The Dosadi Experiment c-2

by Frank Herbert

  "You're sure that you're willing to . . ".

  "Jedrik!"

  He thought he saw the beginning of tears. It wasn't that she hid them, but that they reached a suppression level barely visible and she defied them. She found her voice, pointed.

  "That panel beside the bed. Pressure latch."

  The panel swung wide to reveal two shimmering rods about two centimeters in diameter. The rods danced with the energies of Pcharky's cage. They emerged from the floor, bent at right angles about waist height and, as the panel opened, they rotated to extend into the room - two glowing handles about a meter apart.

  McKie stared at them. He felt a tightness in his breast. What if he'd misread Jedrik? Could he be sure of any Dosadi? This room felt as familiar to him now as his quarters on CC. It was here that Jedrik had taught him some of the most essential Dosadi lessons. Yet . . . he knew the old pattern of what she proposed. The discarded body with its donor ego had always been killed immediately. Why?

  "You'll have your answer to that question when we've done this thing."

  A Dosadi response, ambiguous, heavy with alternatives.

  He glanced around the room, found it hard to believe that he'd known this place only these few days. His attention returned to the shimmering rods. Another trap?

  He knew he was wasting precious time, that he'd have to go through with this. But what would it be like to find himself in Jedrik's flesh, wearing her body as he now wore his own? PanSpechi transferred an ego from body to body. But something unspeakable which they would not reveal happened to the donor.

  McKie took a trembling breath.

  It had to be done. He and Jedrik shared a common purpose. She'd had many opportunities to use Pcharky simply to escape or to extend her life . . . the way, he realized now, that Broey had used the Dosadi secret. The fact that she'd waited for a McKie forced him to believe her. Jedrik's followers trusted her - and they were Dosadi. And if he and Jedrik escaped, Aritch would find himself facing a far different McKie from the one who'd come so innocently across the Rim. They might yet stay Aritch's hand.

  The enticement had been real, though. No doubting that. Shed an old body, get a new one. And the Rim had been the major source of raw material: strong, resilient bodies. Survivors.

  "What do I do?" he asked.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder, and she spoke from beside him.

  "You are very Dosadi, McKie. Astonishing."

  He glanced at her, saw what it had cost her to move here from the door. He slipped a hand around her waist, eased her to a sitting position on the bed and within reach of the rods.

  "Tell me what to do."

  She stared at the rods, and McKie realized it was rage driving her, rage against Aritch, the embodiment of "X," the embodiment of a contrived fate. He understood this. The solution of the Dosadi mystery had left him feeling empty, but on the edges there was such a rage as he'd never before experienced. He was still BuSab, though. He wanted no more bloodshed because of Dosadi, no more Gowachin justifications.

  Jedrik's voice interrupted his thoughts and he saw that she also shared some of his misgivings.

  "I come from a long line of heretics. None of us doubted that Dosadi was a crime, that somewhere there was a justice to punish the criminals."

  McKie almost sighed. Not the old Messiah dream! Not that! He would not fill that role, even for Dosadi.

  It was as though Jedrik read his mind. Perhaps, with that simulation model of him she carried in her head, this was exactly what she did.

  "We didn't expect a hero to come and save us. We knew that whoever came would suffer from the same deficiencies as the other non-Dosadi we saw here. You were so . . . slow. Tell me, McKie, what drives a Dosadi?"

  He almost said, "Power."

  She saw his hesitation, waited.

  "The power to change your condition," he said.

  "You make me very proud, McKie."

  "But how did you know I was . . ."

  "McKie!"

  He swallowed, then: "Yes, I guess that was the easiest part for you."

  "It was much more difficult finding your abilities and shaping you into a Dosadi."

  "But I might've been . . ."

  "Tell me how I did it, McKie."

  It was a test. He saw that. How had she known absolutely that he was the one she needed?

  "I was sent here in a way that evaded Broey."

  "And that's not easy." Her glance flickered ceilingward. "They tried to bait us from time to time. Havvy . . ."

