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scenario he had constructed in his imagination as to how this momentous talk
would proceed.
One way or the other, his last trail seemed to roc drawing inexorably to a
dead end. Already, one possible link was broken. His meeting with Pip when. he
was six years old appeared to have been accidental, A coincidence only.
"For yourself?" he asked uncertainly.
September snorted. "I wouldn't know what to do with a slave. No, lad, I was
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bidding for an organization."
The trail abruptly revealed a fresh length of itself. Perhaps the giant wasn't
the end after all.
"What organization?" he pressed the big man. "does it still exist? Could it
be traced if it's disbanded, traced to its responsible individuals?"
"Easy down, lad," September advised him, male ing calming motions with both
hands. "You've already toil us you found out about your natural mother last
year."
"Yes. She's dead. She died before I was sold." Silently he strained his
erratic abilities, trying to see if the information sparked any response in
September's mind. He was disappointed. The big man exhibited no reaction he
could detect, mental or otherwise.
"As to my natural father, I know nothing," he continued, "I do know that my
father wasn't the man my natural mother was married to. I'd hoped that by
tracing whoever was trying to buy me, I aright discover some new information
leading to him."
"That makes sense, feller-me-lad," agreed an approving September.
"Nothing makes sense," growled Isili, who had listened to about as much of
Flinx's problems as she could stand. "What about us, Skua?" She was stalking
magnificently back and forth, her ebony mane flying, her amber eyes glowing.
"Nothing makes sense if all the work we've put in here goes for nothing, and
it will if the Otoid persist after us." She stopped abruptly and whirled on
him.
"Months of planning, years of research, and we come up with nothing!" She
wrung her hands in frustration. "I don't know why I tear myself up about it.
I'm probably all wrong about this temple. We've been excavating for nearly two
months and we haven't found anything beyond those."
She indicated the exquisite carvings lining the chamber's interior. "And we
didn't have to move a pebble to find them. Hieroglyphs, stores ... what a
waqte."
"They seem unusually well preserved to me" was Flinx's comment. He found her
attitude peculiarly unscientific.
She startled him by trying to read his mind. The force of her desire shocked
him a little, although he knew she had no talents of any kind. She possessed a
powerful mind, did Isili Hasboga, but it was not a mind of Talent.
"So you think the historical and scientific aspects of our grub should
interest me more, do you?"
she eventually inquired. "My real work is back home, on Comagrave. There's a
site in the Mountains of the Mourners that's never been dug. No foundation or
museum or university thinks it's worth excavating." Her eyes blazed. "I know
better! They're wrong, all of them!"
Fanaticism in pursuit of knowledge, Flinx reflected, was still fanaticism.
"I know what's there," she rambled on, "under the garb mounds. And I'll find
it, even though I
have to mount and finance my own expedition. But for that I need credits. All
of us need credits."
She drew herself up haughtily. "That's why we're all on Alaspin. As you are
neither a scientist nor a researcher," she concluded with a twinge of
bitterness, "I don't suppose I can expect you to understand that."
"Maybe I understand more than you think" was his quiet reply. "I have a good
friend, a young thranx who was once a student archeologist in the Church, who
would have symnathized completely with your attitude at one time. She's since
found other things to do." He wondered how Sylzenzuzex
file:///D|/Alan%20Dean%20Foster/Foster,%20Alan%20Dean%20-%20End%20of%20The%20M
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file:///D|/Alan%20Dean%20Foster/Foster,%20Alan%20Dean%20-%20End%20of%20The%20M
atter.txt was managing without him in teaching the ursinoids back on
Ulru-Ujurr.
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