Geriatric or other life extension for the powerful poses a similar threat to a sentient species as that found historically in the dominance of a self-perpetuating bureaucracy.  Both assume prerogatives of immortality, collecting more and more power with each passing moment. This is power which draws a theological aura about itself:  the unassailable Law, the God-given mandate of the leader, manifest destiny.  Power held too long within a narrow framework moves farther and farther away from the adaptive demands of changed conditions.  The leadership grows ever more paranoid, suspicious of inventive adaptations to change, fearfully protective of personal power and, in the terrified avoidance of what it sees as risk, blindly leads its people into destruction.

--BuSab Manual

"Very well.  I'll tell you what bothers me," Ceylang said.  "There are too many things about this problem that I fail to understand."

From her seated position, she looked across a small, round room at Aritch, who floated gently in a tiny blue pool.  His head at the pool's lip was almost on a level with Ceylang's.  Again, they had worked late into the night.  She understood the reasons for this, the time pressures were quite apparent, but the peculiar Gowachin flavor of her training kept her in an almost constant state of angry questioning.

This whole thing was so un-Wreave!

Ceylang smoothed the robe over her long body.  The robe was blue now, one step away from Legum black.  Appropriately, there was blue all around her:  the walls, the floor, the ceiling, Aritch's pool.

The High Magister rested his chin on the pool's edge to speak.

"I require specific questions before I can even hope to penetrate your puzzlement."

"Will McKie defend or prosecute?  The simulator . . ."

"Damn the simulator!  Odds are that he'll make the mistake of prosecuting.  Your own reasoning powers should . . ."

"But if he doesn't?"

"Then selection of the judicial panel becomes vital."

Ceylang twisted her body to one side, feeling the chairdog adjust for her comfort.  As usual, Aritch's answer only deepened her sense of uncertainty.  She voiced that now.

"I continue to have this odd feeling that you intend me to play some role which I'm not supposed to discover until the very last instant."

Aritch breathed noisily through his mouth, splashed water onto his head.

"This all may be moot.  By this time day after tomorrow, Dosadi and McKie may no longer exist."

"Then I will not advance to Legum?"

"Oh, I'm fairly certain you'll be a Legum."

She studied him, sensing irony, then:

"What a delicate line you walk, High Magister."

"Hardly.  My way is wide and clear.  You know the things I cannot countenance.  I cannot betray the Law or my people."

"I have similar inhibitions.  But this Dosadi thing -- so tempting."

"So dangerous!  Would a Wreave don Human flesh to learn the Human condition?  Would you permit a Human to penetrate Wreave society in this . . ."

"There are some who might conspire in this!  There are even Gowachin who . . ."

"The opportunities for misuse are countless."

"Yet you say that McKie already is more Gowachin than a Gowachin."

Aritch's webbed hands folded over the pool's edge, the claws extended.

"We risked much in training him for this task."

"More than you risk with me?"

Aritch withdrew his hands, stared at her, unblinking.

"So that's what bothers you."

"Precisely."

"Think, Ceylang, how near the core of Wreavedom you would permit me to come.  Thus far and no farther will we permit you."

"And McKie?"

"May already have gone too far for us to permit his continued existence."

"I heed your warning, Aritch.  But I remain puzzled as to why the Calebans couldn't prevent . . ."

"They profess not to understand the ego transfer.  But who can understand a Caleban, let alone control one in a matter so delicate?  Even this one who created the God Wall . . ."

"It's rumored that McKie understands Calebans."

"He denies it."

She rubbed her pocked left jowl with a prehensile mandible, felt the many scars of her passage through the Wreave triads.  Family to family to family until it was a single gigantic family.  Yet, all were Wreave.  This Dosadi thing threatened a monstrous parody of Wreavedom.  Still . . .

"So fascinating," she murmured.

"That's its threat."

"We should pray for the death of Dosadi."

"Perhaps."

She was startled.

"What . . ."

"This might not die with Dosadi.  Our sacred bond assures that you will leave here with this knowledge.  Many Gowachin know of this thing."

"And McKie."

"Infections have a way of spreading," Aritch said.  "Remember that if this comes to the Courtarena."

There are some forms of insanity which, driven to an ultimate expression, can become the new models of sanity.

-BuSab Manual

"McKie?"

It was the familiar Caleban presence in his awareness, as though he heard and felt someone (or something) which he knew was not there.

The preparation had been deceptively simple.  He and Jedrik clasped hands, his right hand and her left, and each grasped one of the shimmering rods with the other hand.

McKie did not have a ready identity for this Caleban and wondered at the questioning in her voice.  He agreed, however, that he was indeed McKie,

shaping the thought as subvocalized conversation.  As he spoke, McKie was acutely aware of Jedrik beside him.  She was more than just another person now.  He

carried a tentative simulation model of her, sometimes anticipating her responses.

"You make mutual agreement?" the Caleban asked.

McKie sensed Pcharky then:  a distant presence, the monitor for this experience.  It was as though Pcharky had been reduced to a schematic which the Caleban followed, a set of complex rules, many of which could not be translated into words.  Some part of McKie responded to this as though a monster awakened within him, a sleeping monster who sat up full of anger at being aroused thus, demanding:

"Who is it that dares awaken me?"

McKie felt his body trembling, felt Jedrik trembling beside him.  The Caleban/Taprisiot-trembling, the sweaty response to trance!  He saw these phenomena now in a different light.  When you walked at the edge of this abyss . . .

While these thoughts passed through his mind, he felt a slight shift, no more than the blurred reflection of something which was not quite movement.  Now, while he still felt his own flesh around him, he also felt himself possessed of an inner contact with Jedrik's body and knew she shared this experience.

Such a panic as he had not thought possible threatened to overwhelm him.  He felt Jedrik trying to break the contact, to stop this hideous sharing, but they were powerless in the grip of a force which would not be stopped.

No time sense attached itself to this experience, but a fatalistic calm overcame them almost simultaneously.  McKie felt awareness of Jedrik/flesh deepen.  Curiosity dominated him now.

So this is woman!

This is man?

They shared the thoughts across an indistinct bridge.

Fascination gripped McKie.  He probed deeper.

He/She could feel himself/herself breathing.  And the differences!  It was not the genitalia, the presence or lack of breasts.  She felt bereft of breasts.  He felt acutely distressed by their presence, self-consciously aware of profound implications.  The sense of difference went back beyond gamete McKie/Jedrik.

McKie sensed her thoughts, her reactions.

Jedrik:  "You cast your sperm upon the stream of time."

McKie:  "You enclose and nurture . . ."

"I cast / I nurture."

It was as though they looked at an object from opposite sides, aware belatedly that they both examined the same thing.

"We cast / we nurture."

Obscuring layers folded away, and McKie found himself in Jedrik's mind, she in his.  Their thoughts were one entity.

The separate Dosadi and ConSentient experiences melted into a single relationship.

"Aritch . . . ah, yes.  You see?  And your PanSpechi friend, Bildoon.  Note that.  You suspected, but now you know . . ."

Each set of experiences fed on the other, expanding, refining . . . condensing, discarding, creating . . .

So that's the training of a Legum.

Loving parents?  Ahhh, yes, loving parents.

"I/we will apply pressure there . . . and there . . . They must be maneuvered into choosing that one as a judge.  Yes, that will give us the required leverage.  Let them break their own code."

And the awakened monster stirred within them.  It had no dimension, no place, only existence.  They felt its power.

"I do what I do!"

The power enveloped them.  No other awareness was permitted.  They sensed a primal current, unswerving purpose, a force which could override any other thing in their universe.  It was not God, not Life, not any particular species.  It was something so far beyond such articulations that Jedrik/McKie could not even contemplate it without a sense that the next instant would bring obliteration.  They felt a question hurled at their united, fearful awareness.  The question was framed squarely in anger, astonishment, cold amusement, and threat.

