Cuckoo's Egg

by C. J. Cherryh

  Five-fingered hands; a surer grip; a talent at climbing: these it had. It had youth: strong legs, that felt no pain.

  It knew— if it used its wits— how a once-maimed shonun had to compensate for these things.

  And it would, being hatani, try to predict; try then to seize events and turn them.

  It smelled of fear and sweat, even when the wind had cleaned the scent. It stank of something else, a bitter, acrid taint.

  * * *

  Run and run: it was speed Thorn had first for advantage. It was agility— Duun's was greatest, hand to hand. But Thorn's was more in distance, in the rocks, in the quick scaling of a tilted tree across a crack—

  (Fool! he'll know—)

  (But it will cost him time.)

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  And Thorn had gotten the mountain between him and Duun, gotten stone between them, to confuse the scent.

  But Duun could smell where a hand had been, if he got his nose down to it. So Duun claimed.

  (Run, minnow. I'm coming, little fish….)

  Downland. The opposite of what Duun had said he ought to do: should he confound the choice? What was there to do that he had never done?

  (Gods, his gut, his bowels ached. Fear? The chase? The jolts from rock to rock?)

  (Something in the food?)

  * * *

  Duun tripped the support. The log rolled down the gravel slope. Hastily done. Rife with scent. He spotted the second trap too, the limb drawn back, and drew back his hand in time. Double-snared.

  (Good, fish. Well done, that. But not good enough.) Thorn knelt on hands and knees. He had reached the road and crossed it, leaving tracks; he paused to set a rock up on a twig, on a slope where haste might set a foot, then hurled himself downslope, leaving further tracks, leaving a bit of skin on the stones below.

  He miscalculated further, sprawled. His face stung with shame. He gathered himself up again, doubled over a little farther on sweating and resisting the easy support of a tree.

  (Touch nothing, leave no trace—)

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  Duun would hurt him. That was nothing. It was the look in Duun's gray eyes. The stare. The scorn.

  Thorn bent and caught his breath; and wits began to work. He looked up at the slope he had left.

  (Take me now, face to face.)

  (The walls are down, minnow. What will you do?)

  (Did Duun sleep? Could Duun sleep more than he did these last nights in the house?)

  Was Duun-hatani lying awake each night— thinking a minnow might try him? Expecting it?

  Was Duun as tired as he?

  (Fix the breakfast, minnow. Hear?)

  Hatani tricks. A hatani decides what his enemy will do.

  A pebble in the tea. (Fix the breakfast, minnow.) And what his enemy believes.

  Anger came into him. He purged it.

  (Wield anger; it has no place, else.)

  (Is there a use for fear?)

  * * *

  Duun stopped, not yet in the open. There was the land below. There were the treetops black and green downslope. There was, beyond the trees, the great flat plain, the river-plain, the valley of the Oun, which watered it, narrow in its folds.

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  And a sudden bleak thought came to him.

  Predictive. His heart doubled its beats. He had chosen the hunter's part. It was that part habitual with him; Thorn seldom turned, only tried to disarm his attacks, to defend— to set snares. It was wise in Thorn (Face to face with me— Thorn challenged, and: no, said Thorn, when I offered him a fight.)

  It was constantly the running tactic. The evasion.

  (Find me, Duun-hatani. Find me if you can. Find me where I choose.) In a different place, a change of grounds.

  Duun dared not run. That was always the pursuer's hazard. Thorn's traps were halfhearted, token; but there was no tokenness in a downslope fall.

  Thorn supposed in him a certain degree of care.

  And Thorn was quicker. Younger. Sound of wind.

  Duun set out quickly. Anger rose in him and died a quick death.

  (Well-done, minnow, if this was your plan. I am not ashamed. Not of you.) Duun saw his hazard. And being hatani-trained, perhaps the young fool knew what he did.

  Perhaps.

