During those earlier days of training on Tandaloor, McKie had felt more than a little lost, hemmed in by threatening strangers, constantly aware of the important matters which rode on his success. But things were different after the interview with Aritch. McKie was now a trained, tested, and proven Legum, not to mention a renowned agent of BuSab. Yet there were times when the mood of those earlier days intruded. Such intrusions annoyed him with their implication that he was being maneuvered into peril against his will, that the Gowachin secretly laughed as they prepared him for some ultimate humiliation. They were not above such a jest. Common assessment of Gowachin by non-Gowachin said the Frog God’s people were so ultimately civilized they had come full circle into a form of primitive savagery. Look at the way Gowachin males slaughtered their own newborn tads!
Once, during one of the rare naps Aritch’s people permitted him, McKie had awakened to sit up and try to shake off that depressing mood of doom. He told himself true things: that the Gowachin flattered him now, deferred to him, treated him with that quasireligious respect which they paid to all Legums. But there was no evading another truth: the Gowachin had groomed him for their Dosadi problem over a long period of time, and they were being less than candid with him about that long process and its intentions.
There were always unfathomed mysteries when dealing with Gowachin.
When he’d tried returning to sleep that time, it was to encounter disturbing dreams of massed sentient flesh (both pink and green) all naked and quite defenseless before the onslaughts of gigantic Gowachin males.
The dream’s message was clear. The Gowachin might very well destroy Dosadi in the way (and for similar reasons) that they winnowed their own tads—searching, endlessly searching, for the strongest and most resilient survivors.
The problem they’d dumped in his lap daunted McKie. If the slightest inkling of Dosadi leaked into common awareness without a concurrent justification, the Gowachin Federation would be hounded unmercifully. The Gowachin had clear and sufficient reason to destroy the evidence—or to let the evidence destroy itself.
Justification.
Where was that to be found? In the elusive benefits which had moved the Gowachin to mount this experiment?
Even if he found that justification, Dosadi would be an upheaval in the ConSentiency. It’d be the subject of high drama. More than twenty generations of Humans and Gowachin surfacing without warning! Their lonely history would titillate countless beings. The limits of language would be explored to wring the last drop of emotive essence from this revelation.
No matter how explained, Gowachin motives would come in for uncounted explorations and suspicions.
Why did they really do it? What happened to their original volunteers?
People would look backward into their own ancestry—Human and Gowachin alike. “Is that what happened to Uncle Elfred?” Gowachin phylum records would be explored. “Yes! Here are two—gone without record!”
Aritch’s people admitted that “a very small minority” had mounted this project and kept the lid on it. Were they completely sane, this Gowachin cabal?
McKie’s short naps were always disturbed by an obsequious Gowachin bowing over his bedog, begging him to return at once to the briefing sessions which prepared him for survival on Dosadi.
Those briefing sessions! The implied prejudices hidden in every one raised more questions than were answered. McKie tried to retain a reasoned attitude, but irritants constantly assailed him.
Why had the Gowachin of Dosadi taken on Human emotional characteristics? Why were Dosadi’s Humans aping Gowachin social compacts? Were the Dosadi truly aware of why they changed governmental forms so often?
The bland answer to these frequent questions enraged McKie.
“All will be made clear when you experience Dosadi for yourself.”
He’d finally fallen into a counterirritant patter:
“You don’t really know the answer, do you? You’re hoping I’ll find out for you!”
Some of the data recitals bored McKie. While listening to a Gowachin explain what was known about Rim relationships, he would find himself distracted by people passing in the multisentient access way outside the briefing area.
Once, Ceylang entered and sat at the side of the room, watching him with a hungry silence which rubbed McKie’s sensibilities to angry rawness. He’d longed for the blue metal box then, but once the solemn investment had pulled the mantle of Legumic protection around him, the box had been removed to its sacred niche. He’d not see it again unless this issue entered the Courtarena. Ceylang remained an unanswered question among many. Why did that dangerous Wreave female haunt this room without contributing one thing? He suspected they allowed Ceylang to watch him through remote spy devices. Why did she choose that once to come in person? To let him know he was being observed? It had something to do with whatever had prompted the Gowachin to train a Wreave. They had some future problem which only a Wreave could solve. They were grooming this Wreave as they’d groomed him. Why? What Wreave capabilities attracted the Gowachin? How did this Wreave female differ from other Wreaves? Where were her loyalties? What was the ‘Wreave Bet’?
This led McKie into another avenue never sufficiently explored: what Human capabilities had led the Gowachin to him? Dogged persistence? A background in Human law? The essential individualism of the Human?
There were no sure answers to these questions, no more than there were about the Wreave. Her presence continued to fascinate him, however. McKie knew many things about Wreave society not in common awareness outside the Wreave worlds. They were, after all, integral and valued partners in BuSab. In shared tasks, a camaraderie developed which often prompted intimate exchanges of information. Beyond the fact that Wreaves required a breeding triad for reproduction, he knew that Wreaves had never discovered a way to determine in advance which of the Triad would be capable of nursing the offspring. This formed an essential building stone in Wreave society. Periodically, this person from the triad would be exchanged for a like person from another triad. This insured their form of genetic dispersion and, of equal importance, built countless linkages throughout their civilization. With each such linkage went requirements for unquestioning support in times of trouble.
