Patrimony by Alan Dean Foster

Author:Alan Dean Foster [Foster, Alan Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: General, Fiction, Science Fiction, Flinx (Fictitious character), Pip (Fictitious character: Foster), Humanx Commonwealth (Imaginary organization), Adventure
ISBN: 9780345485083
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-09-29T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

With long, slender arms the length of his body, Zlezelrenn did not have to bend over to adjust the bottom of his leggings. Prehensile cilia coiled around the rear straps and tugged them tight. While the leggings that covered his lower limbs were striped and swiped in the traditional patterns of his clan, the fabric of which they had been fashioned was wholly artificial. In fact, the material had not even been woven on Silvoun. The colorful synthetic textile had been imported from some far-off world in the sky whose name Zlezelrenn did not know. Its alien origin did not matter to him. While Elders among his sociel decried the loss of ancient crafts, the younger Zlezelrenn and his contemporaries delighted in the many choices introduced fabric had made available. They lasted longer than his ancestors’ attire, held their colors better, were cheap and easy to customize, and, unlike treated valask hide, were impervious to water rot. He still championed the weaving of valask-hide apparel by others, however. Traditional textiles were very popular with tourists.

He cradled his puronn lightly against his left arm, the grasping cilia lightly fondling the trigger at the far end. The five other members of the hunting party trailed behind him, their eyebands alert for telltale movement among the rocks and trees, the sensitive specialized hairs on their flat, disc-shaped skulls attuned to the slightest rise in feral flii. An intermittent breeze caused their inscribed transparent vests to flutter around them. The weapons they bore were a far cry from the primitive slingstones and jabsticks employed by their ancestors. Like his leggings, their weapons were also imported.

Life on Silvoun had changed in significant ways ever since it had agreed to join the vast multispecies galactic authority that called itself the Commonwealth. His kind had adapted more easily and successfully than many others to that all-embracing, system-spanning authority. Even on their homeworld, the Tlel were not numerous, and they were by nature nonconfrontational. They represented no threat to the largely benign control exerted by the Commonwealth’s two dominant species, the hairless mammalian humans and their partners the insectoid thranx. The Tlel did not even particularly mind that when discussed elsewhere, their homeworld of Silvoun was usually referred to as Gestalt, a name bestowed on it by its well-meaning but initially uninformed human discoverers.

Silvoun, Gestalt, Zlezelrenn—names were unimportant. What mattered in life was boon companions, a sated digestive system, entertaining art and inspiring music, spiritual fulfillment, intellectual discourse, respect for one’s Elders (if not for their clothing) and for tradition. That was why he and five other members of his sociel were out hunting in weather that, judging by a glance at the sky, was threatening to turn bad. They did not need to hunt. No Tlel needed to hunt for food any longer. The galactic economy that had arrived with the Commonwealth had flooded Silvoun/Gestalt with a steady and sometimes bewildering variety of manufactured goods, foodstuffs included. The larder in his own dwelling was well stocked

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