  "Compromised, contaminated . . ."

  "Useless. Sometimes, a stranger looks out of Havvy's eyes."

  "My eyes are my own."

  "The first thing Bahrank reported about you."

  "But even before that . . ."

  "Yes?"

  "They used Havvy to tell you I was coming . . . and he told you that you could use my body. He had to be truthful with you up to a point. You could read Havvy! How clever they thought they were being! I had to be vulnerable . . . really vulnerable."

  "The first thing . . ."

  ". . . you found out about me." He nodded. "Suspicions confirmed. All of that money on my person. Bait. I was someone to be eliminated. I was a powerful enemy of your enemies."

  "And you were angered by the right things."

  "You saw that?"

  "McKie, you people are so easy to read. So easy!"

  "And the weapons I carried. You were supposed to use those to destroy yourselves. The implications . . ."

  "I would've seen that if I'd had first-hand experience of Aritch. You knew what he intended for us. My mistake was to read your fears as purely personal. In time . . ."

  "We're wasting time."

  "You fear we'll be too late?"

  Once more, he looked at the shimmering rods. What was it Pcharky did? McKie felt events rushing over him, engulfing him. What bargain had Jedrik really driven with Pcharky? She saw the question on his face.

  "My people knew all along that Pcharky was just a tool of the God who held us prisoner. We forced a bargain on that God - that Caleban. Did you think we would not recognize the identity between the powers of that cage and the powers of our God Wall? No more delays, McKie. It's time to test our bargain."

  ***

  Geriatric or other life extension for the powerful poses a similar threat to a sentient species as that found historically in the dominance of a self-perpetuating bureaucracy. Both assume prerogatives of immortality, collecting more and more power with each passing moment. This is power which draws a theological aura about itself: the unassailable Law, the God-given mandate of the leader, manifest destiny. Power held too long within a narrow framework moves farther and farther away from the adaptive demands of changed conditions. The leadership grows ever more paranoid, suspicious of inventive adaptations to change, fearfully protective of personal power and, in the terrified avoidance of what it sees as risk, blindly leads its people into destruction.

  - BuSab Manual

  "Very well. I'll tell you what bothers me," Ceylang said. "There are too many things about this problem that I fail to understand."

  From her seated position, she looked across a small, round room at Aritch, who floated gently in a tiny blue pool. His head at the pool's lip was almost on a level with Ceylang's. Again, they had worked late into the night. She understood the reasons for this, the time pressures were quite apparent, but the peculiar Gowachin flavor of her training kept her in an almost constant state of angry questioning.

  This whole thing was so un-Wreave!

  Ceylang smoothed the robe over her long body. The robe was blue now, one step away from Legum black. Appropriately, there was blue all around her: the walls, the floor, the ceiling, Aritch's pool.

  The High Magister rested his chin on the pool's edge to speak.

  "I require specific questions before I can even hope to penetrate your puzzlement."

  "Will McKie defend or prosecute? The simulator . . ."

  "Damn the si
mulator! Odds are that he'll make the mistake of prosecuting. Your own reasoning powers should . . ."

  "But if he doesn't?"

  "Then selection of the judicial panel becomes vital."

  Ceylang twisted her body to one side, feeling the chairdog adjust for her comfort. As usual, Aritch's answer only deepened her sense of uncertainty. She voiced that now.

  "I continue to have this odd feeling that you intend me to play some role which I'm not supposed to discover until the very last instant."

  Aritch breathed noisily through his mouth, splashed water onto his head.

  "This all may be moot. By this time day after tomorrow, Dosadi and McKie may no longer exist."

  "Then I will not advance to Legum?"

  "Oh, I'm fairly certain you'll be a Legum."

  She studied him, sensing irony, then:

  "What a delicate line you walk, High Magister."

  "Hardly. My way is wide and clear. You know the things I cannot countenance. I cannot betray the Law or my people."

