Cuckoo's Egg

"Hang on," Duun said when Thorn grabbed the pole for himself. "It does it one more time. We're bound for the rim.

It was like a ship moving; downbegan to feel alarmingly sideways, and the cylinder seemed slowly to change its pitch before it jolted into contact and the door opened.

There were attendants, men and women wearing ordinary kilts, all white; Duun pulled his helmet off and Thorn did so with the rest.

(Look your fill. Stare at me.) Thorn kept his eyes from them and handed the helmet to a woman he never looked at. "Sey Duun," a man said,

"they'd like to see you in the office."

"They'll have to come to me," Duun said. He peeled his suit off, sat down and removed the boots. One attendant started to touch the baggage and 211

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Thorn moved and stepped on the strap. The attendant changed his mind.

And Duun smiled with the twisted side. It was right. After drifting so long Thorn knew something, if only so small a thing. They did not touch him and they did not touch Duun and they kept their hands off the baggage.

Weig and his crew took their leave. "Duun-hatani," Weig said, nothing else. He seemed moved. "Weig-tanun," Duun said. "Appeal to me if things don't go right." And Duun gave a twisted smile: "Not all my solutions are so cursed difficult."

"I'll remember," Weig said, and took his crew away; but Ghindi looked back once, and Thorn paused.

"Come on," Duun said, standing up. Theirs was another door, that opened narrowly.

(Tubes. The spi

Hatani waited for them there, three of them; Thorn saw the gray cloaks and felt profound relief. "Tagot, Desuuran, Egin," Duun said. "Haras."

There were courtesies. Thorn bowed, looked up into careful hatani faces which did not intrude their passions into anyone's view. He held the baggage with hands to which the last shreds of the gel still clung, and it was as if he had stood in a battering gale of others' feelings, others' fears; others' needs— and found a sudden calm.

"We'll rest." Duun said.

"Duun-hatani. Haras." Tagot's hand indicated the way, and he walked with them, the others at their backs, and that order was all settled with the slightest of signs that left no doubt Duun would let them at his back.

Thorn slung the carry strap to his shoulder and walked a little at Duun's heel, rumpled and with his knee abraded raw again, with the red scars of 212

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burns on his hands, his hair loose and tending to fall into his eyes; but so was Duun scarred; but so was Duun's silver hide stained dark with sweat at his shoulders and the small of his back.

(Have we found a place, finally? Hatani live here. Is this a place we won't be driven from?)

They passed doors; they rode down two levels in an elevator; they walked down a bowed hallway that might have been the city tower in some distorted mirror.

They opened one door; a hatani waited there in a short hall and opened yet another for them, on a large bare-floored room to which they had to step, as if it were all one riser on which other risers were built. The walls were barren and white. An elder hatani waited here. "Your rooms are safe," that hatani said, and walked out, quietly, economically, with everything said that needed saying.

"Food, bath, bed," Duun said. Thorn set the baggage down and Duun opened it and took out his cloak. It wrapped another one. "This is yours."

Duun laid it on the riser. "When you need it."

Thorn looked at it and looked at Duun. And Duun walked away, himself in search of those things he had named.

* * *

It was not, ultimately, safe: Duun knew this. There were always, where shonunin existed, ways to corrupt and ways to strike at a target. The ghotanin had thought at Gatog One they had chosen the most vulnerable target in the shuttle; at Gatog Two the fight was likely to be closer to the station itself, but ghotanin might change their minds and divert their attention here. Dallen Company was not funding them anymore. There was a likelihood they would try to hold the earth station now, and stalemate Tangen, who with kosan and tanun allies held the shuttleports and the earth-based controls of satellite defense. No great number would get into space in those few shuttles. Space was out of reach for most of earth now, perhaps for years and years, and the earth-station would be 213

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deprived of ships, if ghotanin risked the few they had left still outside the zone of the conflict.

Duun padded into the darkened bedroom, taking no great care for quiet; and exhausted as Thorn was the boy likely waked. "It's Duun," Duun said.

"Go on sleeping. "I've business to take care of. Hatani are at every entrance to this place and I know them. Go on sleeping."

Thorn stirred in the bed, turned on his back and looked up at him in the twilight. Thorn smelled mostly of soap now. He had scrubbed and shaved.

"You'll be back."

"Oh, yes." (So he perceives something.) "Deep sleep, Thorn: you can do that here. With them outside. Relax."

Duun left and closed the door this time.

* * *

Duun was back and there were visitors. "Who?" Thorn asked Duun at breakfast. "People who want to see you," Duun said, looking at him across the unfamiliar table in a guarded, critical way. "Finish your breakfast and make yourself presentable. I don't want to be ashamed."

Thorn laid down his plate in front of his ankles and put the spoon in it.

"No, finish," Duun said. "You have time. You've lost weight."

"I never liked this." It was the green mince that was on his plate every day at home. It tasted like the fish oil that was in his pills when as a child he had bitten down on one. "My stomach's queasy as it is."

"Do people worry you?"

(Do you have a need, mi

"Their faces shout at me," Thorn said. It was the best way he could explain it.

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Duun looked at him, still as a pond in winter. "Too many needs coming at you, is it, Haras-hatani?"

"Duun, how is earth? Have you heard?"

(He doesn't want that question. He doesn't want it at all.)

"Sagot wishes you well," Duun said.

(He's lying, surely he's lying, his face is so good at it.) But it looked like truth. (Sagot in her room, Sagot waiting for me— O gods, I want to go home, Duun!)

"I'm glad," Thorn said. "Tell her that from me."

"I'll relay that. Eat your breakfast."

Thorn turned on the riser and put his feet off, missing the teapot.

"Thorn."

Thorn stopped; it was reflex.

"Wear your cloak," Duun said.

* * *

They were mostly old, the visitors, two very old, with the pale mask of age on them: one was hatani and another kosan guild. There were a scattering of shonunin of middle years, one with the dark crest of the Bigon: one with the silver-tip of the icy isle of Soghai: Thorn had heard of such people and never seen one. It was a woman, a hatani, and she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Sogasi, Duun named her, and Thorn stored away that name the way he stored the names of the others, in their sequence and their guilds, which were hatani and tanun and kosan. The tanun gazed at him with that frankness he had seen in Ghindi and Weig and the others; the kosan with something of dread and longing. The hatani shielded him from such things and he was grateful.