Cuckoo's Egg

by C. J. Cherryh

  "On rock. On what I see and don't see." Thorn's muscles began to shake; he clenched his arms about his knees the harder and tried not to show the shivering, but Duun would see. Duun missed nothing. "What's wrong with me? How did I turn out this way?"

  "Doubtless the gods did it."

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  The blasphemy shocked him, from Duun. He piled one atop it. "The gods have a sense of humor?"

  Duun's ears went back. "We'll talk about it later."

  "You'll never give me my answer. Will you?"

  A long silence. Yes and no trembled on a knife's edge. For the first time Thorn felt Duun was close to answering him and a breath might tip the balance. He held that breath till his sides ached.

  "No," Duun said then. "Not yet."

  * * *

  "He's intelligent," Ellud admitted. Duun clasped his crossed ankles and returned a stolid stare. "Did I say not?" Duun asked. "What else do your young agents say?" Ellud laid back his ears. "I handed them over to you."

  "Come, Ellud. How many sides do you face at once?"

  Ellud shifted uncomfortably on his desk. "I'm fending rocks, Duun; you know that."

  "I know that. I want to know who you're talking to."

  "The council. The council wants to talk to him. "

  "No."

  "You say no. They get no from you and come to my back door. I'm getting supply shortages; I'm getting delivery delays; I'm getting records lost."

  "Not coincidence."

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  "Not at this rate," Ellud said. Duun drew a deep breath and straightened his back; Ellud held up a hand. "I'll take care of it, Duun. I'd have come to you if I couldn't."

  "How does Tshon report me?"

  Ellud's mouth dropped. "Duun—"

  "I'm not offended. How does she report me?"

  "I— told Council you're quite stable. Her report was an advantage. To both of us."

  Duun smiled. With all the horror that expression had for the beholder; and he was always, with Ellud, aware of it. "I sent council a letter. If they want a hatani sanction individually and singly— let them forget their contract.

  The government made it. They've got it to my dying day."

  "Or his."

  "Are you telling me something, Ellud?"

  "I don't remember telling you anything. I'd have to swear I didn't."

  Few things disturbed Duun's centering. This was one. Ellud grew very still, hands loose in his lap, for a long while staring at that stare.

  "If there were to be an accident," Duun said.

  "I don't know how it would come. He's hatani, you said. He wouldn't be easy. Duun— you have to understand. It's not just council; it's public pressure: the matter at Sheon— got out."

  Duun said nothing and Ellud lifted a modifying hand, sketched diffident explanation. "They called the magistrates, the magistrates called the province head— back when they thought they'd run afoul of the Guild, when they thought they'd hatani troubles up to their armpits— well, the matter got blown up larger: a few offices got onto it, and a few wealthy 89

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  landholders at some dinner party— Well, a note went out to political interest here. And Rothen's successor—"

  "Shbit."

  "Shbit. Exactly. Wants to play politics. On the issue the whole thing's gone sour." Ellud made a helpless motion. "Duun, hard as it is to think anyone could be shortsighted enough—"

  "I don't find it hard at all. "I have a very fine appreciation of venality. And stupidity. Tomorrow doesn't come and a stone cast up doesn't come down.

  For a renunciate, I'm a verypractical man, Ellud. You should remember that."

  "I remember." In a small, hoarse voice. "Duun, for the gods' own sake—they're trying to get between you and the Guilds. You know that's how they'll work. They're trying to slow my office down with their paper-delays. They want documentation of malfeasance. I'm making duplicates of everything. I've got them in a packet in hands that will get them to the Guild— if— anything should happen."

  "Wise."

  "People are frightened, Dunn."

  "Go on guarding the back door. I'll take care of the front. I will."

  "For the gods' sakes—"

  Duun gave him a cold stare. "Calling on Shbit would solve it."

  "You couldn't get to him."

  "Couldn't?" Duun pursed his mouth. He drew in air that stank of politics and his blood ran faster. "Watch me."

  "Gods. Don't. Don't. Ammunition's all I want. Listen— Duun. Just let me take it awhile. Let me handle it. What happens to me when the pieces start 90

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  hitting the ground? You've got the Guild. I've got no cover. You think I can't manage it? I managed it while you were rusting in the hills for sixteen years. For the gods' sake, leave politics to me and get me what I need. You've got enough in your lap. Trust me for this."

  Duun scowled. "Meaning?"

  "Just— let me pile up data. Awhile."

  "The Guild's another answer. He might make it."

  "Gods. You don't mean that."

  "We're very catholic."

  Ellud's ears sank in dismay.

  "I'm working on it," Duun said. "I tell you that. But he's not ready yet."

  "You know what that would cause?"

  "And prevent."

  There was a long silence. Then: "The tapes, Duun. For the gods' sakes, start them. Can you do that?"

  Duun stared and thought about it. "Yes."

  * * *

  They sat together, Elanhen and Betan and Sphitti and Cloen: "This is the way it is," Elanhen said. "We get scored together. All of us. You're the one they threw into the group. If you don't learn, we fail together." "We get thrown out of our jobs," Betan said.

