“What issues are at trial?”
She asked it with a childlike innocence which did not even fool Bildoon. They were forced to explain, however, because of those other judges to whom every nuance here was vital. She heard them out in silence.
“An alleged experiment on a sentient population confined to a planet called Dosadi … lack of informed consent by subject population charged … accusations of conspiracy against certain Gowachin and others not yet named …”
Two fingers pressed to his eyes in the guise of intense listening, McKie made contact with Jedrik, suggesting, conferring. They had to find a way out of this trap! When he looked up, he saw the suspicions in Parando’s face: Which body, which ego? McKie? Jedrik?
In the end, Ceylang hammered home the private message, demanding whether Jedrik had “any personal relationship with Defense Legum?”
Jedrik answered in a decidedly un-Dosadi fashion.
“Why … yes. We are lovers.”
In itself, this was not enough to exclude her from the arena unless Prosecution and the entire judicial panel agreed. Ceylang proposed the exclusion. Bildoon and Parando were predictable in their agreement. McKie waited for Broey.
“Agreed.”
Broey had a private compact with the shadow forces then. Jedrik and McKie had expected this, but had not anticipated the form confirmation would take.
McKie asked for a recess until the following morning.
With the most benign face on it, this was granted. Broey announced the decision, smiling down at Jedrik. It was a measure of McKie’s Dosadi conditioning that he could not find it in himself to blame Broey for wanting personal victory over the person who had beaten him on Dosadi.
Back in his quarters, Jedrik put a hand on McKie’s chest, spoke with eyes lowered.
“Don’t blame yourself, McKie. This was inevitable. Those judges, none of them, would’ve allowed any protest from you before seeing me in person on that arena floor.”
“I know.”
She looked up at him, smiling.
“Yes … of course. How like one person we are.”
For a time after that, they reviewed the assessment of the aides chosen for Broey. Shared memories etched away at minutiae. Could any choice be improved? Not one person was changed—Human or Gowachin. All of those advisors and aides were Dosadi-born. They could be depended upon to be loyal to their origins, to their conditioning, to themselves individually. For the task assigned to them, they were the best available.
McKie brought it to a close.
“I can’t leave the immediate area of the arena until the trial’s over.”
She knew that, but it needed saying.
There was a small cell adjoining his office, a bedog there, communications instruments, Human toilet facilities. They delayed going into the bedroom, turned to a low-key argument over the advisability of a body exchange. It was procrastination on both sides, outcome known in advance. Familiar flesh was familiar flesh, less distracting. It gave each of them an edge which they dared not sacrifice. McKie could play Jedrik and Jedrik could play McKie, but that would be dangerous play now.
When they retired, it was to make love, the most tender experience either had known. There was no submission, only a giving, sharing, an open exchange which tightened McKie’s throat with joy and fear, sent Jedrik into a fit of un-Dosadi sobbing.
When she’d recovered, she turned to him on the bed, touched his right cheek with a finger.
“McKie.”
“Yes?”
“I’ve never had to say this to another person, but …” She silenced his attempted interruption by punching his shoulder, leaning up on an elbow to look down at him. It reminded McKie of their first night together, and he saw that she had gone back into her Dosadi shell … but there was something else, a difference in the eyes.
“What is it?”
“Just that I love you. It’s a very interesting feeling, especially when you can admit it openly. How odd.”
“Stay here with me.”
“We both know I can’t. There’s no safe place here for either of us, but the one who …”
“Then let’s …”
“We’ve already decided against an exchange.”
“Where will you go?”
“Best you don’t know.”
“If …”
“No! I wouldn’t be safe as a witness; I’m not even safe at your side. We both …”
“Don’t go back to Dosadi.”
“Where is Dosadi? It’s the only place where I could ever feel at home, but Dosadi no longer exists.”
“I meant …”
“I know.”
She sat up, hugged her knees, revealing the sinewy muscles of her shoulders and back. McKie studied her, trying to fathom what it was she hid in that Dosadi shell. Despite the intimacy of their shared memories, something about her eluded him. It was as though he didn’t want to learn this thing. She would flee and hide, of course, but … He listened carefully as she began to speak in a faraway voice.
“It’d be interesting to go back to Dosadi someday. The differences …”
She looked over her shoulder at him.
“There are those who fear we’ll make over the ConSentiency in Dosadi’s image. We’ll try, but the result won’t be Dosadi. We’ll take what we judge to be valuable, but that’ll change Dosadi more than it changes you. Your masses are less alert, slower, less resourceful, but you’re so numerous. In the end, the ConSentiency will win, but it’ll no longer be the ConSentiency. I wonder what it’ll be when …”
She laughed at her own musings, shook her head.
“And there’s Broey. They’ll have to deal with Broey and the team we’ve given him. Broey Plus! Your ConSentiency hasn’t the faintest grasp of what we’ve loosed among them.”
“The predator in the flock.”
“To Broey, your people are like the Rim—a natural resource.”
“But he has no Pcharkys.”
“Not yet.”
“I doubt if the Calebans ever again will participate in …”
“There may be other ways. Look how easy it is for us.”
