He waited for her to say it.

"Because we Wreaves are the best in the universe at learning the behavior of others -- both overt and covert."

"And you dare not rely on any supposed inhibitions he may or may not have!"

After a long pause, she said:

"You are a better teacher than I'd suspected.  Perhaps you're even better than you suspected."

"Their law!  It is a dangerous foundation for nonauthentic traditions.  It is no more than a device to justify false ethics!"

-Gowachin comment on ConSentient Law

While they dressed in the dim dawn light coming through the single window, McKie began testing what Jedrik meant by being his teacher.

"Will you answer any question I ask about Dosadi?"  "No."

Then what areas would she withhold from him?  He saw it at once:  those areas where she gained and held personal power.

"Will anyone resent it that we . . . had sex together?"  "Resent?  Why should anyone resent that?"

"I don't . . ."

"Answer my question!"

"Why do I have to answer your every question?"

"To stay alive."

"You already know everything I . . ."

She brushed this aside.

"So the people of your ConSentiency sometimes resent the sexual relationships of others.  They are not sure, then, how they use sex to hold power over others."

He blinked.  Her quick, slashing analysis was devastating.

She peered at him.

"McKie, what can you do here without me?  Don't you know yet that the ones who sent you intended you to die here?"

"Or survive in my own peculiar way."

She considered this.  It was another idea about McKie which she had put aside for later evaluation.  Indeed, he might well have hidden talents which her questions had not yet exposed.  What annoyed her now was the sense that she didn't know enough about the ConSentiency to explore this.  Could not take the time right now to explore it.  His response disturbed her.  It was as though everything she could possibly do had already been decided for her by powers of which she knew next to nothing.  They were leading her by the nose, perhaps, just as she led Broey . . . just as those mysterious Gowachin of the ConSentiency obviously had led McKie . . . poor McKie.  She cut this short as unprofitable speculation.  Obviously, she had to begin at once to search out McKie's talent.  Whatever she discovered would reveal a great deal about his ConSentiency.

"McKie, I hold a great deal of power among the Humans and even among some Gowachin in the Warrens -- and elsewhere.  To do this, I must maintain certain fighting forces, including those who fight with physical weapons."

He nodded.  Her tone was that of lecturing to a child, but he accepted this, recognizing the care she took with him.

"We will go first," she said, "to a nearby training area where we maintain the necessary edge on one of my forces."

Turning, she led him out into the hall and down a stairway which avoided the room of the cage.  McKie was reminded of Pcharky, though, thinking about that gigantic expenditure of space with its strange occupant.

"Why do you keep Pcharky caged?" he asked, addressing Jedrik's back.

"So I can escape."

She refused to elaborate on this odd answer.

Presently, they emerged into a courtyard nestled into the solid walls of towering buildings.  Only a small square of sky was visible directly overhead and far away.  Artificial lighting from tubes along the walls provided an adequate illumination.  It revealed two squads facing each other in the center of the courtyard.  They were Humans, both male and female; all carried weapons:  a tube of some sort with a wandlike protrusion from the end near their bodies.  Several other Humans stood at observation positions around the two squads.  There was a guard station with a desk at the door through which McKie and Jedrik had emerged.

"That's an assault force," Jedrik said, indicating the squads in the courtyard.  She turned and consulted with the two young men at the guard station.

McKie made a rough count of the squads:  about two hundred.  It was obvious that everything had stopped because of Jedrik's presence.  He thought the force was composed of striplings barely blooded in Dosadi's cruel necessities.  This forced him to a reevaluation of his own capabilities.

From Jedrik's manner with the two men, McKie guessed she knew them well.  They paid close attention to everything she said.  They, too, struck him as too young for responsibility.

The training area was another matter.  It bore a depressing similarity to other such facilities he'd seen in the backwaters of the ConSentiency.  War games were a constant lure among several species, a lure which BuSab had managed thus far to channel into such diversions as weapons fetishes.

Through the omnipresent stink, McKie smelled the faint aroma of cooking.  He sniffed.

Turning to him, Jedrik spoke:

"The trainees have just been fed.  That's part of their pay."

It was as though she'd read his mind, and now she watched him for some reaction.

McKie glanced around the training area.  They'd just been fed here?  There wasn't a scrap or crumb on the ground.  He thought back to the restaurant, belatedly aware of a fastidious care with food that he'd seen and passed right over.

Again, Jedrik demonstrated the ease with which she read his reactions, his very thoughts.

"Nothing wasted," she said.

She turned away.

McKie looked where her attention went.  Four women stood at the far side of the courtyard, weapons in their hands.  Abruptly, McKie focused on the woman to the left, a competent-looking female of middle years.  She was carrying a . . . it couldn't be, but . . .Jedrik headed across the courtyard toward the woman.  McKie followed, peered closely at the woman's weapon.  It was an enlarged version of the pentrate from his kit!  Jedrik spoke briefly to the woman.

"Is that the new one?"

"Yes.  Stiggy brought it up this morning."

"Useful?"

"We think so.  It focuses the explosion with somewhat more concentration than our equipment."

"Good. Carry on."

There were more training cadre near the wall behind the women.  One, an older man with one arm, tried to catch Jedrik's attention as she led McKie toward a nearby door.

"Could you tell us when we . . ."

"Not now."

In the passage beyond the door, Jedrik turned and confronted McKie.

"Your impressions of our training?  Quick!"

"Not sufficiently versatile."

She'd obviously probed for his most instinctive reaction, demanding the gut response unmonitored by reason.  The answer brought a glowering expression to her face, an emotional candor which he was not to appreciate until much later.  Presently, she nodded.

"They are a commando.  More functions of a commando should be interchangeable.  Wait here."

She returned to the training area.  McKie, watching through the open door, saw her speak to the woman with the pentrate.  When Jedrik returned, she nodded to McKie with an expression of approval.

"Anything else?"

"They're awfully damned young.  You should have a few seasoned officers among them to put a rein on dangerous impetuosity."

"Yes, I've already set that in motion.  Hereafter, McKie, I want you to come out with me every morning for about an hour.  Watch the training, but don't interfere.  Report your reactions to me."

He nodded.  Clearly, she considered him useful and that was a step in the right direction.  But it was an idiotic assignment.  These violent infants possessed weapons which could make Dosadi uninhabitable.  There was an atavistic excitement in the situation, though.  He couldn't deny that.  Something in the Human psyche responded to mass violence -- really, to violence of any sort.  It was related to Human sexuality, an ancient stirring from the most primitive times.

Jedrik was moving on, however.

"Stay close."

They were climbing an inside stairway now and McKie, hurrying to keep up, found his thoughts locked on that pentrate in the hands of one of Jedrik's people.  The speed with which they'd copied and enlarged it dazzled him.  It was another demonstration of why Aritch feared Dosadi.

At the top of the stairs, Jedrik rapped briefly at a door.  A male voice said, "Come in."

The door swung open, and McKie found himself presently in a small, unoccupied room with an open portal at the far wall into what appeared to be a larger, well-lighted area.  Voices speaking so softly as to be unintelligible came from there.  A low table and five cramped chairs occupied the small room.  There were no windows, but a frosted overhead fixture provided shadowless illumination.  A large sheet of paper with colored graph lines on it covered the low table.

A swish of fabric brought McKie's attention to the open portal.  A short, slender woman in a white smock, grey hair, and the dark, penetrating stare of someone accustomed to command entered, followed by a slightly taller man in the same white.  He looked older than the woman, except his hair remained a lustrous black.  His eyes, too, held that air of command.  The woman spoke.

"Excuse the delay, Jedrik.  We've been changing the summation.  There's now no point where Broey can anticipate and change the transition from riots to full-scale warfare."

McKie was surprised by the abject deference in her voice.  This woman considered herself to be far below Jedrik.  The man took the same tone, gesturing to chairs.

"Sit down, please.  This chart is our summation."

As the woman turned toward him, McKie caught a strong whiff of something pungent on her breath, a not unfamiliar smell.  He'd caught traces of it several times in their passage through the Warrens.  She went on speaking as Jedrik and McKie slipped into chairs.

"This is not unexpected."  She indicated the design on the paper.

The man intruded.

"We've been telling you for some time now that Tria is ready to come over."

"She's trouble," Jedrik said.

"But Gar . . ."

It was the woman, arguing, but Jedrik cut her off.

"I know:  Gar does whatever she tells him to do.  The daughter runs the father.  He thinks she's the most wonderful thing that ever happened, able to . . ."

"Her abilities are not the issue," the man said.

The woman spoke eagerly.

"Yes, it's her influence on Gar that . . ."

"Neither of them anticipated my moves," Jedrik said, "but I anticipated their moves."

The man leaned across the table, his face close to Jedrik's.  He appeared suddenly to McKie like a large, dangerous animal -- dangerous because his actions could never be fully predicted.  His hands twitched when he spoke.

"We've told you every detail of our findings, every source, every conclusion.  Now, are you saying you don't share our assessment of . . ."

"You don't understand," Jedrik said.

The woman had drawn back.  Now, she nodded.

Jedrik said:

"It isn't the first time I've had to reassess your conclusions.  Hear me:  Tria will leave Broey when she's ready, not when he's ready.  It's the same for anyone she serves, even Gar."

They spoke in unison:

"Leave Gar?"

"Leave anyone.  Tria serves only Tria.  Never forget that.  Especially don't forget it if she comes over to us."

The man and woman were silent.

McKie thought about what Jedrik had said.  Her words were another indication that someone on Dosadi might have other than personal aims.  Jedrik's tone was unmistakable:  she censured and distrusted Tria because Tria served only selfish ambition.  Therefore, Jedrik (and this other pair by inference) served some unstated mutual purpose.  Was it a form of patriotism they served, species-oriented?  BuSab agents were always alert for this dangerous form of tribal madness, not necessarily to suppress it, but to make certain it did not explode into a violence deadly to the ConSentiency.

The white-smocked woman, after mulling her own thoughts, spoke:

"If Tria can't be enlisted for . . . what I mean is, we can use her own self-serving to hold her."  She corrected herself.  "Unless you believe we cannot convince her we'll overcome Broey."  She chewed at her lip, a fearful expression in her eyes.

A shrewd look came over Jedrik's face.

"What is it you suspect?"

The woman pointed to the chart on the table.

"Gar still shares in the major decisions.  That shouldn't be, but it is. If he . . ."

The man spoke with subservient eagerness.

"He has some hold on Broey!"

The woman shook her head.

"Or Broey plays a game other than the one we anticipated."

Jedrik looked at the woman, the man, at McKie.  She spoke as though to McKie, but McKie realized she was addressing the air.

"It's a specific thing.  Gar has revealed something to Broey.  I know what he's revealed.  Nothing else could force Broey to behave this way."  She nodded at the chart.  "We have them!"

The woman ventured a question.

"Have we done well?"

"Better than you know."

The man smiled, then:

"Perhaps this is the time to ask if we could have larger rooms.  The damn' children are always moving the furniture.  We bump . . ."

"Not now!"

Jedrik arose.  McKie followed her example.

"Let me see the children," Jedrik said.

The man turned to the open portal.

"Get out here, you!  Jedrik wants you!"

Three children came scurrying from the other room.  The woman didn't even look at them.  The man favored them with an angry glare.  He spoke to Jedrik.

"They've brought no food into this house in almost a week."

McKie studied the children carefully as he saw Jedrik was doing.  They stood in a row just inside the room and, from their expressions, it was impossible to tell their reaction to the summons.  They were two girls and a boy.  The one on the right, a girl, was perhaps nine; on the left, another girl, was five or six.  The boy was somewhat older, perhaps twelve or thirteen.  He favored McKie with a glance.  It was the glance of a predator who recognizes ready prey, but who already has eaten.  All three bore more resemblance to the woman than to the man, but the parentage was obvious:  the eyes, the set of the ears, nose . . .

