Apparently termites worked outside at night, then blocked the entrances at dawn. Hari let his pan shuffle over to a large tan mound, but he was riding it so well now that the pan’s responses were weak. Hari/Ipan looked for cracks, knobs, slight hollows-and when he brushed away some mud, found nothing. Other pans readily unmasked tunnels. Had they, memorized the hundred or more tunnels in each mound?
He finally uncovered one. Ipan was no help. Hari could control, but that blocked up the wellsprings of deep knowledge within the pan.
The pans deftly tore off twigs or grass stalks near their mounds. Hari carefully followed their lead. His twigs and grass didn’t work. The first lot was too pliant, and when he tried to work them into a twisting tunnel, they collapsed and buckled. He switched to stiffer ones, but those caught on the tunnel walls, or snapped off. From Ipan came little help. Hari had managed him a bit too well.
He was getting embarrassed. Even the younger pans had no trouble picking just the right stems or sticks. Hari watched a pan nearby drop a stick that seemed to work. He then picked it up when the pan moved on. He felt welling up from Ipan a blunt anxiety, mixing frustration and hunger. He could taste the anticipation of luscious, juicy termites.
He set to work, plucking the emotional strings of Ipan. This job went even worse. Vague thoughts drifted up from Ipan, but Hari was in control of the muscles now, and that was the bad part.
He quickly found that the stick had to be stuck in about ten centimeters, turning his wrist to navigate it down the twisty channel. Then he had to gently vibrate it. Through Ipan he sensed that this was to attract termites to bite into the stick. At first he did it too long and when he drew the stick out it was half gone. Termites had bitten cleanly through it. So he had to search out another stick and that made Ipan’s stomach growl.
The other pans were through termite-snacking while Hari was still fumbling for his first taste. The nuances irked him. He pulled the stick out too fast, not turning it enough to ease it past the tunnel’s curves. Time and again he fetched forth the stick, only to find that he had scraped the luscious Termites off on the walls. Their bites punctured his stick, until it was so shredded he had to get another. The termites were dining better than he.
He finally caught the knack, a fluid slow twist of the wrist, gracefully extracting termites, clinging like bumps. Ipan licked them off eagerly. Hari liked the morsels, filtered through pan taste buds. Not many, though. Others of the troop were watching his skimpy harvest, heads tilted in curiosity, and he felt humiliated.
The hell with this,he thought.
He made Ipan turn and walk into the woods. Ipan resisted, dragging his feet. Hari found a thick limb, snapped it off to carrying size, and went back to the mound.
No more fooling with sticks. He whacked the mound solidly. Five more and he had punched a big hole. Escaping termites he scooped up by the delicious handful.
So much for subtlety!he wanted to shout. He tried writing a note for her in the dust, but it was hard, forcing the letters out through his suddenly awkward hands. Pans could handle a stick to fetch forth grubs, but marking a surface was somehow not a ready talent. He gave up.
Sheelah/Dors came into view, proudly carrying a reed swarming with white-bellied termites. These were the best, a pan gourmet delicacy. I better, she signed.
He made Ipan shrug and signed, I got more.
So it was a draw.
Later Dors reported to him that among the troop he was known now as Big Stick. The name pleased him immensely.
11.
At dinner he felt elated, exhausted, and not in the mood for conversation. Being a pan seemed to suppress his speech centers. It took some effort to ask Ex Spec Vaddo about immersion technology. Usually he accepted the routine techno-miracles, but understanding pans meant understanding how he experienced them.
“The immersion hardware puts you in the middle of a pan’s anterior cingulate gyrus,” Vaddo said over dessert. “Just ‘gyrus’ for short. That’s the brain’s main cortical region for mediating emotions and expressing them through action.”
“ Thebrain?” Dors asked. “What about ours?”
Vaddo shrugged. “Same general layout. Pans’ are smaller, without a big cerebrum.”
Hari leaned forward, ignoring his steaming cup of kaff. “This ‘gyrus,’ it doesn’t give direct motor control?”
“No, we tried that. It disorients the pan so much, when you leave, it can’t get itself back together.”
“So we have to be more subtle,” Dors said.
“We have to be. In pan males, the pilot light is always on in neurons that control action and aggression-”
“That’s why they’re more violence-prone?” she asked.
“We think so. It parallels structures in our own brains.”
“Really? Men’s neurons?” Dors looked doubtful. “Human males have higher activity levels in their temporal limbic systems, deeper down in the brain-evolutionarily older structures.”
“So why not put me into that level?” Hari asked.
“We place the immersion chips into the gyrus area because we can reach it from the top, surgically. The temporal limbic is way far down, impossible to implant a chip.”
Dors frowned. “So pan males-”
“Are harder to control. Professor Seldon here is running his pan from the backseat, so to speak.”
“Whereas Dors is running hers from a control center that, for female pans, is more central?” Hari peered into the distance. “I was handicapped!”
Dors grinned. “You have to play the hand you’re dealt.”
“It’s not fair.”
“Big Stick, biology is destiny.”
The troop came upon rotting fruit. Fevered excitement ran through them.
The smell was repugnant and enticing at the same time, and at first he did not understand why. The pans rushed to the overripe bulbs of blue and sickly green, popping open the skins, sucking out the juice.
Tentatively, Hari tried one. The hit was immediate. A warm feeling of well-being kindled up in him. Of course-the fruity esters had converted into alcohol! The pans were quite deliberately setting about getting drunk.
He “let” his pan follow suit. He hadn’t much choice in the matter.
Ipan grunted and thrashed his arms whenever Hari tried to turn him away from the teardrop fruit. And after a while, Hari didn’t want to turn away, either. He gave himself up to a good, solid drunk. He had been worrying a lot lately, agitated in his pan, and…this was completely natural, wasn’t it?
Then a pack of raboons appeared, and he lost control of Ipan.
They come fast. Running two-legs, no sound. Their tails twitch, talking to each other.
Five circle left. They cut off Esa.
Biggest thunders at them. Hunker runs to nearest and it spikes him with its forepuncher.
I throw rocks. Hit one. It yelps and scurries back. But others take its place. I throw again and they come and the dust and yowling are thick and the others of them have Esa. They cut her with their punch-claws. Kick her with sharp hooves.
Three of them carry her off.
Our fems run, afraid. We warriors stay.
We fight them. Shrieking, throwing, biting when they get close. But we cannot reach Esa.
Then they go. Fast, running on their two hoofed legs. Furling their tails in victory. Taunting us.
We feel bad. Esa was old and we loved her.
Fems come back, nervous. We groom ourselves and know that the two-legs are eating Esa somewhere.
Biggest come by, try to pat me.
I snarl. He Biggest! This thing he should have stopped.
His eyes get big and he slap me. I slap back at him. He slam into me. We roll around in dust. Biting, yowling. Biggest strong, strong and pound my head on ground.