Lost and Found Page 11

  Only when he was certain that the creature had once more entered into a state of repose did Walker edge his way toward the artificial panorama that separated him from the grand enclosure. His heart sank when he discovered that the restraining field remained in place. He was trapped in here with this thing. For how long, only his captors knew. Were they waiting to see how long he could survive in what at best was the temperamental presence of his gigantic new roommate? The prospect only intensified the hatred he felt for his captors. How, he wondered, did this creature feel about the Vilenjji? Did it possess enough awareness, sufficient cognizance, to experience such complex emotions? What would it do when it awoke of its own accord, instead of being startled to wakefulness by an unexpected intrusion? Would it be more amenable to the uninvited such as himself? Or would it awaken hungry? Walker felt like dinner, in both senses of the word.

  Nightfall tended to arrive more swiftly in the new enclosure while darkness lingered longer, indicating a different night-day cycle than that of Earth. While the enclosure’s denizen slept through it all, Walker found himself being awakened by the slightest sound. Paradoxical that he should be disturbed by the activity of some small alien arthropod or the falling of a root section when the tossings and turnings of the resident he truly feared generated far more disturbance. But when he was asleep, his nerves were unable to distinguish between sounds, and so woke him at the slightest noise. Normally he would have relied on George, who was a naturally much lighter sleeper, to keep watch for him while he rested. But George wasn’t here.

  Faux morn brought with it a waking chill that found him shivering in his clothing. No tent, no sleeping bag, had been transferred from his own enclosure to enhance his comfort. Given the insult and hurt he had perpetrated on the Vilenjji, he supposed he ought to be grateful that they hadn’t killed him outright.

  Rising, he advanced experimentally toward the resting place of the enclosure’s dominant life-form. Expecting to find it still slumbering, he was surprised to see it squatting down before a flat piece of terrain from which blossomed pitcherlike growths. As Walker looked on, a perfect circle of the flora sank into the ground, to reappear moments later laden with a ceramic cistern full of water and the largest food bricks he had yet seen. There were none of the especially tasty cubes that he and George had come to prize so highly. Only several varieties of food, and the water. He thought he recognized the general appearance of at least one type of brick, though that did not mean he could identify its specific components.

  Overnight, the gnawing in his stomach had metamorphosed into a throbbing insistence. He had to eat something, if only to keep his strength up in case he had to run. Given a choice between Vilenjji food bricks and alien greensward, he opted for the former. The problem lay in obtaining one.

  Looking around, he searched his immediate surroundings until he found a large piece of wood that was banded like a zebra. Though hollow, the broken branch was still sturdy and intact. It was a poor weapon, but better a poor one than none, he decided as he retraced his steps.

  Resting the makeshift club on his right shoulder while gripping it firmly with one hand, he made his approach from the side of the food lift directly opposite the monster, advancing one deliberate but unthreatening step at a time. He had covered half the distance between his starting point and the place where the being squatted when it finally took notice of his approach. Contracted against the side of the massive body while the creature ate, both eyestalks now extended to half their length while the narrow black pupils expanded slightly. It was watching him.

  It was also feeding an entire food brick into its vertically aligned jaws. Interlocking teeth, some the size of Walker’s open palm, sliced through the dense, compacted loaf of nourishment as if it were made of butter. If his digestive system could tolerate its chemistry, one such brick, Walker suspected, would easily feed him for a week.

  He continued his slow, steady approach. Slitted ebony pupils contracted within bulging eyeballs. A low rumbling sound emerged from somewhere deep within the creature. It sounded like the start-up of a piece of heavy machinery in need of lubrication. The food was very close now. Bending forward slightly, his gaze flicking rapidly between bricks and beast, Walker reached for the nearest piece of food.

  Two thick tentacles lashed out at him. The speed of the hulking creature’s reaction caught Walker off guard. Tentacle tips cracked like whips only inches from his extended hand. Instantly, he drew it back. A check showed that all five fingers were intact. As a warning, the gesture was unmistakable. Next time, he worried, those flailing twin limbs might break his wrist. Or snap his hand off at the joint. Uncertain what to do next, he hesitated, wondering at the same time if any Vilenjji were studying the confrontation. Or if they cared.

