“Dissolved well this node.”
How could you look at an individual life as a “node”?
If association with Calebans had taught him anything, it was that understanding between species was tenuous at best and trying to understand a Caleban could drive you insane. In what medium did a node dissolve?
McKie sighed.
For now, this Dosadi report from the Wreave and Laclac agents had to be accepted on its own limited terms. Powerful people in the Gowachin Confederacy had sequestered Humans and Gowachin on an unlisted planet. Dosadi—location unknown, but the scene of unspecified experiments and tests on an imprisoned population. This much the agents insisted was true. If confirmed, it was a shameful act. The frog people would know that, surely. Rather than let their shame be exposed, they could carry out the threat which the two agents reported: blast the captive planet out of existence, the population and all of the incriminating evidence with it.
McKie shuddered.
Dosadi, a planet of thinking creatures—sentients. If the Gowachin carried out their violent threat, a living world would be reduced to blazing gases and the hot plasma of atomic particles. Somewhere, perhaps beyond the reach of other eyes, something would strike fire against the void. The tragedy would require less than a standard second. The most concise thought about such a catastrophe would require a longer time than the actual event.
But if it happened and the other ConSentient species received absolute proof that it had happened … ahhh, then the ConSentiency might well be shattered. Who would use a jumpdoor, suspecting that he might be shunted into some hideous experiment? Who would trust a neighbor, if that neighbor’s habits, language, and body were different from his own? Yes … there would be more than Humans and Gowachin at each other’s throats. These were things all the species feared. Bildoon realized this. The threat to this mysterious Dosadi was a threat to all.
McKie could not shake the terrible image from his mind: an explosion, a bright blink stretching toward its own darkness. And if the ConSentiency learned of it … in that instant before their universe crumbled like a cliff dislodged in a lightning bolt, what excuses would be offered for the failure of reason to prevent such a thing?
Reason?
McKie shook his head, opened his eyes. It was useless to dwell on the worst prospects. He allowed the apartment’s sleep gloom to invade his senses, absorbed the familiar presence of his surroundings.
I’m a Saboteur Extraordinary and I’ve a job to do.
It helped to think of Dosadi that way. Solutions to problems often depended upon the will to succeed, upon sharpened skills and multiple resources. BuSab owned those resources and those skills.
McKie stretched his arms high over his head, twisted his blocky torso. The bedog rippled with pleasure at his movements. He whistled softly and suffered the kindling of morning light as the apartment’s window controls responded. A yawn stretched his mouth. He slid from the bedog and padded across to the window. The view stretched away beneath a sky like stained blue paper. He stared out across the spires and rooftops of Central Central. Here lay the heart of the domine planet from which the Bureau of Sabotage spread its multifarious tentacles.
He blinked at the brightness, took a deep breath.
The Bureau. The omnipresent, omniscient, omnivorous Bureau. The one source of unmonitored governmental violence remaining in the ConSentiency. Here lay the norm against which sanity measured itself. Each choice made here demanded utmost delicacy. Their common enemy was that never-ending sentient yearning for absolutes. And each hour of every waking workday, BuSab in all of its parts asked itself:
“What are we if we succumb to unbridled violence?”
The answer was there in deepest awareness:
“Then we are useless.”
ConSentient government worked because, no matter how they defined it, the participants believed in a common justice personally achievable. The Government worked because BuSab sat at its core like a terrible watchdog able to attack itself or any seat of power with a delicately balanced immunity. Government worked because there were places where it could not act without being chopped off. An appeal to BuSab made the individual as powerful as the ConSentiency. It all came down to the cynical, self-effacing behavior of the carefully chosen BuSab tentacles.
I don’t feel much like a BuSab tentacle this morning, McKie thought.
In his advancing years, he’d often experienced such mornings. He had a personal way of dealing with this mood: he buried himself in work.
