Cuckoo’s Egg by C.J. Cherryh

There was, pushed up against the plane. The canopy was up. Duun tossed the baggage to a guard, scrambled up the ladder and Thorn hit the treads behind him, hampered by the suit that restrained his limbs, panting when he reached the wing surface and crawled over the side close on Duun’s tail. There was a pilot and co-pilot and two more seats in back in a cockpit that hardly looked big enough for the seats up front: Duun trod on one seat and dropped into place in the second, grabbed complicated belts and fastened them, and Thorn slid into the one beside him-belts like the simulator. Plug-ins for the mask hoses between their legs: Duun showed him and rammed it home. “Communications switch,” Duun’s voice came over the speaker over his ear, and Duun turned a face unrecognizable in an insect-like mask to show him the three way sliding switch and button on the side. The canopy was sliding forward with a whine of hydraulics. The pilot turned his head and made some signal with an uplifted hand to Duun and Duun made one back. The pilot turned around but the co-pilot was handling things: the fans picked up and the plane began to roll out of the building, faster and faster under open, overcast sky, the tires bumping on uneven pavings, the Dsonan skyline to their left unreal as a city window-view.

Faster still. They swung out onto a long expanse of concrete and the engine whine increased. The force slammed them back as the plane made its run and thundered out over the river, pulled a sharp bank and showed river for a long dizzy moment until the pilot decided to fly rightwise up again.

“Gods,” Thorn said. His heart raced as clouds shredded past and still the climb kept up. (Why this fast? Why this sudden? What’s Duun up to?) “How fast can this plane go?”

“Mach two plus if it has to. It’s a courier plane-armed, in case you should wonder. And in case you should wonder again, yes, there’s a reason. It’s problems on the ground I’m worried about. I don’t expect trouble, but there’s that remote chance. There’s a remote chance of trouble even up here. There’s a ghota unit over in Hoguni province that’s got one of these and I’m worried where its orders come from.”

“Ghota? Aren’t they guards?”

“Hired. Warrior guild. One of two. The kosan and the ghota. Our friends up front are kosanin. They take one service for life. Ghotanin rent themselves out; you don’t trust them until you know how long their contract’s for and whether you’re the only one paying them. Like one-year wives. They’re always hunting for their next advantage. Kosanin won’t serve with them. That’s why they’re in separate units.”

“Duun-hatani, I might not know enough!”

“Whatever you do don’t lie and don’t flinch. No one ever knows enough. That’s all I can tell you now. Two rules. A third. Remember Sheon.

Remember the knife on your pillow. Remember the pebble-game. But always be polite.”

They came screaming in at a runway that jutted out into the sea, braked in a straining effort, and turned sharper than seemed likely toward another collection of buildings and aircraft of all sizes, most small.

And none sleek as their own. “Well,” Duun said, “no one’s beat us here except the locals and the happen-bys.”

Thorn looked, searching. There were insignia on most of the craft. Some were striped and most were white. A copter waited, rotors turning. “Is that ours?”

“We’ll hope it is.” Duun’s hand gripped his, painfully hard. “Hear me. From here on there will be no mistakes, Haras-hatani.”

A massive building spread across the land beyond the airport. They had it in sight as they came in, a flat sprawl unlike other buildings Thorn knew. Gray stone. Hatani gray. The guild-hall.

Avenen.

The plane stopped. Engine-sound dwindled. A vehicle whisked up and towed a ladder into place. The canopy slid back, admitting chill wind.

Duun pitched their baggage out into an attendant’s hands, climbed out and Thorn followed in haste. (Think, think, watch these attendants, watch everything.)

(Is it all some test? Did Duun lie? Are there really ghotanin after us and would they come here?)

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *