George had halted before a pair of the most graceful-looking living things Walker had ever seen. Displaying skin that more nearly resembled glazed porcelain, they had flattened heads with large, doelike eyes and downy hearing organs. Disconcertingly, these could retract completely into their platelike central bodies and reemerge elsewhere. Dressed in shimmering sackcloth holed like Swiss cheese, the pliable bodies themselves undulated like peach-colored gelatin. A brace of long cilia fringed the torsos. Like the rest of the creatures’ bodies, these too were in constant, hypnotic motion. Only the lower limbs, thicker versions of the raylike cilia, exhibited any kind of stability.
“Greetings of the hour, Pyn and Pryrr. You can call me George now.” The dog gestured with his head. “My new companion Marc has gifted me with a new name.”
“Geoorrgg—George,” the one called Pryrr sang. The tone of voice it employed was natural and unaffected, but it sounded like singing to Walker. “Hello, Maaarrrc—Marc.”
“Hello—greetings.” Though he excelled at a profession that rewarded the articulate, Walker found himself momentarily tongue-tied. It was not the appearance of the two aliens that challenged his speech: it was their beauty. The splendor of their shimmering skin, of their mesmerizing movements, and their liquid voices.
George was less overawed. “Marc and I are from the same homeworld. So I guess I’m not a solo anymore.”
Cilia that caught the light like shards of crystal china rippled rhythmically. “That is a goooddd thing, George.” Pyn emphasized pleasure by popping a mutable head through a hole in the front of the flowing garment. “It is good to have the company of another with whooommm one can share memoriess of hooomme.” Limpid orbs surveyed the taller human. “You two cannot mate, I thinnnnk.”
“Lord, no,” Walker blurted. “Different, uh, species. Though George’s and mine do have an association that goes back a long way.”
“Aaaaahhh,” Pryrr sighed—a sound like warm wind rustling tropical palms. “Symbiooootes. Almost as gooooddd.”
“Pyn and Pryrr are Aulaanites,” George explained helpfully. “They were at sea, in what we would call a cooperating lagoon, rehearsing a presentation for an extended family gathering, when the Vilenjji snatched them. Though they can get around okay on dry land, their compartment is mostly heavy water.” Without a farewell, he turned and trotted off. Walker followed. Behind them, the Aulaanites danced in place, cilia describing meaningful streaks of reflective beauty through the accommodating air.
“You told me that the Vilenjji let oxygen breathers interact without constraint. They also let you visit one another’s living spaces?”
“So long as nobody makes trouble, yeah.” The dog nodded in the direction they were going. “Have a look. More interspecies interactions to study.” Slowing, he indicated the small hillock they were approaching. It was covered with something akin to rusted clover that popped and snapped underfoot like fried pork cracklings. “Here’s a good place.” So saying, he turned a few tight circles before settling himself down in the ground cover.
Wincing at the crunching sounds that resulted, Walker sat down next to him. The single large growth that dominated the hillock resembled a giant multiheaded mushroom with dozens of individual translucent caps. They were delicate enough, Walker saw, that they would have moved up and down in a light breeze. But there was no breeze. Only the distant, unvarying whisper of the unseen recyclers that processed the enclosure’s atmosphere.
Spread out before them, several small streams ran downslope to terminate in individual enclosures. In one, Walker thought he could make out harsh light and little growth: some kind of desert environment. In two others, rain appeared to be falling steadily. Highly localized rain.
“You said that the Vilenjji like to study interspecies interactions.”
“That’s just a guess.” Rolling over onto his back, George let his tongue loll lazily out one side of his mouth. With all four paws in the air, he looked almost as relaxed as he did comical. “I haven’t been able to find out what the Vilenjji want with us. Of course, I haven’t talked to everybody here. There are representatives of dozens of different species, hailing from as many different worlds. If you’re interested in asking questions, you can try your luck with any of them.” Turning onto his side, he winked at his friend. “Just don’t get into any fights. Although from what I’ve been able to figure out, the Tripodan was the worst of the lot except for one. It’s gone, and you don’t see much of the other.”
