Cuckoo's Egg

XIV

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.

A vacuum went on in the shower and Thorn watched the water droplets run in clinging trails until they were gone and the lamp dried him. He elbowed the latch and drifted out again, turned once in midair in slow revolution before Duun snagged him and wrapped a plain blue kilt about him, tugged the self-belt about his waist with a touch familiar years ago, exactly the snugness, exactly the way Duun had done it then-Thorn looked into Duun's face from a grownup angle, met him eye-to-eye when Duun finished with the small pat on the side he had given him when he was small. Time went backward and forward, spun like the room.

"Follow me," Duun said, trod on the cabinet wall and drifted upward with unerring grace through the narrow hatch.

Thorn kicked off, angled his body with what grace he could manage and sailed through in Duun's wake, followed him again, up into a light, into the mind and heart of the shuttle where crew came and went.

They stared-(they shocked; they want to be polite; they don't know whether to stare or not, whether staring's honest or only rude.) Duun drifted on and stopped and Thorn imitated his move, ignoring the stares- (The world in flames. They ought to hate me. I don't blame them. I was born for it.) And he floated strangely free, taking all their blame, ignoring their eyes on his smooth pale skin, suffering Duun's grip on his arm that drew him toward the window.

The bright blue world-was there. Its fires were invisible. The perspective denied everything-the fires became one more illusion beyond a window; his life shrank to invisible scale, lived out on a mountain and in a city whose burning could not even stain the clouds.

He stared and stared, and the tears beaded in his eyes until his blinking drove them. He wiped his eyes and a droplet floated free from his fingertip, perfect, a wobbling orb like the world in space.

"Do you love it?" Duun asked. "Do you love it, minnow?"

"Yes," Thorn said when he could say anything at all. He wiped his eyes again. "It's still there."

"So long as you aren't on it," Duun said, and it was truth; he had seen it. Thorn's chest ached. He put out a hand and touched the window and the world.

The ship left the world, while they belted in below. The engines kicked them hard and long.

Thorn shut his eyes. I can't sleep, I can never sleep, he told himself, but the strength ebbed out of him and he felt the pain reminding him of what he was and what it cost, constantly, like the beats of his heart. "Drink," Duun said, and fed him something through a straw that he wanted no more of after the first sip. "Drink it." Again, in that voice that had drilled him all his life, and it left no choice. Thorn drank, and slept; and when he woke Duun slept by his side-his unscarred side toward him, that side that gave its own illusions, of what Duun had been before.

Thorn shut his eyes again. (Is Sagot alive? Did Manan and the other pilot live? The guild- did the missiles defend it?)

(Children standing on the rock at Sheon, seeing red suns bloom on their horizons. Smoke palls the sky. Thunder shakes the ground.)

(In the halls at Dsonen people run in confusion, not knowing where to go.)

The sun whirls past the canopy and men like great insects manage the controls. The plane hangs in the sky and time stops. The war goes on in a moment frozen forever, all war, all time.

Sagot sits in her lonely hall. There is thunder. She sits frail and imposing at the end of that room, waiting in front of all the empty desks.

A shuttle flies in place and the universe rushes past it, sweeping the world out of its reach.

There were mundane things. There had to be: there were bodily needs, and Thorn cared stubbornly for himself, once Duun had shown him how things worked; there was a breakfast of sorts, and Thorn found his hands a little less painful, Crew came drifting through their compartment in the urge of like necessities and coming back again. There was still the surreal about it, like the drifting course they took, a leisurely pace, a slowness like a dream.

"Where are we going, Duun?"

"Gatog."

"Is that the station?" Thorn had never heard it called that.

"It's one of them." Duun said.

(Is there more than one?) Sagot's teaching developed cracks, fractured in doubts. (Is no truth entire?)

"We had a report," Duun said, "the ghotanin have sent a messenger to Tangan offering to talk. The kosan guild refused at first, but they're going to relent."

