Lost and Found (7 page)

“Damn straight,” George growled as he backed up slightly.

“Why?”

“Because your ass was out of reach.” The woolly head jerked in the direction of the sauntering Ghouaba, who was now disappearing out of reach behind a copse of flaring Harakath bushes. “You were thinking of going for it, weren’t you?”

“Well, I—how did you know?”

“Everybody knows,” George informed him. “I didn’t see what happened to you, but others did. You found something. Something the Vilenjji didn’t want you to have. The Ghouaba told them about it. They came and took it away from you. Then they sealed you back up in your personal environment. I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again. But nobody touched the entity responsible for getting you locked up. Nobody dares. You don’t do that here. Remember the—”

“The Tripodan. Yeah, I remember.” Walker’s fury faded along with the sight of the Ghouaba. “I’ll just have to try to restrain myself, keep away from it. But it would be so easy to pick it up and break its neck, just snap it like— Hey, you’re not going to bite me again, are you?” He looked alarmed as the mutt came toward him, snarling softly.

“I will if it’s the only way I can get your attention.”

“Okay, okay.” Reluctantly, Walker turned away from the Harakath copse. “I promise. I won’t touch the putrid little twerp.”

“Better not.” George stopped growling.

As they walked off, the human glanced back toward the bushes. “One of these days, though . . .”

“One of these days may never come,” George informed him warningly. “Better resign yourself to it.”

“All right. I hear what you’re saying.” Reaching down, he gave the dog a reassuring pat between the ears. “I don’t want to get shut away like that again.”

Unfortunately, no matter how hard he tried, no matter how great the effort he expended on its behalf, the image of the Ghouaba grinning at him from behind the loglike legs of the retreating Vilenjji simply would not go away.

5

It did not help that it was impossible to constantly avoid seeing the being who had betrayed him. Spacious as it was, the boundaries of the grand enclosure were finite, as were the opportunities to practice avoidance within. Over the course of the following days and weeks, during walks and the casual runs he employed to keep his strength (as well as his spirits) up, he encountered the Ghouaba more than once. On several occasions, he was convinced that the rubber-limbed little alien was taunting him.

It was easier when he was running with George. By now he had come to rely not only on the dog’s company, but also on its straightforwardness, its utilitarian approach to their adverse circumstances. As his four-legged friend remarked one time, “The brain boost the Vilenjji gave me didn’t make me a surgeon, or an engineer, or even a meter reader. All I’ve got is common sense. But like most dogs, I’ve got a lot of it.”

Keeping that in mind helped prevent Walker from reaching out, snatching up the grinning Ghouaba, and unscrewing its deceitful little head. Aware now that the Vilenjji surveillance system was less than perfect, there was always the chance that he could do the deed and get away with it. The risk, however, was too high for the satisfaction that might be achieved. His captors might not take him away forever, as they had with the Tripodan, but the thought of being locked up in permanent solitary was even worse. As a good commodities trader, he had learned early on when not to overbid on appealing futures. It being his future that was at stake, as opposed to that of a container-ship load of juice concentrate or soybeans, it behooved him to be more cautious than ever.

He was able to take some solace in staring murderously at the Ghouaba whenever their paths happened to cross. How much effect that had on the alien, how much sleep it caused it to lose, Walker did not know. It depended on how the Ghouaba chose to interpret the human’s expression. But it made him feel better to favor the creature with a homicidal stare whenever they locked eyes. Being as unfamiliar as the Ghouaba with the meaning of human expressions, he doubted the Vilenjji would lock him away for that.

“I’d pee on it for you,” George declared wholeheartedly halfway through their regular morning run, “but there’s no telling how our purple hosts would react. Or Ghouaba-boy, either. They might both find it flattering. Or I might get my peter fried by a bolt of lightning. Either way, it’s better to give such things a pass. Among dogs, the necessity for revenge fades with time. Why don’t you just forget about the incident? It’s over and done.” Deep brown eyes looked up at him. “What would you have done with that Vilenjji gadget, anyway, if you’d been able to keep it? Threatened to stab one of them unless they turned their ship around and took us home?”

“I don’t know.” Arms and legs pumping, Walker jogged alongside the dog. “First off, I would’ve tried to discover what it did, what its various functions were.”

George leaped a small growth topped with deep blue bubblelike blossoms. “Maybe it was a suicide device, and activating it would have offed you in a particular messy alien manner. Ever think of that?”

