Cuckoo's Egg

by C. J. Cherryh

  Cuckoo's Egg

  "Yes, Duun." Thorn sucked breath in. Sweat ran in his eyes and he wiped it.

  "It's that damned handedness again. You know what you did?"

  "Went to the right," Thorn said. His shoulders sank. He wiped sweat again. "I feinted left."

  "But you went to the right, fool!"

  "Yes, Duun. I thought you'd think I'd go left this time for sure."

  "Not when you never do it! Gods, surprise me once!"

  Thorn's face was all chagrin.

  "Up!" Duun struck, lizard-quick. Thorn escaped, escaped, escaped, attacked and escaped with a ringing of the blades.

  Duun hit him then, averted the blade and struck his arm up with his fist.

  Thorn flung his own arm up to lessen the force, skipped back and covered himself again.

  Duun called time again and Thorn looked down at his wrist as if he expected to see blood. "At least," Duun said, "you didn't stop when I hit you."

  "No." They had hammered that one out in painful lessons, beginner habits unlearned with bruises. "I'm sorry." Breathless, with another wipe at the sweat. Thorn meant the blade-touch.

  "You've developed a whole new form of fence, the artful covering of your mistakes! You're best at your escapes!"

  "I'm sorry, Duun-hatani."

  "This isn't hand-to-hand. In this, young fool, you've got a damn sharp claw! Rearrange your thinking and use it. Again!"

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  Thorn came at him. He evaded it, struck, evaded, struck.

  "Hold!"

  Thorn flinched back. Stood there with the breath rasping through his mouth and sweat running in his eyes. He straightened. "I'm sorry, Duun."

  It had gotten to be a refrain. There were always mistakes. His look was contrite.

  Duun reached a hand toward his face, slowly. Thorn stepped back. There was threat in that stance, wariness. Duun smiled.

  Thorn straightened his shoulders back, panting. (Why do you shout at me?

  Why do you curse me? What's wrong today? I'm trying to listen, Duun, don't make fun of me like that.)

  "Let me touch you, minnow. This once."

  The knife-hand lowered. Thorn stood still. Duun came close and put his palm in the middle of Thorn's chest, on flesh gone pale without sunlight, on flesh slickly sweating so that hands slipped off it, if one grappled without claws. The heart jumped beneath his hand in steady, labored pulses. There was no flinching. No shivering. Duun moved the hand up to the side of Thorn's neck and felt the same pulse. A slight flinching. Reflex.

  Or teaching. He looked into alien white eyes: it was curious how little the blue centers had changed from the first time he had looked into them, an infant lying on his lap; a round-bellied child clambering on his crossed ankles and trying to pull his ears; a boy's face gazing up at him in sudden shock at finding him on the trail—

  They had never seemed to change size. The bones about them did. The face became hollow-cheeked and the jaw lengthened and its skin roughened in dark hair Thorn kept shaved…. (They'll laugh at me, Duun; my body hair just doesn't get thick enough and I'm not going to grow it on my face like that, all patched up and thick here and not there.") Thorn shaved his body here and there too, where the patchiness was worst.

  Clipped and groomed and gods, tried, not to grow a coat any longer, but at least not to let the changes in his body overcome the Thorn they both had 135

  Cuckoo's Egg

  gotten used to. Thorn smelled different than he once had. The chest and shoulders were wider and muscled, the belly flat and hard, the loins narrow, the legs long-muscled and agile. Strong, Thorn could lift him nowadays, though gods knew Duun had no intention to let him try.

  Strange, Thorn was not ugly. Seventeen, nearly eighteen years, and Duun looked at him eye-to-eye, even having to look up a little lately. And there was in Thorn a symmetry that made that face probable on that body and the composite of him fit together in a grace of motion that no aesthete could deny. ("When you get used to him he's beautiful," Sagot said.

  "Frightening, like some big animal you've gotten closer to than you wanted. But you want to watch him move. There's a fascination to such things, isn't there?)

