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 enclosures.” He lowered his voice. “Listen, Marc. No matter what happens, always stay calm. Keep your head and you’ll keep your head, if you know what I mean. Usually, the Vilenjji don’t interfere in altercations between captives, no matter what happens. But a couple of days before you got here, a Tripodan from Jerenus IV—”
“What’s a Tripodan? Where’s Jerenus IV?”
“Shut up and listen to me. The Tripodan, I was told it had caused trouble before. This time, it got into an argument with a Sesu. There are four of them captive here, and they’re about as dangerous as pups. But they’ve got sharp tongues. I mean, sharp verbally. The Tripodan took exception to something one of the Sesu said. Then it took the Sesu apart. The way a human would dismember a fried chicken. I watched, from as far away as I could get, and I know I was whining good and loud the whole time. I was plenty scared, let me tell you, because I had no idea what might happen next.
“What did happen was that a whole squad of Vilenjji showed up and came lurching into the grand enclosure. That’s the big central area where all the captives are allowed to mix with one another. I hadn’t seen that many of them all in one place before, and I haven’t seen that many together again since. They must’ve been pretty ticked off. The Sesu, I later found out, mate in quartets. Remove any one of the four and you lose breeding capability. No wonder the Vilenjji were upset. They carried these funny-looking, squat little balloonlike guns that spat out some kind of fast-hardening glue. In less than a minute that Tripodan, big and strong as it was, had no more range of motion than the statue I used to piss on in the park back home.”
Walker’s tone was subdued. “What did they do to it—to the Tripodan?”
“Took it away. Never saw it again.” The dog rose, stretched. “Maybe now it’s a doorstop in some high-ranking Vilenjji’s office. If they have ranks. If they have offices. Me, I’ve got my standard defense all prepared in case something like that comes after me. I back into a corner and whine my guts out.” He eyed the solemn-faced human tellingly. “You ought to try it. Works wonders. Even on aliens.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.” Walker intended nothing of the kind. He hadn’t made first string outside linebacker at a major American university by whining in the face of adversity.
Of course, he reminded himself, then he had only been competing against corn-fed 300-pounders from Nebraska and swift tailbacks from the small towns of Texas—not seven-foot-tall aliens who controlled immobilizing electrical fields and paralyzing glue guns. Perhaps under certain circumstances the occasional whine could be countenanced. Like, to preserve his life.
It was getting dark. Walker glanced back at his tent, then toward the invitingly open environment that constituted George’s reconstituted urban backstreet. He studied the decaying trash, the torn and tattered cardboard cartons, the rusting ruin of a once-grand automobile, and decided that a change of surroundings could wait. Apparently, the dog had been thinking along the same lines but had come to a different decision.
“Mind if I stay with you tonight, Marc?”
Walker turned toward the corridor. It was still empty, still silent. Still fraught with ominous possibilities better left unconsidered. “Won’t you miss your place?”
“My ‘place’?” With a twist of his shaggy head, George gestured back the way he had come. “That dump’s just where I happened to be hanging out when the Vilenjji picked me up. I’m an orphan, Marc. Lot of us in Chicago.” Without waiting for further invitation, he trotted past the commodities trader. “Your place looks clean. I’ve never been in the mountains. Not much of that in Illinois.” Dark, soulful eyes stared up at him. “I can whimper longingly, if it will help, and lick your hand.”
Walker had to grin. “I didn’t know dogs were capable of sarcasm.”
“Are you kidding? We’re masters of it. In fact, we’re so good at it that you humans don’t know when we’re having a laugh at your expense. So, what do you say?”
Another glance toward the threatening, dark corridor wherein nightmares dwelled. “What about the Vilenjji? Won’t they object to two of their specimens doubling up?”
George shrugged. “Only one way to find out. Nothing we can do about it if they do.”
Walker rose from where he had been sitting. With the setting of the “sun,” the temperature was starting to cool rapidly. “Actually, I was going to ask you if you’d stay.”
The dog spoke while sniffing industriously at the entrance to the tent. “Us terrestrials have to stick together. At least until we find out what the Vilenjji ultimately want with us.”
Despite his boredom, his isolation, and his continuing depression, as he walked over to the entrance Walker fervently hoped that day still lay far in the future. “It’s a big tent. There’s plenty of room. Glad to have the company. Just one thing.”
George looked up at him. “I’ll go outside to do my thing, if that’s what you’re wondering. Technically I’m not housebroken, because I’ve never had a house, but I don’t do business where I sleep.”
