Orphan Star Read Online Free PDF Page B

Instead, they found themselves in a ground-car garage, which showed ample sign of having been recently vacated.
    “Keep your monumental ears open,” Flinx advised quietly. “See if you can find out where Challis has fled. I’m going to work my own sources. . . .”
    When they left through the open doorway of the garage, no one challenged their departure, though hidden eyes observed it. But those behind the eyes were grateful to see the pair go.
    “You’re sure they’re not still here?” Symm wondered aloud. “Someone could have taken the car as a diversion.”
    Flinx replied with the kind of unnerving assurance Symm didn’t pretend to understand, but had come to accept. “No, they’re no longer in this vicinity.”
    The pair parted outside the last encircling wall of the inurb. There was no formality, no shaking of hands—nothing of the sort was required between these two.
    “If you learn anything get in touch with me at Mother Mastiff’s shop,” Flinx instructed the giant. “Whatever happens, I’ll let you know my plans.”
    As he made his way back through the market’s concentric circles, he clutched his cloak tightly about him. The last drops of the morning rain were falling. In the distance an, always hopeful sun showed signs of emerging from the low, water-heavy clouds.
    Plenty of activity swirled about him. At this commercial hub of the Commonwealth, business operated round the clock.
    Flinx knew a great many inhabitants of this world-within-a-world on sight. Some were wealthy and great, some poor and great. A few were not human and more were less human than others though all claimed membership in the same race.
    Passing the stall of the sweets vendor Kiki, he kept his attention resolutely ahead. It was too early and his stomach was too empty for candy. Besides, his innards still rocked slightly from the aftereffects of Challis’ seemingly harmless jewelry. So, at Chairman Nils he bought a small loaf of bran bread coated with nut butter.
    Nils was a fortyish food vendor with an authoritative manner. Everyone called him the Chairman. He ruled his corner of the marketplace with the air of a dictator, never suspecting that he held this power because his fellow sellers and hawkers found it amusing to humor his gentle madness. There were never any delusions in his baked goods, however. Flinx took a ferocious bite out of the triangular loaf, enjoying the occasional crunch of chopped nuts woven into the brown butter.
    A glance at the sky still hinted at the possibility of the sun breaking through, a rare occurrence in usually cloud-shrouded Drallar.
    His snack finished, Flinx began moving through a section filled with handsome, permanent shopfronts—a section that was considerably different from the region of makeshift shacks and stores in which he had been raised. When he’d first proposed shifting the ancient stall from the noisome depths of the marketplace Mother Mastiff had protested vociferously. “I wouldn’t know how to act,” she had argued, “What do I know about treating with fancy customers and rich folks?”
    “Believe me, Mother”—though they both knew she wasn’t his real mother, she acted as one to half the homeless in Drallar—“they’re the same as your old customers, only now the idiots will come with bigger bankrolls. Besides, what else would I do with all the money Malaika pressed on me?”
    Eventually he had been forced to purchase the shop and thus present her with a
fait accompli.
She railed at him for hours when he told her—until she saw the place. Though she continued muttering dire imprecations about everything he showed her—the high-class inventory, the fancy living quarters upstairs, the automatic cooking devices—her resistance collapsed with unsurprising speed.
    But there were two things she still refused to do. One was to change her handmade, homemade attire—as esoteric a collage of beads, bells, and cloth as could be imagined. The other was to use the