Lost and Found (27 page)

About the far side of the chamber there was no wondering, at least. It consisted of a floor-to-ceiling transparency, lightly tinted to mute the bright sunlight pouring in from outside. Walking to the center of the room while her flanking limbs gestured to left and right, Cheloradabh beckoned with her middle hand for them to follow.

“This is your common area. Private dwelling spaces for each of you are located on opposite sides of the common.” She pointed out each individual’s entryway. “Anything you need, you may speak for within your personal zones, and it will be provided to the best of the abode’s ability.” A unified wave utilizing all three arms took in their immediate surroundings and, by implication, much that lay beyond them and out of sight.

“Even for a Sessrimathe, the joy and success of moving into a new residence is the result of an ongoing learning process between dweller and dwelling. Mistakes may—no, will—be made at first. But the building will learn. Sessrimathe buildings are good learners. Be patient with yours, and with your individual dwelling zones, and you will be rewarded with comfort and contentment.”

“‘Rewarded.’” George trotted over to the expansive transparency to take in the panoramic view it provided of gigantic tree-buildings and lakes. “I don’t recall earning any rewards. Your people are the ones who brought in the Vilenjji, not us.”

Cheloradabh hesitated before replying, as if slightly embarrassed. “Funds are made available for such things. Work will not be required of you. The relevant details of this matter have been discussed and approved at higher levels.” All three arms gestured reassuringly. “It is felt that this is the least that can be proffered to make up for what you endured at the hands of so-called representatives of civilization.”

“So we’re wards of the state.” Moving forward to stand alongside George, gazing out the transparency at the magnificent, enchanting, and yes, civilized view, Walker had mixed feelings about their new condition. He shouldn’t, he knew. It was infinitely better than being wards of the Vilenjji. “Charity cases.”

“Survivors.” Cheloradabh corrected him as she tripodded backward toward the main entrance. “I leave you to explore your new habitations. For the foreseeable future, I am assigned to you four as adviser. If you experience any difficulties or have any problems that you yourselves cannot solve, please do not hesitate to ask your residences to contact me.” The inner wall once more gave way to a flurry of faux sawdust (or maybe it was the technological equivalent of pixie dust, Walker mused), and then she was gone.

Sque had been squirming with impatience ever since they arrived. Now she scurried off in the direction of her private chambers. Walker felt sure her parting words were not a literal translation.

“I hope there is a shower,” the K’eremu was heard to mutter.

Walker glanced down at the dog. “What say we check it out, George?”

His four-legged companion shrugged. “Might as well. It’s not like I got a heavy date waiting for me.” Together, they went their separate ways.

What would a Sessrimathe residence intended for a human be like? Walker wondered as he pushed timidly through the portal that separated his private area from the common room. A cheap hotel room? A French chateau? Where would the Sessrimathe, intelligent and insightful as they were, obtain adequate referents? He found out all too soon.

The tent was as he remembered it. So was the cold, refreshing wedge of Cawley Lake. And the surrounding forest, and distant snow-capped mountains, and the ground, right down to the gravel beach and the sandy soil underfoot. Slightly stunned, he stood just inside the portal and stared. It made perfect sense, of course. Where else would the Sessrimathe gain insight into the living conditions and requirements of a species they had never previously encountered? Only from documentation and examples acquired from the Vilenjji ship, and then only from what the Vilenjji, in their haste to conceal their activities, had not bothered to destroy.

With the best will and the best of intentions, their hosts had perfectly duplicated his cell.

He wanted to scream. Had there been no one to overhear, he would have done exactly that. But the kindly (patronizing?) Cheloradabh had instructed them to address their rooms if there was anything they needed, and he was uncertain how some frustrated screeching would be interpreted by whatever concealed sensors were doubtless even now monitoring his every sound and move.

Calm down, he told himself. This is not a Vilenjji enclosure. Sure, it looks just like it, but so does a small sliver of the real northern Sierra Nevada. It was put here to make you happy, not to incarcerate you. You are not on exhibit.

At least, he assumed he was not. If that was the Sessrimathe intent and they had been lying to him and his friends all along, there would have been no need for the earlier visit to the interview bubble. The more he considered the prospect, the more he thought it should be easy enough to find out the truth.

“Room,” he said aloud. After months spent on the Vilenjji ship he felt not in the least foolish about addressing some unseen alien instrumentality. Clearly, this was a civilization rife with such advanced amenities. “Is anyone besides you watching or listening to me now, or otherwise monitoring my activities? Or is my privacy secure and complete?”

“Your privacy is secure.” Whether the room was speaking common English or something utterly bizarre that was only rendered comprehensible by the Vilenjji implant he neither knew nor cared. It was enough that it could understand him, and he it.

Might as well accept the reply as truth, he told himself. He had no means of proving otherwise. Besides, if you couldn’t trust your own residence, what could you trust? Scrutinizing his surroundings and relying for instruction and explication on the room’s voice, he began to experiment with them.

Water he could draw from the fragment of lake. Food would probably prove more problematic. As it turned out, he needn’t have worried about that, though he was less than enchanted with the results. In response to his request, a circular hole opened in—he should have expected it—the ground. On a small square platter were three all-too-familiar food bricks and two food cubes. Shaking his head slowly, he walked over, sat down, and took a bite out of one of the cubes. It tasted exactly like its Vilenjji counterpart. Something else the Sessrimathe had gleaned from the surviving records of his former captors. He sighed.

