Cuckoo's Egg

by C. J. Cherryh

"People." Duun turned toward him. "People like you, minnow."

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  The room was very still. There had never been such a voice. There was nowhere such a voice. The windows were illusion and the world was.

  "No, Duun."

  "Do you know differently?"

  'Dammit, Duun— don't do this to me!"

  "You wanted your answer. There's one more question. Do you want to ask it?"

  "What am I?"

  "Ah." Duun walked to the window rim, eclipsing a light. "You're a genetic code. So am I. Yours is different."

  "I'm not shonun?"

  "Oh, gods, minnow, you've known that for years." Duun faced him, twilight shadow against the glare, gray against the void. "You just didn't know what else you could be. The world held all your possibilities. I created you. A code into an egg, not the first trial; there were thousands of tries till the meds got the right of it. A technology had to be built: we had the most of it, our own doing; but you were a special problem. And you—were the success. They brought you to me: they didn't want to. They'd labored so hard to have you. Do you believe me, minnow? Am I telling the truth?"

  "I don't know, Duun." Thorn wanted to sit down. He wanted to go somewhere. There was no refuge, on this floor, beneath these windows.

  "It is the truth," Duun said. "The ear picks up those messages. Perhaps there's something in the pathways of the brain; perhaps it's knowing one's own face; perhaps both these things. You duplicate the sounds on the tapes perfectly; no shonun can manage all those consonants— no shonun could read the faces on that tape— except maybe myself; except Sagot sometimes. You taught me. You taught me your reflexes and your inmost 219

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  feelings; and when we gave you the vocabulary we've been able to guess for ourselves— perhaps it's pathways, gods know— you began to handle it. That's what you were made for."

  "To live here? To work with this? "

  "It doesn't appeal to you?"

  "Duun— take me home. O gods, take me home again."

  "Haras. Don't break down on me. You haven't come this far to beg me like a child."

  Thorn came over to the window and turned his back to it. It took the sight away. It put light on Duun's face and hid his own. "Don't play me tricks. I can't—" ( Can't, minnow?") There was silence.

  "The transmissions come at regular intervals," Duun said in a calm, still voice. "They repeat, mostly. What do they say?"

  "I told you what they said."

  "You encourage me."

  "To what?" Thorn looked up at the window; perspective destroyed the illusion, made it only glare and dark, meaningless. He flinched from it and looked back. "Is that why they're afraid of me?"

  "I took an alien, I held it, fed it, warmed it— it was small, but it would grow. I took it up on a mountain and lived with it alone. I slept under one roof with it, I made it angry, I encouraged it and pushed it and I had nightmares, minnow, I dreamed that it might turn on me. There were times I held it that my flesh crawled; I did these things."

  (Duun— o gods, Duun—) It was beyond hurt.

  "…I was more than fair with it. I gave it everything I had to give; I went from step to step. I made it shonun. I taught it; argued with it; discovered 220

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  its mind and step by step I gave it everything I knew how to teach. Every chance. You grew up shonun. No one knew what to expect. When I told Ellud I would make you hatani he was appalled. When the world knew—there was near panic. No matter. It never reached you. When I told Ellud I would bring you to the guild— well, hatani was bad enough: their judgments were limited. But to put you in the guild— That was earthquake. And you won it. You won Tangen. You did it all, minnow."

  "Do you love me, Duun?"

  (Thrust and evade.) Duun's scarred ear twitched and he smiled. There was sorrow in it and satisfaction. "That's a hatani question."

  "I was taught by the best."

  (Second attack.) Duun's mouth tautened on the scarred side. "Let me tell you a story, minnow."

  "Is it a good one?"

  "It's how I lost the fingers. You've always wondered, haven't you?— I thought you had. No one asks the questions of their relatives that they really want to know— after they grow up. And they never discover the good questions until it's far too personal to ask."

  "Was it my fault?"

  "Ah. I got through your guard."

  "Tell me the story, Duun."

  "We were rank beginners— I'm sure Sagot told you most of this: tanun guild took us into space, just the merest foothold. The moon. A station.

  The companies moved in. We had scientific bases here and there. Hatani guild, ghota, tanun— kosan here and there; not many. A lot of ordinary folk, doing what ordinary folk do— making money, mostly; or learning things. The world fared pretty well in those days. Then a ship turned up."

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  Duun's face lifted slightly, a gesture toward the window, toward the lights.

  "The one out there."

  "Not shonun," Thorn said.

  "Not shonun. It was pretty badly battered when I first saw it. It's not clear what happened at first: it scared hell out of the Dothog mission and someone started shooting, it's not clear which side. They were ghotanin, of course. There wasn't much left to question to fix responsibility. But the ship didn't leave the solar system then— too heavily damaged. It moved off, faster than anyone wanted to believe; ghotanin and kosanin chased that thing where they could— we could at least tell each other where it was heading. And for the next two years we chased that ship and battered at it. We. Tangen sent me up. I wasn't chief of the mission then, but I survived longer. We battered away at it; we lost ships. Its maneuvers got slower. We knew it was transmitting. We knew it was transmitting to someone outside the solar system, and we finally silenced that. We chewed away at it and finally we got it at a speed we could match. We boarded. There was one of them still alive. We tried to take him that way.

