At least the endless requests to speak with him and his friends, to meet them in person, to listen to them discourse on their individual and conjoined ordeals, were growing more and more infrequent. It was after the conclusion of one such discussion, involving a fascinating yet disquieting gathering of estimable Sessrimathe and representatives from at least a dozen other sentient species, that what had really been bothering Walker hit him hard. Hit him with similar force, though different overtones, as the same words that had been spoken to him by the K’eremu Sequi’aranaqua’na’senemu in the course of their initial encounter aboard the Vilenjji ship.
“That is how you should now view yourself: as a novelty,” she had told him what seemed like eons ago.
And that was what he was, and his friends, too, he realized with crushing certainty: novelties. The Vilenjji had intended to market them as such. The Sessrimathe had saved them from that prospect, only for them to become . . . exactly the same thing. True, they were guests, not prisoners. Honored visitors, not chattel. But the end was the same. As freed captives from exotic, unvisited worlds, they were novelties.
Just as clearly, their novelty value was starting to wear off.
That did not mean they were going to be ignored, or worse still, thrown out onto what passed for the streets of Autheth. Having dealt with them for several months now, having met a great many of them on an individual basis, Walker felt he knew their kindly and civilized hosts that well at least. They might be three-sided, but they were not two-faced.
Though they enjoyed their newfound privacy, the four of them had been through too much together not to occasionally take pleasure in one another’s company. Each had their own interests that their residences could not satisfy. Braouk would ask to be taken to the Jaimoudu Mountains, there to alternately compose or recite to the winds, as the mood took him. Sque had taken to spending as much time as she could by the shores of Seremathenn’s single vast ocean, communing in private with the waves until her escorts despaired of persuading her to return to her assigned dwelling. George spent most of his time exploring the immense pseudo-tree that was their building, relying on his innate ability to make friends with any intelligence, no matter what its shape or species, to find his way around.
All these individual outings provided fodder for conversation when they, by common agreement, gathered together in the common room at least once a week to swap tales of explorations and experiences. It was in the course of one such get-together that Walker finally gave voice to what had begun to trouble him more and more.
“I think our hosts are getting tired of us.”
There was immediate objection. “I see no evidence of that,” Braouk rumbled in response. “Certainly to me, no one has said, anything untoward.”
“I linger by the sea for as long as I wish, lamenting the absence of familiar smells but luxuriating in the sensation of it.” Sque lay coiled atop her appendages in front of the opening to the small, comfortable cave she had caused to be installed in the common room. As counterpoint, George had caused to be created something like a shag rug that was anything but, mostly because it was semi-alive and followed him around, while Walker had finally managed to get the dwelling to fabricate a weird piece of furniture that at least nominally resembled a soft chair.
“As the day grows late, my escorts often become anxious,” the K’eremu continued, “but they are too respectful of a manifestly superior intelligence to insist on my leaving. I only do so to humor them—and to get back here to get something to eat.”
“I guess I’m easy.” Lying prone on his rugenstein thing, its cushioning tendrils wriggling unnaturally beneath him as they massaged his belly, George looked up at Walker out of eyes that were presently more curious than soulful. “Something the matter, Marc? Food not to your liking anymore? Temperature not adjusting to your taste? Daily workload of doing nothing and having to find something to occupy your time making mischief with your stressed-out human psyche? Feeling guilty for having been dropped into a swell setup like this?”
Walker shifted uneasily in his chair. Between him and the dog but a good distance from the moisture-loving Sque, a fire burned brightly a few inches above the floor. Its purpose was solely decorative, since a word from any of the residents could instantly adjust the ambient temperature within the room. He had sometimes wondered, but had never gotten around to inquiring, as to the hovering conflagration’s source of fuel and combustion. In the end, it was enough that the building provided it on request. It was bright, and cheery, and hinted of home, yet remained somehow . . . cold. An odd condition, to say the least, to ascribe to a fire.
