Lost and found_ a novel - Alan Dean Foster [41]
When he had finished, the dog picked its muzzle back up. “Doesn’t sound very promising. But then, it’s not anything worse than what I expected. We’ll just have to take life day to day. She’s right about one thing, of course. There’s no way out of here. Out of this.”
Having refused to acknowledge that verdict from a tentacled K’eremu, Walker was not about to accept it from a dog. Not even one as articulate as George.
He was proud of the fact that he never lost control. Even in the midst of tight, last-minute competitive bidding, when the placement of an overoptimistic decimal point could cost clients tens of thousands of dollars, he prided himself on never losing his cool. It was a trademark of his success. He was the ex-football star who knew how to control his emotions, knew how to let that calculator brain of his do all the work. His steadiness under fire, as it were, was a hallmark of his success. His superiors appreciated and rewarded it, his coworkers regarded it with admiration or jealousy, depending on their respective degree of self-confidence and closeness to him, and his rivals feared it. It had always stood him in good stead. It had stood him in good stead for the weeks on board the alien vessel that had now stretched into months.
Uncharacteristically, he forgot to look at his watch on the day that he lost it. His self-control, not the watch. So afterward, he was not sure exactly when it had happened. Or how.
All he knew was that he had awakened as usual, walked with a yawning George down to the transmigrated segment of Cawley Lake to wash his face and hands, and settled down to await the arrival of the morning meal. As always, the neat circle of surface briefly subsided, only to return within a moment piled up with food bricks, food cubes, and the usual liquid trimmings. Maybe it was the water that set him off; a damp fuse to his human explosive. Maybe it was the predictability of it all. He did not know.
All he did know, or rather knew when George told him about it later, was that instead of choosing something to eat from the infuriatingly precise assortment of offerings, he straightened, drew back his right foot, and booted the mixed pyramid of alien nutrients as hard as he could in the general direction of the corridor. Several times during his college career he had been called upon to kick extra points or the occasional short field goal, and he still had a strong leg. His form was admirable, too. Food and water went flying. Impacting on the electrical barrier, a couple of food bricks penetrated nearly a foot before being crisped.
You learn something every day, he told himself wildly as the pungent burning smell of carbonized foodstuffs wafted back to him. Vilenjji food bricks, for example, were not improved by further cooking.
“Marc, that wasn’t wise.”
A slightly crazed look in his eyes, Walker peered down at the dog. “That’s okay. Neither am I. Neither are you. Frankly, sanity is beginning to bore me. I’m getting sick and tired of playing the well-mannered little pet.” Bending, he began picking up handfuls of dirt, gravel, sand, faux twig and leaf litter, and chucking them methodically at the barrier. Nothing got through. Anything organic got fried.
Visibly worried, George began backing away from his soil-flinging friend. The dog’s eyes darted repeatedly from Walker to the grand enclosure. Emerging from mutt jaws as sharp barks, the translator embedded in Walker’s head rendered the sounds as, “Please, Marc—stop it. You’re making me nervous!”
“Screw that! I’m sick of this, understand? I’m sick of all of it!” Though he began to cry, he did not stop bending, grabbing, and throwing; bending, grabbing, and throwing. “I want out! Let me out! Why don’t you take me for a walk, goddammit!”
It took a good five minutes of throwing and screaming, kicking and ranting, before the two Vilenjji showed up. George saw them first, slumping toward the little piece of Sierra Nevada from across the far side of the grand enclosure.
“Marc, stop it now!” he whined worriedly even