“You’re lying.”
“Even you, Havvy, are capable of recognizing a truth. I’m going to release you, pass you back through the lines to Broey. Tell him what you learned from me.”
“It’s a lie! They’re not going to …”
“Ask Aritch for yourself.”
Havvy didn’t ask “Aritch who?” He lifted himself from the chair.
“I will.”
“Tell Broey we’ve less than sixty hours. None of us who can resist mind erasure will be permitted to escape.”
“Us?”
McKie nodded, thinking: Yes, I am Dosadi now. He said:
“Get out of here.”
It afforded him a measure of amusement that the door was opened by the sub-commander just as Havvy reached it.
“See to him yourself,” McKie said, indicating Havvy. “I’ll be ready to go in a moment.”
Without any concern about whether the subcommander understood the nature of the assignment, McKie closed his eyes in thought. There remained the matter of Mrreg, who’d sent twenty Gowachin from Tandaloor to get his people off the planet. Mrreg. That was the name of the mythical monster who’d tested the first primitive Gowachin people almost to extinction, setting the pattern of their deepest instincts.
Mrreg?
Was it code, or did some Gowachin actually use that name? Or was it a role that some Gowachin filled?
Does a populace have informed consent when a ruling minority acts in secret to ignite a war, doing this to justify the existence of the minority’s forces? History already has answered that question. Every society in the ConSentiency today reflects the historical judgment that failure to provide full information for informed consent on such an issue represents an ultimate crime.
—from The Trial of Trials
Less than an hour after closing down at Gate Eighteen, McKie and his escort arrived back at Jedrik’s headquarters building. He led them to the heavily guarded side entrance with its express elevator, not wanting to pass Pcharky at this moment. Pcharky was an unnecessary distraction. He left the escort in the hallway with instructions to get food and rest, signaled for the elevator. The elevator door was opened by a small Human female of about fifteen years who nodded him into the dim interior.
McKie, his natural distrust of even the young on this planet well masked, nevertheless kept her under observation as he accepted the invitation. She was a gamin child with dirty face and hands, a torn grey single garment cut off at the knees. Her very existence as a Dosadi survivor said she’d undoubtedly sold her body many times for scraps of food. He realized how much Dosadi had influenced him when he found that he couldn’t raise even the slightest feeling of censure at this knowledge. You did what the conditions around you demanded when those conditions were overwhelming. It was an ultimate question: this or death? And certainly some of them chose death.
“Jedrik,” he said.
She worked her controls and he found himself presently in an unfamiliar hallway. Two familiar guards stood at a doorway down the hall, however. They betrayed not the slightest interest in him as he opened the door between them swiftly and strode through.
It was a tiny anteroom, empty, but another door directly in front of him. He opened this with more confidence than he felt, entered a larger space full of projection-room gloom with shadowed figures seated facing a holographic focus on his left. McKie identified Jedrik by her profile, slipped into a seat beside her.
She kept her attention on the h-focus where a projection of Broey stood looking out at something over their shoulders. McKie recognized the subtle slippage of computer simulation. That was not a flesh-and-blood Broey in the focus.
Someone on the far side of the room stood up and crossed to sit beside another figure in the gloom. McKie recognized Gar as the man moved through one of the projection beams.
McKie whispered to Jedrik, “Why simulation?”
“He’s beginning to do things I didn’t anticipate.”
The suicide missions. McKie looked at the simulation, wondered why there was no sync-sound. Ahhh, yes. They were lip-reading, and it was silent to reduce distractions, to amplify concentration. Yes, Jedrik was reworking the simulation model of Broey which she carried in her head. She would also carry another model, even more accurate than the one of Broey, which would give her a certain lead time on the reactions of one Jorj X. McKie.
“Would you really have done it?” he asked.
“Why do you distract me with such nonsense?”
He considered. Yes, it was a good question. He already knew the answer. She would have done it: traded bodies with him and escaped outside the God Wall as McKie. She might still do it, unless he could anticipate the mechanics of the transfer.
By now, she knew about the sixty-hour limit and would suspect its significance. Less than sixty hours. And the Dosadi could make extremely complex projections from limited data. Witness this Broey simulation.
The figure in the focus was talking to a fat Human female who held a tube which McKie recognized as a communicator for field use.
Jedrik spoke across the room to Gar.
“She still with him?”
“Addicted.”
A two-sentence exchange, and it condensed an entire conversation about possible uses of that woman. McKie did not ask addicted to what. There were too many such substances on Dosadi, each with peculiar characteristics, often involving odd monopolies with which everyone seemed familiar. This was a telltale gap in Aritch’s briefings: the monopolies and their uses.
As McKie absorbed the action in the focus, the reasons behind this session became more apparent. Broey was refusing to believe the report from Havvy.
And there was Havvy in the focus.
Jedrik favored McKie with one flickering glance as Havvy-simulation appeared. Certainly. She factored McKie into her computations.
McKie compressed his lips. She knew Havvy would contaminate me. They couldn’t say “I love you” on this damned planet. Oh, no. They had to create a special Dosadi production number.
