Asimov’s Future History Volume 15

by Isaac Asimov

  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. Learning, 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 unremarkable. 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.

  He swung back down, head plunging toward the ground. Then up into the lower branches, twigs slapping his face.

  On the next swing he was higher. All along the top of the wall thick glass glinted. Very professional.

  He barely had time to realize all this when she let him go..

  He arced up, hands stretched out–and barely caught the lip. If it had not protectively protruded out, he would have missed.

  He let his body slam against the side. His feet scrabbled for purchase against the sheer face. A few toes got hold. He heaved up, muscles bunching–and over. Never before had he appreciated how much stronger a pan could be. No man could have made it here.

  He scrambled up, cutting his arm and haunch on glass. It was a delicate business, getting to his feet and finding a place to stand.

  A surge of triumph. He waved to Sheelah, invisible in the tree.

  From here on it was up to him. He realized suddenly that they could have fashioned some sort of rope, tying together vines. Then he could lift her up here. Good idea, too late.

  No point in delaying. The compound was partly visible through the trees, a few lights burning. Utterly silent. They had waited until the night was about half over; he had nothing but Ipan’s gut feelings to tell him when.

  He looked down. Just beyond his toes razor wire gleamed, set into the concrete. Carefully he stepped between the shiny lines. There was room among the sharp glass teeth to stand. A tree blocked his vision and he could see little below him in the dim glow from the station. At least that meant they couldn’t see him, either.

  Should he jump? Too high. The tree that hid him was close, but he could not see into it. He stood and thought, but nothing came to him. Meanwhile Sheelah was behind him, alone, and he hated leaving her where dangers waited that he did not even know.

  He was thinking like a man and forgetting that he had the capability of a pan.

  Go. He leaped. Twigs snapped and he plunged heavily in shadows. Branches stabbed his face. He saw a dark shape to his right and so curled his legs, rotated, hands out–and snagged a branch. His hands closed easily around it and he realized it was too thin, too thin

  It snapped. The crack came like a thunderbolt to his ears. He fell, letting go of the branch. His back hit something hard and he rolled, grappling for a hold. His fingers closed around a thick branch and he swung from it. Finally he let out a gasp.

  Leaves rustled, branches swayed. Nothing more.

  He was halfway up a tree. Aches sprouted in his joints, a galaxy of small pains.

  Hari relaxed and let Ipan master the descent. He had made far too much noise falling in the tree, but there was no sign of any movement across the broad lawns between him and the big, luminous station.

  He thought of Dors and wished there were some way he could let her know he was inside now. Thinking of her, he measured with his eye the distances from nearby trees, memorizing the pattern so that he could find the way back at a dead run if he had to.

  Now what? He didn’t have a plan.

  Hari gently urged Ipan–who was nervous and tired, barely controllable–into
a triangular pattern of bushes. Ipan’s mind was like a stormy sky split by skittering lightning. Not thoughts precisely, more like knots of emotion, forming and flashing around crisp kernels of anxiety. Patiently Hari summoned up soothing images, getting Ipan’s breathing slowed, and he almost missed the whispery sound.

  Nails scrabbling on a stone walkway. Something running fast.

  They came around the triangle peak of bushes. Bunched muscles, sleek skin, stubby legs eating up the remaining distance. They were well trained to seek and kill soundlessly, without warning.

  To Ipan the monsters were alien, terrifying. Ipan stepped back in panic before the two onrushing bullets of muscle and bone. Black gums peeled back from white teeth, bared beneath mad eyes.

  Then Hari felt something shift in Ipan. Ancient, instinctive responses stopped his retreat, tensed the body. No time to flee, so fight.

  Ipan set himself, balanced. The two might go for his arms so he drew them back, crouching to bring his face down.

  Ipan had dealt with four-legged pack hunters before, somewhere far back in ancestral memory, and knew innately that they lined up on a victim’s outstretched limb, would go for the throat. The canines wanted to bowl him over, slash open the jugular, rip and shred in the vital seconds of surprise.

  They gathered themselves, bundles of swift sinew, running nearly shoulder to shoulder, big heads up–and leaped.

