She had a dozen thick branches lined up on the ground. She went to a nearby spindly tree and peeled bark from it in long strips. The noise made Ipan uneasy. Predators would be curious at this unusual sound. He scanned the forest for danger.
Sheelah came over to him, slapped him in the face to get his attention. She wrote with a stick on the ground: RAFT.
Hari felt particularly dense as he pitched in. Of course. Had his pan immersion made him more stupid? Did the effect worsen with time? Even if he got out of this, would he be the same? Many questions, no answers. He forgot about them and worked.
They lashed branches together with bark, crude but serviceable. They found two small fallen trees and used them to anchor the edge of the raft. I, Sheelah pointed, and demonstrated pulling the raft.
First, a warm-up. Ipan liked sitting on the raft in the bushes. Apparently the pan could not see the purpose of the raft yet. Ipan stretched out on the deck of saplings and gazed up into the trees as they swished in the warm winds.
They carried the awkward plane of branches down to the river after another mutual grooming session. The sky was filled with birds, but he could see no flyers.
They hurried. Ipan was skeptical about stepping onto the raft when it was halfway into the water, but Hari called up memories filled with warm feeling, and this calmed the quick-tripping heart he could feel knocking in the pan’s chest.
Ipan sat gingerlyon the branches. Sheelah cast off.
She pushed hard, but the river swept them quickly downstream. Alarm spurted in Ipan.
Hari made Ipan close his eyes. That slowed the breathing, but anxiety skittered across the pan mind like heat lightning forking before a storm. The raft’s rocking motion actually helped, making Ipan concentrate on his queasy stomach. Once his eyes flew open when a floating log smacked into the raft, but the dizzying sight of water all around made him squeeze them tight immediately.
Hari wanted to help her, but he knew from the trip-hammer beating of Ipan’s heart that panic hovered near. He could not even see how she was doing. He had to sit blind and feel her shoving the raft along.
She panted noisily, struggling to keep it pointed against the river’s tug. Spray splashed onto him. Ipan jerked, yelped, pawed anxiously with his feet, as if to run.
A sudden lurch. Sheelah’s grunt cut off with a gurgle and he felt the raft spin away on rising currents. A sickening spin…
Ipan jerked clumsily to his feet. Eyes jumped open.
Swirling water, the raft unsteady. He looked down and the branches were coming apart. Panic consumed him. Hari tried to promote soothing images, but they blew away before winds of fright.
Sheelah came paddling after the raft, but it was picking up speed. Hari made Ipan gaze at the far shore, but that was all he could do before the pan started yelping and scampering on the raft, trying to find a steady place.
It was no use. The branches broke free of their bindings and chilly water swept over the deck. Ipan screamed. He leaped, fell, rolled, jumped up again.
Hari gave up any idea of control. The only hope lay in seizing just the right moment. The raft split down the middle and his half veered heavily to the left. Ipan started away from the edge and Hari fed that, made the pan step farther. In two bounds he took the pan off the deck and into the water-toward the far shore.
Ipan gave way then to pure blind panic. Hari let the legs and arms thrash-but to each he gave a push at the right moment. He could swim, Ipan couldn’t.
The near-aimless flailing held Ipan’s head out of water most of the time. He even gained a little headway. Hari kept focused on the convulsive movements, ignoring the cold water-and then Sheelah was there.
She grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and shoved him toward shore. Ipan tried to grapple with her, climb up her. Sheelah socked him in the jaw. He gasped. She pulled him toward shore.
Ipan was stunned. This gave Hari a chance to get the legs moving in a thrusting stroke. He worked at it, single-minded among the rush and gurgle, chest heaving…and after a seeming eternity, felt pebbles beneath his feet. Ipan scrambled up onto the rocky beach on his own.
He let the pan slap himself and dance to warm up. Sheelah emerged dripping and bedraggled, and Ipan swept her up in his thankful arms.
18.
Walking was work and Ipan wasn’t having any.
Hari tried to make the pan cover ground, but now they had to ascend difficult gullies, some mossy and rough. They stumbled, waded, climbed, and sometimes just crawled up the slopes of the valley. The pans sniffed out animal trails, which helped a bit.
Ipan stopped often for food, or just to gaze idly into the distance. Soft thoughts flitted like moths through the foggy mind, buoyant on liquid emotional flows which eddied to their own pulse. Pans were not made for extended projects.
They made slow progress. Night came and they had to climb trees, snagging fruit on the way.
Ipan slept, but Hari did not. Could not.
Their lives were just as much at risk here as the pans’, but the slumbering minds he and Dors attended had always lived this way. To the pans, the forest night seeped through as a quiet rain of information, processed as they slept. Their minds keyed vagrant sounds to known nonthreats, leaving slumber intact.
Hari did not know the subtle signs of danger and so mistook every rustle and tremor in the branches as danger approaching on soft feet. Sleep came against his will.
In dawn’s first pale glow Hari awoke with a snake beside him. It coiled like a green rope around a descending branch, getting itself into striking position. It eyed him and Hari tensed.
Ipan drifted up from his own profound slumber. He saw the snake, but did not react with a startled jerk, as Hari feared he might.
A long moment passed between them and Ipan blinked just once. The snake became utterly motionless and Ipan’s heart quickened, but he did not move. Then the snake uncoiled and glided away, and the unspoken transaction was done. Ipan was unlikely prey, this green snake did not taste good, and pans were smart enough to be about other business.
When Sheelah awoke they went down to a nearby chuckling stream for a drink, scavenging leaves and a few crunchy insects on the way. Both pans nonchalantly peeled away fat black land leeches which had attached to them in the night. The thick, engorged worms sickened Hari, but Ipan pulled them off casually, much the way Hari would have retied loosened shoelaces.
Luckily, Ipan did not eat them. He drank and Hari reflected that the pan felt no need to clean himself. Normally Hari vapored twice a day, before breakfast and before dinner, and felt ill at ease if he sweated-a typical meritocrat.
Here he wore the shaggy body comfortably. Had his frequent cleansings been a health measure, like the pans’ grooming? Or a rarefied, civilized habit? He dimly remembered that as a boy on Helicon he had gone for days in happy, sweaty pleasure and had disliked baths and showers. Somehow Ipan returned him to a simpler sense of self, at ease in the grubby world.
His comfort did not last long. They sighted raboons uphill.
Ipan had picked up the scent, but Hari did not have access to the part of the pan brain that made scent-picture associations. He had only known that something disturbed Ipan, wrinkling the knobby nose. The sight at short range jolted him.
Thick hindquarters, propelling them in brisk steps. Short forelimbs, ending in sharp claws. Their large heads seemed to be mostly teeth. sharp and white above slit ted, wary eyes. A thick brown pelt covered them, growing bushy in the heavy tail they used for balance.