Lost and Found (10 page)

“Yet you’re stuck in here and they’re out there,” he could not resist adding.

“A lamentable state of affairs, to be sure,” she told him. “Sadly, even advanced intelligence can be surprised and overcome by a sufficient application of brute force. In the use of that the Vilenjji are regrettably proficient. Sophisticated argumentation tends to lose much of its ability to compel when confronted by the business end of a gun.”

He was quiet for a while, as they sat together in the mist, each lost in their own thoughts, each contemplating a future devoid of optimism. When he at last spoke again, his tone was subdued.

“Then there’s no hope for any of us. To get out of this and get home, I mean.”

“Are you being deliberately awkward again?” She scanned his face, and he wondered what she saw there. “Or is it only sincere naÏveté? One does not escape from a starship. Even if it were possible, where would one escape to? I do not know how long you have been here, but knowing something as I do of the general speed of this vessel, although speed is not a precisely accurate term when it comes to the physics of interstellar travel, I can tell you that I am many, many dozens of parsecs from my home system. I would seriously doubt that you are much nearer to your own.” Limbs shifted. It was starting to drizzle again.

“Best to hope for placement with an understanding buyer, on a world whose ecology is not uncomfortably dissimilar to your own. That, and a remaining life given over to tolerable pursuits. My personal fear is that I will be sold not on the basis of my mental powers but for the attraction of my digital dexterity, and that I will be asked to provide entertainment by juggling with my limbs instead of my mind.”

Walker had visions of himself, consigned forever to life on some unknown, unimaginable alien world, collared and chained side by side with George.

“There has to be
something
we can do,” he protested. He’d already asked as much of the dog, whose response had been the canine equivalent of “Stick your head between your legs and kiss your ass good-bye.” He doubted he would get that kind of response from Sque. For one thing, she had no ass.

But while less colorful, her response was not any more encouraging. “To the Vilenjji you represent an expenditure of time, money, and effort. They will want that returned to them, with a profit. No amount of pleading, of asserting your intelligence, however difficult that might be to prove, of outrage, of appeal to whatever ethical standards the Vilenjji might possess, is going to get you back to your homeworld. I have seen it tried by others; all of that, and more. Nothing works. The Vilenjji are implacable. They are also large, physically powerful, determined, and personally disagreeable. Better to spend your time concentrating on maintaining your health. There is nothing you can do.”

He rose. “Maybe there’s nothing
you
can do, for all your vaunted intelligence! But I’m getting out of here. Someday, some way, I’m getting out!” Pivoting sharply, he slipped and nearly fell. Recovering as much of his dignity from the near fall as he could, he straightened and stomped out of the K’eremu ecosystem and back toward the grand enclosure.

A lilting, moist voice called after him. “When you do, hold your breath. By doing so, most oxygen breathers can live for another minute or so in the vacuum of space before they either boil or freeze solid, depending on their proximity to the nearest stellar body.”

He slowed slightly, turned, and shouted back into the mist that had already swallowed up the K’eremu. “It was very nice to meet you, Sque. Thanks for all the information.”

There was no response. He would have been surprised if there had been.

Lying on the ground cover, his head resting on his crossed forepaws, George perked up immediately when Walker emerged from the mist-shrouded compartment. The dog was livid. While George could not flush, he could certainly make use of his voice.

“What the lost bones happened to you in there? Where have you been? I was almost ready to come in after you!” He paused. “Almost.”

Kneeling, Walker reached out to pet the dog. George would have none of it, backing swiftly out of the man’s reach. “Don’t be angry, George. I learned a lot from the resident.”

Anger immediately forgotten, the dog looked past him, toward the rain-swept private enclosure. “Something
does
live in there? What is it? A talking mold?”

Walker shook his head. “Kind of hard to describe to a dog from Chicago. I don’t suppose you’ve ever seen an octopus, or a squid?”

George surprised him. “Sure. Lots of times. Fancy restaurants throw them out all the time. People order them, see what they look like on a plate, then refuse to eat them. I’m perfectly happy to take the throwaways. One being’s refusal is another’s edible refuse. Not much taste, but filling, and nice and chewy.”

“Don’t let Sque ever hear you talk like that. She doesn’t think much of anything besides her own kind as it is.”

“So it’s a she. Well, what did ‘she’ have to say that was so important it kept you in there for hours?”

“I told you I was sorry.” Since kneeling was starting to cause the backs of his thighs to ache, he chose a soft-looking spot and sat down. Initial annoyance forgotten, the dog promptly plopped its head onto his lap. Absently, Walker stroked the back of George’s head as he repeated everything Sque had told him.

When he had finished, the dog picked its muzzle back up. “Doesn’t sound very promising. But then, it’s not anything worse than what I expected. We’ll just have to take life day to day. She’s right about one thing, of course. There’s no way out of here. Out of this.”

Having refused to acknowledge that verdict from a tentacled K’eremu, Walker was not about to accept it from a dog. Not even one as articulate as George.

He was proud of the fact that he never lost control. Even in the midst of tight, last-minute competitive bidding, when the placement of an overoptimistic decimal point could cost clients tens of thousands of dollars, he prided himself on never losing his cool. It was a trademark of his success. He was the ex-football star who knew how to control his emotions, knew how to let that calculator brain of his do all the work. His steadiness under fire, as it were, was a hallmark of his success. His superiors appreciated and rewarded it, his coworkers regarded it with admiration or jealousy, depending on their respective degree of self-confidence and closeness to him, and his rivals feared it. It had always stood him in good stead. It had stood him in good stead for the weeks on board the alien vessel that had now stretched into months.

Uncharacteristically, he forgot to look at his watch on the day that he lost it. His self-control, not the watch. So afterward, he was not sure exactly when it had happened. Or how.

