C. Cherryh: Cuckoo's Egg

(Where's the breaking-point, Thorn? The killing-point? The point you turn?)

(Or do you fall first? How long, Thorn?)

Duun hastened. His limp betrayed him. There was a pain within his side. (Old man, old man- they put you back together; you should have let them replace the knee, regrow the hand- now you rue it, late.)

He found another way-he guessed which way Thorn must head and guessed amiss.

(So. He learned that lesson all too well. Does he read me? Does he know? Or is it random choice he tries? Knowledge or fool's choice?)

(How old is he in his own terms? Not man yet. Not grown. But near.)

(Thorn-that-I-carried. Haras , Thorn, that wounds the hand that holds it, the foot that treads it, that tangles paths and bears bitter blooms and poisoned fruit.)

The shadows multiplied in the sinking sun. Thorn gasped for air, withheld his hands from their instinctive reach after support on trunk and log and stone as he descended the valley. He sighted on a stone and went to it, for his legs wandered. He sighted on the next and followed that. Such little goals led him now.

(Get beyond the pale, get to paths strange to both of us. Duun knows the mountain too well- far too well.)

(Go where Duun would not have me go-make him angry-anger in my enemy is my friend, my friend-)

He smelled smoke. It was far away in the valley, but he went toward it.

(Let Duun worry now. Let him come here to find me. Here among the countryfolk. Here among others. Other people.)

(Run and run. Stop for wind. Let us play this game in and out of strange places, in among stranger-folk who know nothing of the game.)

– There must be food, food for taking with hatani tricks. ("They're herders," Duun had said. "Herder-folk. No, little fish, not hatani, nothing like. They respect us too much to come here. That's all. They lived here once.")

(Where houses are is food, is shelter: he'll have to search, he won't know if they'd lie, these countryfolk, or hide me-Perhaps they would.)

There was a trail. There was a stink of habit here even his nose could tell, musty, old dung, the frequent passage of animals.

Thorn jogged up it. Stink to hide his stink. To confound Duun's nose. Tracks to hide his tracks. Let Duun guess. Thorn gathered speed and coursed along the trail. There was the taste of blood in his mouth.

("-They never bother anything," Duun said of farmer-folk. "They don't ask to be bothered and we don't go there.")

("Couldn't we see them, Duun-hatani? Couldn't we go and see?") Thorn wondered if they were like the meds and Ellud; if there were- (-O gods, if there were some like me.) In all the wide world Duun spoke of, there must be more like him.

It was what Duun had thought. Fool! he cursed himself. Fool! To maneuver the enemy and not to see it-that was the greatest fool in the world. Scent-blind, sick with livhl, Thorn was seeking a hiding-place, seeking some place rife with scents, with smoke, with tracks and confusion. Cover himself in shonun-scent.

Thorn was going to the one place forbidden him. Change the rules. Upset the game.

Find outsiders and raise it another level still.

(Duun, what's wrong with me?)

( Slick, the infant said, rubbing at his stomach.)

Faces in the mirror.

(Duun, will my ears grow?)

Duun laid his own ears back and put on speed, risking everything now, risking shame, that a minnow might trap him.

But Thorn already had.

There was a house in the twilight-not a large house like theirs up on the mountain, but a ramshackle thing part metal and part wood. There were fences, put together the same way, of bits and pieces. Fences -Thorn guessed that word: fences , Duun said, kept countryfolk cattle from the woods: and cattle Thorn had seen, from high on the mountaintop, white and brown dots moving across the flat in summer-haze. ("City-meat comes from those," Duun told him. And Thorn: "Can't we hunt them?" "There's no hunting them," Duun had said. "They're tame. They're stupid. They stand there to be killed. Staring at you. They trust shonunin.")

("And they kill them, Duun?")

White animals huddled in their pens. Lights burned near the house on a tall pole in the twilight. Thorn saw the power lines, that led from there two ways, the house, and off across the land- (The power unit's far away then. Can there be other houses near?) He skirted brush, came up nearer, where he had a closer view of the house, the dusty yard beyond its fence. Hiyi grew there, along the row, all in leaf in this season, flowerless. He heard high voices, the closing of some door. "I'll get you," someone shrilled, but there was laughter in the voice. "I'll get you, Mon!"

More shrieks. Thorn came closer, taking to the road. Beneath the lights, in front of the porch, two small figures ran and raced and played chase.

"Come in here!" a voice called from the open door. "Come in, it's time to eat."

They were children. They ran and shrieked and yelled-

Duun's kind. Thorn's heart stopped. He stood there in the road and looked beyond the fence and likewise the children stopped their game and stared, they on their side, he on his.

They were like Duun. Like him, in grayer, paler coats. With Duun-like ears, eyes, faces- with all that made up Duun.

"Aiiii!" one screamed. The other yelled. They hugged each other and yelled-to frighten him, he thought; he stood his ground, trembling at the sight. More of Duun's kind came out.

But children were like Duun. Children were not born hairless; he was not a child gone wrong, failed in growing-

– He was-

(Duun!)

He drew back. A man had run out onto the step. "Get in! Get inside!" Thorn thought it meant him, and delayed. " Ili! Ili! Get the gun!"

(O gods! Guns! Duun!)

He spun on his heel and ran. He heard doors slam, more than once. Heard running come toward the fence, heard voices at his back. "Gods, it's him! " one yelled, and others took it up. "It's that thing- that thing! "

It was a trap. Duun had made it. Duun had snared all his paths, all the world: there was no way, nothing, anywhere, that Duun had not seen and set up to trap him-

(Got you, minnow, got you again-)

Thorn snatched breath and left the road, darted into the undergrowth, hearing the howl of animals at his back, hearing shouts raised- " The thing on the mountain! - It's him, it's come!"

(O gods , Duun-gods-) Breath split his side. Branches tore at him. He ran and something in him had broken, ached, swelled in his throat-

They hunted him. They all did. There was no help.

No quarter.

Leaves burst into flames near him. Beamer. He heard the whine of projectiles.

Splinters burst into his face. He flung his hands up, hit a tree or some such thing: impact numbed his arm and spun him. The ground came up. He felt twigs stab his hand, earth and leaves abrade the heel of it. He scrambled to turn over and get his knees, his legs under him, eyes pouring tears; the numbed arm flopped at his side. He heard more shots whine.

"There he is!"

He dived and dodged and stumbled to his knees again, aware of shock. Once he had fallen from the rocks and been like this, numb from head to foot, and scared and breathless-had risen and walked and run again and known only later where he was, to find Duun gazing down at him from the high rocks.

To find Duun coming down to him, game abandoned, to take his face in his maimed hand, jaw pinched between thumb and forefinger, and look into his eyes-

"You hear me, little fish? You hear me?

Duun!

Thorn slipped to one knee and got up again, turned, his shoulder to rough bark. There were lights, the howl of beasts, there were shapes behind the lights, people shining lights wildly this way and that into the brush, over him.