Lost and found_ a novel - Alan Dean Foster [17]
“Uh, no thanks, George. I’m going to take your word for it that you are what you say you are.” He scrunched down a little tighter on his chosen chunk of granite. “And you keep your nose to yourself.”
“Will do, Marc. As best as I can. You being human and olfactorily challenged and all, I bet you haven’t even noticed what these lumps who snatched us smell like.”
“No, not really, I haven’t.”
Edging closer on its belly, the dog looked around and whispered conspiratorially, “Mothballs. They smell like old, thrown-away mothballs.”
Walker shared a smile with the mutt. “Not meaning to insult you or anything, George, but it’s been my experience generally that dogs, even those from Chicago, don’t talk. Not English, anyway.”
“We don’t generally speak Vilenj, either,” the unoffended George replied. One forefoot rose to dig meaningfully several times at one ear before the dog looked up again. “Implants. One for each internal auricular setup containing, as I understand it, some kind of universal translation node. Soft-wired right into the brain. So you can understand pretty much anything you hear. Every sentient here has them. Even the Vilenjji. Plus, I got a brain boost. Something to do with stimulating and multiplying cerebral folds. All I know is that things that always seemed muddled to me now seem obvious.”
“You’re very lucky,” Walker commented.
Gazing back at him, the dog cocked its head sideways. “Am I? It wasn’t a damn Christmas present, you know. They do it so they can talk to you, and so you can talk back. It was done to facilitate communication between captive and captor, between dog and Vilenjji. After it was all done and healed up, given the meager amount of talking they do, I wondered why they bothered. So I asked. They told me they were curious. Not as to why a race of subsentient but semi-intelligent creatures choose to exist in such a subservient relationship with a slightly higher order of being, but as to why we seem to enjoy it so much.”
One of the great unanswered questions, Walker mused. “What did you tell them?”
Raising a hind leg, George began to scratch furiously behind his left ear. “I told them that while I couldn’t speak for all dogs, in my case it was just because I happen to like humans. Actually, I think that’s pretty universal, dogwise. Besides, I told ’em, who says it’s a subservient relationship? Not all, but many of us get a free place to live, free food, free medical care, and stuff to play with. Humans have to work their butts off all the time for any of that. All we have to do is lick the occasional face and whine piteously. You tell me who has the better deal.”
“What’d they say to that?”
George shrugged, dogwise. “They said a slave isn’t a slave unless it possesses the intellectual wherewithal to comprehend the condition of slavery. I told them to stuff it down their masticatory orifices.”
Walker shifted on his stone. The corridor remained empty. “If you don’t mind my saying so, you have an awfully well-developed vocabulary.”
George put one paw to the side of his nose. “Like I said: knowledge boost. I’d give it all back if I could. Talking is hard work. Thinking is harder. I’d rather be chasing cats. Wouldn’t you rather be chasing a football?”
The commodities trader looked startled. “How did you know I played football?”
“Didn’t. Lucky guess. You’re in better shape than most humans your age.”
“Thanks.” Walker was quietly relieved. It was difficult enough to get used to the idea of a talking dog. He was not sure he could handle one that could also read minds. “You look pretty good yourself.”
“Clean living,” George replied. “Plenty of cat chasing. Actually, I quite like kitties. But tradition is tradition, you know.”
Walker nodded sagely. “Isn’t it going to be tough on you when we get out of here? Being so much smarter than the average dog, I mean?” He repressed the urge to pat the woolly head reassuringly.
George snapped idly at an invisible