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range, less than a hundred klicks, say. And it made sense to keep the subject
pans within easy flyer distance. Certainly Vaddo and the others had gotten to
the troop quickly.
Is, he persisted.
Not. She pointed down the valley. Maybe there.
He could only hope Dors got the general idea. Their signs were scanty and he
began to feel a broad, rising irritation. Pans felt and sensed strongly, but
they were so limited.
Ipan expressed this by tossing limbs and stones, banging on tree trunks.
It didn't help much. The need to speak was like a pressure he could not
relieve. Dors felt it, too. Sheelah chippered and grunted in frustration.
Beneath his mind he felt the smoldering presence of Ipan. They had never been
together this long before and urgency welled up between the two canted systems
of mind. Their uneasy marriage was showing greater strains.
Sit. Quiet. She did. He cupped a hand to his ear.
Bad come?
No. Listen In frustration Hari pointed to Sheelah herself. Blank incom-
prehension in the pan's face. He scribbled in the dust: LEARN FROM
PANS. Sheelah's mouth opened and she nodded.
They squatted in the shelter of prickly bushes and
troop had imbued it with blunt emotions, attached to clefts where a friend
fell and died, where the troop found a hoard of fruits, where they met and
fought two big cats. It was an intricate landscape suffused with feeling, the
pan mechanism of memory.
Hari faintly urged Ipan to think beyond the ridge line and felt in response a
diffuse anxiety. He bore in on that kernel and an image burst into Ipan's
mind, fringed in fear. A rectangular bulk framed against a cool sky. The
Excursion Station.
There. He pointed for Dors.
Ipan had simple, strong, apprehensive memories of the place. His troop had
been taken there, outfitted with the implants which allowed them to be ridden,
then deposited back in their territory.
Far, Dors signed.
We go.
Hard. Slow.
No stay here. They catch.
Dors looked as skeptical as a pan could look. Fight?
, Did she mean fight Vaddo here? Or fight once they reached the Excur-
sion Station? No here. There.
Dors frowned, but accepted this. He had no real plan, only the idea that
Vaddo was ready for pans out here and might not be so prepared for them
through immersion was known to prove fatal. Their bodies would fail from
neurological shock, without ever regaining consciousness.
He saw a tear run down Sheelah's cheek. She knew how hopeless matters were,
too. He swept her up in his arms and, looking at the distant mountains, was
surprised to find tears in his own eyes as well.
17.
He had not counted on the river. Men, animals these problems he had
considered. They ventured down to the surging waters where the forest gave the
nearest protection and the stream broadened, making the best place to ford.
But the hearty river that chuckled and frothed down the valley was im-
possible to swim.
Or rather, for Ipan to swim. Hari had been coaxing his pan onward, carefully
pausing when his muscles shook or when he wet himself from anxiety. Dors was
having similar trouble and it slowed them. A night spent up in high branches
soothed both pans, but now at midmorning all the stressful symptoms returned
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as Ipan put one foot into the river. Cool, swift currents.
Ipan danced back onto the narrow beach, yelping in dread.
Go? Dors/Sheelah signed.
Hari calmed his pan and they tried to get it to attempt swimming.
up.
A big herd of gigantelope grazed nearby and some were crossing the river for
better grass beyond. They tossed their great heads, as if mocking the pans.
The river was not deep, but to Ipan it was a wall. Hari, trapped by
Ipan's solid fear, seethed but could do nothing.
Sheelah paced the shore. She huffed in frustration and looked at the sky,
squinting. Her head snapped around in surprise. Hari followed her gaze. A
flyer was swooping down the valley, coming their way.
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