“But we were printed upon each other by …”
“Exactly! And they continue to suspect that you’re in my body and I’m in yours. Their entire experience precludes the free shift back and forth, one body to another …”
“Or this other thing …”
He caressed her mind.
“Yes! Broey won’t suspect until too late what’s in store for him. They’ll be a long time learning there’s no way to sort you from … me!”
This last was an exultant shout as she turned and fell upon him. It was a wild replay of their first night together. McKie abandoned himself to it. There was no other choice, no time for the mind to dwell on depressing thoughts.
In the morning, he had to tap his implanted amplifiers to bring his awareness to the required pitch for the arena. The process took a few minutes while he dressed.
Jedrik moved softly with her own preparations, straightened the bedog and caressed its resilient surface. She summoned a jumpdoor then, held him with a lingering kiss. The jumpdoor opened behind her as she pushed away from him.
McKie smelled familiar flowers, glimpsed the bowers of his Tutalsee island before the door blinked out of existence, hiding Jedrik and the island from him. Tutalsee? The moment of shocked understanding delayed him. She’d counted on that! He recovered, sent his mind leaping after her.
I’ll force an exchange! By the Gods …
His mind met pain, consuming, blinding pain. It was agony such as he’d not even imagined could exist.
Jedrik!
His mind held an unconscious Jedrik whose awareness had fled from pain. The contact was so delicate, like holding a newborn infant. The slightest relaxation and he knew he would lose her to … He felt that terrifying monster of the first exchange hovering in the background, but love and concern armed him against fear.
Frantic, McKie held that tenuous contact while he called a jumpdoor. There was a small delay and when the door opened, he saw through the portal the black, twisted wreckage which had been his bower island. A hot sun beat down on steaming cinders. And in the background, a warped metal object which might have been one of Tutalsee’s little four-place flitters rolled over, gurgled, and sank. The visible wreckage said the destructive force had been something like a pentrate, swift and all-consuming. The water around the island still bubbled with it. Even while he watched, the island began breaking up, its cinders drifting apart on the long, low waves. A breeze flattened the steaming smoke. Soon, there’d be nothing to show that beauty had floated here. With a pentrate, there would be nothing to recover … not even bodies to …
He hesitated, still holding his fragile grasp on Jedrik’s unconscious presence. The pain was only a memory now. Was it really Jedrik in his awareness, or only his remembered imprint of her? He tried to awaken the sleeping presence, failed. But small threads of memory emerged, and he saw that the destruction had been Jedrik’s doing, response to attack. The attackers had wanted a live hostage. They hadn’t anticipated that violent, unmistakable message.
“You won’t hold me over McKie’s head!”
But if there were no bodies …
Again, he tried to awaken that unconscious presence. Her memories were there, but she remained dormant. The effort strengthened his grip upon her presence, though. And he told himself it had to be Jedrik, or he wouldn’t know what had happened on the bower island.
Once more, he searched the empty water. Nothing.
A pentrate would’ve torn and battered everything around it. Shards of metal, flesh reduced to scattered cinders …
She’s dead. She has to be dead. A pentrate …
But that familiar presence lay slumbering in his mind.
The door clacker interrupted his reverie. McKie released the jumpdoor, turned to look through the bedside viewer at the scene outside his Legum quarters. The expected deputation had arrived. Confident, the puppet masters were moving even before confirmation of their Tutalsee gambit. They could not possibly know yet what McKie knew. There could be no jumpdoor or any other thread permitted to connect this group to Tutalsee.
McKie studied them carefully, keeping a bridle on his rage. There were eight of them, so contained, so well schooled in Dosadi self-control. So transparent to a Jedrik-amplified McKie. They were four Humans and four Gowachin. Overconfident. Jedrik had seen to that by leaving no survivors.
Again, McKie tried to awaken that unconscious presence. She would not respond.
Have I only built her out of my memories?
There was no time for such speculation. Jedrik had made her choice on Tutalsee. He had other choices to make here and now—for both of them. That ghostly presence locked in his mind would have to wait.
McKie punched the communicator which linked him to Broey, gave the agreed-upon signal.
“It’s time.”
He composed himself then, went to the door.
They’d sent no underlings. He gave them that. But they addressed him as Jedrik, made the anticipated demands, gloated over the hold they had upon him. It was only then that McKie saw fully how well Jedrik had measured these people; and how she had played upon her McKie in those last hours together like an exquisitely tuned instrument. Now, he understood why she’d made that violent choice.
As anticipated, the members of the delegation were extremely surprised when Broey’s people fell upon them without warning.
For the Gowachin, to stand alone against all adversity is the most sacred moment of existence.
—The Gowachin, a BuSab analysis
The eight prisoners were dumped on the arena floor, bound and shackled. McKie stopped near them, waiting for Ceylang to arrive. It was not yet dawn. The ceiling above the arena remained dark. A few of the transmitter eyes around the upper perimeter glittered to reveal that they were activated. More were coming alive by the moment. Only a few of the witness seats were occupied, but people were streaming in as word was passed. The judicial bench remained empty.