“It’s comfortable, George. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was ‘swell.’ ”
“You don’t have to go that far,” the dog responded. “Whenever the need arises, I’ll say it for you. ‘This setup is swell.’ ” Woolly eyebrows narrowed, and his tone grew suddenly serious. “You’re unhappy.”
“Not unhappy, George. Not unhappy. Homesick.”
The dog let out a disgusted snort and sank his snout deeper into the affectionate shag. The rug purred contentedly as it continued to caress him. “I’ve seen a determined poodle scare off a pair of burglars, I’ve laid between rails while twenty minutes of freight train clanked past a foot over my head, I’ve fished a whole, slightly overdone chateaubriand out of a restaurant Dumpster—but I’ve never yet met a contented human. What is it with you apes, anyway?” Both eyes rolled ceilingward in irritation
“I can’t help it, George. I miss home. I miss . . . things.” Walker gestured behind his chair, back in the direction of his room. “Don’t get me wrong: The Sessrimathe have been great to us. And their technology is— Well, if I could transfer the specifics, any tenth of a percent of what we’ve been exposed to would make me the wealthiest man on Earth. But it’s not everything. I don’t think any technology is. I miss the corned beef and Swiss at the corner deli near my condo. I miss Chicago pizza. I miss the tang of the wind off the river, and the sight of crowds shopping downtown at Christmas. I miss dumpy, ordinary, mind-numbing television. God help me, I miss television commercials. I miss knowing if the Bears are going to make the playoffs, and if there’s another Daley matriculating in the political wings, and what the cocoa crop projections are for the Ivory Coast and the PNG and the Caribbean.” He sighed heavily.
“I miss dating, and going home with a date, and even getting rejected by a date. I miss the water cooler at work and the begonia on my little twelfth-floor porch. I miss reading about what’s happening in the world and the newest hit singer and the latest movie and the next can’t-put-it-down book.” He looked down at his friend, his voice (if not his eyes) misty with remembrance. “Don’t you ever miss anything, George?”
The dog spoke without lifting his muzzle. Swathed in rug, it made him hard to understand. “Dogs are grateful for whatever they happen to possess at the moment, Marc. Humans are always missing too many things.”
Walker looked away. Outside, beyond the wall-to-ceiling transparency, the towering wood-walls of this corner of greater Autheth pulsed with the palest of yellow lights, individual windows such as their own a thousand pinpoints of brilliance against the urbane darkness.
“I can’t stay here,” he mumbled, a bit surprised to finally hear himself say it.
“Oh, for Lassie’s sake!” Standing up, George began walking in circles around the hovering flames. Humping clumsily across the floor, his rug made futile attempts to catch up with him. “What is wrong with you? What were you back home? A movie star? A billionaire? The elephant king? A southeast Asian drug warlord? What did you leave behind that you can’t find a substitute for here? This is a terrific setup! All play, pretty much, with no work. And here’s another one to chew on: Think you’ll live longer under Sessrimathe care, or when poked and cut by pill-prescribing quacks back on Earth? Corned beef sandwiches? Sports results? Give me a break, man!
“So the Sessrimathe and their friends might be growing a little bored with us.
So we’re becoming yesterday’s news. Doesn’t everything, and everybody, anywhere? What matters is how they take care of us, and as far as I’m concerned, this is the best anyone has ever taken care of me! I don’t give a cat’s ass how many arms they’ve got—or eyes, or other appendages. You remember what Cheloradabh said: ‘There’s a fund for this sort of thing.’ Predicament of the moment or not, exotic alien flavor of the week or not, I don’t see why we can’t play off being the poor, primitive former captives of the barbaric Vilenjji for the rest of our natural days. The Sessrimathe, for one, are too civilized to let it be otherwise.” With that he went grumpily silent, allowed his exhausted rug to catch back up to him, and flumped back down onto its welcoming coils.