"For this you awaken me?"

Now, they understood why the old body and donor-ego had always been slain immediately.  This terrible sharing made a . . . made a noise.  It awakened a questioner.

They understood the question without words, knowing they could never grasp the full meaning and emotive thrust, that it would burn them out even to try.  Anger . . . astonishment . . . cold amusement . . . threat.  The question as their own united mind(s) interpreted it represented a limit.  It was all that Jedrik/McKie could accept.

The intrusive questioner receded.

They were never quite sure afterward whether they'd been expelled or whether they'd fled in terror, but the parting words were burned into their combined awareness.

"Let the sleeper sleep."

They walked softly in their minds then.  They understood the warning, but knew it could never be translated in its fullest threat for any other sentient being.

Concurrent:  McKie/Jedrik felt a projection of terror from the God Wall Caleban, unfocused, unexplained.  It was a new experience in the male-female collective memory.  Caleban Fannie Mae had not even projected this upon original McKie when she'd thought herself doomed.

Concurrent:  McKie/Jedrik felt a burntout fading from Pcharky.  Something in that terrible contact had plunged Pcharky into his death spiral.  Even as McKie/Jedrik realized this, the old Gowachin died. It was a slammed door.  But this came after a blazing realization by McKie/Jedrik that Pcharky had shared the original decision to set up the Dosadi experiment.

McKie found himself clothed in living, breathing flesh which routed its messages through his awareness.  He wasn't sure which of their two bodies he possessed, but it was distinct, separate.  It wrapped him in Human senses:  the taste of salt, the smell of perspiration, and the omnipresent Warren stink.  One hand held cold metal, the other clasped the hand of a fellow Human.  Perspiration drenched this body, made the clasped hands slippery.  He felt that knowing which hand held another hand was of utmost importance, but he wasn't ready to face that knowledge.  Awareness of self, this new self, and a whole lifetime of new memories, demanded all of the attention he could muster.

Focus:  A Rim city, never outside Jedrik's control because she had fed the signals through to Gar and Tria with exquisite care, and because those who gave the orders on the Rim had shared in the generations of selective breeding which had produced Jedrik.  She was a biological weapon whose sole target was the God Wall.

Focus:  Loving parents can thrust their child into deadly peril when they know everything possible has been done to prepare that child for survival.

The oddity to McKie was that he felt such things as personal memories.

"I did that."

Jedrik suffered the throes of similar experiences.

Which body?

So that was the training of a BuSab agent.  Clever . . . almost adequate.  Complex and full of much that she found to be new, but why did it always stop short of a full development?

She reviewed the sessions with Aritch and Ceylang.  A matched pair.  The choice of Ceylang and the role chosen for her appeared obvious.  How innocent!  Jedrik felt herself free to pity Ceylang.  When allowed to run its course, this was an interesting emotion.  She had never before felt pity in uncolored purity.

Focus:  McKie actually loved her.  She savored this emotion in its ConSentient complexity.  The straight flow of selected emotions fascinated her.  They did not have to be bridled!

In and out of this creative exchange there wove an intimacy, a pure sexuality without inhibitions.

McKie, savoring the amusement Jedrik had felt when Tria had suggested a McKie/Jedrik breeding, found himself caught by demanding male eroticism and knew by the sensation that he retained his old body.

Jedrik, understanding McKie's long search for a female to complete him, found her amusement converted to the desire to demonstrate that completion.  As she turned toward him, releasing the dull rod which had once shimmered in contact with Pcharky, she found herself in McKie's flesh looking into her own eyes.

McKie gasped in the mirror experience.

Just as abruptly, driven by shock, they shifted back into familiar flesh:  McKie male, Jedrik female.  Instantly, it became a thing to explore - back -- and forth.  Eroticism was forgotten in this new game.

"We can be either sex/body at will!"

It was something beyond Taprisiots and Calebans, far more subtle than the crawling progression of a PanSpechi ego through the bodies from its creche.

They knew the source of this odd gift even as they sank back on the bed, content to be familiar male and female for a time.

The sleeping monster.

This was a gift with barbs in it, something loving parents might give their child in the knowledge that it was time for this lesson. Yet they felt revitalized, knowing they had for an instant tapped an energy source without limits.

A pounding on the door interrupted this shared reverie.

"Jedrik!  Jedrik!"

"What is it?"

"It's Broey.  He wishes to talk to McKie."

They were off the bed in an instant.

Jedrik glanced at McKie, knowing she had not one secret from him, that they shared a reasoning base.  Out of the mutual understanding in this base, she spoke for both of them.

"Does he say why?"

"Jedrik . . ."

They both recognized the voice of a trusted aide and heard the fear in it.

". . . it's midmorning and there is no sun.  God has turned off the sun!"

"Sealed us in . . ."

". . . to conceal the final blast."

Jedrik opened the door, confronted the frightened aide.

"Where is Broey?"

"Here -- in your command post.  He came alone without escort."

She glanced at McKie.  "You will speak for us."

Broey waited near the position board in the command post.  Watchful Humans stood within striking distance.  He turned as McKie and Jedrik entered.  McKie noted that the Gowachin's body was, indeed, heavy with breeding juices as anticipated.  Unsettling for a Gowachin.

"What are your terms, McKie?"

Broey's voice was guttural, full of heavy breathing.

McKie's features remained Dosadi-bland, but he thought:  Broey thinks I'm responsible for the darkness.  He's terrified.

McKie glanced at the threatening black of the windows before speaking.  He knew this Gowachin from Jedrik's painstaking study.  Broey was a sophisticate, a collector of sophistication who surrounded himself with people of the same stripe.  He was a professional sophisticate who read everything through that peculiar Dosadi screen.  No one could come into his circle who didn't share this pose.  All else remained outside and inferior.  He was an ultimate Dosadi, a distillation, almost as Human as Gowachin because he'd obviously once worn a Human body.  He was Gowachin at his origins, though -- no doubt of it.

"You followed my scent," McKie said.

"Excellent!"

Broey brightened.  He had not expected a Dosadi exchange, pared to the nonemotional essentials.

"Unfortunately," McKie said, "You have no position from which to negotiate.  Certain things will be done.  You will comply willingly, your compliance will be forced, or we will act without you."

It was a deliberate goading on McKie's part, a choice of non-Dosadi forms to abbreviate this confrontation.  It said more than anything else that McKie came from beyond the God Wall, that the darkness which held back the daylight was the least of his resources.

Broey hesitated, then:

"So?"

The single word fell on the air with countless implications:  an entire exchange discarded, hopes dashed, a hint of sadness at lost powers, and still with that sophisticated reserve which was Broey's signature.  It was more subtle than a shrug, more powerful in its Dosadi overtones that an entire negotiating session.

"Questions?" McKie asked.

Broey glanced at Jedrik, obviously surprised by this.  It was as though he appealed to her:  they were both Dosadi, were they not?  This outsider came here with his gross manners, his lack of Dosadi understanding.  How could one speak to such one?  He addressed Jedrik.

"Have I not already stated my submission?  I came alone, I . . ."

Jedrik picked up McKie's cue.

"There are certain . . . peculiarities to our situation."

"Peculiarities?"

Broey's nictating membrane blinked once.

Jedrik allowed her manner to convey a slight embarrassment.

"Certain delicacies of the Dosadi condition must be overlooked.  We are now, all of us, abject supplicants . . . and we are dealing with people who do not speak as we speak, act as we act . . ."

"Yes."  He pointed upward.  "The mentally retarded ones.  We are in danger then."

It was not a question.  Broey peered upward, as though trying to see through the ceiling and intervening floors.  He drew in a deep breath.

"Yes."

