAnn needed less of it to function effectively than did humans, Flinx felt from his experience of the city that it would not be difficult to come by. Since he could no longer safely rent a place to sleep, he would find some sheltered place near a pathway. The prospect of sleeping out in the open did not disturb him. He had done it often enough as a child on Moth.
    As for the fact that he was about to do so on an entirely alien world, well, a dirty deserted alley was a dirty deserted alley irrespective of the species responsible for its aesthetics, design, and construction.
    Upon exiting the public transport he found himself in a district dominated by large individual dwellings. On a human world they would have