Cuckoo's Egg (27 page)
("Try this, minnow, try it on your tongue, never swallow first-off—")
"—you tolerate most things; we tolerate most of yours. Thank the gods that's so, or you'd have lived in virtual isolation."
(Sheon, the leaves moving in the summer wind, green and fragrant—) (The stinging smell of lugh-flowers on the long road down from home to exile—)
"Am I the only one, am I all, Duun?"
"Yes. There was argument on that point. A lot of it. All they could see was the tapes; read the tapes; if he doesn't live, if he should meet with accident.
…But there was only one of me, minnow; and I had to teach you, my way; learn from you, my way. If you'd been in isolation, I would have been too.
We were bound together. To make you what you are took me, and it took those tapes, minnow— Some of them, gods know, maybe simple entertainment for the crew— the one that was the key. There are others.
The audio you heard— that's from Gatog. The messages come regularly.
You know what I imagine they say? 'Here we are. You killed our messenger.' But I don't know what they say after that. I don't know how long they'll wait. They know we've got a ship. They know whatever that pilot told them. 'They're killing me. I can't leave. They're poor primitives.
They're not worth much. But look out for them.' "
"You think they're going to attack."
"I planned to be capable of coming to them— whatever they're doing. But the way that ship works— the way they think it works— We guess wrong and we might lose Gatog. We might lose everything. The irony is, 224
Cuckoo's Egg
minnow, we can push it out to some safe distance and try— but we'd be flying that ship with no knowledge how to do it. Even if it works. And we can't start that kind of engine near anything else. And not from a standing start, they tell me. The awful truth is we don't know the last things. We don't know how to fly it. If we did we could have saved
Ganngein
and
Nonnent.
It's that fast— even inside a solar system. Outside— gods help us, we don't know."
"Am I supposed to do something about this?" Thorn trembled, a brief convulsion. "Am I what the ghota want to stop?"
"There are three kinds of people I've found: those who think the universe is good, those who believe it's corrupt, and those who don't want to think about it any more than they can help. I prefer the first two. The last can be hired by anybody. Dallen Company wants you stopped because they're scared of you: so do others; the ghota are just damn scared of your being hatani and not theirs, and of more and more knowledge in hatani hands and not theirs. They're dying and they know it. The world can't afford them anymore. It can't afford ignorance. The tanun, the kosan guilds—you're their hope."
"To do what?
Fly
that ship?"
"I don't know. Maybe. Someday. What would you do?"
"O gods."
"
Now
you know what you're for."
"Don't ask me this! Duun—"
"Haras-hatani, what will you do?"
Thorn walked off across the floor, raised his hands to his head, dropped them. There were no thoughts. Nothing but a tumbling of images. (The boulders in the sand, each with a hatani. Tangan's aged mask and Sagot's blurred. Manan's impersonal voice: "That's a miss on their side, a hit on ours. It's down."
Ganngein
's: "This isn't a trip we want to share.") 225
Cuckoo's Egg
He looked back at Duun. At a quiet shadow against the vast illusion of the windows.
"Well?" Duun asked.
"I'm not even eighteen years old!"
"I didn't say it was all in your lap. You're not responsible for the ghota.
You're not to blame for the world's foolishness; but it's burning, Haras-hatani. And maybe that eighteen years is all the world is going to have.
What will you do to stop it?"
(Go back to earth? How could I stop it? Who would hear me? Hatani.
Tanun guild; kosanin would hear Duun.)
(A room with a bed, a bath, a fire, and hidden tricks. What is my room?
This place. This world. How do I put out the fire but with my bare hands?
Am I twice a fool?)
(
Now
you know what you're for.)
Thorn looked about him, the windows, the glittering sprawl of Gatog; the computer banks. (The ghotanin are afraid of something. This. Of its use.) (The tapes. The voices.)
"I see," Thorn said. "You already know what you want me to do. You think you know. You wonder what I think. Pathways? Is that it?"
