Cuckoo's Egg

by C. J. Cherryh

  He studied his history and the dates settled into his mind but the names eluded him.

  "Something's bothering you," Sphitti said. "Do the sound-routines. You can do that."

  It insulted him. (I'm hatani, he wished to shout at Sphitti; things don't bother me.) It was the worse because it was patently true. Cloen walked warily around him. Elanhen worked silently at his own console on something abstruse and statistical, while Betan gave Thorn looks over her shoulder and said nothing.

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  Can I help? the message said in the bottom of his screen.

  After, he sent back, and nothing else.

  (Duun had cheated him. Duun had maneuvered him all his life. But why did Duun spend his life on one student? Why did Duun have so much wealth and the countryfolk live in a tin roofed house— but now they had Sheon; and Duun had this place, which was at the top of one of the tallest buildings in Dsonan, in the capital of the world, where power was. Why me? Why Duun? Why all this effort?)

  (Why do I know so little about the things I want and so much I never wanted to know, and why do they lock the doors and guards take us where we go in this building? Guards for what? What do they guard? Us?

  Someone else?)

  (I used to live here, Duun had said.)

  (Ellud's an old friend.)

  (I grew up at Sheon. So did Duun. Where did he know Ellud from?) The numbers blurred. Thorn keyed in letter function.

  Betan Betan Betan, he wrote, and again, Betan, and filled the screen with the repeat key.

  The hours dragged. The clock came up noon and in silence they shut down terminals and got up off their desks. But Thorn kept his terminal alive. He had told the guard who walked with him that he would have extra work to do. "I have to catch up in my history," he said when Sphitti asked. The others passed him without a word to him, talking to each other— perhaps Betan had changed her mind, perhaps Betan would forget, it had only been a casual thing to her. He heard the door snick shut and turned about on his desk and saw Betan come back in.

  Thorn stood up. Betan walked to his desk and they both sat down knee-to-knee on the side of it. She was grave and looked at him in a quiet way no 112

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  one but Betan used, not even Duun. She sensed something amiss. He knew. His heart sped and his breath grew tight; but she smelled of flowers and herself, she always did, like sun and warmth. "Something's wrong,"

  she said, but it was different the way she said it. Her face was vastly concerned, open in a way no one else was with him. "What is it?"

  "I almost beat Duun yesterday." Thorn was dismayed by the way the exaggeration leapt out so easily and then he could not take it back.

  "Was he angry?"

  "I don't think so." His breath grew tighter. "Betan, I lived at Sheon—" (but she knows that, this is a stupid way to start) "—I don't know the city. I've never been outside, except once, when I flew in— You do, a lot, don't you?"

  "Oh, yes. I go to the coast every spring."

  (Conjuring ribald jokes and student humor and mystic somethings every male in the world knew but him, more marked than Duun, scentblind and naked as something newborn.) Betan sat close, knee touching his knee.

  Her eyes were wide and dark. "I never learned," he said, and lost track of what he was saying, (not hatani, no: she was not; he did not need to be, for once he did not have to be complex, only simple, with Betan, who used to frighten him and now set her hand on his knee and slid it up.) He put his on hers, and felt the silkenness of her fur and felt the muscles slide, alive and taut as she leaned and stretched and came up against him with her hand on his body. "I never learned—"

  He felt things happening to him all at once, felt things vastly out of his control and brought it back again. It was all very clear suddenly what he wanted and what his body was doing on its own, and he held her against him and maintained that good feeling as long as he dared, until he felt everything slipping again, and he took her belt and unfastened it quickly.

  She unfastened his. Her head burrowed underneath his chin and she leaned on him, all warm, and her smell had changed.

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  It was fear. He flinched, jerked her back by both arms and she twisted in his grip— "Betan!"

  The door opened beyond her. A man walked out into the foyer. Betan jerked out of Thorn's hands and scrambled off the riser.

  Duun.