“It’s not that.” Walker felt slightly uncomfortable, having to put into words a request he had never previously had to articulate. “It’s just that, well—do you mind if I pet you once in a while?”
The dog grinned back up at him and replied, in an excellent impersonation of the commodities trader’s voice, “Actually, I was going to ask you.”
When the hooting of a counterfeit owl woke Walker up in the middle of the night, he
found a warm, dark mass pressed tightly up against him. Somehow, the dog had wormed its way into the sleeping bag without waking its principal occupant. Walker’s initial reaction was to shove the furry lump out into the tent proper. Instead, he ended up gently raising his left arm and circling it over the warm body, to snug it just a little closer. Deep in sleep, George snuffled once, then lay quiet. The arrangement worked well enough for the rest of the night, except for one time when the dog woke the commodities trader a second time by kicking out with his hind legs. Walker decided to persevere and ignore the kick. He would get used to it.
He’d once had a girlfriend who snored, but never a sleeping partner who kicked.
Perhaps the Vilenjji did not care where George slept, Walker reflected the following morning. More likely, they were pleased to have a new relationship to study. Walker did not care. After weeks of isolation, it was good to have company, and an affable dog was better than nothing. A chatty, talking dog who’d had his IQ boosted was a good deal better.
Their captors must have been pleased. Breakfast brought forth not only the usual food bricks, but a flexible metal bowl full of bite-sized food cubes. Maybe it was the presence of his new companion, but the new food reminded Walker uncomfortably of kibble. It didn’t taste like dog food, however. The blue ones tasted like chicken. The pink ones tasted like the blue ones. The yellow, lavender, green, and gold ones all tasted like boiled brussels sprouts, which only proved how little the Vilenjji actually knew about human beings. As if by way of unintentional compensation, two silvery sapphire cubes tasted like fresh banana pudding.
As soon as his palate encountered one of the latter cubes, he made a show of consuming it and its complement as slowly as possible, running his face through the gamut of expressions of ecstasy. Whether his performance would result in more of the silver banana-ish cubes being provided he did not know, but he was determined to try. Although he did not make the connection, what he had done was the human equivalent of George wagging his tail. To top it all off, in addition to the usual cylinder of water, there was a second, smaller one full of some pale gingery liquid. Though it tasted like weak cola, it might as well have been champagne. By the time he had finished eating, Walker felt as if he had consumed the equivalent of a full five-course meal at the best restaurant in New Orleans.
That was when he noticed George looking at him oddly.
“Well, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” the dog replied. “Did I say anything was wrong?”
“You’ve got that grin on your face. I know that expression already.”
“How perceptive of you. All right, I’ll tell you. But you’re not going to like it. I was watching your face while you ate, especially those silver-metallic things. You were begging. You weren’t sitting up on your hindquarters holding your paws out in front of you and sticking out your tongue, but you were begging.”
Walker looked away. “I was not,” he groused.
“Why deny it? As long as you know what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it, there’s no reason to be ashamed. Humans beg all the time. For better jobs, for sexual favors, for the appreciation of their fellows. Is that a higher calling than begging for food? Why do you think you suddenly rated a better spread, anyway?”
Actually, Walker realized, he’d been so busy sampling the new comestibles that he hadn’t thought about it. He said as much.
“It’s because you’re cooperating. You haven’t done anything stupid, like try to kill yourself. And you’ve interacted constructively with me. And vice versa. I got better food, too.”
“I did try to break out and jump one of the Vilenjji,” he argued, even as he drained the last of the ginger drink from its container.
“That’s not stupid: that’s expected,” George countered unhesitatingly.
“I was going to collect rocks and throw them at the Vilenjji.”
The dog’s mouth opened and his tongue emerged. He was laughing, Walker saw. “You think any entities smart enough to build something like this ship and travel between the stars a-hunting specimens like me and you aren’t bright enough to take steps to protect themselves from the disgruntled? The electrical barriers that restrain us? The deeper you try to penetrate one, the stronger the shock becomes.”
“I know that,” Walker informed him. “I’ve tried it.”
George nodded. “Everybody does. So did I. We’ve got one fellow prisoner, doesn’t look like much, but she can spit acid. In my book, that trumps throwing rocks as a potential threat. If you could push deep enough into the restraint field, without it first killing you, it would strengthen enough to fry your bones. Same thing would happen to any rocks you threw. Or acid someone spit. The Vilenjji may be big, and ugly, and gruff, but they’re not stupid.
“In addition to failing, the attempt would cost you a day’s rations, at least. I get the impression that they like their specimens to stay healthy and in one piece. But that doesn’t mean they won’t mete out punishment if they feel it’s deserved. Through withholding food or, in the case of the disappeared Tripodan, something worse.”
