[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]She tried to call out, to move toward the boy but she was plunged into a nightmare of slow motion.
The Magfield was thick, clinging, the Air a soupy mass in which she was embedded. She struggled
to get free, to shout to her brother, but the hurtling, blurring speed of the pig reduced her efforts to
the trivial.
There was barely a mansheight between the pig and the boy. Dura, trapped in viscous Air, heard
herself scream.
Suddenly the sow opened its mouth wide and bellowed in agony. Jetfarts staining the air, it veered
abruptly. One ventral fin caught Farr with a side-swipe which sent him spinning against a tree
trunk... but, Dura saw with a flood of relief, he was no more than shocked.
As the sow tumbled in the Air the reason for its distress revealed itself: Adda's long spear,
protruding from the sow's belly. The spear quivered as the beast thrashed, seeking an escape from
this sudden agony.
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Now Adda himself raced along the Magfield, ungainly but determined. Behind him the two trapped
pigs were struggling free of the abandoned net. Adda bellowed: "She's gone rogue... Dura, get to the
boy and keep him away."
Now the pig settled in the Air, all six of its eyestalks triangulating on the old man. Adda slowed to a
hover, arms and legs outspread, his gaze locked on the pig.
Dura said uncertainly, "Adda, get out of the way... I think..."
"Get the damn boy."
Dura hurried to obey, skirting the hovering pig.
With a howl that rent the glutinous Air, the pig charged Adda.
Adda twisted in the Air and began to Wave out of the way, his legs thrashing at the Magfield...
But, Dura saw instantly, not fast enough.
Clinging to the weeping Farr there was nothing she could do as the final, ghastly moments unfolded.
Adda's face showed no fear but no acceptance either, Dura saw; there was only a grimace of
irritation, perhaps at this newest failure of his crumbling body.
As it closed on Adda, trailing green clouds of jetfarts, the sow opened its mouth.
The huge, circular maw closed on both Adda's legs. The momentum of the hurtling sow carried
away both pig and Adda, and Dura cried out as she saw Adda's fragile body smashed against a tree
trunk. But he was still conscious, and fighting; with both fists he pounded on the sow's wide,
quivering back.
Dura kicked away from the tree and Waved as hard as she could toward the pig. Philas was
approaching the pig from the far side, her stabbing spears held out before her. The woman's eyes
were wide, emptied by shock and terror.
The pig, halted by its impact with the tree, pulled back into clear Air now, and it began, with lateral
squirts of gas, to rotate around its long axis. Adda seemed to realize what was happening. With his
legs still trapped, he beat harder at the pig's flank, cursing violently. But still the pig twisted, ever
faster, becoming at last a blur of fins and eyestalks. Jetfart gas trailed around its body in circular
ribbons, and electron glow sparkled from its fins. Adda, at last, fell backward and lay against the
pig's long flank, his knees bent cruelly.
This was the way boars killed their prey, Dura knew: the boar would spin so fast that the
superfluidity of the Air which sustained all animals in the Mantle, including humans, broke down. It
was simple, but deadly effective. Even now, she knew, the pain of Adda's trapped legs, the agony
induced by the whirling of the world around him, would be subsumed by a dull, disabling numbness
as his muscles ceased to function, his senses dimmed, and at last even his mind failed.
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With a yell from deep in her gut, Dura threw herself at the whirling animal. She scrabbled at its
smooth, slippery hide, feeling her belly and legs brush against its hot flesh. She stabbed at its tough
epidermis once, twice, before being hurled clear. She tumbled backward through the Air, colliding
with a trunk hard enough to knock the breath out of her.
One of her two short spears had snapped, she saw, and was now floating harmlessly away. But she
had succeeded in ramming the other through the skin of the pig. The wounded animal, with Adda's
spear still protruding from its belly, tried to maintain its rotation; but, distracted by pain, its motion
became uneven, and the pig began to precess clumsily, the axis of its rotation dipping as it thrashed
in the Air. Poor Adda, now evidently unconscious, was thrown back and forth by the pig, his limp
body flopping passively against the animal's flank.
Philas fell on the pig now and drove another spear into the animal's hide, widening the wound Dura
had made. The animal opened its huge mouth, its circular lip-face pulling back to reveal a green-
stained throat, and let out a roar of pain. Adda, his legs freed from the mouth, fell limply away from
the pig; Farr hurried to him.
Philas rammed her second spear into the thrashing pig's mouth, stabbing at the organs exposed
within. Dura pushed away from the tree and hurled herself once more at the sow; she was
weaponless, but she hauled at the spears already embedded in the pig's flanks, wrenching open the
wounds, while Philas continued to work at the mouth.
It took many minutes. The pig thrashed and tore at the Air to the end, striving to use its residual
rotation to throw off its attackers. But it had no escape. At last, leaking jetfarts aimlessly, its cries
dying to a murmur, the sow's struggles petered away.
The two women, exhausted, hung in the Air. The sow was an inert mass, immense, its skin ripped,
its mouth gaping loosely. Dura panting, barely able to see found it difficult to believe that even
now the animal would not erupt to a ghastly, butchered semblance of life.
Dura Waved slowly through the Air to Philas. The two women embraced, their eyes wide with shock
at what they had done.
Farr gingerly laid Adda along a tree trunk, relying on the gentle pressure of the Magfield to hold him
in place. He stroked the old man's yellowed hair. He had retrieved Adda's battered old spear and laid
it beside him.
Dura and Philas approached, Dura wiping trembling hands on her thighs. She studied Adda's injuries
cautiously, scared even to touch him.
Adda's legs, below the knees, were a mangled mess: the long bones were obviously broken in
several places, the feet reduced to masses of pulped meat. The surface of Adda's chest was unbroken
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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]zanotowane.pldoc.pisz.plpdf.pisz.plkajaszek.htw.pl
