The Deep Beyond: Cuckoo's Egg / Serpent's Reach

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Just don’t tell me they don’t. I can read bodies; I can read eyes, Sagot. They hate me and they’re afraid of me and they made me what I am. Is that reasonable of them?”

  “Maybe it’s the hatani they’re afraid of. Did you think of that? People don’t like being read. A hatani stops at your door, you give that hatani food, a place to sleep, and you start thinking over every move you make because you know you’re being read, constantly, every tiny move. It would take a very stupid person or a very innocent one to relax with a hatani under his roof.”

  “A hatani doesn’t judge if he’s not asked to. Sometimes not even then. Why should they worry?”

  “Guilt. Everyone’s guilty of something. A hatani makes you know what you’re guilty of.”

  “Even hatani are guilty, Sagot.”

  “But they cover it. They know how not to be read, don’t they? If they really try. Sometimes they don’t.” Sagot got up and came and sat down next to him, put her arm around him. “Sometimes they don’t want to, do they? Come on, lean on me, I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Tell me about the test, Sagot.”

  “Wicked lad.” Her hand pressed his shoulder, close to his neck, and made him nervous. He shrugged and she slipped it to the middle of his back. “You have a hatani mind, all right. You’re growing up.”

  “I hear words, Sagot, sounds run in my head and I hear words in them.”

  “What do they say, these words?”

  “They tell me hello, they want something, I can’t tell what, they talk about the sun and the earth, they talk about math and chemistry, oxygen, they say, and carbon, over and over, and they talk nonsense, the elements, the reactions inside the sun, the lifecycle of stars—”

  Sagot’s arm had gone tense. He turned and looked at her at close range, saw her eyes dilate and contract. “Did I just scare you?” Thorn asked.

  “Go on talking.”

  “I’m not supposed to talk to you about it. You keep telling me that.”

  “You can tell me about this. Go on.”

  “There isn’t anything more. I can’t remember anything else. I see that desert place and a place like a space station, I see the earth in space with the sun coming up, and faces— faces like mine, I see the space station full of them, I see people like me coming and going and talking to each other— sometimes they’re mad, and I can read them if I can’t figure out what they’re saying, one wants something and she’s a woman— Duun says I imagine it, but I’d never imagine a thing like that, her mouth is all red and her hair is long and her eyes are all painted round the edges: she wants something very bad and she’s angry with a man but he’s sorry and they go on meeting in this place, these places where people eat and have clothes, clothes for people with no hair, and she’s shaped like—” He shaped the image of fullness of his chest. (White all white, and large and strange-looking.) “And finally— there are a lot of people that come and go— she goes off with this other man and they go into his bedroom and they love each other, but it isn’t love, she doesn’t even like him, and he’s mad about that, maybe about something else; then she leaves and she goes and finds the first man but he’s about to go somewhere and he doesn’t want to talk to her. Her eyes run. He goes away. She goes to this place where people eat and she’s very unhappy. Then he walks through the door and he comes over to sit with her, but not on ordinary furniture, on these legged things, all the furniture’s like that. She’s pretending she’s not glad to see him, she keeps eating. He knows she’s pretending and he says something and they look at each other and say something about going somewhere, and then it stops and I don’t know where they went.”

  Sagot took his face between her hands and he was so lost he let her. She pulled his face down to her level and washed his eyes with her tongue, which made him feel strange and loved, even as old as Sagot was.

  “Is that what I’m supposed to see?”

  She let him go. “Go home. I’ll call Ogot.”

  “What am I supposed to see? Is it over? Am I through with that?”

  “I don’t know. Go home.”

  XII

  Ellud paced the floor and flung his arms out: “I can’t cover this!”

  “You don’t have to.” Duun stayed seated. “I’m taking him this afternoon. I’ll want the copter on the roof, I’ll want the plane at Trusa, no slip-ups; take one off the line. I’ll take it myself.”

  “Gods, your license is expired. I won’t have it. You don’t fly these damn things nowadays, the damn computers do. I’ll get you a pilot.” Ellud threw that out and lost his case.

  “Do that. One hour. I’m headed out.” Duun went for the door.

  “They’ll have my post, they’ll move the minute you’re clear of the roof, I’ll have councillors at this door.”

  “Watch Shbit, that’s all. I’ll get him back for you.”

  “The Guild won’t take him!”

  “Is that hope they will or hope they won’t?”

  Ellud stood there with his mouth open. Duun left.