  That was my mistake." Duun lifted the maimed hand, palm outward. "He got all the rest of us. One blast. I got through it and got to him. I killed him. We found out later the ship was rigged in a way that might have destroyed it. But he never did that. We found four others frozen in vacuum. And this one. Maybe he was crazy by then. Maybe he thought he could live a little longer. Maybe he was afraid to use that last trick. But I got back; we hauled that ship in with all it contained.

  "It changed the world, Thorn. Until that time we thought we were alone.

  And this thing was a nightmare. Two years. Two years of throwing everything we had at it and it was five of these people. Just five. They nearly wrecked the world. They cost us— O gods. Nothing was the same.

  And there was panic. They came to me, the council did. I was very famous then. It was those first days: we'd stopped it damn close to the earth. That was why we fought like that, and why it cost so much. The council asked me to do something: Tangan had refused them. Hatani judgment? I asked them. Is that what you want? We'll give you anything, they said, any help.

  All our backing. I told them they were fools. They had all the provinces hammering at their doors demanding action, they had the companies, they 222

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  had the guilds all pulling in different directions, and kosan and ghota at odds. You've been out there, they said; give us a solution. And I took them up on it." Duun motioned to the window. "I knew there were transmissions that went out from that ship while we hunted it. I thought there might be answers we couldn't hear. I called in scientists. I ordered Gatog built. I ordered that ship studied. I ordered it duplicated if we could. I ordered you— created. You're him, Thorn; you're the man on the ship. Born from his blood, his cells. You are my enemy. I made you over again. You are my war, my way to fight a war we didn't know how to fight. You're my answer. I knew what you would look like— what you will look like, in another ten-year. I knew what you'd grow into— physic
ally. But now I know what I killed. What he might have been. If he were my son."

  Thorn shut his eyes. There were tears. ("Don't you know by now I can't?") They ran when he blinked and shattered Duun's image when he looked at Duun again. 'You're maneuvering me."

  "I'm hatani. Of course. I always have been. I told you that."

  "The way you maneuvered Tangan. Gods— why? What do you want?"

  "You're the world's long nightmare. A bad dream. Everything earth has went to build Gatog, to build that other ship— You understand what it is to jump that far that fast in industry? New materials, new processes, new physics— new fears and new money and all that goes with it. Politics.

  Companies. A world that had just reached out into space— and all of a sudden— discoveries that shatter it. Energies that, gods help us— we're still unraveling, technologies with potentials we're not ready to cope with, with all that means. We didn't know, when that ship transmitted, how long we had before an answer might come. We know now that ship came from a star nine light-years out. That's when the first message came— nine years after that ship first transmitted. We don't know how fast the ship traveled. We're beginning to understand that. It's fast. It's very fast.

  Translight. I was naive at first. I imagined we had years— half of a century— to get here. Duplicate the ship. Teach them a lesson. Send the kosan guild to deal with them and hatani to settle matters. We know a lot more now— what the cost of a ship like that is when you have to develop each part and joint as a new technology; the social cost of changes. It's 223

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  made us rich. It's made us capable of blowing ourselves to hell. The tapes, minnow, the tapes— we salvaged off the ship. The machine that runs them, the drug that we found with them. A whole new category of drugs; a new vice. Gods, I had to be so careful with you. Every substance, every damn plant you touched— drove the meds crazy. Livhl you could take; sjuuna and mara; dsuikin, never—"

  ("Try this, minnow, try it on your tongue, never swallow first-off—")

  "—you tolerate most things; we tolerate most of yours. Thank the gods that's so, or you'd have lived in virtual isolation."

  (Sheon, the leaves moving in the summer wind, green and fragrant—) (The stinging smell of lugh-flowers on the long road down from home to exile—)

  "Am I the only one, am I all, Duun?"

  "Yes. There was argument on that point. A lot of it. All they could see was the tapes; read the tapes; if he doesn't live, if he should meet with accident.

  …But there was only one of me, minnow; and I had to teach you, my way; learn from you, my way. If you'd been in isolation, I would have been too.

  We were bound together. To make you what you are took me, and it took those tapes, minnow— Some of them, gods know, maybe simple entertainment for the crew— the one that was the key. There are others.

  The audio you heard— that's from Gatog. The messages come regularly.

  You know what I imagine they say? 'Here we are. You killed our messenger.' But I don't know what they say after that. I don't know how long they'll wait. They know we've got a ship. They know whatever that pilot told them. 'They're killing me. I can't leave. They're poor primitives.

  They're not worth much. But look out for them.' "

  "You think they're going to attack."

  "I planned to be capable of coming to them— whatever they're doing. But the way that ship works— the way they think it works— We guess wrong and we might lose Gatog. We might lose everything. The irony is, 224

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  minnow, we can push it out to some safe distance and try— but we'd be flying that ship with no knowledge how to do it. Even if it works. And we can't start that kind of engine near anything else. And not from a standing start, they tell me. The awful truth is we don't know the last things. We don't know how to fly it. If we did we could have saved Ganngein and Nonnent. It's that fast— even inside a solar system. Outside— gods help us, we don't know."

