McKie spoke to Jedrik's back as they went down the stairs.
"That couple - they're addicted to something."
Surprisingly, Jedrik stopped, looked back up at him.
"How else do you think I hold such a pair? The substance is called dis. It's very rare. It comes from the far mountains, far beyond the . . . far beyond. The Rim sends parties of children as bearers to obtain dis for me. In a party of fifty, thirty can expect to die on such a trek. Do you get the measure of it, McKie?"
Once more, they headed down the stairs.
McKie, realizing she'd taken the time to teach him another lesson about Dosadi, could only follow, stunned, while she led him into a room where technicians bleached the sun-darkened areas of his skin.
When they emerged, he no longer carried the stigma of Pylash Gate.
***
When the means of great violence are widespread, nothing is more dangerous to the powerful than that they create outrage and injustice, for outrage and injustice will certainly ignite retaliation in kind.
- BuSab Manual
''It is no longer classifiable as rioting," the aide said. He was a short Gowachin with pinched features, and he looked across the room to where Broey sat facing a dead communicator. There was a map on the wall behind the aide, its colors made brilliant by harsh morning light coming in the east windows. Below the map, a computer terminal jutted from the wall. Occasionally it clicked.
Gar came into the room from the hall, peered around as though looking for someone, left.
Broey noted the intrusion, glanced at the map.
"Still no sign of where she's gone to ground?"
"Nothing certain."
"The one who paraded McKie through the streets . . ."
"Clearly an expendable underling."
"Where did they go?"
The aide indicated a place on the map, a group of buildings in the Warrens to the northwest.
Broey stared at the blank face of his communications screen. He'd been tricked again. He knew it. That damnable Human female! Violence in the city teetered on the edge of full-scale war: Gowachin against Human. And still nothing, not even a hint at the location of Gar's Rim stores, the blasphemous factories. It was an unstable condition which could not continue much longer.
His communications screen came alive with a report: violent fighting near Gate Twenty-One. Broey glanced at the map. That made it more than one hundred clearly defined battles between the species along an unresolved perimeter. The report spoke of new weapons and unsuccessful attempts to capture specimens.
Gate Twenty-One?
That wasn't far from the place where McKie had been paraded through . . .
Several things slipped into a new relationship in Broey's mind. He looked at his aide, who stood waiting obediently at the map.
"Where's Gar?"
Aides were summoned, sent running. Gar was not to be found.
"Tria?"
She, too, was unavailable.
Gar's fanatics remained neutral, but more of Jedrik's pattern was emerging. Everything pointed to an exquisite understanding of the weakness implicit in the behavior of Gar and Tria.
And I thought I was the only one who saw that!
Broey hesitated.
Why would the God not speak to him other than to say "I am watched."
Broey felt tricked and betrayed in his innermost being. This had a cleansing effect on his reason. He could only depend on himself. And he began to sense a larger pattern in Jedrik's behavior. Was it possible that Jedrik shared his goals? The possibility excited him.
He looked at the aides who'd come running with the negative information about Gar and Tria, began to snap orders.
"Get our people out of all those Warrens, except that corridor to the northeast. Reinforce that area. Everyone else fall back to the secondary walls. Let no Humans inside that perimeter. Block all gates. Get moving!"
This last was shouted as his aides hesitated.
Perhaps it already was too late. He realized now that he'd allowed Jedrik to bait and distract him. It was clear that she'd created in her mind an almost perfect simulation model of Broey. And she'd done it from a Liaitor position! Incredible. He could almost feel sorry for Gar and Tria. They were like puppets dancing to Jedrik's strings.
I was no better.
It came over him that Jedrik's simulation probably encompassed this very moment of realization. Admiration for her permeated him.
Superb!
Quietly, he issued orders for the sequestering of Gowachin females within the inner Graluz bastions which he'd had the foresight to prepare. His people would thank him for that.
Those who survived the next few hours.
***
The attack by those who want to die - this is the attack against which you cannot prepare a perfect defense.
- Human aphorism
By the third morning, McKie felt that he might have lived all of his life on Dosadi. The place demanded every element of attention he could muster.
He stood alone in Jedrik's room, staring absently at the unmade bed. She expected him to put the place in order before her return. He knew that. She'd told him to wait here and had gone away on urgent business. He could only obey.
Concerns other than an unmade bed distracted him, though. He felt now that he understood the roots of Aritch's fears. The Gowachin of Tandaloor might very well destroy this place, even if they knew that by doing so they blasted open that bloody region where every sentient hid his most secret fears. He could see this clearly now. How the Running Phylum expected him to avoid that monstrous decision was a more elusive matter.
There were secrets here.
McKie sensed Dosadi like a malignant organism beneath his feet, jealously keeping those secrets from him. This place was the enemy of the ConSentiency, but he found himself emotionally siding with Dosadi. It was betrayal of BuSab, of his Legum oath, everything. But he could not prevent that feeling or recognition of it. In the course of only a few generations, Dosadi had become a particular thing. Monstrous? Only if you held to your own precious myths. Dosadi might be the greatest cleansing force the ConSentiency had ever experienced.
