Ian Watson Converts

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Argus was gathered at the Temple of Venus. Robina listened intently to Icara s
somewhat flighty verbal report, to confirm her own impressions from the air,
then swung her main picket line eastwards intending to come up on the temple
from its southern side so that they could herd that nucleus, like hounds
herding deer, towards the pitfall below the Lighthouse.
Good work, Icara. Fly back. Watch whether any more of them gather as we get
nearer.
It isn t so easy for me! Not to fly a bee-line. I get distracted. By
anything! I m a creature of caprice.
So are we all, dear. Far more than you realize. Just do your best.
Robina fingered and toed her troops out through the glades.
The fat former God Nut woman had changed into a great white grub or
caterpillar, perhaps prior to becoming a winter chrysalis out of which
something more elegant would emerge in the spring. She humped her bulk along
at surprising speed on twenty or thirty short legs, crashing through the
bushes.
She was the first to start some quarry. Shetani darted out of the boscage,
squealing in panic when she saw what was bearing down on her. The Unit darted
this way and that irrationally.
The grub-woman reared, waving ten or twelve legs in the air. When the
chameleon-pig ill-advisedly scampered under her, the great grub squelched down
upon the hindquarters of the Unit. Shrieking,
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Shetani the rider popped right out of her crushed mount. The rider fell in the
grass. She jerked and twitched and began crying out in her native Makonde
tongue.
The grub-woman swung towards her. And here, for the rider, was a real shetani,
ambushing her in the
Bush! As large as a cow, with so many legs! Scrambling up, Shetani scuttled
out of the way in terror.
Down at the temple, Shetani s terror infected Thelma. Thelma was already
fleeing for her life, in two other aspects, pursued by a savage Doberman and a
runaway wheelchair &
As dusk drew its mantle down over the day, the spearhead of the second tribe
at last arrived to the south of the temple. They halted in horseshoe
formation. Robina had taken her time with the advance. The longer that her
picket line spent on flushing out isolated members of Thelma s tribe, the more
fear and confusion they spread.
Well alerted to the threat by now, Ariel waited outside the temple on Geneva s
shoulder, charged with lightning, ready to launch himself. Yet still he
refused Maccoby s offer of a peace-keeping force.
Impatiently Geneva stamped the turf. She balled and unballed her fists. Nixy
the water nymph, flushed from a pool earlier on, was clutching hold of the
lesser satyr at last, to his confused satisfaction. Argus gazed in horror with
all his eyes, straining against the decline of day for each scattered photon
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of warning.
He was waiting for the first direct sighting of Robina; then he could past-see
what had come over her.
Silvester stood to one side, his branches raised, ready to bring them down
stunningly on enemy heads.
Thelma was trying to control herself. She was infected by gusts of hysteria
from Shetani, who was now reduced to helpless child size, and loose in the
darkening, nightmare haunted woods. How Thelma wished that she could strike
off the finger and the toe which linked her to this hellish delirium! Yet,
even though
Shetani played havoc with her concentration, still Thelma strove to rally her
own tribe to her. At least a dozen of her network had already tangled with
Robina s forces. Most had fled; some had failed to flee. As a result of these
encounters, two of her toes were dead. This upset Thelma s sense of balance,
and temporarily robbed her of contact with two more members of her tribe who
were paired on a finger-toe basis &
Eventually Robina rode into the temple glade on Mr Hacker s back. Six of her
tribe flanked her. Harry
Fullerton, former God Nut but now a Christian devil with horns and a barbed
tail, advanced ahead. As did another ex-God Nut spy, now an Angel of
Righteousness. Both angel and devil clutched wooden knobkerries broken from
the forest.
Ariel promptly launched himself from Geneva towards a plane tree. Grasping the
lowest branch, he scurried inwards then shinned up higher and higher and crept
out along a limb.
Why, Robina? Why? he cried, in as loud a voice as he could muster.
Either rebellious Robina failed to hear his little voice, or else she ignored
it.
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Ariel let go of his perch. In a long glide he swept down across the glade.
Geneva also charged at the same moment, bellowing a war cry. Robina, for her
part, spurred Mr Hacker forward with her heels.
Ariel s glide carried him over Harry Fullerton. The devil thrashed the air
with his cudgel. Ariel, pulling out of his dive, climbed clear and merely
touched the cudgel with his fingertip. Lightning clove the wood. The devil
collapsed, stunned.
Ariel reached the safety of another bough, scrambled higher, and hunched there
quickly accumulating more energy.
With one careless fist Geneva swatted away the club of the Angel of
Righteousness; and the force of her charge knocked him sideways. Without
breaking step she rushed on, on collision course with the centaur, who was now
at half gallop.
From behind Mr Hacker s human torso Robina suddenly produced the
Sansevieria in its pot. Leaning forward, while clutching Mr Hacker around the
waist with her other arm, she rode at tilt towards Geneva.
The blades of the plant jutted ahead like an already splintered lance.
Too late, Geneva saw the weapon she most feared.
A moment later, it impaled her in the breast.
Even so, sheer momentum still carried her on into the centaur, tumbling him,
unseating Robina.
Robina held on long enough to slither around Mr Hacker s torso and avoid being
crushed by his fall.
Since she had received some Judo instruction from Dr Shiba, in case her
superchimps ever misbehaved grossly, she performed a roll and came up [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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