He saw now that the belief that high order mental experiences like emotion were unique to people was…simply conceited. These pans shared much of the human worldview. A theory of pan psychohistory could be valuable.
He gingerly separated himself from the dense, pressing pan mind. He wondered if the pan knew he was here. Yes, it did-dimly.
Yet this did not bother the pan. He integrated it into his blurred, blunt world. Hari was somewhat like an emotion, just one of many fluttering by and staying a while, then wafting away.
Could he be more than that? He tried getting the pan to lift its right arm-and it was like lead. He struggled for a while that way with no success. Then he realized his error. He could not overpower this pan, not as a kernel in a much larger mind.
He thought about this as the pan groomed a female, picking carefully through coarse hair. The strands smelled good, the air was sweet, the sun stroked him with blades of generous warmth…
Emotion. Pans didn’t follow instructions because that simply lay beyond them. They could not understand directions in the human sense. Emotions-those they knew. He had to be an emotion, not a little general giving orders.
He sat for a while simply being this pan. He learned-or rather, he felt. The troop groomed and scavenged food, males eyeing the perimeter, females keeping close to the young. A lazy calm descended over him, carrying him effortlessly through warm moments of the day.
Not since boyhood had he felt anything like this. A slow, graceful easing, as though there were no time at all, only slices of eternity.
In this mood, he could concentrate on a simple movement-raising an arm, scratching-and create the desire to do it. His pan responded. To make it happen, he had to feel his way toward a goal.
Catching a sweet scent on the wind, Hari thought about what food that might signal. His pan meandered upwind, sniffed, discarded the clue as uninteresting. Hari could now smell the reason why: fruit, true, sweet, yes-but inedible for a pan.
Good. He was learning. And he was integrating himself into the deep recesses of this pan-mind.
Watching the troop, he decided to name the prominent pans, to keep them straight: Agile the quick one, Sheelah the sexy one, Grubber the hungry one…But what was his own name? His he dubbed Ipan. Not very original, but that was its main characteristic, Ias pan.
Grubber found some bulb-shaped fruit and the others drifted over to scavenge. The hard fruit smelled a little too young (how did he know that?), but some ate it anyway.
And which of these was Dors? They had asked to be immersed in the same troop, so one of these-he forced himself to count, though somehow the exercise was like moving heavy weights in his mind-these twenty-two was her. How could he tell? He ambled over to several females who were using sharp-edged stones to cut leaves from branches. They tied the strands together so they could carry food.
Hari peered into their faces. Mild interest, a few hands held out for stroking, an invitation to groom. No glint of recognition in their eyes.
He watched a big fern, Sheelah, carefully wash sand-covered fruit in a creek. The troop followed suit; Sheelah was a leader of sorts, a female lieutenant to Biggest.
She ate with relish, looked around. There was grain growing nearby, past maturity, ripe tan kernels already scattered in the sandy soil. Concentrating, Hari could tell from the faint bouquet that this was a delicacy. A few pans squatted and picked grains from the sand, slow work. Sheelah did the same, and then stopped, gazing off at the creek. Time passed, insects buzzed. After a while she scooped up sand and kernels and walked to the brook’s edge. She tossed it all in. The sand sank, the kernels floated. She skimmed them off and gulped them down, grinning widely.
An impressive trick. The other pans did not pick up on her kernel-skimming method. Fruit washing was conceptually easier, he supposed, since the pan could keep the fruit the whole time. Kernel-skimming demanded throwing away the food first, then rescuing it-a harder mental jump.
He thought about her and in response Ipan sauntered over her way. He peered into Sheelah’s eyes-and she winked at him. Dors! He wrapped hairy arms around her in a burst of love.
8.
“Pure animal love,” she said over dinner. “Refreshing.”
Hari nodded. “I like being there, living that way.”
“I can smell so much more.”
“Fruit tastes differently when they bite into it.” He held up a purple bulb, sliced into it, forked it into his mouth. “To me, this is almost unbearably sweet. To Ipan, it’s pleasant, a little peppery. I suppose pans have been selected for a sweet tooth. It gets them more fast calories.”
“I can’t think of a more thorough vacation. Not just getting away from home, but getting away from your species.”
He eyed the fruit. “And they’re so, so…”
“Horny?”
“Insatiable;”
“You didn’t seem to mind.”
“My pan, Ipan? I bailout when he gets into his hump-them-all mood.”
She eyed him. “Really?”
“Don’t you bailout?”
“Yes, but I don’t expect men to be like women.”
“Oh?” he said stiffly.
“I’ve been reading in the Ex Spec’s research library, while you toy with pan social movements. Women invest heavily in their children. Men can use two strategies: parental investment, plus ‘sow the oats.”‘ She lifted an eyebrow. “Both must have been selected for in our evolution, because they’re both common.”
“Not with me.”
To his surprise, she laughed. “I’m talking in general. My point is, the pans are much more promiscuous than we are. The males run everything. They help out the females who are carrying their children, I gather, but then they shop around elsewhere all the time.”
Hari switched into his professional mode; it was decidedly more comfortable when dealing with such issues. “As the specialists say, they are pursuing a mixed reproductive strategy.”
“How polite.”
“Polite plus precise.”
Of course, he couldn’t really be sure Dors bailed out of Sheelah when a male came by for a quick one. (They were always quick, too-thirty seconds or less.) Could she exit the pan mind that quickly? He required a few moments to extricate himself. Of course, if she saw the male coming, guessed his intentions…
He was surprised at himself. What role did jealousy have when they were inhabiting other bodies? Did the usual moral code make any sense? Yet to talk this over with her was…embarrassing.
He was still the country boy from Helicon, like it or not.
Ruefully he concentrated on his meal of local “roamer-fleisch,” which turned out to be an earthy, dark meat in a stew of tangy vegetables. He ate heartily, and in response to Dors’ rather obviously amused silence said, “I’d point out that pans understand commerce, too. Food for sex, betrayal of the leader for sex, spare my child for sex, grooming for sex, just about anything for sex.”
“It does seem to be their social currency. Short and decidedly not sweet. Just quick lunges, strong sensations, then boom-it’s over.”
“The males need it, the females use it.”
“Ummm, you’ve been taking notes.”
“If I’m going to model pans as a sort of simplified people, then I must.”
“Model pans?” came the assured tones of Ex Spec Vaddo. “They’re not model citizens, if that’s what you mean.” He gave them a sunny smile and Hari guessed this was more of the obligatory friendliness of this place.
Hari smiled mechanically. “I’m trying to find the variables that could describe pan behavior.”
“You should spend a lot of time with them,” Vaddo said, sitting at the table and holding up a finger to a waiter for a drink. “They’re subtle creatures.”
“I agree,” said Dors. “Do you ride them very much?”
“Some, but most of our research is done differently now.” Vaddo’s mouth twisted ruefully. “Statistical models, that sort of thing. I got this touring idea started, using the immersion tech we had developed earlier, to make money for the project. Otherwise, we’d have had to close.”