Lost and Found (3 page)

What had they wanted with him? he wondered as he crawled back out of the tent. If it was just a look, he would have much preferred that they ask first. Offered the choice, he would have been perfectly content to stand still for a painless examination instead of getting whacked around and knocked out. What kind of advanced examination technique was that? At least, he reflected, they hadn’t shot him. Not with anything whose consequences he could detect. Emerging from the tent and standing up outside, he felt carefully of his body one more time. Everything seemed to be where it belonged. He was not missing any significant appurtenances. All appeared to be working normally, suggesting that he retained all of his internal organs and their concomitant vital connections.

Had they planted something in him? A transmitter of some kind, perhaps? Or had he simply seen too many bad movies, too much lowest-common-denominator television? How could he begin to impugn motives to aliens, anyway? Whatever they wanted from him, they had obviously obtained to their satisfaction and moved on—to the next camper at the next lake, or to the next wandering sheep herder on the next continent. No doubt they had their aims, their desires, and their own reasons for doing what they did. Doubtless he would never know what those might have been. In this instance, he was more than content to continue to dwell in ignorance.

Raising his arms, he stretched. Despite the violent encounter, he had rested surprisingly well. Having downed the juice, now he was hungry. Initially anxious to pack up and leave, he found that there was no reason to do so. To all outward and inward appearances, it did not appear that he was going to require medical attention. What had happened, had happened. It was over and done with. There was no reason to rush his departure. Besides, another two days at the lake would see him returning to Chicago in triumph, to collect on his bet.

Having survived the astonishing encounter, he found that he felt remarkably well. Exhilarated, even. Such an achievement demanded something of a celebration. In lieu of the usual breakfast bars, he would break out the camp stove and make pancakes. A bit of a project, especially for a city boy like himself, but it was not as if he had to hurry to make a four o’clock appointment. Turning, he prepared to reenter the tent.

The alien that was gazing back at him might have been one of those who had participated in his capture the night before. Or it might have been a completely new individual. In fact, as a stunned Walker gaped, it seemed to him that it must be a different entity because it was noticeably shorter than the three he had confronted previously: no more than six-foot-six or -seven. It had the same wraparound eyes, the same tapering skull, the same sucker-lined upper and lower limb flaps. Its garb was different, however. Looser and paler, as if its owner were clad in affectionate smoke. It stood gazing at him for another moment, then rotated on its two black-shod under-limbs and lumbered away.

Behind it, mountains were missing. So were trees, and his 4X4, and the dirt trail at whose terminus the SUV had been parked. Also blue sky, clouds, and sunlight. In their place was a high, dreary wall of unknown material studded with unrecognizable protuberances and tubes that resembled more than anything else the skin of some dead, bloated, diseased cetacean. Not everything was the same monotonous, dull hue. Some of the projections were dark brown, others a jaundiced yellow. Here and there, hieroglyphs in neon navy blue or carmine floated above specific locations on the wall like photonic barnacles. It looked like a great, hollowed-out, tubular whale.

It was a colorful hell, in a sickly sort of way, a badly shaken Walker decided.

Trembling, he leaned slightly on one of the flexible tent poles for support. It felt real and familiar in his grasp, white and cool and plasticky. He inhaled deeply, desperately. The air was still sweet. When he kicked lightly at the ground underfoot, gravel rattled. In the trees off to his right, the jay and the chipmunk had resolved their differences and gone their separate ways. All seemed well, and healthy, and normal.

Except for one corner of reality that had gone missing.

A window into his world, he thought. They’ve somehow opened a window into the world that enabled them to look in on him. Unconsciously, he found himself backing up until a cold damp began to chill his ankles. Looking down, he saw that he had retreated all the way into the lake shallows. Stepping out of the water, he turned to look across the glistening expanse to the far shore and the slope of the snow-crowned mountain that towered above it. The longer he looked, the less sure he was of its reality. There was a hint of curious foreshortening, of a fakery of space, that whispered of someone, or something, playing hide-the-slipper with his optic nerves.

