C. Cherryh: Cuckoo's Egg

"Station."

Static snapped. The nose of the plane dipped in a dive. Altitude traded for speed.

("Mach two plus if it has to.")

Thorn trembled. There was pain, pain from his burns, from warmth; he gasped at the sluggish thin feed of the mask and his nose and throat and eyes were raw. Sweat ran on him. There was a high strange sound, a sense that quivered through his bones and bowels like elemental fear. (I'm scared, Duun; Duun, I don't want to die like this-)

There was a blur ahead of them, the first substance there had been, a shadow in front of them, a blaze of light.

(That's ground coming up, that's the river-O gods, that's ground, the city-)

Pressure began, a constriction of his limbs, the pain again-the world tilted violently and became half earth and sky split vertically, flipped straight again as Thorn felt the straining of the straps. (They'll break, I'll go up and into the canopy, I can't hold on-)

Then another force slammed in, and they were losing speed. One ear failed to pop, reached a painful point and pressure went on and on in acute agony that made one fabric with other things.

Smoke on the horizon. Smoke palling the city in the one direction, a gray blur to either side.

A runway ribboned out of the forward perspective, a straight pale line ahead. The plane came in knife-straight, sank on its haunches in a long jarring rush before the thunder of the reversing engines made headway against their speed. More speed down. More. Tires squealed and the jets roared again as a gantry loomed up, a shuttle poised like a white tower against the smoke-stained sky. On the horizon a red sun burst and swelled and faded. Another, burning bright.

Closer and closer. The plane jolted and thumped and rocked over uneven pavement; there was a truck coming toward them. The plane's canopy retracted and metal stank, pinging and popping with heat. Duun reached and yanked connections as the engines whined down; popped Thorn's belt and his own, stood up and vaulted the side. Thorn scrambled up on the seat, flinched at heat and saw Duun spring from the wing's back edge to the truckbed and go to one knee as he landed; Thorn rolled over the side and hit the wing as Duun got up, strode once on a yielding surface and leapt for the truckbed and Duun's arms.

Duun and he both went down, rolled, and the truck lurched into motion, leaving the plane dwindling behind. On the horizon more suns burst, and one flowered in the sky and faded in a smudge of smoke.

Duun held onto him. Thorn trembled, felt Duun unfasten his mask for him and let him fill his lungs with cold gasps of air. Duun clenched him the tighter as the truck whined and jolted and the gantry towered into view, white girders against the smoke-ravaged sky. It braked. "Out," Duun said, and helped him balance as he got up, vaulted the rear of the truck to the ground and was there to steady him when his feet hit the pavement.

"Come on. Run!" Duun dragged him for the gantry, for the white wall that was a shuttle fin. There was an elevator, its door open, and a woman who motioned at them hurry, hurry, in a violence like an oath. They made it in: the woman shut the door and moved a bar-switch that set them moving up. The whole elevator reeked of their suits and sweat and fear, and Thorn staggered as it lifted. Duun's hand met his chest. "Hold on, dammit, Thorn! Hold on!"

Thorn locked his knees, leaned on the wall with his forearm. Girders whipped past the window in a blur; then the woman jammed down the switch and the car slammed to a stop. The door opened, showing them a thick-walled open hatch.

"Come on," Duun said, and shoved Thorn into it and followed. Thorn looked back in distress as explosions came like distant thunder.

Still outside, the woman swung the hatch shut, disappearing in a diminishing crescent of the murky sunlight. Thump. (What about her?) The world seemed an unsafe place, no place to leave alone. But Duun spun him about and all but threw him into a seat in this cubbyhole of a place, one of three seats built flat on this dimly lighted floor.

"Belt in," Duun said, and Thorn groped for belts as Duun fell into his seat and got them, fastened them for him and got his own helmet off. Duun hugged it to his breast and pushed a button on the arm of the seat. "We're set, we're set back here."

"Understand you clear."

Thorn stripped his helmet off with his wrists; Duun helped him, bent and stowed it in a bin in the floor beside his seat. The lid latched and echoed hollowly. Thorn lay there breathing in great gasps while Duun secured his own belts. "They're waiting on the attendant to get down the escape route," Duun said, his own head back, his eyes shut. "Driver of that truck's got to get out too."

"What about the plane?"

"Maran and Koga-they're headed out and over to Drenn. Refuel and up again.It's their wing that's taking the beating out there. They'll have a window-ours: they've got to take that missile screen down again for us to clear this port."

(People are dying. Everywhere those shells go off. All those people-)

A thunder began to grow. (They're hitting close to us.) Sweat flooded Thorn's body in a sickly sense of doom; then the sound went to his bones and the force came down on him, dizzying and all-encompassing. Another thunder began, pieces of the ship rattling, as if it was all coming apart. (We won't make it, we won't make it-some missile will stop us.)

The weight grew, pressing him down into the couch.

They were leaving the world. Everything. There was void ahead, incomprehensible and without end.

(I looked up at the moon and tried to see where they were, but of course I couldn't.)

(The world's wide, minnow, wider than you know.)

(The world's beautiful. Haven't you seen it in pictures?)

There was peace, eerie peace and stillness, in which moving cost little and breathing cost far less. A gentle air touched Thorn's face and a breeze stirred against his cheek.

Duun floated above him, balanced crazily on one arm that gripped the back of the seat. Thorn blinked, and Duun freed him of the restraints. A little move of Thorn's arm against the seat freed him from the cushion.

"We're up," Thorn murmured. "We're up." "Where the worlds spin, yes. You can be easy awhile, minnow. It's a great ocean you've come to. It's easy to move and easy to move too far." Duun grinned at him. (Can he smile after all that? Can he be happy? Can anyone ever, after that?)

Duun pulled gently at his wrist- "Keep your arm stiff. Never mind, don't try to hold." The fastenings of the flightsuit gave way. Duun's own suit drifted in pieces, loosed at chest and wrists and ankles. Duun worked him free: torque set them spinning and they drifted together while the cabin revolved slowly about them.

Freedom, then, Thorn drifted, shut his eyes in exhaustion, half-slitted them to watch Duun come and go through a hole he had not seen before.A hatch had opened above them. In the lazy spin Thorn caught sight of white light, of shonun bodies that drifted to and fro about some business, Duun went up to that place and sailed down again like some graceful diver. Duun's ears were up; his eyes were lively and bright.

(He knows this, he knows all of it, he's been this way more than once.)

"Where are we going, Duun?"

"Hush. Rest. People are busy."

"What's happened to the world?"

"It's still there. Fighting's centered mostly now around the shuttleports and Avenen and Suunviden. but it's dying down now-now that we're away and there's not a damn thing they can do about it."

"Why did we do it? Where are we going?" "Why, why, and why? There's a shower on board. I'm going to use it. When I have I'm going to tape some plastic around those hands of yours and make you pleasanter company." Duun drifted off from him. Thorn twisted in midair and saw him disappear down yet another hole. Thorn tried to maneuver himself, spun and brought up against the cushions, remembering only at the last moment not to use his hands; he rebounded helplessly and drifted, waiting.