Again, it was compressed communication.  Anyone who could put the God Wall there could crush an entire planet.  Therefore, Dosadi and all of its inhabitants had been brought to a common subjection.  Only a Dosadi could have accepted it this quickly without more questions, and Broey was an ultimate Dosadi.

McKie turned to Jedrik.  When he spoke, she anticipated every word, but she waited him out.

"Tell your people to stop all attacks."

He faced Broey.

"And your people."

Broey looked from Jedrik to McKie, back to Jedrik with a puzzled expression openly on his face, but he obeyed.

"Which communicator?"

Where pain predominates, agony can be a valued teacher.

-Dosadi aphorism

McKie and Jedrik had no need to discuss the decision.  It was a choice which they shared and knew they shared through a memory-selection process now common to both of them.  There was a loophole in the God Wall and even though that wall now blanketed Dosadi in darkness, a Caleban contract was still a Caleban contract.  The vital question was whether the Caleban of the God Wall would respond.

Jedrik in McKie's body stood guard outside her own room while a Jedrik-fleshed McKie went alone into the room to make the attempt.  Who should he try to contact?  Fannie Mae?  The absolute darkness which enclosed Dosadi hinted at an absolute withdrawal of the guardian Caleban.  And there was so little time.

McKie sat cross-legged on the floor of the room and tried to clear his mind.  The constant strange discoveries in the female body he now wore interfered with concentration.  The moment of exchange left an aftershock which he doubted would ever diminish.  They had but to share the desire for the change now and it occurred.  But this different body -- ahh, the multiplicity of differences created its own confusions.  These went far beyond the adjustments to different height and weight.  The muscles of his/her arms and hips felt wrongly attached.  The bodily senses were routed through different unconscious processes.  Anatomy created its own patterns, its own instinctual behavior.  For one thing, he found it necessary to develop consciously monitored movements which protected his/her breasts.  The movements were reminiscent of those male adjustments by which he prevented injury to testes.  These were movements which a male learned early and relegated to an automatic behavior pattern.  The problem in the female body was that he had to think about such behavior.  And it went far beyond the breast-testes interlock.

As he tried to clear his mind for the Caleban contact, these webbed clusters of memory intruded.  It was maddening.  He needed to clear away bodily distractions, but this female body demanded his attention.  In desperation, he hyperventilated and burned his awareness into a pineal focus whose dangers he knew only too well.  This was the way to permanent identity loss if the experience were prolonged.  It produced a sufficient clarity, however, that he could fill his awareness with memories of Fannie Mae.

Silence.

He sensed time's passage as though each heartbeat were a blow.

Fear hovered at the edges of the silence.

It came to him that something had put a terrible fear into the God Wall Caleban.

McKie felt anger.

"Caleban! You owe me!"

"McKie?"

The response was so faint that he wondered whether it might be his hopes playing tricks on him.

"Fannie Mae?"

"Are you McKie?"

That was stronger, and he recognized the familiar Caleban presence in his awareness.

"I am McKie and you owe me a debt."

"If you are truly McKie . . . why are you so . . . strange . . . changed?"

"I wear another body."

McKie was never sure, but he thought he sensed consternation.  Fannie Mae responded more strongly then.

"I remove McKie from Dosadi now?  Contract permits."

"I will share Dosadi's fate."

"McKie!"

"Don't argue with me, Fannie Mae.  I will share Dosadi's fate unless you remove another node/person with me."

He projected Jedrik's patterns then, an easy process since he shared all of her memories.

"She wears McKie's body!"

It was accusatory.

"She wears another body," McKie said.  He knew the Caleban saw his new relationship with Jedrik.  Everything depended now on the interpretation of the Caleban contract.

"Jedrik is Dosadi," the Caleban protested.

"So am I Dosadi . . . now."

"But you are McKie!"

"And Jedrik is also McKie.  Contact her if you don't believe me."

He broke the contact with an angry abruptness, found himself sprawled on the floor, still twitching.  Perspiration bathed the female body which he still wore. The head ached.

Would Fannie Mae do as he'd told her?  He knew Jedrik was as capable of projecting his awareness as he was of projecting hers.  How would Fannie Mae interpret the Dosadi contract?

Gods!  The ache in this head was a burning thing.  He felt alien in Jedrik's body, misused.  The pain persisted and he wondered if he'd done irreparable harm to Jedrik's brain through that intense pineal focus.

Slowly, he pushed himself upright, got to his feet.  The Jedrik legs felt weak beneath him.  He thought of Jedrik outside that door, trembling in the zombielike trance required for this mind-to-mind contact.  What was taking so long?  Had the Calebans withdrawn?

Have we lost?

He started for the door but before he'd taken the second step, light blazed around him.  For a fractional heartbeat he thought it was the final fire to consume Dosadi, but the light held steady.  He glanced around, found himself in the open air.  It was a place he recognized immediately:  the courtyard of the Dry Head compound on Tandaloor.  He saw the familiar phylum designs on the surrounding walls:  green Gowachin script on yellow bricks.  There was the sound of water splashing in the corner pool.  A group of Gowachin stood in an arched entry directly ahead of him and he recognized one of his old teachers.  Yes -- this was a Dry Head sanctum.  These people had protected him, trained him, introduced him to their most sacred secrets.

The Gowachin in the shadowed entry were moving excitedly into the courtyard, their attention centered on a figure sprawled near them.  The figure stirred, sat up.

McKie recognized his own body there.

Jedrik!

It was an intense mutual need.  The body exchange required less than an eyeblink.  McKie found himself in his own familiar body, seated on cool tiles.  The approaching Gowachin bombarded him with questions.

"McKie, what is this?"

"You fell through a jumpdoor!"

"Are you hurt?"

He waved the questions away, crossed his legs, and fell into the long-call trance focused on that bead in his stomach.  That bead Bildoon had never expected him to use!

As it was paid to do, the Taprisiot waiting on CC enfolded his awareness.  McKie rejected contact with Bildoon, made six calls through the responsive Taprisiot.  The calls went to key agents in BuSab, all of them ambitious and resourceful, all of them completely loyal to the agency's mandate.  He transmitted his Dosadi information in full bursts, using the technique derived from his exchanges with Jedrik -- mind-to-mind.

There were few questions and those easily answered.

"The Caleban who holds Dosadi imprisoned plays God.  It's the letter of the contract."

"Do the Calebans approve of this?"

That question came from a particularly astute Wreave agent sensitive to the complications implicit in the fact that the Gowachin were training Ceylang, a Wreave female, as a Legum.

"The concepts of approval or disapproval are not applicable.  The role was necessary for that Caleban to carry out the contract."

"It was a game?"

The Wreave agent was outraged.

"Perhaps.  There's one thing certain:  the Calebans don't understand harmful behavior and ethics as we understand them."

"We've always known that."

"But now we've really learned it."

When he'd made the six calls, McKie sent his Taprisiot questing for Aritch, found the High Magister in the Running Phylum's conference pool.

"Greetings, Client."

McKie projected wry amusement.  He sensed the Gowachin's shock.

"There are certain things which your Legum instructs you to do under the holy seal of our relationship," McKie said.

"You will take us into the Courtarena, then?"

The High Magister was perceptive and he was a beneficiary of Dosadi's peculiar gifts, but he was not a Dosadi.  McKie found it relatively easy to manipulate Aritch now, enlisting the High Magister's deepest motivations.  When Aritch protested against canceling the God Wall contract, McKie revealed only the first layer of stubborn determination.

"You will not add to your Legum's difficulties."

"But what will keep them on Dosadi?"

"Nothing."

"Then you will defend rather than prosecute?"

"Ask your pet Wreave," McKie said.  "Ask Ceylang."

