The attendant shifted slightly, arms moving up. McKie glimpsed the blade tip at the attendant's right shoulder.
"Gowachin don't have families as do Humans or even Wreaves," Mrreg said. "We have graduated advancement into groups which hold more and more responsibility for those beneath them. This was the pattern adopted by our High Command. What you see as a Gowachin family is only a breeding group with its own limited rules. With each step up in responsibility goes a requirement that we pay an increasing price for failure. You ask if I know the price? Ahhh, McKie. The breeding male Gowachin makes sure that only the swiftest, most alert of his tads survive. A Magister upholds the forms of the Law. The High Command answers to a . . . Mrreg. You see? And a Mrreg must make only the best decisions. No failures. Thus . . . Laupuk."
As he spoke the final word, the blade in the attendant's hands flashed out and around in a shimmering arc. It caught the seated Gowachin at the neck. Mrreg's head, neatly severed, was caught in the loop at the blade's tip, lifted high, then lowered onto the white apron which now was splashed with green gore.
The scene blanked out, was replaced by the Gowachin who had connected McKie with Mrreg.
"Aritch wishes to consult his Legum," the Gowachin said.
***
In a changing universe, only a changing species can hope to be immortal and then only if its eggs are nurtured in widely scattered environments. This predicts a wealth of unique individuals.
- Insights (a glimpse of early Human philosophy), BuSab Text
Jedrik made contact with McKie while he waited for the arrival of Aritch and Ceylang. He had been staring absently at the ceiling, evaluating in a profoundly Dosadi way how to gain personal advantage from the upcoming encounter, when he felt the touch of her mind on his.
McKie locked himself in his body.
"No transfer."
"Of course not."
It was a tiny thing, a subtle shading in the contact which could have been overlooked by anyone with a less accurate simulation model of Jedrik.
"You're angry with me," McKie said.
He projected irony, knew she'd read this correctly.
When she responded, her anger had been reduced to irritation. The point was not the shading of emotion, it was that she allowed such emotion to reveal itself.
"You remind me of one of my early lovers," she said.
McKie thought of where Jedrik was at this moment: safely rocked in the flower-perfumed air of his floating island on the planetary sea of Tutalsee. How strange such an environment must be for a Dosadi - no threats, fruit which could be picked and eaten without a thought of poisons. The memories she'd taken from him would coat the island with familiarity, but her flesh would continue to find that a strange experience. His memories - yes. The island would remind her of all those wives he'd taken to the honeymoon bowers of that place.
McKie spoke from this awareness.
"No doubt that early lover failed to show sufficient appreciation of your abilities, outside the bedroom, that is. Which one was it . . ."
And he named several accurate possibilities, lifting them from the memories he'd taken from Jedrik.
Now, she laughed. He sensed the untainted response, real humor and unchecked.
McKie was reminded in his turn of one of his early wives, and this made him think of the breeding situation from which Jedrik had come - no confusions between a choice for breeding mate and a lover taken for the available enjoyment of sex. One might even actively dislike the breeding mate.
Lovers . . . wives . . . What was the difference, except for the socially imprinted conventions out of which the roles arose? But Jedrik did remind him of that one particular woman, and he explored this memory, wondering if it might help him now in his relationship with Jedrik. He'd been in his midthirties and assigned to one of his first personal BuSab cases, sent out with no oldtimer to monitor and instruct him. The youngest Human agent in the Bureau's history ever to be released on his own, so it was rumored. The planet had been one of the Ylir group, very much unlike anything in McKie's previous experience: an ingrown place with deep entryways in all of the houses and an oppressive silence all around. No animals, no birds, no insects - just that awesome silence within which a fanatic religion was reported forming. All conversations were low voiced and full of subtle intonations which suggested an inner communication peculiar to Ylir and somehow making sport with all outsiders not privy to their private code. Very like Dosadi in this.
His wife of the moment, safely ensconced on Tutalsee, had been quite the opposite: gregarious, sportive, noisy.