  "What's your job?" Thorn asked, because everything they said puzzled him.

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  Their faces went closed to him then, on secrets they would not share.

  * * *

  "You've got a problem," Betan said, leaning over his shoulder while he plied the keyboard in his lap and watched the window across the room become a glowing display. Lines blinked and intersected. "That's the trajectory. With that acceleration where will you intercept?" Sometimes the problems made vague sense. And sometimes they did not.

  (What in the world comes in two hundred twenty-fours?) (Stars. Trees. Kinds of grass. The ways of a river. The stubbornness of a child.)

  (I can reckon the speed of the wind, name the stars, the cities of the world—)

  "…in order, the particles—"

  Betan brushed his arm as she bent above him. She smelled of something different. She had no reticence with him. She took no care how she leaned past him. The column of her throat was undefended, her body sleek coated and ripe with musk—

  "You got it right," Sphitti said as they clustered about his desk sitting on its edges. "Here's an application now. If you were drifting in midair— no friction and no gravity—"

  (They're trying to trip me.) "You can't."

  "Say that you could."

  Betan flicked an ear at him. Perhaps it was a joke at his expense.

  "Write it down," said Cloen.

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  "I don't have to."

  "Let him do it his way," Sphitti said. Then he had to get it right.

  "That's right," Elanhen said then, checking what he said.

  "Damn hatani arrogance," Cloen said when he was not quite out of earshot, when he and Elanhen were off together at Cloen's desk.

  It hurt. Thorn was not immune to that.

  (Duun, what do I do when people insult me? When they hate me? How do I answer, Duun?)

  But he never asked it aloud. The shame of it distressed him. And he thought that he should come up with that answer on his own.

  * * *

  "Just the sounds," Betan said. "It doesn't matter what it means. It's a test of your recall. L
isten to the tape and memorize the sound." "It's not words at all!"

  "Pretend it is. Just try. Record it. Play it back till there's no difference."

  Thorn looked at Betan, at Sphitti. At two gray pairs of eyes. He felt indignation at this, as if they had made this one up. But they had never joked with him, not on lessons.

  He put the plug into his ear and listened. Tried to pronounce the babble.

  (They'll be laughing. It sounds like water running.) He looked around at them, but they found other things to do, with the computer and with their own studies. He turned back to his work, put his hands over his eyes to shut out the world.

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  He mouthed the noises. He slowed down the machine and ran it fast and memorized the sequences. It was harder than Sphitti's physics. The plug gave him an earache.

  "I've had enough of that," he said after he had gotten the start of it down and they gathered about to hear it. He would never have said that to Duun, but they accepted such things.

  "That's all you're supposed to do in the mornings," Elanhen said. "You keep at that."

  Thorn sat there amid his desk. He thought that he could beat any of them (even Betan, because Duun had made him believe that he was good).

  "Get to work," Cloen said.

  "I'm going home," Thorn said.

  "You can't. The door's locked. The guard won't let you."

  "Shut up, Cloen," Betan said. "Thorn, do the work. Please. I'm asking."

  Thorn glared at Cloen. At Betan too. (But it was pleasant that they said please to him. No one did. It occurred to him that they had to worry what they would do if he grew recalcitrant; and that they had to fear him (even Betan) the way he had to fear Duun. And that was a pleasant thought.) He cut off the tape, found his place in it again as the others drifted back to their places; and he did what Betan had asked until his ear hurt and his head ached.

  But when they were leaving he contrived that Cloen should brush against him.

  He sent Cloen against the foyer wall with a move of his arm. And stood there, in a shocked tableau of fellow-students and the guard outside the open door.

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  "I'm hatani. Lay a hand on me again and I'll break it."

  Cloen's ears were back. His jaw had dropped. He stood away from the wall and looked at Elanhen. "I never touched him!"

  Thorn walked out. An escort always came to bring him home. Duun's idea.

  Duun's direction. Thorn swept a gesture at the man waiting for him outside and never looked back.

  * * *

  "Go to the gym." Duun said when he came out of his office; and this was not habit, but Thorn went, and stopped and turned. Duun shoved at him. "I think you hit me," Duun said, with a darkness in his eves; and sudden fear washed over Thorn like icewater. Thorn backed up. He had not hit Duun; and one thing came to him at once: that someone had been on the phone when he came in. "What should I do about it?" Duun asked. "Well, Haras-hatani?"

  "I'm sorry, Duun." Thorn sweated. (Gods, move on me! Come on!) His concentration shredded. He dared not back out now. And he had never faced Duun in temper; he had never looked to. (O gods, Duun, don't kill me!)

  "The knife, minnow. Lay it down. Do you hear me? I'm telling you— lay it down."

  Thorn went off-center, shifted his balance back with a lifting of his head.

  Stood there with his arms loose and a quaking in his knees.

  "That's good." Duun patted his cheek. "That's very good."

  (O gods, Duun, don't!)

  The clawtip traced a gentle path down to his jaw. "I want to talk to you."

  The hand dropped to his arm and took it, hurling him staggering to the center of the floor.

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  "Duun-hatani, I'm sorry!"

  "Sit down."