He broke the contact then, knowing Aritch could only obey him.  The High Magister had few choices, most of them bad ones.  And Gowachin Law prevented him from disregarding his Legum's orders once the pattern of the contest was set.

McKie awoke from the call to find his Dry Head friends clustered around Jedrik.  She was explaining their predicament.  Yes . . .  There were advantages to having two bodies with one purpose.  McKie got to his feet.  She saw him, spoke.

"My head feels better."

"It was a near thing."  And he added:

"It still is.  But Dosadi is free."

In the classical times of several species, it was the custom of the powerful to nudge the power-counters (money or other economic tabulators, status points, etc.) into occasional violent perturbations from which the knowledgeable few profited.  Human accounts of this experience reveal edifying examples of this behavior (for which, see Appendix G).  Only the PanSpechi appear to have avoided this phenomenon, possibly because of creche slavery.

-Comparative History, The BuSab Text

McKie made his next series of calls from the room the Dry Heads set aside for him.  It was a relatively large room reserved for Human guests and contained well-trained chairdogs and a wide bedog which Jedrik eyed with suspicion despite her McKie memories of such things.  She knew the things had only a rudimentary brain, but still they were . . . alive.

She stood by the single window which looked out on the courtyard pool, turning when she heard McKie awaken from his Taprisiot calls.

"Suspicions confirmed," he said.

"Will our agent friends leave Bildoon for us?" she asked.

"Yes."

She turned back to the window.

"I keep thinking how the Dosadi sky must look now . . . without a God Wall.  As bright as this."  She nodded toward the courtyard seen through the window.  "And when we get jumpdoors . . ."

She broke off.  McKie, of course, shared such thoughts.  This new intimacy required considerable adjustment.

"I've been thinking about your training as a Legum," she said.

McKie knew where her thoughts had gone.

The Gowachin chosen to train him had all appeared open in their relationship.  He had been told that his teachers were a select group, chosen for excellence, the best available for the task:  making a Gowachin Legum out of a non-Gowachin.

A silk purse from a sow's ear!

His teachers had appeared to lead conventional Gowachin lives, keeping the usual numbers of fertile females in family tanks, weeding the Graluz tads with necessary Gowachin abandon.  On the surface of it, the whole thing had assumed a sense of the ordinary.  They had introduced him to intimate aspects of their lives when he'd inquired, answered his questions with disarming frankness.

McKie's Jedrik-amplified awareness saw this in a different light now.  The contests between Gowachin phylums stood out sharply.  And McKie knew now that he had not asked the right questions, that his teachers had been selected by different rules than those revealed to him at the time, that their private instructions from their Gowachin superiors contained nuances of vital importance which had been hidden from their student.

Poor Ceylang.

These were unsettling reflections.  They changed his understanding of Gowachin honor, called into question all of those inadvertent comparisons he'd made between Gowachin forms and the mandate of his own BuSab.  His BuSab training came in for the same questioning examination.

Why . . . why . . . why . . . why . . .

Law?  Gowachin Law?

The value in having a BuSab agent as a Legum of the Gowachin had gained a new dimension.  McKie saw these matters now as Jedrik had once seen through the God Wall.  There existed other forces only dimly visible behind the visible screen.  An unseen power structure lay out there -- people who seldom appeared in public, decision makers whose slightest whim carried terrible import for countless worlds.  Many places, many worlds would be held in various degrees of bondage.  Dosadi had merely been an extreme case for a special purpose.

New bodies for old.  Immortality.  And a training ground for people who made terrible decisions.

But none of them would be as completely Dosadi as this Jedrik-amplified McKie.

He wondered where the Dosadi decision had been made.  Aritch had not shared in it; that was obvious.  There were others behind Aritch -- Gowachin and non-Gowachin.  A shadowy power group existed.  It could have its seat on any world of the ConSentiency.  The power merchants would have to meet occasionally, but not necessarily face to face.  And never in the public eye.  Their first rule was secrecy.  They would employ many people who lived at the exposed fringes of their power, people to carry out shadowy commands -- people such as Aritch.

And Bildoon.

What had the PanSpechi hoped to gain?  A permanent hold on his creche's ego?  Of course.  That . . . plus new bodies -- Human bodies, undoubtedly, and unmarked by the stigmata of his PanSpechi origins.

Bildoon's behavior -- and Aritch's -- appeared so transparent now.  And there'd be a Mrreg nearby creating the currents in which Aritch swam.  Puppet leads to Puppet Master.

Mrreg.

That poor fool, Grinik, had revealed more than he thought.

And Bildoon.

"We have two points of entry," McKie said.

She agreed.

"Bildoon and Mrreg.  The latter is the more dangerous."

A crease beside McKie's nose began to itch.  He scratched at it absently, grew conscious that something had changed.  He stared around, found himself standing at the window and clothed in a female body.

Damn!  It happened so easily.

Jedrik stared up at him with his own eyes.  She spoke with his voice, but the overtones were pure Jedrik.  They both found this amusing.

"The powers of your BuSab."

He understood.

"Yes, the watchdogs of justice."

"Where were the watchdogs when my ancestors were lured into this Dosadi trap?"

"Watchdogs of justice, very dangerous role," he agreed.

"You know our feelings of outrage," she said.

"And I know what it is to have loving parents."

"Remember that when you talk to Bildoon."

Once more, McKie found himself on the bed, his old familiar body around him.

Presently, he felt the mental tendrils of a Taprisiot call, sensed Bildoon's awareness in contact with him.  McKie wasted no time.  The shadow forces were taking the bait.

"I have located Dosadi.  The issue will come to the Court arena.  No doubt of that.  I want you to make the preliminary arrangements.  Inform the High Magister Aritch that I make the formal imposition of the Legum.  One member of the judicial panel must be a Gowachin from Dosadi.  I have a particular Gowachin in mind.  His name is Broey."

"Where are you?"

"On Tandaloor."

"Is that possible?"

McKie masked his sadness.  Ahhh, Bildoon, how easily you are read.

"Dosadi is temporarily out of danger.  I have taken certain retaliatory precautions."

McKie broke the contact.

Jedrik spoke in a musing voice.

"Ohh, the perturbations we spread."

McKie had no time for such reflections.

"Broey will need help, a support team, an extremely reliable troop which I want you to select for him."

"Yes, and what of Gar and Tria?"

"Let them run free.  Broey will pick them up later."

Communal/managed economics have always been more destructive of their societies than those driven by greed.  This is what Dosadi says:  Greed sets its own limits, is self-regulating.

-The Dosadi Analysis / BuSab Text

McKie looked around the Legum office they'd assigned him.  Afternoon smells from Tandaloor's fern jungles came in an open window.  A low barrier separated him from the Courtarena with its ranks of scats all around.  His office and adjoining quarters were small but fitted with all requisite linkages to libraries and the infrastructure to summon witnesses and experts.  It was a green-walled space so deceptively ordinary that its like had beguiled more than one non-Gowachin into believing he knew how to perform here.  But these quarters represented a deceptive surface riding on Gowachin currents.  No matter that the ConSentient Pact modified what the Gowachin might do here, this was Tandaloor, and the forms of the frog people dominated.

Seating himself at the single table in the office space, McKie felt the chairdog adjust itself beneath him.  It was good to have a chairdog again after Dosadi's unrelenting furniture.  He flipped a toggle and addressed the Gowachin face which appeared on the screen inset into his table.

"I require testimony from those who made the actual decision to set up the Dosadi experiment.  Are you prepared to meet this request?"

"Do you have the names of these people?"

Did this fool think he was going to blurt out:  "Mrreg"?

"If you force me to it," McKie warned, "I will bind Aritch to the Law and extract the names from him."

This had no apparent effect on the Gowachin.  He addressed McKie by name and title, adding:

"I leave the formalities to you.  Any witness I summon must have a name."