Something about that Ylir case had sent McKie back to this wife with a sharpened awareness of her needs. The marriage had gone well for a long time, longer than any of the others. And he saw now why Jedrik reminded him of that one: they both protected themselves with a tough armor of femininity, but were extremely vulnerable behind that facade. When the armor collapsed, it collapsed totally. This realization puzzled McKie because he read his own reaction clearly: he was frightened.
In the eyeblink this evaluation took, Jedrik read him:
"We have not left Dosadi. We've taken it with us."
So that was why she'd made this contact, to be certain he mixed this datum into his evaluations. McKie looked out the open window. It would be dusk soon here on Tandaloor. The Gowachin home planet was a place which had defied change for thousands of standard years. In some respects, it was a backwater.
The ConSentiency will never be the same.
The tiny trickle of Dosadi which Aritch's people had hoped to cut off was now a roaring cataract. The people of Dosadi would insinuate themselves into niche after niche of ConSentient civilization. What could resist even the lowliest Dosadi? Laws would change. Relationships would assume profound and subtle differences. Everything from the most casual friendship to the most complex business relationship would take on some Dosadi character.
McKie recalled Aritch's parting question as Aritch had sent McKie to the jumpdoor which would put him on Dosadi.
"Ask yourself if there might be a price too high to pay for the Dosadi lesson."
That had been McKie's first clue to Aritch's actual motives and the word lesson had bothered him, but he'd missed the implications. With some embarrassment, McKie recalled his glib answer to Aritch's question:
"It depends on the lesson."
True, but how blind he'd been to things any Dosadi would have seen. How ignorant. Now, he indicated to Jedrik that he understood why she'd called such things to his attention.
"Aritch didn't look much beyond the uses of outrage and injustice . . ."
"And how to turn such things to personal advantage."
She was right, of course. McKie stared out at the gathering dusk. Yes, the species tried to make everything its own. If the species failed, then forces beyond it moved in, and so on, ad infinitum.
I do what I do.
He recalled those words of the sleeping monster with a shudder, felt Jedrik recoil. But she was proof even against this.
"What powers your ConSentiency had."
Past tense, right. And not our ConSentiency because that already was a thing of the past. Besides . . . she was Dosadi.
"And the illusions of power," she said.
He saw at last what she was emphasizing, and her own shared memories in his mind made the lesson doubly impressive. She'd known precisely what McKie's personal ego-focus might overlook. Yet, this was one of the glues which held the ConSentiency together.
"Who can imagine himself immune from any retaliation?" he quoted.
It was right out of the BuSab Manual.
Jedrik made no response.
McKie needed no more emphasis from her now. The lesson of history was clear. Violence bred violence. If this violence got out of hand, it ran a course depressing in its repetitive pattern. More often than not, that course was deadly to the innocent, the so-called "enlistment phase." The ex-innocents ignited more violence and more violence until either reason p
revailed or all were destroyed. There were a sufficient number of cinder blocks which once had been planets to make the lesson clear. Dosadi had come within a hair of joining that uninhabited, uninhabitable list.
Before breaking contact, Jedrik had another point to make.
"You recall that in those final days, Broey increased the rations for his Human auxiliaries, his way of saying to them: 'You'll be turned out onto the Rim soon to tend for yourselves."'
"A Dosadi way of saying that."
"Correct. We always held that thought in reserve: that we should breed in such numbers that some would survive no matter what happened. We would thus begin producing species which could survive there without the city of Chu . . . or any other city designed solely to produce nonpoisonous foods."
"But there's always a bigger force waiting in the wings."
"Make sure Aritch understands that."
***
Choose containable violence when violence cannot be avoided. Better this than epidemic violence.
- Lessons of Choice, The BuSab Manual
The senior attendant of the Courtarena, a squat and dignified Gowachin of the Assumptive Phylum, confronted McKie at the arena door with a confession:
"I have delayed informing you that some of your witnesses have been excluded by Prosecution challenge."
