C. Cherryh - Cuckoo's Egg

"You'll never give me my answer. Will you?"

A long silence. Yes and no trembled on a knife's edge. For the first time Thorn felt Duun was close to answering him and a breath might tip the balance. He held that breath till his sides ached.

"No," Duun said then. "Not yet."

"He's intelligent," Ellud admitted. Duun clasped his crossed ankles and returned a stolid stare. "Did I say not?" Duun asked. "What else do your young agents say?"

Ellud laid back his ears. "I handed them over to you."

"Come, Ellud. How many sides do you face at once?"

Ellud shifted uncomfortably on his desk. "I'm fending rocks, Duun; you know that."

"I know that. I want to know who you're talking to."

"The council. The council wants to talk to him ."

"No."

"You say no. They get no from you and come to my back door. I'm getting supply shortages; I'm getting delivery delays; I'm getting records lost."

"Not coincidence."

"Not at this rate," Ellud said. Duun drew a deep breath and straightened his back; Ellud held up a hand. "I'll take care of it, Duun. I'd have come to you if I couldn't."

"How does Tshon report me?"

Ellud's mouth dropped. "Duun-"

"I'm not offended. How does she report me?"

"I-told Council you're quite stable. Her report was an advantage. To both of us."

Duun smiled. With all the horror that expression had for the beholder; and he was always, with Ellud, aware of it. "I sent council a letter. If they want a hatani sanction individually and singly-let them forget their contract. The government made it. They've got it to my dying day."

"Or his."

"Are you telling me something, Ellud?"

"I don't remember telling you anything. I'd have to swear I didn't."

Few things disturbed Duun's centering. This was one. Ellud grew very still, hands loose in his lap, for a long while staring at that stare.

"If there were to be an accident," Duun said.

"I don't know how it would come. He's hatani, you said. He wouldn't be easy. Duun-you have to understand. It's not just council; it's public pressure: the matter at Sheon-got out."

Duun said nothing and Ellud lifted a modifying hand, sketched diffident explanation. "They called the magistrates, the magistrates called the province head-back when they thought they'd run afoul of the Guild, when they thought they'd hatani troubles up to their armpits-well, the matter got blown up larger: a few offices got onto it, and a few wealthy landholders at some dinner party- Well, a note went out to political interest here. And Rothen's successor-"

"Shbit."

"Shbit. Exactly. Wants to play politics. On the issue the whole thing's gone sour." Ellud made a helpless motion. "Duun, hard as it is to think anyone could be shortsighted enough-

"I don't find it hard at all. "I have a very fine appreciation of venality. And stupidity. Tomorrow doesn't come and a stone cast up doesn't come down. For a renunciate, I'm a very practical man, Ellud. You should remember that."

"I remember." In a small, hoarse voice. "Duun, for the gods' own sake-they're trying to get between you and the Guilds. You know that's how they'll work. They're trying to slow my office down with their paper-delays. They want documentation of malfeasance. I'm making duplicates of everything. I've got them in a packet in hands that will get them to the Guild-if- anything should happen."

"Wise."

"People are frightened, Duun."

"Go on guarding the back door. I'll take care of the front. I will."

"For the gods' sakes-"

Duun gave him a cold stare. "Calling on Shbit would solve it."

"You couldn't get to him."

"Couldn't?" Duun pursed his mouth. He drew in air that stank of politics and his blood ran faster. "Watch me."

"Gods. Don't. Don't. Ammunition's all I want. Listen-Duun. Just let me take it awhile. Let me handle it. What happens to me when the pieces start hitting the ground? You've got the Guild. I've got no cover. You think I can't manage it? I managed it while you were rusting in the hills for sixteen years. For the gods' sake, leave politics to me and get me what I need.

You've got enough in your lap. Trust me for this."

Duun scowled. "Meaning?"

"Just-let me pile up data. Awhile."

"The Guild's another answer. He might make it."

"Gods. You don't mean that."

"We're very catholic."

Ellud's ears sank in dismay.

"I'm working on it," Duun said. "I tell you that. But he's not ready yet."

"You know what that would cause?"

"And prevent."

There was a long silence. Then: "The tapes, Duun. For the gods' sakes, start them. Can you do that?"

Duun stared and thought about it. "Yes."

They sat together, Elanhen and Betan and Sphitti and Cloen: "This is the way it is," Elanhen said. "We get scored together. All of us. You're the one they threw into the group. If you don't learn, we fail together."

"We get thrown out of our jobs," Betan said.

"What's your job ?" Thorn asked, because everything they said puzzled him.

Their faces went closed to him then, on secrets they would not share.

"You've got a problem," Betan said, leaning over his shoulder while he plied the keyboard in his lap and watched the window across the room become a glowing display. Lines blinked and intersected. "That's the trajectory. With that acceleration where will you intercept?"

Sometimes the problems made vague sense. And sometimes they did not.

(What in the world comes in two hundred twenty-fours?)

(Stars. Trees. Kinds of grass. The ways of a river. The stubbornness of a child.)

(I can reckon the speed of the wind, name the stars, the cities of the world-)

"… in order, the particles-"

Betan brushed his arm as she bent above him. She smelled of something different. She had no reticence with him. She took no care how she leaned past him. The column of her throat was undefended, her body sleek coated and ripe with musk-

"You got it right," Sphitti said as they clustered about his desk sitting on its edges. "Here's an application now. If you were drifting in midair-no friction and no gravity-"

(They're trying to trip me.) "You can't."

"Say that you could."

Betan flicked an ear at him. Perhaps it was a joke at his expense.

"Write it down," said Cloen.

"I don't have to."

"Let him do it his way," Sphitti said. Then he had to get it right.

"That's right," Elanhen said then, checking what he said.

"Damn hatani arrogance," Cloen said when he was not quite out of earshot, when he and Elanhen were off together at Cloen's desk.

It hurt. Thorn was not immune to that.

(Duun, what do I do when people insult me? When they hate me? How do I answer, Duun?)

But he never asked it aloud. The shame of it distressed him. And he thought that he should come up with that answer on his own.

"Just the sounds," Betan said. "It doesn't matter what it means. It's a test of your recall. Listen to the tape and memorize the sound."

"It's not words at all!"

"Pretend it is. Just try. Record it. Play it back till there's no difference."

Thorn looked at Betan, at Sphitti. At two gray pairs of eyes. He felt indignation at this, as if they had made this one up. But they had never joked with him, not on lessons.

"He put the plug into his ear and listened. Tried to pronounce the babble. (They'll be laughing. It sounds like water running.) He looked around at them, but they found other things to do, with the computer and with their own studies. He turned back to his work, put his hands over his eyes to shut out the world.

(Remembering days on Sheon's porch, the hiyi blooms-)

He mouthed the noises. He slowed down the machine and ran it fast and memorized the sequences. It was harder than Sphitti's physics. The plug gave him an earache.