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.He sobbed.He shook with tears.When he had gotten control again he wiped his face and nose with wet hands and looked up because he had to."You're a fine young man," Sagot said."I like you.""You're lying, you're lying, Duun put you up to this—""Doubtless he did.But you're still a fine young man.I can see that in you.I can see more than you think I see, I've brought up too many boys not to have had a young man wail and pour his troubles into my lap now and again, and young women too— I confess to you, even a few who weren't so young, all wailing and shaking with the troubles that were great to them then.Lamentations like that, they're like great storms.They're good for you.They come sweeping through the woods and break a few limbs.But 124Cuckoo's Eggthey herald change.They bring the turn of seasons.They make things new.There, that's good.Your eyes are bright— very handsome eyes, if different.They're blue, aren't they, when they're not running.""Let me alone!""It's amazing how much young men are alike; first the wails, then the shouting.I know it hurts.I've buried two husbands.I know something about pain.""Are you hatani?"She smiled."Gods, no.But I know Duun.You know a hatani can do a lot of things, but when it comes to others, well— reason can't solve everything.'Take care of him,' he said, 'Sagot, talk to him, teach him—''Now why should I do that?' I said.'I've got my work, I've got things to do, I've got fourteen great-great-grandchildren, I don't need another boy—'But then I got to thinking, it's been so very long.They're all grown.I'm a hundred fifty-nine, young lad, and I've traveled all over the world, I've trekked down rivers, I've been to the two poles, I've written books— some of the books you study, by the by; I've had nine husbands, lovers I've forgotten, a few I haven't, and I've patched young knees, set bones, birthed babies and seen enough in this world not to be shocked at anything, that's the truth.""Maybe that's why Duun wanted you with me." Bitterly.But somewhere in the chatter the pain in his chest stopped, and Sagot made it stop, and he had no more wish to run away.He sat there with his feet dangling, his five fingered hands in his lap and the remnant of tears drying on his naked face.(But Betan's furred skin was silk and tasted like she smelled—)"I don't think you think enough of yourself," Sagot said."It's very well to be hatani, but you're not all that thing, you know, the way you're not just that pair of eyes or that pair of hands or that sex between your legs—"(The heat flew to his face.) "Oh, well, boy, I know, I know, you've only now discovered it and for a while it's the most of you, but that passes, it gets less important, the more of you there gets to be, the more abilities, the more thoughts, everything changes and shifts until the world's so wide and 125Cuckoo's Eggthe things you are get so complex there's no containing them.You're not just Thorn who was born in a lab, right down this hall; you're Thorn the hatani, Thorn my student, Thorn who'll go places and do things and be things Thorn hasn't even thought of, and I haven't, and you'll find answers to your questions and questions yet to answer, which makes life, after all.So wail and take on if you have to, and if you want to come here every day and pour it all in my lap, well, that's doing some good, if you need to.But when you're done with that and you're quite ready I've got a lot of things I want to give you— it is giving, you know, a kind of gift.When you've lived as many years as I have you want to leave something in the world, and my teaching's that thing; it's what I do."Another sob overtook him, unexpected, like a sudden breath.But it hurt less.Thorn wiped his face with a swipe of his hand, quick, distasteful.He slid back on the riser and tucked his feet up.There was no choice.Sagot left him none."I'm listening, Sagot," (O gods, what has she got to teach?) Sagot teemed with secrets, frightening as Duun.As implacable.As difficult to get around."Are you sure you're not hatani?"Sagot laughed and even that was gentle, a fragility about her voice."I take that for a compliment.What do you like best, what study?""Physics.""Physics, then.Show me what you know.I'll find out where to start."* * *"If an object were traveling at the speed of light, and a man traveled on it to the nearest star— what is that star?" "Goth.""And distant—?""5 light-years."126Cuckoo's Egg"5.1.Be precise for this.And this man was forty; and he left a sister on earth when he went…."* * *"There's a kind of parasite infests the brains of cattle on the Sgoht river.I remember once seeing one—" "You were there?""Child, I lived nine months on the Sgoht, and I had a village magistrate for a lover.He had a ring threaded so, right through the side of his lip, and it looked odd, I'll tell you, when he smiled.He had been married six times and he had a great notch in his nose where one of his wives took a stick to him, but she was a crazy woman and her daughter was crazier.She took it into her head to sell her mother's land, that's right, without owning it— she was going to sell her expectation of inheriting it to this man she was living with so she could get the money to go downriver and get a husband who owned a grocery, don't ask me why, but I think food was quite all she could think of— she must have weighed two hundred, all of it [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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