"Is that part of your solution?" Thorn asked. His mind worked again. Duun looked at him with that closed hatani stare to match what Thorn gave him.

"Balance is," Duun said. "It was never my intention to destroy the ghota."

"They call you sey Duun."

"It's a courtesy these days."

"You led kosanin?"

"Once."

No more than that. Duun would not be led.

More of sleep and meals and bodies. The gel on his hands began to peel. The crew grew familiar: Ghindi, Spart, Mogannen, Weig. Half-names. Pet-names. But it was enough. Duun knew them and talked with them in quiet tones, and talked sometimes with voices on the radio from one end or the other of their journey.

None of it concerned Thorn. And everything did. He eavesdropped in mortal dread and caught nothing but city names and Gatog's name and jargon after that.

Intercept, Thorn heard once, and his heart delayed a beat. He looked Duun's way and kept looking Duun's way when Duun stopped the conversation.

"Minnow," Duun said to him, drifting toward Thorn. And nodded to him that he ought to follow.

Duun drifted down into the place they slept in and came to a graceful stop. Thorn reached with his foot and a half-healed hand and did almost as well. "Are there ghotanin here?" Thorn asked.

"Maybe there are," Duun said. "They're not our job to fight."

"Is it a game?" Thorn asked in anger. "Am I supposed to discover what we're going to? Where I am? Isn't it over, Duun?"

Duun looked at him in a strange, distant way. "It's only beginning. It's not the right question, Haras-hatani. None of those is the right question."

Thorn grew very still inside.

"Think on it." Duun said. "Tell me when you know."

The void that had sped past him, about him, shrank to a single familiar dimension.

("Again," Duun said, standing over him on the sand. "Again.")

Thorn sucked in a breath and stared at Duun as Duun pushed off and soared up through the lighted hatchway like some sleek gray man-sized fish.

(He's been waiting for me. Where have I been? Where has my mind been? It was pity he felt for me.)

(He belongs here. This is his element, like Sheon; and the city-tower and the guild-hall never were.)

Thorn pushed off and extended his body the way Duun had, with the same grace, conscious of it. He came up into the light of the crew-compartment, found his touch-point with one sure motion and drifted to the counter-hold he sought, there where he could see Duun and the others.

They were receiving and sending messages again. Duun listened and answered in that jargon again which made little sense. "Is it custom," Thorn asked when there was a lull, "to talk) that; or have we enemies up here?"

"Is that your question?" Duun asked.

"I'll tell you when I ask it." Thorn held to the counter and felt the sensitivity of his burns. "If this is an ocean, this minnow had better learn to swim. He should have learned days ago."

Duun looked at him and slanted his ears back in an expression Thorn had seen a thousand times. "There are enemies. The same as we met on earth. The companies who maintain factories and mines up here use ghotanin for guards. And some of them have ships. Not like the shuttle. The shuttle's not built for what we're doing. Ships are moving, some friendly, some not. We've burned all the fuel we have getting out of earth's pull. It wasn't a scheduled launch. It was the reserve shuttle we used. One's always kept launch-ready: the companies like their schedules kept. And getting it powered up without letting Shbit and the ghotanin trace that order to me-that took some work."

(You knew it all in advance, then. Dammit, Duun-)

Duun might have smiled; on the ruined side such motions were ambiguous and made him deceptive to read. It might have been a grimace. "Right now," Duun said, "we're on course for Gatog. It lies some distance out. We're not capable of stopping, of course. But that's not a great problem. A miner's already moving into line to be on that course a few weeks hence, a simple salvage job. If nothing intervenes. We're moving very slowly. Our enemies are closing at ten times our speed. We have no weapons. Those ships do. Fortunately so do our friends. It's a very touchy business, minnow, hour by hour. A ship spends fuel; the other side does; each move changes the intercept point and the schedule. We're the only fixed quantity because we can't maneuver, no more than a world or a moon. We just sail on. And hour by hour those ships out there burn a little, figure, discover what the enemy's doing, refigure, maneuver and do another burn. Faster and faster. It depends on how willing crews are to die, and at what point they commit themselves. For the nearest of our friends the earth is close to the infinity point: they were never built to land, and if they overspend on fuel they'll not have the capacity to do the necessary vector change and get back again: the gravity well is just that, a treacherous slope, and a ship that spends everything can find itself going downhill. For our enemies, the infinity point is infinity-or some star a hundred years away. And someone could eventually fetch them back. They don't need to be as brave. Or as careful."