Jedrik had completed her study.  She gestured to the boy.

"Start sending him to the second training team."

"About time," the woman said.  "We'll be glad to get him out of here."

"Come along, McKie."

In the hall, Jedrik said:

"To answer your question, they're pretty typical."

McKie, who had only wondered silently, swallowed in a dry throat.  The petty goals of these people:  to get a bigger room where they could live without bumping into furniture.  He'd sensed no affection for each other in that couple.  They were companions of convenience.  There had been not the smallest hint of emotion for each other when they spoke.  McKie found it difficult to imagine them making love, but apparently they did.  They had produced three children.

Realization came like an explosion in his head.  Of course they showed no emotion!  What other protection did they have?  On Dosadi, anything cared for was a club to beat you into somebody else's line.  And there was another thing.

McKie spoke to Jedrik's back as they went down the stairs.

"That couple -- they're addicted to something."

Surprisingly, Jedrik stopped, looked back up at him.

"How else do you think I hold such a pair?  The substance is called dis.  It's very rare.  It comes from the far mountains, far beyond the . . . far beyond.  The Rim sends parties of children as bearers to obtain dis for me.  In a party of fifty, thirty can expect to die on such a trek.  Do you get the measure of it, McKie?"

Once more, they headed down the stairs.

McKie, realizing she'd taken the time to teach him another lesson about Dosadi, could only follow, stunned, while she led him into a room where technicians bleached the sun-darkened areas of his skin.

When they emerged, he no longer carried the stigma of Pylash Gate.

When the means of great violence are widespread, nothing is more dangerous to the powerful than that they create outrage and injustice, for outrage and injustice will certainly ignite retaliation in kind.

-BuSab Manual

''It is no longer classifiable as rioting," the aide said.  He was a short Gowachin with pinched features, and he looked across the room to where Broey sat facing a dead communicator.  There was a map on the wall behind the aide, its colors made brilliant by harsh morning light coming in the east windows.  Below the map, a computer terminal jutted from the wall.  Occasionally it clicked.

Gar came into the room from the hall, peered around as though looking for someone, left.

Broey noted the intrusion, glanced at the map.

"Still no sign of where she's gone to ground?"

"Nothing certain."

"The one who paraded McKie through the streets . . ."

"Clearly an expendable underling."

"Where did they go?"

The aide indicated a place on the map, a group of buildings in the Warrens to the northwest.

Broey stared at the blank face of his communications screen.  He'd been tricked again.  He knew it.  That damnable Human female!  Violence in the city teetered on the edge of full-scale war:  Gowachin against Human.  And still nothing, not even a hint at the location of Gar's Rim stores, the blasphemous factories.  It was an unstable condition which could not continue much longer.

His communications screen came alive with a report:  violent fighting near Gate Twenty-One.  Broey glanced at the map.  That made it more than one hundred clearly defined battles between the species along an unresolved perimeter.  The report spoke of new weapons and unsuccessful attempts to capture specimens.

Gate Twenty-One?

That wasn't far from the place where McKie had been paraded through . . .

Several things slipped into a new relationship in Broey's mind.  He looked at his aide, who stood waiting obediently at the map.

"Where's Gar?"

Aides were summoned, sent running.  Gar was not to be found.

"Tria?"

She, too, was unavailable.

Gar's fanatics remained neutral, but more of Jedrik's pattern was emerging.  Everything pointed to an exquisite understanding of the weakness implicit in the behavior of Gar and Tria.

And I thought I was the only one who saw that!

Broey hesitated.

Why would the God not speak to him other than to say "I am watched."

Broey felt tricked and betrayed in his innermost being.  This had a cleansing effect on his reason.  He could only depend on himself.  And he began to sense a larger pattern in Jedrik's behavior.  Was it possible that Jedrik shared his goals?  The possibility excited him.

He looked at the aides who'd come running with the negative information about Gar and Tria, began to snap orders.

"Get our people out of all those Warrens, except that corridor to the northeast.  Reinforce that area.  Everyone else fall back to the secondary walls.  Let no Humans inside that perimeter.  Block all gates.  Get moving!"

This last was shouted as his aides hesitated.

Perhaps it already was too late.  He realized now that he'd allowed Jedrik to bait and distract him.  It was clear that she'd created in her mind an almost perfect simulation model of Broey.  And she'd done it from a Liaitor position!  Incredible.  He could almost feel sorry for Gar and Tria.  They were like puppets dancing to Jedrik's strings.

I was no better.

It came over him that Jedrik's simulation probably encompassed this very moment of realization.  Admiration for her permeated him.

Superb!

Quietly, he issued orders for the sequestering of Gowachin females within the inner Graluz bastions which he'd had the foresight to prepare.  His people would thank him for that.

Those who survived the next few hours.

The attack by those who want to die -- this is the attack against which you cannot prepare a perfect defense.

-Human aphorism

By the third morning, McKie felt that he might have lived all of his life on Dosadi.  The place demanded every element of attention he could muster.

He stood alone in Jedrik's room, staring absently at the unmade bed.  She expected him to put the place in order before her return.  He knew that.  She'd told him to wait here and had gone away on urgent business.  He could only obey.

Concerns other than an unmade bed distracted him, though.  He felt now that he understood the roots of Aritch's fears.  The Gowachin of Tandaloor might very well destroy this place, even if they knew that by doing so they blasted open that bloody region where every sentient hid his most secret fears.  He could see this clearly now.  How the Running Phylum expected him to avoid that monstrous decision was a more elusive matter.

There were secrets here.

McKie sensed Dosadi like a malignant organism beneath his feet, jealously keeping those secrets from him.  This place was the enemy of the ConSentiency, but he found himself emotionally siding with Dosadi.  It was betrayal of BuSab, of his Legum oath, everything.  But he could not prevent that feeling or recognition of it.  In the course of only a few generations, Dosadi had become a particular thing.  Monstrous?  Only if you held to your own precious myths.  Dosadi might be the greatest cleansing force the ConSentiency had ever experienced.

The whole prospect of the ConSentiency had begun to sicken him.  And Aritch's Gowachin.  Gowachin Law?  Stuff Gowachin Law!

It was quiet in Jedrik's room.  Painfully quiet.

He knew that out on the streets of Chu there was violent warfare between Gowachin and Human.  Wounded had been rushed through the training courtyard while he was there with Jedrik.  Afterward, she'd taken him to her command post, a room across the hall and above Pcharky's cage.  He'd stood nearby, watched her performance as though she were a star on an entertainment circuit and he a member of the audience.  It was fascinating.  Broey will do this.  Broey will give that order.  And each time, the reports revealed how precisely she had anticipated her opponent.

Occasionally, she mentioned Gar or Tria.  He was able to detect the subtle difference in her treatment of that pair.

On their second night together, Jedrik had aroused his sexual appetites softly, deftly.  She had treated him to a murmurous compliance, and afterward had leaned over him on an elbow to smile coldly.

"You see, McKie:  I can play your game."

Shockingly, this had opened an area of awareness within him which he'd not even suspected.  It was as though she'd held up his entire previous life to devastating observation.

And he was the observer!

Other beings formed lasting relationships and operated from a secure emotional base.  But he was a product of BuSab, the Gowachin . . . and much that had gone before.  It had become increasingly obvious to him why the Gowachin had chosen him to groom for this particular role.

I was damaged and they could rebuild me the way they wanted!

Well, the Gowachin could still be surprised by what they produced.  Dosadi was evidence of that.  They might not even suspect what they'd actually produced in McKie.

He was bitter with a bitterness he knew must've been fermenting in him for years.  The loneliness of his own life with its central dedication to BuSab had been brought to a head by the loneliness of this imprisoned planet.  An incredible jumble of emotions had sorted themselves out, and he felt new purpose burning within him.

Power!

Ahhhh . . . that was how it felt to be Dosadi!

He'd turned away from Jedrik's cold smile, pulled the blankets around his shoulder.

Thank you, loving teacher.

Such thoughts roamed through his mind as he stood alone in the room the following day and began to make the bed.  After her revelation, Jedrik had resumed her interest in his memories, napping only to awaken him with more questions.

In spite of his sour outlook, he still felt it his duty to examine her behavior in every possible light his imagination could produce.  Nothing about Dosadi was too absurd.  He had to build a better picture of this society and its driving forces.

Before returning to Jedrik's room, he'd made another tour of the training courtyard with her.  There'd been more new weapons adapted from his kit, and he'd realized the courtyard was merely Jedrik's testing ground, that there must be many more training areas for her followers.

McKie had not yet revealed to her that Aritch's people might terminate Dosadi's people with violence.  Shed been centering on this at dawn.  Even while they shared the tiny toilet cubicle off her room she'd pressed for answers.

For a time, McKie had diverted her with questions about Pcharky.  What were the powers in that cage?  At one point, he'd startled her.

"Pcharky knows something valuable he hopes to trade for his freedom."

"How'd you know?"

"It's obvious.  I'll tell you something else:  he came here of his own free will . . . for whatever purpose."

"You learn quickly, McKie."

She was laughing at him and he glared at her.

"All right!  I don't know that purpose, but it may be that you only think you know it."

For the briefest flicker, something dangerous glared from her eyes, then:

"Your jumpdoors have brought us many fools, but Pcharky is one of the biggest fools.  I know why he came.  There've been many like him.  Now . . . there is only one.  Broey, for all of his power, cannot search out his own Pcharky.  And Keila Jedrik is the one who frustrates him."

Too late, she realized that McKie had goaded her into this performance.  How had he done that?  He'd almost found out too much too soon.  It was dangerous to underestimate this naive intruder from beyond the God Wall.

Once more, she'd begun probing for things he had not yet revealed.  Time had protected him.  Aides had come urging an early inspection of the new weapons.  They were needed.

Afterward, they'd gone to the command post and then to breakfast in a Warren dining room.  All through breakfast, he'd plied her with questions about the fighting.  How extensive was it?  Could he see some of the prisoners?  Were they using the weapons built from the patterns in his kit?  Were they winning?

Sometimes she merely ignored his questions.  Most of her answers were short, distracted.  Yes.  No.  No.  Yes.  McKie realized she was answering in monosyllables to fend him off.  He was a distraction.  Something important had been communicated to her and he'd missed it.  Although this angered him, he tried to mask the emotion, striving to penetrate her wall of concern.  Oddly, she responded when he changed his line of questioning to the parents of the three children and the conversation there.

"You started to designate a particular place:  'Beyond the . . .'  Beyond what?"

"It's something Gar, thinks I don't know.  He thinks only his death fanatics have that kind of rapport with the Rim."

He stared at her, caught by a sudden thought.  By now, he knew much about Gar and Tria.  She answered his questions about them with candor, often using him openly to clarify her own thoughts.  But -- death fanatics?

"Are these fanatics homosexual?"

She pounced.

"How'd you know?"

"A guess."

"What difference would it make?"

"Are they?"

"Yes."

McKie shuddered.

She was peremptory.

"Explain!"

"When Humans for any reason go terminal where survival of their species is concerned, it's relatively easy to push them the short step further into wanting to die."

"You speak from historical evidence?"

"Yes."

"Example."

"With rare exceptions, primitive Humans of the tribal eras reserved their homosexuals as the ultimate shock troops of desperation.  They were the troops of last resort, sent into battle as berserkers who expected, who wanted, to die."

She had to have the term berserkers explained, then showed by her manner that she believed him.  She considered this, then:

"What does your ConSentiency do about this susceptibility?"

"We take sophisticated care to guide all natural sexual variants into constructive, survival activities.  We protect them from the kinds of pressures which might tip them over into behavior destructive of the species."

Only later had McKie realized she had not answered his question:  beyond what?  She'd rushed him off to a conference room where more than twenty Humans were assembled, including the two parents who'd made the chart about Tria and Gar.  McKie realized he didn't even know their names.

It put him at a disadvantage not knowing as many of these people by sight and name as he should.  They, of course, had ready memories of everyone important around them and, when they used a name, often did it with such blurred movement into new subjects that he was seldom sure who had been named.  He saw the key to it, though.  Their memories were anchored in explicit references to relative abilities of those around them, relative dangers.  And it wasn't so much that they concealed their emotions as that they managed their emotions.  Nowhere in their memories could there be any emotive clouding such as thoughts of love or friendship.  Such things weakened you.  Everything operated on the strict basis of quid pro quo, and you'd better have the cash ready -- whatever that cash might be. McKie, pressed all around by questions from the people in the conference room, knew he had only one real asset:  he was a key they might use to open the God Wall.  Very important asset, but unfortunately owned by an idiot.

Now, they wanted his information about death fanatics.  They milked him dry, then sent him away like a child who has performed for his elders but is sent to his room when important matters are brought up for discussion.

The more control, the more that requires control.  This is the road to chaos.

-PanSpechi aphorism

By the fourth morning of the battle for Chu, Tria was in a vile humor.  Her forces had established lines holding about one-eighth of the total Warren territory, mostly low buildings, except along Broey's corridor to the Rim.  She did not like the idea that Jedrik's people held an unobstructed view down onto most of the death fanatics' territory.  And most of those leaders who'd thrown in their lot with Tria were beginning to have second thoughts, especially since they'd come to realize that this enclave had insufficient food production facilities to maintain itself.  The population density she'd been forced to accept was frightening:  almost triple the Warren norm.

Thus far, neither Broey nor Jedrik had moved in force against her.  Tria had finally been brought to the inescapable conclusion that she and Gar were precisely where Jedrik wanted them.  They'd been cut out of Broey's control as neatly and cleanly as though by a knife.  There was no going back.  Broey would never accept Human help under present circumstance.  That, too, spoke of the exquisite care with which Jedrik had executed her plan.

Tria had moved her command post during the night to a high building which faced the canyon walls to the north.  Only the river, with a single gate under it, separated her from the Rim.  She'd slept badly, her mind full of worries.  Chief among her worries was the fact that none of the contact parties she'd sent out to the Rim had returned.  There'd been no fires on the Rim ledges during the night.  No word from any of her people out there.

Why?

Once more, she contemplated her position, seeking some advantage, any advantage.  One of her lines was anchored on Broey's corridor to the Rim, one line on the river wall with its single gate, and the rest of her perimeter meandered through a series of dangerous salients from the fifth wall to the river.

She could hear sounds of battle along the far side of Broey's corridor.  Jedrik's people used weapons which made a great deal of noise.  Occasionally, an explosive projectile landed in Tria's enclave.  These were rare, but she'd taken casualties and the effect on morale was destructive.  That was a major problem with fanatics:  they demanded to be used, to be wasted.

Tria stared down at the river, aware of the bodies drifting on its poison currents -- both Human and Gowachin bodies, but more Gowachin than Human.  Presently, she turned away from the scene, padded into the next room, and roused Gar.

"We must contact Jedrik," she said.

He rubbed sleep from his eyes.

"No!  We must wait until we make contact with our people on the Rim.  Then we can . . ."

"Faaaaa!"

She'd seldom showed that much disgust with him.

"We're not going to make contact with our people on the Rim.  Jedrik and Broey have seen to that.  It wouldn't surprise me if they were cooperating to isolate us."

"But we've . . ."

"Shut up, Father!"  She held up her hands, stared at them.  "I was never really good enough to be one of Broey's chief advisors.  I always suspected that.  I always pressed too hard.  Last night, I reviewed as many of my decisions as I could.  Jedrik deliberately made me look good.  She did it oh so beautifully!"

"But our forces on the Rim . . ."

"May not be ours!  They may be Jedrik's."

"Even the Gowachin?"

"Even the Gowachin."

Gar could hear a ringing in his ears.  Contact Jedrik?  Throw away all of their power?

"I'm good enough to recognize the weakness of a force such as ours," Tria said.  "We can be goaded into spending ourselves uselessly.  Even Broey didn't see that, but Jedrik obviously did.  Look at the salients along her perimeter!"

"What have salients . . ."

"They can be pinched off and obliterated!  Even you must see that."

"Then pull back and . . ."

"Reduce our territory?"  She stared at him, aghast.  "If I even intimate I'm going to do that, our auxiliaries will desert wholesale.  Right now they're . . ."

"Then attack!"

"To gain what?"

Gar nodded.  Jedrik would fall back across mined areas, blast the fanatics out of existence.  She held enough territory that she could afford such destruction.  Clearly, she'd planned on it.

"Then we must pinch off Broey's corridor."

"That's what Jedrik wants us to do.  It's the only negotiable counter we have left.  That's why we must contact Jedrik."

Gar shook his head in despair.

Tria was not finished, though.

"Jedrik might restore us to a share of power in the Rim city if we bargain for it now.  Broey would never do that.  Do you understand now the mistake you made with Broey?"

"But Broey was going to . . ."

"You failed to follow my orders, Father.  You must see now why I always tried to keep you from making independent decisions."

Gar fell into abashed silence.  This was his daughter, but he could sense his peril.

Tria spoke.

"I will issue orders presently to all of our commanders.  They will be told to hold at all costs.  They will be told that you and I will try to contact Jedrik.  They will be told why."

"But how can . . ."

"We will permit ourselves to be captured."

QUESTION:  Who governs the governors?  ANSWER:  Entropy.

-Gowachin riddle

Many things conspired to frustrate McKie.  Few people other than Jedrik answered his questions.  Most responded as though to a cretin.  Jedrik treated him as though he were a child of unknown potential.  At times, he knew he amused her.  Other times, she punished him with an angry glance, by ignoring him, or just by going away -- or worse, sending him away.

It was now late afternoon of the fifth day in the battle for Chu, and Broey's forces still held out in the heart of the city with their slim corridor to the Rim.  He knew this from reports he'd overheard.  He stood in a small room off Jedrik's command post, a room containing four cots where, apparently she and/or her commanders snatched occasional rest. One tall, narrow window looked out to the south Rim.  McKie found it difficult to realize that he'd come across that Rim just six days previously.

Clouds had begun to gather over the Rim's terraced escarpments, a sure sign of a dramatic change in the weather.  He knew that much, at least, from his Tandaloor briefings.  Dosadi had no such thing as weather control.  Awareness of this left him feeling oddly vulnerable.  Nature could be so damnably capricious and dangerous when you had no grip on her vagaries.

McKie blinked, held his breath for a moment.

Vagaries of nature.

The vagaries of sentient nature had moved the Gowachin to set up this experiment.  Did they really hope to control that vast, seething conglomerate of motives?  Or had they some other reason for Dosadi, a reason which he had not yet penetrated?  Was this, after all, a test of Caleban mysteries?  He thought not.

He knew the way Aritch and aides said they'd set up this experiment.  Observations here bore out their explanations.  None of that data was consistent with an attempt to understand the Calebans.  Only that brief encounter with Pcharky, a thing which Jedrik no longer was willing to discuss.

No matter how he tried, McKie couldn't evade the feeling that something essential lay hidden in the way this planet had been set upon its experimental course; something the Gowachin hadn't revealed, something they perhaps didn't even understand themselves.  What'd they done at the beginning?  They had this place, Dosadi, the subjects, the Primary . . . yes, the Primary.  The inherent inequality of individuals dominated Gowachin minds.  And there was that damnable DemoPol.  How had they mandated it?  Better yet:  how did they maintain that mandate?

Aritch's people had hoped to expose the inner workings of sentient social systems.  So they said.  But McKie was beginning to look at that explanation with Dosadi eyes, with Dosadi skepticism.  What had Fannie Mae meant about not being able to leave here in his own body/node?  How could he be Jedrik's key to the God Wall?  McKie knew he needed more information than he could hope to get from Jedrik.  Did Broey have this information?  McKie wondered if he might in the end have to climb the heights to the Council Hills for his answers.  Was that even possible now?

When he'd asked for it, Jedrik had given him almost the run of this building, warning:

"Don't interfere."

Interfere with what?

When he'd asked, she'd just stared at him.

She had, however, taken him around to familiarize everyone with his status. He was never quite sure what that status might be, except that it was somewhere between guest and prisoner.

Jedrik had required minimal conversation with her people.  Often, she'd used only hand waves to convey the necessary signals of passage.  The whole traverse was a lesson for McKie, beginning with the doorguards.

"McKie."  Pointing at him.

The guards nodded.

Jedrik had other concerns.

"Team Nine?"

"Back at noon."

"Send word."

Everyone subjected McKie to a hard scrutiny which he felt certain would let them identify him with minimal interruption.

There were two elevators:  one an express from a heavily guarded street entrance on the side of the building, the other starting above the fourth level at the ceiling of Pcharky's cage.  They took this one, went up, pausing at each floor for guards to see him.

When they returned to the cage room, McKie saw that a desk had been installed just inside the street door.  The father of those three wild children sat there watching Pcharky, making occasional notations in a notebook.  McKie had a name for him now, Ardir.

Jedrik paused at the desk. .

"McKie can come and go with the usual precautions."

McKie, addressing himself finally to Jedrik, had said:

"Thanks for taking this time with me."

"No need to be sarcastic, McKie."

He had not intended sarcasm and reminded himself once more that the usual amenities of the ConSentiency suffered a different interpretation here.

Jedrik glanced through Ardir's notes, looked up at Pcharky, back to McKie.  Her expression did not change.

"We will meet for dinner."

She left him then.

For his part, McKie had approached Pcharky's cage, noting the tension this brought to the room's guards and observers.  The old Gowachin sat in his hammock with an indifferent expression on his face.  The bars of the cage emitted an almost indiscernible hissing as they shimmered and glowed.

"What happens if you touch the bars?" McKie asked.

The Gowachin jowls puffed in a faint shrug.

McKie pointed.

"There's energy in those bars.  What is that energy?  How is it maintained?"

Pcharky responded in a hoarse croaking.

"How is the universe maintained?  When you first see a thing, is that when it was created?"

"Is it a Caleban thing?"

Shrug.

McKie walked around the cage, studying it.  There were glistening bulbs wherever the bars crossed each other.  The rods upon which the hammock was suspended came from the ceiling. They penetrated the cage top without touching it.  The hammock itself appeared to be fabric.  It was faintly blue.  He returned to his position facing Pcharky.

"Do they feed you?"

No answer.

Ardir spoke from behind him.

"His food is lowered from the ceiling.  His excreta are hosed into the reclamation lines."

McKie spoke over his shoulder.

"I see no door into the cage.  How'd he get in there?"

"It was built around him according to his own instructions."

"What are the bulbs where the bars cross?"

"They came into existence when he activated the cage."

"How'd he do that?"

"We don't know.  Do you?"

McKie shook his head from side to side.

"How does Pcharky explain this?"

"He doesn't."

McKie had turned away to face Ardir, probing, moving the focus of questions from Pcharky to the planetary society itself.  Ardir's answers, especially on matters of religion and history, were banal.

Later, as he stood in the room off the command post reviewing the experience, McKie found his thoughts touching on a matter which had not even come into question.

Jedrik and her people had known for a long time that Dosadi was a Gowachin creation.  They'd known it long before McKie had appeared on the scene.  It was apparent in the way they focused on Pcharky, in the way they reacted to Broey.  McKie had added one significant datum:  that Dosadi was a Gowachin experiment.  But Jedrik's people were not using him in the ways he might expect.  She said he was the key to the God Wall, but how was he that key?