  * * *

  Thorn ached still. The first cramps had bent him double. (O gods, gods, gods, his guts.) He heaved himself down at a streamside he had never hunted yet, bathed his face. Livhl-root. He knew the herb. He knew others and chewed the leaves, a foul taste, but it stopped the spasms in his bowels. He had left sign. He had made mistakes when the pain drove him. He chewed the sour leaves he found and swallowed, splashed his face with 47

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  icy water from the spring. His hands were white with the chills that racked him.

  Fool, to challenge Duun. To have offered quarter. To have changed the game. Nothing was safe. He flung himself up again and ran down the stream—

  —Old trick. Ancient trick, Duun would say. Do something original.

  He had no strength left. His knees ached with the struggle with the water and the rocks, his bones ached with the chill: his joints grew loose and ached and strained with the sudden turn of river stones. The cold got into his bones and set him shivering.

  (Can one die of livhl? Was it livhl?)

  His ankle turned; he saved himself from a plunge in icy water, waded to the shore, his arms and the legs under him jerking with shivers like drugged spasms. (O Duun, unfair.)

  No quarter. None.

  Downhill again.

  * * *

  The sun went past zenith. The drug had worked. Duun caught the livhl-stink, though Thorn had been wary, and fouled the brook to kill it. It was in his sweat, on the things his hands had touched. He had taken to the stream and followed that— no craft at all to conceal his exit-point. A snare was possible, if Thorn's wits were not addled. Duun went around the place, picked the trail up without difficulty, though water had killed the scent somewhat. (Well-thought, minnow; the brush is thick, the chance for ambush all too great. Am I to follow you into a thrown rock, a deadfall?) (Where's the breaking-point, Thorn? The killing-point? The point you turn?)

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  (Or do you fall first? How long, Thorn?)

  Duun hastened. His limp betrayed him. There was a pain within his side.

  (Old man, old man— they put you back together; you should have let them replace the knee, regrow the hand— now you rue it, late.) He found another way— he guessed which way Thorn must head and guessed amiss.

  (So. He learned that lesson all too well. Does he read me? Does he know?

  Or is it random choice he tries? Knowledge or fool's choice?) (How old is he in his own terms? Not man yet. Not grown. But near.) (Thorn-that-I-carried. Haras, Thorn, that wounds the hand that holds it, the foot that treads it, that tangles paths and bears bitter blooms and poisoned fruit.)

  * * *

  The shadows multiplied in the sinking sun. Thorn gasped for air, withheld his hands from their instinctive reach after support on trunk and log and stone as he descended the valley. He sighted on a stone and went to it, for his legs wandered. He sighted on the next and followed that. Such little goals led him now. (Get beyond the pale, get to paths strange to both of us. Duun knows the mountain too well— far too well.)

  (Go where Duun would not have me go— make him angry— anger in my enemy is my friend, my friend—)

  He smelled smoke. It was far away in the valley, but he went toward it.

  (Let Duun worry now. Let him come here to find me. Here among the countryfolk. Here among others. Other people.)

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  (Run and run. Stop for wind. Let us play this game in and out of strange places, in among stranger-folk who know nothing of the game.)

  —There must be food, food for taking with hatani tricks. ("They're herders," D
uun had said. "Herder-folk. No, little fish, not hatani, nothing like. They respect us too much to come here. That's all. They lived here once.")

  (Where houses are is food, is shelter: he'll have to search, he won't know if they'd lie, these countryfolk, or hide me— Perhaps they would.) There was a trail. There was a stink of habit here even his nose could tell, musty, old dung, the frequent passage of animals.

  Thorn jogged up it. Stink to hide his stink. To confound Duun's nose.

  Tracks to hide his tracks. Let Duun guess. Thorn gathered speed and coursed along the trail. There was the taste of blood in his mouth.

  ("—They never bother anything," Duun said of farmer-folk. "They don't ask to be bothered and we don't go there.") ("Couldn't we see them, Duun-hatani? Couldn't we go and see?") Thorn wondered if they were like the meds and Ellud; if there were—

  (—O gods, if there were some like me.)