  The pupils dilated and contracted with thought. With anxiety. (Is this a game, Duun? Am I supposed to do something?)

  Duun walked away, turning his back on that look. Perhaps Thorn picked up his anxiety. It was acute now.

  ("We've got to go with it," Ellud said. "Duun, you're put me off; first it was Wait till he's got the first tapes down. Then it was: The Betan business has him upset. Now it's: There's a last few things I have to teach him.

  Duun, we're out of excuses.")

  Duun picked up the cap for the wer-knife. Looked back across the room where Thorn was doing the same thing. Ripple of muscle, the reach of an arm. Thorn was whole this morning. Duun wished to remember this.

  * * *

  "These are the words: I know you can remember them. You won't need much study. Ship. Sun. Hand. Warning. They're equivalents to these sound patterns." Sagot played the tape in the recorder wand she held. It was all a complicated thing, and Thorn centered himself, not to diffuse his concentration on his surroundings. The guard had not brought him to the familiar room this morning, but two doors down, into a place with the slick, bare floors that shouted meds, a place that was large enough, but 136

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  there were two large risers and a clutter of cabinets: the windows showed illusory desert, which only made the place seem starker, less comforting.

  Sagot was there waiting for him, sitting cross-legged on a desk with a keyboard in her lap; there was a keyboard and monitor at her knee. "Sit down," Sagot had said, and the guard went out and closed the door on them.

  "I. He. Go."

  Thorn had thought simulator when the guard brought him to a strange door. He enjoyed that, the fast interaction with the computer, the imagination of flight, and land skimming beneath illusory wings. Gods, they had a screen in one room that made it all seem real. He sat in a machine in that room that had controls very like the copter controls had looked, and the whole machine could move under him, incline and tilt with the screens so that the first time he had had to clamp his jaws to keep from screaming when he lost control and the room spun. He was better at it now.

  ("Meds?" he had said at once to Sagot, alarmed. "Sit down," she said, "it's patterns today.")

  "Stop. Man. Radio. Stop."

  "Is it some kind of language?"

  "Do your patterns, boy."

  (Something's wrong. Sagot's mouth is hard. Did I ask something wrong? Is she worried about this place?)

  "Concentrate."

  Thorn worked at it. He put meanings with the patterns. Sagot left him listening to his tapes over and over again and he hated them. He mouthed the sounds, resenting it. It was not a good day. Duun had been surly at breakfast; surly in Duun's way, which meant quiet and thoughtful and not giving him anything from inside him, only the surface, like a puddle 137

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  frozen over. Sagot gave him stark orders and went off and left him in this room, disappearing through the inner door and coming and going in perfunctory checks on him.

  (They've been talking to each other. Duun's mad at me and he's told Sagot.

  I haven't done anything to make Sagot mad.)

  (I was stupid about my moves yesterday. I can't stop going to the right all the time, I'm worse when Duun yells at me, I wish he'd hit me, even, I don't mind his hitting me, I deserve to get hit when I leave my side open like that. It's like I've reached a point I can't improve anymore, and Duun knows it, and I'm not good enough to be hatani, not quite. He's worked so long to teach me, and I go off to the right like a fool and he ought to shout at me, he should have cut me and maybe I'd remember after that.) There was a scar across his forearm and one on Duun's.

  (I always remembered that.)

  "Boy."

  The machine went off, Sagot's interven
tion. He blinked at Sagot, who had brought him a pill and a small cup of water. (Gods, it is meds. What's wrong? Do they just want to look at me?) "Sagot, I don't want to swallow that. I'm not sick."

  She went on holding it out. There was no choice, then. He picked the pill off her black, wrinkled palm and put it in his mouth. He had no need of the water to swallow it, but it made his stomach feel better; it threatened upset. (Is that what has Sagot acting strange? Is there something really the matter with me? Does Duun think so?)

  "I want you to go next door with me," Sagot said. "Yes, it's meds. You're going to lie down a while and I want you to be good about this."

  (You smell afraid, Sagot. So do I, I think. Gods, what's this about?) 138

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  He got up. He towered over Sagot, but Sagot reached and took his hand.

