Read Online The End of the Matter by Alan Dean Foster - Free Book Online

parents he found less here than he already knew; there was nothing about his mother to match what he had spent a year learning, nothing at all about his still-mysterious father.
    “Thank you, Char Mormis,” he forced himself to say tightly, struggling to hide his disappointment. Finally, he had reached the dead end he’d feared. There was no place else to go, nowhere more to search.
    The matter was finished.
    “I appreciate your kindness.” Flinx’s hand moved in the direction of his credit cardmeter.
    Mormis waved the gesture off. “No, thank
you,
Flinx. The pleasure was mine. It’s always heartening to see merchandise that has done well for itself. You are an independent citizen?”
    “Have been since the day I was bought, thanks to my buyer.”
    “You know, it’s odd . . . Can’t I persuade you to have a brandy?”
    Flinx shook his head. Despite Mormis’s courtesy, the man was still of a breed for whom human lives were chips on a gaming table. He wanted out.
    But there was something prodding at Mormis. “It’s strange . . . I have an excellent memory for people—nature of the business, you understand.” Flinx nodded without speaking. “But . . . I think I remember your sale.”
    Flinx sat down abruptly.
    “Yes, I’m sure of it. At that time it was my father, Shan Mormis, who was running Arcadia. I was still learning. But your sale, your sale . . . it sticks in my mind for some reason. You’ve brought the memory back to me, for two reasons. The first concerned your buyer. An old woman?”
    Flinx nodded vigorously.
    “That grandiose name on the manifest”—the man gestured toward the wall—“didn’t match her appearance. Does that make sense to you?”
    “A squat, heavy woman dressed in neat rags, with a vocabulary like a spacer?”
    “That description seems to fit,” Mormis confessed, caught up in Flinx’s excitement. “You keep in touch with your former owner?”
    “She was never really an owner in the usual sense,” Flinx explained, a pugnacious yet affectionate picture of Mother Mastiff forming in his mind.
    “I suspected as much, considering your present status. Such a contrast between appearance and given name—how could one forget? The other memory concerns the one other person who was bidding for you.” Mormis looked embarrassed. “You were not a quality item.”
    “My value on the scale of such things doesn’t depress me,” Flinx assured him.
    “Self-deprecation . . . a good trait in mer—in a citizen,” the slaver corrected himself hastily. “It was the spirited bidding for your unremarkable self between two extraordinary persons which remains in my memory.”
    “What of the other bidder?” insisted Flinx eagerly.
    “Well, he was human, quite human. Huge he was, built like a city wall. Would have fetched a pretty price on the stage. Sadly, he was on the wrong end of the business. He must have weighed as much as two good-sized men. Heavy-planet upbringing, no doubt. All white-haired he was, though I think it was premature. Two meters tall, easily.” Mormis paused, and Flinx had to urge him to continue.
    “There
must
be more.”
    Mormis strained at his memory. “So many over the years . . . that face, though. A cross between a libertine’s and a prophet’s. And I think he wore a gold ring in one ear. Yes, I’m sure of it. A gold ring, or at least one of golden hue.”
    “A name, Char Mormis, a name!”
    The slaver rambled on. “You weren’t sold very high, Flinx. I think the fellow had reason to leave the bidding when he did. He left in a rush, and as I recall there were an inordinate number of soldiers milling about. But I shadow-play a scenario. I never heard him mention a name.”
    “Anything else?” Flinx pressed him, refusing to be discouraged. “Why did he want to buy me?”
    Mormis looked away, as if Flinx had touched on something the slaver would have preferred not to discuss. “We do not inquire into the motives of our customers.