  Betan stopped, of a sudden crouched and backing away. Thorn got to his feet. "Dammit— Duun!"

  Duun stepped marginally out of the doorway and waved Betan to it. She hesitated.

  "Get out!" Thorn cried. (Gods, he'll kill her—) "Betan! Get out!"

  She skittered out the foyer doorway and through the outer door like escaping prey. Duun glanced after her and looked back at Thorn.

  Thorn shook. He stood with one foot on the sand and one knee on the desk and shook with reaction as he put his clothes together. Duun stood there as if he would wait forever.

  "Leave me alone," Thorn said. "Duun, for the gods' sake leave me alone!"

  "We'll talk later. Let's go home, Haras."

  "I haven't got a home! A hatani doesn't have anywhere! He hasn't got anything—"

  "We'll talk later, Thorn."

  Thorn shivered convulsively. There was no choice. (There's never been a choice. Come home, Haras. Give up, minnow. Pretend nothing's wrong.) (But she was scared. She panicked. Scared of me—)

  "Come on," Duun said.

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  "I wish you'd been a little later!"

  Duun said nothing. Held out his hand toward the door. Thorn left the desk and the room blurred. (Your eyes are running, Thorn.) He walked out and in a vast blurred haze Duun walked beside him down the hall to the elevator. The silence lasted all the way to their door and past the guard there. That watcher was noncommittal, as if he read them both.

  Duun closed the door behind them. Thorn headed for his room.

  "There was no choice," Duun said. "You know what you'd have done to her?"

  "I wouldn't have hurt her!" He spun about and faced Duun squarely, at the distance of the hall. "Dammit, I wouldn't have—"

  "I have to be more plain to you about anatomy."

  " I wouldn't have hurt her! I'd have— I'd—" (I can't; couldn't; but touching her, but her touching me—)

  "I can imagine you'd have tried." Coldly, cooly, from age and superiority.

  "Common sense was nowhere in it, Thorn. You know it."

  "Tell me. Lecture me. Gods, I don't mind what you do to me, but you came in like that on her— What do you think you did to her, Duun-hatani?

  Is that your sublety?"

  "I promised you an answer. Years ago you asked a question and I promised you an answer when you could beat me. Well, you came close yesterday. Perhaps that's good enough."

  Shock poured over Thorn. Then reason did. He flung up a hand. "Dammit, dammit, you're maneuvering me! I know your tricks, you taught them to me, I know what you're doing, Duun!"

  "I'm offering you your answer. That's all. What you are, where you came from—"

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  "O gods, I don't want to hear it!" Thorn turned. He ran. He shut the door to his room and leaned against it shaking.

  The intercom came alive. "When you want, you can come out, Thorn. I don't think badly of you. Not in this. Even a hatani can take wounds. This is a great one. Come out when you can face me. I'll wait for you. I'll be waiting, Thorn."

  * * *

  He was dry-eyed when he came out. He unlocked the door and walked out into the hall, and down the hall into the main room. Duun was there, sitting on the riser that touched the wall. The windows were all stars and dark. Nightview. Perhaps it was. Duun did not look at him at once, not until he had crossed the sand and sat down on the riser in the tail of Duun's view. Then Duun turned his face to him; and there was no sound except something mechanical behind
one window and a whisper of air from the ducts.

  "Have you come for your answer?" Duun asked.

  "Yes," Thorn said. He sat upright, hands on his thighs, ankles crossed. He looked unflinchingly at Duun.

  "You've studied genetics," Duun said. "You know what governs heredity."

  (Be quick. Drive the knife in quickly. Duun. O gods, I don't want to sit through this.) "Yes. I understand."

  "You understand that genes make you what you are; that every trait you manifest is no matter of chance. A harmonious whole, Haras."

  "Are you my father?"

  "No. You had none. Nor mother. You're an experiment. A trial, if you will—"

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  Thorn was strangely numb. Duun's voice drifted somewhere in the half-dark, in the timelessness of the view. The night went on forever and he went on hearing it.

