Cuckoo's Egg (12 page)

Thorn went off-center, shifted his balance back with a lifting of his head.

Stood there with his arms loose and a quaking in his knees.

"That's good." Duun patted his cheek. "That's very good."

(O gods, Duun,
don't
!)

The clawtip traced a gentle path down to his jaw. "I want to talk to you."

The hand dropped to his arm and took it, hurling him staggering to the center of the floor.

95

Cuckoo's Egg

"Duun-hatani, I'm sorry!"

"Sit down."

He sat down on the fresh-raked sand. Duun came and hunkered down in front of him.

"Why are you sorry?" Duun asked. "Because of Cloen or for me?"

"You, Duun-hatani. I shouldn't have done it. I'm sorry. He—"

"What did he do?"

"He hates me. He hates me, that's all, and he's subtle about it."

"More subtle than
you
? Haras-hatani, I am confounded by his capacity."

Heat rushed to Thorn's face. He looked at the sand. "He
tries
to be subtle.

Anything I do is wasted on him."

"You're different; just like Cloen with his baby-spots. And you suspect everyone's noticing. And you want to make sure they respect you. Am I halfway right?"

"Yes, Duun-hatani."

"You have a need, Haras. Do you know it? Can you say it to me?"

"Not to be different."

"Louder."

"Not to be different, Duun-hatani."

"Was it reasonable, what you did?"

"He won't despise me!"

96

Cuckoo's Egg

"Is that so important? What do you own? What does a hatani own?"

"Nothing. Nothing, Duun."

"Yet here we live in a fine place. We have enough to eat. We don't have to hunt—"

"I'd rather hunt."

"So would I. But why are we here? We're here because of what we are.

You own nothing. You have no self-interest. If this Cloen should ask you to remove him from a difficulty you would do it. He would have no right to dictate how you did it; or when or where— but Cloen is your charge.

The
world
is your charge, Haras-hatani. Do you know— you can walk the roads and go from house to house and no one will refuse you food or drink or a place to sleep. And when someone comes to you with a thing and says: help me— do you know what to warn him: Do you know, Haras-hatani? Do you know what a hatani will tell him?

"No, Duun-hatani."

"You will say: 'I am hatani; what you loose you cannot recall; what you ask you cannot unask; what I do is my solution.' There was a wicked man once who called a hatani. 'Kill my neighbor,' he said. 'That's not hatani business,' the hatani said and went away. The wicked man found another hatani. 'My life is wretched,' the wicked man said. 'I hate my neighbor. I want to see him die,' 'That
is
a hatani matter,' the hatani said. 'Do you give it into my hands?' 'Yes,' the wicked man said. And the hatani struck him dead. Do you understand the solution?"

Thorn looked up in horror.

"Do you understand?" Duun asked. "His problem was removed. And the world was eased. That's what you are. A solution. The helper of the world.

Do you want
my
solution for your problem?"

Thorn's heart beat very fast. "What should I do, Duun-hatani?"

97

Cuckoo's Egg

"Tell Cloen to hit you once. Tell him to use his judgment in the matter."

He looked at Duun a very long time. His gut ached. "Yes," he said.

"Remember the lesson. Do as you're told. Someday you'll be wise enough to solve problems. Until then, don't create them. Do you hear?" Duun reached out and closed his hand on Thorn's shoulder. "Do you hear?"

"I hear."

Duun let him go.

98

Cuckoo's Egg

VIII

"It certainly didn't help matters," Ellud said, with the report aglow in his lap. He flung it aside and the optic draped itself over the stack of real paper and went on glowing with ghostly, damning letters. "I chastised my staffer. I don't know why I picked him. But, dammit, Duun—
you
passed him."

"For his faults," Duun said. "As well as his virtues. I never expected perfection. I didn't want it. That's why I stayed by your choices."

"Damn hatani tricks," Ellud said after a moment. "I understand what you're doing. But I don't like it with my staff. Cloen could have been killed."

"I didn't judge so. In that, I was right."

"It's in the record what happened. It was too well witnessed. I can't get rid of it. And with all the sniffing about the council's doing, I wish to the gods I could."