  In air, they were committed, Ipan knew. And open. Ipan brought both hands up to grasp the canines’ forelegs.

  He threw himself backward, holding the legs tight, his hands barely beneath the jaws. The wirehounds’ own momentum carried them over his head as he rolled backward.

  Ipan rolled onto his back, yanking hard. The sudden snap slammed the canines forward. They could not get their heads around and down, to close on his hand.

  The leap, the catch, the quick pivot and swing, the heave–all combined in a centrifugal whirl that slung the wirehounds over Ipan as he himself went down, rolling. He felt the canines’ legs snap and let go. They sailed over him with pained yelps.

  Ipan rolled over completely, head tucked in, and came off his shoulders with a bound. He heard a solid thud, clacks as jaws snapped shut. A thump as the canines hit the grass, broken legs unable to cushion them.

  He scrambled after them, his breath whistling. They were trying to get up, turning on snapped legs to confront their quarry. Still no barks, only faint whimpers of pain, sullen growls. One swore vehemently and quite obscenely. The other chanted, “Baaas’ard... baaas’ard...”

  Animals turning in their vast, sorrowful night.

  He jumped high and came down on both. His feet drove their necks into the ground and he felt bone give way. Before he stepped back to look, he knew they were gone.

  Ipan’s blood surged with joy. Hari had never felt this tingling thrill, not even in the first immersion, when Ipan had killed a Stranger. Victory over alien things with teeth and claws that come at you out of the night was a profound, inflaming pleasure.

  Hari had done nothing. The victory was wholly Ipan’s.

  For a long moment Hari basked in it in the cool night air, felt the tremors of ecstasy.

  Slowly, reason returned. There were other wirehounds. Ipan had caught these just right. Such luck did not strike twice.

  The wirehounds were easy to see on the lawn. Would attract attention.

  Ipan did not like touching them. Their bowels had emptied and the smell cut the air. They left a smear on the grass as he dragged them into the bushes.

  Time, time. Someone would miss the canines, come to see.

  Ipan was still pumped up from his victory. Hari used that to get him trotting across the broad lawn, taking advantage of shadows. Energy popped in Ipan’s veins. Hari knew it was a mere momentary glandular joy, overlaying a deep fatigue. When it faded, Ipan would become dazed, hard to govern.

  Every time he stopped he looked back and memorized landmarks. He might have to return this way on the run.

  It was late and most of the station was dark. In the technical area, though, a cluster of windows blossomed with what Ipan saw as impossibly rich, strange, superheated light.

  He loped over to them and flattened himself against the wall. It helped that Ipan was fascinated by this strange citadel of the godlike humans. Out of his own curiosity he peeked in a window. Under enamel light a big assembly room sprawled, one that Hari recognized. There, centuries ago, he had formed up with the other brightly dressed tourists to go out on a trek.

  Hari let the pan’s curiosity propel him around to the side, where he knew a door led into a long corridor. The door opened freely, to Hari’s surprise. Ipan strolled down the slick tiles of the hallway, quizzically studying the phosphor paint designs on the ceiling and walls, which emitted a soothing ivory glow.

  An office doorway was open. Hari made Ipan squat and bob his head around the edge. Nobody there. It was a sumptuous den with shelves soaring into a vaulted ceiling. Hari remembered sitting there discussing the immersion process. That meant the immersion vessels were just a few doors away down–

  The squeak of shoes on tiles made him turn.

  Ex Spec Vaddo was behind him, leveling a weapon.

  In the cool light the man’s face looked odd to Ipan’s eyes, mysteriously bony. Long, thin, the expression hard to read...

  Hari felt the rush of reverence in Ipan and let it carry the pan forward, chippering softly. Ipan felt awe, not fear.

  Vaddo tensed up, waving the snout of his ugly weapon. A metallic click. Ipan brought his hands up in a ritual pan greeting and Vaddo shot him.

  The impact spun Ipan around. He went down, sprawling.

  Vaddo’s mouth curled in derision. “Smart prof, huh? Didn’t figure the alarm on the door, huh?”