“Most of the data for this originated before the breakup,” McKie said. “It’s useless. Rather than ask the computer to play pretty pictures for us, why don’t we examine our own memories? Surely, somewhere in the combined experiences with Broey …”
A chuckle somewhere to the left stopped him.
Too late, McKie saw that every seat in the room had an arm keyed to the simulations. They were doing precisely what he’d suggested, but in a more sophisticated way. The figures at the focus were being adjusted to the combined memories. There was such a keyed arm at McKie’s right hand. He suddenly realized how tactless and lecturing he still must appear to these people. They didn’t waste energy on unnecessary words. Anyone who did must be subnormal, poorly trained or … or not from Dosadi.
“Does he always state the obvious?” Gar asked.
McKie wondered if he’d blown his lieutenancy, lost the opportunity to explore the mystery of the Rim, but … no, there wasn’t time for that now. He’d have to penetrate the Rim another way.
“He’s new,” Jedrik said. “New is not necessarily naive, as you should know.”
“He has you doing it now,” Gar said.
“Guess again.”
McKie put a hand to the simulation controls under his right hand, tested the keys. He had it in a moment. They were similar to such devices in the ConSentiency, an adaptation from the DemoPol inputs, no doubt. Slowly, he changed the Broey at the focus, heavier, the sagging jowls and node wattles of a breeding male Gowachin. McKie froze the image.
“Tentative?” Gar asked.
Jedrik answered for him.
“It’s knowledge he brought here with him.” She did something to her controls, stopped the projection, and raised the room lights.
McKie noted that Tria was nowhere in the room.
“The Gowachin have sequestered their females somewhere,” McKie said. “That somewhere should not be difficult to locate. Send word to Tria that sh
e must not mount her attack on Broey’s corridor just yet.”
“Why delay?” Gar demanded.
“Broey will have all but evacuated the corridor by now,” McKie said.
Gar was angry and showing it.
“Not a single one of them has gone through that Rim gate.”
“Not to the Rim,” Jedrik said.
It was clear to her now. McKie had supplied the leverage she needed. It was time now to employ him as she’d always intended. She glanced at McKie.
“We have unfinished business. Are you ready?”
He held his silence. How could he answer such a Dosadi-weighted question? There were so many things left unspoken on this planet, only the native-born could understand them all. McKie felt once more that he was a dull outsider, a child of dubious potential among normal adults.
Jedrik arose, looked across at Gar.
“Send word to Tria to hold herself in readiness for another assignment. Tell Broey. Call him on an open line. We now have an excellent use for your fanatics. If only a few of your people fight through to that Graluz complex, it’ll be enough and Broey will know it.”
McKie noted that she spoke to Gar with a familiar teaching emphasis. It was the curiously weighted manner she’d once used with McKie, but no longer found necessary. His recognition of this amused her.
“Come along, McKie. We haven’t much time.”
Does a population have informed consent when that population is not taught the inner workings of its monetary system, and then is drawn, all unknowing, into economic adventures?
—from The Trial of Trials
For almost an hour after the morning meal, Aritch observed Ceylang as she worked with the McKie simulator. She was pushing herself hard, believing Wreave honor at stake, and had almost reached the pitch Aritch desired.
Ceylang had set up her own simulator situation: McKie interviewing five of Broey’s Gowachin. She had the Gowachin come to McKie in surrender, hands extended, the webbed fingers exposed to show that the talons were withdrawn.
Simulator-McKie merely probed for military advantages.
“Why does Broey attack in this fashion?”
Or he’d turn to some places outside the h-focus of the simulator.
“Send reinforcements into that area.”
Nothing about the Rim.
Earlier, Ceylang had tried the issue with a prisoner simulation where the five Gowachin tried to confuse McKie by presenting a scenario in which Broey massed his forces at the corridor. The makings of a breakout to the Rim appeared obvious.
Simulator-McKie asked the prisoners why they lied.
Ceylang cleared the simulator and sat back. She saw Aritch at the observation window, opened a channel to him.
“Something has to be wrong in the simulation. McKie cannot be led into questioning the purposes of the Rim.”
“I assure you that simulation is remarkable in its accuracy. Remarkable.”
“Then why …”
“Perhaps he already knows the answer. Why don’t you try him with Jedrik? Here …” Aritch operated the controls at the observer station. “This might help. This is a record of McKie in recent action on Dosadi.”
The simulator presented a view down a covered passage through a building. Artificial light. Darkness at the far end of the passage. McKie, two blocky guards in tow, approached the viewers.
Ceylang recognized the scene. She’d watched this action at Gate Eighteen from several angles; had seen this passage empty before the battle, acquainting herself with the available views. As she’d watched it then, the passage had filled with Human defenders. There was a minor gate behind the viewer and she knew the viewer itself to be only a bright spot, a fleck of glittering impurity in an otherwise drab brick over the gate’s archway.
