They Walked Like Men (1962) by Clifford D. Simak

Author:Clifford D. Simak
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction, Human-Alien Encounters, General, Large Type Books, Fiction
ISBN: 9780786251575
Publisher: Avon Books
Published: 1964-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

“I get you,” said the Dog. “There are times I do not catch so quick. I require a little time.”

“And before I forget to ask you, how come you can talk to me? There is no such thing as a talking dog.”

“Dog?”

“Yes, the thing you are. You look just like a dog.”

“How marvelous!” cried the Dog, enraptured. “So that is what I am. I had met creatures of my general appearance, but they were so different from me and of so many different types. At first I tried communicating with them, but—”

“You mean you’re really as you are. You aren’t something built out of something else, like our friends there in the sack?” “I am myself,” the Dog said proudly. “I would be nothing else even if I could.”

“But you haven’t answered how you can talk to me.” “My friend, if you please, let’s not go into that. It would require so much explanation and we have so little time. I am, you see, not really talking with you. I am communicating, but—”

“Telepathy?” I asked. “Come again—and slowly.”

I told him what telepathy was, or was supposed to be. I made a bad job of it, principally, I suppose, because I knew very little of it.

“Roughly,” said the Dog. “Not exact, however.” I let it go at that. There were other things that were more important.

“You’ve been hanging around my place,” I said. “I saw you yesterday.”

“Why, certainly,” said the Dog. “You were—let me try to put this right—you were the focal point.”

“The focal point,” I said, amazed. All this time I had been thinking I’d just fallen into it. Some guys are like that. If lightning hits a tree in a thousand-acre forest, they’ll be standing underneath it.

“They knew,” said the Dog, “and, of course, I knew. You mean that you were ignorant?” “You said a mouthful, buster.”

We had reached the end of Timber Lane and were out on the highway now, heading back for town.

“You didn’t answer me,” I said, “when I asked what these things are. The name you have for them. Come to think of it, there are a lot of things you haven’t answered.”

“You gave me no chance,” said the Dog. “You ask me things too fast. And you have a funny thinker. It keeps churning round and round.”

The window on his side of the car was open several inches and a sharp breeze was blowing in. It was blowing back his whiskers, smooth against his jaws.

They were heavy, ugly jaws, and he kept them closed. They didn’t move as if he had been, talking—with his mouth, I mean.

“You know about my thinker?” I asked him feebly. “How else,” rejoined the Dog, “could I converse with you? And it’s most disorderly and moving very fast. It will not settle down.”

I thought that over and decided maybe he was right.

Although I didn’t like the connotations of what he’d said. I had a sneaking feeling that he might know everything I knew or thought, although, God knows, he didn’t act that way.

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