Free Patrimony by Alan Dean Foster

bother to query the skimmer’s AI for a more detailed explanation. Shifting his attention back to his current qwikmeal, he dug his spoon into the steaming bowl of mixed vegetables and meat of an uncertain origin.
    It would not do to confront on an empty stomach the man who might or might not be his father.

CHAPTER 4

    The town of Sluuvaneh was no primitive assemblage of smoking huts and hand-tilled fields. While the size of the majority of small, domed, pastel-hued buildings clearly marked them as individual residences, there were also a number of distinctive larger structures whose functions Flinx could not immediately identify from the air. One boasted an impressive field of antennae of varying shape and size. Local communications center, he speculated. Others suggested the presence of low-level or boutique manufacturing facilities. At least two landing sites for visiting vehicles were clearly marked out. Both featured large structures—domed, of course—intended to provide protection from the elements for local vehicles as well as offer temporary shelter for visiting craft. Buildings and touchdown pads were immaculate, free of debris, and as contemporary as any counterpart on more populous Commonwealth worlds.
    His approach had been monitored by local traffic control ever since his rented skimmer had crossed Sluuvaneh municipal limits. Automated instructions directed him to set down at the northernmost of the two welcoming ovals. Communicating with his skimmer’s AI, local navigation as efficient and current as anything in Tlossene took control of his craft. Guiding it smoothly into one of the beckoning hangars, it parked the arrival neatly between a pair of slightly smaller craft. One of these looked brand new while the other sat beaten and battered on its charging pad, badly in need of an update and refurbishing.
    Not being a government representative, a deliverer of goods, or in any other way significant, Flinx’s arrival was not met. For all anyone in Sluuvaneh cared, he was welcome to sit in his skimmer until his supplies ran out. As near as he could perceive, there were not even any emotions aimed in his direction. Gathering up Pip, he checked to make sure his translator was activated as he exited the rented transport.
    As it developed, even the translator was not necessary. Many of the town’s Tlel inhabitants spoke terranglo, he soon learned. Sometimes broken, sometimes more a variety of local pidgin than grammatically correct, but consistently comprehensible. After chatting with a couple of workers at the landing area, he turned off the translator altogether. It appeared that engaging a native escort to accompany him for the few days’ travel it would take to reach the man who might, just might, be his natural father was going to be even easier and more straightforward than he had imagined. If only his intermittent headaches didn’t put him in a hospital before that meeting could take place. Though he had yet to master the problem, he had lived long enough to realize that the impatience that led to stress was more dangerous to him than a boatload of zealously upwardly mobile AAnn. Stress, he reminded himself, that invariably fertilized the slightest tingle and throb at the back of his head.
    Given its location and the smaller stature of its inhabitants, the streets of Sluuvaneh were both wider and better maintained than he had anticipated. The town was an idiosyncratic amalgamation of traditional native design and advanced Commonwealth technology. As with a great many of its sibling communities scattered around the planet, it might be isolated physically, but its inhabitants were in constant contact with the planetary Shell and related support facilities. Just one example took the form of the conventional automated navigation facility that had taken control of Flinx’s skimmer as soon as it entered the relevant traffic zone and guided it to a perfect, gentle touchdown.
    The robotic personal transport