Free Flinx's Folly by Alan Dean Foster Page B

of the building in search of public transport to take him back to his hotel.

CHAPTER
    5
    The flying snake was dozing on its familiar perch, a soft cushion nestled strategically in the office-laboratory’s south-facing window. Bathed in Nur’s nurturing sunshine, the minidrag’s bright colors and muted iridescence formed a wonderful counterpart to the otherwise humdrum devices that filled the room. So motionless was it that a visitor might easily have taken it for some supernally truthful sculpture and not a real, living creature.
    It might as well have been a sculpture for all the attention the two technicians paid to it. They were young, attractive, excruciatingly intelligent, and thoroughly preoccupied with their work. In the center of the room they flanked an oversized holo depicting a number of complex organic molecules. Occasionally, one of them looked away from the large central display to check a readout on one of the several drifting heads-ups that followed each of them around the room like so many flat, rectangular, semitransparent dogs.
    By voicing commands or moving their control-gloved fingers within the central display, they could adjust the position and mold the depicted molecular structures to suit their liking. Each new alignment was dutifully recorded, analyzed, and subjected to careful comparison with previous constructions. From time to time, a new configuration was entered into the Euremtalis chemical synthesizer on the far side of the room. Within ten minutes a preproduction sample of the combined organic molecules appeared in a small dish. After a final check and dissection, these samples would find their way to Product Testing in another part of the industrial research complex.
    All this work by skilled and highly paid technicians was devoted not to preventing hunger on some primitive world, to curing some exotic disease, or even to making life a little easier for the majority of humankind but dedicated to making human females—and occasionally males—appear slightly younger and more attractive to members of the opposite sex. In that respect, though their methods were as different as their results, the efforts of the two techs mirrored the ancient daubers of henna and streakers of plant sap who had preceded them in the same kind of work by eight or nine thousand years.
    The techs did not reflect on this irony as they continued with their work. It was doubtful it had ever occurred to them. They were concerned with tomorrow, not with the past. And in tomorrow’s world, rewards came to those who successfully fashioned a new lip sparkle, eye filter, or follicular chromophore.
    None of this meant anything to the flying snake. Normally, it spent the day ignoring the efforts of the various techs who shared the lab space. Nor was it unusual for the minidrag to repeatedly shift its position, the better to stretch its longitudinal quick-twitch muscles and soak up still more sun.
    So the speed and suddenness with which it abruptly and for no apparent reason raised its iridescent green head was curious indeed.
    Immersed in their work, the two techs did not notice the uncharacteristically abrupt gesture. They continued fiddling with their holoed molecules, murmuring to each other in soft, professional voices. Across the room, the flying snake had now raised its head some distance off the cushion and, virtually motionless, was staring in the direction of the privacy curtain that veiled the doorway.
    At the soft fanlike snap of leathery wings unfurling in a single movement, both techs turned to look curiously. While one appeared uncertain, the other gave voice to concern.
    “That’s odd. He usually reacts that way only when I’m threatened.” The minidrag’s master looked carefully around the room.
    A loud thrumming sound, the kind an oversized hummingbird might make, suddenly filled the room. The minidrag was airborne. It hovered for a moment, semitranslucent wings converting the sunlight pouring through