“You are engaging in strange behavior for a Legum. Yes, bring it.” This last was addressed to someone offscreen. Another attendant appeared, carrying a white garment shaped somewhat like a long apron with sleeves. The attendant proceeded to put this onto Mrreg, who ignored him, concentrating on McKie.
“Do you have any idea what you’re doing, McKie?”
“Preparing to act for my client.”
“I see. Who told you about me?”
McKie shook his head.
“Did you really believe me unable to detect your presence or interpret the implications of what my own senses tell me?”
McKie saw that the Gowachin failed to see beneath the surface taunting. Mrreg turned to the attendant who was tying a green ribbon at the back of the apron. The old Gowachin had to lean forward for this. “A little tighter,” he said.
The attendant retied the ribbon.
Addressing McKie, Mrreg said, “Please forgive the distraction. This must proceed at its own pace.”
McKie absorbed this, assessed it Dosadi fashion. He could see the makings of an important Gowachin ritual here, but it was a new one to him. No matter. That could wait. He continued speaking, probing this Mrreg.
“When you found your own peculiar uses for Dosadi …”
“Peculiar? It’s a universal motivation, McKie, that one tries to reduce the competition”
“Did you assess the price correctly, the price you might be asked to pay?”
“Oh, yes. I knew what I might have to pay.”
There was a clear tone of resignation in the Gowachin’s voice, a rare tone for his species. McKie hesitated. The attendant who’d brought the apron left the room, never once glancing in McKie’s direction, although there had to be a screen to show whatever Mrreg saw of his caller.
“You wonder why I sent a proxy to hire the Legum?” Mrreg asked.
“Why Aritch?”
“Because he’s a candidate for … greater responsibilities. You know, McKie, you astonish me. Undoubtedly you know what I could have done to you for this impertinence, yet that doesn’t deter you.”
This revealed more than Mrreg might have intended, but he remained unaware (or uncaring) of what McKie saw. For his part, McKie maintained a bland exterior, as blank as that of any Dosadi.
“I have a single purpose,” McKie said. “Not even my client will sway me from it.”
“The function of a Legum,” Mrreg said.
The attendant of the white apron returned with an unsheathed blade. McKie glimpsed a jeweled handle and glittering sweep of cutting edge about twenty centimeters long. The blade curved back upon itself in a tight arc at the tip. The attendant, his back to McKie, stood facing Mrreg. The blade no longer was visible.
Mrreg, his left side partly obscured from McKie by the attendant, leaned to the right and peered up at the screen through which he watched McKie.
“You’ve never been appraised of the ceremony we call Laupuk. It’s very important and we’ve been remiss in leaving this out of your education. Laupuk was essential before such a … project as Dosadi could be set in motion. Try to understand this ritual. It will help you prepare your case.”
“What was your Phylum?” McKie asked.
“That’s no longer important but … very well. It was Great Awakening. I was High Magister for two decades before we made the Dosadi decision.”
“How many Rim bodies have you used up?”
“My final one. That, too, is no longer important. Tell me, McKie, when did you suspect Aritch was only a proxy?”
“When I realized that not all Gowachin were born Gowachin.”
“But Aritch …”
“Ahh, yes: Aritch aspires to greater responsibilities.”
“Yes … of course. I see. The Dosadi decision had to go far beyond a few phylums or a single species. There had to be a … I believe you Humans call it a ‘High Command.’ Yes, that would’ve become obvious to one as alert as you now appear. Your many marriages deceived us, I think. Was that deliberate?”
Secure behind his Dosadi mask, McKie decided to lie.
“Yes.”
“Ahhhbhhhhh.”
Mrreg seemed to shrivel into himself, but rallied.
“I see. We were made to believe you some kind of dilettante with perverted emotions. It’d be judged a flaw which we could exploit. Then there’s another High Command and we never suspected.”
It all came out swiftly, revealing the wheels within wheels which ruled Mrreg’s view of the ConSentient universe. McKie marveled at how much more was said than the bare words. This one had been a long time away from Dosadi and had not been born there, but there were pressures on Mrreg now forcing him to the limits of what he’d learned on Dosadi.
McKie did not interrupt:
“We didn’t expect you to penetrate Aritch’s role, but that was not our intent, as you know. I presume …”
Whatever Mrreg presumed, he decided not to say it, musing aloud instead.
“One might almost believe you were born on Dosadi.”
McKie remained silent, allowing the fear in that conjecture to fill Mrreg’s consciousness.
Presently, Mrreg asked, “Do you blame all Gowachin?”
Still, McKie remained silent.
Mrreg became agitated.
“We are a government of sorts, my High Command. People can be induced not to question a government.”
McKie decided to press this nerve.
“Governments always commit their entire populations when the demands grow heavy enough. By their passive acceptance, these populations become accessories to whatever is done in their name.”
“You’ve provided free use of jumpdoors for the Dosadi?”
McKie nodded. “The Calebans are aware of their obligation. Jedrik has been busy instructing her compatriots.”
“You think to loose the Dosadi upon the ConSentiency and hunt down my High Command? Have a care, McKie. I warn you not to abandon your duties as a Legum, or to turn your back on Aritch.”
McKie continued silent.
“Don’t make that error, McKie. Aritch is your client. Through him you represent all Gowachin.”
“A Legum requires a responsible client,” McKie said. “Not a proxy, but a client whose acts are brought into question by the case being tried.”
Mrreg revealed Gowachin signs of deep concern.
“Hear me, McKie. I haven’t much time.”
In a sudden rush of apprehension, McKie focused on the attendant with the blade who stood there partly obscuring the seated Gowachin. Mrreg spoke in a swift spill of words.
“By our standards, McKie, you are not yet very well educated in Gowachin necessities. That was our error. And now your … impetuosity has put you into a position which is about to become untenable.”
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 prevailed 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 fend 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.