The whole prospect of the ConSentiency had begun to sicken him. And Aritch's Gowachin. Gowachin Law? Stuff Gowachin Law!
It was quiet in Jedrik's room. Painfully quiet.
He knew that out on the streets of Chu there was violent warfare between Gowachin and Human. Wounded had been rushed through the training courtyard while he was there with Jedrik. Afterward, she'd taken him to her command post, a room across the hall and above Pcharky's cage. He'd stood nearby, watched her performance as though she were a star on an entertainment circuit and he a member of the audience. It was fascinating. Broey will do this. Broey will give that order. And each time, the reports revealed how precisely she had anticipated her opponent.
Occasionally, she mentioned Gar or Tria. He was able to detect the subtle difference in her treatment of that pair.
On their second night together, Jedrik had aroused his sexual appetites softly, deftly. She had treated him to a murmurous compliance, and afterward had leaned over him on an elbow to smile coldly.
"You see, McKie: I can play your game."
Shockingly, this had opened an area of awareness within him which he'd not even suspected. It was as though she'd held up his entire previous life to devastating observation.
And he was the observer!
Other beings formed lasting relationships and operated from a secure emotional base. But he was a product of BuSab, the Gowachin . . . and much that had gone before. It had become increasingly obvious to him why the Gowachin had chosen him to groom for this particular role.
I was damaged and they could rebuild me the way they wanted!
Well, the Gowachin could still be surprised by what they produced. Dosadi was evidence of that. They might not even suspect what they'd actually produced in McKie.
He was bitter with a bitterness he knew must've been fermenting in
him for years. The loneliness of his own life with its central dedication to BuSab had been brought to a head by the loneliness of this imprisoned planet. An incredible jumble of emotions had sorted themselves out, and he felt new purpose burning within him.
Power!
Ahhhh . . . that was how it felt to be Dosadi!
He'd turned away from Jedrik's cold smile, pulled the blankets around his shoulder.
Thank you, loving teacher.
Such thoughts roamed through his mind as he stood alone in the room the following day and began to make the bed. After her revelation, Jedrik had resumed her interest in his memories, napping only to awaken him with more questions.
In spite of his sour outlook, he still felt it his duty to examine her behavior in every possible light his imagination could produce. Nothing about Dosadi was too absurd. He had to build a better picture of this society and its driving forces.
Before returning to Jedrik's room, he'd made another tour of the training courtyard with her. There'd been more new weapons adapted from his kit, and he'd realized the courtyard was merely Jedrik's testing ground, that there must be many more training areas for her followers.
McKie had not yet revealed to her that Aritch's people might terminate Dosadi's people with violence. Shed been centering on this at dawn. Even while they shared the tiny toilet cubicle off her room she'd pressed for answers.
For a time, McKie had diverted her with questions about Pcharky. What were the powers in that cage? At one point, he'd startled her.
"Pcharky knows something valuable he hopes to trade for his freedom."
"How'd you know?"
"It's obvious. I'll tell you something else: he came here of his own free will . . . for whatever purpose."
"You learn quickly, McKie."
She was laughing at him and he glared at her.
"All right! I don't know that purpose, but it may be that you only think you know it."
For the briefest flicker, something dangerous glared from her eyes, then:
"Your jumpdoors have brought us many fools, but Pcharky is one of the biggest fools. I know why he came. There've been many like him. Now . . . there is only one. Broey, for all of his power, cannot search out his own Pcharky. And Keila Jedrik is the one who frustrates him."
Too late, she realized that McKie had goaded her into this performance. How had he done that? He'd almost found out too much too soon. It was dangerous to underestimate this naive intruder from beyond the God Wall.
Once more, she'd begun probing for things he had not yet revealed. Time had protected him. Aides had come urging an early inspection of the new weapons. They were needed.
Afterward, they'd gone to the command post and then to breakfast in a Warren dining room. All through breakfast, he'd plied her with questions about the fighting. How extensive was it? Could he see some of the prisoners? Were they using the weapons built from the patterns in his kit? Were they winning?
Sometimes she merely ignored his questions. Most of her answers were short, distracted. Yes. No. No. Yes. McKie realized she was answering in monosyllables to fend him off. He was a distraction. Something important had been communicated to her and he'd missed it. Although this angered him, he tried to mask the emotion, striving to penetrate her wall of concern. Oddly, she responded when he changed his line of questioning to the parents of the three children and the conversation there.
"You started to designate a particular place: 'Beyond the . . .' Beyond what?"
"It's something Gar, thinks I don't know. He thinks only his death fanatics have that kind of rapport with the Rim."
He stared at her, caught by a sudden thought. By now, he knew much about Gar and Tria. She answered his questions about them with candor, often using him openly to clarify her own thoughts. But - death fanatics?
"Are these fanatics homosexual?"
She pounced.
"How'd you know?"
"A guess."
"What difference would it make?"
"Are they?"
