Foundation's Fear ( Second Foundation Trilogy #1)

Foundation's Fear ( Second Foundation Trilogy #1) Page 54

 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 recog­ nized. 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.

 ExSpec Vaddo was behind him, leveling a weapon.

 In the cool light the man’s face looked odd to Ipan’s eyes, mys­ teriously 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 ag­ onized 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 in­ stantly 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 spider­ webs 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. Next 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, re­ membering 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.

 He searched the polished steel surface and found the panel on

 the side. Ipan stared woozily at the meaningless lettering.

 Hari himself had trouble reading. The letters jumped and fused together.

 He found several buttons and servo controls. Ipan’s hands were worse now. It took three stabs with the pen to get the reviving program activated. Lights cycled from green to amber.

 Ipan abruptly sat down on the cool floor. The blue-white flies were buzzing all around his head and now they wanted to bite him. He sucked in the cool dry air, but there was no substance in it, no help…

 Then, without any transition, he was looking at the ceiling. On his back. The lamps up there were getting dark, fading. Then they went out.

 22.

 Hari’s eyes snapped open.

 The recovery program was still sending electro-stims through his muscles. He let them jump and tingle and ache while he thought. He felt fine. Not even hungry, as he usually did after an immersion. How long had he been in the wilderness? At least five days.

 He sat up. There was no one in the vessel room. Evidently Vaddo had gotten some silent alarm but had not alerted anyone else. That pointed, again, to a tight little conspiracy.

 He got out shakily. To get free he had to detach some feeders and probes, but they seemed simple enough.

 Ipan. The big body filled the walkway. He knelt and felt for a pulse. Rickety.

 But first, Dors. Her vessel was next to his and he started the re­ vival. She looked well.

 Vaddo must have put some transmission block on the system, so that none of the staff could tell by looking at the panel that anything was wrong. A simple cover story: a couple who wanted a really long immersion. Vaddo had warned them, but no, they wanted it, so…A perfectly plausible story.

 Dors’ eyes fluttered. He kissed her. She gasped.

 He made a pan sign, quiet, and went back to Ipan.

 Blood was flowing steadily. Hari was surprised to find that he could not pick up the rich, pungent elements in the pan’s blood from smell alone. A human missed so much!

 He took off his shirt and made a crude tourniquet. At least Ipan’s breathing was regular. Dors was ready to get out by then, and he helped her disconnect.

 “I was hiding in a tree and then—poof!” she said. “What a relief. How did you—”

 “Let’s get moving,” he said.

 As they left the room, she said, “Who can we trust? Whoever did this—” She stopped when she saw Vaddo. “Oh.”

 Somehow her expression made him laugh. She was very rarely surprised.

 “You did this?”

 “Ipan.”

 “I never would have believed a pan could, could…”

 “I doubt anyone’s been immersed this long. Not under such stress, anyway. It all just—well, it came out.”

 He picked up Vaddo’s weapon and studied the mechanism. A standard pistol, silenced. Vaddo had not wanted to awaken the rest of the station. That was promising. There should be people here who would spring to their aid. He started toward the building where the station personnel lived.

 “Wait, what about Vaddo?”

 “I’m going to wake up a doctor.”

 They did—but Hari took him into the vessel room first, to work on Ipan. Some patchwork and injections and the doctor said Ipan would be all right. Only then did he show the man Vaddo’s body.

 The doctor got angry about that, but Hari had a gun. All he had to do was point it. He didn’t say anything, just gestured with the gun.

 He did not feel like talking and wondered if he ever would again. When you couldn’t talk you concentrated more, entered into things. Immersed.

 And in any case, Vaddo had been dead for some time.

 Ipan had done a good job. The doctor shook his head at the severe damage.

 Alarms were ringing. He got an instant headache. The security officer showed up. He could see from her reaction that she had not been in on the plot. Can’t connect it to the Academic Potentate, then, he thought abstractly.

 But how much did that prove? Imperial politics were subtle…. Dors looked at him oddly the whole time. He did not understand why, until he realized that he had not even thought about helping Vaddo first. Ipan was himself, in a sense he knew deeply but could not explain.

 But he understood immediately when Dors wanted to go to the station wall and call to Sheelah. They brought her, too, in from the far wild darkness.