Lost and found_ a novel - Alan Dean Foster [51]
No, he thought. There was one other thing he could do.
“Sorrow is sharing, the abducted are together, many one.”
He did not think it would have passed muster in Mrs. Longcarrow’s senior English composition class, but the effect on the Tuuqalian was immediate. Both eye coverings slid back.
“You speak comfort and not fear. You seek empathy and not flight.”
Walker forbore from pointing out that there was nowhere for him to flee to. However, he was more than willing to take credit where due, and also where not. “It just looked like you could use a kind word or two. Oh, sorry—I’m afraid I’m not really much of a poet.”
“All language is music,” the Tuuqalian rumbled good-naturedly. “It is only the form, the style of the singing, that varies. The poetry lies in the spirit, not in the words.”
His competitors in Chicago would have found that account of one of the Exchange’s sharpest operators uproarious, Walker knew. But they would not have expressed their dissenting opinion in the presence of the Tuuqalian. Because the alien would not just have intimidated them; its appearance would have sent them screaming.
Masks, he told himself. Even aliens, it seemed, hid behind masks.
“You really didn’t want to hurt me, did you?”
“Yes, I did,” Braouk replied, eyes literally wide. “I wanted to smash you, to rip your limbs from your body, to wind your internal organs like thread around my tentacles, to—”
“Okay, okay—I get the idea.” Fortunately sated, Walker promptly lost what remained of his appetite. Setting the remnants of the food brick aside, he made a circumspect return to the water cistern. “What about my speaking comfort and seeking empathy?” He drank rapidly, just in case.
“That was then. This is the now. Timing triumphant.”
“Glad to hear it. Is that why you’ve never made friends with any of the other captives?”
“Many reasons clamor for preeminence. That is certainly one of them.”
“Speaking of friends,” Walker murmured as he used the back of one hand to wipe drops of water from his lips, “there’s someone I wish you could meet.”
And just like that, the barrier separating the Tuuqalian’s environment from the grand enclosure vanished.
8
It so happened that when it deactivated, a preoccupied George was pacing back and forth on the other side of the barrier. He had done so several times every day since Walker had been trapped on the other side. The suddenness of the shift caught him by surprise, and he jumped several inches into the air when the familiar opacity was replaced by an unrestricted view of the enclosure’s interior.
Keyed up beyond measure, he raced forward—only to dig in all four paws the instant he saw the looming monstrosity that was squatting within arm’s reach of his human. He knew what it was. Like a number of the other captives, he had caught a glimpse of the Tuuqalian on the rare occasions when the Vilenjji had let it roam free throughout the grand enclosure. At such times, he and every other oxygen breather had retreated swiftly to their own environments, to leave the ground-shaking creature to itself. Only when it had returned to its own ecosystem and the intervening barrier reestablished itself did the others dare to emerge from their places of concealment. It was the only resident the others had feared more than the now-long-absent Tripodan.
When the Vilenjji had dumped Walker into the Tuuqalian’s enclosure, George had immediately lost all hope for his friend. To see Marc now, sitting proximate to and apparently unafraid beside the alien giant, was more than a shock. It was inexplicable. Tentatively, George crept forward in search of explication.
With his stomach full of Vilenjji food brick and water, Walker wanted more than anything to lapse into a deep and relaxing sleep. But he knew he could not. Not yet. Not until he had obtained a few more answers. Not until he could be more sure of the alien he wanted to think of as a friend, but whose mood, poetic declamations notwithstanding, could conceivably undergo a drastic