For Love of Mother-Not by Alan Dean Foster Page A

with snakes, though this be no normal snake and I wouldn’t care to make no predictions about it, much less about its diet.”
    “I’ll find out,” Flinx assured her. “If you don’t need me to help in the shop today—”
    “Help, hah! No, go where ye will. Just make sure that creature goes with ye.”
    “I’m going to take him around the marketplace,” Flinxsaid excitedly, “and see if anyone recognizes him. There’s sure to be someone who will.”
    “Don’t bet your blood on it, boy,” she warned him. “It’s likely an offworld visitor.”
    “I thought so, too,” he told her. “Wouldn’t that be interesting? I wonder how it got here?”
    “Someone with a grudge against me brought it, probably,” she muttered softly. Then, louder, she said, “There be no telling. If ’tis an escaped pet and a rare one, ye can be sure its owner will be stumbling about here soonest in search of it.”
    “We’ll see.” Flinx knew the snake belonged right where it was, riding his shoulder. It felt right. He could all but feel the wave of contentment it was generating.
    “And while I’m finding out what he is,” he added briskly, “I’ll find out what he eats, too.”
    “Ye do that,” she told him. “Fact be, why not spend the night at it? I’ve some important buyers coming around suppertime. They were referred to me through the Shopkeeper’s Association and seem especial interested in some of the larger items we have, like the muriwood table. So ye take that awful whatever-it-be,” and she threw a shaky finger in the direction of the snake, “and stay ye out ’til well after tenth hour. Then I’ll
think
about letting the both of ye back into my house.”
    “Yes, Mother, thank you.” He ran up to give her a kiss. She backed off.
    “Don’t come near me, boy. Not with that monster sleeping on your arm.”
    “He wouldn’t hurt you, Mother. Really.”
    “I’d feel more confident if I had the snake’s word on it as well as yours, boy. Now go on, get out, be off with the both of ye. If we’re fortunate, perhaps it will have some homing instinct and fly off when you’re not looking.”
    But Pip did not fly off. It gave no sign of wishing to be anywhere in the Commonwealth save on the shoulder of a certain redheaded young man.
    As Flinx strolled through the marketplace, he was startled to discover that his ability to receive the emotions and feelingsof others had intensified, though none of the isolated bursts of reception matched in fury that first overpowering deluge of the night before. His receptivity had increased in frequency and lucidity, though it still seemed as unpredictable as ever. Flinx suspected that his new pet might have something to do with his intensified abilities, but he had no idea how that worked, anymore than he knew how his Talent operated at the best of times.
    If only he could find someone to identify the snake! He could always work through his terminal back home, but requests for information were automatically monitored at Central, and he was afraid that a query for information on so rare a creature might trigger alarm on the part of curious authorities. Flinx preferred not to go through official channels. He had acquired Mother Mastiff’s opinion of governmental bureaucracy, which placed it somewhere between slime mold and the fleurms that infested the alleys.
    By now, he knew a great many inhabitants of the marketplace. Wherever he stopped, he inquired about the identity and origin of his pet. Some regarded the snake with curiosity, some with fear, a few with indifference. But none recognized it.
    “Why don’t you ask Makepeace?” one of the vendors eventually suggested. “He’s traveled offworld. Maybe he’d know.”
    Flinx found the old soldier sitting on a street corner with several equally ancient cronies. All of them were pensioners. Most were immigrants who had chosen Moth for their final resting place out of love for its moist climate and because it was a