The attendant, whose name was Darak, gave a Gowachin shrug, waited.
McKie glanced beyond the attendant at the truncated oval of the arena entrance which framed a lower section of the audience seats. The seats were filled. He had expected some such challenge for this first morning session of the trial, saw Darak's words as a vital revelation. They were accepting his gambit. Darak had signaled a risky line of attack by those who guided Ceylang's performance. They expected McKie to protest. He glanced back at Aritch, who stood quietly submissive three steps behind his Legum. Aritch gave every appearance of having resigned himself to the arena's conditions.
"The forms must be obeyed."
Beneath that appearance lay the hoary traditions of Gowachin Law - The guilty are innocent. Governments always do evil. Legalists put their own interests first. Defense and prosecution are brother and sister. Suspect everything.
Aritch's Legum controlled the initial posture and McKie had chosen defense. It hadn't surprised him to be told that Ceylang would prosecute. McKie had countered by insisting that Broey sit on a judicial panel which would be limited to three members. This had caused a delay during which Bildoon had called McKie, probing for any betrayal. Bildoon's approach had been so obvious that McKie had at first suspected a feint within a feint.
"McKie, the Gowachin fear that you have a Caleban at your command. That's a force which they . . ."
"The more they fear the better."
McKie had stared back at the screen-framed face of Bildoon, observing the signs of strain. Jedrik was right: the non-Dosadi were very easy to read.
"But I'm told you left this Dosadi in spite of a Caleban contract which prohibited . . ."
"Let them worry. Good for them."
McKie watched Bildoon intently without betraying a single emotion. No doubt there were others monitoring this exchange. Let them begin to see what they faced. Puppet Bildoon was not about to uncover what those shadowy forces wanted. They had Bildoon here on Tandaloor, though, and this told McKie an essential fact. The PanSpechi chief of BuSab was being offered as bait. This was precisely the response McKie sought.
Bildoon had ended the call without achieving his purpose. McKie had nibbled only enough to insure that Bildoon would be offered again as bait. And the puppet masters still feared that McKie had a Caleban at his beck and call.
No doubt the puppet masters had tried to question their God Wall Caleban. McKie hid a smile, thinking how that conversation must have gone. The Caleban had only to quote the letter of the contract, and if the questioners became accusatory the Caleban would respond with anger, ending the exchange. And the Caleban's words would be so filled with terms subject to ambiguous translation that the puppet masters would never be certain of what they heard.
As he stared at the patiently waiting Darak, McKie saw that they had a problem, those shadowy figures behind Aritch. Laupuk had removed Mrreg from their councils and his advice would have been valuable now. McKie had deduced that the correct reference was "The Mrreg" and that Aritch headed the list of possible successors. Aritch might be Dosadi-trained but he was not Dosadi-born. There was a lesson in this that the entire ConSentiency would soon learn.
And Broey as a judge in this case remained an unchangeable fact. Broey was Dosadi-born. The Caleban contract had kept Broey on his poison planet, but it had not limited him to a Gowachin body. Broey knew what it was to be both Human and Gowachin. Broey knew about the Pcharkys and their use by those who'd held Dosadi in bondage. And Broey was now Gowachin. The forces opposing McKie dared not name another Gowachin judge. They must choose from the other species. They had an interesting quandary. And without a Caleban assistant, there were no more Pcharkys to be had on Dosadi. The most valuable coin the puppet masters had to offer was lost to them. They'd be desperate. Some of the older ones would be very desperate.
Footsteps sounded around the turn of the corridor behind Aritch. McKie glanced back, saw Ceylang come into view with her attendants. McKie counted no less than twenty leading Legums around her. They were out in force. Not only Gowachin pride and integrity, but their sacred view of Law stood at issue. And the desperate ones stood behind them, goading. McKie could almost see those shadowy figures in the shape of this entourage.
