Cuckoo’s Egg
C.J. Cherryh
Cuckoo’s Egg
C.J. Cherryh
Contents
· Chapter I
· Chapter II
· Chapter III
· Chapter IV
· Chapter V
· Chapter VI
· Chapter VII
· Chapter VIII
· Chapter IX
· Chapter X
· Chapter XI
· Chapter XII
· Chapter XIII
· Chapter XIV
· Chapter XV
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DAW Titles by CJ. CHERRYH
THE ALLIANCE-UNION UNIVERSE
The Company Wars
DOWNBELOW STATION
The Era of Rapprochement
SERPENT’S REACH
FORTY THOUSAND IN GEHENNA
MERCHANTER’S LUCK
The Chanur Novels
THE PRIDE OF CHANUR
CHANUR’S VENTURE
THE KIF STRIKE BACK
CHANUR’S HOMECOMING
CHANUR’S LEGACY
The Mri Wars
THE FADED SUN: KESRITH
THE FADED SUN: SHON’JIR
THE FADED SUN: KUTATH
Merovingen Nights (Mri Wars period)
ANGEL WITH THE SWORD
The Age of Exploration
CUCKOO’S EGG
VOYAGER IN NIGHT
PORT ETERNITY
The Hanan Rebellion
BROTHERS OF EARTH
HUNTER OF WORLDS
The Morgaine Cycle
GATE OF IVREL (#1)
WELL OF SHIUAN (#2)
FIRES OF AZEROTH (#3)
EXILE’S GATE (#4)
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CUCKOO’S EGG
C.J. CHERRYH
DAW BOOKS, INC.
DONALD A. WOLLHEIM. FOUNDER
Hudson Street. New York. NY
ELIZABETH R. WOLLHEJM
SHEILA E. GILBERT
PUBLISHERS
Copyright © 1985 by C.J. Cherryh All Rights Reserved.
Cover art by Michael Whelan.
For color prints of Michael Whelan paintings, please contact: Glass Onion Graphics, P.O. Box 88 Brookfield, CT
DAW Book Collectors No. 646.
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
First DAW Printing, October 1985
DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES -MARCA REGISTRADA HECHO EN U.S.A.
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
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I
He sat in a room, the sand of which was synthetic and shining with opal tints, fine and light beneath his bare feet. The windows held no city view, but a continuously rotating panorama of the Khogghut plain: a lie. Traffic noise came through. His name was Duun. It was Dana Duun Shtoni no Lughn. But Duun was enough for day-today. They called him other things. Sey:general. Mingi: lord. Or something very like. Hatani: that was another thing. But Duun was enough now. There was only one. Shonunin the world over knew that, and knew him; and when the door chimed and they came to bring the alien to him, those who carried it would not look him in the eyes, not alone for the scars that a shonun could see, the pale smooth marks traced through the fur of half his face like the limbs of a lightning-blasted tree, the marks that twisted his right ear and left his mouth quirked in permanent irony and one eye staring out of ruin.
He was Duun, of Shanoen. He reached out hands one of which was marred, like his face, and took the closed carrier that they gave him, marking how their ears slanted back and how they turned their heads from his for horror- not of what they saw: they were meds, and had seen deformity. It was the force in him: like a great wind, like a great heat in their faces.
But his hands were gentle when he took the carrier from them.
They went away, appalled and forgetting courtesies.
He waved the door shut and set the carrier on the table-rise, opened it and gathered the small bundled thing from it.
Shonunin were naked when they were born, but downed in silver that quickly went to dapples and last of all to gray body coat and black on limbs and ears and crest. Duun held the creature on its discarded wrapping, on his knees; and its downless skin was naked and pink as something lately skinned, except for a thatch of nondescript hair atop its skull. It waved soft limbs in helpless twitches. Its eyes were shut, in a face flat and not unlike a shonun; between its legs an outsized organ of curious form and various (they said) function. Its mouth worked restlessly, distorting the small face. And Duun touched it with the sensitive pads of his fingers, with the four fingers of his left hand and the two of his maimed right, exploring the hot, smooth feel of the bandage-patched belly, the chest, the limbs. With the merest tip of a claw he drew down its soft lip to inspect its mouth-nothing but toothless gums, for it was mammalian. With the claw he lifted the lid of a sleeping eye; he saw it white and milky, centered with blue, restless in natural shiftings. He touched the convolutions of the stiff, small ears; explored the visible organ and discovered reaction: so it was sensitive. That was of interest. He examined the fat, clawless feet, all one pad as far as the toes. Unfurled a five-fingered hand with the careful touch of a single clawed finger, and the tiny fist clenched again, stubbornly. It waved its limbs. Fluid shot from the organ and fouled Duun’s clothes.