"What will our friends do?"

"Some of them are hatani."

"They'll do what they have to, then." The guild house. The laughter which no longer sounded cruel, but innocent and brave. (They didn't know then they were in such close danger. Even hatani failed to read it. They saw the ghota; they knew trouble had come in, but they couldn't know it all.) "Are they armed?"

"Yes."

Thorn looked about him, at the crew who worked so unceasingly, who talked calmly over the radio and sometimes joked with each other or did whimsical things, like sailing a morsel of food toward a fellow crew member for that one to catch. "These are brave people," Thorn said, as if he stood at the foot of some great mountain. It was that kind of awe, making him quiet inside. He thought of Manan and his copilot, the plane running ahead of the maelstrom the shuttle would kick up. The woman at the shuttle hatchway, sealing them in, staying in the shattered world.

Sagot kissing him good-bye.

Tangan accepting an old student's betrayal of him and giving kindness to one more incoming boy.

Tears filled his eyes and he wiped at them and found Duun looking at him. "I'm sorry, Duun. I don't know why I do that."

"Don't you know by now I can't?" Duun asked him.

Thorn stared at him with the streaks drying on his face.

"Duun," Weig said. And Duun went to see what Weig wanted.

"We're down to twenty hours," Weig said.

There was suit drill. "If we get hit, at least there's some chance." Duun said, and opened that long locker which hugged one side of the bridge, where spacesuits nestled one behind the other like embryos in a womb. Duun pulled one out and shoved it at him, fastenings all undone. "Try it."

Thorn tucked up and got his feet inserted, struggling with the rest. Duun showed him once how to do the fastenings, then made him do it over and over again until his hands hurt. Duun showed him how the backpacks fit against the rear of the seats, and how an automation on the seat back would bring the helmet down and release it in his grip. "So you don't have to sit in that damn rig for hours," Duun said, and showed him the air connectors to the shuttle's own emergency supply, and how to disconnect and use the backpack. "Helmet first, then disconnect and you've got air enough in the suit to get to the pack and get it started." Duun made him work it all again and again until he was exhausted.

"Sleep awhile," Duun said then. "You'll need it."

It amazed Thorn that Duun could do that so readily, anchored to his couch down in their own compartment; and most of all that up above in the activity and bright light of the bridge, Ghindi and Spart tethered themselves in a corner by the closets and went to an honest and quick sleep, while Weig and Mogannen kept computing changes. Thorn tethered himself beside Duun and tried, succeeded at least in resting; but the plane got into his half-dreams; so did the flight; and Betan.

Then he undipped and sailed up to the bridge to discover Ghindi and Spart at work and the other two asleep. The computer ticked away. Thorn came gingerly closer off the overhead, hanging upside down over Ghindi's post and a little back so that he could see the screen.

Ghindi turned her chair around and looked up. She had that look people had when they came face-to-face with him; and then she banished it for one he could not well read. Exhaustion. Sadness. Was it love? It made no sense. He tumbled over and righted himself with a move of his hand that helped him turn. Perhaps the look made more sense right-side up.

"I'm sorry," Thorn said, meaning for bothering her in her work. He wanted to go and hide himself below before Duun found out.

She started at him, bewildered. They were both tired and a little crazed. They could not make sense to each other. "We'll get you there," she said.

