The Dosadi Experiment c-2

by Frank Herbert

  "What have salients . . ."

  "They can be pinched off and obliterated! Even you must see that."

  "Then pull back and . . ."

  "Reduce our territory?" She stared at him, aghast. "If I even intimate I'm going to do that, our auxiliaries will desert wholesale. Right now they're . . ."

  "Then attack!"

  "To gain what?"

  Gar nodded. Jedrik would fall back across mined areas, blast the fanatics out of existence. She held enough territory that she could afford such destruction. Clearly, she'd planned on it.

  "Then we must pinch off Broey's corridor."

  "That's what Jedrik wants us to do. It's the only negotiable counter we have left. That's why we must contact Jedrik."

  Gar shook his head in despair.

  Tria was not finished, though.

  "Jedrik might restore us to a share of power in the Rim city if we bargain for it now. Broey would never do that. Do you understand now the mistake you made with Broey?"

  "But Broey was going to . . ."

  "You failed to follow my orders, Father. You must see now why I always tried to keep you from making independent decisions."

  Gar fell into abashed silence. This was his daughter, but he could sense his peril.

  Tria spoke.

  "I will issue orders presently to all of our commanders. They will be told to hold at all costs. They will be told that you and I will try to contact Jedrik. They will be told why."

  "But how can . . ."

  "We will permit ourselves to be captured."

  ***

  QUESTION: Who governs the governors?

  ANSWER: Entropy.

  - Gowachin riddle

  Many things conspired to frustrate McKie. Few people other than Jedrik answered his questions. Most responded as though to a cretin. Jedrik treated him as though he were a child of unknown potential. At times, he knew he amused her. Other times, she punished him with an angry glance, by ignoring him, or just by going away - or worse, sending him away.

  It was now late afternoon of the fifth day in the battle for Chu, and Broey's forces still held out in the heart of the city with their slim corridor to the Rim. He knew this from reports he'd overheard. He stood in a small room off Jedrik's command post, a room containing four cots where, apparently she and/or her commanders snatched occasional rest. One tall, narrow window looked out to the south Rim. McKie found it difficult to realize that he'd come across that Rim just six days previously.

  Clouds had begun to gather over the Rim's terraced escarpments, a sure sign of a dramatic change in the weather. He knew that much, at least, from his Tandaloor briefings. Dosadi had no such thing as weather control. Awareness of this left him feeling oddly vulnerable. Nature could be so damnably capricious and dangerous when you had no grip on her vagaries.

  McKie blinked, held his breath for a moment.

  Vagaries of nature.

  The vagaries of sentient nature had moved the Gowachin to set up this experiment. Did they really hope to control that vast, seething conglomerate of motives? Or had they some other reason for Dosadi, a reason which he had not yet penetrated? Was this, after all, a test of Caleban mysteries? He thought not.

  He knew the way Aritch and aides said they'd set up this experiment. Observations here bore out their explanations. None of that data was consistent with an attempt to understand the Calebans. Only that brief encounter with Pcharky, a thing which Jedrik no longer was willing to discuss.

  No matter how he tried, McKie couldn't evade the feeling that something essential lay hidden in the way this planet had been set upon its experimental course; something the Gowachin hadn't revealed, something they perhaps didn't even understand themselves. What'd they done at the beginning? They had this place, Dosadi, the subjects, the Primary . . . yes, the Primary. The inherent inequality of individuals dominated Gowachin minds. And there was that damnable DemoPol. How had they mandated it? Better yet: how did they maintain that mandate?

  Aritch's people had hoped to expose the inner workings of sentient social systems. So they said. But McKie was beginning to look at that explanation with Dosadi eyes, with Dosadi skepticism. What had Fannie Mae meant about not being able to leave here in his own body/node? How could he be Jedrik's key to the God Wall? McKie knew he needed more information than he could hope to get from Jedrik. Did Broey have this information? McKie wondered if he might in the end have to climb the heights to the Council Hills for his answers. Was that even possible now?

  When he'd asked for it, Jedrik had given him almost the run of this building, warning:

  "Don't interfere."

  Interfere with what?

  When he'd asked, she'd just stared at him.

  She had, however, taken him around to familiarize everyone with his status. He was never quite sure what that status might be, except that it was somewhere between guest and prisoner.

  Jedrik had required minimal conversation with her people. Often, she'd used only hand waves to convey the necessary signals of passage. The whole traverse was a lesson for McKie, beginning with the doorguards.

  "McKie." Pointing at him.

  The guards nodded.

  Jedrik had other concerns.

  "Team Nine?"

  "Back at noon."

  "Send word."

  Everyone subjected McKie to a hard scrutiny which he felt certain would let them identify him with minimal interruption.

  There were two elevators: one an express from a heavily guarded street entrance on the side of the building, the other starting above the fourth level at the ceiling of Pcharky's cage. They took this one, went up, pausing at each floor for guards to see him.

  When they returned to the cage room, McKie saw that a desk had been installed just inside the street door. The father of those three wild children sat there watching Pcharky, making occasional notations in a notebook. McKie had a name for him now, Ardir.

  Jedrik paused at the desk. .