Except for the crackle of floating flames, it was quiet in the common room. Outside, the myriad lights of Autheth twinkled through the night. Walker checked his watch: one small, ever-present touch of home, and one for which he was every day thankful. In half an hour’s time, the immense and diverse alien metropolis would begin to receive two hours of precisely calibrated rain. A voice made him look up. It was as deep as it was tentative, as musical as it was imposing.
“Uhmmgghh, it may seem ungrateful of me to say this, but—I now experience, from day to day, feelings similar.”
Rising and whirling, George gaped at the Tuuqalian. “What? Not you, too!”
With the two massive tentacles on his left side, Braouk gestured toward the window. His eyestalks were hanging so low they nearly touched the floor where he was squatting.
“Sad it is, the refrain bears saying, home calls. I find welcome here, but not inspiration. And,” the giant added touchingly, “there is the matter of unrequited longing for family left behind.”
“The mark not necessarily of homesickness,” Sque piped up, unlimbering a sufficiency of appendages to emphasize her words, “but of necessity. While I have applied myself to learning what I can during our extended sojourn here, it must be admitted that there is only so much our well-meaning hosts can teach a K’eremu. While their physical science is undeniably impressive, they are plainly lacking when it comes to the higher facets of philosophy, natural science, and many other areas of advanced cogitation. Only among my own kind can I expand my mind fully, and properly engage and exercise all its resources, even though the unique genius that is myself is not always recognized as such even by my own kindred. For those reasons and not for any primitive sense of ‘home illness,’ I see an increasingly urgent need to return to K’erem.”
“Well, fine, that’s just fine. Fine for all of you.” Turning back to Walker, the dog fixed him with a stare that was suddenly challenging instead of consoling, penetrating rather than affectionate. “Aside from the fact that what you’re all wishing for is impossible, what about me?”
Walker blinked. “I don’t get you, George. What about you? You’d be able to go home, too, of course.”
“Really?” His gaze unbroken, the dog cocked his head to one side. “What an enticing prospect, Marc. Look, my tongue is hanging out and I’m salivating at the thought of it.” From his chair, Walker stared uncomprehendingly at his friend and companion. In all their long relationship, including the time spent in captivity aboard the Vilenjji ship, it was the first time he had ever heard George sound bitter. Sarcastic, yes; caustic, yes; but never bitter. Until now.
“Go home to what?” the dog continued derisively. “To be the star of a traveling media circus? A biological freak show? ‘See George, the talking dog, the eighth wonder of the world!’ Or in self-defense would I be expected to just shut up, and for the rest of my life not say another word, or have another discussion with another intelligent being. How would you like to have to live like that?”
Walker levered himself forward in his chair. Though assembled of bars and energy clamps and carefully repositioned bubbles of gas, it was utterly noiseless. “You could always talk to me, George,” he replied softly.
“Yeah. I could always talk to you.” The dog began pacing in swift, tight circles, chasing his own self. “Nothing personal, Marc. We’ve been through a lot together, and I like you. But that’s not enough. You’re not enough. Once upon a time that kind of one-on-one relationship would have been fine. But not only has my intellect been boosted, so have my expectations.” Halting without catching his tail, or his self, he flicked his ears toward the two aliens who were watching from the other side of the room.
“I’ve had to learn how to communicate and deal with K’eremu and Tuuqalian, with Vilenjji and Sessrimathe, and with all the other captives I met in the enclosures on board the Vilenjji vessel.” The woolly head looked back and up at him. “I can’t go back to talking to just one human. Much less barking at him.”
“Opportunities for interaction, with many other peoples, awaits beyond.” Reaching out and forward, the huge yet philosophically inclined Tuuqalian scooped the dog up in his left pair of cablelike tentacles. Bringing both eyestalks close together, Braouk trained on George orbs that taken in tandem were nearly as big as the dog himself.
“I cannot stay here, George. Sequi’aranaqua’na’senemu, she cannot stay here, either. Your friend Marcus Walker cannot stay here. We must all of us try our best to find our way home again, even though it is likely we will fail. You may remain. The civilized Sessrimathe will be glad to take care of you. By remaining, you can look forward to many years of stimulating interaction with their kind as well as with others who come to visit, to trade, and to learn.” Gently, he set George back down on the floor. The pointed tip of one appendage powerful enough to rip the doors off a car lightly scratched the dog between his ears.
George gazed up at the hulking shape. Viewed by an unsuspecting visitor from home in the purposely dimmed light of the room, Braouk had the shadowy silhouette of a perfect nightmare. But to the dog, who by now knew the Tuuqalian well, the alien was a friend: a massive mélange of teeth, tentacles, and bulbous eyes with a heart as big as his body. He turned slightly to his right.
“Sque?”
“You’re asking my opinion? I always knew despite the disparity in physical dimensions which of you two was the more gifted.” Familiar by now with the K’eremu’s casually disparaging speech, Walker said nothing. He had come to find her unbounded egotism almost endearing. From beneath overhanging brows, metal-gray eyes squinted back at the dog. “Loneliness will eventually balance out the initial pleasures to be gained by staying here. I have had time to watch and to learn about you, George. While I could, if forced to, survive in such cocooning surroundings, I do not believe the same to be true of one of your kind. You do not possess sufficient depth of self-importance. You need the company of others.”
“In other words, unlike you, I’m not adequately antisocial enough.”
“Put it however you prefer.” She was too vain to be offended.
“Come with us, George. Something will work itself out.” Walker did not exactly plead, but the more it occurred to him that he might actually lose the company of the dog, his one remaining real contact with home, the deeper grew the sudden and surprising ache that he had developed within.
“Right, sure,” the dog muttered gloomily. “All we have to do is turn left, hang a right, and we’ll find ourselves on the I-55 headed toward the Loop. Provided we can figure out how to parse parsecs. The longer I think about even trying, the more I tend to be of the same opinion as the big guy. As a project, it’s doomed from the start. An undertaking in both senses of the word.”
Braouk drew up eyestalks as well as tentacles. “Not to try, to concede the inevitable, cowardice becomes.”
“Oh, now that’s fair.” The dog lay down on his rug, which shivered with delight in response. “Work my emotions from both sides.” He took a deep breath, his sides heaving. With an expression perfected from years of successful begging on the streets of the Windy City, he eyed Walker dubiously. It was several minutes before he finally replied. “All right, I’ll come with you. But only because, like Sque keeps telling me, you need looking after.
”
Walker blinked. A glance in the direction of the K’eremu produced nothing in the way of a response. “Why you little— How long have you two been dissing me behind my back?”
Lying prone on his belly on the rug, George shrugged slightly. “Like I told you, Marc. I need more than you.”
Leaning back in his makeshift chair, Walker was left slowly shaking his head. Before him, the ornamental blaze continued to waltz in midair, fired with the flame of an alien technology. “You know, George, sometimes you’re a real son of a bitch.”
“I should hope so,” the dog replied equably.
By ALAN DEAN FOSTER
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
The Black Hole
Cachalot
Dark Star
The Metrognome and Other Stories
Midworld
Nor Crystal Tears
Sentenced to Prism
Splinter of the Mind’s Eye
Star Trek® Logs One–Ten
Voyage to the City of the Dead
. . . Who Needs Enemies?
With Friends Like These . . .
Mad Amos
The Howling Stones
Parallelities
The Icerigger Trilogy:
Icerigger
Mission to Moulokin
The Deluge Drivers
The Adventures of Flinx of the Commonwealth:
For Love of Mother-Not
The Tar-Aiym-Krang
Orphan Star
The End of the Matter
Bloodhype
Flinx in Flux
Mid-Flinx
Flinx’s Folly
The Damned:
Book One: A Call to Arms
Book Two: The False Mirror
Book Three: The Spoils of War
The Founding of the Commonwealth:
Phylogenesis
Dirge
Lost and Found is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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