A Wreave in the Bureau had tried to explain this:
“Take, for example, the situation where a Wreave is murdered or, even worse, deprived of essential vanity. The guilty party would be answerable personally to millions upon millions of us. Wherever the triad exchange has linked us, we are required to respond intimately to the insult. The closest thing you have to this, as I understand it, is familial responsibility. We have this familial responsibility for vendetta where such affronts occur. You have no idea how difficult it was to release those of us in BuSab from this … this bondage, this network of responsibility.”
The Gowachin would know this about the Wreaves, McKie thought. Had this characteristic attracted the Gowachin or had they chosen in spite of it, making their decision because of some other Wreave aspect? Would a Wreave Legum continue to share that network of familial responsibility? How could that be? Wreave society could only offend a basic sensibility of the Gowachin. The Frog God’s people were even more … more exclusive and individual than Humans. To the Gowachin, family remained a private thing, walled off from strangers in an isolation which was abandoned only when you entered your chosen phylum.
As he waited beside the white rock on Dosadi, McKie reflected on these matters, biding his time, listening. The alien heat, the smells and unfamiliar noises, disturbed him. He’d been told to listen for the sound of an internal combustion engine. Internal combustion! But the Dosadi used such devices outside the city because they were more powerful (although much larger) than the beamed impulse drivers which they used within Chu’s walls.
“The fuel is alcohol. Most of the raw materials come from the Rim. It doesn’t matter how much poison there is in such fuel. They ferment bushes, trees, ferns … anything the Rim suppli
es.”
A sleepy quiet surrounded McKie now. For a long time he’d been girding himself to risk the thing he knew he would have to do once he were alone on Dosadi. He might never again be this alone here, probably not once he was into Chu’s Warrens. He knew the futility of trying to contact his Taprisiot monitor. Aritch, telling him the Gowachin knew BuSab had bought “Taprisiot insurance,” had said:
“Not even a Taprisiot call can penetrate the God Wall.”
In the event of Dosadi’s destruction, the Caleban contract ended. McKie’s Taprisiot might even have an instant to complete the death record of McKie’s memories. Might. That was academic to McKie in his present circumstances. The Calebans owed him a debt. The Whipping Star threat had been as deadly to Calebans as to any other species which had ever used jumpdoors. The threat had been real and specific. Users of jumpdoors and the Caleban who controlled those jumpdoors had been doomed. “Fannie Mae” had expressed the debt to McKie in her own peculiar way:
“The owing of me to thee connects to no ending.”
Aritch could have alerted his Dosadi guardian against any attempt by McKie to contact another Caleban. McKie doubted this. Aritch had specified a ban against Taprisiot calls. But all Calebans shared an awareness at some level. If Aritch and company had been lulled into a mistaken assumption about the security of their barrier around Dosadi …
Carefully, McKie cleared his mind of any thoughts about Taprisiots. This wasn’t easy. It required a Sufi concentration upon a particular void. There could be no accidental thrust of his mind at the Taprisiot waiting in the safety of Central Central with its endless patience. Everything must be blanked from awareness except a clear projection toward Fannie Mae.
McKie visualized her: the star Thyone. He recalled their long hours of mental give and take. He projected the warmth of emotional attachment, recalling her recent demonstration of “nodal involvement.”
Presently, he closed his eyes, amplified that internal image which now suffused his mind. He felt his muscles relax. The warm rock against his back, the sand beneath him, faded from awareness. Only the glowing presence of a Caleban remained in his mind.
“Who calls?”
The words touched his auditory centers, but not his ears.
“It’s McKie, friend of Fannie Mae. Are you the Caleban of the God Wall?”
“I am the God Wall. Have you come to worship?”
McKie felt his thoughts stumble. Worship? The projection from this Caleban was echoing and portentous, not at all like the probing curiosity he always sensed in Fannie Mae. He fought to regain that first clear image. The inner glow of a Caleban contact returned. He supposed there might be something worshipful in this experience. You were never absolutely certain of a Caleban’s meaning.
“It’s McKie, friend of Fannie Mae,” he repeated.
The glow within McKie dimmed, then: “But you occupy a point upon Dosadi’s wave.”
That was a familiar kind of communication, one to which McKie could apply previous experience in the hope of a small understanding, an approximation.
“Does the God Wall permit me to contact Fannie Mae?”
Words echoed in his head:
“One Caleban, all Caleban.”
“I wish converse with Fannie Mae.”
“You are not satisfied with your present body?”
McKie felt his body then, the trembling flesh, the zombielike trance state which went with Caleban or Taprisiot contact. The question had no meaning to him, but the body contact was real and it threatened to break off communication. Slowly, McKie fought back to that tenuous mind-presence.
“I am Jorj X. McKie. Calebans are in my debt.”
“All Calebans know this debt.”
“Then honor your debt.”
He waited, trying not to grow tense.
The glow within his head was replaced by a new presence. It insinuated itself into McKie’s awareness with penetrating familiarity—not full mental contact, but rather a playing upon those regions of his brain where sight and sound were interpreted. McKie recognized this new presence.