The answer was not to be found in Ardir.  That one had not tried to evade McKie's questions, but the answers betrayed a severely limited scope to Ardir's knowledge and imagination.

McKie felt deeply disturbed by this insight.  It was not so much what the man said as what he did not say when the reasons for speaking openly in detail were most demanding.  Ardir was no dolt.  This was a Human who'd risen high in Jedrik's hierarchy.  Many speculations would've crossed his mind.  Yet he made no mention of even the more obvious speculations.  He raised no questions about the way Dosadi history ran to a single cutoff point in the past without any trace of evolutionary beginnings.  He did not appear to be a religious person and even if he were, Dosadi would not permit the more blatant religious inhibitions.  Yet Ardir refused to explore the most obvious discrepancies in those overt religious attitudes McKie had been told to expect.  Ardir played out the right attitudes, but there was no basis for them underneath.  It was all surface.

McKie suddenly despaired of ever getting a deep answer from any of these people -- even from Jedrik.

An increase in the noise level out in the command post caught McKie's attention.  He opened the door, stood in the doorway to study the other room.

A new map had been posted on the far wall.  There was a position board, transparent and covered with yellow, red, and blue dots, over the map.  Five women and a man -- all wearing earphones -- worked the board, moving the colored markers.  Jedrik stood with her back to McKie, talking to several commanders who'd just come in from the streets.  They still carried their weapons and packs.  It was their conversation which had attracted McKie.  He scanned the room, noted two communications screens at the left wall, both inactive.  They were new since his last view of the room and he wondered at their purpose.

An aide leaned in from the hallway, called out:

"Gate Twenty-One just reported.  Everything has quieted there.  They want to know if they should keep their reserves on the alert."

"Have them stand down," Jedrik said.

"The two prisoners are being brought here," the aide added.

"I see it," Jedrik said.

She nodded toward the position board.

McKie, following the direction of her gaze, saw two yellow markers being moved with eight blue companions.  Without knowing how he understood this, he saw that this must be the prisoners and their escort.  There were tensions in the command post which told him this was an important event.  Who were those prisoners?

One of Jedrik's commanders spoke.

"I saw the monitor at . . ."

She was not listening to him and he broke off.  Two people on the position board exchanged places, trading earphones.  The messenger who'd called out the information about the gate and the prisoners had gone.  Another messenger came in presently, conferred in a soft voice with people near the door.

In a few moments, eight young Human males entered carrying Gar and Tria securely trussed with what appeared to be shining wire.  McKie recognized the pair from Aritch's briefings.  The escort carried their prisoners like so much meat, one at each leg and each arm.

"Over here," Jedrik said, indicating two chairs facing her.

McKie found himself suddenly aware, in an extremely Dosadi way, of many of the nuances here.  It filled him with elation.

The escort crossed the room, not bothering to steer clear of all the furniture.  The messenger from the hallway delayed his departure, reluctant to leave.  He'd recognized the prisoners and knew something important was about to happen.

Gar and Tria were dumped into the two chairs.

"Release their bindings," Jedrik said.

The escort obeyed.

Jedrik waited, staring across at the position board.  The two yellow and eight blue markers had been removed.  She continued to stare at the board, though.  Something there was more important than these two prisoners.  She pointed to a cluster of red markers in an upper corner.

"See to that."

One of her commanders left the room.

McKie took a deep breath.  He'd spotted the flicker of her movement toward the commander who'd obeyed.  So that was how she did it!  McKie moved farther into the room to put Jedrik in profile to him.  She made no response to his movement, but he knew she was aware of him.  He stepped closer to what he saw as the limit of her tolerance, noted a faint smile as she turned toward the prisoners.

There was an abrupt silence, one of those uncomfortable moments when people realize there are things they must do, but everyone is reluctant to start.  The messenger still stood by the door to the hall, obviously wanting to see what would happen here.  The escort who'd brought the prisoners remained standing in a group at one side.  They were almost huddled, as though seeking protection in their own numbers.

Jedrik glanced across at the messenger.

"You may go."

She nodded to the escort.

"And you."

McKie held his cautious distance, waiting, but Jedrik took no notice of him.  He saw that he not only would be allowed to stay, but that he was expected to use his wits, his off-world knowledge.  Jedrik had read things in his presence:  a normal distrust, caution, patience.  And the fears, of course.

Jedrik took her time with the prisoners.  She leaned forward, examined first Tria, then Gar.  From the way she looked at them, it was clear to McKie she weighed many possibilities on how to deal with this pair.  She was also building the tensions and this had its effect.  Gar broke.

"Broey has a way of describing people such as you." Gar said.  "He calls you 'rockets,' which is to say you are like a display which shoots up into the sky -- and falls back."

Jedrik grinned.

McKie understood.  Gar was not managing his emotions very well.  It was a weakness.

"Many rockets in this universe must die unseen," Jedrik said.

Gar glared at her.  He didn't like this response, glanced at Tria, saw from her expression that he had blundered.

Tria spoke now, smiling faintly.

"You've taken a personal interest in us, Jedrik."

To McKie, it was as though he'd suddenly crossed a threshold into the understanding of another language. Tria's was a Dosadi statement, carrying many messages.  She'd said that Jedrik saw an opportunity for personal gain here and that Tria knew this.  The faint smile had been the beginning of the statement.  McKie felt a new awe at the special genius of the Dosadi awareness.  He moved a step closer.  There was something else about Tria . . . something odd.

"What is that one to you?"

Tria spoke to Jedrik, but a flicker of the eyes indicated McKie.

"He has a certain utility," Jedrik said.

"Is that the reason you keep him near you?"

"There's no single reason."

"There've been certain rumors . . ."

"One uses what's available," Jedrik said.

"Did you plan to have children by him?"

Jedrik shook with silent mirth.  McKie understood that Tria probed for weaknesses, found none.

"The breeding period is so incapacitating for a female," Tria said.

The tone was deliberately goading, and McKie waited for a response.

Jedrik nodded.

"Offspring produce many repercussions down through the generations.  Never a casual decision for those of us who understand."

Jedrik looked at Gar, forcing McKie to shift his attention.

Gar's face went suddenly bland, which McKie interpreted as shock and anger.  The man had himself under control quickly, however.  He stared at McKie, directed a question to Jedrik.

"Would his death profit us?"

Jedrik glanced at McKie.

Shocked by the directness of the question, McKie was at least as intrigued by the assumptions in Gar's question.  "Us!"  Gar assumed that he and Jedrik had common cause.  Jedrik was weighing that assumption and McKie, filled with elation, understood.  He also recognized something else and realized he could now repay all of Jedrik's patient teaching.

Tria!

Something about Tria's way of holding her head, the inflections in her spoken Galach, struck a chord in McKie's memory.  Tria was a Human who'd been trained by a PanSpechi -- that way of moving the eyes before the head moved, the peculiar emphasis in her speech mannerisms.  But there were no PanSpechi on Dosadi.  Or were there?

None of this showed on McKie's face.  He continued to radiate distrust, caution, patience.  But he began to ask himself if there might be another loose thread in this Dosadi mystery.  He saw Jedrik looking at him and, without thinking about it, gave her a purely Dosadi eye signal to follow him, returned to the adjoining room.  It was a measure of how she read him that she came without question.

"Yes?"

He told her what he suspected.

"These PanSpechi, they are the ones who can grow a body to simulate that of another species?"

"Except for the eyes.  They have faceted eyes.  Any PanSpechi who could act freely and simulate another species would be only the surface manifestation.  The freely moving one is only one of five bodies; it's the holder of the ego, the identity.  This passes periodically to another of the five.  It's a PanSpechi crime to prevent that transfer by surgically fixing the ego in only one of the bodies."

Jedrik glanced out the doorway.  "You're sure about her?"

"The pattern's there."

"The faceted eyes, can that be disguised?"

"There are ways:  contact lenses or a rather delicate operation.  I've been trained to detect such things, however, and I can tell you that the one who trained her is not Gar."

She looked at him.

"Broey?"

"A Graluz would be a great place to conceal a creche but . . ."  He shook his head.  ". . . I don't think so.  From what you tell me about Broey . . ."

"Gowachin," she agreed.  "Then who?"

"Someone who influenced her when she was quite young."

"Do you wish to interrogate the prisoners?"

"Yes, but I don't know their potential value."

She stared at him in open wonder.  His had been an exquisitely penetrating Dosadi-style statement.  It was as though a McKie she thought she knew had been transformed suddenly right in front of her eyes.  He was not yet sufficiently Dosadi to trust completely, but she'd never expected him to come this far this quickly.  He did deserve a more detailed assessment of the military situation and the relative abilities of Tria and Gar.  She delivered this assessment in the Dosadi way:  barebones words, swift, clipped to an essential spareness which assumed a necessary broad understanding by the listener.

Absorbing this, McKie sensed where she limited her recital, tailoring it for his abilities.  In a way, it was similar to a response by his Daily Schedule back on Central Central.  He could see himself in her attitudes, read her assessment of him.  She was favoring him with a limited, grudging respect tempered by a certain Fondness as by a parent toward a child.  And he knew that once they returned to the other room, the fondness would be locked under a mask of perfect concealment.  It was there, though.  It was there.  And he dared not betray her trust by counting on that fondness, else it would be locked away forever.

"I'm ready," he said.

They returned to the command post, McKie with a clearer picture of how to operate here.  There was no such thing as mutual, unquestioning trust.  You always questioned.  You always managed.  A sort of grudging respect was the nearest they'd reveal openly.  They worked together to survive, or when it was overwhelmingly plain that there was personal advantage in mutual action.  Even when they united, they remained ultimate individualists.  They suspected any gift because no one gave away anything freely.  The safest relationships were those in which the niches of the hierarchy were clear and solidly held -- minimum threat from above and from below.  The whole thing reminded McKie of stories told about behavior in Human bureaucracies of the classical period before deep space travel.  And many years before he had encountered a multispecies corporation which had behaved similarly until the ministrations of BuSab had shown them the error of their ways.  They'd used every dirty trick available:  bribing, spying and other forms of covert and overt espionage, fomenting dissent in the opposition, assassination, blackmail, and kidnapping.  Few in the ConSentiency had not heard of InterRealm Supply, now defunct.

McKie stopped three paces from the prisoners.

Tria spoke first.

"Have you decided what to do with us?"

"There's useful potential in both of you," McKie said, "but we have other questions."

The "we" did not escape Tria or Gar.  They both looked at Jedrik, who stood impassively at McKie's shoulder.

McKie addressed himself to Gar.

"Is Tria really your daughter, your natural child?"

Tria appeared surprised and, with his new understanding, McKie realized she was telling him she didn't care if he saw this reaction, that it suited her for him to see this.  Gar, however, had betrayed a flicker of shock.  By Dosadi standards, he was dumbfounded.  Then Tria was not his natural daughter, but until this moment, Tria had never questioned their relationship.

"Tell us," McKie said.

The Dosadi spareness of the words struck Gar like a blow.  He looked at Jedrik.  She gave every indication of willingness to wait forever for him to obey, which was to say that she made no response either to McKie's words or Gar's behavior.

Visibly defeated, Gar returned his attention to McKie.

"I went with two females, only the three of us, across the far mountains.  We tried to set up our own production of pure food there.  Many on the Rim tried that in those days.  They seldom came back.  Something always happens:  the plants die for no reason, the water source runs dry, something steals what you grow.  The Gods are jealous.  That's what we always said."

He looked at Tria, who studied him without expression.

"One of the two women died the first year.  The other was sick by the following harvest season, but survived through the next spring.  It was during that harvest . . . we went to the garden . . . ha!  The garden!  This child was there.  We had no idea of where she'd come from.  She appeared to be seven or eight years old, but her reactions were those of an infant.  That happens often enough on the Rim -- the mind retreats from something too terrible to bear.  We took her in.  Sometimes you can train such a child back to usefulness.  When the woman died and the crop failed, I took Tria and we headed back to the Rim.  That was a very bad time.  When we returned . . .  I was sick.  Tria helped me then.  We've been together ever since."