  "McKie can come and go with the usual precautions."

  McKie, addressing himself finally to Jedrik, had said:

  "Thanks for taking this time with me."

  "No need to be sarcastic, McKie."

  He had not intended sarcasm and reminded himself once more that the usual amenities of the ConSentiency suffered a different interpretation here.

  Jedrik glanced through Ardir's notes, looked up at Pcharky, back to McKie. Her expression did not change.

  "We will meet for dinner."

  She left him then.

  For his part, McKie had approached Pcharky's cage, noting the tension this brought to the room's guards and observers. The old Gowachin sat in his hammock with an indifferent expression on his face. The bars of the cage emitted an almost indiscernible hissing as they shimmered and glowed.

  "What happens if you touch the bars?" McKie asked.

  The Gowachin jowls puffed in a faint shrug.

  McKie pointed.

  "There's energy in those bars. What is that energy? How is it maintained?"

  Pcharky responded in a hoarse croaking.

  "How is the universe maintained? When you first see a thing, is that when it was created?"

  "Is it a Caleban thing?"

  Shrug.

  McKie walked around the cage, studying it. There were glistening bulbs wherever the bars crossed each other. The rods upon which the hammock was suspended came from the ceiling. They penetrated the cage top without touching it. The hammock itself appeared to be fabric. It was faintly blue. He returned to his position facing Pcharky.

  "Do they feed you?"

  No answer.

  Ardir spoke from behind him.

  "His food is lowered from the ceiling. His excreta are hosed into the reclamation lines."

  McKie spoke over his shoulder.

  "I see no door into the cage. How'd he get in there?"

  "It was built around him according to his own instructions."

  "What are the bulbs where the bars cross?"

&
nbsp; "They came into existence when he activated the cage."

  "How'd he do that?"

  "We don't know. Do you?"

  McKie shook his head from side to side.

  "How does Pcharky explain this?"

  "He doesn't."

  McKie had turned away to face Ardir, probing, moving the focus of questions from Pcharky to the planetary society itself. Ardir's answers, especially on matters of religion and history, were banal.

  Later, as he stood in the room off the command post reviewing the experience, McKie found his thoughts touching on a matter which had not even come into question.

  Jedrik and her people had known for a long time that Dosadi was a Gowachin creation. They'd known it long before McKie had appeared on the scene. It was apparent in the way they focused on Pcharky, in the way they reacted to Broey. McKie had added one significant datum: that Dosadi was a Gowachin experiment. But Jedrik's people were not using him in the ways he might expect. She said he was the key to the God Wall, but how was he that key?

  The answer was not to be found in Ardir. That one had not tried to evade McKie's questions, but the answers betrayed a severely limited scope to Ardir's knowledge and imagination.

  McKie felt deeply disturbed by this insight. It was not so much what the man said as what he did not say when the reasons for speaking openly in detail were most demanding. Ardir was no dolt. This was a Human who'd risen high in Jedrik's hierarchy. Many speculations would've crossed his mind. Yet he made no mention of even the more obvious speculations. He raised no questions about the way Dosadi history ran to a single cutoff point in the past without any trace of evolutionary beginnings. He did not appear to be a religious person and even if he were, Dosadi would not permit the more blatant religious inhibitions. Yet Ardir refused to explore the most obvious discrepancies in those overt religious attitudes McKie had been told to expect. Ardir played out the right attitudes, but there was no basis for them underneath. It was all surface.

  McKie suddenly despaired of ever getting a deep answer from any of these people - even from Jedrik.

  An increase in the noise level out in the command post caught McKie's attention. He opened the door, stood in the doorway to study the other room.

  A new map had been posted on the far wall. There was a position board, transparent and covered with yellow, red, and blue dots, over the map. Five women and a man - all wearing earphones - worked the board, moving the colored markers. Jedrik stood with her back to McKie, talking to several commanders who'd just come in from the streets. They still carried their weapons and packs. It was their conversation which had attracted McKie. He scanned the room, noted two communications screens at the left wall, both inactive. They were new since his last view of the room and he wondered at their purpose.

  An aide leaned in from the hallway, called out:

  "Gate Twenty-One just reported. Everything has quieted there. They want to know if they should keep their reserves on the alert."

  "Have them stand down," Jedrik said.

  "The two prisoners are being brought here," the aide added.

  "I see it," Jedrik said.

  She nodded toward the position board.

  McKie, following the direction of her gaze, saw two yellow markers being moved with eight blue companions. Without knowing how he understood this, he saw that this must be the prisoners and their escort. There were tensions in the command post which told him this was an important event. Who were those prisoners?

  One of Jedrik's commanders spoke.

  "I saw the monitor at . . ."

  She was not listening to him and he broke off. Two people on the position board exchanged places, trading earphones. The messenger who'd called out the information about the gate and the prisoners had gone. Another messenger came in presently, conferred in a soft voice with people near the door.

  In a few moments, eight young Human males entered carrying Gar and Tria securely trussed with what appeared to be shining wire. McKie recognized the pair from Aritch's briefings. The escort carried their prisoners like so much meat, one at each leg and each arm.

  "Over here," Jedrik said, indicating two chairs facing her.