Ceylang, he saw, wore the black robes and white-striped hood of Legum Prosecutor, but she'd thrown back the hood to free her mandibles. McKie detected tension in her movements. She gave no sign of recognition, but McKie saw her through Dosadi eyes.
I frighten her. And she's right.
Turning to address the waiting attendant and speaking loudly to make sure that the approaching group heard, McKie said:
"Every law must be tested. I accept that you have given me formal announcement of a limit on my defense."
Darak, expecting outraged protest and a demand for a list of the excluded witnesses, showed obvious confusion.
"Formal announcement?"
Ceylang and entourage came to a stop behind Aritch.
McKie went on in the same loud voice:
"We stand here within the sphere of the Courtarena. All matters concerning a dispute in the arena are formal in this place."
The attendant glanced at Ceylang, seeking help. This response threatened him. Darak, hoping someday to be a High Magister, should now be recognizing his inadequacies. He would never make it in the politics of the Gowachin Phyla, especially not in the coming Dosadi age.
McKie explained as though to a neophyte:
"Information to be verified by my witnesses is known to me in its entirety. I will present the evidence myself."
Ceylang, having stooped to hear a low-voiced comment from one of her Gowachin advisors, showed surprise at this. She raised one of her ropey tendrils, called, "I protest. The Defense Legum cannot give . . ."
"How can you protest?" McKie interrupted. "We stand here before no judicial panel empowered to rule on any protest."
"I make formal protest!" Ceylang insisted, ignoring an advisor on her right who was tugging at her sleeve.
McKie permitted himself a cold smile.
"Very well. Then we must call Darak into the arena as witness, he being the only party present who is outside our dispute."
The edges of Aritch's jaws came down in a Gowachin grimace.
"At the end, I warned them not to go with the Wreave," he said. "They cannot say they came here unwarned."
Too late, Ceylang saw what had happened. McKie would be able to question Darak on the challenges to the witnesses. Some of those challenges were certain to be overturned. At the very least, McKie would know who the Prosecution feared. He would know it in time to act upon it. There would be no delays valuable to Prosecution. T
ension, fear, and pride had made Ceylang act precipitately. Aritch had been right to warn them, but they counted on McKie's fear of the interlocked Wreave triads. Let them count. Let them blunt their awareness on that and on a useless concern over the excluded witnesses.
McKie motioned Darak through the doorway into the arena, heard him utter an oath. The reason became apparent as McKie pressed through in the crowded surge of the Prosecutor's party. The instruments of Truth-by-Pain had been arrayed on their ancient rack below the judges. Seldom brought out of their wrappings even for display to visiting dignitaries these days, the instruments had not been employed in the arena within the memory of a living witness. McKie had expected this display. It was obvious that Darak and Ceylang had not. It was interesting to note the members of Ceylang's entourage who were watching for McKie's response.
He gave them a grin of satisfaction.
McKie turned his attention to the judicial panel. They had given him Broey. The ConSentiency, acting through BuSab, held the right of one appointment. Their choice delighted McKie. Bait, indeed! Bildoon occupied the seat on Broey's right. The PanSpechi chief of bureau sat there all bland and reserved in his unfamiliar Gowachin robes of water green. Bildoon's faceted eyes glittered in the harsh arena lighting. The third judge had to be the Gowachin choice and undoubtedly maneuvered (as Bildoon had been) by the puppet masters. It was a Human and McKie, recognizing him, missed a step, recovered his balance with a visible effort.
What were they doing?
The third judge was named Mordes Parando, a noted challenger of BuSab actions. He wanted BuSab eliminated - either outright or by removing some of the bureau's key powers. He came from the planet Lirat, which provided McKie with no surprises. Lirat was a natural cover for the shadowy forces. It was a place of enormous wealth and great private estates guarded by their own security forces. Parando was a man of somewhat superficial manners which might conceal a genuine sophisticate, knowledgeable and erudite, or a completely ruthless autocrat of Broey's stamp. He was certainly Dosadi-trained. And his features bore the look of the Dosadi Rim.
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