McKie found himself deeply touched by this recital and hard put to conceal his reaction.  He was not positive that he did conceal it.  With his new Dosadi awareness, he read an entire saga into that sparse account of events which probably were quite ordinary by Rim standards.  He found himself enraged by the other data which could be read into Gar's words.

PanSpechi trained!

That was the key.  Aritch's people had wanted to maintain the purity of their experiment:  only two species permitted.  But it would be informative to examine PanSpechi applications.  Simple.  Take a Human female child.  Put her exclusively under PanSpechi influence for seven or eight years.  Subject that child to selective memory erasure.  Hand her over to convenient surrogate parents on Dosadi.

And there was more:  Aritch lied when he said he knew little about the Rim, that the Rim was outside the experiment.

As these thoughts went through his head, McKie returned to the small adjoining room.  Jedrik followed.  She waited while he assembled his thoughts.

Presently, McKie looked at her, laid out his deductions.  When he finished, he glanced at the doorway.

"I need to learn as much as I can about the Rim."

"Those two are a good source."

"But don't you require them for your other plans, the attack on Broey's corridor?"

"Two things can go forward simultaneously.  You will return to their enclave with them as my lieutenant.  That'll confuse them.  They won't know what to make of that.  They will answer your questions.  And in their confusion they'll reveal much that they might otherwise conceal from you."

McKie absorbed this.  Yes . . . Jedrik did not hesitate to put him into peril.  It was an ultimate message to everyone.  McKie would be totally at the mercy of Gar and Tria.  Jedrik was saying, "See!  You cannot influence me by any threat to McKie."  In a way, this protected him.  In an extremely devious Dosadi way, this removed many possible threats to McKie, and it told him much about what her true feelings toward him could be.  He spoke to this.

"I detest a cold bed."

Her eyes sparkled briefly, the barest touch of moisture, then, arming him:

"No matter what happens to me, McKie -- free us!"

Given the proper leverage at the proper point, any sentient awareness may be exploded into astonishing self-understanding.

-from an ancient Human mystic

"Unless she makes a mistake, or we find some unexpected advantage, it's only a matter of time until she overruns us," Broey said.

He sat in his aerie command post at the highest point of the dominant building on the Council Hills.  The room was an armored oval with a single window about fifteen meters away directly in front of Broey looking out on sunset through the river's canyon walls.  A small table with a communicator stood just to his left.  Four of his commanders waited near the table.  Maps, position boards, and the other appurtenances of command, with their attendants, occupied most of the room's remaining space.

Broey's intelligence service had just brought him the report that Jedrik had taken Gar and Tria captive.

One of his commanders, slender for a Gowachin and with other deprivation marks left from birth on the Rim, glanced at his three companions, cleared his throat.

"Is it time to capitulate?"

Broey shook his head in a Human gesture of negation.

It's time I told them, he thought.

He felt emptied.  God refused to speak to him. Nothing in his world obeyed the old mandates.

We've been tricked.

The Powers of the God Wall had tricked him, had tricked his world and all of its inhabitants.  They'd . . .

"This McKie," the commander said.

Broey swallowed, then:

"I doubt if McKie has even the faintest understanding of how she uses him."

He glanced at the reports on his communicator table, a stack of reports about McKie.  Broey's intelligence service had been active.

"If we captured or killed him . . ." the commander ventured.

"Too late for that," Broey said.

"Is there a chance we won't have to capitulate?"

"There's always that chance."

None of the four commanders liked this answer. Another of them, fat and silky green, spoke up:

"If we have to capitulate, how will we know the . . ."

"We must never capitulate, and we must make certain she knows this," Broey said.  "She means to exterminate us."

There! He'd told them.

They were shocked but beginning to understand where his reasoning had led him.  He saw the signs of understanding come over their faces.

"The corridor . . ." one of them ventured.

Broey merely stared at him.  The fool must know they couldn't get more than a fraction of their forces onto the Rim before Jedrik and Tria closed off that avenue.  And even if they could escape to the Rim, what could they do?  They hadn't the faintest idea of where the damned factories and food stores were buried.

"If we could rescue Tria," the slim commander said.

Broey snorted.  He'd prayed for Tria to contact him, to open negotiations.  There'd been not a word, even after she'd fallen back into that impossible enclave.  Therefore, Tria had lost control of her people outside the city.  All the other evidence supported this conclusion.  There was no contact with the Rim.  Jedrik's people had taken over out there.  Tria would've sent word to him the minute she recognized the impossibility of her position.  Any valuable piece of information, any counter in this game would've leaped into Tria's awareness, and she'd have recognized who the highest bidder must be.

Who was the highest bidder?  Tria, after all, was Human.

Broey sighed.

And McKie -- an idiot savant from beyond the God Wall, a weapons expert.  Jedrik must've known.  But how?  Did the Gods talk to her?  Broey doubted this.  Jedrik gave every evidence of being too clever to be sucked in by trickster Gods.

More clever, more wary, more Dosadi than I.

She deserved the victory.

Broey arose and went to the window.  His commanders exchanged worried glances behind him.  Could Broey think them out of this mess?

A corner of his slim corridor to the Rim was visible to Broey.  He could not hear the battle, but explosive orange blossoms told him the fighting continued.  He knew the gamble Jedrik took.  Those Gowachin beyond the God Wall, the ones who'd created this hellish place, were slow -- terrifyingly slow.  But eventually they would be unable to misunderstand Jedrik's intentions.  Would they step in, those mentally retarded Gowachin out there, and try to stop Jedrik?  She obviously thought they would.  Everything she did told Broey of the care with which Jedrik had prepared for the stupids from Outside.  Broey almost wished her success, but he could not bear the price he and his people would have to pay.

Jedrik had the time-edge on him.  She had McKie.  She had played McKie like a superb instrument.  And what would McKie do when he realized the final use Jedrik intended to make of him?  Yes . . . McKie was a perfect tool for Jedrik.  She'd obviously waited for that perfect instrument, had known when it arrived.

Gods!  She was superb!

Broey scratched at the nodes between his ventricles.  Well, there were still things a trapped people could do.  He returned to his commanders.

"Abandon the corridor.  Do it quietly, but swiftly.  Fall back to the prepared inner walls."

As his commanders started to turn away, Broey stopped them.

"I also want some carefully selected volunteers.  The fix we're in must be explained to them in such a way that there's no misunderstanding.  They will be asked to sacrifice themselves in a way no Gowachin has ever before contemplated."

"How?"

It was the slender one.

Broey addressed himself to this one.  A Gowachin born on the Rim should be the first to understand.

"We must increase the price Jedrik's paying.  Hundreds of their people for every one of ours."

"Suicide missions," the slender one said.

Broey nodded, continued:

"One more thing.  I want Havvy brought up here and I want orders issued to increase the food allotment to those Humans we've held in special reserve."

Two of his commanders spoke in unison:

"They won't sacri . . ."

"I have something else in mind for them."

Broey nodded to himself.  Yes indeed.  Some of those Humans could still serve his purposes.  It wasn't likely they could serve him as McKie served Jedrik, but there was still a chance . . . yes, a chance.  Jedrik might not be certain of what Broey could do with his Humans.  Havvy, for example.  Jedrik had certainly considered and discarded Havvy.  In itself, that might be useful.  Broey waved for his commanders to leave and execute his orders.  They'd seen the new determination in him.  They'd pass that along to the ones beneath them.  That, too, would serve his purposes.  It would delay the moment when his people might suspect that he was making a desperate gamble.

He returned to his communicator, called his search people, urged them to new efforts.  They might still achieve what Jedrik obviously had achieved with Pcharky . . . if they could find a Pcharky.

Knowledge is the province of the Legum, just as knowledge is a source of crime.

-Gowachin Law

Mckie told himself that he might've known an assignment from Jedrik could not be simple.  There had to be Dosadi complications.

"There can be no question in their minds that you're really my lieutenant."

"Then I must be your lieutenant."

This pleased her, and she gave him the bare outline of her plan, warning him that the upcoming encounter could not be an act.  He must respond as one who was fully aware of this planet's demands.

Night fell over Chu while she prepared him and, when they returned to the command post where Gar and Tria waited, the occasion presented itself as Jedrik had told him it would.  It was a sortie by Broey's people against Gate Eighteen.  Jedrik snapped the orders at him, sent him running.

"Find the purpose of that!"

McKie paused only to pick up four waiting guards at the command post door, noting the unconcealed surprise in Gar and Tria.  They'd formed a particular opinion of McKie's position and now had to seek a new assessment.  Tria would be most upset by this, confused by self-doubts.  McKie knew Jedrik would immediately amplify those doubts, telling Gar and Tria that McKie would go with them when he returned from Gate Eighteen.

"You must consider his orders as my orders."

Gate Eighteen turned out to be more than a minor problem.  Broey had taken the gate itself and two buildings.  One of the attackers, diving from an upper window into one of Jedrik's best units, had blown himself up with a nasty lot of casualties.

"More than a hundred dead," a breathless courier told him.

McKie didn't like the implications of a suicide attack, but couldn't pause to assess it.  They had to eliminate this threat.  He gave orders for two feints while a third force blasted down one of the captured buildings, smothering the gate in rubble.  That left the other captive building isolated.  The swiftness of this success dazzled Jedrik's forces, and the commanders snapped to obedience when McKie issued orders for them to take captives and bring those captives to him for interrogation.

At McKie's command, one of his original four guards brought a map of the area, tacked it to a wall.  Less than an hour had passed since he'd left Jedrik, but McKie felt that he'd entered another world, one even more primitive than that surrounding the incredible woman who'd set all of this in motion.  It was the difference between second- and third-hand reports of action and the physical feeling of that action all around him.  Explosions and the hissing of flamers down on the streets jarred his awareness.

Staring at the map, McKie said, "This has all the marks of a trap.  Get all but a holding force out of the area.  Tell Jedrik."

People scurried to obey.

One of the guards and two sub-commanders remained.  The guard spoke.

"What about this place?"

McKie glanced around him.  It was a square room with brown walls.  Two windows looked out on the street away from the battle for the isolated building near the gate.  He'd hardly looked at the room when they'd brought him here to set up his command post.  Four streets with isolated holdouts cushioned him from the main battle.  They could shoot a cable bridge to another building if things became hot here.  And it'd help morale if he remained in the danger area.

He spoke to one of the sub-commanders:

"Go down to the entry.  Call all the elevators down there and disable all but one.  Stand by that one with a holding force and put guards in the stairway.  Stand by yourself to bring up captives.  Comment?"

"I'll send up two cable teams and make sure the adjoining buildings are secure."

Of course!  McKie nodded.

Gods!  How these people reacted in emergencies.  They were as direct and cutting as knives.

"Do it," McKie said.

He had less than a ten-minute wait before two of Jedrik's special security troops brought up the first captive, a young Gowachin whose eyelids bore curious scars -- scroll-like and pale against the green skin.

The two security people stopped just inside the doorway.  They held the Gowachin firmly, although he did not appear to be struggling.  The sub-commander who'd brought them up closed the door as he left.

One of the captors, an older man with narrow features, nodded as he caught McKie's attention.

"What'll we do with him?"

"Tie him in a chair," McKie instructed.

He studied the Gowachin as they complied.

"Where was he captured?"

"He was trying to escape from that building through a perimeter sewage line."

"Alone?"

"I don't know.  He's the first of a group of prisoners.  The others are waiting outside."

They had finished binding the young Gowachin, now took up position directly behind him.