"What did happen was my fault. Power without restraint. I counted on two more years at Sheon. Haras
was
restrained. I'll tell you something which should be evident. Hatani solutions are too wide for young minds. His morality is adequate to hold his power back. It isn't adequate to use it."

"To make him hatani— Duun,
that's
what's sent the wind up the council's—"

"I know."

"I took it for a figure of speech. That it was all you could teach. It was what you knew how to teach."

"Come now."

"Well, that it was easier. But you mean to go all the way with this. When they get that rumor—"

99

Cuckoo's Egg

"Try to be discreet."

"If the Guild could just devise something— clever, if they could find a halfway status—"

"There's no halfway. To give him what I've given him— with nothing but restraint to manage it? No."

Ellud reached and turned off the recorder, There was dismay on his face.

Terror. "For the gods' sake, Duun. Have you lost your senses? What are you after?
What are you after, Duun?
"

"Shbit will have gotten my letter by now Things should be quieter, from council quarter."

A brief silence, no more comfortable. "What did you tell him?"

"I offered him salutation. I felicitated him on his council appointment. I wished him health I signed it. It was a simple letter. He hasn't answered. I expect your supply difficulties to clear up slowly, but I do expect them to clear up."

"You're not the man I knew." Ellud fidgeted with the hem of his kilt. "I don't know how to understand you."

"Old friend. You had courage enough to stay in office this long. I trust you'll keep on with it."

"I have to. Without this office I'm a naked target. They'd go for me. Shbit and his crew. Dammit, I've got no choice. They'd eat me alive."

"I'm here. Trust me."

Ellud stared at him.

* * *

100

Cuckoo's Egg

"Did Cloen hit you?" Duun asked when Thorn got home. Duun leaned easily in the doorway of his office, ears pricked.

"No," Thorn said. There was no satisfaction in that tone. (How much do you control, Duun? Do you know already? Do you always know?) Duun gave him no clues. " 'Cloen,' I said. 'I was wrong in what I did. I'll let you hit me once.' Cloen stood there with his ears back and he raised his hand
no
then. And walked off across the room and got busy."

Duun turned and went back into his office.

"Duun?" Thorn pursued him as far as the doorway. Duun sat down and turned on the computer. "Duun, did I do what you wanted?"

"
Did
you do what I wanted?"

Thorn was silent a moment. "I tried, Duun."

"Do I hear can't?"

"No, Duun."

* * *

The sounds grew less hard. Thorn worked, his eyes shut, his lips moving in repetition of the tape. When it played back it was the same.

"It sounds identical." Cloen said. "I can't tell a difference."

Cloen was careful, since that day. Cloen's face never betrayed anything but respect. And fear. There was that too.

"I've finished it then."

"That one." Cloen licked his lips and looked diffident. "They sent another one. It's not my doing," Cloen said quickly.

101

Cuckoo's Egg

It had to be believed. Cloen did not have the look of lying. Cloen drew the cassette from his pouch and offered it.

"I like chemistry better," Thorn muttered. He felt easier with them since the day Cloen had not hit him. He could say such things and hint at everyday needs, the way they did. He put that manner on and off at the door. It occurred to him that it made them easier with him. He could laugh with them, sometimes, because he had convinced himself he was not the object of laughter. Or if he had been, it was of little consequence.

(But I hate these sound-lessons. I hate this nonsense. I think they like giving them to me. Like a joke on the hatani they can't beat any other way.

I play jokes too. I can make the computer give Sphitti a readout he never expected. He'd think it funny. I wish I
could
do more physics and less of this.)

(I wish Betan would sit here with me instead of Cloen.) (I daren't think that. Duun would break my arm.)

"Thanks," he said dryly and pushed the new cassette into the machine.

Cloen let him alone. They were growing apart. Thorn's shoulders widened.

Poor Cloen's babyspots persisted.

Betan was absent a time. ("It's spring," Elanhen said, and sent heat to Thorn's face. "She's been taking a suppressant but she wants to take a holiday. She'll be back.")

"It's spring," Duun said that evening. "I understand Betan's gone on holiday."