McKie suppressed a smile.  Suspicions confirmed.  This was a fact which the watchful Gowachin in the screen was late recognizing.  Someone else had read the interchange correctly, however.  Another, older, Gowachin face replaced the first one on the screen.

"What're you doing, McKie?"

"Determining how I will proceed with this case."

"You will proceed as a Legum of the Gowachin Bar."

"Precisely."

McKie waited.

The Gowachin peered narrowly at him from the screen.

"Jedrik?"

"You are speaking to Jorj X. McKie, a Legum of the Gowachin Bar."

Belatedly, the older Gowachin saw something of the way the Dosadi experience had changed McKie.

"Do you wish me to place you in contact with Aritch?"

McKie shook his head.  They were so damned obvious, these underlings.

"Aritch didn't make the Dosadi decision.  Aritch was chosen to take the blow if it came to that.  I will accept nothing less than the one who made that ultimate decision which launched the Dosadi experiment.

The Gowachin stared at him coldly, then:

"One moment.  I will see what I can do."

The screen went blank, but the audio remained.  McKie heard the voices.

"Hello . . .  Yes, I'm sorry to interrupt at this time."

"What is it?"

That was a deep and arrogant Gowachin voice, full of annoyance at the interruption.  It was also an accent which a Dosadi could recognize in spite of the carefully overlaid masking tones.  Here was one who'd used Dosadi.

The voice of the older Gowachin from McKie's screen continued:

"The Legum bound to Aritch has come up with a sensitive line of questioning.  He wishes to speak to you."

"To me? But I am preparing for Laupuk."

McKie had no idea what Laupuk might be, but it opened a new window on the Gowachin for him.  Here was a glimpse of the rarified strata which had been concealed from him all of those years.  This tiny glimpse confirmed him in the course he'd chosen.

"He is listening to us at this time."

"Listening . . . why?"

The tone carried threats, but the Gowachin who'd intercepted McKie's demands went on, unwavering:

"To save explanations.  It's clear that he'll accept nothing less than speaking to you.  This caller is McKie, but . . ."

"Yes?"

"You will understand."

"I presume you have interpreted things correctly.  Very well.  Put him on."

McKie's screen flickered, revealed a wide view of a Gowachin room such as he'd never before seen.  A far wall held spears and cutting weapons, streamers of colorful pennants, glistening rocks, ornate carvings in a shiny black substance.  All of this was backdrop for a semireclining chairdog occupied by an aged Gowachin who sat spraddle-legged being anointed by two younger Gowachin males.  The attendants poured a thick, golden substance onto the aged Gowachin from green crystal flasks.  The flasks were of a spiral design.  The contents were gently massaged into the Gowachin's skin.  The old Gowachin glistened with the stuff and when he blinked -- no Phylum tattoos.

"As you can see," he said, "I'm being prepared for . . ."

He broke off, recognizing that he spoke to a non-Gowachin.  Certainly, he'd known this.  It was a slow reaction for a Dosadi.

"This is a mistake," he said.

"Indeed."  McKie nodded pleasantly.  "Your name?"

The old Gowachin scowled at this gaucherie, then chuckled.

"I am called Mrreg."

As McKie had suspected.  And why would a Tandaloor Gowachin assume the name, no, the title of the mythical monster who'd imbued the frog people with a drive toward savage testing?  The implications went far beyond this planet, colored Dosadi.

"You made the decision for the Dosadi experiment?"

"Someone had to make it."

That was not a substantive answer, and McKie decided to take it to issue.  "You are not doing me any favors!  I now know what it means to be a Legum of the Gowachin Bar and I intend to employ my powers to their limits."

It was as though McKie had worked some odd magic which froze the scene on his screen.  The two attendants stopped pouring unguent, but did not look toward the pickup viewer which was recording their actions for McKie.  As for Mrreg, he sat utterly still, his eyes fixed unblinking upon McKie.

McKie waited.

Presently, Mrreg turned to the attendant on his left.  "Please continue.  There is little time."

McKie took this as though spoken to himself.

"You're my client.  Why did you send a proxy?"

Mrreg continued to study McKie.

"I see what Ekris meant."  Then, more briskly:  "Well, McKie, I followed your career with interest.  It now appears I did not follow you closely enough.  Perhaps if we had not . . ."

He left the thought incomplete.

McKie picked up on this.

"It was inevitable that I escape from Dosadi."

"Perhaps."

The attendants finished their work, departed, taking the oddly shaped crystal flasks with them.

"Answer my question," McKie said.

"I am not required to answer your question."

"Then I withdraw from this case."

Mrreg hunched forward in sudden alarm.  "You cannot!  Aritch isn't . . ."

"I have no dealings with Aritch.  My client is that Gowachin who made the Dosadi decision."

"You are engaging in strange behavior for a Legum.  Yes, bring it."  This last was addressed to someone offscreen.  Another attendant appeared, carrying a white garment shaped somewhat like a long apron with sleeves.  The attendant proceeded to put this onto Mrreg, who ignored him, concentrating on McKie.

"Do you have any idea what you're doing, McKie?"

"Preparing to act for my client."

"I see.  Who told you about me?"

McKie shook his head.

"Did you really believe me unable to detect your presence or interpret the implications of what my own senses tell me?"

McKie saw that the Gowachin failed to see beneath the surface taunting.  Mrreg turned to the attendant who was tying a green ribbon at the back of the apron.  The old Gowachin had to lean forward for this.  "A little tighter," he said.

The attendant retied the ribbon.

Addressing McKie, Mrreg said, "Please forgive the distraction.  This must proceed at its own pace."

McKie absorbed this, assessed it Dosadi fashion.  He could see the makings of an important Gowachin ritual here, but it was a new one to him.  No matter.  That could wait.  He continued speaking, probing this Mrreg.

"When you found your own peculiar uses for Dosadi . . ."

"Peculiar?  It's a universal motivation, McKie, that one tries to reduce the competition."

"Did you assess the price correctly, the price you might be asked to pay?"

"Oh, yes. I knew what I might have to pay."

There was a clear tone of resignation in the Gowachin's voice, a rare tone for his species.  McKie hesitated.  The attendant who'd brought the apron left the room, never once glancing in McKie's direction, although there had to be a screen to show whatever Mrreg saw of his caller.

"You wonder why I sent a proxy to hire the Legum?" Mrreg asked.

"Why Aritch?"

"Because he's a candidate for . . . greater responsibilities.  You know, McKie, you astonish me.  Undoubtedly you know what I could have done to you for this impertinence, yet that doesn't deter you."

This revealed more than Mrreg might have intended, but he remained unaware (or uncaring) of what McKie saw.  For his part, McKie maintained a bland exterior, as blank as that of any Dosadi.

"I have a single purpose," McKie said.  "Not even my client will sway me from it."

"The function of a Legum," Mrreg said.

The attendant of the white apron returned with an unsheathed blade.  McKie glimpsed a jeweled handle and glittering sweep of cutting edge about twenty centimeters long.  The blade curved back upon itself in a tight arc at the tip.  The attendant, his back to McKie, stood facing Mrreg.  The blade no longer was visible.

Mrreg, his left side partly obscured from McKie by the attendant, leaned to the right and peered up at the screen through which he watched McKie.

"You've never been appraised of the ceremony we call Laupuk.  It's very important and we've been remiss in leaving this out of your education.  Laupuk was essential before such a . . . project as Dosadi could be set in motion.  Try to understand this ritual.  It will help you prepare your case."

"What was your Phylum?"  McKie asked.

"That's no longer important but . . . very well.  It was Great Awakening.  I was High Magister for two decades before we made the Dosadi decision."

"How many Rim bodies have you used up?"