  "I don't believe this," Thorn said finally. Not because he did not believe it was something equally terrible. But that he saw no way to accomplish it.

  "Duun. The truth. I'm something that went wrong—"

  "Not wrong. No one said wrong. There are things right about you. But you're different. An experiment. You know how conception takes place.

  You know genetic manipulation's done—"

  "I don't know how it's done." (Clinically. Precisely, like a lesson. It could not be him they discussed, a thing in a dish, a mote floating in a glass.) "I know that it is done. I know they can put things together and come up with something that didn't exist before."

  "You know when someone wants a child and there's a— physical impediment— there's the means to bring the embryo to term. A host.

  Sometimes a volunteer. In other cases a mechanical support system. An artificial womb. That was so in your case."

  (A machine. O gods, a machine.)

  "There's nothing remarkable in that," Duun said. "You have that in common with a thousand, two thousand ordinary people who couldn't be born any other way. Medicine's a marvel."

  "They made me up."

  "Something like that."

  He had struggled not to cry. The tears welled up out of nowhere and ran down his face, endless. "When they were putting me together in this lab—

  " He could not talk for a long time and Duun waited for him. He began it again. "When they made me did they bother to do it twice? Is there anyone else like me?"

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  "Not in all the world," Duun said. "No."

  "Why? For the gods' sake why?"

  "Call it curiosity. There are undoubtedly reasons adequate for the meds."

  "The meds—"

  "They're your fathers if you like. After a manner of speaking Ellud is. Or others in the program."

  "What are you?"

  "A hatani solution."

  Small warnings went off. A prickle of alarm. (Self-preservation. Why should I bother? Why should I care?) But there was fear. "Whose?"

  "I might have done many things. I chose to give you the best chance I could give. The only chance I'm equipped to give. Like Ehonin and his daughter."

  "Who asked for it?"

  Duun was silent for a long time. "The government."

  "Asked a hatani solution?" The enormity of it washed over Thorn like a flood. Duun's stare never gave him up.

  "You are one of my principals. I gave you all I could give. I'll go on giving that. It's all that I can do."

  The stars glittered on, awash. "I wanted to love her, Duun."

  "I know."

  "I want to die."

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  "I taught you to fight. Not to die. I'm teaching you to find solutions."

  "Find this one."

  "I've already been asked."

  Thorn shuddered. All his limbs shook.

  "Come here," Duun said. Held out his hands. "Come here, minnow."

  Thorn went. It was a pathetic thing Duun offered, shameful for them both.

  Duun took him in his arms and held tight till the shuddering stopped. After that he lay still against Duun's shoulder for a very long time, and Duun's arms cradled him as they had done before the fire, in Sheon, when he was small.

  He slept. When he woke Duun had fallen asleep over him, and his back ached, and it was all still true.

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  IX

  "Well," Ellud said, "we're still tracing the files as far as we can. When official channels decide to fake a record they can do it with remarkably few tracks."

  "No matter." Duun kept his back straight. The cracked rib and a twisted night put slowness in his movements; and he sat cross-legged on the other riser in Ellud's office with a cup of herbal tea in his hands. He savored the warmth and the quiet. "I congratulate the council. The security service background— true or false— accounted for the way she held herself."

  "Young and bright and probably indebted as hell to someone."

  "Try Dallen Company. Trace it and make as much noise as you like. It ought to keep Shbit prudent awhile."

  "I'm embarrassed about this."

  "She cost them. A lot of years forging that identity. What worries me is how she got out of the building untracked. Dammit, how did they foul that up?"

  "We're trying to find that out too."

