Lost and found_ a novel - Alan Dean Foster [114]
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.”
There was immediate objection. “I see no evidence of that,” Braouk rumbled in response. “Certainly to me, no one has said, anything untoward.”
“I linger by the sea for as long as I wish, lamenting the absence of familiar smells but luxuriating in the sensation of it.” Sque lay coiled atop her appendages in front of the opening to the small, comfortable cave she had caused to be installed in the common room. As counterpoint, George had caused to be