Setting out determinedly, he headed for the dirt track where his 4X4 had been parked. If they had removed it, what else of his had they tampered with? No matter. If necessary, he could walk into Bug Jump. It was all downhill from the lake. Let them track and follow him with their window, if that was what they wanted. Maybe they had taken his SUV in order to study its primitive mechanical schematics.

On the other side of the road, he got a shock. One that was literal as well as mental. The slight electric charge caused him to draw back in surprise. Tentatively, he reached out. His nerves were jarred again; slightly more forcefully this time. Beyond the invisible barrier, the road seemed to stretch out tantalizingly toward nearby forest. But no matter how high he reached or how low he crouched, he could not advance beyond the spot marked by the unseen electrical field.

It was the same no matter which direction he, with an increasing sense of panic and urgency, took. North or south, left or right, after traversing forty feet of dirt and gravel, he inevitably encountered a similar restraining electric charge. Despite the cold, he stripped off his clothes and waded out into the lake. Sure enough, after walking, wading, and eventually swimming some forty feet away from shore, he found himself driven back by the all-encircling, invisible field. Lost in mounting fear, he had neglected to consider what might happen to him if he made contact with a strong electrical field while simultaneously immersed in water. But it did not matter. The water did not lethally amplify the effects of the field. Even though he was submerged up to his neck in the little corner of lake, the jolt to his nervous system was no greater than what he had experienced while standing on dry land.

Swimming back, he staggered out of the icy water and returned to the tent to get a towel. Emerging while drying himself, he discovered that where previously there had been one, there were now two of the aliens standing in the corridor and staring at him. He was not sure whether he wanted to scream or cry.

Forgetting his nakedness, still wiping at himself with the towel, he walked around the tent to confront them.

“Goddammit, who are you? What have you
done
to me? Where is this place?”

The last thing he expected was an answer.

The slightly larger of the pair, who like its companion professed utter disinterest in Walker’s nakedness, opened its slit of a mouth. Within, something ghostly white wriggled unpleasantly.

“Long journey,” it gargled. “Behave.”

Then it turned and clumped away, followed by its companion.

“Wait!” Attempting to follow them, Walker discovered he could see a short distance down the corridor, or tunnel, or whatever it was through which they were striding. It curved darkly to the left, still dense with pseudo-organic protrusions and swellings. To his immediate left and right he had a glimpse of daylight of differing intensity that emanated from unseen sources. Then he came again into contact with something invisible and biting. It was a more powerful shock than any he had felt thus far. Nerves jangling, he staggered back, holding his right wrist as he tried to shake the pins and needles from his hand.

“‘Long journey,’” the creature had said. How he had understood the alien, Walker did not know. Even as he’d heard the sounds, he was aware that the entity was not speaking and he was not hearing English. But he had understood. A journey implied they were all going somewhere together. Journey. His insides went cold and dull, as if he had suddenly become a hollow shell, devoid of any feeling.

The aliens had not opened a window into his reality. They had transplanted a portion of his reality into theirs. Familiar surroundings. It would not do to stick him in a barren cage, or a box. They intended to keep him comfortable—for what purpose he could not imagine and could not envision. Long journey. To where? And with what at its end? It was clear now what had happened to him. He had been abducted—along with his tent, his gear, a minuscule portion of Cawley Lake, and projections or holograms or fake foreshortened representations of everything that surrounded same.

Shaking, he returned to the tent. A check of his cell phone produced nothing—not static, not even a carrier wave. Talk about your long distance. Marcus Walker, phone home. He started to shake.

This won’t do you any good, he told himself firmly. Get a hold of yourself—or they’re liable to.

He stayed there for a long time, until fake afternoon overtook the fake morning. Only when his legs began to cramp did he feel he had no choice but to step outside.

Nothing had changed except for the position of the sham sun in the fraudulent sky. The corridor beyond his cell, or cage, or whatever it was, was empty. No aliens were to be seen staring back at him, an absence for which he was unaccountably grateful. Not even a little bit of what had happened to him so far could be accounted a hallucination.

