Alan Dean Foster - Flinx 16 - Snakes Eyes

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Foster, Alan Dean - Commonwealth 16 - Flinx - Snakes Eyes (SS) (v1.0)

Foster, Alan Dean - Commonwealth 16 - Flinx - Snakes

Eyes (SS) (v1.0) Jacked

Snake Eyes

by Alan Dean Foster

The mysterious young man Philip Lynx, better known to his readers as Flinx, and his empathic

flying snake Pip have gallivanted through five novels written over a span of twelve years.

They've become good friends of mine. I feel I know Pip, for instance, as well as I know my own

six-foot-long Colombian boa constrictor, Samuel.

I wish I knew whether Samuel was a he or a she, though. It's tough to tell with a snake, and

after they get to be Sam's size it's tricky to press the point. Not that it really matters. Sam feels

like a he to me, and so far he hasn't bothered to argue about it. It's just a feeling I have, of course.

I'm often chided for believing that anything as lowly as a snake can project any kind of feeling.

But it's sure fun to imagine one could, and many's the time in those tales that Flinx has been glad

Pip could sense what he was feeling. Never more so than in the story that follows

Her name was Pip. She was a minidrag, or flying snake. She was barely two-thirds of a meter long, and

no bigger around than the wrist of a sensitive woman. Her venom could kill a man in sixty seconds. In a

hundred if she missed the eyes when she spat.

Until a few seconds ago it had been an unremarkable day. Then unexpected and overwhelming emotion-

thoughts had struck her like a wave bowling over an unprepared crustacean. Her own feelings tumbled up

and over, spun and submerged and overpowered by other thoughts. Pip was a sensitive empathic telepath,

and the emotional outburst she'd just received was not to be denied.

Through slitted pupils she could see the slim form of her young master, an adolescent named Flinx,

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Foster, Alan Dean - Commonwealth 16 - Flinx - Snakes Eyes (SS) (v1.0)

asleep on the park bench below her perch. He dreamed pleasant mind-mirages devoid of fear or worry

while fu-guelbell leaves tinkled overhead, crisp as the damp morning air. Pip shivered slightly. Moth,

Flinx's home world, was always cooler than the comfortable jungle and veldt of her own Alaspin.

Their surroundings, a park in Drallar, Moth's capital city, were familiar and empty of menace. Nor did

her roving senses detect anything like a threat in the immediate mental vicinity. Pip decided she could

safely leave Flinx for a while.

The other objects of her concern, the offspring of her recent union on Alaspin with a solidly muscled

minidrag named Balthazaar, were presently elsewhere, busily engaged in the hunts that were part of a mini-

drag's early education. She would have felt better about leaving Flinx had her progeny been around to

watch over him in her absence, but the call swept over her again, insistent, mournful.

Slowly she slid free of her branch. Below, Flinx snuffled in his sleep, dreaming of matters as

incomprehensible to her as they were important to him. Flinx's own mental abilities often weighed heavily

on him.

Children playing nearby saw the brilliant pleated wings of pink and blue unfurl. They stared open-

mouthed at the leathery, supple beauty of the flying snake, ignorant of the lethal danger those wings

represented. They watched with guileless fascination as the exquisitely jeweled creature climbed into the

cloying dampness of Moth's air, spiraled above the chiming treetops, and soared southward out of the city.

Knigta Yakus would have traded a twenty-carat hal-lowseye for a glass of water. As events had

developed, the sunken-chested old graybeard was one of the few men in the Commonwealth who could

readily have made such an offer.

After eight despairing months in the High Desert of Moth's Dead-Place-on-Map he'd discovered a

pocket of the rare orange gems extensive enough to support a dozen people in baroque splendor for the

rest of their lives. Now he survived partly on the thought of the expressions his discovery would produce

on the faces of the boasting rheumy wrecks who inhabited the sandy dives of Edgedune Town.

They had assured him he'd find nothing but sand and a dessicated death in the vast wastelands of Dead-

Place-on-Map. And they'd laughed at him.

One hand reached into the left pocket of his torn overalls and fondled what would be an eloquent

rebuttal to every taunt and cheap joke. It was the single crystal he was bringing out with him: an electric-

orange translucent lump of basic alumina-silicate weighing some two hundred and twelve carats. Properly

cut, it would display a remarkable simulacrum of a human eye in its center, an eye that would stare back at

whoever looked at it. A well-cut hallowseye also produced an emotional response in whoever saw it, a

response generated not by beauty but by peculiar piezoelectric fields within the stone itself.

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Foster, Alan Dean - Commonwealth 16 - Flinx - Snakes Eyes (SS) (v1.0)

This particular gem would finance his return to the High Desert, a decently equipped return with proper

equipment. After that, he'd mine-out the lode and then he would never have to work another day of his

life. But if he didn't find water very soon, he might not have another day of his life left not to work in.