(To Gatog?) Thorn was dismayed. He showed it like a child. Less seemed dishonest toward Ghindi. "Are you kosan?" he asked. He remembered the pilots.

"Tanun," Ghindi named her guild. Tanun, seafarers. It seemed appropriate to him.

"Ghindi," Spart said from his computers. "We've got another burn from Kandurn."

Ghindi turned as if Thorn had fallen suddenly from her world. "We're getting short, aren't we?"

"We're getting short. I think we'd better get Weig and Mogannen up."

Thorn began to turn, found purchase with his foot and dived for the downward hatch, sailed through into that dim light and tumbled to hit a wall and stop. "Duun. They're calling the crew up. It sounds like we're short of time."

Duun moved in his drifting and looked at him. "How short?"

"I don't know. I don't know how to tell, except there's some good bit less time than we had, forty minutes one time and now they've had another burn."

Duun touched bottom and shot up like a swimmer for the light. Thorn touched and followed.

Mogannen and Weig were getting into space-suits. There were three spare seats at one counter that could be powered back from it and locked. Duun did that with the two of them that were assigned to them when they were on the bridge. "When matters get to it," Duun said. "Suit up now."

All very calm. The routine of the bridge went on, except the suiting. Spart and Ghindi took their turn and got back into their seats. Duun drifted loose, suited, helmetless. The waiting became tedium. Thorn's heart once beating in panic could not sustain it. Panic ebbed down to long vexation. He wanted a drink of water. If he did that he might regret it. In such small indignities the worst moments proceeded. Thoughts of itches inaccessible. His own sweat inside the suit, gathered and undispersed. He hung in midair, watching the viewpoint for want of other distraction in this slow creeping of time and the beep of incoming messages droning methodically about the insane business of ghotanin who wished to kill them. Ships had begun to overcommit. Calm voices reported the facts and called it things like zero-return and no-turnaround.

(Strangely enough you don't get to see the stars much. You can see from the shuttle if you get up front… It's beautiful.)

A star brightened while he watched, brightened and brightened, and his heart slammed into rapid beats. "Duun! Weig!" It began to be a sphere.

"Get to that seat!" Duun yelled, and shot that way himself. Thorn dived, caught the back of one and hauled himself into it by the armrest, reached for the furled restraints and started fastening them. He looked up, ahead of them where the star had vanished. "Where is it?"

They had not turned, could not have turned: the shuttle had nothing left.

"Helmet," Duun said. Thorn pushed the button on the armrest, pulled up the connecting hose and communications plug and inserted them as the helmet came down. He locked it in place, selected the third communications channel. One was unified and two was crew-only, three was non-crew. Himself and Duun. He could hear his breathing, could hear Duun's, and it was steadier than his own.

(O gods, how do people get used to this?)

There was another star. All in silence. Only the breathing sounds, the faraway noises of the shuttle's operations that were everywhere ambient, but dimmed by the helmets.

He switched channels, heard the crew talking and the messages coming in. The sweat gathered on his body and his arm was going to sleep until he shifted it. ("Damn suits never fit," Duun had said.) It was better than the flightsuit. Looser.

(Another star. Are those missiles or are those ships? Are those ships dying?)

The crew-talk made no sense to him, full of codes. He cut third channel in. "Duun, what's happening?"

"They're within range of each other. And of us, with far less accuracy. The hatani have headed them off. Outmaneuvered them, if they don't let one get past. If they do they'll never get a second chance and we can't stop it."

The flashes went on. Thorn shut his eyes and opened them again, wishing he dared take the helmet off. The air was cold and stung his throat and nose and eyes.

"That's Ganngein," Weig's voice broke in on third channel. "They got them all. We've got debris on intersect. That's all." "How's Ganngein?" Duun asked. A pause. "Zero-return. So's Nonnent. Ganngein wishes us well and says they'll stay in contact. They're trying to determine their numbers now; they've been skewed."

"Can't the station send something out?" Thorn asked. "Couldn't earth?"