McKie studied the captive.  He wore black coveralls with characteristic deep vee to clear the ventricles.  The garment had been cut and torn in several places.  He'd obviously been searched with swift and brutal thoroughness.  McKie put down a twinge of pity.  The scar lines on the prisoner's eyelids precluded anything but the most direct Dosadi necessities.

"They did a poor job removing your Phylum tattoos," McKie said.  He'd already recognized the scar lines:  Deep Swimmers.  It was a relatively unimportant Phylum, small in numbers and sensitive about their status.

The young Gowachin blinked.  McKie's opening remark had been so conversational, even-toned, that the shock of his words came after.  Shock was obvious now in the set of the captive's mouth.

"What is your name, please?" McKie asked, still in that even, conversational way.

"Grinik."

It was forced out of him.

McKie asked one of the guards for a notebook and stylus, wrote the Gowachin's name in it, adding the Phylum identification.

"Grinik of the Deep Swimmers," he said.  "How long have you been on Dosadi?"

The Gowachin took a deep, ventricular breath, remained silent. The security men appeared puzzled.  This interrogation wasn't going as they'd expected.  McKie himself did not know what to expect.  He still felt himself recovering from surprise at recognition of the badly erased Phylum tattoos.

"This is a very small planet," McKie said.  "The universe from which we both come is very big and can be very cruel.  I'm sure you didn't come here expecting to die."

If this Grinik didn't know the deadly plans of his superiors, that would emerge shortly.  McKie's words could be construed as a personal threat beyond any larger threat to Dosadi as a whole.  It remained to see how Grinik reacted.

Still, the young Gowachin hesitated.

When in doubt, remain silent.

"You appear to've been adequately trained for this project," McKie said.  "But I doubt if you were told everything you should know.  I even doubt if you were told things essential to you in your present position."

"Who are you?" Grinik demanded.  "How dare you speak here of matters which . . ."  He broke off, glanced at the two guards standing at his shoulders.

"They know all about us," McKie lied.

He could smell the sweet perfume of Gowachin fear now, a floral scent which he'd noted only on a few previous occasions.  The two guards also sensed this and showed faint smiles to betray that they knew its import.

"Your masters sent you here to die," McKie said.  "They may very well pay heavily for this.  You ask who I am?  I am Jorj X McKie, Legum of the Gowachin Bar, Saboteur Extraordinary, senior lieutenant of Jedrik who will shortly rule all of Dosadi.  I make formal imposition upon you.  Answer my questions for the Law is at stake."

On the Gowachin worlds, that was a most powerful motivator.  Grinik was shaken by it.

"What do you wish to know?"

He barely managed the words.

"Your mission on Dosadi.  The precise instructions you were given and who gave them to you."

"There are twenty of us.  We were sent by Mrreg."

That name!  The implications in Gowachin lore stunned McKie.  He waited, then:

"Continue."

"Two more of our twenty are out there."

Grinik motioned to the doorway, clearly pleading for his captive associates.

"Your instructions?"

"To get our people out of this terrible place."

"How long?"

"Just . . . sixty hours remain."

McKie exhaled slowly.  So Aritch and company had given up on him.  They were going to eliminate Dosadi.

"Where are the other members of your party?"

"I don't know."

"You were, of course, a reserve team trained and held in readiness for this mission.  Do you realize how poorly you were trained?"

Grinik remained silent.

McKie put down a feeling of despair, glanced at the two guards.  He understood that they'd brought him this particular captive because this was one of three who were not Dosadi.  Jedrik had instructed them, of course.  Many things became clearer to him in this new awareness.  Jedrik had put sufficient pressure on the Gowachin beyond the God Wall.  She still had not imagined the extremes to which those Gowachin might go in stopping her.  It was time Jedrik learned what sort of fuse she'd lighted.  And Broey must be told.  Especially Broey -- before he sent many more suicide missions.

The outer door opened and the sub-commander leaned in to speak.

"You were right about the trap.  We mined the area before pulling back.  Caught them nicely.  The gate's secure now, and we've cleared out that last building."

McKie pursed his lips, then:

"Take the prisoners to Jedrik.  Tell her we're coming in."

A flicker of surprise touched the sub-commander's eyes.

"She knows."

Still the man hesitated.

"Yes?"

"There's one Human prisoner out here you should question before leaving."

McKie waited.  Jedrik knew he was coming in, knew what had gone on here, knew about the Human prisoner out there.  She wanted him to question this person.  Yes . . . of course.  She left nothing to chance . . . by her standards.  Well, her standards were about to change, but she might even know that.

"Name?"

"Havvy.  Broey holds him, but he once served Jedrik.  She says to tell you Havvy is a reject, that he was contaminated."

"Bring him in."

Havvy surprised him.  The surface was that of a bland-faced nonentity, braggadocio clearly evident under a mask of secret knowledge.  He wore a green uniform with a driver's brassard.  The uniform was wrinkled, but there were no visible rips or cuts.  He'd been treated with more care than the Gowachin who was being led out of the room.  Havvy replaced the Gowachin in the chair.  McKie waved away the bindings.

Unfocused questions created turmoil in McKie's mind.  He found it difficult to delay.  Sixty hours!  But he felt that he could almost touch the solution to the Dosadi mystery, that in only a few minutes he would know names and real motives for the ones who'd created this monster.  Havvy?  He'd served Jedrik.  In what way?  Why rejected?  Contaminated?

Unfocused questions, yes.

Havvy sat in watchful tension, casting an occasional glance around the room, at the windows.  There were no more explosions out there.

As McKie studied him more carefully, certain observations emerged.  Havvy was small but solid, one of those Humans of lesser stature who concealed heavy musculature which could surprise you if you suddenly bumped into them.  It was difficult to guess his age, but he was not Dosadi.  A member of Grinik's team?  Doubtful.  Clearly not Dosadi, though.  He didn't examine those around him with an automatic status assessment.  His reactions were slow.  Too much that should remain under shutters flowed from within him directly to the surface.  Yes, that was the ultimate revelation.  It bothered McKie that so much went unseen beneath the surface here, so much for which Aritch and company had not prepared him.  It would take a lifetime to learn all the nuances of this place, and he had less than sixty hours remaining to him.

All of this flowed through McKie's mind in an eyeblink.  He reached his decision, motioned the guards and others to leave.

One of the security people started to protest, but McKie silenced him with a glance, pulled up a chair, and sat down facing the captive.

The door closed behind the last of the guards.

"You were sent here deliberately to seek me out," McKie said.

It was not the opening Havvy had expected.  He stared into McKie's eyes.  A door slammed outside.  There was the sound of several doors opening and shutting, the shuffling of feet.  An amplified voice called out:

"Move these prisoners out!"

Havvy chewed at his upper lip.  He didn't protest.  A deep sigh shook him, then:

"You're Jorj X. McKie of BuSab?"

McKie blew out through pursed lips.  Did Havvy doubt the evidence of his own senses?  Surprising.  McKie shook his head, continued to study the captive.

"You can't be McKie!"  Havvy said.

"Ahhhhhh . . ."  It was pressed out of McKie.

Something about Havvy:  the body moved, the voice spoke, but the eyes did not agree.

McKie thought about what the Caleban, Fannie Mae, had said.  A light touch.  He was overtaken by an abrupt certainty:  someone other than Havvy looked out through the man's eyes.  Yessss.  Aritch's people controlled the Caleban who maintained the barrier around Dosadi.  The Caleban could contact selected people here.  She'd have a constant updating on everything such people learned.  There must be many such spies on Dosadi, all trained not to betray the Caleban contact -- no twitching, no lapses into trance.  No telling how many agents Aritch possessed here.

Would all the other people on Dosadi remain unaware of such a thing, though?  That was a matter to question.

"But you must be McKie," Havvy said.  "Jedrik's still working out of . . ."  He broke off.

"You must've provided her with some amusement by your bumbling," McKie said.  "I assure you, however, that BuSab is not amused."

A gloating look came over Havvy's face.

"No, she hasn't made the transfer yet."

"Transfer?"

"Haven't you figured out yet how Pcharky's supposed to buy his freedom?"

McKie felt off balance at this odd turn.

"Explain."             "

"He's supposed to transfer your identity into Jedrik's body and her identity into your body.  I think she was going to try that with me once, but . . ."

Havvy shrugged.

It was like an explosion in McKie's newly sensitized awareness.  Rejected!  Contaminated!  Body exchange!  McKie was accusatory!

"Broey sent you!"

"Of course."  Offensive.

McKie contained his anger.  The Dosadi complexities no longer baffled him as once they had.  It was like peeling back layer upon layer of concealment.  With each new layer you expected to find the answer.  But that was a trap the whole universe set for the unwary.  It was the ultimate mystery and he hated mystery.  There were those who said this was a necessary ingredient for BuSab agents.  You eliminated that which you hated.  But everything he'd uncovered about this planet showed him how little he'd known previously about any mystery.  Now, he understood something new about Jedrik.  There was little doubt that Broey's Human messenger told the truth.

Pcharky had penetrated the intricacies of PanSpechi ego transfer.  He'd done it without a PanSpechi as his subject, unless . . . yes . . . that expanded the implications in Tria's history.  Their PanSpechi experiment had assumed even more grotesque proportions.

"I will speak directly to your Caleban monitor," McKie said.

"My what?"

It was such obvious dissimulation that McKie only snorted.  He leaned forward.

"I will speak directly to Aritch.  See that he gets this message without any mistakes."

Havvy's eye's became glassy.  He shuddered.

McKie felt the inner tendrils of an attempted Caleban contact in his own awareness, thrust them aside.

"No!  I will speak openly through your agent.  Pay close attention, Aritch.  Those who created this Dosadi horror cannot run far enough, fast enough, or long enough to escape.  If you wish to make every Gowachin in the universe a target for violence, you are proceeding correctly.  Others, including BuSab, can employ mass violence if you force it upon them.  Not a pleasant thought.  But unless you adhere to your own Law, to the honored relationship between Legum and Client, your shame will be exposed.  Innocent Gowachin as well as you others whose legal status has yet to be determined -- all will pay the bloody price."

Havvy's brows drew down in puzzlement.

"Shame?"

"They plan to blast Dosadi out of existence."

Havvy pressed back into the chair, glared at McKie.

"You're lying."

"Even you, Havvy, are capable of recognizing a truth.  I'm going to release you, pass you back through the lines to Broey.  Tell him what you learned from me."

"It's a lie!  They're not going to . . ."

"Ask Aritch for yourself."

Havvy didn't ask "Aritch who?"  He lifted himself from the chair.

"I will."

"Tell Broey we've less than sixty hours.  None of us who can resist mind erasure will be permitted to escape."

"Us?"

McKie nodded, thinking:  Yes, I am Dosadi now.  He said:

"Get out of here."

It afforded him a measure of amusement that the door was opened by the sub-commander just as Havvy reached it.

"See to him yourself," McKie said, indicating Havvy.  "I'll be ready to go in a moment."

Without any concern about whether the sub-commander understood the nature of the assignment, McKie closed his eyes in thought.  There remained the matter of Mrreg, who'd sent twenty Gowachin from Tandaloor to get his people off the planet.  Mrreg.  That was the name of the mythical monster who'd tested the first primitive Gowachin people almost to extinction, setting the pattern of their deepest instincts.

Mrreg?

Was it code, or did some Gowachin actually use that name?  Or was it a role that some Gowachin filled?

Does a populace have informed consent when a ruling minority acts in secret to ignite a war, doing this to justify the existence of the minority's forces?  History already has answered that question.  Every society in the ConSentiency today reflects the historical judgment that failure to provide full information for informed consent on such an issue represents an ultimate crime.

-from The Trial of Trials

Less than an hour after closing down at Gate Eighteen, McKie and his escort arrived back at Jedrik's headquarters building. He led them to the heavily guarded side entrance with its express elevator, not wanting to pass Pcharky at this moment.  Pcharky was an unnecessary distraction.  He left the escort in the hallway with instructions to get food and rest, signaled for the elevator.  The elevator door was opened by a small Human female of about fifteen years who nodded him into the dim interior.

McKie, his natural distrust of even the young on this planet well masked, nevertheless kept her under observation as he accepted the invitation.  She was a gamin child with dirty face and hands, a torn grey single garment cut off at the knees.  Her very existence as a Dosadi survivor said she'd undoubtedly sold her body many times for scraps of food.  He realized how much Dosadi had influenced him when he found that he couldn't raise even the slightest feeling of censure at this knowledge.  You did what the conditions around you demanded when those conditions were overwhelming.  It was an ultimate question:  this or death?  And certainly some of them chose death.

"Jedrik," he said.

She worked her controls and he found himself presently in an unfamiliar hallway.  Two familiar guards stood at a doorway down the hall, however.  They betrayed not the slightest interest in him as he opened the door between them swiftly and strode through.

It was a tiny anteroom, empty, but another door directly in front of him.  He opened this with more confidence than he felt, entered a larger space full of projection-room gloom with shadowed figures seated facing a holographic focus on his left.  McKie identified Jedrik by her profile, slipped into a seat beside her.

She kept her attention on the h-focus where a projection of Broey stood looking out at something over their shoulders.  McKie recognized the subtle slippage of computer simulation.  That was not a flesh-and-blood Broey in the focus.

Someone on the far side of the room stood up and crossed to sit beside another figure in the gloom.  McKie recognized Gar as the man moved through one of the projection beams.

McKie whispered to Jedrik, "Why simulation?"

"He's beginning to do things I didn't anticipate."

The suicide missions.  McKie looked at the simulation, wondered why there was no sync-sound.  Ahhh, yes.  They were lip-reading, and it was silent to reduce distractions, to amplify concentration.  Yes, Jedrik was reworking the simulation model of Broey which she carried in her head.  She would also carry another model, even more accurate than the one of Broey, which would give her a certain lead time on the reactions of one Jorj X. McKie.

"Would you really have done it?" he asked.

"Why do you distract me with such nonsense?"

He considered.  Yes, it was a good question.  He already knew the answer.  She would have done it:  traded bodies with him and escaped outside the God Wall as McKie.  She might still do it, unless he could anticipate the mechanics of the transfer.

By now, she knew about the sixty-hour limit and would suspect its significance.  Less than sixty hours.  And the Dosadi could make extremely complex projections from limited data.  Witness this Broey simulation.

The figure in the focus was talking to a fat Human female who held a tube which McKie recognized as a communicator for field use.

Jedrik spoke across the room to Gar.

"She still with him?"

"Addicted."

A two-sentence exchange, and it condensed an entire conversation about possible uses of that woman.  McKie did not ask addicted to what.  There were too many such substances on Dosadi, each with peculiar characteristics, often involving odd monopolies with which everyone seemed familiar.  This was a telltale gap in Aritch's briefings:  the monopolies and their uses.

As McKie absorbed the action in the focus, the reasons behind this session became more apparent.  Broey was refusing to believe the report from Havvy.

And there was Havvy in the focus.

Jedrik favored McKie with one flickering glance as Havvy-simulation appeared.  Certainly.  She factored McKie into her computations.

McKie compressed his lips.  She knew Havvy would contaminate me.  They couldn't say "I love you" on this damned planet.  Oh, no.  They had to create a special Dosadi production number.

"Most of the data for this originated before the breakup," McKie said.  "It's useless.  Rather than ask the computer to play pretty pictures for us, why don't we examine our own memories?  Surely, somewhere in the combined experiences with Broey . . ."

A chuckle somewhere to the left stopped him.

Too late, McKie saw that every seat in the room had an arm keyed to the simulations.  They were doing precisely what he'd suggested, but in a more sophisticated way.  The figures at the focus were being adjusted to the combined memories.  There was such a keyed arm at McKie's right hand.  He suddenly realized how tactless and lecturing he still must appear to these people.  They didn't waste energy on unnecessary words.  Anyone who did must be subnormal, poorly trained or . . . or not from Dosadi.

"Does he always state the obvious?" Gar asked.

McKie wondered if he'd blown his lieutenancy, lost the opportunity to explore the mystery of the Rim, but . . . no, there wasn't time for that now.  He'd have to penetrate the Rim another way.

"He's new," Jedrik said.  "New is not necessarily naive, as you should know."

"He has you doing it now," Gar said.

"Guess again."

McKie put a hand to the simulation controls under his right hand, tested the keys.  He had it in a moment.  They were similar to such devices in the ConSentiency, an adaptation from the DemoPol inputs, no doubt.  Slowly, he changed the Broey at the focus, heavier, the sagging jowls and node wattles of a breeding male Gowachin.  McKie froze the image.

"Tentative?" Gar asked.

Jedrik answered for him.

"It's knowledge he brought here with him."  She did something to her controls, stopped the projection, and raised the room lights.

McKie noted that Tria was nowhere in the room.

"The Gowachin have sequestered their females somewhere," McKie said.  "That somewhere should not be difficult to locate.  Send word to Tria that she must not mount her attack on Broey's corridor just yet."

"Why delay?" Gar demanded.

"Broey will have all but evacuated the corridor by now." McKie said.

Gar was angry and showing it.

"Not a single one of them has gone through that Rim gate."

"Not to the Rim," Jedrik said.

It was clear to her now.  McKie had supplied the leverage she needed.  It was time now to employ him as she'd always intended.  She glanced at McKie.

"We have unfinished business.  Are you ready?"

He held his silence. How could he answer such a Dosadi-weighted question?  There were so many things left unspoken on this planet, only the native-born could understand them all.  McKie felt once more that he was a dull outsider, a child of dubious potential among normal adults.

Jedrik arose, looked across at Gar.

"Send word to Tria to hold herself in readiness for another assignment.  Tell Broey.  Call him on an open line.  We now have an excellent use for your fanatics.  If only a few of your people fight through to that Graluz complex, it'll be enough and Broey will know it."

McKie noted that she spoke to Gar with a familiar teaching emphasis.  It was the curiously weighted manner she'd once used with McKie, but no longer found necessary.  His recognition of this amused her.

"Come along, McKie.  We haven't much time."

Does a population have informed consent when that population is not taught the inner workings of its monetary system, and then is drawn, all unknowing, into economic adventures?

-from The Trial of Trials

For almost an hour after the morning meal, Aritch observed Ceylang as she worked with the McKie simulator.  She was pushing herself hard, believing Wreave honor at stake, and had almost reached the pitch Aritch desired.

Ceylang had set up her own simulator situation:  McKie interviewing five of Broey's Gowachin.  She had the Gowachin come to McKie in surrender, hands extended, the webbed fingers exposed to show that the talons were withdrawn.

Simulator-McKie merely probed for military advantages.

"Why does Broey attack in this fashion?"

Or he'd turn to some places outside the h-focus of the simulator.

"Send reinforcements into that area."

Nothing about the Rim.

Earlier, Ceylang had tried the issue with a prisoner simulation where the five Gowachin tried to confuse McKie by presenting a scenario in which Broey massed his forces at the corridor.  The makings of a breakout to the Rim appeared obvious.

Simulator-McKie asked the prisoners why they lied.

Ceylang cleared the simulator and sat back.  She saw Aritch at the observation window, opened a channel to him.

"Something has to be wrong in the simulation.  McKie cannot be led into questioning the purposes of the Rim."

"I assure you that simulation is remarkable in its accuracy.  Remarkable."

"Then why . . ."

"Perhaps he already knows the answer.  Why don't you try him with Jedrik?  Here. . ."  Aritch operated the controls at the observer station.  "This might help.  This is a record of McKie in recent action on Dosadi."

The simulator presented a view down a covered passage through a building.  Artificial light.  Darkness at the far end of the passage.  McKie, two blocky guards in tow, approached the viewers.

Ceylang recognized the scene.  She'd watched this action at Gate Eighteen from several angles, had seen this passage empty before the battle, acquainting herself with the available views.  As she'd watched it then, the passage had filled with Human defenders.  There was a minor gate behind the viewer and she knew the viewer itself to be only a bright spot, a fleck of glittering impurity in an otherwise drab brick over the gate's archway.

Now, the long passage seemed strange to Ceylang without its throng of defenders.  There were only a few workmen along its length as McKie passed.  The workmen repaired service pipes in the ceiling.  A cleanup crew washed down patches of blood at the far end of the passage, the high-water mark of the Gowachin attack.  An officer leaned against a wall near the viewer, a bored expression on his face which did not mislead Ceylang.  He was there to watch McKie.  Three soldiers squatted nearby rolling hexi-bones for coins which lay in piles before each man.  Every now and then, one of the gamblers would pass a coin to the watching officer.  A repair supervisor stood with his back to the viewer, notebook in hand, writing a list of supplies to complete the job.  McKie and his guards were forced to step around these people.  As they passed, the officer turned, looked directly into the Viewer, smiled.

"That officer," Ceylang said.  "One of your people?"

"No."

The viewpoint shifted, looking down on the gate itself, McKie in profile.  The gatekeeper was a teenager with a scar down his right cheek and a broken nose.  McKie showed no signs of recognition, but the youth knew McKie.

"You go through on request."

"When did she call?"

"Ten."

"Let us through."

The gate was opened.  McKie and his guards went through, passed beyond the viewer's focus.

The youthful gatekeeper stood up, smashed the viewer.  The h-focus went blank.

Aritch looked down from his observation booth for a moment before speaking.

"Who called?"

"Jedrik?"  Ceylang spoke without thinking.

"What does that conversation tell you?  Quickly!"

"That Jedrik anticipated his movements, was observing him all the time."

"What else?"

"That McKie . . . knows this, knows she can anticipate him."

"She carries a better simulation of him in her head than we have . . . there."

Aritch pointed at the h-focus area.

"But they left so much unspoken!"  Ceylang said.

Aritch remained silent.

Ceylang closed her eyes.  It was like mind reading.  It confused her.

Aritch interrupted her musings.

"What about that officer and the gatekeeper?"

She shook her head.

"You're wise to use living observers there.  They all seem to know when they're being watched.  And how it's done."

"Even McKie."

"He didn't look at the viewers."

"Because he assumed from the first that we'd have him under almost constant observation.  He's not concerned about the mechanical intrusions.  He has built a simulation McKie of his own who acts on the surface of the real McKie."

"That's your assumption?"

"We arrived at this from observation of Jedrik in her dealings with McKie.  She peels away the simulation layers one at a time, coming closer and closer to the actuality at the core."

Another observation bothered Ceylang.

"Why'd the gatekeeper shut down that viewer just then?"

"Obviously because Jedrik told him to do that."

Ceylang shuddered.

"Sometimes I think those Dosadi play us like a fine instrument."

"But of course!  That's why we sent them our McKie."

The music of a civilization has far-reaching consequences on consciousness and, thus, influences the basic nature of a society.  Music and its rhythms divert and compel the awareness, describing the limits within which a consciousness, thus fascinated, may operate.  Control the music, then, and you own a powerful tool with which to shape the society.

-The Dosadi Analysis, BuSab Documents

It was a half-hour before Jedrik and McKie found themselves in the hallway leading to her quarters.  McKie, aware of the effort she was expending to conceal a deep weariness, watched her carefully.  She concentrated on presenting a show of vitality, her attention glued on the prospect ahead.  There was no way of telling what went on in her mind.  McKie did not attempt to break the silence.  He had his own worries.

Which was the real Jedrik?  How was she going to employ Pcharky?  Could he resist her?

He knew he was close to a solution of the Dosadi mystery, but the prospect of the twin gambles he was about to take filled him with doubts.