All he knew was that he had awakened as usual, walked with a yawning George down to the transmigrated segment of Cawley Lake to wash his face and hands, and settled down to await the arrival of the morning meal. As always, the neat circle of surface briefly subsided, only to return within a moment piled up with food bricks, food cubes, and the usual liquid trimmings. Maybe it was the water that set him off; a damp fuse to his human explosive. Maybe it was the predictability of it all. He did not know.

All he did know, or rather knew when George told him about it later, was that instead of choosing something to eat from the infuriatingly precise assortment of offerings, he straightened, drew back his right foot, and booted the mixed pyramid of alien nutrients as hard as he could in the general direction of the corridor. Several times during his college career he had been called upon to kick extra points or the occasional short field goal, and he still had a strong leg. His form was admirable, too. Food and water went flying. Impacting on the electrical barrier, a couple of food bricks penetrated nearly a foot before being crisped.

You learn something every day,
he told himself wildly as the pungent burning smell of carbonized foodstuffs wafted back to him. Vilenjji food bricks, for example, were not improved by further cooking.

“Marc, that wasn’t wise.”

A slightly crazed look in his eyes, Walker peered down at the dog. “That’s okay. Neither am I. Neither are you. Frankly, sanity is beginning to bore me. I’m getting sick and tired of playing the well-mannered little pet.” Bending, he began picking up handfuls of dirt, gravel, sand, faux twig and leaf litter, and chucking them methodically at the barrier. Nothing got through. Anything organic got fried.

Visibly worried, George began backing away from his soil-flinging friend. The dog’s eyes darted repeatedly from Walker to the grand enclosure. Emerging from mutt jaws as sharp barks, the translator embedded in Walker’s head rendered the sounds as, “Please, Marc—stop it. You’re making me nervous!”

“Screw that! I’m sick of this, understand? I’m sick of all of it!” Though he began to cry, he did not stop bending, grabbing, and throwing; bending, grabbing, and throwing. “I want out! Let me out! Why don’t you take
me
for a walk, goddammit!”

It took a good five minutes of throwing and screaming, kicking and ranting, before the two Vilenjji showed up. George saw them first, slumping toward the little piece of Sierra Nevada from across the far side of the grand enclosure.

“Marc, stop it now!” he whined worriedly even as he backed around behind the human’s tent. “Please!”

Walker did not respond. But, bending to scoop up another double handful of dirt and gravel, he did finally see the visitors. They towered over him, staring down out of blank, mooning eyes, the knot of fringe atop their tapered skulls fluttering eerily in the absence of any breeze. Each held a small device that made double loops around their sucker-lined arm flaps. The instruments appeared to have been drop-forged out of liquid metal. A few dull yellow lights gleamed on their sides.

Now thoroughly unhinged, Walker wanted to scramble up one of those purplish, pebble-skinned backs, grab a handful of that fringe, and rip it out by its roots. Instead, he settled for throwing the debris he had gathered, deliberately and without warning, straight at the head of the nearest alien. Numbed as he was by now to both the Vilenjji’s dominance and indifference, he did not expect the action to have any effect. Surely the flung double-handful of gravel and dirt would be stopped by some invisible screen, or shattered to harmless dust by an inexplicable field of force.

The rocks and soil struck the Vilenjji square in the face, whereupon it raised both arms toward the affected area, emitted a high-pitched mewling like a cross between a band saw slicing wood and an untuned piccolo, and staggered backward on its sock-encased leg flaps, one of which showed signs of crumpling beneath the thick, heavy body. Behind the tent, George hunkered down as low as possible and whimpered.

Stumbling into a slight depression in the transplanted surface, the assaulted alien dropped the shiny, smooth-sided, double-looped device it had been holding. Without thinking and without hesitation, Walker made a dive for it. He actually had it in his grasp when his entire body turned to pins and needles. He couldn’t move and he couldn’t scratch. The sensation was not especially painful, but the tingling effect threatened to drive him to distraction.

Proof of the seriousness of the encounter took the form of three more Vilenjji—three!—who came lumbering out of the corridor at top speed. They plunged through the deactivated barrier directly into the Sierran compound. Through the agonizing needling sensation that coursed through his body, Walker felt himself being stood upright. Two of them had him, their arm flaps supporting him where his arms met his shoulders. While a pair of newcomers kept their loop weapons trained on his involuntarily twitching body, the lifters proceeded to haul him out of his compartment and back into the grand enclosure. Though all his senses were alert and he was fully aware of what was happening around him, Walker was unable to move. Nervous system frozen in overdrive, he fought to regain control of his uncooperative muscles. Still wiping dirt and grit from its face, the fifth Vilenjji brought up the rear. Other than its initial ululation, it had exhibited no further signs of distress. Though its expression, such as it was, was noticeably contorted from the usual.

Somehow, George managed to find the courage to follow. At a sensible and respectful distance, of course.

Within the grand enclosure, conversation faded. It did not matter if it was a brace of convivial Hexanutes or a bulbous Ovyr locked in soliloquy with itself: all talking ceased as groups and individuals turned to watch the procession traverse the yielding ground cover. In the lead were two stone-faced Vilenjji who between them hauled the unresisting form of a hairless biped from a place called Earth. Behind came two more of the tall, massive-bodied abductors with weapons trained on the human’s inert body. Then a single Vilenjji who occasionally dragged its left arm flap across its face and lastly, the small hirsute quadruped who similarly hailed from the third planet circling the ordinary star known to its local residents as Sol.

It was an unprecedented procession. No one among the watchers could remember seeing so many Vilenjji inside the enclosure at any one time. Here were five. What it augured not even the most perspicacious among them could say. Many wanted to query the trailing canine, but despite urgent, whispered appeals, the dog ignored them as it continued to track the quintet of Vilenjji.