Lost and found_ a novel - Alan Dean Foster [33]
“Why, George, what a thoughtful sentiment.”
“Sentiment, hell,” the dog growled. “Who else is going to feed me their surplus food bricks?” Stepping to one side, he skittered out of the human’s path. “Go on, then, if you’re so dim-witted that I can’t talk you out of it.”
Walker stepped past him. “Just say that I’m dogged.”
George’s tail had stopped wagging, and he made no attempt to hide his unease. “Curiosity doesn’t kill cats; only humans. Cats are smarter than that.”
With that last observation lingering in his mind, Walker stepped through the unseen divider that separated the grand enclosure from the mist-swept compartment of mystery.
Once inside, the ambient humidity hit him like a wet washcloth across the face. So did something unexpected—the chill. It was cold within the smaller enclosure. Not arctic, but frigid. At least there wasn’t much wind. Well, he was from Chicago. He could handle both the damp and the cold. Were the climatic conditions he was experiencing characteristic of this environment the year-round, or were they seasonal and subject to change? If the former, as he advanced slowly he found himself pitying any creature that had evolved in such conditions. And if they were seasonal, he realized, this might be the being’s equivalent of summer. Really bad weather on its homeworld might be far worse.
What vegetation he encountered was low-lying and tough, designed to minimize exposure to the constant moisture while maximizing its ability to gather sunlight: a difficult duality for any plant to pull off. Gritty soil had accumulated in the cracks and crevices of otherwise smooth, almost black boulders and stones. Exploring, he nearly stepped off a rocky beach and into a pool of water. Kneeling, he dipped a forefinger into the slowly surging liquid and brought it to his lips. Salty, but with less of a bite than that of a terrestrial ocean, and fresher. Different concentration of dissolved minerals, he told himself as he straightened.
He nearly jumped out of his hiking boots when something howled mournfully behind him. When he recognized the source, he wanted to yell angrily at George to keep it down. He didn’t dare. Technically, he was already violating another sentient’s private space. If the Vilenjji were watching, their curiosity to see what would happen next apparently outweighed any hesitation they might feel over one of their specimens intruding on another. Or, he told himself, it might be that they couldn’t care less, and were not even specifically monitoring the situation.
He was just about ready to give up and subscribe to the theory that the living area was indeed unoccupied when a glint of light in the midst of the mist drew him forward. As he grew nearer, he saw that it emanated from a portion of a particularly large isolated basalt boulder that had gone partly translucent. Pressing his face close to the light-emitting oval, he thought he could make out regular shapes inside. Either what he was seeing was the result of a very elaborate, very clever optical illusion, created for what purpose he could not imagine, or else the boulder was at least partially hollow.
Commencing a cautious circumnavigation of the big rock that towered over him, he arrived eventually on the side that faced the relocated portion of sea. Something scuttled out of his path to disappear beneath the surface of the water. The local equivalent of his spurious blue jay and counterfeit chipmunk, he reasoned.
There was an opening in the front of the boulder. While it was not large, he found that if he got down on hands and knees he could enter easily enough. A soft hum, rising and falling almost rhythmically, drew him onward and inward. As he crawled over the damp rocky surface beneath his hands and feet, it occurred to him that if the boulder was occupied and if anything resident did decide to take exception to his entry, he had put himself in a very poor position to defend himself against attack, or to backtrack in a hurry.
The light ahead grew brighter, allowing him as he progressed to resolve objects of obvious