The outer areaway was a din of Courtarena security forces coming and going, people shouting orders, the clank of weapons, a sense of complete confusion there which gradually resolved itself as Broey led his fellow judges up onto their bench. The witness pen was also filling, people punching sleep from their eyes, great gaping yawns from the Gowachin.
McKie looked to Broey’s people, the ones who’d brought in the prisoners. He nodded for the captors to leave, giving them a Dosadi hand signal to remain available. They left.
Ceylang passed them as she entered, still fastening her robe. She hurried to McKie’s side, waited for the judges to be seated before speaking.
“What is the meaning of this? My attendants …”
Broey signaled McKie.
McKie stepped forward to address the bench, pointed to the eight bound figures who were beginning to stir and push themselves upright.
“Here you see my client.”
Parando started to speak, but Broey silenced him with a sharp word which McKie did not catch. It sounded like “frenzy.”
Bildoon sat in fearful fascination, unable to wrest his attention from the bound figures, all of whom remained silent. Yes, Bildoon would recognize those eight prisoners. In his limited, ConSentient fashion, Bildoon was sharp enough to recognize that he was in personal danger. Parando, of course, knew this immediately and watched Broey with great care.
Again, Broey nodded to McKie.
“A fraud has been perpetrated upon this court,” McKie said. “It is a fraud which was perpetrated against those great and gallant people, the Gowachin. Both Prosecution and Defense are its victims. The Law is its ultimate victim.”
It had grown much quieter in the arena. The observer seats were jammed, all the transmitter eyes alive. The faintest of dawn glow touched the translucent ceiling. McKie wondered what time it was. He had forgotten to put on any timepiece.
There was a stir behind McKie. He glanced back, saw attendants belatedly bringing Aritch into the arena. Oh, yes—they would have risked any delay to confer with Aritch. Aritch was supposed to be the other McKie expert. Too bad that this Human who looked like McKie was no longer the McKie they thought they knew.
Ceylang could not hold her silence. She raised a tendril for attention.
“This Tribunal …”
McKie interrupted.
“ … is composed of three people. Only three.”
He allowed them a moment to digest this reminder that Gowachin trial formalities still dominated this arena, and were like no other such formalities in the ConSentiency. It could’ve been fifty judges up there on that bench. McKie had witnessed Gowachin trials where people were picked at random off the streets to sit in judgment. Such jurists took their duties seriously, but their overt behavior could lead another sentient species to question this. The Gowachin chattered back and forth, arranged parties, exchanged jokes, asked each other rude questions. It was an ancient pattern. The jurists were required to become “a single organism.” Gowachin had their own ways of rushing that process.
But this Tribunal was composed of just three judges, only one of them visibly Gowachin. They were separate entities, their actions heavy with mannerisms foreign to the Gowachin. Even Broey, tainted by Dosadi, would be unfamiliar to the Gowachin observers. No “single organism” here holding to the immutable forms beneath Gowachin Law. That had to be deeply disturbing to the Legums who advised Ceylang.
Broey leaned forward, addressed the arena.
“We’ll dispense with the usual arguments while this new development is explored.”
Again, Parando tried to interrupt. Broey silenced him with a glance.
“I call Aritch of the Running Phylum,” McKie said.
He turned.
Ceylang stood in mute indecision. Her advisors remained at the back of the arena conferring among themselves. There seemed to be a difference of opi
nion among them.
Aritch shuffled to the death-focus of the arena, the place where every witness was required to stand. He glanced at the instruments of pain arrayed beneath the judicial bench, cast a wary look at McKie. The old High Magister appeared harried and undignified. That hurried conference to explore this development must’ve been a sore trial to the old Gowachin.
McKie crossed to the formal position beside Aritch, addressed the judges.
“Here we have Aritch, High Magister of the Running Phylum. We were told that if guilt were to be found in this arena, Aritch bore that guilt. He, so we were led to believe, was the one who made the decision to imprison Dosadi. But how can that be so? Aritch is old, but he isn’t as old as Dosadi. Then perhaps his alleged guilt is to be found in concealing the imprisonment of Dosadi. But Aritch summoned an agent of BuSab and sent that agent openly to Dosadi.”
A disturbance among the eight shackled prisoners interrupted McKie. Several of the prisoners were trying to get to their feet, but the links of the shackles were too short.
On the judicial bench, Parando started to lean forward, but Broey hauled him back.
Yes, Parando and others were recalling the verities of a Gowachin Courtarena, the constant reversals of concepts common throughout the rest of the ConSentiency.
To be guilty is to be innocent. Thus, to be innocent is to be guilty.
At a sharp command from Broey, the prisoners grew quiet.
McKie continued.
“Aritch, conscious of the sacred responsibilities which he carried upon his back as a mother carries her tads, was deliberately named to receive the punishment blow lest that punishment be directed at all Gowachin everywhere. Who chose this innocent High Magister to suffer for all Gowachin?”
McKie pointed to the eight shackled prisoners.
“Who are these people?” Parando demanded.
McKie allowed the question to hang there for a long count. Parando knew who these eight were. Did he think he could divert the present course of events by such a blatant ploy?
Presently, McKie spoke.
“I will enlighten the court in due course. My duty, however, comes first. My client’s innocence comes first.”