McKie turned, crossed to the baffle into his bath where he turned his body over to the programmed ministrations of his morning toilet. The psyche-mirror on the bath’s far wall reflected his body while it examined and adjusted to his internal conditions. His eyes told him he was still a squat, dark-skinned gnome of a Human with red hair, features so large they suggested an impossible kinship with the frog people of the Gowachin. The mirror did not reflect his mind, considered by many to be the sharpest legal device in the ConSentiency.
The Daily Schedule began playing to McKie as he emerged from the bath. The DS suited its tone to his movements and the combined analysis of his psychophysical condition.
“Good morning, ser,” it fluted.
McKie, who could interpret the analysis of his mood from the DS tone, put down a flash of resentment. Of course he felt angry and concerned. Who wouldn’t under these circumstances?
“Good morning, you dumb inanimate object,” he growled. He slipped into a supple armored pullover, dull green and with the outward appearance of cloth.
The DS waited for his head to emerge.
“You wanted to be reminded, ser, that there is a full conference of the Bureau Directorate at nine local this morning, but the …”
“Of all the stupid …” McKie’s interruption stopped the DS. He’d been meaning for some time to reprogram the damned thing. No matter how carefully you set them, they always got out of phase. He didn’t bother to bridle his mood, merely spoke the key words in full emotional spate: “Now you hear me, machine: don’t you ever again choose that buddy-buddy conversational pattern when I’m in this mood! I want nothing less than a reminder of that conference. When you list such a reminder, don’t even suggest remotely that it’s my wish. Understood?”
“Your admonition recorded and new program instituted, ser.” The DS adopted a brisk, matter of fact tone as it continued: “There is a new reason for alluding to the conference.”
“Well, get on with it.”
McKie pulled on a pair of green shorts and matching kilt of armored material identical to that of the pullover.
The DS continued:
“The conference was alluded to, ser, as introduction to a new datum: you have been asked not to attend.”
McKie, bending to fit his feet into self-powered racing boots, hesitated, then:
“But they’re still going to have a showdown meeting with all the Gowachin in the Bureau?”
“No mention of that, ser. The message was that you are to depart immediately this morning on the field assignment which was discussed with you. Code Geevee was invoked. An unspecified Gowachin Phylum has asked that you proceed at once to their home planet. That would be Tandaloor. You are to consult there on a problem of a legal nature.”
McKie finished fitting the boots, straightened. He could feel all of his accumulated years as though there’d been no geriatric intervention. Geevee invoked a billion kinds of hell. It put him on his own with but one shopside backup facility: a Taprisiot monitor. He’d have his own Taprisiot link sitting safely here on CC while he went out and risked his vulnerable flesh. The Taprisiot served only one function: to note his death and record every aspect of his final moments—every thought, every memory. This would be part of the next agent’s briefing. And the next agent would get his own Taprisiot monitor etcetera, etcetera, etcetera … BuSab was notorious for gnawing away at its problems. The Bureau never gave up. But the astronomical cost of such a Taprisiot monitor left the
operative so gifted with only one conclusion: odds were not in his favor. There’d be no accolades, no cemetery rites for a dead hero … probably not even the physical substance of a hero for private grieving.
McKie felt less and less heroic by the minute.
Heroism was for fools and BuSab agents were not employed for their foolishness. He saw the reasoning, though. He was the best qualified non-Gowachin for dealing with the Gowachin. He looked at the nearest DS voder.
“Was it suggested that someone doesn’t want me at that conference?”
“There was no such speculation.”
“Who gave you this message?”
“Bildoon. Verified voiceprint. He asked that your sleep not be interrupted, that the message be given to you on awakening.”
“Did he say he’d call back or ask me to call him?”
“No.”
“Did Bildoon mention Dosadi?”
“He said the Dosadi problem is unchanged. Dosadi is not in my banks, ser. Did you wish me to seek more info …”
“No! I’m to leave immediately?”
