The purely academic anatomy lessons and the practice sessions on lifelike dummies had come to deadly focus.
“Just to the left of the stomach circle imagine a small triangle with an apex at the center of the stomach circle extended horizontally and the base even with the bottom of the stomach circle. Strike into the lower outside corner of this triangle and slightly upward toward the midline.”
About the only satisfaction McKie had found in the event was that Pirgutud had died cleanly and quickly with one stroke. McKie had not entered Gowachin Law as a “hacker.”
What had there been in that case and its bloody ending to amuse the Gowachin? The answer filled McKie with a profound sense of peril.
The Gowachin were amused at themselves because they had so misjudged me! But I’d planned all along for them to misjudge me. That was what amused them!
Having provided McKie with a polite period for reflection, the old Gowachin continued:
“I’d bet against you, McKie. The odds, you understand? You delighted me nonetheless. You instructed us while winning your case in a classic manner which would’ve done credit to the best of us. That is one of the Law’s purposes, of course: to test the qualities of those who choose to employ it. Now what did you expect to find when you answered our latest summons to Tandaloor?”
The question’s abrupt shift almost caught McKie by surprise.
I’ve been too long away from the Gowachin, he thought. I can’t relax even for an instant.
It was almost a palpable thing: if he missed a single beat of the rhythms in this room, he and an entire planet could fall before Gowachin judgment. For a civilization which based its law on the Courtarena where any participant could be sacrificed, anything was possible. McKie chose his next words with life-and-death care.
“You summoned me, that is true, but I came on official business of my Bureau. It’s the Bureau’s expectations which concern me.”
“Then you are in a difficult position because you’re also a Legum of the Gowachin Bar subject to our demands. Do you know me?”
This was a Magister, a Foremost-Speaker from the “Phylum of Phylums,” no doubt of it. He was a survivor in one of the most cruel traditions known to the sentient universe. His abilities and resources were formidable and he was on his home ground. McKie chose the cautious response.
“On my arrival I was told to come to this place at this time. That is what I know.”
The least thing that is known shall govern your acts. This was the course of evidence for the Gowachin. McKie’s response put a legal burden on his questioner.
The old Gowachin’s hands clutched with pleasure at the level of artistry to which this contest had risen. There was a momentary silence during which Ceylang gathered her robe tightly and moved even closer to the swingdesk. Now, there was tension in her movements. The Magister stirred, said:
“I have the disgusting honor to be High Magister of the Running Phylum, Aritch by name.”
As he spoke, his right hand thrust out, took the blue box, and dropped it into McKie’s lap. “I place the binding oath upon you in the name of the book!”
As McKie had expected, it was done swiftly. He had the box in his hands while the final words of the ancient legal challenge were ringing in his ears. No matter the ConSentient modifications of Gowachin Law which might apply in this situation, he was caught in a convoluted legal maneuvering. The metal of the box felt cold against his fingers. They’d confronted him with the High Magister. The Gowachin were dispensing with many preliminaries. This spoke of time pressures and a particular assessment of their own predicament. McKie reminded himself that he was dealing with people who found pleasure in their own failures, could be amused by death in the Courtarena, whose most consummate pleasure came when the currents of their own Law were changed artistically.
McKie spoke with the careful formality which ritual required if he were to emerge alive from this room.
“Two wrongs may cancel each other. Therefore, let those who do wrong do it together. That is the true purpose of Law.”
Gently, McKie released the simple swing catch on the box, lifted the lid to verify the contents. This must be done with precise attention to formal details. A bitter, musty odor touched his nostrils as the lid lifted. The box held what he’d expected: the book, the knife, the rock. It occurred to McKie then that he was holding the original of all such boxes. It was a thing of enormous antiquity—thousands upon thousands of standard years. Gowachin professed the belief that the Frog God had created this box, this very box, and its contents as a model, the symbol of “the only workable Law.”
Careful to do it with his right hand, McKie touched each item of the box in its turn, closed the lid and latched it. As he did this, he felt that he stepped into a ghostly parade of Legums, names imbedded in the minstrel chronology of Gowachin history.
Bishkar who concealed her eggs …
Kondush the Diver …
Dritaik who sprang from the marsh and laughed at Mrreg …
Tonkeel of the hidden knife …
McKie wondered then how they would sing about him. Would it be McKie the blunderer? His thoughts raced through review of the necessities. The primary necessity was Aritch. Little was known about this High Magister outside the Gowachin Federation, but it was said that he’d once won a case by finding a popular bias which allowed him to kill a judge. The commentary on this coup said Aritch “embraced the Law in the same way that salt dissolves in water.” To the initiates, this meant Aritch personified the basic Gowachin attitude toward their Law: “respectful disrespect” It was a peculiar form of sanctity. Every movement of your body was as important as your words. The Gowachin made it an aphorism.
“You hold your life in your mouth when you enter the Courtarena.”
They provided legal ways to kill any participant—judges, Legums, clients … But it must be done with exquisite legal finesse, with its justifications apparent to all observers, and with the most delicate timing. Above all, one could kill in the arena only when no other choice offered the same worshipful disrespect for Gowachin Law. Even while changing the Law, you were required to revere its sanctity.
When you entered the Courtarena, you had to feel that peculiar sanctity in every fiber. The forms … the forms … the forms … With that blue box in his hands, the deadly forms of Gowachin Law dominated every movement, every word. Knowing McKie was not Gowachin-born, Aritch was putting time pressures on him, hoping for an immediate flaw. They didn’t want this Dosadi matter in the arena. That was the immediate contest. And if it did get to the arena … well, the crucial matter would be selection of the judges. Judges were chosen with great care. Both sides maneuvered in this, being cautious not to intrude a professional legalist onto the bench. Judges could represent those whom the Law had offended. They could be private citizens in any number satisfactory to the opposing forces. Judges could be (and often were) chosen for their special knowledge of a case at hand. But here you were forced to weigh the subtleties of prejudgment. Gowachin Law made a special distinction between prejudgment and bias.
McKie considered this.
The interpretation of bias was: “If I can rule for a particular side I will do so.”
For prejudgment: “No matter what happens in the arena I will rule for a particular side.”
Bias was permitted, but not prejudgment.
Aritch was the first problem, his possible prejudgments, his bias, his inborn and most deeply conditioned attitudes. In his deepest feelings, he would look down on all non-Gowachin legal systems as “devices to weaken personal character through appeals to illogic, irrationality, and to ego-centered selfishness in the name of high purpose.”
If Dosadi came to the arena, it would be tried under modified Gowachin Law. The modifications were a thorn in the Gowachin skin. They represented concessions made for entrance into the ConSentiency. Periodically, the Gowachin tried to make their Law the basis for all ConSentient Law.
McKie recalled that a G
owachin had once said of ConSentient Law:
“It fosters greed, discontent, and competitiveness not based on excellence but on appeals to prejudice and materialism.”
Abruptly, McKie remembered that this was a quotation attributed to Aritch, High Magister of the Running Phylum. Were there even more deeply hidden motives in what the Gowachin did here?
Showing signs of impatience, Aritch inhaled deeply through his chest ventricles, said:
“You are now my Legum. To be convicted is to go free because this marks you as enemy of all government. I know you to be such an enemy, McKie.”
“You know me,” McKie agreed.
It was more than ritual response and obedience to forms, it was truth. But it required great effort for McKie to speak it calmly. In the almost fifty years since he’d been admitted to the Gowachin Bar, he’d served that ancient legal structure four times in the Courtarena, a minor record among the ordinary Legums. Each time, his personal survival had been in the balance. In all of its stages, this contest was a deadly battle. The loser’s life belonged to the winner and could be taken at the winner’s discretion. On rare occasions, the loser might be sold back to his own Phylum as a menial. Even the losers disliked this choice.
Better clean death than dirty life.
The blood-encrusted knife in the blue box testified to the more popular outcome. It was a practice which made for rare litigation and memorable court performances.
Aritch, speaking with eyes closed and the Running Phylum tattoos formally displayed, brought their encounter to its testing point.
“Now McKie, you will tell me what official matters of the Bureau of Sabotage bring you to the Gowachin Federation.”
Law must retain useful ways to break with traditional forms because nothing is more certain than that the forms of Law remain when all justice is gone.
—Gowachin aphorism
He was tall for a Dosadi Gowachin, but fat and ungroomed. His feet shuffled when he walked and there was a permanent stoop to his shoulders. A flexing wheezing overcame his chest ventricles when he became excited. He knew this and was aware that those around him knew it. He often used this characteristic as a warning, reminding people that no Dosadi held more power than he, and that power was deadly. All Dosadi knew his name: Broey. And very few misinterpreted the fact that he’d come up through the Sacred Congregation of the Heavenly Veil to his post as chief steward of Control: The Elector. His private army was Dosadi’s largest, most efficient, and best armed. Broey’s intelligence corps was a thing to invoke fear and admiration. He maintained a fortified suite atop his headquarters building, a structure of stone and plasteel which fronted the main arm of the river in the heart of Chu. Around this core, the twisting walled fortifications of the city stepped outward in concentric rings. The only entrance to Broey’s citadel was through a guarded Tube Gate in a subbasement, designated TG One. TG One admitted the select of the select and no others.
In the forenoon, the ledges outside Broey’s windows were a roosting place for carrion birds, who occupied a special niche on Dosadi. Since the Lords of the Veil forbade the eating of sentient flesh by sentient, this task devolved upon the birds. Flesh from the people of Chu and even from the Rim carried fewer of the planet’s heavy metals. The carrion birds prospered. A flock of them strutted along Broey’s ledge, coughing, squawking, defecating, brushing against each other with avian insolence while they watched the outlying streets for signs of food. They also watched the Rim, but it had been temporarily denied to them by a sonabarrier. Bird sounds came through a voder into one of the suite’s eight rooms. This was a yellow-green space about ten meters long and six wide occupied by Broey and two Humans.
Broey uttered a mild expletive at the bird noise. The confounded creatures interfered with clear thinking. He shuffled to the window and silenced the voder. In the sudden quiet he looked out at the city’s perimeter and the lower ledges of the enclosing cliffs. Another Rim foray had been repulsed out there in the night. Broey had made a personal inspection in a convoy of armored vehicles earlier. The troops liked it that he occasionally shared their dangers. The carrion birds already had cleaned up most of the mess by the time the armored column swept through. The flat back structure of Gowachin, who had no front rib cage, had been easily distinguishable from the white framework which had housed Human organs. Only a few rags of red and green flesh had marked where the birds had abandoned their feast when the sonabarriers herded them away.
When he considered the sonabarriers, Broey’s thoughts grew hard and clear. The sonabarriers were one of Gar’s damned affectations! Let the birds finish it.
But Gar insisted a few bodies be left around to make the point for the Rim survivors that their attacks were hopeless.
The bones by themselves would be just as effective.
Gar was bloody minded.
Broey turned and glanced across the room past his two Human companions. Two of the walls were taken up by charts bearing undulant squiggles in many colors. On a table at the room’s center lay another chart with a single red line. The line curved and dipped, ending almost in the middle of the chart. Near this terminus lay a white card and beside it stood a Human male statuette with an enormous erection which was labeled “Rabble.” It was a subversive, forbidden artifact of Rim origin. The people of the Rim knew where their main strength lay: breed, breed, breed …
The Humans sat facing each other across the chart. They fitted into the space around them through a special absorption. It was as though they’d been initiated into the secrets of Broey’s citadel through an esoteric ritual both forbidding and dangerous.
Broey returned to his chair at the head of the table, sat down, and quietly continued to study his companions. He experienced amusement to feel his fighting claws twitch beneath their finger shields as he looked at the two. Yes—trust them no more than they trusted him. They had their own troops, their own spies—they posed real threat to Broey but often their help was useful. Just as often they were a nuisance.
Quilliam Gar, the Human male who sat with his back to the windows, looked up as Broey resumed his seat. Gar snorted, somehow conveying that he’d been about to silence the voder himself.
Damned carrion birds! But they were useful … useful.
The Rim-born were always ambivalent about the birds.
Gar rode his chair as though talking down to ranks of the uninformed. He’d come up through the educational services in the Convocation before joining Broey. Gar was thin with an inner emaciation so common that few on Dosadi gave it any special notice. He had the hunter’s face and eyes, carried his eighty-eight years as though they were twice that. Hairline wrinkles crawled down his cheeks. The bas-relief of veins along the backs of his hands and the grey hair betrayed his Rim origins, as did a tendency to short temper. The Labor Pool green of his clothing fooled very few, his face was that well known.
Across from Gar sat his eldest daughter and chief lieutenant, Tria. She’d placed herself there to watch the windows and the cliffs. She’d also been observing the carrion birds, rather enjoying their sounds. It was well to be reminded here of what lay beyond the city’s outer gates.
Tria’s face held too much brittle sharpness to be considered beautiful by any except an occasional Gowachin looking for an exotic experience or a Warren laborer hoping to use her as a step out of peonage. She often disconcerted her companions by a wide-eyed, cynical stare. She did this with an aristocratic sureness which commanded attention. Tria had developed the gesture for just this purpose. Today, she wore the orange with black trim of Special Services, but without a brassard to indicate the branch. She knew that this led many to believe her Broey’s personal toy, which was true but not in the way the cynical supposed. Tria understood her special value: she possessed a remarkable ability to interpret the vagaries of the DemoPol.
Indicating the red line on the chart in front of her, Tria said, “She has to be the one. How can you doubt it?” And she wondered why Broey continued to worry at the o
bvious.
“Keila Jedrik,” Broey said. And again: “Keila Jedrik.”
Gar squinted at his daughter.
“Why would she include herself among the fifty who …”
“She sends us a message,” Broey said. “I hear it clearly now.” He seemed pleased by his own thoughts.
Gar read something else in the Gowachin’s manner.
“I hope you’re not having her killed.”
“I’m not as quick to anger as are you Humans,” Broey said.
“The usual surveillance?” Gar asked.
“I haven’t decided. You know, don’t you, that she lives a rather celibate life? Is it that she doesn’t enjoy the males of your species?”
“More likely they don’t enjoy her,” Tria said.
“Interesting. Your breeding habits are so peculiar.”
Tria shot a measuring stare at Broey. She wondered why the Gowachin had chosen to wear black today. It was a robe-like garment cut at a sharp angle from shoulders to waist, clearing his ventricles. The ventricles revolted her and Broey knew this. The very thought of them pressing against her … She cleared her throat. Broey seldom wore black; it was the happy color of priestly celebrants. He wore it, though, with a remoteness which suggested that thoughts passed through his mind which no other person could experience.
The exchange between Broey and Tria worried Gar. He could not help but feel the oddity that each of them tried to present a threatening view of events by withholding some data and coloring other data.
“What if she runs out to the Rim?” Gar asked.
Broey shook his head.
“Let her go. She’s not one to stay on the Rim.”
“Perhaps we should have her picked up,” Gar said.
Broey stared at him, then:
“I’ve gained the distinct impression that you’ve some private plan in mind. Are you prepared to share it?”