  "I have similar inhibitions. But this Dosadi thing - so tempting."

  "So dangerous! Would a Wreave don Human flesh to learn the Human condition? Would you permit a Human to penetrate Wreave society in this . . ."

  "There are some who might conspire in this! There are even Gowachin who . . ."

  "The opportunities for misuse are countless."

  "Yet you say that McKie already is more Gowachin than a Gowachin."

  Aritch's webbed hands folded over the pool's edge, the claws extended.

  "We risked much in training him for this task."

  "More than you risk with me?"

  Aritch withdrew his hands, stared at her, unblinking.

  "So that's what bothers you."

  "Precisely."

  "Think, Ceylang, how near the core of Wreavedom you would permit me to come. Thus far and no farther will we permit you."

  "And McKie?"

  "May already have gone too far for us to permit his continued existence."

  "I heed your warning, Aritch. But I remain puzzled as to why the Calebans couldn't prevent . . ."

  "They profess not to understand the ego transfer. But who can understand a Caleban, let alone control one in a matter so delicate? Even this one who created the God Wall . . ."

  "It's rumored that McKie understands Calebans."

  "He denies it."

  She rubbed her pocked left jowl with a prehensile mandible, felt the many scars of her passage through the Wreave triads. Family to family to family until it was a single gigantic family. Yet, all were Wreave. This Dosadi thing threatened a monstrous parody of Wreavedom. Still . . .

  "So fascinating," she murmured.

  "That's its threat."

  "We should pray for the death of Dosadi."

  "Perhaps."

  She was startled.

  "What . . ."

  "This might not die with Dosadi. Our sacred bond assures that you will leave here with this knowledge. Many Gowachin know of this thing."

  "And McKie."

  "Infections have a way of spreading," Aritch said. "Remember that if this comes to the Courtarena."

  ***

  There are some forms of insanity which, driven to an ultimate expression, can become the new models of sanity.

  - BuSab Manual

  "McKie?"

  It was the familiar Caleban presence in his awareness, as though he heard and felt someone (or something) which he knew was not there.

  The preparation had been deceptively simple. He and Jedrik clasped hands, his right hand and her left, and each grasped one of the shimmering rods with the other hand.

  McKie did not have a ready identity for this Caleban and wondered at the questioning in her voice. He agreed, however, that he was indeed McKie,

  shaping the thought as subvocalized conversation. As he spoke, McKie was acutely aware of Jedrik beside him. She was more than just another person now. He

  carried a tentative simulation model of her, sometimes anticipating her responses.

  "You make mutual agreement?" the Caleban asked.

  McKie sensed Pcharky then: a distant presence, the monitor for this experience. It was as though Pcharky had been reduced to a schematic which the Caleban followed, a set of complex rules, many of which could not be translated into words. Some part of McKie responded to this as though a monster awakened within him, a sleeping monster who sat up full of anger at being aroused thus, demanding:

  "Who is it that dares awaken me?"

  McKie felt his body trembling, felt Jedrik trembling beside him. The Caleban/Taprisiot-trembling, the sweaty response to trance! He saw these phenomena now in a different light. When you walked at the edge of this abyss . . .

  While these thoughts passed through his mind, he felt a slight shift, no more than the blurred reflection of something which was not quite movement. Now, while he still felt his own flesh around him, he also felt himself possessed of an inner contact with Jedrik's body and knew she shared this experience.

  Such a panic as he had not thought possible threatened to overwhelm him. He felt Jedrik trying to break the contact, to stop this hideous sharing, but they were powerless in the grip of a force which would not be stopped.

  No time sense attached itself to this experience, but a fatalistic calm overcame them almost simultaneously. McKie felt awareness of Jedrik/flesh deepen. Curiosity dominated him now.

  So this is woman!

  This is man?

  They shared the thoughts across an indistinct bridge.

  Fascination gripped McKie. He probed deeper.