  "Am I supposed to do something about this?" Thorn trembled, a brief convulsion. "Am I what the ghota want to stop?"

  "There are three kinds of people I've found: those who think the universe is good, those who believe it's corrupt, and those who don't want to think about it any more than they can help. I prefer the first two. The last can be hired by anybody. Dallen Company wants you stopped because they're scared of you: so do others; the ghota are just damn scared of your being hatani and not theirs, and of more and more knowledge in hatani hands and not theirs. They're dying and they know it. The world can't afford them anymore. It can't afford ignorance. The tanun, the kosan guilds—you're their hope."

  "To do what? Fly that ship?"

  "I don't know. Maybe. Someday. What would you do?"

  "O gods."

  " Now you know what you're for."

  "Don't ask me this! Duun—"

  "Haras-hatani, what will you do?"

  Thorn walked off across the floor, raised his hands to his head, dropped them. There were no thoughts. Nothing but a tumbling of images. (The boulders in the sand, each with a hatani. Tangan's aged mask and Sagot's blurred. Manan's impersonal voice: "That's a miss on their side, a hit on ours. It's down." Ganngein's: "This isn't a trip we want to share.") 225

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  He looked back at Duun. At a quiet shadow against the vast illusion of the windows.

  "Well?" Duun asked.

  "I'm not even eighteen years old!"

  "I didn't say it was all in your lap. You're not responsible for the ghota.

  You're not to blame for the world's foolishness; but it's burning, Haras-hatani. And maybe that eighteen years is all the world is going to have.

  What will you do to stop it?"

  (Go back to earth? How could I stop it? Who would hear me? Hatani.

  Tanun guild; kosanin would hear Duun.)

  (A room with a bed, a bath, a fire, and hidden tricks. What is my room?

  This place. This world. How do I put out the fire but with my bare hands?

  Am I twice a fool?)

  ( Now you know what you're for.)

  Thorn looked about him, the windows, the glittering sprawl of Gatog; the computer banks. (The ghotanin are afraid of something. This. Of its use.) (The tapes. The voices.)

  "I see," Thorn said. "You already know what you want me to do. You think you know. You wonder what I think. Pathways? Is that it?"

  "Maybe just the hope of something better. Tell me your solution."

  "The ship transmitted. Did the message go out translight?"

  "No. Lightspeed."

  "The pilot knew they wouldn't be in time then. He wasn't asking them to save him."

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  "No. There was no hope of that. So what did he want, hatani?"

  "How can I know? You taught me."

  "Perhaps you can't. A great deal of you is shonun."

  "But the messages started nine years later. They say, 'hello; here we are.'

  And they go on saying it. And he said: 'I'm dying; they're killing me and they have such little ships.' They know we can't come to them. Don't they?"

  "They've known at least since that message got to them, seven years, nine years after he was dead. And nine years after that attack on their ship their first messages came to us. And still come."

  "How long have you been getting them now? Five years?"

  "Near seven."

  Thorn shut his eyes a moment. Opened them. "People should have been relieved."

  "Some were. Some were simply reminded. Others said the ship wasn't really translight, that nothing could do that, that the message was a trick and timed to take us off our guard: that ships would be arriving sublight.

  And soon. And they hired the ghota, who saw only money and a chance to stop the hatani guild from getting control of the war they believed would come. The war they've already started."

  "To see who meets those ships."

  "That, yes."


  "Is it so simple, then? The ship out there could transmit."

  "Even simpler. Gatog can."

  "They wouldn't hear me for nine years!"

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  "But then earth would know there's no stopping it. No undoing the messages once we've started sending. And we can hold here at Gatog indefinitely. We can stand off the ghotanin, and it won't take much more than that nine years for ships from the other side to get here if they hear us: some think so, at least. One year, two, at the rate that ship might go.

  They might have been here years ago— if we're right about that speed.

  They might come tomorrow. They may be waiting for their answer. We had no way to read them— until now. When they come, whatever they intend, you'll be here. Safe. A voice like theirs. Perhaps they'll remember their pilot when they see you. Perhaps they'll wonder. Maybe they'll begin thinking and hesitate at whatever they plan. Gods know, in ten years maybe we'll have learned to fly that ship."

  "Does the earth have to bleed that long?"

  "Maybe it does. Or maybe when earth knows what your solution is a lot of people will stop and think about it. Remember you're hatani. Of the guild.

  That's something the world understands. That's part of my solution too.

  When the panic dies, shonunin will remember the guild passed you.

  They'll know it's a true judgment."

  "No one likes a hatani under his roof. Sagot told me so."

  "Yes, and you've been near eighteen years under theirs. It's true. People begin searching themselves for guilt. They imagine judgment on their sins.

  They know you read them. They see your face and they know you read them. Even I, minnow. I killed you once, remember. Conscience is dreadful company."

  "Duun." Thorn walked back to him, slowly, on the trackless floor; Thorn reached out his hand, slowly, slowly, and touched Duun's face, the scarred side. "So you know I could," Thorn said. And took his hand away.