"My final one.  That, too, is no longer important.  Tell me, McKie, when did you suspect Aritch was only a proxy?"

"When I realized that not all Gowachin were born Gowachin."

"But Aritch . . ."

"Ahh, yes:  Aritch aspires to greater responsibilities."

"Yes . . . of course.  I see.  The Dosadi decision had to go far beyond a few phylums or a single species.  There had to be a . . . I believe you Humans call it a 'High Command.'  Yes, that would've become obvious to one as alert as you now appear.  Your many marriages deceived us, I think.  Was that deliberate?"

Secure behind his Dosadi mask, McKie decided to lie.

"Yes."

"Ahhhhhhhhh."

Mrreg seemed to shrivel into himself, but rallied.

"I see.  We were made to believe you some kind of dilettante with perverted emotions.  It'd be judged a flaw which we could exploit.  Then there's another High Command and we never suspected."

It all came out swiftly, revealing the wheels within wheels which ruled Mrreg's view of the ConSentient universe.  McKie marveled at how much more was said than the bare words.  This one had been a long time away from Dosadi and had not been born there, but there were pressures on Mrreg now forcing him to the limits of what he'd learned on Dosadi.

McKie did not interrupt.

"We didn't expect you to penetrate Aritch's role, but that was not our intent, as you know.  I presume . . ."

Whatever Mrreg presumed, he decided not to say it, musing aloud instead.

"One might almost believe you were born on Dosadi."

McKie remained silent, allowing the fear in that conjecture to fill Mrreg's consciousness.

Presently, Mrreg asked, "Do you blame all Gowachin?"

Still, McKie remained silent.

Mrreg became agitated.

"We are a government of sorts, my High Command.  People can be induced not to question a government."

McKie decided to press this nerve.

"Governments always commit their entire populations when the demands grow heavy enough.  By their passive acceptance, these populations become accessories to whatever is done in their name."

"You've provided free use of jumpdoors for the Dosadi?"

McKie nodded.  "The Calebans are aware of their obligation.  Jedrik has been busy instructing her compatriots."

"You think to loose the Dosadi upon the ConSentiency and hunt down my High Command?  Have a care, McKie.  I warn you not to abandon your duties as a Legum, or to turn your back on Aritch."

McKie continued silent.

"Don't make that error, McKie.  Aritch is your client.  Through him you represent all Gowachin."

"A Legum requires a responsible client," McKie said.  "Not a proxy, but a client whose acts are brought into question by the case being tried."

Mrreg revealed Gowachin signs of deep concern.

"Hear me, McKie.  I haven't much time."

In a sudden rush of apprehension, McKie focused on the attendant with the blade who stood there partly obscuring the seated Gowachin.  Mrreg spoke in a swift spill of words.

"By our standards, McKie, you are not yet very well educated in Gowachin necessities.  That was our error.  And now your . . . impetuosity has put you into a position which is about to become untenable."

The attendant shifted slightly, arms moving up.  McKie glimpsed the blade tip at the attendant's right shoulder.

"Gowachin don't have families as do Humans or even Wreaves," Mrreg said.  "We have graduated advancement into groups which hold more and more responsibility for those beneath them.  This was the pattern adopted by our High Command.  What you see as a Gowachin family is only a breeding group with its own limited rules.  With each step up in responsibility goes a requirement that we pay an increasing price for failure.  You ask if I know the price?  Ahhh, McKie.  The breeding male Gowachin makes sure that only the swiftest, most alert of his tads survive.  A Magister upholds the forms of the Law.  The High Command answers to a . . . Mrreg.  You see?  And a Mrreg must make only the best decisions.  No failures.  Thus . . . Laupuk."

As he spoke the final word, the blade in the attendant's hands flashed out and around in a shimmering arc.  It caught the seated Gowachin at the neck.  Mrreg's head, neatly severed, was caught in the loop at the blade's tip, lifted high, then lowered onto the white apron which now was splashed with green gore.

The scene blanked out, was replaced by the Gowachin who had connected McKie with Mrreg.

"Aritch wishes to consult his Legum," the Gowachin said.

In a changing universe, only a changing species can hope to be immortal and then only if its eggs are nurtured in widely scattered environments.  This predicts a wealth of unique individuals.

-Insights (a glimpse of early Human philosophy), BuSab Text

Jedrik made contact with McKie while he waited for the arrival of Aritch and Ceylang.  He had been staring absently at the ceiling, evaluating in a profoundly Dosadi way how to gain personal advantage from the upcoming encounter, when he felt the touch of her mind on his.

McKie locked himself in his body.

"No transfer."

"Of course not."

It was a tiny thing, a subtle shading in the contact which could have been overlooked by anyone with a less accurate simulation model of Jedrik.

"You're angry with me," McKie said.

He projected irony, knew she'd read this correctly.

When she responded, her anger had been reduced to irritation.  The point was not the shading of emotion, it was that she allowed such emotion to reveal itself.

"You remind me of one of my early lovers," she said.

McKie thought of where Jedrik was at this moment:  safely rocked in the flower-perfumed air of his floating island on the planetary sea of Tutalsee.  How strange such an environment must be for a Dosadi -- no threats, fruit which could be picked and eaten without a thought of poisons.  The memories she'd taken from him would coat the island with familiarity, but her flesh would continue to find that a strange experience.  His memories -- yes. The island would remind her of all those wives he'd taken to the honeymoon bowers of that place.

McKie spoke from this awareness.

"No doubt that early lover failed to show sufficient appreciation of your abilities, outside the bedroom, that is. Which one was it . . ."

And he named several accurate possibilities, lifting them from the memories he'd taken from Jedrik.

Now, she laughed.  He sensed the untainted response, real humor and unchecked.

McKie was reminded in his turn of one of his early wives, and this made him think of the breeding situation from which Jedrik had come -- no confusions between a choice for breeding mate and a lover taken for the available enjoyment of sex.  One might even actively dislike the breeding mate.

Lovers . . . wives . . .  What was the difference, except for the socially imprinted conventions out of which the roles arose?  But Jedrik did remind him of that one particular woman, and he explored this memory, wondering if it might help him now in his relationship with Jedrik.  He'd been in his midthirties and assigned to one of his first personal BuSab cases, sent out with no oldtimer to monitor and instruct him.  The youngest Human agent in the Bureau's history ever to be released on his own, so it was rumored.  The planet had been one of the Ylir group, very much unlike anything in McKie's previous experience:  an ingrown place with deep entryways in all of the houses and an oppressive silence all around.  No animals, no birds, no insects -- just that awesome silence within which a fanatic religion was reported forming.  All conversations were low voiced and full of subtle intonations which suggested an inner communication peculiar to Ylir and somehow making sport with all outsiders not privy to their private code.  Very like Dosadi in this.

His wife of the moment, safely ensconced on Tutalsee, had been quite the opposite:  gregarious, sportive, noisy.

Something about that Ylir case had sent McKie back to this wife with a sharpened awareness of her needs.  The marriage had gone well for a long time, longer than any of the others.  And he saw now why Jedrik reminded him of that one:  they both protected themselves with a tough armor of femininity, but were extremely vulnerable behind that facade.  When the armor collapsed, it collapsed totally.  This realization puzzled McKie because he read his own reaction clearly:  he was frightened.

In the eyeblink this evaluation took, Jedrik read him:

"We have not left Dosadi.  We've taken it with us."

So that was why she'd made this contact, to be certain he mixed this datum into his evaluations.  McKie looked out the open window.  It would be dusk soon here on Tandaloor.  The Gowachin home planet was a place which had defied change for thousands of standard years.  In some respects, it was a backwater.

The ConSentiency will never be the same.