Now, the long passage seemed strange to Ceylang without its throng of defenders. There were only a few workmen along its length as McKie passed. The workmen repaired service pipes in the ceiling. A cleanup crew washed down patches of blood at the far end of the passage, the high-water mark of the Gowachin attack. An officer leaned against a wall near the viewer, a bored expression on his face which did not mislead Ceylang. He was there to watch McKie. Three soldiers squatted nearby rolling hexi-bones for coins which lay in piles before each man. Every now and then, one of the gamblers would pass a coin to the watching officer. A repair supervisor stood with his back to the viewer, notebook in hand, writing a list of supplies to complete the job. McKie and his guards were forced to step around these people. As they passed, the officer turned, looked directly into the viewer, smiled.
“That officer,” Ceylang said. “One of your people?”
“No.”
The viewpoint shifted, looking down on the gate itself, McKie in profile. The gatekeeper was a teenager with a scar down his right cheek and a broken nose. McKie showed no signs of recognition, but the youth knew McKie.
“You go through on request.”
“When did she call?”
“Ten.”
“Let us through.”
The gate was opened. McKie and his guards went through, passed beyond the viewer’s focus.
The youthful gatekeeper stood up, smashed the viewer. The h-focus went blank.
Aritch looked down from his observation booth for a moment before speaking.
“Who called?”
“Jedrik?” Ceylang spoke without thinking.
“What does that conversation tell you? Quickly!”
“That Jedrik anticipated his movements, was observing him all the time.”
“What else?”
“That McKie … knows this, knows she can anticipate him.”
“She carries a better simulation of him in her head than we have … there.”
Aritch pointed at the h-focus area.
“But they left so much unspoken!” Ceylang said.
Aritch remained silent.
Ceylang closed her eyes. It was like mind reading. It confused her.
Aritch interrupted her musings.
“What about that officer and the gatekeeper?”
She shook her head.
“You’re wise to use living observers there. They all seem to know when they’re being watched. And how it’s done.”
“Even McKie.”
“He didn’t look at the viewers.”
“Because he assumed from the first that we’d have him under almost constant observation. He’s not concerned about the mechanical intrusions. He has built a simulation McKie of his own who acts on the surface of the real McKie.”
“That’s your assumption?”
“We arrived at this from observation of Jedrik in her dealings with McKie. She peels away the simulation layers one at a time, coming closer and closer to the actuality at the core.”
Another observation bothered Ceylang.
“Why’d the gatekeeper shut down that viewer just then?”
“Obviously because Jedrik told him to do that.”
Ceylang shuddered.
“Sometimes I think those Dosadi play us like a fine instrument.”
“But of course! That’s why we sent them our McKie.”
The music of a civilization has far-reaching consequences on consciousness and, thus, influences the basic nature of a society. Music and its rhythms divert and compel the awareness, describing the limits within which a consciousness, thus fascinated, may operate. Control the music, then, and you own a powerful tool with which to shape the society.
—The Dosadi Analysis, BuSab Documents
It was a half-hour before Jedrik and McKie found themselves in the hallway leading to her quarters. McKie, aware of the effort she was expending to conceal a deep weariness, watched her carefully. She concentrated on presenting a show of vitality, her attention glued on the prospect ahead. There was no way of telling what went on in her mind. McKie did not attempt to break the silence. He had his own worries.
Which was the real Jedrik? How was she going to employ Pcharky? Could
he resist her?
He knew he was close to a solution of the Dosadi mystery, but the prospect of the twin gambles he was about to take filled him with doubts.
On coming from the projection room, they’d found themselves in a strange delaying situation, as though it were something planned for their frustration. Everything had been prepared for their movement—guards warned, elevator waiting, doors opened. But every time they thought the way clear, they met interference. Except for the obvious importance of the matters which delayed them, it was easy to imagine a conspiracy.
A party of Gowachin at Gate Seventy wanted to surrender, but they demanded a parley first. One of Jedrik’s aides didn’t like the situation. Something about the assessment of the offer bothered her, and she wanted to discuss it with Jedrik. She stopped them halfway down the first hall outside the projection room.
The aide was an older woman who reminded McKie vaguely of a Wreave lab worker at BuSab, one who’d always been suspicious of computers, even antagonistic toward them. This Wreave had read every bit of history he could find about the evolution of such instruments and liked to remind his listeners of the misuses of the DemoPol. Human history had provided him with abundant ammunition, what with its periodic revolts against “enslavement by machines.” Once, he’d cornered McKie.
“Look here! See this sign: ‘Gigo.’ That’s a very old sign that was hung above one of your ancient computers. It’s an acronym: Garbage In, Garbage Out.’ You see! They knew.”
Yes. Jedrik’s female aide reminded him of that Wreave.
McKie listened to her worries. She roamed all around a central disquiet, never settling on a particular thing. Aware of Aritch’s deadline and Jedrik’s fatigue, McKie felt the pressures bearing down upon him. The aide’s data was accurate. Others had checked it. Finally, he could hold his impatience no longer.
“Who fed this data into your computer?”
The aide was startled at the interruption, but Jedrik turned to him, waiting.
“I think it was Holjance,” the aide said. “Why?”
“Get him in here.”