“Bildoon said your orders have been cut. In relationship to Dosadi, he said, and these are his exact words: ‘The worst is probable. They have all the motivation required.’”
McKie ruminated aloud: “All the motivation … selfish interest or fear …”
“Ser, are you inquiring of …”
“No, you stupid machine! I’m thinking out loud. People do that. We have to sort things out in our heads, put a proper evaluation on available data.”
“You do it with extreme inefficiency.”
This startled McKie into a flash of anger. “But this job takes a sentient, a person, not a machine! Only a person can make the responsible decision. And I’m the only agent who understands them sufficiently.”
“Why not set a Gowachin agent to ferret out their …”
“So you’ve worked it out?”
“It was not difficult, even for a machine. Sufficient clues were provided. And since you’ll get a Taprisiot monitor, the project involves danger to your person. While I do not have specifics about Dosadi, the clear inference is that the Gowachin have engaged in questionable activity. Let me remind McKie that the Gowachin do not admit guilt easily. Very few non-Gowachin are considered by them to be worthy of their company and confidence. They do not like to feel dependent upon non-Gowachin. In fact, no Gowachin enjoys any dependent condition, not even when dependent upon another Gowachin. This is at the root of their law.”
This was a more emotionally loaded conversation than McKie had ever before heard from his DS. Perhaps his constant refusal to accept the thing on a personal anthropomorphic basis had forced it into this adaptation. He suddenly felt almost shy with the DS. What it had said was pertinent, and more than that, vitally important in a particular way: chosen to help him to the extent the DS was capable. In McKie’s thoughts, the DS was suddenly transformed into a valued confidante.
As though it knew his thoughts, the DS said:
“I’m still a machine. You are inefficient, but as you have correctly stated you have ways of arriving at accuracy which machines do not understand. We can only … guess, and we are not really programmed to guess unless specifically ordered to do so on a given occasion. Trust yourself.”
“But you’d rather I were not killed?”
“That is my program.”
“Do you have any more helpful suggestions?”
“You would be advised to waste as little time as possible here. There was a tone of urgency in Bildoon’s voice.”
McKie stared at the nearest voder. Urgency in Bildoon’s voice? Even under the most urgent necessity, Bildoon had never sounded urgent to McKie. Certainly, Dosadi could be an urgent matter, but … Why should that sound a sour note?
“Are you sure he sounded urgent?”
“He spoke rapidly and with obvious tensions.”
“Truthful?”
“The tone-spikes lead to that conclusion.”
McKie shook his head. Something about Bildoon’s behavior in this matter didn’t ring true, but whatever it was it escaped the sophisticated reading circuits of the DS.
And my circuits, too.
Still troubled, McKie ordered the DS to assemble a full travel kit and to read out the rest of the schedule. He moved to the tool cupboard beside his bath baffle as the DS began reeling off the schedule.
His day was to start with the Taprisiot appointment. He listened with only part of his attention, taking care to check the toolkit as the DS assembled it. There were plastipiks. He handled them gently as they deserved. A selection of stims followed. He rejected these, counting on the implanted sense/ muscle amplifiers which increased the capabilities of senior BuSab agents. Explosives in various denominations went into the kit—raygens, pentrates. Very careful with these dangerous items. He accepted multilenses, a wad of uniflesh with matching mediskin, solvos, miniputer. The DS extruded a life-monitor bead for the Taprisiot linkage. He swallowed it to give the bead time to anchor in his stomach before the Taprisiot appointment. A holoscan and matching blanks were accepted, as were ruptors and comparators. He rejected the adapter for simulation of target identities. It was doubtful he’d have time or facilities for such sophisticated refinements. Better to trust his own instincts.
Presently, he sealed the kit in its wallet, concealed the wallet in a pocket. The DS had gone rambling on:
“ … and you’ll arrive on Tandaloor at a place called Holy Running. The time there will be early afternoon.”
Holy Running!