“No.” Walker had to admit that he had not. “What we need is more knowledge of this place. How it works, who’s in charge, what’s waiting for us when this journey is over.”

“And then what?” the dog inquired.

“I don’t know.” Walker sounded more cross than he was, more irritated at himself than at his companion. “Research pluses and minuses first, then make your bid. When you have all the relevant knowledge.”

“I’d settle for an extra ration of food cubes,” George responded. “But then, I’m a dog. We don’t think as far into the future as humans do.”

“Lucky you.” In tandem, they leaped the next row of ground-hugging bushes.

“Maybe you’re hurting yourself by thinking too much, Marc.” As Walker finally slowed to a halt, breathing hard, bent over with his hands on his knees, the dog trotted around to stand in front of him. He was panting lightly. “Maybe what you need to do is forget the era you evolved from. We’re all of us oxygen breathers in and on the same boat here together. Concentrate on what brought your ancestors and mine out of the caves together. Get back to basics. That’s all we’ve got going for us in this place. There’s no Internet, no cell phones, no interstellar 911 to call.” He pawed at the ground with one foot.

“Like, for example, you dig deep enough here, you find metal. What kind of metal I don’t know, but that’s something. A piece of knowledge. Digging may not be a real useful skill for a commodities trader in Chicago, but we dogs have never lost the ability, or the inclination to pursue it.

“Instead of reacting like you have been to what the Ghouaba did, you need to learn to control your reactions better. Keep your feelings to yourself. In other words, learn how to become a model prisoner. The less trouble you cause, the better you behave, the more rewards you’ll get and the less attention the purple-skins will pay to you. I don’t care what kind of equipment they’re using to keep an eye on our activities. Unless they’ve got one Vilenjji assigned to each captive, every now and then someone is going to be overlooked. Just like your picking up that gadget was overlooked.” The tail wagged. “We want you and me to melt in with the rest of the overlooked. We want to be counted among the contented critters in cages who don’t need constant supervision to make sure they don’t do something daft.”

Walker straightened, took a deep breath. All around them, other captives from other worlds were sleeping, lazing, conversing, eating, exercising, and, in a few cases, engaging in activities that were as utterly unfamiliar to him as they were ultimately unfathomable. Among the assembled, who were engaged in pursuits most likely to attract the attention of the Vilenjji? Who were more likely to be ignored, either because they were harmless or better yet, boring?

He nodded in silent agreement with George’s wisdom. That was it. That was the answer—for the foreseeable future, anyway. From this moment forward, he would strive to be as boring as boring could be. Boring enough so that the Vilenjji would all but forget about him as their interest turned to other, more unpredictable inhabitants of the enclosure.

And while he was striving to bore, he would make it his task to learn as much as possible about his fellow captives as well as his captors, while drawing as little attention to himself and to George as possible.

It was amazing to observe the scruffy mutt in the act of making friends. If dogs were born with an inbred skill, friend-making was it. Tail wagging, tongue lolling, George would saunter up to something that looked as if it had stepped out of a dilettante London writer’s opium dream and bark a cheerful greeting. Receiving the modulated sound waves via the appropriate organic mechanism and having them translated by the Vilenjji’s internal implant, the apparition thus addressed would bend, kneel, fold, twist, or otherwise respond physically to bring itself more in line with the dog. Within a few minutes, they would invariably be chatting amiably.

Walker tried, but he simply did not have his four-legged friend’s knack for ingratiating himself to others. It was a failing that troubled him, because he did not understand it. Back home, he had moved with ease among acquaintances at work and at play. His senior year at university, his teammates had voted him cocaptain. From childhood, he had always gotten along well with people.

Not-people, apparently, were a different matter entirely.

Yet as he trotted from one alien encounter to the next, George was customarily greeted with welcoming cries, squeals, honks, squeaks, whispers, and hoots, whereas Walker’s appearance was habitually met by uncertainty, if not outright apathy.

“You have to try harder, Marc,” George instructed him one day. “Everyone remembers or has been told of what happened to the Tripodan. By now, everyone also knows what occurred between you and the Ghouaba. What applies among humans and, to a certain extent, among dogs on Earth applies equally here. Set one inmate to spy on another and the job of containment becomes easier for the keepers.” Turning, he gestured toward the center of the grand enclosure, where representatives of three species had gathered.