Seated by the shore of the lake, dangling his bare feet in the cold water, Walker nibbled on the last of the standard food bricks. “So we get rewarded for good behavior, punished for bad. There are no variables?” A twinge of anxious anticipation tickled his mind. “They don’t, for example, try to train you? To perform tricks or something?”
George shook his head, rubbed at one eye. “Not so far. Not that I couldn’t handle it if they did.”
“Of course you could,” Walker assured him. “You’re a dog.”
Eye cleared, George looked up. “And you’re a human. Don’t try to tell me humans aren’t trainable. You have jobs, don’t you? Mange, I could train you myself.”
“Don’t get cocky just because you can talk and reason,” Walker advised him. “Humans train dogs. Dogs don’t train humans.”
“Oh no? What about last night? You were going to kick me out of the sleeping bag, weren’t you?”
“I wasn’t—I mean, that was my decision to let you stay.”
With a woolly shrug, George slid his front legs out in front of him. “Okay. Have it your way.”
Nothing else Walker could say or do could induce the mutt to resume the discussion.
4
Time passed. Time that Walker was able to track thanks to his watch. Ticking off Central Standard Time, it had no real relevance to his present circumstances. But the mere sight of the digits changing according to what the time was back home helped, in its small chronological way, to mitigate the stress of his captivity.
Then it happened. Without warning, or announcement.
One minute he and George were sitting and watching fake fingerlings swim through the shallows of the transmigrated portion of Cawley Lake. The next, everything beyond the body of water had disappeared. Or rather, had given way.
In place of “distant” mountains and forest there stood an open, rolling meadow. Green sedges fought for space with clusters of what appeared to be rooted macaroni, all dull yellow twists and coils. There were also patches of red weed that was neither true red nor familiar weed, its actual hue shading over significantly into the ultraviolet. Ghost grass. There were trees, some of which entwined to create larger, perfectly geometric forms, while others formed whimsical arches and shelters as they grew.
Roaming over, around, and through the fusion of alien verdure was a Boschian concatenation of beings who looked as if they had stepped whole and entire from the pages of a lost tome by Lewis Carroll. It did not take the edge off their collective consummate weirdness for George to declare that, insofar as he knew, each and every one of the ambulating menagerie was sentient, and at least as intelligent as a dog.
Looking over his shoulder, a momentarily overcome Walker saw his tent standing where he had left it. Beyond lay the empty corridor. To his left were the remnants of the persistent diorama of Sierran mountains and woods. To his right, gravel a
nd lake fragment gave way to George’s cozy urban junkyard. Though he knew he ought to be used to it by now, this arbitrary switching on and off of selected quadrants of reality still retained its ability to disconcert.
Leaning over, he whispered to his companion, “Am I correct in assuming that this is the ‘grand enclosure’ you’ve been talking about?”
George panted softly. “You would be. Not bad, eh? Of course, I don’t know everybody here. Haven’t been on board all that long. But I know a few of the guys. And gals. And others.” He bounded forward. “Come on: I’ll introduce you. No butt sniffing. I learned that right away. Bad protocol.”
Walker wanted to tell his friend that he need not worry, because such thoughts had not occurred to him. Even had he been so caninely inclined, he doubted he could have pursued the activity with any exactness, since some of his fellow oxygen breathers were of such outlandish build and construction that it was difficult to know where butt ended and breathing apparatus began.
It seemed equally unlikely that he would be able to converse with any of them, but the individually attuned transplant that Vilenjji manipulators had inserted into his head transmuted virtually all of the intelligently modulated air that was pushed in his direction into words he could understand.
Looking around as the vigorously tail-wagging George led him away from the tent and deep into the far larger enclosure enabled Walker to gain a much better sense of his surroundings. Not only could he see his own personal pen (a term that wasn’t much more endearing than cell, he reflected, determining then and there never to use it again) receding behind him, he could make out similarly shaped but far more exotic corrals (that wasn’t better either, he decided) nearby. They marched off to the right of his enclosure and to the left of George’s. Though he could not quite make out the final boundaries, it appeared as if the smaller enclosures formed a giant ring, with the grand enclosure across which he was presently striding occupying the center. A garland of compartments surrounding a central open area like pearls flattering a diamond. Strain as he might, and certain the every move of every being within the compound was being watched and recorded, he could not pick out a single monitoring lens or similar device. After a few moments, his attention drawn inexorably to the exotic parade of fellow oxygen breathers, he gave up trying.
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