C. Cherryh - Cuckoo's Egg

Strange, Thorn was not ugly. Seventeen, nearly eighteen years, and Duun looked at him eye-to-eye, even having to look up a little lately. And there was in Thorn a symmetry that made that face probable on that body and the composite of him fit together in a grace of motion that no aesthete could deny. ("When you get used to him he's beautiful," Sagot said. "Frightening, like some big animal you've gotten closer to than you wanted. But you want to watch him move. There's a fascination to such things, isn't there?)

The pupils dilated and contracted with thought. With anxiety. (Is this a game, Duun? Am I supposed to do something?)

Duun walked away, turning his back on that look. Perhaps Thorn picked up his anxiety. It was acute now.

("We've got to go with it," Ellud said. "Duun, you're put me off; first it was Wait till he's got the first tapes down. Then it was: The Betan business has him upset. Now it's: There's a last few things I have to teach him. Duun, we're out of excuses.")

Duun picked up the cap for the wer -knife. Looked back across the room where Thorn was doing the same thing. Ripple of muscle, the reach of an arm. Thorn was whole this morning. Duun wished to remember this.

"These are the words: I know you can remember them. You won't need much study. Ship. Sun. Hand. Warning. They're equivalents to these sound patterns." Sagot played the tape in the recorder wand she held. It was all a complicated thing, and Thorn centered himself, not to diffuse his concentration on his surroundings. The guard had not brought him to the familiar room this morning, but two doors down, into a place with the slick, bare floors that shouted meds , a place that was large enough, but there were two large risers and a clutter of cabinets: the windows showed illusory desert, which only made the place seem starker, less comforting. Sagot was there waiting for him, sitting cross-legged on a desk with a keyboard in her lap; there was a keyboard and monitor at her knee. "Sit down," Sagot had said, and the guard went out and closed the door on them.

"I. He. Go."

Thorn had thought simulator when the guard brought him to a strange door. He enjoyed that, the fast interaction with the computer, the imagination of flight, and land skimming beneath illusory wings. Gods, they had a screen in one room that made it all seem real. He sat in a machine in that room that had controls very like the copter controls had looked, and the whole machine could move under him, incline and tilt with the screens so that the first time he had had to clamp his jaws to keep from screaming when he lost control and the room spun. He was better at it now.

("Meds?" he had said at once to Sagot, alarmed. "Sit down," she said, "it's patterns today.")

"Stop. Man. Radio. Stop."

"Is it some kind of language?"

"Do your patterns, boy."

(Something's wrong. Sagot's mouth is hard. Did I ask something wrong? Is she worried about this place?)

"Concentrate."

Thorn worked at it. He put meanings with the patterns. Sagot left him listening to his tapes over and over again and he hated them. He mouthed the sounds, resenting it. It was not a good day. Duun had been surly at breakfast; surly in Duun's way, which meant quiet and thoughtful and not giving him anything from inside him, only the surface, like a puddle frozen over. Sagot gave him stark orders and went off and left him in this room, disappearing through the inner door and coming and going in perfunctory checks on him.

(They've been talking to each other. Duun's mad at me and he's told Sagot. I haven't done anything to make Sagot mad.)

(I was stupid about my moves yesterday, I can't stop going to the right all the time, I'm worse when Duun yells at me, I wish he'd hit me, even, I don't mind his hitting me, I deserve to get hit when I leave my side open like that. It's like I've reached a point I can't improve anymore, and Duun knows it, and I'm not good enough to be hatani, not quite. He's worked so long to teach me, and I go off to the right like a fool and he ought to shout at me, he should have cut me and maybe I'd remember after that.)

There was a scar across his forearm and one on Duun's.

(I always remembered that.)

"Boy."

The machine went off, Sagot's intervention. He blinked at Sagot, who had brought him a pill and a small cup of water. (Gods, it is meds. What's wrong? Do they just want to look at me?) "Sagot, I don't want to swallow that. I'm not sick."

She went on holding it out. There was no choice, then. He picked the pill off her black, wrinkled palm and put it in his mouth. He had no need of the water to swallow it, but it made his stomach feel better; it threatened upset. (Is that what has Sagot acting strange? Is there something really the matter with me? Does Duun think so?)

"I want you to go next door with me," Sagot said. "Yes, it's meds. You're going to lie down a while and I want you to be good about this."

(You smell afraid, Sagot. So do I, I think. Gods, what's this about?)

He got up. He towered over Sagot, but Sagot reached and took his hand. (I'm hatani, Sagot, you're not supposed to-) But he never told Sagot no. She led him by the hand to the door in the side of that room, and led him through it into a small room that left no illusions about meds in this room. It was a cramped small place, all machinery and a table. Sagot's hand held his. She was evidently not going to argue the matter. (She's afraid. What should I be?) But he stood there while meds came out and told him to take off his kilt and lie down.

"I'll be all right," he told Sagot; he did not want to undress with her there, not because he would shock her-(I have fourteen great-greatgrandchildren, boy)-but precisely because it would not, she would look on him as a child, and child-Thorn was already too naked. But Sagot stayed, and Thorn turned his back and unfastened his kilt and got up on the table when the meds told him to. His head swam; his limbs felt distant from his brain; he drifted in a vast calm which itself alarmed him.

(It was a drug Sagot gave me. Does Duun know? Does he know where I am, what they're doing, did he order this?)

They pasted electrodes about his body. He felt this far distant from him. They spoke in whispers or his hearing had gone wrong. They adjusted a screen above his head. Something soft and rough settled over his naked body and he realized vaguely that someone had put a sheet over him; he was dimly grateful. (It's cold in here; they never realize how cold I get sometimes, they've got a coat and I don't and I'm sweating now-) Something tight went over his legs, once again over his chest. "Talk to him, for the gods' sake, he's not a piece of meat you're handling."

"Sagot-mingi, we have to ask you to be still, with respect, mingi Sagot."

Something weighed on his shoulder. Shook at him. "Keep your eyes open. Look up."

Thorn obeyed that voice. He heard the sound of his tapes over and over again.

"Blink. That's right. You can blink when you have to."

"He's following that, isn't he?"

The voice drifted out again. He heard another voice babbling at him; there were images, he was in the simulator; more voices, more images, there were people like him moving in the dark, there were faces that babbled at him, there were machines and more machines-

He tried to leave this.

Eyes stared at him, mirrorlike. More machines that spun in dark and arms that moved-

He fought. He evaded and escaped and fought.

"This is your heritage," a voice told him out of the dark. "Accept it, Haras-hatani. This is your heritage. Accept what you hear and see.

Stop resisting. Accept this. This is your heritage."

Chaos of images.

"Listen to the sounds. Learn this, Haras-hatani. Remember these things."