“See how hesitant that group is even though they’ve been meeting happily together for weeks beneath that tree? Everybody here would like to trust everybody else, with the obvious exception of the Ghouaba. But no one is sure who might inform on them to the Vilenjji and who might not.”

Seated on the cushioning ground cover, a discouraged Walker pitched pebbles toward a sculpted depression in the soil covering. “What’s to inform about? My finding that Vilenjji device was an exception, wasn’t it?”

Tail-wagging slowed, the dog nodded. “As far as I know, it was. But nobody’s sure what kind of activity, short of murder, the Vilenjji might not approve of, and nobody wants to risk finding out. So despite the smiles, or the equivalent thereof, everyone here exists in a state of permanent paranoia. Whether that’s an intentional consequence on the part of the Vilenjji or just fortuitous for them no one can say. But it’s no less real for that. Don’t you find yourself constantly looking over your shoulder, toward the nearest corridor, to see if they’re watching in person?”

Rising, Walker let the last pebbles fall from his hand. “All the time. You can’t help it.” He indicated the enclosure in which they stood. “There’s nothing else to look at, anyway.”

“There is if you have friends.” Approaching the human, George pawed at his right leg. “Come on, Marc. I’ll help you.”

“All right.” The commodities trader looked down into the dog’s bright, alert eyes. “But I’m not going to lick anyone. Or anything.”

George snickered. “Don’t say that until you’ve met the Kitoulli sisters.”

It wasn’t a question of being subservient, Walker slowly learned. More a matter of showing respect, not only for the representative of another sentient species, but for their particular problems and concerns—even if one didn’t understand everything that was being said, or shown. It took a while, but under the dog’s tutelage Walker slowly got the hang of it. The results were immediate, and welcome. Inhabitants of the enclosures who had previously shied away from him, or wandered off, or turned their backs (or the equivalent thereof) on him grew gradually more voluble. Having George available to act as an intermediary certainly helped. Nor did a willing Walker take umbrage on those increasingly infrequent occasions when the dog would point out one of the human’s faux paws, as George liked to refer to them.

It took weeks. But there came a day when Walker no longer felt it necessary to have George along if he experienced the desire to engage something strange and otherworldly in casual conversation. So far had he come in his social development that he believed he had made the acquaintance of most of his fellow captives. Most, but not all.

One outlying enclosure located on the far side of the grand central mingling area from his own fragment of ship-borne Sierra Nevada particularly intrigued him. Among the astonishing diversity of personal environments, it stood out for several reasons. Where nearly all the individual ecosystems experienced localized fluctuations between day and night, this one was shrouded in perpetual gloom. Though he did not enter it but only strolled on past, it seemed unlikely that temperatures within could vary very much. It appeared to rain frequently, and when it wasn’t raining, the interior was typically cloaked in a heavy mist. Wandering close to the very border of this particularly damp transplanted elsewhere, he thought he could hear the sound of water running continuously: not surprising, given the amount of moisture the murky dwelling space received.

“Who lives in there?” he finally asked one morning as he and George enjoyed a counterclockwise hike around the circumference of the grand enclosure. “Have I ever met them?”

Tellingly, the dog kept his friend between himself and this particular slice of alien ecosystem. “I don’t know, Marc. I’ve never met the occupant. All I know for sure is that it has to be an oxygen breather, like the rest of us. Come to think of it, I don’t know that I’ve ever met anyone who
has
met whoever lives in there. That’s assuming anything does, and that it’s not just an empty cubicle that’s been prepped and made ready in expectation of the arrival of some future unfortunate abductee.”

Having halted beside the environment in question, Walker leaned forward to squint into the depths of the permanent gloom. “If that’s the case, it sure seems like it’s been held in readiness for a long time. Leastwise, it has been for as long as I’ve been here.” Looking to his left, he nodded in the direction of the curving arc of individual living areas. “There are more than a dozen unoccupied spaces, and none of them have been given this kind of elaborate prearrival treatment. I bet somebody
is
living in there.” He took a step toward the invisible barrier that separated the distinct environment from the grand enclosure.

“Whoa!” George darted around to cut him off. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Walker nodded again, this time straight ahead. “If there’s nobody living in there, I’ll soon find out and there’s no harm in looking. If there
is
a sentient at home, maybe it’s hurt, or lonely, or otherwise incapacitated, and we can help.”