“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.
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 baby-spots 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.”
“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.