  In all the wide world Duun spoke of, there must be more like him.

  * * *

  It was what Duun had thought. Fool! he cursed himself. Fool! To maneuver the enemy and not to see it— that was the greatest fool in the world. Scent-blind, sick with livhl, Thorn was seeking a hiding-place, seeking some place rife with scents, with smoke, with tracks and confusion. Cover himself in shonun-scent. Thorn was going to the one place forbidden him. Change the rules. Upset the game.

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  Find outsiders and raise it another level still.

  (Duun, what's wrong with me?)

  ( Slick, the infant said, rubbing at his stomach) Faces in the mirror.

  (Duun, will my ears grow?)

  Duun laid his own ears back and put on speed, risking everything now, risking shame, that a minnow might trap him.

  But Thorn already had.

  * * *

  There was a house in the twilight— not a large house like theirs up on the mountain, but a ramshackle thing part metal and part wood. There were fences, put together the same way, of bits and pieces. Fences— Thorn guessed that word: fences, Duun said, kept countryfolk cattle from the woods: and cattle Thorn had seen, from high on the mountaintop, white and brown dots moving across the flat in summer-haze. ("City-meat comes from those," Duun told him. And Thorn: "Can't we hunt them?" "There's no hunting them," Duun had said. "They're tame. They're stupid. They stand there to be killed. Staring at you. They trust shonunin.") ("And they kill them, Duun?") White animals huddled in their pens. Lights burned near the house on a tall pole in the twilight. Thorn saw the power lines, that led from there two ways, the house, and off across the land— (The power unit's far away then. Can there be other houses near?) He skirted brush, came up nearer, where he had a closer view of the house, the dusty yard beyond its fence.

  Hiyi grew there, along the row, all in leaf in this season, flowerless. He heard high voices, the closing of some door. "I'll get you," someone shrilled, but there was laughter in the voice. "I'll get you, Mon!"

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  More shrieks. Thorn came closer, taking to the road. Beneath the lights, in front of the porch, two small figures ran and raced and played chase.

  "Come in here!" a voice called from the open door. "Come in, it's time to eat."

  They were children. They ran and shrieked and yelled—

  Duun's kind. Thorn's heart stopped. He stood there in the road and looked beyond the fence and likewise the children stopped their game and stared, they on their side, he on his.

  They were like Duun. Like him, in grayer, paler coats. With Duun-like ears, eyes, faces— with all that made up Duun.

  "Aiiii!" one screamed. The other yelled. They hugged each other and yelled— to frighten him, he thought; he stood his ground, trembling at the sight. More of Duun's kind came out.

  But children were like Duun. Children were not born hairless; he was not a child gone wrong, failed in growing—

  —He was—

  (Duun!)

  He drew back. A man had run out onto the step. "Get in! Get inside!"

  Thorn thought it meant him, and delayed. "Ili! Ili! Get the gun!"

  (O gods! Guns! Duun!)

  He spun on his heel and ran. He heard doors slam, more than once. Heard running come toward the fence, heard voices at his back. "Gods, it's him! "

  one yelled, and others took it up. "It's that thing— that thing! "

  It was a trap. Duun had made it. Duun had snared all his paths, all the world: there was no way, nothing, anywhere, that Duun had not seen and set up to trap him—

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  (Got you, minnow, got you again—)

  Thorn snatched breath and left the road, darted into the undergrowth, hearing the howl of animals at his back, hearing shouts raised— "The thing on the mountain! — It's him, it's come!"

  (O gods, Duun— gods—) Breath split his side. Branches tore at him. He ran and something in him had broken, ached, swelled in his throat—

  They hunted him. They all did. There was no help.

  No quarter.

  Leaves burst into flames near him. Beamer. He heard the whine of projectiles.

  Splinters burst into his face. He flung his hands up, hit a tree or some such thing: impact numbed his arm and spun him. The ground came up. He felt twigs stab his hand, earth and leaves abrade the heel of it. He scrambled to turn over and get his knees, his legs under him, eyes pouring tears; the numbed arm flopped at his side. He heard more shots whine.

  "There he is!"

  He dived and dodged and stumbled to his knees again, aware of shock.

  Once he had fallen from the rocks and been like this, numb from head to foot, and scared and breathless— had risen and walked and run again and known only later where he was, to find Duun gazing down at him from the high rocks.

  To find Duun coming down to him, game abandoned, to take his face in his maimed hand, jaw pinched between thumb and forefinger, and look into his eyes—

  "You hear me, little fish? You hear me?

  Duun!

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  Thorn slipped to one knee and got up again, turned, his shoulder to rough bark. There were lights, the howl of beasts, there were shapes behind the lights, people shining lights wildly this way and that into the brush, over him.

  "Get it! There it goes!"

  He put the tree between them and him and ran again, left arm swinging like a dead thing at his side. (I was hit. It was a shot that knocked me down. They shot me. Am I allowed to use my knife?) He ran and ran, sliding on the slopes, tearing himself on brambles. (Is this real? Is it game?

  Duun— Did you set this up? Am I supposed to kill? Duun. I'm scared! ) He came down the slope, skidded at the bottom, spun on one foot and ran left along the streamcourse.

  A shadow rose up in his path. He flung himself aside to escape it, but it was there, shonun-smelling, blocking the strike of his right arm, and a voice said: "Thorn!" before a two-fingered grip came up at his throat and spun him off-balance and crushed him in a choking hold. Thorn bent, caught one-handed at the arm and tried a throw. Sickness jolted through him to the roots of his teeth. He was pulled back and back stumbling in the leaves, and a grip twisted his wounded arm. "Get out of here!" Duun hissed into his ear. "Thorn, Thorn— it's me! Run for it! Get home!"

  Duun's hand let go and shoved hard in the middle of his back. Thorn ran.

  He ran and slipped on leaves and ran again; his side ached. Fire shot through it. His arm ached and the pain jolted through each step.

  (Get home!)

  (Do I believe you, Duun— do I do what you say? Is it a trap. Duun?) A gun cracked. Several. He heard the echo off the hills. There were shouts— there were voices, the howl of beasts.

  (But Duun's back there.) Thorn stumbled to a stop, hit a tree in his blindness and leaned his back on it. His sight hazed. The pain was one vast 54

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  throbbing now, beyond pain, or it had gotten to his heart. He blinked the nigh
t as clear as it would come. There were lights. There were more voices raised— shouts and cries and howls; again the discharge of a gun.

  (Duun!")

  Thorn began to run downslope, holding the loose arm still as he could.

  Branches jabbed into his face and he ducked his head aside, ran blindly, trusting the slope of the land to tell him downhill from up— fended brush finally with the right hand and let the left drag on the brambles in cold, vast shocks. He heard his breathing, felt the tearing of his chest— there was no more night, no more world: it had shrunk to body-size, all sound diminished to the sound of his breath and his heart.

  (They'll kill him like the cattle! Duun!)

  A branch thrust into his way, wrapped living round him, locked and held.

  "Thorn! Dammit— fool!"

  Thorn hung there, on Duun's arm. Duun's strong grip spun him, seized him by both arms and shook him, snapping his head back.

  "Fool! Where were you going?"

  He could not answer. The pain came on in waves. Duun shook at him again. It was Duun. It smelled of Duun. (Scent-blind. Scent-blind fool.)

  "I had to hurt someone," Duun said. It was anger. Duun shook at him.

  "You hear me, fool! I had to hurt someone for your sake."

  "I think— I think—" Shock came on him. His jaws passed his control, locked and chattered. And Duun took him to the ground. ("How many times did they get you? Gods. Gods. I see it….") He stretched him out there on the forest slope and probed the arm, while here and elsewhere came and went for him.

  "Why?" he asked Duun. "Why did they do it?" While his jaws spasmed and chattered and the pain came and went. "Duun, were they supposed to do that?"

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