Cuckoo’s Egg by C.J. Cherryh

Duun recovered the bundle of their belongings and headed for the copter. Thorn ran at his heels, mask flapping and the suit impairing his movements. (Watch these people. Watch all of them, watch their hands.)

Up the short couple of steps into the copter, the pilot in his place. (Duun’s nose is better. He’d smell fear if that man meant trouble, even through all this oil stink.) Thorn fell into his seat beside Duun and belted in as the copter lifted, turned, heaved itself off in its tilted fashion and ground flew along in surreal intimacy after the courier-plane’s sun-dazzled altitude. There was only the illusion of speed. It took long minutes to come gliding over the gray walls, over buildings that looked like a dozen architects had quarreled and each changed the plan.

A landing circle came up on a rooftop. There were men standing near it, gray-cloaked, looking up at them as the copter settled.

“They’re all right,” Duun said. “One thing you can believe: no ghota would wear that color here.” The rotors slowed and Duun handed Thorn the baggage and climbed out.

Thorn dropped off the step and followed Duun out from under the blades. The copter roared off again, pelting them with dust, fluttering the gray cloaks.

Duun took his helmet off and walked with it under his arm. Thorn managed the bundle enough to get his off and the wind caught his hair, cold and unforgiving. He looked at the five standing there to meet them, handsome men, one he thought was a woman, all in their gray cloaks and black kilts; and he and Duun were disheveled and dangling masks and hoses like two animate machines lately disconnected. They gazed at Duun and at him-for the first time, at him who had no like, at blowing hair and his smooth face in all its strangeness, and he could not read what they thought. That before anything else convinced him where he was. No one but Duun could go so unreadable to him until now.

But these could. These great sprawling buildings were full of those who could, every one.

“He’s more imposing than the pictures would indicate,” Tangan said, a wisp of a man, so old his cheeks were gaunt and even his crest had whitened. The hands clasped in his lap were gaunt and crossed with knife scars, gotten in a youth so long ago it stretched into myth in the Guild, among novices. Duun sat on the white sand which novices had raked into artistic patterns among the five huge rocks which adorned this ancient room. The lights here were electric but that was the only change from the fifth century. Generations of hatani hands had worn these great boulders dark, smoothing them as surely as the river had from which they were taken. Generations of irreverent novices had sat on them and perched there to do their raking, springing from one to the other and (sometimes, novices being the same in every generation) making it a game, leaping and jumping and thrusting at one another with rake handles.

Tangan had caught a certain rebel and oft-warned novice in that game, among others. And Duun had rued it. Four ten-days of cleaning the sand by hand. It shocked him, how much this man had aged.

“I’ve gotten used to his looks,” Duun said.

“Have you?”

Duun met Tangan’s guarded stare. “I’ve had near twenty years.”

“Twenty years of power beyond any precedent.”

“Sixteen hiding on a mountain, in a woods. Five performing unmentionable tasks which teach any man humility. So does dealing with Dsonan.”

“Ah. How is the capital?”

“Carrying news to you is like bringing water to the well.”

“How is the capital?”

“There are more ways to cheat on an agreement than they teach here, Tangan-hatani.”

“Paradoxically prosperous times. Money. Is that what you see?”

“A lot of new money-paid out in the least educated provinces, to elect fools who’ll take orders, who can only see ways to entrench themselves and make sure contracts go to the right companies. Some of these fools are evident, and shrewd country-folk keep voting them in because the powers in their districts might buy one ten times worse and far more subtle. I tell you we should send one of the novices walking in Elsnuunan and Yoth. Some herder might be passionate enough on some given day to pose us a question. But some of these fools have passed for astute councillors, and protect themselves so well they make and break young politicians on their own.”

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