Eyeing the perambulating carnival of alien grotesqueries, Walker wondered how to go about approaching even the least off-putting of them.
“Just mosey up and say hi,” George advised him. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. I struck up a conversation with the Aulaanites because I thought they were pretty, and I wanted to tell them so. We’ve been friends ever since.” He sniffed at some bright pink growing thing that was thrusting a spherical head up through the ground cover. “The curiosity turned out to be mutual. Pyn and Pryrr find my appearance, as they put it, ‘inconceeeeivably undisciiiiiplined.’ ”
Leaning back with knees up and palms on the ground, Walker watched something like a miniature elephant crossed with a flock of flamingos amble past in front of them. “I wonder what they thought of me?”
“Ask ’em,” George advised. “They’re not shy. Very few of the captives are shy. Any that naturally are tend to lose it after spending a few months by themselves alone in their own enclosures.”
“Months?” Walker looked down sharply. “Some of these beings have been here for months?”
The dog sneezed, pulled back from the pink pop-up. “That’s what I’ve been told. Among those I’ve spoken to, a few have been here longer than a year. Divide that by the number of worlds represented by the diversity of abducted individuals you see, and it’s clear that our friends the Vilenjji not only know how to cover a lot of ground, but have been very busy.”
“But what’s it all for?” With a wave of a hand, Walker took in the grand enclosure and its surrounding necklace of smaller, individual living compartments. “Why do they keep picking up individuals from so many different worlds? Just to study them?”
“I told you: I don’t know. Maybe some of our fellow inmates do. If so, I haven’t met them yet.”
“Somebody must know,” Walker murmured thoughtfully. “If only from questioning the Vilenjji.”
“Ah yeah, the Vilenjji.” George snorted. “Our oh-so-talkative hosts.”
“You said that you’ve talked to them.” Walker’s tone was mildly accusing.
“Couple of times, yeah. Briefly. About all I managed to get out of them, I’ve already told you. They can be damned close-mouthed.”
Over the course of the following weeks Walker met more of his fellow captives. Some were open and friendly, others shy, a few grudgingly antisocial. The latter he tried to avoid, though none of them were really hostile. Not, as a glum and permanently depressed Halorian observed to him, like a Tripodan. In mass they ranged from the single elephantine Zerak he had first seen while seated on the hillock with George, to the trio of turkey-sized Eremot, with their color-changing fur and comical waddling gait. Some were naturally as bright as a human. Others, like George, had been given the Vilenjji brain boost and had learned subsequently how to communicate and learn. It seemed strange that none were demonstrably more intelligent than an increasingly downhearted commodities trader from Chicago, Illinois.
“Maybe they can’t catch anyone smarter,” George suggested when Walker broached the subject to him. “Or maybe they’re afraid to try. Or constrained by other considerations. We don’t know. We don’t know anything, really, Marc.”
“I know that I’m getting out of here,” he shot back defiantly. But in his heart he knew better.
His isolation as well as his destiny were brought home to him forcefully one day, as it was to everyone else who happened to be wandering within the grand enclosure at that time. One moment all was as it was normally; creatures wanderin
g, conversing, contemplating in silence, some playing interspecies games of their own devising. The next, the artificial sky had vanished, giving way to a shallow-domed transparency. With the sky went the light, so that everyone in the enclosure suddenly found themselves standing or sitting or lying or hovering in darkness. It was not total, however. There was some light. As his surprised eyes adjusted, Walker saw its source.
Stars.
Thousands of them. Probably millions, but all he could see were thousands. That was enough, shining in an unbroken spray through the now transparent ceiling. All the colors of the rainbow, like jewels scattered on black velvet, they shone in all their collective galactic magnificence through the crystal clear ceiling of the grand enclosure. Whether the view had been made available intentionally or by accident, perhaps caused by a glitch in some wiring or computer program, Walker never knew. It lasted for a couple of minutes. Then it was gone. The simulated sky returned, a neutral pale blue. Synthetic clouds drifted, gray and low, hinting at rain that would never fall. Fake sunset loomed inexorably.
