Vaddo came forward a careful step at a time, holding the long lance between two claws now. He made the end move in a circle. Movement was jerky; claws were crude, compared with pan hands. But the raboon was stronger.
It came at him with a quick feint, then a thrust. Hari barely managed to dodge sideways while he brushed the lance aside with his stick. Vaddo recovered quickly and came from Hari’s left. Jab, feint, jab, feint. Hari caught each with a swoop of his stick.
Their wooden swords smacked against each other and Hari hoped his didn’t snap. Vaddo had good control of his raboon. It did not try to flee as it had before.
Hari was kept busy slapping aside Vaddo’s thrusts. He had to have some other advantage, or the superior strength of the raboon would eventually tell. Hari circled, drawing Vaddo away from Sheelah. The other raboons were keeping her trapped, but not at tacking. All attention riveted on the two figures as they thrust and parried.
Hari drew Vaddo toward an outcropping. The raboon was having trouble holding its lance straight and had to keep looking down at its claws to get them right. This meant it paid less attention to where its two hooves found their footing. Hari slapped and jabbed and kept moving, making the raboon step sideways. It put a big hoof down among some angular stones, teetered, then recovered.
Hari moved left. It stepped again and its hoof turned and it stumbled. Hari was on it in an instant. He thrust forward as the raboon looked down, feet scrambling for purchase. Hari caught the raboon full with his point.
He pushed hard. The other raboons let out a moaning sound.
Snorting in rage, the raboon tried to get off the point. Hari made Ipan step forward and thrust the tip farther into the raboon. The thing wailed hoarsely. Ipan plunged again. Blood spurted from it, spattering the dust. Its knees buckled and it sprawled.
Hari shot a glance over his shoulder. The others had surged into action. Sheelah was holding off three, screeching at them so loudly it unnerved even him. She had already wounded one. Blood dripped down its brown coat.
But the others did not charge. They circled and growled and stamped their feet but came no closer. They were confused. Learn ing, too. He could see the quick, bright eyes studying the situation, this fresh move in the perpetual war.
Sheelah stepped out and poked the nearest raboon. It launched itself at her in a snarling fit and she stuck it again, deeper. It yelped and turned—and ran.
That did it for the others. They all trotted off, leaving their fellow bleating on the ground. Its dazed eyes watched its blood trickle out. Its eyes flickered and Vaddo was gone. The animal slumped.
With deliberation Hari picked up a rock and bashed in the skull. It was messy work, and he sat back inside Ipan and let the dark, smoldering pan anger come out.
He bent over and studied the raboon brain. A fine silvery webbing capped the rubbery, convoluted ball. Immersion circuitry.
He turned away from the sight and only then saw that Sheelah was hurt.
21.
The station crowned a rugged hill. Steep gullies gave the hillside the look of a weary, lined face. Wiry bushes thronged the lower reaches.
Ipan puffed as he worked his way through the raw land cut by erosion. In pan vision the night was eerie, a shimmering vista of pale greens and blue-tinged shadows. The hill was a nuance in the greater slope of a grand mountain, but pan vision could not make out the distant features. Pans lived in a close, immediate world.
Ahead he could see clearly the glowing blank wall ringing the station. It was massive, five meters tall. And, he remembered from his tourist tour of the place, rimmed with broken glass.
Behind him came gasps as Sheelah labored up the slope. The wound in her side made her gait stiff, face rigid. She refused to hide below. They were both near exhaustion and their pans were balking, despite two stops for fruit and grubs and rest.
Through their feeble sign vocabulary, their facial grimacing, and writing in the dust, they had “discussed” the possibilities. Two pans were vulnerable out here. They could not expect to be as lucky as with the raboons, not tired and in strange territory.
The best time to approach the station was at night. Whoever had engineered this would not wait forever. They had hidden from flyers twice more since morning. Resting through the next day was an inviting option, but Hari felt a foreboding press him onward.
He angled up the hillside, watching for electronic trip wires. Of such technical matters he knew nothing. He would have to keep a lookout for the obvious and hope that the station was not wired for thinking trespassers.
Pan vision was sharp and clear in dim light for nearby objects, but he could find nothing.
He chose a spot by the wall shadowed by trees. Sheelah panted in shallow gasps as she approached. Looking up, the wall seemed immense. Impossible…
Slowly he surveyed the land around them. No sign of any movement. The place smelled peculiar to Ipan, somehow wrong. Maybe animals stayed away from the alien compound. Good; that would make security inside less alert.
The wall was polished concrete. A thick lip jutted out at the top, making climbing it harder.
Sheelah gestured to where trees grew near the wall. Stumps nearer showed that the builders had thought about animals leaping across from branches, but some were tall enough and had branches within a few meters of the top.
Could a pan make the distance? Not likely, especially when tired. Sheelah pointed to him and back to her, then held her hands out and made a swinging motion. Could they swing across the distance?
He studied her face. The designer would not anticipate two pans cooperating that way. He squinted up at the top. Too high to climb, even if Sheelah stood on his shoulders.
Yes, he signed.
A few moments later, her hands holding his feet, about to let go of his branch, he had second thoughts.
Ipan didn’t mind this bit of calisthenics, and in fact was happy to be back in a tree. But Hari’s human judgment still kept shouting that he could not possibly do it. Natural pan talent conflicted with human caution.
Luckily, he did not have much time to indulge in self-doubt. Sheelah yanked him off the branch. He fell, held only by her hands.
She had wrapped her feet securely around a thick branch and now began to oscillate him like a weight on a string. She swung him back and forth, increasing the amplitude. Back, forth, up, down, centrifugal pressure in his head. To Ipan it was unremark able. To Hari it was a wheeling world of heart-stopping whirls.
Small branches brushed him and he worried about noise and then forgot about that because his head was coming up level with the top of the wall.
The concrete lip was rounded off on the inside, so no hook could find a grip.