Cuckoo's Egg

by C. J. Cherryh

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  Tangan had caught a certain rebel and oftwarned novice in that game, among others. And Duun had rued it. Four ten-days of cleaning the sand by hand. It shocked him, how much this man had aged.

  "I've gotten used to his looks," Duun said.

  "Have you?"

  Duun met Tangan's guarded stare. "I've had near twenty years."

  "Twenty years of power beyond any precedent."

  "Sixteen hiding on a mountain, in a woods. Five performing unmentionable tasks which teach any man humility. So does dealing with Dsonan."

  "Ah. How is the capital?"

  "Carrying news to you is like bringing water to the well."

  "How is the capital?"

  "There are more ways to cheat on an agreement than they teach here, Tangan-hatani."

  "Paradoxically prosperous times. Money. Is that what you see?"

  "A lot of new money— paid out in the least educated provinces, to elect fools who'll take orders, who can only see ways to entrench themselves and make sure contracts go to the right companies. Some of these fools are evident, and shrewd country-folk keep voting them in because the powers in their districts might buy one ten times worse and far more subtle. I tell you we should send one of the novices walking in Elsnuunan and Yoth.

  Some herder might be passionate enough on some given day to pose us a question. But some of these fools have passed for astute councillors, and protect themselves so well they make and break young politicians on their own."

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  "Shbit no Lgoth?"

  "He will want to challenge."

  "He has. His agent is on the way."

  Duun smiled softly. "This will be a ghota. I suspect."

  "You know this person?"

  "Likely we've met."

  "You're managing Shbit, then. How well?"

  "I could do better. My hours have been occupied. So this man is a danger.

  I would have removed him arbitrarily but I was crippled by too much power. I could have done too much. So I could do nothing."

  "I predicted this."

  "I predicted Shbit but I didn't know what his name would be. There was too much money being made. And I was in Sheon wiping noses. Master, you know an answer, maybe: was there another way?"

  Long silence. Tangan laced his hands and studied them and looked up. "I saw where you might put us. I thought back over all my years and all the years of the Guild and wondered where the crux was. I think it was when walls were raised. Everything led to this. You put us in a hard place; if we deny him protection we light the fire that will destroy us; if we take him we loose a firestorm. I don't want to contemplate this choice. I'm being frank with you: I ask myself at night how I taught my student that you find yourself capable of this. A hatani ought to have a flaw. A hatani ought to doubt himself enough to have a little guilt of his own. You have none. You burn with too much light, Duun-hatani. You blind me. I can't see whether you're right or wrong. Perhaps it will stop mattering. Perhaps the dark comes next. I confess to trusting you in one thing; I confess to cowardice in this. I didn't believe you'd come here, even when I knew you were training him. Freehatani would have been my solution."

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  Duun contemplated a long while, "Master, you say in one breath you predicted my powerlessness: in the next you say you couldn't predict my coming here at the last."

  "To infect us with your powerlessness?"

  Duun looked up. "Tangan-hatani, in many respects he's a boy like other boys. Remember that."

  "Is that your wisdom?"

  "Tangan-hatani, if I'm a fire I'm the safer for having had a hearth to burn in."

  "Do we make a lamp out of this one and set him on a shelf?"

  "You might, but I'd hope it's a damn steady one."

  "Keep him here?"

  "Set him where you choose. The guild itself is a principal in this solution.

  So am I. I let you judge."

  "We have another choice."

  "The guild won't abdicate this."

  "Do you predict what the Guild will do?"

  "Is that anger, master Tangan?"

  "Of course not. It's overweening pride. My student has set us all in a trap.

  Angmen must have felt pride like that when Chena pulled the guild gates down."

  Duun folded his hands in his lap. "You'll handle it."

  "Do the scars ache. Duun-hatani? You were such an agile student."

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  (Strike and draw.) "I have my ways of compensating. Tangan-hatani. You taught me patience, after all."

  * * *

  Thorn searched the room they gave him: it was a confortable one, all bare wood and aged stone. A fire of real wood burned in the hearth: he had not had that comfort since Sheon, and it might have lured him at once to warm himself there. They gave him water with the assurance it was safe; they gave his meat and cheese with a confection of preserved beanberries. They gave him a bed of furs, and the sand on the floor was white and fine and deep, newly baked and arranged in meticulous spirals. In the next room a hot bath was waiting, milky with aromatics and soothing oils. They smiled at him, hatani smiles, neither false nor true. And he searched the place, hunting pebbles. There were none. He was thirsty after the long flight and the running. His limbs were chafed and sweaty from the flight suit. He had set their baggage on the wooden riser that was also the bureau. "Is that gray cloak yours?" a hatani had asked, watching while he unfolded these things. "No," Thorn had said with a clear-eyed stare, knowing that they knew whose it was. "It must be Duun's," that hatani said. "It is," Thorn said back. "Give me his belongings," the hatani said then; "I'll put them in his room."

  Thorn had smiled then, as certainly as he could. "I'd be a fool to disobey him: forgive me, hatani: when he blames you, tell him it was my fault. In my inexperience I couldn't tell what to do, so I followed his orders."