The tiny trickle of Dosadi which Aritch's people had hoped to cut off was now a roaring cataract. The people of Dosadi would insinuate themselves into niche after niche of ConSentient civilization.  What could resist even the lowliest Dosadi?  Laws would change.  Relationships would assume profound and subtle differences.  Everything from the most casual friendship to the most complex business relationship would take on some Dosadi character.

McKie recalled Aritch's parting question as Aritch had sent McKie to the jumpdoor which would put him on Dosadi.

"Ask yourself if there might be a price too high to pay for the Dosadi lesson."

That had been McKie's first clue to Aritch's actual motives and the word lesson had bothered him, but he'd missed the implications.  With some embarrassment, McKie recalled his glib answer to Aritch's question:

"It depends on the lesson."

True, but how blind he'd been to things any Dosadi would have seen.  How ignorant.  Now, he indicated to Jedrik that he understood why she'd called such things to his attention.

"Aritch didn't look much beyond the uses of outrage and injustice . . ."

"And how to turn such things to personal advantage."

She was right, of course.  McKie stared out at the gathering dusk.  Yes, the species tried to make everything its own.  If the species failed, then forces beyond it moved in, and so on, ad infinitum.

I do what I do.

He recalled those words of the sleeping monster with a shudder, felt Jedrik recoil.  But she was proof even against this.

"What powers your ConSentiency had."

Past tense, right.  And not our ConSentiency because that already was a thing of the past.  Besides . . . she was Dosadi.

"And the illusions of power," she said.

He saw at last what she was emphasizing, and her own shared memories in his mind made the lesson doubly impressive.  She'd known precisely what McKie's personal ego-focus might overlook.  Yet, this was one of the glues which held the ConSentiency together.

"Who can imagine himself immune from any retaliation?" he quoted.

It was right out of the BuSab Manual.

Jedrik made no response.

McKie needed no more emphasis from her now.  The lesson of history was clear.  Violence bred violence.  If this violence got out of hand, it ran a course depressing in its repetitive pattern.  More often than not, that course was deadly to the innocent, the so-called "enlistment phase."  The ex-innocents ignited more violence and more violence until either reason prevailed or all were destroyed.  There were a sufficient number of cinder blocks which once had been planets to make the lesson clear.  Dosadi had come within a hair of joining that uninhabited, uninhabitable list.

Before breaking contact, Jedrik had another point to make.

"You recall that in those final days, Broey increased the rations for his Human auxiliaries, his way of saying to them:  'You'll be turned out onto the Rim soon to tend for yourselves."'

"A Dosadi way of saying that."

"Correct.  We always held that thought in reserve:  that we should breed in such numbers that some would survive no matter what happened.  We would thus begin producing species which could survive there without the city of Chu . . . or any other city designed solely to produce nonpoisonous foods."

"But there's always a bigger force waiting in the wings."

"Make sure Aritch understands that."

Choose containable violence when violence cannot be avoided.  Better this than epidemic violence.

-Lessons of Choice, The BuSab Manual

The senior attendant of the Courtarena, a squat and dignified Gowachin of the Assumptive Phylum, confronted McKie at the arena door with a confession:

"I have delayed informing you that some of your witnesses have been excluded by Prosecution challenge."

The attendant, whose name was Darak, gave a Gowachin shrug, waited.

McKie glanced beyond the attendant at the truncated oval of the arena entrance which framed a lower section of the audience seats.  The seats were filled.  He had expected some such challenge for this first morning session of the trial, saw Darak's words as a vital revelation.  They were accepting his gambit.  Darak had signaled a risky line of attack by those who guided Ceylang's performance.  They expected McKie to protest.  He glanced back at Aritch, who stood quietly submissive three steps behind his Legum.  Aritch gave every appearance of having resigned himself to the arena's conditions.

"The forms must be obeyed."

Beneath that appearance lay the hoary traditions of Gowachin Law -- The guilty are innocent.  Governments always do evil.  Legalists put their own interests first.  Defense and prosecution are brother and sister.  Suspect everything.

Aritch's Legum controlled the initial posture and McKie had chosen defense.  It hadn't surprised him to be told that Ceylang would prosecute.  McKie had countered by insisting that Broey sit on a judicial panel which would be limited to three members.  This had caused a delay during which Bildoon had called McKie, probing for any betrayal.  Bildoon's approach had been so obvious that McKie had at first suspected a feint within a feint.

"McKie, the Gowachin fear that you have a Caleban at your command.  That's a force which they . . ."

"The more they fear the better."

McKie had stared back at the screen-framed face of Bildoon, observing the signs of strain.  Jedrik was right:  the non-Dosadi were very easy to read.

"But I'm told you left this Dosadi in spite of a Caleban contract which prohibited . . ."

"Let them worry.  Good for them."

McKie watched Bildoon intently without betraying a single emotion.  No doubt there were others monitoring this exchange.  Let them begin to see what they faced.  Puppet Bildoon was not about to uncover what those shadowy forces wanted.  They had Bildoon here on Tandaloor, though, and this told McKie an essential fact.  The PanSpechi chief of BuSab was being offered as bait.  This was precisely the response McKie sought.

Bildoon had ended the call without achieving his purpose.  McKie had nibbled only enough to insure that Bildoon would be offered again as bait.  And the puppet masters still feared that McKie had a Caleban at his beck and call.

No doubt the puppet masters had tried to question their God Wall Caleban.  McKie hid a smile, thinking how that conversation must have gone.  The Caleban had only to quote the letter of the contract, and if the questioners became accusatory the Caleban would respond with anger, ending the exchange.  And the Caleban's words would be so filled with terms subject to ambiguous translation that the puppet masters would never be certain of what they heard.

As he stared at the patiently waiting Darak, McKie saw that they had a problem, those shadowy figures behind Aritch.  Laupuk had removed Mrreg from their councils and his advice would have been valuable now.  McKie had deduced that the correct reference was "The Mrreg" and that Aritch headed the list of possible successors.  Aritch might be Dosadi-trained but he was not Dosadi-born.  There was a lesson in this that the entire ConSentiency would soon learn.

And Broey as a judge in this case remained an unchangeable fact.  Broey was Dosadi-born.  The Caleban contract had kept Broey on his poison planet, but it had not limited him to a Gowachin body.  Broey knew what it was to be both Human and Gowachin.  Broey knew about the Pcharkys and their use by those who'd held Dosadi in bondage.  And Broey was now Gowachin.  The forces opposing McKie dared not name another Gowachin judge.  They must choose from the other species.  They had an interesting quandary.  And without a Caleban assistant, there were no more Pcharkys to be had on Dosadi.  The most valuable coin the puppet masters had to offer was lost to them.  They'd be desperate.  Some of the older ones would be very desperate.

Footsteps sounded around the turn of the corridor behind Aritch.  McKie glanced back, saw Ceylang come into view with her attendants.  McKie counted no less than twenty leading Legums around her.  They were out in force.  Not only Gowachin pride and integrity, but their sacred view of Law stood at issue.  And the desperate ones stood behind them, goading.  McKie could almost see those shadowy figures in the shape of this entourage.

Ceylang, he saw, wore the black robes and white-striped hood of Legum Prosecutor, but she'd thrown back the hood to free her mandibles.  McKie detected tension in her movements.  She gave no sign of recognition, but McKie saw her through Dosadi eyes.

I frighten her.  And she's right.

Turning to address the waiting attendant and speaking loudly to make sure that the approaching group heard, McKie said:

"Every law must be tested.  I accept that you have given me formal announcement of a limit on my defense."

Darak, expecting outraged protest and a demand for a list of the excluded witnesses, showed obvious confusion.

"Formal announcement?"

Ceylang and entourage came to a stop behind Aritch.

McKie went on in the same loud voice:

"We stand here within the sphere of the Courtarena.  All matters concerning a dispute in the arena are formal in this place."