"Yes," Thorn said. He had the dkin on his knee, tuning it. He went all cold inside, for reasons he could not plainly define, except the matter of Betan was a place he protected from the others like some galled spot. And Duun knew unerringly how to find these things. "They said she was on suppressants but she wanted to go on holiday. I think she has some friend."

102

Cuckoo's Egg

"Probably," Duun said matter-of-factly. "I'll warn you to be polite at school. Men don't have seasons. But their sisters and their mothers and half their friends do. And Elanhen and Cloen and Sphitti do have lives outside of the school you know. Don't put any pressure on them."

(What about on
me
?)— You're hatani, Duun would say. If Thorn were fool enough to ask Hatani don't have needs.

(Gods, I don't want to get into
that
with him, not today.) Betan did come back. She came sailing in one day all smiles and what had been an all male society of careful courtesies and few pranks became lively again.

(As if the heart came back into the place.) Thorn felt something expand in his chest, as if some anxiety had let go. Spring was over.

"Have you missed me?" Betan asked.

The others flicked ears and rolled their eyes in a way that they would do when they talked about forbidden things. So it had a ribald flavor.

"Yes," Thorn said simply. Dignity seemed best. (They're joking about her being in season. I'll bet none of them got close to a woman this spring.) (Neither did I. Neither
will
I. A hatani has nothing. Owns nothing. Betan has property in the city. She doesn't have to marry. She could have all her children to herself.) Between Duun and the ribald jokes Thorn had learned some few things. (But I'll bet someone will make her the best offer he can.)

* * *

"When Ghosan-hatani came to Elanten there were two sisters who asked her to judge between them and their husband. They had married the same man for a five-year, each in succession. They all three were potters and he 103

Cuckoo's Egg

was promised a potter's shop from his mother's heritage, so a marriage seemed profitable. But during the fourth year of the first sister the second sister bore a child which was only hers. The husband refused to consummate the second marriage if the woman did not disinherit this child. And both women would lose all they had invested in this shop.'This is a small matter,' Ghosan-hatani said when the sisters came to her. 'Judge it yourselves.' Of course the husband was not there. He had no desire to have it judged. And the second sister looked at Ghosan and lost her courage. 'Come away,' she asked her sister. 'We were mad to ask this hatani.' And that sister ran away. But the first sister stayed. 'I want a judgment,' that sister said. So Ghosan-hatani went door-to-door in Elanten and asked everyone in the village what they knew. And she asked the magistrate. And everything confirmed what the sisters had said. 'Give me a pen,' Ghosan said. The magistrate gave the hatani a pen. And Ghosan wrote in the village records that the shop belonged to the child and to his descendants; and if not to them it belonged to the village of Elanten."

"They would hate the child," Thorn objected.

"Perhaps they would," Duun said. "But when the child was grown and the husband was beyond his prime, what would keep him from turning the husband out? The husband not only consummated the marriage, he wanted to marry the women for good, but they only married him one year at a time for the rest of his life, even through he was very kind to them and to the child. The industry still exists in Elanten, and exports all over the world."

"Do hatani marry?" Thorn asked. He was thinking about Betan. His heart beat fast. (Ought I to have asked that? It wasn't the point of the story.) But there was a feeling in him that came in the night, when he had a vague and disturbing dreams, when he waked ashamed of himself. But Duun said nothing about these times, Duun only looked at him with that guardedness that did nothing to reassure him. (Does Duun do these things in the night?

Something is wrong with me. Why shouldn't it be? Who was my mother and father? Was I like that child?)

(Did some hatani judgment take me away from my mother? Was it Duun's?)

104

Cuckoo's Egg

"There are instances," Duun said.

"Were
you
ever married?"

"Several times."

It shocked Thorn. (He's done— that— with a woman.) Thorn's face went hot. (I might.) He thought of the foenin in the woods. And shifted restlessly, and hugged his knees. (Think of something else. What else has Duun done? What made his scars? Is it all one story?)

"There was a hatani named Ehonin," Duun said. "He had a daughter with a woman not his wife. This daughter when she was grown trekked to another province where Ehonin was by then. She asked him to judge between him and her since her mother had married and disowned her.