  The pain from Ipan’s side was sharp, startling. Hari rode the hurt and gathering anger in Ipan, helping it build. Ipan felt his side and his hand came away sticky, smelling like warm iron in the pan’s nostrils.

  Vaddo circled around, weapon weaving. “You killed me, you weak little dope. Ruined a good experimental animal. Now I got to figure what to do with you.”

  Hari threw his own anger atop Ipan’s seething rage. He felt the big muscles in the shoulders bunch. The pain in the side jabbed suddenly. Ipan groaned and rolled on the floor, pressing one hand to the wound.

  Hari kept the head down so that Ipan could not see the blood that was running down now across the legs. Energy was running out of the pan body. A seeping weakness moved up the body.

  He pricked his ears at the shuffling of Vaddo’s feet. Another agonized roll, this time bringing the legs up in a curl.

  “Guess there’s really only one solution–” Hari heard the metallic click.

  Now, yes. He let his anger spill.

  Ipan pressed up with his forearms and got his feet under him. No time to get all the way up. Ipan sprang at Vaddo, keeping low.

  A tinny shot whisked by his head. Then he hit Vaddo in the hip and slammed the man against the wall. The man’s scent was sour, salty.

  Hari lost all control. Ipan bounced Vaddo off the wall and instantly slammed his arms into the man with full force.

  Vaddo tried to deflect the impact. Ipan brushed the puny human arms aside. Vaddo’s pathetic attempts at defense were like spiderwebs brushed away.

  He butted Vaddo and pounded his massive shoulders into the man’s chest. The weapon clattered on the tiles.

  Ipan slammed himself into the man’s body again and again.

  Strength, power, joy.

  Bones snapped. Vaddo’s head snapped back, smacked the wall, and he went limp.

  Ipan stepped back and Vaddo sagged to the tiles. Joy.

  Blue-white flies buzzed at the rim of his vision.

  Must move. That was all Hari could get through the curtain of emotions that shrouded the pan mind.

  The corridor lurched. Hari got Ipan to walk in a sideways teeter.

  Down the corridor, painful steps. Two doors, three. Here? Locked. Ne
xt door. World moving slower somehow.

  The door snicked open. An antechamber that he recognized. Ipan blundered into a chair and almost fell.

  Hari made the lungs work hard. The gasping cleared his vision of the dark edges that had crept in, but the blue-white flies were still there, fluttering impatiently, and thicker.

  He tried the far door. Locked. Hari summoned what he could from Ipan. Strength, power, joy.

  Ipan slammed his shoulder into the solid door. It held. Again. And again, sharp pain–and it popped open.

  Right, this was it. The immersion bay. Ipan staggered into the array of vessels. The walk down the line, between banks of control panels, took an eternity. Hari concentrated on each step, placing each foot. Ipan’s field of view bobbed as the head seemed to slip around on liquid shoulders.

  Here. His own vessel.

  Dors’ tiktok was ready for him. It had seen him coming and latched itself to the board, covering the vital controls.

  Ipan bent to the tiktok’s punch panel. He jabbed at the keys, remembering the access code.

  Ipan’s fingers were too broad. They could not hit a single key at a time.

  The room of bleached light was getting fuzzy. He made Ipan try the code again, but the stubby fingers mashed several keys at once.

  The blue-white flies flapped at the edges of his vision. Ipan’s hands whacked in frustration at the punch-pad.

  Think. Hari looked around. Ipan wasn’t going to last much longer. A desk nearby had a writing slate and pen.

  Leave a note? Hope the right people find it...

  He made Ipan stagger to the desk, grasp the pen. An idea flickered as he tried to write: I NEED...

  He turned and tottered back to the capsule.

  Concentrate.

  Gripping the pen, he punched down with the butt. It struck a key cleanly. The blue flies flickered in his vision.

  The access code was hard to remember now. He worked on it one number at a time. Stab, poke, jab–and it was done. A light winked from red to green.

  He fumbled with the latches. Popped it open.

  There lay Hari Seldon, peaceful, eyes closed.

  Emergency controls, yes. He knew them from the briefing.