“Fannie Mae!”
“What does McKie require?”
For a Caleban, it was quite a direct communication. McKie, noting this, responded more directly:
“I require your help.”
“Explain.”
“I may be killed here … ahh, have an end to my node here on Dosadi.”
“Dosadi’s wave,” she corrected him.
“Yes. And if that happens, if I die here, I have friends on Central Central … on Central Central’s wave … friends there who must learn everything that’s in my mind when I die.”
“Only Taprisiot can do this. Dosadi contract forbids Taprisiots.”
“But if Dosadi is destroyed …”
“Contract promise passes no ending, McKie.”
“You cannot help me?”
“You wish advice from Fannie Mae?”
“Yes.”
“Fannie Mae able to maintain contact with McKie while he occupies Dosadi’s wave.”
Constant trance? McKie was shocked.
She caught this.
“No trance. McKie’s nexus known to Fannie Mae.”
“I think not. I can’t have any distractions here.”
“Bad choice.”
She was petulant.
“Could you provide me with a personal jumpdoor to …”
“Not with node ending close to ending for Dosadi wave.”
“Fannie Mae, do you know what the Gowachin are doing here on Dosadi? This …”
“Caleban contract, McKie.”
Her displeasure was clear. You didn’t question the honor of a Caleban’s word-writ. The Dosadi contract undoubtedly contained specific prohibitions against any revelations of what went on here. McKie was dismayed. He was tempted to leave Dosadi immediately.
Fannie Mae got this message, too.
“McKie can leave now. Soon, McKie cannot leave in his own body/node.”
“Body/node?”
“Answer not permitted.”
Not permitted!
“I thought you were my friend, Fannie Mae!”
Warmth suffused him.
“Fannie Mae possesses friendship for McKie.”
“Then why won’t you help me?”
“You wish to leave Dosadi’s wave in this instant?”
“No!”
“Then Fannie Mae cannot help.”
Angry, McKie began to break the contact.
Fannie Mae projected sensations of frustration and hurt. “Why does McKie refuse advice? Fannie Mae wishes …”
“I must go. You know I’m in a trance while we’re in contact. That’s dangerous here. We’ll speak another time. I appreciate your wish to help and your new clarity, but …”
“Not clarity! Very small hole in understanding but Human keeps no more dimension!”
Obvious unhappiness accompanied this response, but she broke the contact. McKie felt himself awakening, his fingers and toes trembling with cold. Caleban contact had slowed his metabolism to a dangerous low. He opened his eyes.
A strange Gowachin clad in the yellow of an armored vehicle driver stood over him. A tracked machine rumbled and puffed in the background. Blue smoke enveloped it. McKie stared upward in shock.
The Gowachin nodded companionably.
“You are ill?”
We of the Sabotage Bureau remain legalists of a special category. We know that too much law injures a society; it is the same with too little law. One seeks a balance. We are like the balancing force among the Gowachin: without hope of achieving heaven in the society of mortals, we seek the unattainable. Each agent knows his own conscience and why he serves such a master. That is the key to us. We serve a mortal conscience for immortal reasons. We do it without hope of praise or the sureness of success.
—The early writings of Bildoon,
PanSpechi Chief of BuSab
They moved out onto the streets as soon as the after
noon shadows gloomed the depths of the city, Tria and six carefully chosen companions, all of them young Human males. She’d musked herself to key them up and she led them down dim byways where Broey’s spies had been eliminated. All of her troop was armored and armed in the fashion of an ordinary sortie team.
There’d been rioting nearby an hour earlier, not sufficiently disruptive to attract large military attention, but a small Gowachin salient had been eliminated from a Human enclave. A sortie team was the kind of thing this Warren could expect after such a specific species adjustment. Tria and her six companions were not likely to suffer attack. None of the rioters wanted a large-scale mopping up in the area.
A kind of hushed, suspenseful waiting pervaded the streets.
They crossed a wet intersection, green and red ichor in the gutters. The smell of the dampness told her that a Graluz had been broached and its waters freed to wash through the streets.
That would attract retaliation. Some Human children were certain to be killed in the days ahead. An old pattern.
The troop crossed the riot area presently, noting the places where bodies had fallen, estimating casualties. All bodies had been removed. Not a scrap remained for the birds.
They emerged from the Warrens soon afterward, passing through a Gowachin-guarded gate, Broey’s people. A few blocks along they went through another gate, Human guards, all in Gar’s pay. Broey would learn of her presence here soon, Tria knew, but she’d said she was going into the Warrens. She came presently to an alleyway across from a Second Rank building. The windowless grey of the building’s lower floors presented a blank face broken only by the lattice armor of the entrance gate. Behind the gate lay a dimly lighted passage. Its deceptively plain walls concealed spy devices and automatic weapons.
Holding back her companions with a hand motion, Tria waited in the dark while she studied the building entrance across from her. The gate was on a simple latch. There was one doorguard in an alcove on the left near the door which was dimly visible beyond the armorwork of the gate. A building defense force stood ready to come at the doorguard’s summons or at the summons of those who watched through the spy devices.