Lost and found_ a novel - Alan Dean Foster [118]
“Come with us, George. Something will work itself out.” Walker did not exactly plead, but the more it occurred to him that he might actually lose the company of the dog, his one remaining real contact with home, the deeper grew the sudden and surprising ache that he had developed within.
“Right, sure,” the dog muttered gloomily. “All we have to do is turn left, hang a right, and we’ll find ourselves on the I-55 headed toward the Loop. Provided we can figure out how to parse parsecs. The longer I think about even trying, the more I tend to be of the same opinion as the big guy. As a project, it’s doomed from the start. An undertaking in both senses of the word.”
Braouk drew up eyestalks as well as tentacles. “Not to try, to concede the inevitable, cowardice becomes.”
“Oh, now that’s fair.” The dog lay down on his rug, which shivered with delight in response. “Work my emotions from both sides.” He took a deep breath, his sides heaving. With an expression perfected from years of successful begging on the streets of the Windy City, he eyed Walker dubiously. It was several minutes before he finally replied. “All right, I’ll come with you. But only because, like Sque keeps telling me, you need looking after.”
Walker blinked. A glance in the direction of the K’eremu produced nothing in the way of a response. “Why you little— How long have you two been dissing me behind my back?”
Lying prone on his belly on the rug, George shrugged slightly. “Like I told you, Marc. I need more than you.”
Leaning back in his makeshift chair, Walker was left slowly shaking his head. Before him, the ornamental blaze continued to waltz in midair, fired with the flame of an alien technology. “You know, George, sometimes you’re a real son of a bitch.”
“I should hope so,” the dog replied equably.
By ALAN DEAN FOSTER
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
The Black Hole
Cachalot
Dark Star
The Metrognome and Other Stories
Midworld
Nor Crystal Tears
Sentenced to Prism
Splinter of the Mind’s Eye
Star Trek® Logs One–Ten
Voyage to the City of the Dead
. . . Who Needs Enemies?
With Friends Like These . . .
Mad Amos
The Howling Stones
Parallelities
The Icerigger Trilogy:
Icerigger
Mission to Moulokin
The Deluge Drivers
The Adventures of Flinx of the Commonwealth:
For Love of Mother-Not
The Tar-Aiym-Krang
Orphan Star
The End of the Matter
Bloodhype
Flinx in Flux
Mid-Flinx
Flinx’s Folly
The Damned:
Book One: A Call to Arms
Book Two: The False Mirror
Book Three: The Spoils of War
The Founding of the Commonwealth:
Phylogenesis
Dirge
Lost and Found is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A Del Rey® Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 2004 by Thranx, Inc.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Del Rey is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
www.delreydigital.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request from the publisher.
eISBN: 978-0-345-46126-1
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