Lost and Found by Alan Dean Foster Read Free Book Online

Someone with whom to share his isolation and misery. Someone to talk to besides unresponsive aliens. Even a hobo, even a drug addict sleeping it off. Anyone, someone!
    Then he saw that the shape was not human.

3
    He did not burst out crying at the apparent disappointment. Neither did he take flight, wide-eyed and afraid. Instead, he just stood and stared as the solitary inhabitant of the car wreck nonchalantly ambled toward him. It had two eyes, like him. It had two ears, like him. It had hair, more than him. It had a tail, not like him, and it advanced at a comfortable trot on all fours.
    The dog was a mutt, a forty-pound lump of canine insouciance that looked as if it had been sired by a drunken sea lion who had copulated with an industrial-sized bale of steel wool. Fearless and unafraid, the dog came right up to him, tongue lolling to one side, tail wagging, and sat down.
    It wasn’t a beautiful eighteen-year-old runaway, he reflected ruefully. It wasn’t even a strung-out junkie. But it was alive, and homey-familiar, and of Earth. It was company, though not of the sort he had hoped for. Privately, he found himself envying the mutt. Unencumbered by higher powers of cogitation, it might even be enjoying its new surroundings. Or rather, its transplanted familiar surroundings. Just as he, Walker, had been taken whole and intact along with a copy of his immediate environment, so apparently had the pooch. It might wonder why it could not stray beyond a certain line without being shocked, but doubtless its confusion and bewilderment were mitigated by a steady supply of food and water. Walker wondered what its food bricks looked like, and if they were in fact all that very different from those that were provided to him.
    “Well, here we are,” he muttered aloud as he bent over to pat the dog on the top of its woolly head. “Two terrestrial mammals cast adrift on a sea of alien indifference.”
    “Don’t mix metaphors with me, bud. This isn’t the time or the place for it.”
    He froze. The words were not an auditory illusion. He had seen the dog’s mouth move, had heard the sounds spoken. Which meant the canine shape he was staring down at could not be a real dog. It was an alien invention, perhaps designed and fabricated in some unimaginable alien workshop to ease his loneliness and mitigate his melancholy.
    The dog spoke again. “Why did you stop petting me? I haven’t had anybody pet me in days.” Retracting its tongue and turning, the fuzzy head nodded in the direction of the corridor. “The Vilenjji won’t pet me. I’ve asked them to, but they just give back with that flat, fish-eyed stare of theirs.” The tongue reemerged again as its owner panted softly. “Wish they’d take me for a walk once in a while, though. I get tired of hanging around the alley.” Peering past Walker, who had suddenly turned into an unmoving poster boy for a life modeling class, the dog chirped excitedly, “Hey, you’ve got a pond!” Uttering a single, sharp bark, he bounded past the gaping commodities trader.
    “Wait—wait a minute!” Awakening from his trance, Walker rushed after the dog.
    Not wanting to get wet, or do anything else until he understood better what was happening, he was reduced to standing and calling from the shore while the dog swam and played in the portion of lake. Only when he’d had enough did the mutt dog-paddle out, trot onto shore, and shake himself dry. Absently, Walker wondered if the watching aliens were recording this, too, and whether they were discussing animatedly among themselves the dog’s built-in means of shedding water from its fur.
    Sitting down, the mutt began cleaning himself. In between methodical, energetic licks, he squinted up at the bewildered human whose enclosure he was presently sharing.
    “I’m from Chicago. Illinois.” When a dazed Walker still hesitated to reply, the dog prompted, “You?”
    “The same. Chi—Chicago.”
    “Hey, we’re neighbors! Whaddya know?