For no specific reason, tears welled up in Walker’s eyes. Standing there gazing at the alien stars, he had made no sound: simply wept wordlessly. George sat quietly nearby, watching his friend, tail (for a change) not wagging. After awhile he said, “I’d join you if I could, Marc, but dogs don’t cry. Only on the inside.”
Kneeling, still staring at the sky where the stars had been, Walker let his hand fall to the woolly head. As he stroked it gently, George closed his eyes, his expression one of pleasure and transitory contentment.
“That’s all right, George. I know you feel the same.”
“How else could I feel?” Slipping out from beneath his friend’s companionable hand, he rose and started back toward the tent. “Let’s get something to eat. You got any of those power bars left? Not the trail granola—that stuff tastes like Styrofoam packing pellets. The ones with the dried fruit.”
Straightening, Walker wiped at his eyes and nodded. “I think so. Why? You hungry?”
George looked back over his shoulder. “Not particularly. But food makes me feel better. Any taste of Earth is better than none at all.”
Nodding, Walker moved to follow. “I think there are still a couple in my last box. I’ll split one with you.”
He doubted very much, as they headed back toward the tent together, that they were any longer anywhere near the warm, friendly, ocean-swathed ball of dirt both knew as home.
Days, like gas, continued to pass. Walker knew it was days because his watch, thankfully, continued to function. In addition to telling the time and date in three different (and now utterly irrelevant) time zones, holding a small address book, providing a connection to link to the (now unavailable) Internet, serving as a stopwatch, and offering half a dozen other functions, it contained within its chip brain two different mini video games. Boredom notwithstanding, Walker did not play either of them. He was afraid of sacrificing too much battery power. If nothing else, knowing the time (Pacific, Central, and Eastern) kept him, however tenuously, in touch with home. Peripheral as it was, he was inordinately terrified of losing that contact.
With little else to do to pass the time beyond marking it, he and George tried to make the acquaintance of as many of their fellow captives as possible. There were the reticulated Irelutes from A’ba’prin III, the bounding Mirrindrinons from the system of the same name, the lanky ciliated Tacuts from Domiss V and VI, and many more. Some were friendlier than others, some more talkative, some withdrawn, some barely capable of speech despite having been given cerebral kick starts and verbalizing implants. All shared in a common captivity.
Ultimately, it was the solitary Ghouaba who turned him in.
He was not looking for the blade when he stumbled upon it. Actually, it could not properly be called a blade. It was more like a sliver of sharp ceramic. About a foot long, it lay half buried in the sand that lined one side of the grand enclosure’s largest stream. Kneeling, Walker stared at the shiny exposed portion of the fragment, noting how it caught the light. Noting that it held an edge. A quick glance showed no one in his immediate vicinity. George was off somewhere chatting with friends. A brace of Moorooloos slip-slid past, skating on slime-coated foot pads, their attention on one another.
The origin of the ceramic sliver was a mystery. Something left over from the original construction of the enclosure, perhaps. Or even better, some kind of forgotten tool. Either way, it might prove useful. Moving forward so that his body concealed his actions as much as possible from unseen monitors, he reached down and quickly pulled the sliver from its sandy bed. That’s when he discovered that it held a sharp edge. It would be good to have a weapon, however primitive. And if the sliver turned out to be a tool of some kind, it would be interesting to experiment with its capabilities. Perhaps it might even be capable of passing through or otherwise disabling a Vilenjji restraining field.
As he rose, he was momentarily startled to see a small alien staring in his direction. He recognized it as a Ghouaba, citizen of a world known as Ayll VI. A male of its species, the Ghouaba was a short, slim biped whose long arms caused its four-fingered hands to drag on the ground when it walked. It had large, owlish eyes; ears that were capable of facing backward or forward; a wide, toothless mouth that seemed to split its flattened, ovoidal skull almost in half; and a small, constantly wiggling proboscis. It looked at him for a moment before turning and walking away with a loose-limbed stride that made it appear virtually boneless, which it was not.
Taking a deep breath, Walker headed back across the grand enclosure, taking as direct a route as possible toward his own personal environment. Once there and safely back inside the tent, he carefully drew the souvenir out from beneath his shirt. No one had challenged his acquiring of the prize.
On closer inspection, he saw to his growing excitement that the fragment was indeed more than just a broken shard of ceramic or other construction material. There were markings in unknown script on one side and several lightly tinted depressions on the other. When he cautiously pushed a finger into one of the large, shallow depressions, it glowed with life. So did the sharp edge of the device. Moving his free hand toward it, he quickly sensed the heat it was generating. Better and better. Was the device some kind of cutting tool? That would not only serve as a weapon, but might even offer a way out of the great circular enclosure. Of course, once outside he had nowhere to go, but it would be nice to have a choice if, say, the Vilenjji started rounding up captives for medical experimentation or some equally disturbing activity. Better to have the option to delay the inevitable rather than to quietly accede to it.
As he was studying the remaining depressions, wondering what they might do, something wrapped tight around his lower right leg and yanked forcefully. He went down hard on his face and chest, the air whooshing out of him as he was dragged backward out of the tent. Furious, he twisted around—to see a pair of Vilenjji towering over him. One had an arm flap wrapped securely around his ankle, the suckers gripping firmly. The other was gazing down at him with that creepy horizontal, wraparound stare. Its sucker flaps held a long, tapering instrument whose point was aimed directly at Walker’s chest. He went very still.
He also noted the care with which the Vilenjji who had dragged him out of the tent took the ceramic sliver, pulling it gently free of the human’s reluctant fingers. This accomplished, it turned to its companion and hooted softly, like an owl in training for an avian rendition of Handel. Automatically, the implant in Walker’s head translated. The Vilenjji was customarily terse.
“Got it.”
“How comes a jiab to be in the compound?” the alien wielding the rifle, or whatever it was, responded.
Hairs, or cilia, atop the other’s tapering skull fluttered slightly. “Lost. Carelessness. No damage done.”
Together, they examined the recumbent human, who was watching them closely and breathing hard. The tip of the weapon device moved slightly. Walker closed his eyes. When he opened the
m again, the two Vilenjji were departing. Slowly, he sat up. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of a much smaller figure standing just outside the boundary of his private bit of transplanted Sierra.
The Ghouaba was looking straight at him and grinning. At least, Walker thought it was a grin. He might be completely misinterpreting the expression. But he was not misinterpreting the Ghouaba’s stance, nor the ease it exhibited in the company of the two withdrawing Vilenjji. It was instantly clear to Walker how his captors had learned of his possession of the device. There was no other reason for the Ghouaba to be there with them.
“You little big-eared bastard!” he growled.
Perhaps the Vilenjji were out of translation range. Perhaps they chose simply to ignore the biped’s angry comment, which was not directed at them in any case. But the Ghouaba heard, and understood, as its own implant deciphered the human’s comment. Despite the fact that Walker was twice its size and many times its mass, it did not appear intimidated.
“Touch-eh me-eh and Vilenjji see-eh,” it countered. “Hurt-eh me-eh and ugly Earth-thing die-eh. Eh-theht!” Turning away, it confidently showed the human its back. Possibly also its backside, though Walker was wholly ignorant of Ghouaban biology.
Rising, ignoring the warning, he started for the grand enclosure, intending to follow the little betrayer until the Vilenjji had absented themselves. Then he remembered George’s story of the Tripodan, who had attacked and killed another of the Vilenjji’s specimens. “Never saw it again,” the dog had concluded the tale by telling him.
As he stood debating what to do, all but shaking with rage, a vista of all-too-familiar mountains and forest and sky appeared, replacing his view of the grand enclosure. No, he thought wildly as he rushed forward. But there was no mistaking the reality of the illusion, if that was not an oxymoron. Sure enough, as he attempted to push through the forced perspective of the restored panorama, he came up against the familiar tingling, and then pain, of a reactivated restraining field.
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