He dressed. And having dressed, prepared to make pancakes. Anything to take his mind off what had happened to him. Besides, he doubted that his captors would look kindly, or indifferently, on a hunger strike by a subject they had gone to some trouble to acquire, and he did not want to imagine what methods they might employ to counteract such a demonstration of resistance.

All went well until he tried to fire up the portable propane stove. The self-igniting flame refused to light. Nor would any of the matches he took from his emergency kit work. Snapping them against the striker on the box failed to generate so much as an encouraging spark.

It made sense, he realized when he finally finished cursing and complaining. No matter how advanced, no matter how superior an alien technology, allowing for the presence of uncontrolled open flame was a luxury or a danger that could not be permitted. How the aliens managed to suppress the process of combustion in his stove, let alone a match, he did not know. Finding some satisfaction in private grumbling, he reluctantly put the pancake mix and cooking equipment back inside the tent and settled for opening a box of crackers. This modest nutrition he prepared to supplement with a can of garlic-flavored Cheez Whiz, wondering as he did so if the aliens would permit the can to operate under pressure, or if their life support system would find it as objectionable as it did open flame.

As he prepared to squeeze pasteurized-process cheese food onto a waiting wheat thin, a hole about a yard in diameter appeared in the ground in front of him. Mesmerized, he stared at the dark, perfectly round opening where seconds before there had been solid gravel and grit. As he watched, the missing circle of surface smoothly and soundlessly returned from unseen depths. Atop it was a flat sheet of thin yellow material on which sat two neat piles of paperback-sized bricks; one plain brown, the other white mottled with several shades of green. There was also a two-foot-tall cylinder of blue metal, open at the top. Color-coded, he wondered? Or were the tints just coincidental.

Unsure if he was interpreting the offering correctly, and wondering how and with what they were watching him, he squirted some of the Cheez Whiz onto the cracker. In response, the round platform descended several inches, then rose back up again, a little more rapidly this time. Reluctant to respond, he was also disinclined to get zapped for refusing to do so. Whatever was on the yellow sheet, he decided, it could not be a whole lot worse than Cheez Whiz, especially to a Chicagoan used to real food.

Setting his erstwhile lunch aside, he crawled forward to study the presentation more closely. While none of it looked particularly appetizing, neither did the bricks drip alien mucus or quiver like gelatin. Purely on aesthetics, he decided to try one of the mildly attractive dappled white bricks first. Slipping one end into his mouth, he bit down cautiously. While the consistency was disagreeably rubbery, the taste was not unpleasant: something like congealed beef broth, and not too salty. In contrast, the brown brick was definitely vegan material. If the victuals
were
color-coded, he reflected, they had been concocted according to a cipher that did not correspond to human analogs. As for the cylinder, insofar as he could determine, it contained nothing more than cold water. It might also be heavily drugged, he realized, but that seemed unlikely. His captors had no need to resort to such subterfuges. They had already shown that they could put him under any time they wished.

We must keep the specimen alive and healthy, he mused gloomily. No matter. He saw no reason not to eat. And there was Cheez Whiz for dessert.

Nothing appeared in the corridor to study the human eating. He was sure they were watching, monitoring him anyway. Given their manifest technological sophistication, it would be silly of them not to. Since there was nothing he could do about it, he decided to try not to think about it.

There were more of the food bricks than he could eat. Not knowing how or when he might be fed again, he did his best to try and finish it all. After a while, the camouflaged delivery platform sank back down out of sight, only to reappear swiftly minus the tray/plate and once more covered with gravel to match its surface surroundings. He wondered where the disappearing alien dumbwaiter went, what lay behind it, how his food was prepared, who or what decided it was edible for him, and finally came to the conclusion it was much too soon to try to figure it all out.

For the rest of the afternoon he wandered around his enclosure (as he had come to think of it), exploring its limits while checking for possible gaps in the system of electrical fields that hemmed him in. After all, just because he was a captive did not necessarily mean he had been taken off Earth. The aliens might still be on the ground somewhere, or have a facility hidden high in the Himalayas, or (less promisingly for one afflicted with thoughts of escape) deep under the sea.