  Duun stared at Ellud a moment and poured himself another cup of tea from the vessel which sat at his left knee. He lifted the cup and looked at Ellud again, making his face expressionless, his eyes uninformative as glass. "He's growing to be a man, all fine points aside; the matter was bound to come up. Betan was a solution when I picked her. I sensed she had the nerve to deal with him. That was understatement, at least. Thorn, gods know, could take care of himself— up to a point. But at least she was bent on creating an incident. That's likeliest. And at worst case, she would do that and kill him in the process. If she could. She had nerve for it. Pity the Guild didn't get her."

  "Free-hatani?"

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  "I've thought of that. I don't think so. Free-ghota, maybe."

  "Good gods, if you thought that—"

  "Hindsight. She might be the same vukun as Shbit's own bodyguards.

  They're capable. Maybe even one of Dallen Company's guilded hire-ons.

  She botched it up if killing was what she intended, but she wasn't bad.

  And I doubt it was all that simple." Another sip of the tea. "You won't find her, not now, I think. She likely did clear the building. Look for old friends in Security."

  "I'm doing that."

  "She'll probably suicide after she reports. I embarrassed her, and not in her youthful modesty. Shbit will see the body disappears. I'll be glad to see her go to him, frankly. It'll make solutions a lot neater."

  "I don't like this kind of thing."

  "I don't like it either. I may yet visit Shbit. But this discomfiture ought to slow him down a while. He can't bring his witness to light now. That's all spoiled— the charges of assault and ravishment—" Duun drew a deep breath. Ellud's distress was evident. "Well, it's over. For a while. I put him to work in the gym this morning, refused all further questions, and poured a sedative down him afterward. Right now he's sleeping and Hosi's standing over him. Tomorrow, well, we'll change that school situation. I think it's best. With thanks to your staff. I'd like to pull him out, get him out to the country—"

  "Gods, no! We just had one security breach. You want another business like Sheon?"

  "—but I know it's not feasible."

  "Duun. Duun-batani." Ellud reached beside him on the desk, picked up the optic sheet and waved it. "I'm getting inquiries. We've got a slow leak that's going to become a panic, for the gods' sake, Duun! We haven't got that much maneuvering room left. I want that program to go on, I want it 121

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  back on schedule. I'm telling you this. It's not just Shbit now. It's coming from the provinces. We're getting inquiries. Do you understand?"

  "I've alw
ays understood. There's a limit, Ellud. The mind has limits. I want him tranquil. I want him whole. He's closer now than he ever was. But give him room"

  "He doesn't know about Betan, does he?"

  "How could I explain that without getting into the whole council business?

  That's why I couldn't stop her on the spot. What would I say? Some people want you killed? He already avoids mirrors. Let the scars heal over before he gets the rest." It was the two-fingered hand that held the cup. Duun contemplated that, rolled it in his fingers and set it down. "Put Sagot on it."

  "She couldn't."

  " Ask her. No, I'll explain to her. She's old, she's canny, and she's female, and that's the best combination I can think of to handle this."

  * * *

  The guard still stood at the door, the same as always, and Thorn turned to look at the guard who escorted him to the upper floor— not a hard look, not vengeful. ( He put Duun onto it.) At first Thorn had thought of Cloen. But Thorn had not been devious, had not— truly— thought of covering his tracks, not thought he had to.

  Going through that ordinary door this morning was all that he could do.

  ("Betan's gone," Duun had told him yesterday. "She's been transferred. It was her request.") ("Did you kill her?" Thorn had asked, cold and shivering a second time. It was not a rational question, perhaps; but the very air felt brittle, full of doubts, full of duplicities. And Duun looked him in the eyes when he answered: "No. No such thing—" as soberly as ever Duun had answered him, as ever Duun had told him half-truths, had kept the world from him until Betan let it in.)

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  (What year are we in?)

  (I shouldn't have laughed. Sheon's not quite the world capital, is it?) Thorn walked in, into the foyer with its stark white walls, its plain white sand, the severely arranged vase-and-branch on its riser. The sand showed the raking it got at night; a solitary line of footprints led around the corner into the large main room in which all the windows were white and blank.