  He had to have food. And water.

  Unlimbering the club, he held it as high as he could and advanced again toward the food pile, intending to knock a brick off to one side. In the face of such a determined incursion, surely the beast wouldn’t begrudge the harmless biped one brick. Walker’s greatest defense lay in the hope that it would not consider him worth killing. And there was always the chance that the Vilenjji, desirous of defending however small and defiant a part of their investment, would intervene to protect him. He would have had more confidence in the latter possibility had it not been the Vilenjji who had placed him in his present circumstances in the first place.

  Chewing slowly, the monster continued to watch him as he moved forward. When he tentatively thrust the tip of the branch toward the food, it struck. Ready for it this time, Walker swung the club up, around, and down with both hands, striking at the two tentacles. He did not miss.

  The impact reverberated back up his arms. As for the object of his attack, it did not even blink. Instead, both tentacles wrapped around the length of tree branch and ripped it out of his grasp. Had he not let go, he would have found himself lifted into the air along with the club. The creature considered the length of wood for a brief moment. Then the two tentacles snapped it like a toothpick and tossed the fragments casually aside. Meanwhile, both other manipulative appendages continued their steady transfer of food bricks into the seemingly insatiable maw. This feeding was interrupted occasionally as the creature took long drafts of water from the glossy cistern. Standing out of reach, a weary and frustrated Walker could only eye thirstily the rivulets of water that did not vanish down the slit of a mouth.

  Only when it had consumed the last of the generous pile of food bricks and drained the cistern dry did the creature rise to its full height, turn, and amble back to its resting place. When he was sure it had lost interest in him, Walker rushed forward. On hands and knees, he made a minute inspection of the place where the food had emerged from belowground. Not a crumb remained, though he did manage to lap up some spilled water that had collected off to one side in a couple of tiny pools.

  Thoroughly disheartened, he sat back and stared at the once-more recumbent form of the entity with whom he was being forced to share living space. If nothing else, he could be grateful for the fact that it was not overtly hostile. More than anything, it ignored him. That did not mean he was incapable of irritating it to the point of taking his head off. Yet he had to take that risk. He needed food, fuel. A few more days of this and he would be too feeble to mount a satisfactory attack.

  The wooden club had proven less than a failure. What else could he try? His previous assault had been on the Vilenjji. If he succeeded in throwing enough dirt and gravel into one of those protuberant, side-stalked eyes, would it temporarily blind this creature? If so, he could grab a food brick or two and then run like hell. But run where? Though larger than his piece of transplanted Sierra Nevada, the alien’s enclosure was not extensive. Unlike Sque’s eco-quarters, there were no caves to hide within. Would the creature even bother to come after him, or would it simply wipe its dirtied eye clean and resume eating? He had been unable to come up with a satisfactory approximation of its intelligence level. Clearly, it was aware
of him. But in what capacity? As a competitor for food, or as another kind of intelligence?

  It didn’t matter. None of it. Because in the final analysis, he had to have something to eat.

  He could have made the next assault during the midday meal, or at dinnertime. Despite his hunger, he held off. For one thing, his inaction might help to lull the creature into believing that the human had no further interest in trying to partake of the Vilenjji-supplied nourishment. For another, there was always the chance that it might prove sleepier and less alert when breakfast was delivered in the morning. Somehow, Walker managed a decent night’s sleep, curled up in a far corner of the environment as far from its monstrous occupant as possible.

  False sunrise was followed by both human and monster awakening and moving separately to the place where the food appeared. As before, the creature squatted down expectantly opposite the circular cutout in the ground, its four slightly thicker supportive tentacles compacting beneath it like the folds of an accordion. Halting on the other side, well out of reach, Walker waited. Throughout the silent dance, neither entity made a sound.