For the hundredth time he reminded himself that this desperate situation was his own damned fault.

With ten months' supplies he'd confidently marched into Dead-Place-on-Map, knowing full well that in the

desolate reaches of the High Desert he could anticipate finding no water and precious little game.

Five days before, he'd shot a skipgravel. Only hunger had enabled him to eat all of the tiny quasi-rodent,

down to the last bean-size organ. That had been his last solid food. His water... when had his water run

out? His brain said yesterday. His tongue and throat argued for a week.

Leaning back, he glared at the cloud-mottled sky that had become an unfriendly, unavoidable

companion. It was overcast, as always. Few regions on the winged world of Moth saw the sun more than a

couple of days a year. But the homogenized clouds overhead held on to their slight moisture content with

the tenacity of a bereaved mistress guarding her benefactor's will.

Towering on the western horizon, broken-toothed mountains prevented any substantial moisture from

reaching the High Desert. It all fell heavily on their eastern slopes. None fell where it could revive Knigta

Yakus.

Painfully he squinted at the distant snow-capped spires of five-thousand-meter-high Mount Footasleep.

Beneath it and several kilometers to the north lay Coc-cyxcrack Pass and the town of Edgedune. Both

were unbearably far away, impossibly out of his reach.

In his youth, when his body was made of braided duralloy cable insulated in hard flesh, he might have

made it. Bitterly he cursed his eighty-two-year-old frame. The insulation was battered, the cables of his

muscles corroded away. Dehydration gave his naturally thin form the look of a dead twig. Once-powerful

muscles hung slackly from old bones like slabs of exfoliating shale.

A sad snort caused him to look backward. Even though he had already abandoned all his equipment, the

dryzam was beginning to fail. The ten-meter-long scaly quadruped stumbled along faithfully in his wake.

Its long anteaterlike snou*. swung slowly from side to side over the rocky ground. Absurdly tiny eyes

glowed behind the snout. There were five of them, set in a curve across the top of the skull. Like the sails

of an ancient ship, twin dorsal fins moved on the back. They helped to cool the tired creature, but that was

no substitute for a long drink.

Oddly, the starving dryzam no longer made Yakus nervous, though his desiccated human carcass would

make a welcome snack for the omnivorous beast of burden. A more faithful creature Yakus could not

imagine. It had never complained about its load, or about the always slim rations Yakus had allowed it.

Despite its evident thirst, the prospector was convinced it would die before it turned on him. The animal

was the best purchase he'd made on Moth.

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Foster, Alan Dean - Commonwealth 16 - Flinx - Snakes Eyes (SS) (v1.0)

Yakus had a great deal of respect for such loyalty. He eyed the slightly swollen belly of the green-and-

yellow beast sadly. Its meat and blood could keep him alive for some time, maybe even long enough to

reach Edgedune. Idly he fingered the needier slung at his hip. Could he kill it?

"I'm sorry, Dryzam." He'd never bothered to name it.

The creature halted when Yakus did. It wheezed painfully, sounding like a badly tuned oboe. Already it

had gone weeks without water. Its supremely efficient, streamlined body had extended itself as far as

could be expected.

Five tiny eyes blinked expectantly, patiently back at him, ready to try to respond to his requests.

"Tooop?" it inquired hopefully. "Too-whoop?"

"Stop that. Quit lookin' at me like that, you dumb dinosaur." Come on now, Yakus. No place to get

sentimental. That's all it is, a damn dumb animal that's goin' to die soon anyhow.

Just like himself.

Yakus had spent most of his eighty-two years struggling to exist in a universe which made it much

simpler to be dead. The crystals offered him a chance to spend his few remaining days in comfort. That is,

they did if he could only bring himself to slaughter this ugly, staring, urine-colored heap of—

Something which was not a piece of cloud moved in the sky above him.

"Concentration's goin'," he muttered to himself as he fought to identify the object. Lately he'd been

muttering to himself a lot.

The shape dipped lower, cruised near on convenient thermals. Yakus was a much-traveled, observant

man. He recognized the intruder. He didn't believe his eyes, but he recognized it. It didn't belong in this

desolate place, that tiny half-legendary dispenser of instant death. But there was no mistaking that shape

and size and coloring.

Yakus was too debilitated, too worn out and despondent, to wonder what an Alaspinian minidrag was

doing in Dead-Place-on-Map in the High Desert of Moth. All he could consider now was its reputation.

No known antidote, natural or cultured, existed to counter the flying snake's venom.

He had to kill it first.

Riding air currents, the creature swooped lower. Yakus raised the needier. Reflexively his gaze went to

the weapon's handle, automatically took in the reading on the built-in gauge.

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Alan Dean Foster - Flinx 16 - Snakes Eyes

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