  • • •

  Thorn hurried; he had a bundle under his arm that was a change of clothes, his and Duun’s and Duun’s gray cloak, wrapped around things they needed from the bath and tied with a cord; he had new winter-clothes on, quilted coat, baggy trousers, quilted boots: so did Duun, striding along beside him to the elevator.

  “Where are we going, Duun?” Half protest and half question, third time posed. (Have I broken some rule, have I made Duun mad?) But he could not read Duun now, except that there were secrets and Duun was in a great hurry to get him out— (Outside?) He had not worn pants and coat since Sheon, in the coldest weather. Had never worn boots. It was only the beginning of fall.)

  (He knows what I told Sagot. I’ve done something wrong! We’re running again, like we ran from Sheon— men with guns, people are hunting us— But that’s crazy. They wouldn’t. I haven’t talked to anyone I shouldn’t, I haven’t done anything—)

  (Have I?)

  The elevator door opened. Duun went through last and used a card to operate it. The elevator shot up and up, past all the floors between them and the roof.

  The door whisked open in the cupola. Beyond the windows was true sky, gray cloud, a copter with its blades turning. Guards were waiting there to open the door for them and the wind skirled in with bitter chill. “Head down!” Duun yelled at him and ran, ducking low when he got near the copter. Thorn remembered that, ran, with the wind of the blades burning his face. He kept low until he reached the copter, and clambered in like Duun did, as fast as he could, flung himself into the seat and started fastening straps. (Like the simulator. But this isn’t. This is real.) The copter upped power and surged upward with a vengeance. The tops of Dsonan’s tall buildings spun dizzily into view, the deep chasms of rail-courses and maintenance-ways, the distant port with the gray light shining off the water beneath a smear of clouds.

  “We’re going to the airport,” Duun told him, shouting in his ear. “We’ve got a plane waiting for us.”

  Thorn looked at Duun with question available to be read. Pleading.

  “We’re going up to Avenen,” Duun shouted at him. “The Guild headquarters. You’d better settle your mind on this trip, minnow. As many hatani as they can muster are going to be coming in there and you’re going to have to do it this time or not at all. There won’t be a second chance.”

  “For what?”

  “To get you Guild protection, that’s what.”

  • • •

  They ran from the copter to a building and shed their quilted winter gear for suits that hugged the body. Attendants impersonal as the meds worked at fastenings, jerking at them, two at a time, rough in their frantic haste: masks next, that dangled about their necks, and helmets with a microphone inside. “Run,” Duun said then, bending to snatch up the baggage, and they ran, out the door attendants held open fo
r them, into a thunderous noisy building open at either end, where a plane sat with its fans at idle, a dip-nosed machine with stubby backswept wings. “This thing uses a runway,” Duun yelled over the noise. “We’re going to roll out from here— go round behind the wing, there’s a ladder.”

  There was, pushed up against the plane. The canopy was up. Duun tossed the baggage to a guard, scrambled up the ladder and Thorn hit the treads behind him, hampered by the suit that restrained his limbs, panting when he reached the wing surface and crawled over the side close on Duun’s tail. There was a pilot and co-pilot and two more seats in back in a cockpit that hardly looked big enough for the seats up front: Duun trod on one seat and dropped into place in the second, grabbed complicated belts and fastened them, and Thorn slid into the one beside him— belts like the simulator, Plug-ins for the mask hoses between their legs: Duun showed him and rammed it home. “Communications switch,” Duun’s voice came over the speaker over his ear, and Duun turned a face unrecognizable in an insect-like mask to show him the three way sliding switch and button on the side. The canopy was sliding forward with a whine of hydraulics. The pilot turned his head and made some signal with an uplifted hand to Duun and Duun made one back. The pilot turned around but the co-pilot was handling things: the fans picked up and the plane began to roll out of the building, faster and faster under open, overcast sky, the tires bumping on uneven pavings, the Dsonan skyline to their left unreal as a city windowview.

  Faster still. They swung out onto a long expanse of concrete and the engine whine increased. The force slammed them back as the plane made its run and thundered out over the river, pulled a sharp bank and showed river for a long dizzy moment until the pilot decided to fly rightwise up again.

  “Gods,” Thorn said. His heart raced as clouds shredded past and still the climb kept up. (Why this fast? Why this sudden? What’s Duun up to?) “How fast can this plane go?”

  “Mach two plus if it has to. It’s a courier plane— armed, in case you should wonder. And in case you should wonder again, yes, there’s a reason. It’s problems on the ground I’m worried about. I don’t expect trouble, but there’s that remote chance. There’s a remote chance of trouble even up here. There’s a ghota unit over in Hoguni province that’s got one of these and I’m worried where its orders come from.”