  He/She could feel himself/herself breathing. And the differences! It was not the genitalia, the presence or lack of breasts. She felt bereft of breasts. He felt acutely distressed by their presence, self-consciously aware of profound implications. The sense of difference went back beyond gamete McKie/Jedrik.

  McKie sensed her thoughts, her reactions.

  Jedrik: "You cast your sperm upon the stream of time."

  McKie: "You enclose and nurture . . ."

  "I cast / I nurture."

  It was as though they looked at an object from opposite sides, aware belatedly that they both examined the same thing.

  "We cast / we nurture."

  Obscuring layers folded away, and McKie found himself in Jedrik's mind, she in his. Their thoughts were one entity.

  The separate Dosadi and ConSentient experiences melted into a single relationship.

  "Aritch . . . ah, yes. You see? And your PanSpechi friend, Bildoon. Note that. You suspected, but now you know . . ."

  Each set of experiences fed on the other, expanding, refining . . . condensing, discarding, creating . . .

  So that's the training of a Legum.

  Loving parents? Ahhh, yes, loving parents.

  "I/we will apply pressure there . . . and there . . . They must be maneuvered into choosing that one as a judge. Yes, that will give us the required leverage. Let them break their own code."

  And the awakened monster stirred within them. It had no dimension, no place, only existence. They felt its power.

  "I do what I do!"

  The power enveloped them. No other awareness was permitted. They sensed a primal current, unswerving purpose, a force which could override any other thing in their universe. It was not God, not Life, not any particular species. It was something so far beyond such articulations that Jedrik/McKie could not even contemplate it without a sense that the next instant would bring obliteration. They felt a question hurled at their united, fearful awareness. The question was framed squarely in anger, astonishment, cold amusement, and threat.

  "For this you awaken me?"

  Now, they understood why the old body and donor-ego had always been slain immediately. This terrible sharing made a . . . made a noise. It awakened a questioner.

  They understood the question without words, knowing they could never grasp the full meaning and emotive thrust, that it would burn them out even to try. Anger .
. . astonishment . . . cold amusement . . . threat. The question as their own united mind(s) interpreted it represented a limit. It was all that Jedrik/McKie could accept.

  The intrusive questioner receded.

  They were never quite sure afterward whether they'd been expelled or whether they'd fled in terror, but the parting words were burned into their combined awareness.

  "Let the sleeper sleep."

  They walked softly in their minds then. They understood the warning, but knew it could never be translated in its fullest threat for any other sentient being.

  Concurrent: McKie/Jedrik felt a projection of terror from the God Wall Caleban, unfocused, unexplained. It was a new experience in the male-female collective memory. Caleban Fannie Mae had not even projected this upon original McKie when she'd thought herself doomed.

  Concurrent: McKie/Jedrik felt a burntout fading from Pcharky. Something in that terrible contact had plunged Pcharky into his death spiral. Even as McKie/Jedrik realized this, the old Gowachin died. It was a slammed door. But this came after a blazing realization by McKie/Jedrik that Pcharky had shared the original decision to set up the Dosadi experiment.

  McKie found himself clothed in living, breathing flesh which routed its messages through his awareness. He wasn't sure which of their two bodies he possessed, but it was distinct, separate. It wrapped him in Human senses: the taste of salt, the smell of perspiration, and the omnipresent Warren stink. One hand held cold metal, the other clasped the hand of a fellow Human. Perspiration drenched this body, made the clasped hands slippery. He felt that knowing which hand held another hand was of utmost importance, but he wasn't ready to face that knowledge. Awareness of self, this new self, and a whole lifetime of new memories, demanded all of the attention he could muster.

  Focus: A Rim city, never outside Jedrik's control because she had fed the signals through to Gar and Tria with exquisite care, and because those who gave the orders on the Rim had shared in the generations of selective breeding which had produced Jedrik. She was a biological weapon whose sole target was the God Wall.

  Focus: Loving parents can thrust their child into deadly peril when they know everything possible has been done to prepare that child for survival.