  The circle subsided, reappeared a moment later piled high with the usual assortment of food bricks and a freshly refilled cistern of water. The creature began to eat. Deliberately doing nothing for a while, a crouching Walker watched and waited. Then he rose and sauntered forward, hands in pockets. Espying his approach, the monster rumbled its familiar warning. Walker halted, his attention apparently drawn elsewhere. The creature resumed eating.

  Bringing his clenched right fist out of his pocket, Walker threw the handful of carefully scavenged pebbles hard at the monster’s right eye and prepared to dash toward the food as soon as it reacted. It did so—but not as he had hoped.

  The two right-side tentacles, which were not engaged in feeding, rose and swatted the flung gravel aside like the harmless grit it was. To see something so massive react to an unforeseen attack with such speed and dexterity was astonishing. The creature barely paused in its chewing. Not one piece of rock got through to strike the bulbous, staring black eye.

  A different sound emerged from the beast. Compared to the utterances that had preceded it, the lilting growl was relatively low-key. A grunt, Walker wondered? A belch? A chuckle at his utter and complete ineffectuality?

  He fell to his knees, as much from dejection as fatigue. Plainly, there was no way he was going to force this hulking apparition away from the food and water. Unless the Vilenjji reached their fill of the confrontation, or of the punishment they were subjecting him to, or both, he was going to die here: probably of hunger. Another day or two of hopeless attacks against the inarticulate master of this relocated alien veldt would see him rendered too weak to do anything.

  Maybe that was what the Vilenjji were after, he thought suddenly. Maybe as soon as he was reduced to near death, as soon as he had learned his lesson, they would appear and return him to his own enclosure. The question was, unfamiliar as they were with human physiology, whether he would have the strength remaining to recover from the experience, and if so, would he suffer any permanent damage as a result of it?

  Kneeling there on the yellow ground cover, he contemplated finding as comfortable a corner as possible, lying down, and waiting for whatever might come. There was always the possibility, of course, that the Vilenjji would do nothing. That they would not intervene, but would simply leave him to his own devices. To starve to death.

  A thought sparked. Maybe the problem was that he was thinking too much like an ex-football player, or a proactive commodities trader. Maybe he ought to fall back on the advice of others, of friends. Friends like a certain dog.

  It was worth a try. At this point, he had very little to lose. And it suited him to be doing something instead of crawling off into a corner like a trapped rat. Maybe that was what the Vilenjji were expecting and waiting for him to do. Well, he would not give the smug purple bastards the satisfaction. He might well die, he might be killed by the creature into whose environment they had deliberately placed him, but he would not surrender without a fight.

  Or without a little vigorous cowering.

  Falling first to all fours, he then dropped even lower, all the way down onto his belly. The fuzzy yellow alien ground cover tickled his nose and cheeks. He ignored it as he began to squirm guardedly forward.

  As the creature continued methodically demolishing food bricks, one dark round eye rotated on its stalk to watch him. Gritting his teeth, he lowered his head until his face was all but in the dirt. Occasionally he would glance up to check his location.

  As he neared the monster, he slowed his pace. This required little effort since he was near collapse from lack of nourishment anyway. It took nearly an hour to submissively travel the last forty feet on his belly. By that time, exhausted and filthy, he hardly cared whether he succeeded in snatching a few crumbs of food brick or not.

  It struck him that he had made it to within arm’s length of the circle that descended into the ground and returned with food. While the bricks themselves were all but odorless, he could swear that he smelled the water in the cistern: cool, sweet, and beckoning. Glancing up, he saw the huge alien looming over him. It continued to eat without pause. There were only three of the big food bricks remaining. Walker hardly dared to breathe. He only needed one. One brick, he thought as he fought to remain focused through an increasing haze of frailty. One brick, and if he was extremely fortunate, maybe a few swallows of water. Timidly, slowly, he extended his right hand as he reached for the nearest unit. Try as he might, he could not still the trembling in his fingers.

  Like a rust-colored steel cable, one thick tentacle slammed down inches from his questing fingers, blocking their path.