"Station's in ghota hands," Duun said. "Unfortunately. Hatani there were too few. But there's no ship at the station now-Hatani got that, thank the gods, or ghotanin'd have overhauled us from behind. It was the ghota outliers that hit us up ahead. Station's got one shuttle left; earth has a few. But a shuttle can't stop Ganngein. Not a question of slowing down that mass, which they couldn't in the first place. Just of catching them in a docking maneuver. They can't match those speeds even to get the crew off." (Sphitti's voice: "Here's an application now.

If you were drifting in mid-air-no friction and no gravity-)

("You can't.")

("Say that you could.")

(Angles and lines on a schoolroom screen-)

There was a long time that the crew and the doomed ships talked, business only.

"That's it," Thorn heard one say. "We're going to hit the well-looks like three days on. It could be worse. Like four."

"We hear you," Weig said. There was sorrow in his voice. Thorn listened and stared at the points of light. His arm and his leg were numb. No one moved to take off the suits. Debris on intersect. He remembered that. The other two ships talked awhile. There was no better news.

(This is more dreadful than the planes. This silence. This inevitability of ships that meet that fast, with distances that take days. For Betan it was quick. These men and women will have time to talk and eat and sleep and wake three times before they hit the ground. Before they skim through the well and get caught and dragged in.)

"… we think," Nonnent said, "we think we may have the angle to transit. We don't know yet."

"We'll miss your company then," Ganngein said.

A long pause. "Yes, we hear that." Quickly, from Nonnent.

"Don't be embarrassed about it. This isn't a trip we want to share."

Hatani. Or tanun guild.

There was long silence. Eventually there began to be a hole in space, small at first, that grew and ate the stars. "Something's out there, Duun. Isn't it?"

"Dust," Duun said. "Particles. We won't use the lights. We're conserving all the power we've got and we can't dodge it anyway."

(How long can it take us? What if a mostly whole ship were in our path?)

(Fool's question, Thorn.)

Wait and wait and wait. All the stars were gone. The ships talked now and again. They talked about the cloud.

Static began. Transmission broke up. A noise penetrated the helmet, a distant hammer blow. Another. The sounds accelerated to a battering. It stopped.

"We're still in it." Weig said. "This is going- uhh!"

The shock rang through the structure and up through the deck. Thorn clenched his gloved hands on the armrests and forgot the pain. Silence a time.

"Clipped the left wing," Mogannen said. "We've got a little spin now. Don't-"

Another shock. Shock after shock. Silence then. An occasional strike, none large.

(Pieces of the ghotanin. Or of one of our own. We're flying through dead ships. Dead. Bodies. Or bits of them. Blood out there would freeze like snow.)

The stars came back. "Hey!" Weig shouted. We're through!"

(For me. For me and Duun, the dead back on earth. Ganngein and Nonnent. Ghota and hatani ships.)

"There's a ship out there," Spart said, and Thorn's heart stopped. "It's Deva. It's going to serve as pickup. It's about nine hours down."

"Thank the gods," Mogannen said.

"We go out to it," Duun explained. "They can't stop our spin to pick us up. We're easier to manage in suits."

Deva shone a light for them. The shuttle turned slowly, wedge-shaped shadow against the sun. Debris trailed from one wing edge, and from the tail. A touch came at his leg and Duun snagged him, maneuvered and got him by the hand. Near them three became a chain. One of them was still loose but in no danger. Deva's beacon brightened among the stars, a white and blinding sun.

Deva was not so fine inside as the shuttle- was all bare metal and plastics; but it had shonunin in it. It had welcome.

"Duun-hatani," the captain said.

"You're a good sight, Ivogi-tanun," said Duun.

Thorn held his helmet in his hands. He saw the others' looks, the crew who stood gazing at him. As they might look at some strange fish they had hauled up in their nets.

"This is Haras," Duun said. "Hatani guild."

"We heard," Ivogi-tanun said.