Lost and found_ a novel - Alan Dean Foster [18]
That kept Walker quiet for a while. His silence did not seem to trouble George, who was content to rest his head on his forepaws and lie quietly in the artificial sun. Eventually the trader stood, studied their surroundings. The barrier between his mountain lake environment and that of the dog’s relocated urban surroundings was still unbarred. The realization that it might be closed off again at any time, at a whim of their captors, and that he might be separated from his garrulous new four-legged friend, left him unexpectedly queasy. He chose not to address the phlegmatic pooch’s terse observation directly.
“Didn’t I hear you say something about them, these Vilenjji, taking you for walks?”
Lifting his head from his paws, George nodded. “I keep asking them, and I keep getting turned down. Not that they have to worry about it. There’s nowhere to run to. Sometimes one or two of them will pay a visit to my cage.”
“Enclosure, you mean.” Walker had no grounds for correcting the dog, other than psychological. It was easier to think of himself as being kept in an enclosure than a cage. “They come in?”
“Sure. They know I’m not going to hurt them. I mean, I could bite. There’s nothing wrong with my teeth. But have you noticed the size of these mutes? What good would it do, ultimately, to take a chunk out of a leg flap?”
“You’d get some honest satisfaction out of it,” Walker countered heartily, feeling a lot like taking a bite out of a Vilenjji himself.
George snorted softly. “Then you nip one of them. Me, I’d rather keep getting my food bricks.”
Walker thought back to the days when he had not been fed, remembering the hollow feeling that by afternoon had developed in the pit of his stomach. The dog was right. If he was somehow going to get through this, he would have to alter his behavior to match his circumstances. This was not a play-off game. No running down an opponent here. He would have to use his brains. Like George.
But he knew he would draw the line at licking a Vilenjji’s face, or asking to be petted.
“What else have you seen while you’ve been here?” He gestured at their immediate surroundings. “This is all I’ve been allowed to access.”
“Well, for one thing, there are a lot more enclosures like yours and mine. Also some that are smaller, some that are substantially larger.”
“You mean, like for elephants and things?”
“‘Things’ is more like it. I haven’t been on the ship for that long, but as near as I can tell, you and I are the only captives from Earth. All the others are from . . . somewhere else.” He eyed Walker evenly. “As soon as they think you’re ready to handle it, at regular intervals they’ll drop the innermost part of your enclosure. The electrical field as well as the hologram, or whatever it is.” He nodded in the direction of the corridor. “The rest of the ship is naturally off limits. I suspect that letting you and I get together is a prelude to introducing you to the rest of the gang.”
Every time Walker thought he was getting a mental handle on his situation, new circumstances kept cropping up to dump him on his mental butt all over again. “‘Rest of the gang’?”
“All the other oxygen breathers. They’re not a bad bunch, I suppose. You meet worse in city alleys. Our laugh-a-minute captors get a kick out of seeing how we all interact, I suppose. Maybe the interactions of different species from different worlds edifies them. Maybe it makes them laugh. I don’t know why they do it. If you’re that curious, you ask them, when you get the chance. I’m not sure why, but I get the feeling prying into the motivations of the Vilenjji might not be a good idea.”
Walker looked around nervously. The enclosure, the cell that he had come to resent so thoroughly, had abruptly taken on all the aspects of a comfortable, familiar home he did not want to lose—even if it was nothing but a carefully crafted illusion.
“How do you know we’re on a ship?” he mumbled.
“I asked some of our fellow captives. Must be pretty good size, too, just extrapolating from the