  (I'm hatani, Sagot, you're not supposed to—) But he never told Sagot no.

  She led him by the hand to the door in the side of that room, and led him through it into a small room that left no illusions about meds in this room.

  It was a cramped small place, all machinery and a table. Sagot's hand held his. She was evidently not going to argue the matter. (She's afraid. What should I be?) But he stood there while meds came out and told him to take off his kilt and lie down.

  "I'll be all right," he told Sagot; he did not want to undress with her there, not because he would shock her— (I have fourteen great-great-grandchildren, boy)— but precisely because it would not, she would look on him as a child, and child-Thorn was already too naked. But Sagot stayed, and Thorn turned his back and unfastened his kilt and got up on the table when the meds told him to. His head swam; his limbs felt distant from his brain; he drifted in a vast calm which itself alarmed him.

  (It was a drug Sagot gave me. Does Duun know? Does he know where I am, what they're doing, did he order this?)

  They pasted electrodes about his body. He felt this far distant from him.

  They spoke in whispers or his hearing had gone wrong. They adjusted a screen above his head. Something soft and rough settled over his naked body and he realized vaguely that someone had put a sheet over him; he was dimly grateful. (It's cold in here; they never realize how cold I get sometimes, they've got a coat and I don't and I'm sweating now—) Something tight went over his legs, once again over his chest. " Talk to him, for the gods' sake, he's not a piece of meat you're handling."

  "Sagot-mingi, we have to ask you to be still, with respect, mingi Sagot."

  Something weighed on his shoulder. Shook at him. "Keep your eyes open.

  Look up."

  Thorn obeyed that voice. He heard the sound of his tapes over and over again.

  "Blink. That's right. You can blink when you have to."

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  "He's following that, isn't he?"

  The voice drifted out again. He heard another voice babbling at him; there were images, he was in the simulator; more voices, more images, there were people like him moving in the dark, there were faces that babbled at him, there were machines and more machines—

  He tried to leave this.

  Eyes stared at him, mirrorlike. More machines that spun in dark and arms that moved—

  He fought. He evaded and escaped and fought.

  "This is your heritage," a voice told him out of the dark. "Accept it, Haras-hatani. This is your heritage. Accept what you hear and see. Stop resisting.

  Accept this. This is your heritage."

  Chaos of images.

  "Listen to the sounds. Learn this, Haras-hatani. Remember these things."

  "Wake up."

  He was lying on the table. The sheet was over him. He was drenched in sweat. He wanted only to lie there and his eyes stung as if sweat were in them; it might be. Someone wiped his face and the cloth was neutral-feeling, wet and rough but neither cold nor hot. Someone lifted a weight off his chest and legs. "Are you sure you ought to? He's not awake yet."

  He was, but he preferred to keep that secret to himself, and stare at the stark steel of the machinery, ignoring the faces and the touches, the sudden nakedness of his body as they peeled electrodes away in small twitches he ought to have felt keenly and did not.

  "His color isn't good."

  (I'm cold, fool.)

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  Something stung his arm. It was not a great pain. In a moment he began to feel his heart thumping the way it did in nightmares.

  (Go away. Let me alone. Don't touch me.)

  "Hold him, don't let him move."

  He blinked. Meds held his limbs in a hurtful grip. He lifted his head. "Let go. I'm awake. I want to sit up."

  They looked foolish, with a dropping of their ears. After they had mulled it over they let him go and one at his side got a hand beneath his back and one and another helped him sit up, holding him.

  "Are you through?" Thorn said.

  "We're through," one said. They rarely spoke to him at all. "We'll put you to bed awhile."

  "I'm going home." Thorn gave a sudden heave and landed with his feet on the floor. His feet were numb, but his knees held. The med reached and he stopped that reach with a backhand lift of his arm, slow-motion, gentle warning. The med took the warning when his stare followed the turn he made, and backed off.

  "Sagot," someone said, "Sagot, get in here fast."

