Lost and found_ a novel - Alan Dean Foster [78]
“They’ll be after us,” Walker pointed out. An exasperated Sque replied without repeating her previous criticism.
“That the lighting has been fully restored suggests that the electrical barriers that restrain captives within their enclosures have also been reactivated. The Vilenjji will be busy for some time recapturing those of our fellow unfortunates who are racing aimlessly through the same corridors that are utilized by the crew. After that, our captors will be forced to spend some time winkling out the smarter ones among the escapees, who will be busily seeking hiding places from their captors. By that time we should be well away from here, in another part of the vessel, where hopefully they will not think to search for a while.”
Both Sque and George seemed to know exactly where they were going. As such, it did not take long before the escapees found themselves standing (and in Braouk’s case, crawling) beneath the particular enclosure that had been home to Walker from the day he had first awakened to find himself a captive on the alien spacecraft. It felt strange to be standing there, so close to his simulated piece of California mountains, knowing that familiar objects like his tent, and spare clothing, and miscellaneous but homey camping gear lay not far above his head, yet impossibly out of reach. Even if they could somehow manually operate the small, circular food service lift, he did not dare risk ascending lest Vilenjji surveillance equipment detect his presence. As far as their current accessibility was concerned, everything from his compact flashlight to his few remaining energy bars might as well have been lying buried in the dust of Earth’s moon.
In place of the latter he and George helped themselves to as many of the stacked food bricks as they could. Ripping some flexible bits of what looked like metal fabric from nearby mechanisms, Braouk showed himself to be as adept a weaver of scavenged materials as of words, fashioning a brace of crude but serviceable carry sacks for all four of them. The impermeable material was capable of holding water as well as bricks. Two problems immediately presented themselves.
“I’ll carry yours,” Walker told his companion when it was apparent that George’s back was too narrow to support even a small sack.
The dog grinned up at him. “I always said humans were good for something.”
The second awkwardness was less easily resolved.
“I do not carry things.” Tentacles contracted as Sque refused the sack proffered by Braouk. “The K’eremu do not indulge in manual labor.”
“What do the K’eremu deign to indulge in?” The Tuuqalian’s eyestalks extended threateningly toward the much smaller alien.
Walker stepped between them and extended a hand. “It’s all right, Braouk. I’ll carry hers.”
The big alien hesitated. Then, instead of handing over the pair of empty sacks he had fashioned for the K’eremu, a powerful tentacle took the ones the human had been holding out of Walker’s hand and slung them over a fourth limb. They hung there, all four of them, as easily as an old lady’s purse from her shoulder.
“Never mind. I will carry all the food and drink. The sum of it weighs less on my mind than the complaining of others.”
Sque had prepared a riposte, but for once the K’eremu took Walker’s cautioning glance to heart, or whatever equivalent internal system she employed to pump critical body fluids through her system.
Retracing their earlier steps, she and George led the way to the locations beneath both her enclosure and that of the Tuuqalian. When they had accumulated all the food bricks, cubes, squares, and liquids they could reasonably carry, the K’eremu led them out from beneath the vast circle of the enclosures and back into the light of the service corridor that encircled them, following, as she informed them, “the map I have made in my mind” based on what information