"Yes."
McKie shuddered.
She was peremptory.
"Explain!"
"When Humans for any reason go terminal where survival of their species is concerned, it's relatively easy to push them the short step further into wanting to die."
"You speak from historical evidence?"
"Yes."
"Example."
"With rare exceptions, primitive Humans of the tribal eras reserved their homosexuals as the ultimate shock troops of desperation. They were the troops of last resort, sent into battle as berserkers who expected, who wanted, to die."
She had to have the term berserkers explained, then showed by her manner that she believed him. She considered this, then:
"What does your ConSentiency do about this susceptibility?"
"We take sophisticated care to guide all natural sexual variants into constructive, survival activities. We protect them from the kinds of pressures which might tip them over into behavior destructive of the species."
Only later had McKie realized she had not answered his question: beyond what? She'd rushed him off to a conference room where more than twenty Humans were assembled, including the two parents who'd made the chart about Tria and Gar. McKie realized he didn't even know their names.
It put him at a disadvantage not knowing as many of these people by sight and name as he should. They, of course, had ready memories of everyone important around them and, when they used a name, often did it with such blurred movement into new subjects that he was seldom sure who had been named. He saw the key to it, though. Their memories were anchored in explicit references to relative abilities of those around them, relative dangers. And it wasn't so much that they concealed their emotions as that they managed their emotions. Nowhere in their memories could there be any emotive clouding such as thoughts of love or friendship. Such things weakened you. Everything operated on the strict basis of quid pro quo, and you'd better have the cash ready - whatever that cash might be. McKie, pressed all around by questions from the people in the conference room, knew he had only one real asset: he was a key they might use to open the God Wall. Very important asset, but unfortunately owned by an idiot.
Now, they wanted his information about death fanatics. They milked him dry, then sent him away like a child who has performed for his elders but is sent to his room when important matters are brought up for discussion.
***
The more control, the more that requires control. This is the road to chaos.
- PanSpechi aphorism
By the fourth morning of the battle for Chu, Tria was in a vile humor. Her forces had established lines holding about one-eighth of the total Warren territory, mostly low buildings, except along Broey's corridor to the Rim. She did not like the idea that Jedrik's people held an unobstructed view down onto most of the death fanatics' territory. And most of those leaders who'd thrown in their lot with Tria were beginning to have second thoughts, especially since they'd come to realize that this enclave had insufficient food production facilities to maintain itself. The population density she'd been forced to accept was frightening: almost triple the Warren norm.
Thus far, neither Broey nor Jedrik had moved in force against her. Tria had finally been brought to the inescapable conclusion that she and Gar were precisely where Jedrik wanted them. They'd been cut out of Broey's control as neatly and cleanly as though by a knife. There was no going back. Broey would never accept Human help under present circumstance. That, too, spoke of the exquisite care with which Jedrik had executed her plan.
Tria had moved her command post during the night to a high building which faced the canyon walls to the north. Only the river, with a single gate under it, separated her from the Rim. She'd slept badly, her mind full of worries. Chief among her worries was the fact that none of the contact parties she'd sent out to the Rim had returned. There'd been no fires on the Rim ledges during the night. No word from any of her people out there.
Why?
Once more, she contemplated her position, seeking some advantage, any advantage. One of her lines was anchored on Broey's corridor to the Rim, one line on the river wall with its single gate, and the rest of her perimeter meandered through a series of dangerous salients from the fifth wall to the river.
She could hear sounds of battle along the far side of Broey's corridor. Jedrik's people used weapons which made a great deal of noise. Occasionally, an explosive projectile landed in Tria's enclave. These were rare, but she'd taken casualties and the effect on morale was destructive. That was a major problem with fanatics: they demanded to be used, to be wasted.
Tria stared down at the river, aware of the bodies drifting on its poison currents - both Human and Gowachin bodies, but more Gowachin than Human. Presently, she turned away from the scene, padded into the next room, and roused Gar.
"We must contact Jedrik," she said.
He rubbed sleep from his eyes.
"No! We must wait until we make contact with our people on the Rim. Then we can . . ."
"Faaaaa!"
She'd seldom showed that much disgust with him.
"We're not going to make contact with our people on the Rim. Jedrik and Broey have seen to that. It wouldn't surprise me if they were cooperating to isolate us."
"But we've . . ."
"Shut up, Father!" She held up her hands, stared at them. "I was never really good enough to be one of Broey's chief advisors. I always suspected that. I always pressed too hard. Last night, I reviewed as many of my decisions as I could. Jedrik deliberately made me look good. She did it oh so beautifully!"
"But our forces on the Rim . . ."
"May not be ours! They may be Jedrik's."
"Even the Gowachin?"
"Even the Gowachin."
Gar could hear a ringing in his ears. Contact Jedrik? Throw away all of their power?
"I'm good enough to recognize the weakness of a force such as ours," Tria said. "We can be goaded into spending ourselves uselessly. Even Broey didn't see that, but Jedrik obviously did. Look at the salients along her perimeter!"
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