  Walker could have burst out crying. He could have launched into hysterics. He could have risen to his feet and made a mad, doubtless futile dash for the food. But the time spent on board the Vilenjji vessel had changed him. Time, and talking to his fellow captives. Especially to one fellow captive. He neither went mad nor lost control.

  Instead, he rolled onto his back, bent his knees up toward his chest, held his open hands palm upward, let his tongue loll loose, and opened his eyes wide in what he hoped was a manner any sentient would interpret as doleful pleading.

  The reaction this provoked was not expected.

  “Stop that,” the creature rumbled softly.

  Walker maintained his posture of naked vulnerability. He was sure the creature had spoken. He had seen its ripsaw-lined jaws move at the same time as his implanted translator had brought him the words. Nevertheless, he stayed as he was. For one thing, he was unsure precisely what the monster wanted him to stop.

  “I said, stop that,” it growled a second time.

  Walker retracted his tongue and swallowed. “Stop what?” he whined, as piteously as he could manage.

  “Groveling. Begging. It’s embarrassing. No intelligent being should have to act like that.”

  There was no question that it was the creature who was addressing him, Walker realized. It was after all not a mute mountain of bristle-coated alien protoplasm, then, but something more.

  Warily, he rolled onto his belly and backed up onto hands and knees. “No intelligent being should let another one starve.”

  “Why not?” the newly voluble monster grunted. “Supposedly intelligent beings should not try to reduce others to the level of property, yet we are ample evidence such practices exist.”

  “Then you and I have something in common.” Rising slowly to his feet, Walker brushed muck and ground cover from his dirty clothing.

  “We have nothing in common except misplaced intellect.” Eyestalks rose and dipped. “Sentience and sentenced, adrift among the stars, lost dreaming.”

  Oh, Lord, Walker thought. Alien haiku. Or something like that. Next thing you knew, the monster would launch into an animated discourse on flower arranging. Was there an opening here he could exploit? And if he tried, would it translate properly, or end up getting him killed
? Drunk from lack of nourishment, he felt he had nothing to lose.

  “Uh . . . prisoners in arms, trapped among many strangers, sharing pain.”

  Both eyes turned to look at him as the entire massive body, squatting on its under-tentacles, pivoted in his direction. Walker was uncomfortably aware of the proximity of those clashing jaws and their serrated, interlocking teeth. More significantly, the tentacle that had descended like a falling log to block his access to the food was abruptly drawn aside.

  “Brothers in singing, forced into small place, empathy tendered.”

  “Wondering if we two, called to . . . oh hell,” Walker concluded, unable to finish the attempt. Then the food brick was in his clutching hands, pieces of it crumbling away beneath the pressure of his desperate fingers. He started to turn, to run—only to have the same tentacle that had previously blocked his access to the bricks drop down to cut off his intended escape route. Turning, he saw the vast torso leaning toward him, almost on top of him.

  “Stay and converse, fellow singer of rhythms; loneliness taunts. Rather rage than raconteur, would I—’til now.”

  “Sure. Glad to have a chat.” Unable to hold off any longer, Walker opened his mouth and took a huge bite out of the food brick he was holding. At that moment, for all he cared, he might as well have been swallowing alien compost. All he knew was that it went down easily and settled comfortingly into the vacant pit of his stomach. He forced himself to eat more slowly. When later he moved to the cistern and shoved his cupped hands inside, drawing water to his lips, the creature again made no move to stop him.

  As his strength slowly returned, he remembered his own loneliness, before he had made contact with George. Maybe that was all this thing wanted, too—some like-minded company. Given its overawing size and intimidating appearance, he could understand why the other captives might shy away from any hesitant, clumsy overtures. Perhaps foolishly, he decided to be entirely truthful from the very beginning. Taking a seat opposite the monster, still nibbling on the remnants of the large food brick he clutched as if it was an official Federal Depository ingot, he addressed himself to his unexpectedly lyrical fellow prisoner.