  Another hatani had come up beside him then and reached out his hand.

  "Please, visitor: let me at least put these things away for you."

  "No," Thorn had said, turning the hand with a slow move of his own. "No, hatani. Forgive me."

  That hatani drew back. "No one will trouble you till morning, visitor," the other said. They closed the door behind them.

  (It can't be that easy. There's another trick.)

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  Thorn searched for it. He stripped off the suit, down to his small-kilt. He investigated the food, breaking up the cheese and tearing the meat apart.

  He drained the tub. He turned out the bed. He searched the closet and pulled out the bureau drawer to look at the space behind it. He racked his brain then. (Even the furniture could hide something.) So he probed the boards of the closet, he investigated the toilet and the bathtub riser, and the sink.

  The faucet was dry. That was one thing amiss. He felt into it and found nothing. (Damn. Something's wrong there. Maybe it's to prevent my drinking that and not the pitcher.) He tried to move even the tub and the bed and the big riser near it. He investigated the walls.

  And finally, he knelt down in the corner near the door and began to move the deep sand.

  He found the small panel in the stone beneath when he had shifted half the sand in the room. He was panting by then. He wiped at his face with a dry and dusty arm. (No.) He remembered Sagot's fish and the bird. Duun laying his pebble on the table beside the teapot. (Trust nothing.) He got his dress kilt and pried up the panel with his thumbnail through the cloth. He laid it back. There was a pebble in a small recess. He went to the bureau, got his razor from his kit and a square of tissue. And with that he raked the pebble out and wrapped it in tissue, replaced the lid and contemplated the long wave of sand which wanted redistributing.

  ("Be polite.") Perhaps it extended to leaving the room in order.

  And then another thought came creeping into his mind. ("Snap. No b
ird.

  See what assumptions do?")

  (Fish and bird. Pebble and pot.)

  (Is there any assurance there's no second stone?) Half the room remained. (And— gods— how much time? It might be in the sand. I can't move it except by hand.)

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  He put the one stone securely in his belt and started scooping the rest of the sand away.

  * * *

  The other secret well was in the far corner. There was no third. He stared at a great mound of sand over by the door and went and cleared the plate of the mangled food, and with the plate scooped and scattered sand as quickly as he could. His back and arms ached; his knees were raw, for all that he had tried to pad them with his spare clothing in his crawling about. His hands were abraded of their calluses, all the protection he acquired on them. He was thirsty and thanked the gods he had had breakfast at least, for he would not touch the food. (There might be a pebble in the source vessel, not even in this room. How could I trust it? And the sink.

  Something's wrong. Do I fail if I don't use the safe things? I'm sweaty. I smell awful. I can't go to any interview smelling like this. I look like this and now I have to offend their noses too. And I've used the only change of clothes I had.)

  (Use Duun's? Gods, no.)

  (What time is it?)

  Thorn threw sand and spread it, waded into it and kicked it as level as he could with his feet and tried to think. He stood panting, returned to the bath and worked at the sink plumbing until his hands bled. Nothing budged it, and he sat on the cold tiles with his legs going numb. (It's not going to give. It's just the pitcher they want me to use, that's all.) And his mouth was dry, his throat raw with dust and exertion. (I've won. There were two pebbles. I've got them both. I won't drink the water, I won't eat the food; I won't sleep in the bed.)

  (The mattress. Is there a rule about not breaking things?) (In Duun's game we never did.)

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  He heaved himself up off the tiles, limped in to the warm sand in front of the fire and sank down there, gritty and sweaty and chilled. (Gods, at least I can use the razor and the lotion I brought. That smells good. Maybe it will cover some of my stink.)

  (I daren't sleep. They promised no one would bother me. I daren't believe that either.)

  He felt after the pebbles in his belt and took out his prizes, never touching them with his fingers. They lay in the tissue, each unique, one with a white vein, the other white with a black. (Would someone ever cheat?) (Fool!)

  He looked at the fire, the abundant embers in the grate.

  He went to the table and got the pitcher and poured it out on the coals. A great hissing of steam rose up and there was still a vivid glow in the coals.

  (Oh, damn, damn, damn! The bath I drained. The water that won't run.) He took the pitcher to the bath and tried the taps again, got down on his knees and dipped out all the water in the toilet with his hands: it filled the pitcher once.

  The coals had livened again when he got back. He poured the water on and got the platter and poured sand on, waited a while and scooped some of it out with the plattter. There was still heat. There had been a metal grate beneath the logs. The coals lay at a forearm's depth in sand.

  (How much time? 0 gods, I daren't wait for this.) He cast the top sand away. He got down to the coals and used his razor again to rake them onto the platter, to turn them and examine them. Bit by bit the collection in the bathroom grew; and he got down to the deeper coals and into the heat. There was a metal grate. He got that out using his flight helmet for a hook. He moved more coals, and heat cracked the plate in two. He used the larger piece and raked more gingerly. His hands 172

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  blistered now. The pain was a new encounter every time he reached in; everything he held was hot. The shard broke again and one by one the pieces he used broke to smaller and smaller shards. He abandoned his taking the coals to the bath, he only slid them out onto the sand and examined them and reached back for more. He set his knee on a hot ember and tears blurred his eyes, ran on his face and dried.