  McKie found himself suddenly aware, in an extremely Dosadi way, of many of the nuances here. It filled him with elation.

  The escort crossed the room, not bothering to steer clear of all the furniture. The messenger from the hallway delayed his departure, reluctant to leave. He'd recognized the prisoners and knew something important was about to happen.

  Gar and Tria were dumped into the two chairs.

  "Release their bindings," Jedrik said.

  The escort obeyed.

  Jedrik waited, staring across at the position board. The two yellow and eight blue markers had been removed. She continued to stare at the board, though. Something there was more important than these two prisoners. She pointed to a cluster of red markers in an upper corner.

  "See to that."

  One of her commanders left the room.

  McKie took a deep breath. He'd spotted the flicker of her movement toward the commander who'd obeyed. So that was how she did it! McKie moved farther into the room to put Jedrik in profile to him. She made no response to his movement, but he knew she was aware of him. He stepped closer to what he saw as the limit of her tolerance, noted a faint smile as she turned toward the prisoners.

  There was an abrupt silence, one of those uncomfortable moments when people realize there are things they must do, but everyone is reluctant to start. The messenger still stood by the door to the hall, obviously wanting to see what would happen here. The escort who'd brought the prisoners remained standing in a group at one side. They were almost huddled, as though seeking protection in their own numbers.

  Jedrik glanced across at the messenger.

  "You may go."

  She nodded to the escort.

  "And you."

  McKie held his cautious distance, waiting, but Jedrik took no notice of him. He saw that he not only would be allowed to stay, but that he was expected to use his wits, his off-world knowledge. Jedrik had read things in his presence: a normal distrust, caution, patience. And the fears, of course.

  Jedrik took her time with the prisoners. She leaned forward, examined first Tria, then Gar. From the way she looked at them, it was clear to McKie she weighed many possibilities on how to deal with this pair. She was also building the tensions and this had its effect. Gar broke.

  "Broey has a way of describing people such as you." Gar said. "He calls you 'rockets,' which is to say you are like a display which shoots up into the sky - and falls back."

  Jedrik grinned.

  McKie understood. Gar was not managing his emotions very well. It was a weakness.

  "Many rockets in this universe must die unseen," Jedrik said.

  Gar glared at her. He didn't like this response, glanced at Tria, saw from her expression that he had blundered.

  Tria spoke now, smiling faintly.

  "You've taken a personal interest in us, Jedrik."

  To McKie, it was as though he'd suddenly crossed a threshold into the understanding of another language. Tria's was a Dosadi statement, carrying many messages. She'd said that Jedrik saw an opportunity for personal gain here and that Tria knew this. The faint smile had been the beginning of the statement. McKie felt a new awe at the special genius of the Dosadi awareness. He moved a step closer. There was something else about Tria . . . something odd.

  "What is that one to you?"

  Tria spoke to Jedrik, but a flicker of the eyes indicated McKie.

  "He has a certain utility," Jedrik said.

  "Is that the reason you keep him near you?"

  "There's no single reason."

  "There've been certain rumors . . ."

  "One uses what's available," Jedrik said.

  "Did you plan to have children by him?"

  Jedrik shook with silent mirth. McKie understood that Tria probed for weaknesses, found none.

  "The bre
eding period is so incapacitating for a female," Tria said.

  The tone was deliberately goading, and McKie waited for a response.

  Jedrik nodded.

  "Offspring produce many repercussions down through the generations. Never a casual decision for those of us who understand."

  Jedrik looked at Gar, forcing McKie to shift his attention.

  Gar's face went suddenly bland, which McKie interpreted as shock and anger. The man had himself under control quickly, however. He stared at McKie, directed a question to Jedrik.

  "Would his death profit us?"

  Jedrik glanced at McKie.

  Shocked by the directness of the question, McKie was at least as intrigued by the assumptions in Gar's question. "Us!" Gar assumed that he and Jedrik had common cause. Jedrik was weighing that assumption and McKie, filled with elation, understood. He also recognized something else and realized he could now repay all of Jedrik's patient teaching.

  Tria!

  Something about Tria's way of holding her head, the inflections in her spoken Galach, struck a chord in McKie's memory. Tria was a Human who'd been trained by a PanSpechi - that way of moving the eyes before the head moved, the peculiar emphasis in her speech mannerisms. But there were no PanSpechi on Dosadi. Or were there?

  None of this showed on McKie's face. He continued to radiate distrust, caution, patience. But he began to ask himself if there might be another loose thread in this Dosadi mystery. He saw Jedrik looking at him and, without thinking about it, gave her a purely Dosadi eye signal to follow him, returned to the adjoining room. It was a measure of how she read him that she came without question.

  "Yes?"

  He told her what he suspected.

  "These PanSpechi, they are the ones who can grow a body to simulate that of another species?"

  "Except for the eyes. They have faceted eyes. Any PanSpechi who could act freely and simulate another species would be only the surface manifestation. The freely moving one is only one of five bodies; it's the holder of the ego, the identity. This passes periodically to another of the five. It's a PanSpechi crime to prevent that transfer by surgically fixing the ego in only one of the bodies."