McKie riveted his attention to this datum. A Gowachin saying skittered through his mind: The Law is a blind guide, a pot of bitter water. The Law is a deadly contest which can change as waves change.
No doubt of what had led his thoughts into that path. Holy Running was the place of Gowachin myth. Here, so their stories said, lived Mrreg, the monster who had set the immutable pattern of Gowachin character.
And now, McKie suspected he knew which Gowachin Phylum had summoned him. It could be any one of five Phyla at Holy Running, but he felt certain it’d be the worst of those five—the most unpredictable, the most powerful, the most feared. Where else could a thing such as Dosadi originate?
McKie addressed his DS:
“Send in my breakfast. Please record that the condemned person ate a hearty breakfast.”
The DS, programmed to recognize rhetoric for which there was no competent response, remained silent while complying.
All sentient beings are created unequal. The best society provides each with equal opportunity to float at his own level.
—The Gowachin Primary
By mid-afternoon, Jedrik saw that her gambit had been accepted. A surplus of fifty Humans was just the right size to be taken by a greedy underlying. Whoever it was would see the possibilities of continuing—ten here, thirty there—and because of the way she’d introduced this flaw, the next people discarded would be mostly Humans, but with just enough Gowachin to smack of retaliation.
It’d been difficult carrying out her daily routine knowing what she’d set in motion. It was all very well to accept the fact that you were going into danger. When the actual moment arrived, it always had a different character. As the subtle and not so subtle evidence of success accumulated, she felt the crazy force of it rolling over her. Now was the time to think about her true power base, the troops who would obey her slightest hint, the tight communications linkage with the Rim, the carefully selected and trained lieutenants. Now was the time to think about McKie slipping so smoothly into her trap. She concealed elation behind a facade of anger. They’d expect her to be angry.
The evidence began with a slowed response at her computer terminal. Someone was monitoring. Whoever had taken her bait wanted to be certain she was expendable. Wouldn’t want to eliminate someone and then discover that the eliminated someone was essential to the power structure. She’d made damned sure to cut a wide swath into a region which could be made non-essen
tial.
The microsecond delay from the monitoring triggered a disconnect on her telltale circuit, removing the evidence of her preparations before anyone could find it. She didn’t think there’d be that much caution in anyone who’d accept this gambit, but unnecessary chances weren’t part of her plan. She removed the telltale timer and locked it away in one of the filing cabinets, there to be destroyed with the other evidence when the Elector’s toads came prying. The lonely blue flash would be confined by metal walls which would heat to a nice blood red before lapsing into slag and ashes.
In the next stage, people averted their faces as they walked past her office doorway.
Ahhh, the accuracy of the rumor-trail.
The avoidance came so naturally: a glance at a companion on the other side, concentration on material in one’s hands, a brisk stride with gaze fixed on the corridor’s ends. Important business up there. No time to stop and chat with Keila Jedrik today.
By the Veil of Heaven! They were so transparent!
A Gowachin walked by examining the corridor’s blank opposite wall. She knew that Gowachin: one of the Elector’s spies. What would he tell Elector Broey today? Jedrik glared at the Gowachin in secret glee. By nightfall, Broey would know who’d picked up her gambit, but it was too small a bite to arouse his avarice. He’d merely log the information for possible future use. It was too early for him to suspect a sacrifice move.
A Human male followed the Gowachin. He was intent on the adjustment of his neckline and that, of course, precluded a glance at a Senior Liaitor in her office. His name was Drayjo. Only yesterday, Drayjo had made courting gestures, bending toward her over this very desk to reveal the muscles under his light grey coveralls. What did it matter that Drayjo no longer saw her as a useful conquest. His face was a wooden door, closed, locked, hiding nothing.
Avert your face, you clog!
When the red light glowed on her terminal screen, it came as anticlimax. Confirmation that her gambit had been accepted by someone who would shortly regret it. Communication flowed across the screen: