"Does my Legum presume to judge me?"

"No.  But if I speak with a certain bitterness, please recall that I am a Human.  I embrace a profound sympathy for the Gowachin, but I remain Human."

"Ahhhh, yes.  We must not forget the long Human association with DemoPols."

"We survive by selecting the best decision makers," McKie said.

"And a DemoPol elevates mediocrity."

"Has that happened on Dosadi?"

"No."

"But you wanted them to try many different governmental forms?"

The High Magister shrugged, remained silent.

"We Humans found that the DemoPol does profound damage to social relationships.  It destroys preselected portions of a society."

"And what could we hope to learn by damaging our Dosadi society?"

"Have we arrived back at the question of expected benefits?"

Aritch stretched his aching muscles.

"You are persistent, McKie. I will say that."

McKie shook his head sadly.

"The DemoPol was always held up to us as the ultimate equalizer, a source of decision-making miracles.  It was supposed to produce a growing body of knowledge about what a society really needed.  It was thought to produce justice in all cases despite any odds."

Aritch was irritated.  He leaned forward, wincing at the pain of his old muscles.

"One might make the same accusations about the Law as practiced everywhere except on Gowachin worlds!"

McKie suppressed a sharp response.  Gowachin training had forced him to question assumptions about the uses of law in the ConSentiency, about the inherent rightness of any aristocracy, any power bloc whether majority or minority.  It was a BuSab axiom that all power blocs tended toward aristocratic forms, that the descendants of decision makers dominated the power niches.  BuSab never employed offspring of their agents.

Aritch repeated himself, a thing Gowachin seldom did.

"Law is delusion and fakery, McKie, everywhere except on the Gowachin worlds!  You give your law a theological aura.  You ignore the ways it injures your societies.  Just as with the DemoPol, you hold up your law as the unvarying source of justice. When you . . ."

"BuSab has . . ."

"No! If something's wrong in your societies, what do you do?  You create new law.  You never think to remove law or disarm the law.  You make more law!  You create more legal professionals.  We Gowachin sneer at you!  We always strive to reduce the number of laws, the number of Legums.  A Legum's first duty is to avoid litigation.  When we create new Legums, we always have specific problems in mind.  We anticipate the ways that laws damage our society."

It was the opening McKie wanted.

"Why are you training a Wreave?"

Belatedly, Aritch realized he had been goaded into revealing more than he had wanted.

"You are good, McKie.  Very good."

"Why?" McKie persisted.  "Why a Wreave?"

"You will learn why in time."

McKie saw that Aritch would not expand on this answer, but there were other matters to consider now.  It was clear that the Gowachin had trained him for a specific problem:  Dosadi.  To train a Wreave as Legum, they'd have an equally important problem in mind . . . perhaps the same problem.  A basic difference in the approach to law, species differentiated, had surfaced, however, and this could not be ignored.  McKie well understood the Gowachin disdain for all legal systems, including their own.  They were educated from infancy to distrust any community of professionals, especially legal professionals.  A Legum could only tread their religious path when he completely shared that distrust.

Do I share that distrust?

He thought he did.  It came naturally to a BuSab agent.  But most of the ConSentiency still held its professional communities in high esteem, ignoring the nature of the intense competition for new achievements which invariably overcame such communities:  new achievements, new recognition.  But the new could be illusion in such communities because they always maintained a peer review system nicely balanced with peer pressures for ego rewards.

"Professional always means power," the Gowachin said.

The Gowachin distrusted power in all of its forms.  They gave with one hand and took with the other.  Legums faced death whenever they used the Law.  To make new law in the Gowachin Courtarena was to bring about the elegant dissolution of old law with a concomitant application of justice.

Not for the first time, McKie wondered about the unknown problems a High Magister must face.  It would have to be a delicate existence indeed.  McKie almost formed a question about this, thought better of it.  He shifted instead to the unknowns about Dosadi.  God Wall?  Heavenly Veil?

"Does Dosadi often accept a religious oligarchy?"

"As an outward form, yes.  They currently are presided over by a supreme Elector, a Gowachin by the name of Broey."

"Have Humans ever held power equal to Broey's?"

"Frequently."

It was one of the most responsive exchanges that McKie had achieved with Aritch.  Although he knew he was following the High Magister's purpose, McKie decided to explore this.

"Tell me about Dosadi's social forms."

"They are the forms of a military organization under constant attack or threat of attack.  They form certain cabals, certain power enclaves whose influences shift."

"Is there much violence?"

"It is a world of constant violence."

McKie absorbed this.  Warlords.  Military society.  He knew he had just lifted a corner of the real issue which had brought the Gowachin to the point of obliterating Dosadi.  It was an area to be approached with extreme caution.  McKie chose a flanking approach.

"Aside from the military forms, what are the dominant occupations?  How do they perceive guilt and innocence?  What are their forms of punishment, of absolution?  How do they . . ."

"You do not confuse me, McKie.  Consider, Legum:  there are better ways to answer such questions."

Brought up short by the Magister's chiding tone, McKie fell into silence.  He glanced out the oval window, realizing he'd been thrown onto the defensive with exquisite ease.  McKie felt the nerves tingling along his spine.  Danger!  Tandaloor's golden sun had moved perceptibly closer to the horizon.  That horizon was a blue-green line made hazy by kilometer after kilometer of hair trees whose slender female fronds waved and hunted in the air.  Presently, McKie turned back to Aritch.

Better ways to answer such questions.

It was obvious where the High Magister's thoughts trended.  The experimenters would, of course, have ways of watching their experiment.  They could also influence their experiment, but it was obvious there were limits to this influence.  A population resistant to outside influences?  The implied complications of this Dosadi problem daunted McKie.  Oh, the circular dance the Gowachin always performed!

Better ways.

Aritch cleared his ventricle passages with a harsh exhalation, then:

"Anticipating the possibility that others would censure us, we gave our test subjects the Primary."

Devils incarnate!  The Gowachin set such store on their damned Primary!  Of course all people were created unequal and had to find their own level!

McKie knew he had no choice but to plunge into the maelstrom.

"Did you also anticipate that you'd be charged with violating sentient rights on a massive scale?"

Aritch shocked him by a brief puffing of jowls, the Gowachin shrug.

McKie allowed himself a warning smile.

"I remind the High Magister that he raised the issue of the Primary."

"Truth is truth."

McKie shook his head sharply, not caring what this revealed.  The High Magister couldn't possibly have that low an estimation of his Legum's reasoning abilities.  Truth indeed!

"I'll give you truth:  the ConSentiency has laws on this subject to which the Gowachin are signatories!"

Even as the words fell from his lips, McKie realized this was precisely where Aritch had wanted him to go.  They've learned something from Dosadi!  Something crucial!

Aritch massaged the painful muscles of his thighs, said, "I remind you, Legum, that we peopled Dosadi with volunteers."

"Their descendants volunteered for nothing!"

"Ancestors always volunteer their descendants -- for better or for worse.  Sentient rights?  Informed consent?  The ConSentiency has been so busy building law upon law, creating its great illusion of rights, that you've almost lost sight of the Primary's guiding principle:  to develop our capacities.  People who are never challenged never develop survival strengths!"

Despite the perils, McKie knew he had to press for the answer to his original question:  benefits.

"What've you learned from your monster?"

"You'll soon have a complete answer to that question."

Again, the implication that he could actually watch Dosadi.  But first it'd be well to disabuse Aritch of any suspicion that McKie was unaware of the root implications.  The issue had to be met head on.

"You're not going to implicate me."

"Implicate you?"  There was no mistaking Aritch's surprise.

"No matter how you use what you've learned from Dosadi, you'll be suspected of evil intent.  Whatever anyone learns from . . ."

"Oh, that.  New data gives one power."

"And you do not confuse me, Aritch.  In the history of every species there are many examples of places where new data has been gravely abused."

Aritch accepted this without question.  They both knew the background.  The Gowachin distrusted power in all of its forms, yet they used power with consummate skill.  The trend of McKie's thoughts lay heavily in this room now.  To destroy Dosadi would be to hide whatever the Gowachin had learned there.  McKie, a non-Gowachin, therefore, would learn these things, would share the mantle of suspicion should it be cast.  The historical abuses of new data occurred between the time that a few people learned the important thing and the time when that important thing became general knowledge.  To the Gowachin and to BuSab it was the "Data Gap," a source of constant danger.

"We would not try to hide what we've learned," Aritch said, "only how we learned it."

"And it's just an academic question whether you destroy an entire planet and every person on it!"

"Ahh, yes:  academic.  What you don't know, McKie, is that one of our test subjects on Dosadi has initiated, all on her own, a course of events which will destroy Dosadi very quickly whether we act or not.  You'll learn all about this very soon when, like the good Legum we know you to be, you go there to experience this monster with your own flesh."

In the name of all that we together hold holy I promise three things to the sacred congregation of people who are subject to my rule.  In the first place, that the holy religion which we mutually espouse shall always preserve their freedom under my auspices; secondly, that I will temper every form of rapacity and inequity which may inflict itself upon us all; and thirdly, that I will command swift mercy in all judgments, that to me and to you the gracious Lord may extend His Recognition.

-The Oath of Power, Dosadi Sacred Congregation papers

Broey arose from prayer, groped behind him for the chair, and sank into it.  Enclosed darkness surrounded him.  The room was a shielded bubble attached to the bottom of his Graluz.  Around the room's thick walls was the warm water which protected his females and their eggs.  Access to the bubble was through a floor hatch and a twisting flooded passage from the Graluz.  Pressure in the bubble excluded the water, but the space around Broey smelled reassuringly of the Graluz.  This helped reinforce the mood he now required.

Presently, the God spoke to him.  Elation filled Broey.  God spoke to him, only to him.  Words hissed within his head.  Scenes impinged themselves upon his vision centers.

Yes!  Yes!  I keep the DemoPol!

God was reassured and reflected that reassurance.

Today, God showed him a ritual Broey had never seen before.  The ritual was only for Gowachin.  The ritual was called Laupuk.  Broey saw the ritual in all of its gory details, felt the rightness of it as though his very cells accepted it.

Responsibility, expiation -- these were the lessons of Laupuk.  God approved when Broey expressed understanding.

They communicated by words which Broey expressed silently in his thoughts, but there were other thoughts which God could not perceive.  Just as God no doubt held thoughts which were not communicated to Broey.  God used people, people used God.  Divine intervention with cynical overtones.  Broey had learned the Elector's role through a long and painful apprenticeship.

I am your servant, God.

As God admonished, Broey kept the secret of his private communion.  It suited his purpose to obey, as it obviously suited God's purpose.  There were times, though, when Broey wanted to shout it:

"You fools!  I speak with the voice of God!"

Other Electors had made that mistake.  They'd soon fallen from the seat of power.  Broey, drawing on several lifetimes of assembled experiences, knew he must keep this power if he ever were to escape from Dosadi.

Anyway, the fools did his bidding (and therefore God's) without divine admonition.  All was well.  One presented a selection of thoughts to God . . . being careful always where and when one reviewed private thoughts.  There were times when Broey felt God within him when there'd been no prayer, no preparations here in the blackness of this bubble room.  God might peer out of Broey's eyes at any time -- softly, quietly -- examining His world and its works through mortal senses.

"I guard My servant well."

The warmth of reassurance which flowed through Broey then was like the warmth of the Graluz when he'd still been a tad clinging to his mother's back.  It was a warmth and sense of safety which Broey tempered with a deep awareness of that other Graluz time:  a giant grey-green adult male Gowachin ravening through the water, devouring those tads not swift enough, alert enough to escape.

I was one of the swift.

Memory of that plunging, frantic flight in the Graluz had taught Broey how to behave with God.

In his bubble room's darkness, Broey shuddered.  Yes, the ways of God were cruel.  Thus armed, a servant of God could be equally cruel, could surmount the fact that he knew what it was to be both Human and Gowachin.  He need only be the pure servant of God.  This thought he shared.

Beware, McKie.  God has told me whence you come.  I know your intentions.  Hold fast to the narrow path, McKie.  You risk my displeasure.

Behavioral engineering in all of its manifestations always degenerates into merciless manipulation.  It reduces all (manipulators and manipulated alike) to a deadly "mass effect."  The central assumption, that manipulation of individual personalities can achieve uniform behavioral responses, has been exposed as a lie by many species but never with more telling effect than by the Gowachin on Dosadi.  Here, they showed us the "Walden Fallacy" in ultimate foolishness, explaining:  "Given any species which reproduces by genetic mingling such that every individual is a unique specimen, all attempts to impose a decision matrix based on assumed uniform behavior will prove lethal."

-The Dosadi Papers, BuSab reference

McKie walked through the jumpdoor and, as Aritch's aides had said, found himself on sand at just past Dosadi's midmorning.  He looked up, seeking his first real-time view of the God Wall, wanting to share the Dosadi feeling of that enclosure.  All he saw was a thin haze, faintly silver, disappointing.  The sun circle was more defined than he'd expected and he knew from the holographic reproductions he'd seen that a few of the third-magnitude stars would be filtered out at night.  What else he'd expected, McKie could not say, but somehow this milky veil was not it.  Too thin, perhaps.  It appeared insubstantial, too weak for the power it represented.'

The visible sun disk reminded him of another urgent necessity, but he postponed that necessity while he examined his surroundings.

A tall white rock?  Yes, there it was on his left.

They'd warned him to wait beside that rock, that he'd be relatively safe there.  Under no circumstances was he to wander from this contact point.

"We can tell you about the dangers of Dosadi, but words are not enough.  Besides, the place is always developing new threats."

Things he'd learned in the briefing sessions over the past weeks reinforced the warning.  The rock, twice as tall as a Human, stood only a few paces away, massive and forbidding.  He went over and leaned against it.  Sand grated beneath his feet.  He smelled unfamiliar perfumes and acridities.  The sun-warmed surface of the rock gave its energy to his flesh through the thin green coveralls they'd insisted he wear.

McKie longed for his armored clothing and its devices to amplify muscles, but such things were not permitted.  Only a reduced version of his toolkit had been allowed and that reluctantly, a compromise.  McKie had explained that the contents would be destroyed if anyone other than himself tried to pry into the kit's secrets.  Still, they'd warned him never to open the kit in the presence of a Dosadi native.

"The most dangerous thing you can do is to underestimate any of the Dosadi."

McKie, staring around him, saw no Dosadi.

Far off across a dusty landscape dotted with yellow bushes and brown rocks, he identified the hazy spires of Chu rising out of its river canyon.  Heat waves dizzied the air above the low scrub, giving the city a magical appearance.

McKie found it difficult to think about Chu in the context of what he'd learned during the crash course the Gowachin had given him.  Those magical fluting spires reached heavenward from a muck where "you can buy anything . . . anything at all."

Aritch's aides had sewn a large sum in Dosadi currency into the seams of his clothing but, at the same time, had forced him to digest hair-raising admonitions about "any show of unprotected wealth."

The jumpdoor attendants had recapitulated many of the most urgent warnings, adding:

"You may have a wait of several hours.  We're not sure.  Just stay close to that rock where you'll be relatively safe.  We've made protective arrangements which should work.  Don't eat or drink anything until you get into the city.  You'll be faintly sick with the diet change for a few days, but your body should adjust."

"Should adjust?"

"Give it time."

He'd asked about specific dangers to which he should be most alert.

"Stay clear of any Dosadi natives except your contacts.  Above all, don't even appear to threaten anyone."

"What if I get drowsy and take a nap?"

They'd considered this, then:

"You know, that might be the safest thing to do.  Anyone who'd dare to nap out there would have to be damned well protected.  There'd be some risk, of course, but there always is on Dosadi.  But they'd be awfully leery of anyone casual enough to nap out there."

Again, McKie glanced around.

Sharp whistlings and a low rasp like sand across wood came from behind the tall rock.  Quietly, McKie worked his way around to where he could see the sources of these noises.  The whistling was a yellow lizard almost the color of the bushes beneath which it crouched.  The rasp came from a direction which commanded the lizard's attention.  Its source appeared to be a small hole beneath another bush.  McKie thought he detected in the lizard only a faint curiosity about himself.  Something about that hole and the noise issuing from it demanded a great deal of concentrated attention.

Something stirred in the hole's blackness.

The lizard crouched, continued to whistle.

An ebony creature about the size of McKie's fist emerged from the hole, darted forward, saw the lizard.  Wings shot from the newcomer's sides and it leaped upward, but it was too late.  With a swiftness which astonished McKie, the lizard shot forward, balled itself around its prey.  A slit opened in the lizard's stomach, surrounded the ebony creature.  With a final rasping, the black thing vanished into the lizard.

All this time, the lizard continued to whistle.  Still whistling it crawled into the hole from which its prey had come.

"Things are seldom what they seem to be on Dosadi," McKie's teachers had said.

He wondered now what he had just seen.

The whistling had stopped.

The lizard and its prey reminded McKie that, as he'd been warned, there had not been time to prepare him for every new detail on Dosadi.  He crouched now and, once more, studied his immediate surroundings.

Tiny jumping things like insects inhabited the narrow line of shade at the base of the white rock.  Green (blossoms?) opened and closed on the stems of the yellow bushes. The ground all around appeared to be a basic sand and clay, but when he peered at it closely he saw veins of blue and red discoloration.  He turned his back on the distant city, saw far away mountains:  a purple graph line against silver sky.  Rain had cut an arroyo in that direction.  He saw touches of darker green reaching from the depths.  The air tasted bitter.

Once again, McKie made a sweeping study of his surroundings, seeking any sign of threat.  Nothing he could identify.  He palmed an instrument from his toolkit, stood casually and stretched while he turned toward Chu.  When he stole a glance at the instrument, it revealed a sonabarrier at the city.  Absently scratching himself to conceal the motion, he returned the instrument to his kit.  Birds floated in the silver sky above the sonabarrier.

Why a sonabarrier? he wondered.

It would stop wild creatures, but not people.  His teachers had said the sonabarrier excluded pests, vermin.  The explanation did not satisfy McKie.

Things are seldom what they seem.

Despite the God Wall, that sun was hot.  McKie sought the shady side of the rock.  Seated there, he glanced at the small white disk affixed to the green lapel at his left breast:  OP40331-D404.  It was standard Galach script, the lingua franca of the ConSentiency.

"They speak only Galach on Dosadi.  They may detect an accent in your speech, but they won't question it."

Aritch's people had explained that this badge identifed McKie as an open-contract worker, one with slightly above average skills in a particular field, but still part of the Labor Pool and subject to assignment outside his skill.

"This puts you three hierarchical steps from the Rim" they'd said.

It'd been his own choice.  The bottom of the social system always had its own communications channels flowing with information based on accurate data, instinct, dream stuff, and what was fed from the top with deliberate intent.  Whatever happened here on Dosadi, its nature would be revealed in the unconscious processes of the Labor Pool.  In the Labor Pool, he could tap that revealing flow.

"I'll be a weaver," he'd said, explaining that it was a hobby he'd enjoyed for many years.

The choice had amused his teachers.  McKie had been unable to penetrate the reason for their amusement.

"It is of no importance right now.  One choice is as good as another."

They'd insisted he concentrate on what he'd been doing at the time, learning the signal mannerisms of Dosadi.  Indeed, it'd been a hectic period on Tandaloor after Aritch's insistence (with the most reasonable of arguments) that the best way for his Legum to proceed was to go personally to Dosadi.  In retrospect, the arguments remained persuasive, but McKie had been surprised.  For some reason which he could not now identify, he had expected a less involved overview of the experiment, watching through instruments and the spying abilities of the Caleban who guarded the place.

McKie was still not certain how they expected him to pull this hot palip from the cooker, but it was clear they expected it.  Aritch had been mysteriously explicit:

"You are Dosadi's best chance for survival and our own best chance for . . . understanding."

They expected their Legum to save Dosadi while exonerating the Gowachin.  It was a Legum's task to win for his client, but these had to be the strangest circumstances, with the client retaining the absolute power of destruction over the threatened planet.

On Tandaloor, McKie had been allowed just time for short naps.  Even then, his sleep had been restless, part of his mind infernally aware of where he lay:  the bedog strange and not quite attuned to his needs, the odd noises beyond the walls -- water gurgling somewhere, always water.

When he'd trained there as a Legum, that had been one of his first adjustments:  the uncertain rhythms of disturbed water.  Gowachin never strayed far from water.  The Graluz -- that central pool and sanctuary for females, the place where Gowachin raised those tads which survived the ravenous weeding by the male parent -- the Graluz always remained a central fixation for the Gowachin. As the saying put it:

"If you do not understand the Graluz, you do not understand the Gowachin."

As such sayings went, it was accurate only up to a point.

But there was always the water, contained water, the nervous slapping of wavelets against walls.  The sound conveyed no fixed rhythms, but it was a profound clue to the Gowachin:  contained, yet always different.

For all short distances, swimming tubes connected Gowachin facilities.  They traversed long distances by jumpdoor or in hissing jetcars which moved on magnetic cushions.  The comings and goings of such cars had disturbed McKie's sleep during the period of the crash course on Dosadi.  Sometimes, desperately tired, his body demanding rest, he would find himself awakened by voices.  And the subtle interference of the other sounds -- the cars, the waves -- made eavesdropping difficult.  Awake in the night, McKie would strain for meaning.  He felt like a spy listening for vital clues, seeking every nuance in the casual conversations of people beyond his walls.  Frustrated, always frustrated, he had retreated into sleep.  And when, as happened occasionally, all sound ceased, this brought him to full alert, heart pounding, wondering what had gone wrong.

And the odors!  What memories they brought back to him.  Graluz musk, the bitter pressing of exotic seeds, permeated every breath. Fern tree pollen intruded with its undertones of citrus.  And the caraeli, tiny, froglike pets, invaded your sleep at every dawning with their exquisite belling arias.

During those earlier days of training on Tandaloor, McKie had felt more than a little lost, hemmed in by threatening strangers, constantly aware of the important matters which rode on his success.  But things were different after the interview with Aritch.  McKie was now a trained, tested, and proven Legum, not to mention a renowned agent of BuSab.  Yet there were times when the mood of those earlier days intruded.  Such intrusions annoyed him with their implication that he was being maneuvered into peril against his will, that the Gowachin secretly laughed as they prepared him for some ultimate humiliation.  They were not above such a jest.  Common assessment of Gowachin by non-Gowachin said the Frog God's people were so ultimately civilized they had come full circle into a form of primitive savagery.  Look at the way Gowachin males slaughtered their own newborn tads!

Once, during one of the rare naps Aritch's people permitted him, McKie had awakened to sit up and try to shake off that depressing mood of doom.  He told himself true things:  that the Gowachin flattered him now, deferred to him, treated him with that quasireligious respect which they paid to all Legums.  But there was no evading another truth:  the Gowachin had groomed him for their Dosadi problem over a long period of time, and they were being less than candid with him about that long process and its intentions.

There were always unfathomed mysteries when dealing with Gowachin.

When he'd tried returning to sleep that time, it was to encounter disturbing dreams of massed sentient flesh (both pink and green) all naked and quite defenseless before the onslaughts of gigantic Gowachin males.

The dream's message was clear.  The Gowachin might very well destroy Dosadi in the way (and for similar reasons) that they winnowed their own tads -- searching, endlessly searching, for the strongest and most resilient survivors.

The problem they'd dumped in his lap daunted McKie.  If the slightest inkling of Dosadi leaked into common awareness without a concurrent justification, the Gowachin Federation would be hounded unmercifully.  The Gowachin had clear and sufficient reason to destroy the evidence -- or to let the evidence destroy itself.

Justification.

Where was that to be found?  In the elusive benefits which had moved the Gowachin to mount this experiment?

Even if he found that justification, Dosadi would be an upheaval in the ConSentiency.  It'd be the subject of high drama.  More than twenty generations of Humans and Gowachin surfacing without warning!  Their lonely history would titillate countless beings.  The limits of language would be explored to wring the last drop of emotive essence from this revelation.

No matter how explained, Gowachin motives would come in for uncounted explorations and suspicions.

Why did they really do it?  What happened to their original volunteers?

People would look backward into their own ancestry -- Human and Gowachin alike.  "Is that what happened to Uncle Elfred?"  Gowachin phylum records would be explored.  "Yes! Here are two -- gone without record!"

Aritch's people admitted that "a very small minority" had mounted this project and kept the lid on it.  Were they completely sane, this Gowachin cabal?

McKie's short naps were always disturbed by an obsequious Gowachin bowing over his bedog, begging him to return at once to the briefing sessions which prepared him for survival on Dosadi.

Those briefing sessions!  The implied prejudices hidden in every one raised more questions than were answered.  McKie tried to retain a reasoned attitude, but irritants constantly assailed him.

Why had the Gowachin of Dosadi taken on Human emotional characteristics?  Why were Dosadi's Humans aping Gowachin social compacts?  Were the Dosadi truly aware of why they changed governmental forms so often?

The bland answer to these frequent questions enraged McKie.

"All will be made clear when you experience Dosadi for yourself."

He'd finally fallen into a counterirritant patter:

"You don't really know the answer, do you?  You're hoping I'll find out for you!"

Some of the data recitals bored McKie.  While listening to a Gowachin explain what was known about Rim relationships, he would find himself distracted by people passing in the multisentient access way outside the briefing area.

Once, Ceylang entered and sat at the side of the room, watching him with a hungry silence which rubbed McKie's sensibilities to angry rawness.  He'd longed for the blue metal box then, but once the solemn investment had pulled the mantle of Legumic protection around him, the box had been removed to its sacred niche.  He'd not see it again unless this issue entered the Courtarena.  Ceylang remained an unanswered question among many.  Why did that dangerous Wreave female haunt this room without contributing one thing?  He suspected they allowed Ceylang to watch him through remote spy devices.  Why did she choose that once to come in person?  To let him know he was being observed?  It had something to do with whatever had prompted the Gowachin to train a Wreave.  They had some future problem which only a Wreave could solve.  They were grooming this Wreave as they'd groomed him.  Why?  What Wreave capabilities attracted the Gowachin?  How did this Wreave female differ from other Wreaves?  Where were her loyalties?  What was the 'Wreave Bet'?

This led McKie into another avenue never sufficiently explored:  what Human capabilities had led the Gowachin to him?  Dogged persistence?  A background in Human law?  The essential individualism of the Human?

There were no sure answers to these questions, no more than there were about the Wreave.  Her presence continued to fascinate him, however.  McKie knew many things about Wreave society not in common awareness outside the Wreave worlds.  They were, after all, integral and valued partners in BuSab.  In shared tasks, a camaraderie developed which often prompted intimate exchanges of information.  Beyond the fact that Wreaves required a breeding triad for reproduction, he knew that Wreaves had never discovered a way to determine in advance which of the Triad would be capable of nursing the offspring.  This formed an essential building stone in Wreave society.  Periodically, this person from the triad would be exchanged for a like person from another triad.  This insured their form of genetic dispersion and, of equal importance, built countless linkages throughout their civilization.  With each such linkage went requirements for unquestioning support in times of trouble.

A Wreave in the Bureau had tried to explain this:

"Take, for example, the situation where a Wreave is murdered or, even worse, deprived of essential vanity.  The guilty party would be answerable personally to millions upon millions of us.  Wherever the triad exchange has linked us, we are required to respond intimately to the insult.  The closest thing you have to this, as I understand it, is familial responsibility.  We have this familial responsibility for vendetta where such affronts occur.  You have no idea how difficult it was to release those of us in BuSab from this . . . this bondage, this network of responsibility."

The Gowachin would know this about the Wreaves, McKie thought.  Had this characteristic attracted the Gowachin or had they chosen in spite of it, making their decision because of some other Wreave aspect?  Would a Wreave Legum continue to share that network of familial responsibility?  How could that be?  Wreave society could only offend a basic sensibility of the Gowachin.  The Frog God's people were even more . . . more exclusive and individual than Humans.  To the Gowachin, family remained a private thing, walled off from strangers in an isolation which was abandoned only when you entered your chosen phylum.

As he waited beside the white rock on Dosadi, McKie reflected on these matters, biding his time, listening.  The alien heat, the smells and unfamiliar noises, disturbed him.  He'd been told to listen for the sound of an internal combustion engine.  Internal combustion!  But the Dosadi used such devices outside the city because they were more powerful (although much larger) than the beamed impulse drivers which they used within Chu's walls.

"The fuel is alcohol.  Most of the raw materials come from the Rim.  It doesn't matter how much poison there is in such fuel.  They ferment bushes, trees, ferns . . . anything the Rim supplies."

A sleepy quiet surrounded McKie now.  For a long time he'd been girding himself to risk the thing he knew he would have to do once he were alone on Dosadi.  He might never again be this alone here, probably not once he was into Chu's Warrens.  He knew the futility of trying to contact his Taprisiot monitor.  Aritch, telling him the Gowachin knew BuSab had bought "Taprisiot insurance," had said:

"Not even a Taprisiot call can penetrate the God Wall."

In the event of Dosadi's destruction, the Caleban contract ended.  McKie's Taprisiot might even have an instant to complete the death record of McKie's memories.  Might.  That was academic to McKie in his present circumstances.  The Calebans owed him a debt.  The Whipping Star threat had been as deadly to Calebans as to any other species which had ever used jumpdoors.  The threat had been real and specific.  Users of jumpdoors and the Caleban who controlled those jumpdoors had been doomed.  "Fannie Mae" had expressed the debt to McKie in her own peculiar way:

"The owing of me to thee connects to no ending."

Aritch could have alerted his Dosadi guardian against any attempt by McKie to contact another Caleban.  McKie doubted this.  Aritch had specified a ban against Taprisiot calls.  But all Calebans shared an awareness at some level.  If Aritch and company had been lulled into a mistaken assumption about the security of their barrier around Dosadi . . .

Carefully, McKie cleared his mind of any thoughts about Taprisiots.  This wasn't easy.  It required a Sufi concentration upon a particular void.  There could be no accidental thrust of his mind at the Taprisiot waiting in the safety of Central Central with its endless patience.  Everything must be blanked from awareness except a clear projection toward Fannie Mae.

McKie visualized her:  the star Thyone.  He recalled their long hours of mental give and take.  He projected the warmth of emotional attachment, recalling her recent demonstration of "nodal involvement."

Presently, he closed his eyes, amplified that internal image which now suffused his mind.  He felt his muscles relax.  The warm rock against his back, the sand beneath him, faded from awareness.  Only the glowing presence of a Caleban remained in his mind.

"Who calls?"

The words touched his auditory centers, but not his ears.

"It's McKie, friend of Fannie Mae.  Are you the Caleban of the God Wall?"

"I am the God Wall.  Have you come to worship?"

McKie felt his thoughts stumble.  Worship?  The projection from this Caleban was echoing and portentous, not at all like the probing curiosity he always sensed in Fannie Mae.  He fought to regain that first clear image.  The inner glow of a Caleban contact returned.  He supposed there might be something worshipful in this experience.  You were never absolutely certain of a Caleban's meaning.

"It's McKie, friend of Fannie Mae," he repeated.

The glow within McKie dimmed, then:  "But you occupy a point upon Dosadi's wave."

That was a familiar kind of communication, one to which McKie could apply previous experience in the hope of a small understanding, an approximation.

"Does the God Wall permit me to contact Fannie Mae?"

Words echoed in his head:

"One Caleban, all Caleban."

"I wish converse with Fannie Mae."

"You are not satisfied with your present body?"

McKie felt his body then, the trembling flesh, the zombie-like trance state which went with Caleban or Taprisiot contact.  The question had no meaning to him, but the body contact was real and it threatened to break off communication.  Slowly, McKie fought back to that tenuous mind-presence.

"I am Jorj X. McKie. Calebans are in my debt."

"All Calebans know this debt."

"Then honor your debt."

He waited, trying not to grow tense.

The glow within his head was replaced by a new presence.  It insinuated itself into McKie's awareness with penetrating familiarity -- not full mental contact, but rather a playing upon those regions of his brain where sight and sound were interpreted.  McKie recognized this new presence.

"Fannie Mae!"

"What does McKie require?"

For a Caleban, it was quite a direct communication.  McKie, noting this, responded more directly:

"I require your help."

"Explain."

"I may be killed here . . . ahh, have an end to my node here on Dosadi."

"Dosadi's wave," she corrected him.

"Yes.  And if that happens, if I die here, I have friends on Central Central . . . on Central Central's wave . . . friends there who must learn everything that's in my mind when I die."

"Only Taprisiot can do this.  Dosadi contract forbids Taprisiots."

"But if Dosadi is destroyed . . .

"Contract promise passes no ending, McKie."

"You cannot help me?"

"You wish advice from Fannie Mae?"

"Yes."

"Fannie Mae able to maintain contact with McKie while he occupies Dosadi's wave."

Constant trance?  McKie was shocked.

She caught this.

"No trance.  McKie's nexus known to Fannie Mae."

"I think not.  I can't have any distractions here."

"Bad choice."

She was petulant.

"Could you provide me with a personal jumpdoor to . . ."

"Not with node ending close to ending for Dosadi wave."

"Fannie Mae, do you know what the Gowachin are doing here on Dosadi? This . . ."

"Caleban contract, McKie."

Her displeasure was clear.  You didn't question the honor of a Caleban's word-writ.  The Dosadi contract undoubtedly contained specific prohibitions against any revelations of what went on here.  McKie was dismayed.  He was tempted to leave Dosadi immediately.Fannie Mae got this message, too.

"McKie can leave now.  Soon, McKie cannot leave his own body/node."

"Body/node?"

"Answer not permitted."

Not permitted!

"I thought you were my friend, Fannie Mae!"

Warmth suffused him.

"Fannie Mae possesses friendship for McKie."

"Then why won't you help me?"

"You wish to leave Dosadi's wave in this instant?"

"No!"

"Then Fannie Mae cannot help."

Angry, McKie began to break the contact.

Fannie Mae projected sensations of frustration and hurt.  "Why does McKie refuse advice?  Fannie Mae wishes . . ."

"I must go.  You know I'm in a trance while we're in contact.  That's dangerous here.  We'll speak another time.  I appreciate your wish to help and your new clarity, but . . ."

"Not clarity!  Very small hole in understanding but Human keeps no more dimension!"

Obvious unhappiness accompanied this response, but she broke the contact.  McKie felt himself awakening, his fingers and toes trembling with cold.  Caleban contact had slowed his metabolism to a dangerous low.  He opened his eyes.

A strange Gowachin clad in the yellow of an armored vehicle driver stood over him.  A tracked machine rumbled and puffed in the background.  Blue smoke enveloped it.  McKie stared upward in shock.

The Gowachin nodded companionably.

"You are ill?"

We of the Sabotage Bureau remain legalists of a special category.  We know that too much law injures a society; it is the same with too little law.  One seeks a balance.  We are like the balancing force among the Gowachin:  without hope of achieving heaven in the society of mortals, we seek the unattainable.  Each agent knows his own conscience and why he serves such a master.  That is the key to us.  We serve a mortal conscience for immortal reasons.  We do it without hope of praise or the sureness of success.

-The early writings of Bildoon, PanSpechi Chief of BuSab

They moved out onto the streets as soon as the afternoon shadows gloomed the depths of the city, Tria and six carefully chosen companions, all of them young Human males.  She'd musked herself to key them up and she led them down dim byways where Broey's spies had been eliminated.  All of her troop was armored and armed in the fashion of an ordinary sortie team.

There'd been rioting nearby an hour earlier, not sufficiently disruptive to attract large military attention, but a small Gowachin salient had been eliminated from a Human enclave.  A sortie team was the kind of thing this Warren could expect after such a specific species adjustment.  Tria and her six companions were not likely to suffer attack.  None of the rioters wanted a large-scale mopping up in the area.

A kind of hushed, suspenseful waiting pervaded the streets.

They crossed a wet intersection, green and red ichor in the gutters.  The smell of the dampness told her that a Graluz had been broached and its waters freed to wash through the streets.

That would attract retaliation.  Some Human children were certain to be killed in the days ahead.  An old pattern.

The troop crossed the riot area presently, noting the places where bodies had fallen, estimating casualties.  All bodies had been removed.  Not a scrap remained for the birds.

They emerged from the Warrens soon afterward, passing through a Gowachin-guarded gate, Broey's people.  A few blocks along they went through another gate, Human guards, all in Gar's pay.  Broey would learn of her presence here soon, Tria knew, but she'd said she was going into the Warrens.  She came presently to an alleyway across from a Second Rank building.  The windowless grey of the building's lower floors presented a blank face broken only by the lattice armor of the entrance gate.  Behind the gate lay a dimly lighted passage.  Its deceptively plain walls concealed spy devices and automatic weapons.

Holding back her companions with a hand motion, Tria waited in the dark while she studied the building entrance across from her.  The gate was on a simple latch.  There was one doorguard in an alcove on the left near the door which was dimly visible beyond the armorwork of the gate.  A building defense force stood ready to come at the doorguard's summons or at the summons of those who watched through the spy devices.

Tria's informants said this was Jedrik's bolt hole.  Not in the deep Warrens at all.  Clever.  But Tria had maintained an agent in this building for years, as she kept agents in many buildings.  A conventional precaution.  Everything depended on timing now.  Her agent in the building was poised to eliminate the inner guards at the spy device station.  Only the doorguard would remain.  Tria waited for the agreed upon moment.

The street around her smelled of sewage:  an open reclamation line.  Accident?  Riot damage?  Tria didn't like the feeling of this place.  What was Jedrik's game?  Were there unknown surprises built into this guarded building?  Jedrik must know by now that she was suspected of inciting the riot -- and of other matters.  But would she feel safe there in her own enclave?  People tended to feel safe among their own people.  She couldn't have a very large force around her, though.  Still, some private plot worked itself through the devious pathways of Jedrik's mind, and Tria had not yet fathomed all of that plot.  There were surface indicators enough to risk a confrontation, a parley.  It was possible that Jedrik flaunted herself here to attract Tria.  The potential in that possibility filled Tria with excitement.

Together, we'd be unbeatable!

Yes, Jedrik fitted the image of a superb agent.  With the proper organization around her . . .

Once more, Tria glanced left and right.  The streets were appropriately empty.  She checked the time.  Her moment had come.  With hand motions, she sent flankers out left and right and another young male probing straight across the street to the gate.  When they were in place, she slipped across with her three remaining companions in a triangular shield ahead.

The doorguard was a Human with grey hair and a pale face which glistened yellow in the dim light of the passage.  His lids were heavy with a recent dose of his personal drug, which Tria's agent had supplied.

Tria opened the gate, saw that the guard carried a round dead-man switch in his right hand as expected.  His grin was gap toothed as he held the switch toward her.  She knew he'd recognized her.  Much depended now on her agent's accuracy.

"Do you want to die for the frogs?"  Tria asked.

He knew about the rioting, the trouble in the streets.  And he was Human, with Human loyalties, but he knew she worked for Broey, a Gowachin.  The question was precisely calculated to fill him with indecision.  Was she a turncoat?  He had his Human loyalties and a fanatic's dependence upon this guard post which kept him out of the depths.  And there was his personal addiction.  All doorguards were addicted to something, but this one took a drug which dulled his senses and made it difficult for him to correlate several lines of thought.  He wasn't supposed to use his drug on duty and this troubled him now.  There were so many matters to be judged, and Tria had asked the right question.  He didn't want to die for the frogs.

She pointed to the dead-man switch, a question.

"It's only a signal relay," he said.  "No bomb in this one."

She remained silent, forcing him to focus on his doubts.

The guard swallowed.  "What do you . . ."

"Join us or die."

He peered past her at the others.  Things such as this happened frequently in the Warrens, not very often here on the slopes which led up to the heights.  The guard was not a one trusted with full knowledge of whom he guarded.  He had explicit instructions and a dead-man relay to warn of intruders.  Others were charged with making the more subtle distinctions, the real decisions.  That was this building's weak point.

"Join who?" he asked.

There was false belligerency in his voice, and she knew she had him then.

"Your own kind."

This locked his drug-dulled mind onto its primary fears.  He knew what he was supposed to do:  open his hand.  That released the alarm device in the dead-man switch.  He could do this of his own volition and it was supposed to deter attackers from killing him.  A dead man's hand opened anyway.  But he'd been fed with suspicions to increase his doubts.  The device in his hand might not be a simple signal transmitter.  What if it actually were a bomb?  He'd had many long hours to wonder about that.

"We'll treat you well," Tria said.

She put a companionable arm around his shoulder, letting him get the full effect of her musk while she held out her other hand to show that it carried no weapon.  "Demonstrate to my companion here how you pass that to your relief."

One of the young males stepped forward.

The guard showed how it was done, explaining slowly as he passed the device.  "It's easy once you get the trick of it."

When her companion had the thing firmly in hand, she raised her arm from the guard's shoulder, touched his carotid artery with a poisoned needle concealed in a fingernail.  The guard had only time to draw one gasping breath, his eyes gaping, before he sank from her embrace.

"I treated him well," she said.

Her companions grinned.  It was the kind of thing you learned to expect from Tria.  They dragged the body out of sight into the guard alcove, and the young male with the signal device took his place at the door.  The others protected Tria with their bodies as they swept into the building.  The whole operation had taken less than two minutes.  Everything was working smoothly, as Tria's operations were expected to work.

The lobby and its radiating hallways were empty.

Good.

Her agent in this building deserved a promotion.

They took a stairway rather than trust an elevator.  It was only three short flights.  The upper hallway also was empty.  Tria led the way to the designated door, used the key her agent had supplied.  The door opened without a sound and they surged into the room.

Inside, the shades had been pulled, and there was no artificial illumination.  Her companions took up their places at the closed door and along both flanking walls.  This was the most dangerous moment, something only Tria could handle.

Light came from thin strips where shades did not quite seal a south window.  Tria discerned dim shapes of furniture, a bed with an indeterminate blob of darkness on it.

"Jedrik?"  A whisper.

Tria's feet touched soft fabric, a sandal.

"Jedrik?"

Her shin touched the bed.  She held a weapon ready while she felt for the dark blob.  It was only a mound of bedding. She turned.

The bathroom door was closed, but she could make out a thin slot of light at the bottom of the door.  She skirted the clothing and sandal on the floor, stood at one side, and motioned a companion to the other side.  Thus far they had operated with a minimum of sound.

Gently, she turned the knob, thrust open the door.  There was water in a tub and a body face down, one arm hanging flaccidly over the edge, fingers dangling.  A dark purple welt was visible behind and beneath the left ear.  Tria lifted the head by the hair, stared at the face, lowered it gently to avoid splashing.  It was her agent, the one she'd trusted for the intelligence to set up this operation.  And the death was characteristic of a Gowachin ritual slaying:  that welt under the ear.  A Gowachin talon driven in there to silence the victim before drowning?  Or had it just been made to appear like a Gowachin slaying?

Tria felt the whole operation falling apart around her, sensed the uneasiness of her companions.  She considered calling Gar from where she stood, but a feeling of fear and revulsion came over her.  She stepped out into the bedroom before opening her communicator and thumbing the emergency signal.

"Central."  The voice was tense in her ear.

She kept her own voice flat.  "Our agent's dead."

Silence.  She could imagine them centering the locator on her transmission, then:  "There?"

"Yes.  She's been murdered."

Gar's voice came on:  "That can't be.  I talked to her less than an hour ago.  She . . ."

"Drowned in a tub of water," Tria said.  "She was knocked out first -- something sharp driven in under an ear."

There was silence again while Gar absorbed this data.  He would have the same uncertainties as Tria.

She glanced at her companions.  They had taken up guard positions facing the doorway to the hall.  Yes, if attack came, it would come from there.

The channel to Gar remained open, and now Tria heard a babble of terse orders with only a few words intelligible:  ". . . team . . . don't let . . . time . . ."  Then, quite clearly:  "They'll pay for this!"

Who will pay? Tria wondered.

She was beginning to make a new assessment of Jedrik.

Gar came back on:  "Are you in immediate danger?"

"I don't know."  It was a reluctant admission.

"Stay right where you are.  We'll send help.  I've notified Broey."

So that was the way Gar saw it.  Yes.  That was most likely the proper way to handle this new development.  Jedrik had eluded them.  There was no sense in proceeding alone.  It would have to be done Broey's way now.

Tria shuddered as she issued the necessary orders to her companions.  They prepared to sell themselves dearly if an attack came, but Tria was beginning to doubt there'd be an immediate attack.  This was another message from Jedrik.  The trouble came when you tried to interpret the message.

The military mentality is a bandit and raider mentality.  Thus, all military represents a form of organized banditry where the conventional mores do not prevail.  The military is a way of rationalizing murder, rape, looting, and other forms of theft which are always accepted as part of warfare.  When denied an outside target, the military mentality always turns against its own civilian population, using identical rationalizations for bandit behavior.

-BuSab Manual, Chapter Five:  "The Warlord Syndrome"

McKie, awakening from the communications trance, realized how he must've appeared to this strange Gowachin towering over him.  Of course a Dosadi Gowachin would think him ill.  He'd been shivering and mumbling in the trance, perspiration rolling from him.  McKie took a deep breath.

"No, I'm not ill."

"Then it's an addiction?"

Recalling the many substances to which the Dosadi could be addicted, McKie almost used this excuse but thought better of it.  This Gowachin might demand some of the addictive substance.

"Not an addiction," McKie said.  He lifted himself to his feet, glanced around.  The sun had moved perceptibly toward the horizon behind its streaming veil.

And something new had been added to the landscape -- that gigantic tracked vehicle, which stood throbbing and puffing smoke from a vertical stack behind the Gowachin intruder.  The Gowachin maintained a steady, intense concentration on McKie, disconcerting in its unwavering directness.  McKie had to ask himself:  was this some threat, or his Dosadi contact?  Aritch's people had said a vehicle would be sent to the contact point, but . . .

"Not ill, not an addiction," the Gowachin said. "Is it some strange condition which only Humans have?"

"I was ill," McKie said.  "But I'm recovered.  The condition has passed."

"Do you often have such attacks?"

"I can go years without a recurrence."

"Years?  What causes this . . . condition?"

"I don't know."

"I . . . ahhhh."  The Gowachin nodded, gestured upward with his chin.  "An affliction of the Gods, perhaps."

"Perhaps."

"You were completely vulnerable."

McKie shrugged.  Let the Gowachin make of that what he could.

"You were not vulnerable?"  Somehow, this amused the Gowachin, who added:  "I am Bahrank.  Perhaps that's the luckiest thing which has ever happened to you."

Bahrank was the name Aritch's aides had given as McKie's first contact.

"I am McKie."

"You fit the description, McKie, except for your, ahhh, condition.  Do you wish to say more?"

McKie wondered what Bahrank expected.  This was supposed to be a simple contact handing him on to more important people.  Aritch was certain to have knowledgeable observers on Dosadi, but Bahrank was not supposed to be one of them.  The warning about this Gowachin had been specific.

"Bahrank doesn't know about us.  Be extremely careful what you reveal to him.  It'd be very dangerous to you if he were to learn that you came from beyond the God Veil."

The jumpdoor aides had reinforced the warning.

"If the Dosadi penetrate your cover, you'll have to return to your pickup point on your own.  We very much doubt that you could make it.  Understand that we can give you little help once we've put you on Dosadi."

Bahrank visibly came to a decision, nodding to himself.

"Jedrik expects you."

That was the other name Aritch's people had provided.  "Your cell leader.  She's been told that you're a new infiltrator from the Rim.  Jedrik doesn't know your true origin."

"Who does know?"

"We cannot tell you.  If you don't know, then that information cannot be wrested from you.  We assure you, though, that Jedrik isn't one of our people."

McKie didn't like the sound of that warning.  ". . . wrested from you."  As usual, BuSab sent you into the tiger's mouth without a full briefing on the length of the tiger's fangs.

Bahrank gestured toward his tracked vehicle.  "Shall we go?"

McKie glanced at the machine.  It was an obvious war device, heavily armored with slits in its metal cab, projectile weapons protruding at odd angles.  It looked squat and deadly.  Aritch's people had mentioned such things.

"We saw to it that they got only primitive armored vehicles, projectile weapons and relatively unimportant explosives, that sort of thing.  They've been quite resourceful in their adaptations of such weaponry, however."

Once more, Bahrank gestured toward his vehicle, obviously anxious to leave.

McKie was forced to suppress an abrupt feeling of profound anxiety.  What had he gotten himself into?  He felt that he had awakened to find himself on a terrifying slide into peril, unable to control the least threat.  The sensation passed, but it left him shaken.  He delayed while he continued to stare at the vehicle.  It was about six meters long with heavy tracks, plus other wheels faintly visible within the shadows behind the tracks.  It sported a conventional antenna at the rear for tapping the power transmitter in orbit beneath the barrier veil, but there was a secondary system which burned a stinking fuel.  The smoke of that fuel filled the air around them with acridity.

"For what do we wait?" Bahrank demanded.  He glared at McKie with obvious fear and suspicion.

"We can go now," McKie said.

Bahrank turned and led the way swiftly, clambering up over the tracks and into a shadowed cab.  McKie followed, found the interior a tightly cluttered place full of a bitter, oily smell.  There were two hard metal seats with curved backs higher than the head of a seated Human or Gowachin.  Bahrank already occupied the seat on the left, working switches and dials.  McKie dropped into the other seat.  Folding arms locked across his chest and waist to hold him in place; a brace fitted itself to the back of his head.  Bahrank threw a switch.  The door through which they'd entered closed with a grinding of servomotors and the solid clank of locks.

An ambivalent mood swept over McKie.  He had always felt faint agoraphobia in open places such as the area around the rock.  But the dim interior of this war machine, with its savage reminders of primitive times, touched an atavistic chord in his psyche and he fought an urge to claw his way outside.  This was a trap!

An odd observation helped him overcome the sensation.  There was glass over the slits which gave them their view of the outside.  Glass.  He felt it.  Yes, glass.  It was common stuff in the ConSentiency -- strong yet fragile.  He could see that this glass wasn't very thick.  The fierce appearance of this machine had to be more show than actuality, then.

Bahrank gave one swift, sweeping glance to their surroundings, moved levers which set the vehicle into lurching motion.  It emitted a grinding rumble with an overriding whine.

A track of sorts led from the white rock toward the distant city.  It showed the marks of this machine's recent passage, a roadway to follow.  Glittering reflections danced from bright rocks along the track.  Bahrank appeared very busy with whatever he was doing to guide them toward Chu.

McKie found his own thoughts returning to the briefings he'd received on Tandaloor.

"Once you enter Jedrik's cell you're on your own."

Yes . . . he felt very much alone, his mind a clutter of data which had little relationship to any previous experience.  And this planet could die unless he made sense out of that data plus whatever else he might learn here.

Alone, alone . . . If Dosadi died there'd be few sentient watchers.  The Caleban's tempokinetic barrier would contain most of that final destructive flare.  The Caleban would, in fact, feed upon the released energy.  That was one of the things he'd learned from Fannie Mae.  One consuming blast, a meal for a Caleban, and BuSab would be forced to start anew and without the most important piece of physical evidence -- Dosadi.

The machine beneath McKie thundered, rocked, and skidded, but always returned to the track which led toward Chu's distant spires.

McKie studied the driver covertly.  Bahrank showed uncharacteristic behavior for a Gowachin:  more direct, more Human.  That was it!  His Gowachin instincts had been contaminated by contact with Humans.  Aritch was sure to despise that, fear it.  Bahrank drove with a casual expertise, using a complex control system.  McKie counted eight different levers and arms which the Gowachin employed.  Some were actuated by knees, others by his head.  His hands reached out while an elbow deflected a lever.  The war machine responded.

Bahrank spoke presently without taking his attention from driving.

"We may come under fire on the second ledge.  There was quite a police action down there earlier."

McKie stared at him.

"I thought we had safe passage through."

"You Rimmers are always pressing."

McKie peered out the slits:  bushes, barren ground, that lonely track they followed.

Bahrank spoke.

"You're older than any Rimmer I ever saw before."

Aritch's people had warned McKie about this as a basic flaw in his cover, the need to conceal the subtle signs of age.

They'd provided him with some geriatric assistance and an answer to give when challenged.  He used that answer now.

"It ages you in a hurry out here."

"It must."

McKie felt that something in Bahrank's response eluded him, but dared not pursue this.  It was an unproductive exchange.  And there was that reference to a "police action."  McKie knew that the Rim Rabble, excluded from Chu, tried periodic raids, most often fruitless.  Barbaric!

"What excuse did you use to come out here?"  McKie asked.

Bahrank shot a probing glance at him, raised one webbed hand from the controls to indicate a handle in the roof over his head.  The handle's purpose was unknown to McKie, and he feared he had already betrayed too much ignorance.  But Bahrank was speaking.

"Officially, I'm scouting this area for any hidden surprises the Rimmers may have stored out here.  I often do that.  Unofficially, everyone thinks I've a secret pond out here full of fertile females."

A pond . . . not a Graluz.  Again, it was a relatively fruitless exchange with hidden undertones.

McKie stared silently ahead through a slit.  Their dusty track made a slow and wide sweep left, abruptly angled down onto a narrow ledge cut from red rock walls.  Bahrank put them through a series of swift changes in speed:  slow, fast, slow, fast.  The red rock walls raced past.  McKie peered out and downward on his side.  Far below lay jungle verdure and, in the distance, the smoke and spires of Chu -- fluted buildings ranked high over dim background cliffs.

The speed changes appeared purposeless to McKie.  And the dizzy drop off the cliff on his side filled him with awe.  Their narrow ledge hugged the cliff, turning as the cliff turned -- now into shadows and now into light.  The machine roared and groaned around him.  The smell of oil made his stomach heave.  And the faraway city seemed little closer than it had from the cliff top, except that it was taller, more mysterious in its smoky obscurity.

"Don't expect any real trouble until we reach the first ledge," Bahrank said.

McKie glanced at him.  First ledge?  Yes, that'd be the first elevation outside the city's walls.  The gorge within which Chu had been raised came down to river level in broad steps, each one numbered.  Chu had been anchored to island hills and flats where the river slowed and split into many arms.  And the hills which had resisted the river were almost solid iron ore, as were many of the flanking ledges.

"Glad to get off there," Bahrank said.

Their narrow ledge had turned at right angles away from the cliff onto a broad ramp which descended into grey-green jungle.  The growth enclosed them in abrupt green shadows.  McKie, looking out to the side, identified hair fronds and broad leaf ficus, giant spikes of barbed red which he had never before seen.  Their track, like the jungle floor, was grey mud.  McKie looked from side to side; the growth appeared an almost equal mixture of Terran and Tandaloor, interspersed with many strange plants.

Sunlight made him blink as they raced out of the overhanging plants onto a plain of tall grass which had been trampled, blasted, and burned by recent violence.  He saw a pile of wrecked vehicles off to the left, twisted shards of metal with, here and there, a section of track or a wheel aimed at the sky.  Some of the wrecks looked similar to the machine in which he now rode.

Bahrank skirted a blast hole at an angle which gave McKie a view into the hole's depths.  Torn bodies lay there.  Bahrank made no comment, seemed hardly to notice.

Abruptly, McKie saw signs of movement in the jungle, the flitting presence of both Humans and Gowachin.  Some carried what appeared to be small weapons -- the glint of a metal tube, bandoliers of bulbous white objects around their necks.  McKie had not tried to memorize all of Dosadi's weaponry; it was, after all, primitive, but he reminded himself now that primitive weapons had created these scenes of destruction.

Their track plunged again into overhanging growth, leaving the battlefield behind.  Deep green shadows enclosed the lurching, rumbling machine.  McKie, shaken from side to side against the restraints, carried an odor memory with him:  deep, bloody musks and the beginnings of rot.  Their shaded avenue made a sharp right turn, emerged onto another ledge slashed by a plunging cut into which Bahrank took them, turning onto another cliff-hugging ledge.

McKie stared across Bahrank through the slits.  The city was nearer now.  Their rocking descent swept his gaze up and down Chu's towers, which lifted like silvery organ pipes out of the Council Hills.  The far cliff was a series of misted steps fading into purple grey.  Chu's Warrens lay smokey and hazed all around the fluted towers.  And he could make out part of the city's enclosing outer wall.  Squat forts dotted the wall's top, offset for enfilading fire.  The city within the wall seemed so tall.  McKie had not expected it to appear so tall -- but that spoke of the population pressures in a way that could not be misunderstood.

Their ledge ended at another battlefield plain strewn with bodies of metal and flesh, the death stink an inescapable vapor.  Bahrank spun his vehicle left, right, dodged piles of torn equipment, avoided craters where mounds of flesh lay beneath insect blankets.  Ferns and other low growth were beginning to spring upright after the monstrous trampling.  Grey and yellow flying creatures sported in the ferntops, uncaring of all that death.  Aritch's aides had warned McKie that Dosadi's life existed amidst brutal excesses, but the actuality sickened him.  He identified both Gowachin and Human forms among the sprawled corpses.  The sleek green skin of a young Gowachin female, orange fertility marks prominent along her arms, especially revolted him.  McKie turned sharply away, found Bahrank studying him with tawny mockery in the shining Gowachin eyes.  Bahrank spoke as he drove.

"There're informers everywhere, of course, and after this . . ."  His head nodded left and right.  ". . . you'll have to move with more caution than you might've anticipated."

A brittle explosion punctuated his words.  Something struck the vehicle's armor on McKie's side.  Again they were a target.  And again.  The clanging of metal against metal came thickly, striking all around them, even on the glass over the view slits.

McKie suppressed his shock.  That thin glass did not shatter.  He knew about thick shields of tempered glass, but this put a new dimension on what he'd been told about the Dosadi.  Quite resourceful, indeed!

Bahrank drove with apparent unconcern.

More explosive attacks came from directly in front of them, flashes of orange in the jungle beyond the plain.

"They're testing," Bahrank said.  He pointed to one of the slits.  "See?  They don't even leave a mark on that new glass."

McKie spoke from the depths of his bitterness.

"Sometimes you wonder what all this proves except that our world runs on distrust."

"Who trusts?"

Bahrank's words had the sound of a catechism.

McKie said:

"I hope our friends know when to stop testing."

"They were told we couldn't take more'n eighty millimeter."

"Didn't they agree to pass us through?"

"Even so, they're expected to try a few shots if just to keep me in good graces with my superiors."

Once more, Bahrank put them through a series of dazzling speed changes and turns for no apparent reason.  McKie lurched against the restraints, felt bruising pain as an elbow hit the side of the cab.  An explosion directly behind rocked them up onto the left track.  As they bounced, Bahrank spun them left, avoided another blast which would've landed directly on them along their previous path.  McKie, his ears ringing from the explosions, felt the machine bounce to a stop, reverse as more explosions erupted ahead.  Bahrank spun them to the right, then left, once more charged full speed ahead right into an unbroken wall of jungle.  With explosions all around, they crashed through greenery, turned to the right along another shadowed muddy track.  McKie had lost all sense of direction, but the attack had ceased.

Bahrank slowed them, took a deep breath through his ventricles.

"I knew they'd try that."

He sounded both relieved and amused.

McKie, shaken by the brush with death, couldn't find his voice.

Their shadowy track snaked through the jungle for a space, giving McKie time to recover.  By then, he didn't know what to say.  He couldn't understand Bahrank's amusement, the lack of enduring concern over such violent threat.

Presently, they emerged onto an untouched, sloping plain as smooth and green as a park lawn.  It dipped gently downward into a thin screen of growth through which McKie could see a silver-green tracery of river.  What caught and held McKie's attention, however, was a windowless, pock-walled grey fortress which lifted from the plain in the middle distance.  It towered over the growth screening the river.  Buttressed arms reached toward them to enclose a black metal barrier.

"That's our gate," Bahrank said.

Bahrank turned them left, lined up with the center of the buttressed arms.  "Gate Nine and we're home through the tube," he said.

McKie nodded.  Walls, tubes, and gates:  those were the keys to Chu's defenses.  They had "barrier and fortress minds" on Dosadi.  This tube would run beneath the river.  He tried to place it on the map which Aritch's people had planted in his mind.  He was supposed to know the geography of this place, its geology, religions, social patterns, the intimate layout of each island's walled defenses, but he found it hard to locate himself now on that mental map.  He leaned forward to the slit, peered upward as the machine began to gather speed, saw the great central spire with its horizontal clock.  All the hours of map briefing snicked into place.

"Yes, Gate Nine."

Bahrank, too busy driving, did not reply.

McKie dropped his gaze to the fortress, stifled a gasp.

The rumbling machine was plunging downslope at a frightening pace, aimed directly toward that black metal barrier.  At the last instant, when it seemed they would crash into it, the barrier leaped upward.  They shot through into a dimly illuminated tube.  The gate thundered closed behind them. Their machine made a racketing sound on metal grating beneath the tracks.

Bahrank slowed them, shifted a lever beside him.  The machine lifted onto wheels with an abrupt reduction in noise which made McKie feel that he'd been deafened.  The feeling was heightened by the realization that Bahrank had said the same thing to him several times.

"Jedrik says you come from beyond the far mountains.  Is that true?"

"Jedrik says it."  He tried to make it sound wry, but it came out almost questioning.

Bahrank was concentrating on a line of thought, however, as he drove them straight down the grating floor of the dim tube.

"There's a rumor that you Rimmers have started a secret settlement back there, that you're trying to build your own city."

"An interesting rumor."

"Isn't it, though?"

The single line of overhead lights in the tube left the cab's interior darker than it'd been outside, illuminated by only the faint reflections from instruments and dials.  But McKie had the odd sensation that Bahrank saw him clearly, was studying every expression.  Despite the impossibility of this, the thought persisted.  What was behind Bahrank's probing?

Why do I feel that he sees right through me?

These disquieting conjectures ended as they emerged from the tube onto a Warren street.  Bahrank spun them to the right along a narrow alleyway in deep grey shadows.

Although he'd seen many representations of these streets the actuality deepened McKie's feelings of misgiving.  So dirty . . . oppressive . . . so many people.  They were everywhere!

Bahrank drove slowly now on the silent wheels, the tracks raised off the paving.  The big machine eased its way through narrow little streets, some paved with stone, some with great slabs of gleaming black.  All the streets were shaded by overhanging upper stories whose height McKie could not judge through the slits.  He saw shops barred and guarded.  An occasional stairway, also guarded, led up or down into repellent darkness.  Only Humans occupied these streets, and no casual, pedestrian expressions on any of them.  Jaws were set on grim mouths.  Hard, questioning eyes peered at the passing vehicle.  Both men and women wore the universal dark, one-piece clothing of the Labor Pool.

Noting McKie's interest, Bahrank spoke.

"This is a Human enclave and you have a Gowachin driver."

"Can they see us in here?"