  He sat down on the fresh-raked sand. Duun came and hunkered down in front of him.

  "Why are you sorry?" Duun asked. "Because of Cloen or for me?"

  "You, Duun-hatani. I shouldn't have done it. I'm sorry. He—"

  "What did he do?"

  "He hates me. He hates me, that's all, and he's subtle about it."

  "More subtle than you? Haras-hatani, I am confounded by his capacity."

  Heat rushed to Thorn's face. He looked at the sand. "He tries to be subtle.

  Anything I do is wasted on him."

  "You're different; just like Cloen with his baby-spots. And you suspect everyone's noticing. And you want to make sure they respect you. Am I halfway right?"

  "Yes, Duun-hatani."

  "You have a need, Haras. Do you know it? Can you say it to me?"

  "Not to be different."

  "Louder."

  "Not to be different, Duun-hatani."

  "Was it reasonable, what you did?"

  "He won't despise me!"

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  "Is that so important? What do you own? What does a hatani own?"

  "Nothing. Nothing, Duun."

  "Yet here we live in a fine place. We have enough to eat. We don't have to hunt—"

  "I'd rather hunt."

  "So would I. But why are we here? We're here because of what we are.

  You own nothing. You have no self-interest. If this Cloen should ask you to remove him from a difficulty you would do it. He would have no right to dictate how you did it; or when or where— but Cloen is your charge.

  The world is your charge, Haras-hatani. Do you know— you can walk the roads and go from house to house and no one will refuse you food or drink or a place to sleep. And when someone comes to you with a thing and says: help me— do you know what to warn him: Do you know, Haras-hatani? Do you know what a hatani will tell him?

  "No, Duun-hatani."

  "You will say: 'I am hatani; what you loose you cannot recall; what you ask you cannot unask; what I do is my solution.' There was a wicked man once who called a hatani. 'Kill my neighbor,' he said. 'That's not hatani business,' the hatani said and went away. The wicked man found another hatani. 'My life is wretched,' the wicked man said. 'I hate my neighbor. I want to see him die,' 'That is a hatani matter,' the hatani said. 'Do you give it into my hands?' 'Yes,' the wicked man said. And the hatani struck him dead. Do you understand the solution?"

  Thorn looked up in horror.

  "Do you understand?" Duun asked. "His problem was removed. And the world was eased. That's what you are. A solution. The helper of the world.

  Do you want my solution for your problem?"

  Thorn's heart beat very fast. "What should I do, Duun-hatani?"

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  "Tell Cloen to hit you once. Tell him to use his judgment in the matter."

  He looked at Duun a very long time. His gut ached. "Yes," he said.

  "Remember the lesson. Do as you're told. Someday you'll be wise enough to solve problems. Until then, don't create them. Do you hear?" Duun reached out and closed his hand on Thorn's shoulder. "Do you hear?"

  "I hear."

  Duun let him go.

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  VIII

  "It certainly didn't help matters," Ellud said, with the report aglow in his lap. He flung it aside and the optic draped itself over the stack of real paper and went on glowing with ghostly, damning letters. "I chastised my staffer. I don't know why I picked him. But, dammit, Duun— you passed him."

  "For his faults," Duun said. "As well as his virtues. I never expected perfection. I didn't want it. That's why I stayed by your choices."

  "Damn hatani tricks," Ellud said after a moment. "I understand what you're doing. But I don't like it with my staff. Cloen could have been killed."

  "I didn't judge so. In that, I was right."

  "It's in the record what happened. It was too well witnessed. I can't get rid of it. And with all the sniffing about the council's doing, I wish to the gods I could."
/>
  "What did happen was my fault. Power without restraint. I counted on two more years at Sheon. Haras was restrained. I'll tell you something which should be evident. Hatani solutions are too wide for young minds. His morality is adequate to hold his power back. It isn't adequate to use it."

  "To make him hatani— Duun, that's what's sent the wind up the council's—"

  "I know."

  "I took it for a figure of speech. That it was all you could teach. It was what you knew how to teach."

  "Come now."

  "Well, that it was easier. But you mean to go all the way with this. When they get that rumor—"

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  "Try to be discreet."

  "If the Guild could just devise something— clever, if they could find a halfway status—"

  "There's no halfway. To give him what I've given him— with nothing but restraint to manage it? No."

  Ellud reached and turned off the recorder, There was dismay on his face.

  Terror. "For the gods' sake, Duun. Have you lost your senses? What are you after? What are you after, Duun? "

  "Shbit will have gotten my letter by now Things should be quieter, from council quarter."

  A brief silence, no more comfortable. "What did you tell him?"

  "I offered him salutation. I felicitated him on his council appointment. I wished him health I signed it. It was a simple letter. He hasn't answered. I expect your supply difficulties to clear up slowly, but I do expect them to clear up."

  "You're not the man I knew." Ellud fidgeted with the hem of his kilt. "I don't know how to understand you."

  "Old friend. You had courage enough to stay in office this long. I trust you'll keep on with it."

  "I have to. Without this office I'm a naked target. They'd go for me. Shbit and his crew. Dammit, I've got no choice. They'd eat me alive."