  “Ghota? Aren’t they guards?”

  “Hired. Warrior guild. One of two. The kosan and the ghota. Our friends up front are kosanin. They take one service for life. Ghotanin rent themselves out; you don’t trust them until you know how long their contract’s for and whether you’re the only one paying them. Like one-year wives. They’re always hunting for their next advantage. Kosanin won’t serve with them. That’s why they’re in separate units.”

  “Duun-hatani, I might not know enough!”

  “Whatever you do don’t lie and don’t flinch. No one ever knows enough. That’s all I can tell you now. Two rules. A third. Remember Sheon. Remember the knife on your pillow. Remember the pebble-game. But always be polite.”

  • • •

  They came screaming in at a runway that jutted out into the sea, braked in a straining effort, and turned sharper than seemed likely toward another collection of buildings and aircraft of all sizes, most small.

  And none sleek as their own. “Well,” Duun said, “no one’s beat us here except the locals and the happen-bys.”

  Thorn looked, searching. There were insignia on most of the craft. Some were striped and most were white. A copter waited, rotors turning. “Is that ours?”

  “We’ll hope it is.” Duun’s hand gripped his, painfully hard. “Hear me. From here on there will be no mistakes, Haras-hatani.”

  A massive building spread across the land beyond the airport. They had it in sight as they came in, a flat sprawl unlike other buildings Thorn knew. Gray stone. Hatani gray. The guild-hall.

  Avenen.

  The plane stopped. Engine-sound dwindled, A vehicle whisked up and towed a ladder into place. The canopy slid back, admitting chill wind.

  Duun pitched their baggage out into an attendant’s hands, climbed out and Thorn followed in haste. (Think, think, watch these attendants, watch everything.)

  (Is it all some test? Did Duun lie? Are there really ghotanin after us and would they come here?)

  Duun recovered the bundle of their belongings and headed for the copter. Thorn ran at his heels, mask flapping and the suit impairing his movements. (Watch these people. Watch all of them, watch their hands.)

  Up the short couple of steps into the copter, the pilot in his place. (Duun’s nose is better. He’d smell fear if that man meant trouble, even through all this oil stink.) Thorn fell into his seat beside Duun and belted in as the copter lifted, turned, heaved itself off in its tilted fashion and ground flew along in surreal intimacy after the courier-plane’s sun-dazzled altitude. There was only the illusion of speed. It took long minutes to come gliding over the gray walls, over buildings that looked like a dozen architects had quarreled and each changed the plan.

  A landing circle came up on a rooftop. There were men standing near it, gray-cloaked, looking up at them as the copter settled.

  “They’re all right,” Duun said. “One thing you can believe: no ghota would wear that color here.” The rotors slowed and Duun handed Thorn the baggage and climbed out

  Thorn dropped off the step and followed Duun out from under the blades. The copter roared off again, pelting them with dust, fluttering the gray cloaks.

  Duun took his helmet off and walked with it under his arm. Thorn managed the bundle enough to get his off and the wind caught his hair, cold and unforgiving. He looked at the five standing there to meet them, handsome men, one he thought was a woman, all in their gray cloaks and black kilts; and he and Duun were disheveled and dangling masks and hoses like two animate machines lately disconnected. They gazed at Duun and at him— for the first time, at him who had no like, at blowing hair and his smooth face in all its strangeness, and he could not read what they thought. That before anything else convinced him where he was. No one but Duun could go so unreadable to him until now.

  But these could. These great sprawling buildings were full of those who could, every one.

  • • •

  “He’s more imposing than the pictures would indicate,” Tangan said, a wisp of a man, so old his cheeks were gaunt and even his crest had whitened. The hands clasped in his lap were gaunt and crossed with knife scars, gotten in a youth so long ago it stretched into myth in the Guild, among novices. Duun sat on the white sand which novices had raked into artistic patterns among the five huge rocks which adorned this ancient room. The lights here were electric but that was the only change from the fifth century. Generations of hatani hands had worn these great boulders dark, smoothing them as surely as the river had from which they were taken. Generations of irreverent novices had sat on them and perched there to do their raking, springing from one to the other and (sometimes, novices being the same in every generation) making it a game, leaping and jumping and thrusting at one another with rake handles.

  Tangan had caught a certain rebel and oft-warned 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.”r />
  “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.”

  “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. Free-hatani would have been my solution.”