"Maybe just the hope of something better. Tell me your solution."
"The ship transmitted. Did the message go out translight?"
"No. Lightspeed."
"The pilot knew they wouldn't be in time then. He wasn't asking them to save him."
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"No. There was no hope of that. So what did he want, hatani?"
"How can I know?
You
taught me."
"Perhaps you can't. A great deal of you is shonun."
"But the messages started nine years later. They say, 'hello; here we are.'
And they go on saying it. And he said: 'I'm dying; they're killing me and they have such little ships.' They
know
we can't come to them. Don't they?"
"They've known at least since that message got to them, seven years, nine years after he was dead. And nine years after that attack on their ship their first messages came to us. And still come."
"How long have you been getting them now? Five years?"
"Near seven."
Thorn shut his eyes a moment. Opened them. "People should have been relieved."
"Some were. Some were simply reminded. Others said the ship wasn't really translight, that nothing could do that, that the message was a trick and timed to take us off our guard: that ships would be arriving sublight.
And soon. And they hired the ghota, who saw only money and a chance to stop the hatani guild from getting control of the war they believed would come. The war they've already started."
"To see who meets those ships."
"That, yes."
"Is it so simple, then? The ship out there could transmit."
"Even simpler. Gatog can."
"They wouldn't hear me for nine years!"
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"But then earth would know there's no stopping it. No undoing the messages once we've started sending. And we can hold here at Gatog indefinitely. We can stand off the ghotanin, and it won't take much more than that nine years for ships from the other side to get here if they hear us: some think so, at least. One year, two, at the rate that ship might go.
They might have been here years ago— if we're right about that speed.
They might come tomorrow. They may be waiting for their answer. We had no way to read them— until now. When they come, whatever they intend, you'll be here. Safe. A voice like theirs. Perhaps they'll remember their pilot when they see you. Perhaps they'll wonder. Maybe they'll begin thinking and hesitate at whatever they plan. Gods know, in ten years maybe we'll have learned to fly that ship."
"Does the earth have to bleed that long?"
"Maybe it does. Or maybe when earth knows what your solution is a lot of people will stop and think about it. Remember you're hatani. Of the guild.
That's something the world understands. That's part of my solution too.
When the panic dies, shonunin will remember the guild passed you.
They'll know it's a true judgment."
"No one likes a hatani under his roof. Sagot told me so."
"Yes, and you've been near eighteen years under theirs. It's true. People begin searching themselves for guilt. They imagine judgment on their sins.
They know you read them. They see your face and they know you read them. Even I, minnow. I killed you once, remember. Conscience is dreadful company."
"Duun." Thorn walked back to him, slowly, on the trackless floor; Thorn reached out his hand, slowly, slowly, and touched Duun's face, the scarred side. "So you know I could," Thorn said. And took his hand away.
* * *
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He spoke, quietly, steadily into the microphone and it went out, starting the long journey messages would take each day. Minutes to the earth and hours to Gatog Two and Dothog; nine years to another star. Duun's skin tightened. He had heard that voice, speaking that language, for two years before they silenced it the first time; doubtless others had the same reaction. It would create new panic on earth, in the station. Perhaps
Nonnent
would hear it in their lonely journey, if they had waited to hear it, and know that they had won.
There was a translation. Thorn read that out, which was only for their solar system. ("I'll have to keep working with the tapes," Thorn had said, for there were the originals at Gatog: there were written documents. They had a vast library of them here; and other tapes. Thorn dreaded it; Duun knew how much. Thorn had heard that voice too, twin of his own, in its rage and agony. But the computers built more and more complex fields. They had certainty on some words. They had broken the alphabet. They worked out the phonics and that study branched and multiplied, on a strange story of strange people a hatani had learned to read.)
"The message is," Thorn said:
"I am Haras. One. Two. Three. I am Haras.
Star G. Oxygen. Carbon. I am Haras. I hear you. The world is the earth.
The star is the sun. I am a man. Hello."
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