Cuckoo's Egg

"What was that about?" Thorn asked.

"Take a walk with me," Duun said.

They passed through a huge room, after many halls, where a handful of workers in white, body-covering garments labored over terminals in their laps. It was all computers, row upon row of mostly empty risers. The few workers that were there turned in curiosity and stared in shock, and one by one began to get up. "Stay seated," Duun said. His quiet voice went to the walls of that vast place, stopping all such movement. And more quietly still: "This is the control center. Nothing's coming in now: this is all housekeeping."

"What do they do here?" Thorn asked, since questions seemed invited.

"They monitor the equipment." Duun brought him to the nearest corner of the room and used a card to open an elevator door: it was the sort they had ridden into the wheel. Thorn seized on the nearest support pole as the door shut; and they both held on.

"Where are we going?" Thorn asked. Duun's reticences maddened him. (But what would I know if he told me? He can't tell me. He can only pose me riddles arid let me get there as best I can.)

"To the future," Duun said. (Truth and untruth.) The elevator shifted and the strongest force was the grip of their hands on the pole, while other forces seemed more and more ambiguous. "You've seen the earth, from its simplest to its most complex. Its past, its present; you're in Gatog, do you see no paradox?"

"I'm helpless, Duun. Am I supposed to see?"

"Change is your world. Flux and shift."

"Will we go home again?"

"Is that your question?"

The car shifted yet again, a violent sway, and seemed to have changed direction. Thorn clenched the pole and looked at the control panel and back to Duun. "We passed the core," Duun said. "Now we're going out again."

"Why did they make me, Duun?"

Duun met his eyes belatedly. There was dreadful amusement on Duun's face. The scarred mouth tautened on that side. "Is that the question? I'm answering it."

"In this place?" Thorn's heart sped. Panic afflicted him. "Is this where I come from? This?"

" I'll show you something. We're almost there."

(I don't want to see. Stop it, Duun. Duun, tell me, don't show me anything!)

The car slowed again, turned, slammed home. The door opened on another room much like the last, but all the risers were vacant, their in-built monitors dark. Thorn walked out into it in Duun's wake. The floors were bare and cold as all floors in this place. Like a ship. Like a laboratory. No foot left traces. There was no record of passage, no hint of time or change: it afflicted him. There were windows. Duun touched a wall-switch and they came alive clear across the far wall, showing the lights, the girders, the strange shapes that were Gatog.

"Quite a sight, isn't it?" Duun said. "Don't you see discrepancies?" Duun walked to a counter and pushed a button.

Sounds began, static-filled, a sputtering crackle. "… stop… " a voice said; it was a voice. "… you… world…"

(Gods. Gods. The tapes.)

Duun pushed another button. (One beep. A word. Two. Word…) Thorn came as far as the console and leaned on it beside Duun. His heart slammed against his ribs. "It comes from here."

Duun cut all the sound. The silence was numbing. Duun walked away, up the aisle toward the illusion of the windows and Thorn followed, on the trackless floor and stopped when the windows were all the view. Duun lifted his arm and pointed. "That's what the ear picks up. It listens, mi

"Numbers." Thorn looked and lost all sense of up and down. The vision reeled among lights and Gatog's shape and the occasional bright stars, and Duun a gray-cloaked shadow against that bottomless void. "It talks about the stars, the elements- Stop playing games, Duun! What's sending it?"

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

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, mi

"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 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, mi

"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, mi

(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 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, mi

"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, mi