  Thorn waited then, if Sagot was coming. He remembered he was naked. "I want my clothes." A med gave him his kilt, and he took it and worked with numb fingers and diminished balance to put it on.

  A door opened. He looked up at Sagot. "Sagot," he said; he was very careful to be polite. Duun would hit him if he was rude to the meds, and he was desperate. He made his voice ever so calm and courteous, and stood as easily as he could. "Sagot, they think I ought to go to bed here and I'd much rather go to my own and sleep. Please get me home, Sagot."

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  Sagot looked at him with her thin mouth all taut. A long while she stood there. "All right," Sagot said. "Call his guard and call Duun and tell him we're coming back." Sagot came and took Thorn's arm, wound her thin, fragile forearm about his and locked both her hands on his, and he walked with her, out of that room.

  "We'll wait here a moment," she said in the other room; and stood there with him, holding to his arm. In a moment the door opened and the guard was there who walked with him everywhere. Ogot was his name. He said little, but he was a pleasant man; he was Duun's, and if Ogot had taken him to this place and never told him, perhaps Ogot had not known half as much as Sagot had. Ogot looked worried to see him, and Thorn felt ashamed to be so helpless.

  "It's all right," Sagot said, "they've just given him a little sedative; we'll walk slowly. The boy wants to go home now. Come on, Thorn."

  * * *

  He was not in his bed, he was lying on cushions on the riser that touched the main room wall, the windows showed branches lashing in the rain, glass spotted and distorted with water. The audio played thunder and rain-sound. Lightning flashed. The air-conditioning wafted moist, cool air and the smell of woods in rain. He lay against the cushions in the room he knew (but the walls always changed) and blinked. He knew those trees, the one that bent, the crooked limb, the rocks, the way one could climb— "Here." Duun sat down on the riser and took a cup and poured him tea.

  "It's got aghos in it, don't spit it: you could use the calories."

  He took it in one hand and sipped at it. The spice was sickly sweet, but it tasted better than his mouth did. He blinked at Duun. His neck was stiff; he had been sleeping wrong.

  "That's good," Duun said. "I moved you in here."

  "Carried me?" He remembered bed; remembered Duun rousing him once and making him drink.

  "I still can."

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  "Duun, they—"

  "Hush."

  Thorn caught his breath. So he had been about to embarrass himself. (You have a need, Thorn.) He
felt drained and placid now after the storm before.

  The illusory rain spattered the windows. "That's Sheon, isn't it?"

  "I saved that image. I had it done about a year ago. I thought I'd use it someday."

  (Some special day. Today? Is it a gift? To make up for the other thing?)

  "More tea?" Come on. I want you to wake up now. We're going to have a round in the gym this afternoon."

  "You'll kill me."

  "I'll go easy, minnow." Duun's face staring at him, half good, half bad, with that forever mocking smile. "You'll manage."

  (Is he happy with me now? Was it a test I passed?) "Duun, they had me—"

  Duun lifted his right hand, the single finger. Silence, that meant. (I don't want you to talk.)

  "They—"

  "It didn't happen."

  "Dammit, it—"

  "It didn't happen. Hush."

  Thorn's pulse picked up. He lay there staring at Duun's scarred face, at the unblinking stare. His heart thumped against his ribs. (What are you doing to me? What are you doing to me, Duun-hatani?)

  * * *

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  "You're slow, Thorn. Slow. Speed!"

  Thorn tried. He spun and lost his centering, dived backward to save himself as the capped knife crossed his belly: he felt the touch of it, spun away and brought his blade up in defense at what followed. Time, Duun called, and hunkered down. Thorn sat down and wiped his face.

  "I'm off. I'll get it back."

  "You'll go on practicing." Duun said,

  "What— 'go on'?" (Has something changed? What's wrong?) Go on had the sound of finality.

  "Three mornings of a five you'll have your study. Every other day you'll go back to that room. It's another kind of study."

  "Duun—"

  "—which we won't talk about."

  "Duun, I can't!"

  "Can't?"