Cuckoo's Egg

Duun poked him in the belly. Hard. Thorn withstood that. He centered himself, expecting-some sudden move. A blow that could take his head off. Because Duun knew he could turn it. Thorn thought of that. Suddenly he was not thinking of the blow; timing-sense deserted him and he shivered, flinched, knowing it. And Duun saw that too.

"Where's the mind, Haras?"

Thorn centered himself again. Duun walked around behind him. Thorn's ears strained. He listened to the soft sound of Duun's tread on sand. His own rapid breathing dimmed his hearing and endangered him. He did not move until he heard Duun on his left, then turned his head, pursuing the movement which teased the tail of his eye.

Slowly Duun extended his right hand toward Thorn's face-(Attack?) Thorn's heart jumped and in a critical moment the hand had passed his reaction-point and he let it, let Duun touch his jaw. A two-fingered grip settled gently on either side, where no one's hand belonged but his teacher's, but the slow-moving hand too quick for him if he should move. He was vulnerable to that. He knew it. He cherished it. When Duun discovered weaknesses in him he attacked them, but this was the allowable one, this one was his safety that kept the games all games. Duun never took that away. Duun's dark eyes were on a level with his own, poured force into him, like the dark of night, like the dark and all the stars in which he whirled and perished.

"What is your need, Haras-hatani?"

(O gods, Duun-don't.)

"What is your need, Haras-Thorn? Why did I get through your guard? To what are you vulnerable? Name me that thing."

"You, Duun-hatani. I need you."

The grip hurt. Bruised. "What am I to you, mi

Words failed him. The grip grew harder. Gentler then. The eyes shifted, let him go and he could blink. Duun drew his hand back and Thorn was shaking.

"You understand what I did to you, mi

(Duun holding him by the fire, Duun touching him, all the warmth there was. Not to be touched again. Not ever to allow that to Duun or anyone-) Tears stung Thorn's eyes. (Your eyes are ru

Duun's eyes on his. Dark and deep and cold as the artificial night. A second time Duun's hand lifted. (I'll hurt you this time, Thorn.) Thorn lifted his hand ever so slowly and opposed it. Duun seemed satisfied. Walked around him again and the skin of Thorn's back crawled. His buttocks tensed. Once more to the side and in front of him.

Like a lizard-strike this time. Thorn flung up his hand and palm hit palm with a slap that echoed. No force then. No pushing, from either side. Duun signed with his other hand. Thorn accepted it, maintained wariness while Duun disengaged his hand and put it behind him.

Inviting a strike. (Try me, fledgling.)

"I'm not a fool, Duun-hatani."

"You're less one than you were," Meaning the matter of the farmers, Thorn thought. It was all in these days Duun had ever hinted on the matter.

"I'm not ready, Duun-hatani."

"The world doesn't always ask if you're ready, Haras. It's not likely to." Duun set his hands in his belt. "You're going to have other teachers. Oh, I'll be here. For now. But there'll be others. Other young people. They're not hatani. They know you are."

(People like me, Duun? Are any like me?) But the question hung in his throat. ("What do you need, Haras-hatani?") It was deadly. It opened him up in ways he knew better than to confess. "When?" he asked. (Duun, I don't want other teachers.)

(Want, mi

VII

They were five: Elanhen, a youth whose back had black tipping on the gray, broad of shoulder, with a wary eye turned to the world and a diffident and ready grin; he was first and easiest in his ma

And Sphitti, lank, unkempt Sphitti. They called him that, which was a kind of weed (like Thorn). Sphitti would sit and think and think and he hardly talked.

Lastly there was Betan-who was female; who moved with a wide-hipped stride, whose grin was sudden and whose wit was quicker than the rest. Betan smelled different. Betan wrinkled her nose at him and gri

(They don't have the moves, Duun had insisted. But Duun had lied before.)

They met, all five of them, in a room Duun took him to, on a floor above the floor where they lived. "Go inside," Duun said, and under the eyes of a watcher at the door, made to leave him, which prospect alone filled Thorn with panic. "Mind your ma

Four strangers got up off their seats when he passed the foyer, four strangers whose commingled scent was artifice and flowers, in a white-sanded room as large as the gymnasium: it had five desks; and the windows in this white sterility showed a thicket like Sheon's woods, a tangle for eye and mind. He would smell of fear to them. He stopped still. "Hello," said the one he discovered as Elanhen. "Hello," Thorn said, and put the best face on he could, a face he had seen in Duun when he met the meds. "I'm Haras." Haras he was to outsiders, his hatani-name. They told theirs. That was how it started. "We're a study-group," Elanhen said. "They say you're good."

He might have been furred as they were, four-fingered, with ears and eyes like theirs. (I'm different. They shot at me at Sheon. Aren't you shocked, the least bit?) But no one affected to notice.