After eating and drinking his fill, he experimented by asking for something sweeter. An hour later, two very small food cubes presented themselves on the platter. One was almost salty, but the other had pleasing overtones of the fynbos honey a well-traveled friend had once sent him from Cape Town. Encouraged, he tried again, this time requesting a different flavor. Thirty minutes later one half-sized food brick offered itself up that tasted of roasted almonds. This time he almost smiled. Steak and lobster might be out of the question, but he felt that with trial and error, the building’s synthesizer might eventually be persuaded to manage something that tasted like chicken. Or rather, chicken-flavored food brick. After months surviving on the unvarying diet the Vilenjji had provided for him, he was more than willing to settle for the latter.

Nor, true to Cheloradabh’s word, were the building’s abilities limited to food modification. He got rid of the tent. In response to the preprogrammed chill of a Sierra night, the ambient temperature was easily stabilized at a comfortable seventy-two degrees. Dividing the fragment of lake, he had one half heated for cozy bathing while leaving the other cool for drinking.

A request for a large bed, however, resulted in the delivery three days later of a king-sized version of his venerable sleeping bag. It was apparent that solid objects required more detailed description on his part, more work (and possibly outsourcing) than simple adjustments to food and water. So it was nearly two weeks before the satisfactory approximation of an air bed arrived. When it finally did, however, he settled down on the first gentle, cushioning surface he had enjoyed in months and slept for ten hours straight. Awakening, he felt more rested than he had since leaving Chicago for the Sierras, all too many months ago.

But he did not necessarily feel more relaxed.

Some days the four of them were left alone, to explore and play with and learn from their new surroundings. Other days (and only after polite requests, never demands), they were taken to visit the discussion bubble, or presented to the curious and often important in person, or escorted on sightseeing tours of Seremathenn that were eye-opening and mind-boggling.

It was a beautiful world, not just one that happened to be home to an immensely advanced society. Adjusted, preserved, modified, sanctified by its enlightened inhabitants, Seremathenn was as cultured an example as one could find of civilization. In the course of their travels over the following weeks and months, Walker and his friends (sometimes including even the recalcitrant Sque) were introduced to marvels of sophisticated technology, innovative art, and curious visitors from other worlds both nearby and distant. Galactic civilization, they learned, was not a monolithic alliance of developed worlds and sentient species, but rather an idea, a notion of mutual civility and respect that precluded the need for rigid governmental ties.

It was, perhaps of necessity, not perfect, as testified to by the activities of individual rascal elements. The professional association of Vilenjji responsible for the abduction of Walker and his friends was one example of the latter. There were, a discomfited (if a dwelling could be discomfited) room informed Walker, others. And beyond those systems that were accounted active members of civilization lay still additional cultures—some powerful, others less so, still others more primitive than even his Earth. The galaxy was a big place, allowing room for societies at all stages of development.

And yet despite the genuine kindness that was being shown to them by their hosts, despite his increasing skill at getting his room to adjust its appearance, contents, and provisions to his needs, as the weeks slid by he found himself growing more and more uneasy. He thought he detected some of the same frustration in Sque, and certainly in Braouk. Only George seemed wholly content, having finally succeeded in inducing his own personal zone to synthesize edible oblong objects with the flavor and taste, if not the exact appearance and consistency, of prime rib bones.

At least the endless requests to speak with him and his friends, to meet them in person, to listen to them discourse on their individual and conjoined ordeals, were growing more and more infrequent. It was after the conclusion of one such discussion, involving a fascinating yet disquieting gathering of estimable Sessrimathe and representatives from at least a dozen other sentient species, that what had really been bothering Walker hit him hard. Hit him with similar force, though different overtones, as the same words that had been spoken to him by the K’eremu Sequi’aranaqua’na’senemu in the course of their initial encounter aboard the Vilenjji ship.

“That is how you should now view yourself: as a novelty,” she had told him what seemed like eons ago.

And that was what he was, and his friends, too, he realized with crushing certainty: novelties. The Vilenjji had intended to market them as such. The Sessrimathe had saved them from that prospect, only for them to become . . . exactly the same thing. True, they were guests, not prisoners. Honored visitors, not chattel. But the end was the same. As freed captives from exotic, unvisited worlds, they were novelties.

Just as clearly, their novelty value was starting to wear off.

That did not mean they were going to be ignored, or worse still, thrown out onto what passed for the streets of Autheth. Having dealt with them for several months now, having met a great many of them on an individual basis, Walker felt he knew their kindly and civilized hosts that well at least. They might be three-sided, but they were not two-faced.

Though they enjoyed their newfound privacy, the four of them had been through too much together not to occasionally take pleasure in one another’s company. Each had their own interests that their residences could not satisfy. Braouk would ask to be taken to the Jaimoudu Mountains, there to alternately compose or recite to the winds, as the mood took him. Sque had taken to spending as much time as she could by the shores of Seremathenn’s single vast ocean, communing in private with the waves until her escorts despaired of persuading her to return to her assigned dwelling. George spent most of his time exploring the immense pseudo-tree that was their building, relying on his innate ability to make friends with any intelligence, no matter what its shape or species, to find his way around.

All these individual outings provided fodder for conversation when they, by common agreement, gathered together in the common room at least once a week to swap tales of explorations and experiences. It was in the course of one such get-together that Walker finally gave voice to what had begun to trouble him more and more.

“I think our hosts are getting tired of us.”