(Everything Duun does has a cause. And Sagot's his friend. Maybe—maybe Betan was. No. Yes. O gods, maybe it's
all
set up. Could Betan take a thing like me by
preference?
Was she curious? Curious— about what she'd let do
that
with her?)
(Sphitti laughing and joking with me, Elanhen too, from the time we met.
Wouldn't it be natural to flinch? But they were prepared for it. They
knew
what I'd look like. Maybe Cloen was the only honest one— the only one Who ever told me the truth.)
(Fool, you knew that, you knew it from the time you walked into that room and you wanted to believe something else. You saw how Betan moved— you thought
hatani
then and put that thought away.) (She flinched at the last, she flinched and I reacted— I smelled the fear, her nerve broke— I pushed back, it scared me, it was reflex, she was up against me and I smelled the fear—)
(Thorn, where's your mind? Did you leave it at Sheon, on that hill, when you went back for him? Can you forget how Duun works?) (I love him. Does he love me?)
(Is even Sagot real? All her chatter— from the start— 'I like you, boy.'
Thorn, you fool.)
(Did Duun tell the truth, what I am and where he got me?) 131
Cuckoo's Egg
Thorn sat there with his hands locked between his knees; and at last he got up and turned on the lights, checked the bed, as if there could be a pebble there. There was none.
(I hate him. I hate him for what he's done to me.) (It was the best thing in the world when he smiled at me today.) 132
Cuckoo's Egg
X
"Again."
They used the
wer
-knives this time, the blades cased in clear plastic. Duun bent and took the pass, snaked from Thorn's strike and Thorn evaded his, fell and flipped up on his feet a distance away. "Is that a move you invented?" Duun asked dryly, and Thorn lowered his head and looked under one brow in that way he had when he had done something foolish.
"I invented it just then," Thorn said, "when I landed on my heel. I'm sorry.
Duun."
It was well-done, nevertheless. Duun laid his ears back. "Again."
Three more times. The
wer
-knives met in a way they never met when they were naked steel, plastic touching plastic and giving too much resistance.
Duun floated back and stripped the cover from his blade. Thorn's eyes betrayed dismay, but Thorn pulled the sheath from his and threw it aside.
Naked steel. Duun gripped the knife in his maimed right hand, held the left close to it, ready to change off on short notice. Thorn did the same, maneuvering and watching nothing but his eyes and that blade.
Duun moved, not the feint that was his habit, but straight attack, aborted at the last instant when he saw Thorn cover; evade: to a feint, double-feint, hand-shift, retreating circle, sideslip, hand-shift.
Blade hissed on blade and slid clear; continuing drive, a floating attack.
Thorn escaped it with a fall and roll, came up again with sand in his hair and a desperate parry, for Duun kept coming and the wall was coming at Thorn's back.
Thorn sensed it and moved, too quickly. Duun shifted hands and blade rang on blade as Thorn backed up in free space again.
Duun called time. "Dammit, that steel's too fine to be treated like that!
Keep edge off edge!"
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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!"
134
Cuckoo's Egg
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.
* * *
Cuckoo's Egg
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
Cuckoo's Egg
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 intervention. 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
Cuckoo's Egg
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.