On coming from the projection room, they'd found themselves in a strange delaying situation, as though it were something planned for their frustration.  Everything had been prepared for their movement -- guards warned, elevator waiting, doors opened.  But every time they thought the way clear, they met interference.  Except for the obvious importance of the matters which delayed them, it was easy to imagine a conspiracy.

A party of Gowachin at Gate Seventy wanted to surrender, but they demanded a parley first.  One of Jedrik's aides didn't like the situation.  Something about the assessment of the offer bothered her, and she wanted to discuss it with Jedrik.  She stopped them halfway down the first hall outside the projection room.

The aide was an older woman who reminded McKie vaguely of a Wreave lab worker at BuSab, one who'd always been suspicious of computers, even antagonistic toward them.  This Wreave had read every bit of history he could find about the evolution of such instruments and liked to remind his listeners of the misuses of the DemoPol.  Human history had provided him with abundant ammunition, what with its periodic revolts against "enslavement by machines."  Once, he'd cornered McKie.

"Look here!  See this sign:  'Gigo.'  That's a very old sign that was hung above one of your ancient computers.  It's an acronym:  'Garbage In, Garbage Out.'  You see!  They knew."

Yes.  Jedrik's female aide reminded him of that Wreave.

McKie listened to her worries.  She roamed all around a central disquiet, never settling on a particular thing.  Aware of Aritch's deadline and Jedrik's fatigue, McKie felt the pressures bearing down upon him.  The aide's data was accurate.  Others had checked it.  Finally, he could hold his impatience no longer.

"Who fed this data into your computer?"

The aide was startled at the interruption, but Jedrik turned to him, waiting.

"I think it was Holjance," the aide said. "Why?"

"Get him in here."

"Her."

"Her, then!  Make sure she's actually the one who fed in that data."

Holjance was a pinch-faced woman with deep wrinkles around very bright eyes.  Her hair was dark and wiry, skin almost the color of McKie's.  Yes, she was the one who'd fed the data into the computer because it had arrived on her shift, and she'd thought it too important to delegate.

"What is it you want?" she demanded.

He saw no rudeness in this.  It was Dosadi directness.  Important things were happening all around.  Don't waste time.

"You saw this assessment of the surrender offer?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Are you satisfied with it?"

"The data went in correctly."

"That's not my question."

"Of course I'm satisfied!"

She stood ready to defend herself against any charge that she'd slighted her job.

"Tell me, Holjance," he said, "if you wanted the Gowachin computers to produce inaccurate assessments, what would you do?"

She thought about this a moment, blinked, glanced almost furtively at Jedrik who appeared lost in thought. "Well, sir, we have a regular filtering procedure for preventing . . ."

"That's it," Jedrik said.  "If I were a Gowachin, I would not be doing that right now."

Jedrik turned, barked orders to the guards behind her.

"That's another trap!  Take care of it."

As they emerged from the elevator on Jedrik's floor, there was another delay, one of the escort who'd been with McKie at Gate Eighteen.  His name was Todu Pellas and McKie addressed him by name, noting the faint betrayal of pleasure this elicited.  Pellas, too, had doubts about carrying out a particular order.

"We're supposed to back up Tria's move by attacking across the upper parkway, but there are some trees and other growth knocked down up there that haven't been moved for two days."

"Who knocked down those trees?" McKie asked.

"We did."

McKie understood.  You feinted.  The Gowachin were supposed to believe this would provide cover for an attack, but there'd been no attack for two days.

"They must be under pretty heavy strain," Jedrik said.

McKie nodded.  That, too, made sense.  The alternative Gowachin assumption was that the Humans were trying to fake them into an attack at that point.  But the cover had not been removed by either side for two days.

Jedrik took a deep breath.

"We have superior firepower and when Tria . . . well.  You should be able to cut right through there to . . ."

McKie interrupted.

"Call off that attack."

"But. . ."

"Call it off!"

She saw the direction of his reasoning. Broey had learned much from the force which Gar and Tria had trained. And Jedrik herself had provided the final emphasis in the lesson. She saw there was no need to change her orders to Pellas.

Pellas had taken it upon himself to obey McKie, not waiting for Jedrik's response, although she was his commander.  He already had a communicator off his belt and was speaking rapidly into it.

"Yes!  Dig in for a holding action."

He spoke in an aside to Jedrik.

"I can handle it from here."

In a few steps, Jedrik and McKie found themselves in her room.  Jedrik leaned with her back against the door, no longer trying to conceal her fatigue.

"McKie, you're becoming very Dosadi."

He crossed to the concealing panels, pulled out the bed.

"You need rest."

"No time."

Yes, she knew all about the sixty-hour deadline -- less than fifty-five hours now.  Dosadi's destruction was a reaction she hadn't expected from "X," and she blamed herself.

He turned, studied her, saw that she'd passed some previously defined limit of personal endurance.  She possessed no amplifiers of muscles or senses, none of the sophisticated aids McKie could call upon in emergencies.  She had nothing but her own magnificent mind and body.  And she'd almost run them out.  Still, she pressed on.  This told him a great deal about her motivation.

McKie found himself deeply touched by the fact that she'd not once berated him for hiding that ultimate threat which Aritch held over Dosadi.  She'd accepted it that someone in Aritch's position could erase an entire planet, that McKie had been properly maneuvered into concealing this.

The alternative she offered filled McKie with misgivings.

Exchange bodies?

He understood now that this was Pcharky's function, the price the old Gowachin paid for survival.  Jedrik had explained.

"He will perform this service one more time.  In exchange, we release him from Dosadi."

"If he's one of the original . . . I mean, why doesn't he just leave?"

"We haven't provided him with a body he can use."

McKie had suppressed a feeling of horror.  But the history of Dosadi which Jedrik unfolded made it clear that a deliberate loophole had been left in the Caleban contract which imprisoned this planet.  Fannie Mae had even said it.  He could leave in another body.  That was the basic purpose behind this experiment.

New bodies for old!

Aritch had expected this to be the ultimate enticement, luring McKie into the Gowachin plot, enlisting McKie's supreme abilities and his powerful position in BuSab.

A new body for his old one.

All he'd have to do would be to cooperate in the destruction of a planet, conceal the real purpose of this project, and help set up another body-trade planet better concealed.

But Aritch had not anticipated what might be created by Jedrik plus McKie. They now shared a particular hate and motivation.

Jedrik still stood at the door waiting for him to decide.

"Tell me what to do," he said.

"You're sure that you're willing to . . ".

"Jedrik!"

He thought he saw the beginning of tears.  It wasn't that she hid them, but that they reached a suppression level barely visible and she defied them.  She found her voice, pointed.

"That panel beside the bed.  Pressure latch."

The panel swung wide to reveal two shimmering rods about two centimeters in diameter.  The rods danced with the energies of Pcharky's cage.  They emerged from the floor, bent at right angles about waist height and, as the panel opened, they rotated to extend into the room -- two glowing handles about a meter apart.

McKie stared at them.  He felt a tightness in his breast.  What if he'd misread Jedrik?  Could he be sure of any Dosadi?  This room felt as familiar to him now as his quarters on CC.  It was here that Jedrik had taught him some of the most essential Dosadi lessons.  Yet . . . he knew the old pattern of what she proposed.  The discarded body with its donor ego had always been killed immediately.  Why?

"You'll have your answer to that question when we've done this thing."

A Dosadi response, ambiguous, heavy with alternatives.

He glanced around the room, found it hard to believe that he'd known this place only these few days.  His attention returned to the shimmering rods.  Another trap?

He knew he was wasting precious time, that he'd have to go through with this.  But what would it be like to find himself in Jedrik's flesh, wearing her body as he now wore his own?  PanSpechi transferred an ego from body to body.  But something unspeakable which they would not reveal happened to the donor.

McKie took a trembling breath.

It had to be done.  He and Jedrik shared a common purpose.  She'd had many opportunities to use Pcharky simply to escape or to extend her life . . . the way, he realized now, that Broey had used the Dosadi secret.  The fact that she'd waited for a McKie forced him to believe her.  Jedrik's followers trusted her -- and they were Dosadi.  And if he and Jedrik escaped, Aritch would find himself facing a far different McKie from the one who'd come so innocently across the Rim.  They might yet stay Aritch's hand.

The enticement had been real, though.  No doubting that.  Shed an old body, get a new one.  And the Rim had been the major source of raw material:  strong, resilient bodies.  Survivors.

"What do I do?" he asked.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and she spoke from beside him.

"You are very Dosadi, McKie.  Astonishing."

He glanced at her, saw what it had cost her to move here from the door.  He slipped a hand around her waist, eased her to a sitting position on the bed and within reach of the rods.

"Tell me what to do."

She stared at the rods, and McKie realized it was rage driving her, rage against Aritch, the embodiment of "X," the embodiment of a contrived fate.  He understood this.  The solution of the Dosadi mystery had left him feeling empty, but on the edges there was such a rage as he'd never before experienced.  He was still BuSab, though.  He wanted no more bloodshed because of Dosadi, no more Gowachin justifications.

Jedrik's voice interrupted his thoughts and he saw that she also shared some of his misgivings.

"I come from a long line of heretics.  None of us doubted that Dosadi was a crime, that somewhere there was a justice to punish the criminals."

McKie almost sighed.  Not the old Messiah dream!  Not that!  He would not fill that role, even for Dosadi.

It was as though Jedrik read his mind.  Perhaps, with that simulation model of him she carried in her head, this was exactly what she did.

"We didn't expect a hero to come and save us.  We knew that whoever came would suffer from the same deficiencies as the other non-Dosadi we saw here.  You were so . . . slow.  Tell me, McKie, what drives a Dosadi?"

He almost said, "Power."

She saw his hesitation, waited.

"The power to change your condition," he said.

"You make me very proud, McKie."

"But how did you know I was . . ."

"McKie!"

He swallowed, then: "Yes, I guess that was the easiest part for you."

"It was much more difficult finding your abilities and shaping you into a Dosadi."

"But I might've been . . ."

"Tell me how I did it, McKie."

It was a test.  He saw that.  How had she known absolutely that he was the one she needed?

"I was sent here in a way that evaded Broey."

"And that's not easy."  Her glance flickered ceilingward.  "They tried to bait us from time to time.  Havvy . . ."

"Compromised, contaminated . . ."

"Useless.  Sometimes, a stranger looks out of Havvy's eyes."

"My eyes are my own."

"The first thing Bahrank reported about you."

"But even before that . . ."

"Yes?"

"They used Havvy to tell you I was coming . . . and he told you that you could use my body.  He had to be truthful with you up to a point.  You could read Havvy!  How clever they thought they were being!  I had to be vulnerable . . . really vulnerable."

"The first thing . . ."

". . . you found out about me."  He nodded.  "Suspicions confirmed.  All of that money on my person.  Bait.  I was someone to be eliminated.  I was a powerful enemy of your enemies."

"And you were angered by the right things."

"You saw that?"

"McKie, you people are so easy to read.  So easy!"

"And the weapons I carried.  You were supposed to use those to destroy yourselves.  The implications . . ."

"I would've seen that if I'd had first-hand experience of Aritch.  You knew what he intended for us.  My mistake was to read your fears as purely personal.  In time . . ."

"We're wasting time."

"You fear we'll be too late?"

Once more, he looked at the shimmering rods.  What was it Pcharky did?  McKie felt events rushing over him, engulfing him.  What bargain had Jedrik really driven with Pcharky?  She saw the question on his face.

"My people knew all along that Pcharky was just a tool of the God who held us prisoner.  We forced a bargain on that God -- that Caleban.  Did you think we would not recognize the identity between the powers of that cage and the powers of our God Wall?  No more delays, McKie.  It's time to test our bargain."