  From far down in the coals, he scooped out a small black ember which was too regular and too smooth. He rolled it in the sand to cool it and scratched it with his razor. It was a pebble.

  He wrapped it with the rest and never flinched at the heat. (Should I stop hunting?)

  He kept going, to the last. Off to the side of the hearth, beneath old ash, he found a metal trap, and pried that open with his razor. He burned himself again getting out the small stone at the bottom. But he rolled it into the tissue too, and gingerly searched what little ash was left until he was sure there were no more.

  He sat down then, slumped with his arms on his knees until he had rested.

  And then he began to pick the grate and the dead coals up and restore them to the fireplace.

  The door opened when he was in the middle of this task. The hatani who had put him into the room were back. They looked about the room.

  One walked into the bath and came back again, and Thorn got to his feet.

  "Come with us," the first hatani said.

  Thorn took his sooty kilt and wrapped it about himself, then started gathering up all the rest of his and Duun's belongings, every one.

  "Visitor," the other said. "it's clear you're not leaving, from the condition of this room. There's no need to pack."

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  "Please." Thorn wrapped Duun's cloak and change of clothing in his flight suit, which, with the cloak, was the only thing left unsoiled. He gathered his razor off the floor and put it in the helmet along with the lotion bottles.

  "Oh, don't be a fool!" the other said. "They'll laugh at you in the hall.

  You're going to meet master Tangan, with all the hatani in the house! You can't drag all that stuff in!"

  "I never got to give Duun his cloak. I don't know. I might lose these things. I'll let him tell me what to do."

  "Come on, then, fool. But I warn you they'll laugh. Gods— you're filthy.

  Do you want a change of clothes? I can lend you some."

  "Thank you. I'll ask Duun when I see him."

  The other gestured at the open door.

  * * *

  The corridor gave way to an open hall, a pit sided with many steps; and gray-cloaked hatani sat on those steps, hundreds of them. The floor was sanded and swirled with raking. There were great boulders on the sand. On each of them a hatani sat. At the bottom of the steps in front of him stood Duun, the only one without a cloak. Duun lifted his chin slightly and Thorn walked down the steps, his escort behind him.

  "You brought my cloak," Duun said. "Have they touched it at all?"

  "No, Duun-hatani."

  Duun held out his hand and took it and put it on. Duun extended his hand toward the farthest of the rocks. "The last is master Tangen."

  Thorn walked down and across the sand, along the narrow path the hatani on the boulders had walked, like the form of a tree. He heard others walk 174

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  behind him. He stopped in front of the farthest. His belongings were still in his arms.

  "You may set those things down." master Tangan said, and lifted his hand in that way Duun had which meant a thing could be trusted. "You will stand." Duun came and stood near him. The two who had brought him stood on the other side. Thorn set his belongings on the ground in front of him.

  "You are untidy, young man," Tangan said. "Is this a way to come to this hall?"

  "Forgive me, master Tangan."

  "Was there something amiss with the room?"

  Thorn hesitated. It seemed the right question. He reached into his belt and drew out the tissue. He unfolded it and showed the pebbles. His burns hurt and his sooty hands bled onto the tissue, shaking in spite of all he could do. (Were they all? Did I miss one?)

  "Did he drink the water?"

  "The pitche
r was empty," one of his escorts said.

  "Did he eat the food?"

  "The food was crumbled," the other said.

  "There was a pebble in the pitcher from which that pitcher was poured.

  There was a pebble in the plate from which that plate was served. Did you drink or eat?"

  "No, master Tangan. I poured the water on the fire. I didn't eat. I didn't touch my hand to my mouth after touching the food."

  "How can I know this is the truth?"

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  At first it seemed an accusation. Then it occurred to him it was another question. "You're hatani, master Tangan. If I couldn't find a trick like that you could read me too."

  A moment of silence, all about the room. "Did you bathe?"

  "No, master Tangan."

  "That seems evident."

  He was too weary. He only stared up at Tangan, still holding the pebbles.

  "What did you do with the water?"

  "I let it out, master Tangan, hunting for pebbles."

  "Was there one?"

  "Not in that tub."

  "Lay the pebbles that you found on the sand one by one."

  Thorn bent and slipped them from the tissue one at a time. At the third there was a stirring in the seats; at the fourth a greater stirring. He straightened and looked up at the old, old man.

  "Four is unusual," master Tangan said simply. "Two beyond the food and water would have passed you. That's the first test. The second is myself.

  Tell me the worst thing you ever did."

  Almost Thorn let his face react. And stopped himself. He thought a moment. (Losing Sheon? But that wasn't from knowledge. That was my ignorance. That blames Duun.) "I shouted at my teacher Sagot, master Tangan. Yesterday."

  "Have you stolen?"

  "Only from Duun."