The attendant glanced at Ceylang, seeking help.  This response threatened him.  Darak, hoping someday to be a High Magister, should now be recognizing his inadequacies.  He would never make it in the politics of the Gowachin Phyla, especially not in the coming Dosadi age.

McKie explained as though to a neophyte:

"Information to be verified by my witnesses is known to me in its entirety.  I will present the evidence myself."

Ceylang, having stooped to hear a low-voiced comment from one of her Gowachin advisors, showed surprise at this.  She raised one of her ropey tendrils, called, "I protest.  The Defense Legum cannot give . . ."

"How can you protest?" McKie interrupted.  "We stand here before no judicial panel empowered to rule on any protest."

"I make formal protest!" Ceylang insisted, ignoring an advisor on her right who was tugging at her sleeve.

McKie permitted himself a cold smile.

"Very well.  Then we must call Darak into the arena as witness, he being the only party present who is outside our dispute."

The edges of Aritch's jaws came down in a Gowachin grimace.

"At the end, I warned them not to go with the Wreave," he said.  "They cannot say they came here unwarned."

Too late, Ceylang saw what had happened.  McKie would be able to question Darak on the challenges to the witnesses.  Some of those challenges were certain to be overturned.  At the very least, McKie would know who the Prosecution feared.  He would know it in time to act upon it.  There would be no delays valuable to Prosecution.  Tension, fear, and pride had made Ceylang act precipitately.  Aritch had been right to warn them, but they counted on McKie's fear of the interlocked Wreave triads.  Let them count.  Let them blunt their awareness on that and on a useless concern over the excluded witnesses.

McKie motioned Darak through the doorway into the arena, heard him utter an oath.  The reason became apparent as McKie pressed through in the crowded surge of the Prosecutor's party.  The instruments of Truth-by-Pain had been arrayed on their ancient rack below the judges.  Seldom brought out of their wrappings even for display to visiting dignitaries these days, the instruments had not been employed in the arena within the memory of a living witness.  McKie had expected this display.  It was obvious that Darak and Ceylang had not.  It was interesting to note the members of Ceylang's entourage who were watching for McKie's response.

He gave them a grin of satisfaction.

McKie turned his attention to the judicial panel.  They had given him Broey.  The ConSentiency, acting through BuSab, held the right of one appointment.  Their choice delighted McKie.  Bait, indeed!  Bildoon occupied the seat on Broey's right.  The PanSpechi chief of bureau sat there all bland and reserved in his unfamiliar Gowachin robes of water green.  Bildoon's faceted eyes glittered in the harsh arena lighting.  The third judge had to be the Gowachin choice and undoubtedly maneuvered (as Bildoon had been) by the puppet masters.  It was a Human and McKie, recognizing him, missed a step, recovered his balance with a visible effort.

What were they doing?

The third judge was named Mordes Parando, a noted challenger of BuSab actions.  He wanted BuSab eliminated -- either outright or by removing some of the bureau's key powers.  He came from the planet Lirat, which provided McKie with no surprises.  Lirat was a natural cover for the shadowy forces.  It was a place of enormous wealth and great private estates guarded by their own security forces.  Parando was a man of somewhat superficial manners which might conceal a genuine sophisticate, knowledgeable and erudite, or a completely ruthless autocrat of Broey's stamp.  He was certainly Dosadi-trained.  And his features bore the look of the Dosadi Rim.

There was one more fact about Parando which no one outside Lirat was supposed to know.  McKie had come upon it quite by chance while investigating a Palenki who'd been an estate guard on Lirat.  The turtlelike Palenki were notoriously dull, employed chiefly as muscle.  This one had been uncommonly observant.

"Parando makes advice on Gowachin Law."

This had been responsive to a question about Parando's relationship with the estate guard being investigated.  McKie, not seeing a connection between question and answer, had not pursued the matter, but had tucked this datum away for future investigation.  He had been mildly interested at the time because of the rumored existence of a legalist enclave on Lirat and such enclaves had been known to test the limits of legality.

The people behind Aritch would expect McKie to recognize Parando.  Would they expect Parando to be recognized as a legalist?  They were certain to know the danger of putting Parando on a Gowachin bench.  Professional legalists were absolutely prohibited from Gowachin judicial service.

"Let the people judge."

Why would they need a legalist here?  Or were they expecting McKie to recognize the Rim origins of Parando's body?  Were they warning McKie not to raise that issue here?  Body exchange and the implications of immortality represented a box of snakes no one wanted to open.  And the possibility of one species spying on another. . .  There was fragmentation of the ConSentiency latent in this case.  More ways than one.

If I challenge Parando, his replacement may be more dangerous.  If I expose him as a legalist after the trial starts . . .  Could they expect me to do that?  Let us explore it.

Knowing he was watched by countless eyes, McKie swept his gaze around the arena.  Above the soft green absorbent oval where he stood were rank on rank of benches, every seat occupied.  Muted morning light from the domed translucent ceiling illuminated rows of Humans, Gowachin, Palenki, Sobarips . . .  McKie identified a cluster of ferret Wreaves just above the arena, limber thin with a sinuous flexing in every movement.  They would bear watching.  But every species and faction in the ConSentiency would be represented here.  Those who could not come in person would watch these proceedings via the glittering transmitter eyes which looked down from the ceiling's edges.

Now, McKie looked to the right at the witness pen set into the wall beneath the ranked benches.  He identified every witness he'd called, even the challenged ones.  The forms were being obeyed.  While the ConSentient Covenant required certain modifications here, this arena was still dominated by Gowachin Law.  To accent that, the blue metal box from the Running Phylum occupied the honor place on the bench in front of the judicial panel.

Who will taste the knife here?

Protocol demanded that Prosecutor and Defense approach to a point beneath the judges, abase themselves, and call out acceptance of the arena's conditions.  The Prosecutor's party, however, was in disarray.  Two of Ceylang's advisors were whispering excited advice to her.

The members of the Judicial panel conferred, glancing at the scene below them.  They could not act formally until the obeisance.

McKie passed a glance across the panel, absorbed Broey's posture.  The Dosadi Gowachin's enlightened greed was like an anchor point.  It was like Gowachin Law, changeable only on the surface.  And Broey was but the tip of the Dosadi advisory group which Jedrik had approved.

Holding his arms extended to the sides, McKie marched forward, abased himself face down on the floor, stood and called out:

"I accept this arena as my friend.  The conditions here are my conditions but Prosecution has defiled the sacred traditions of this place.  Does the court give me leave to slay her outright?"

There was an exclamation behind him, the sound of running, the sudden flopping of a body onto the arena's matted floor.  Ceylang could not address the court before this obeisance and she knew it.  She and the others now also knew something else just as important -- that McKie was ready to slay her despite the threat of Wreave vendetta.

In a breathless voice, Ceylang called out her acceptance of the arena's conditions, then:

"I protest this trick by Defense Legum!"

McKie saw the stirring of Gowachin in the audience.  A trick?  Didn't Ceylang know yet how the Gowachin dearly loved legal tricks?

The members of the judicial panel had been thoroughly briefed on the surface demands of the Gowachin forms, though it was doubtful that Bildoon understood sufficiently what went on beneath those forms.  The PanSpechi confirmed this now by leaning forward to speak.

"Why does the senior attendant of this court enter ahead of the Legums?"

McKie detected a fleeting smile on Broey's face, glanced back to see Darak standing apart from the prosecution throng, alone and trembling.

McKie took one step forward.

"Will the court direct Darak to the witness pen?  He is here because of a formal demand by the Prosecutor."

"This is the senior attendant of your court," Ceylang argued.  "He guards the door to . . ."

"Prosecution made formal protest to a matter which occurred in the presence of this attendant," McKie said.  "As an attendant, Darak stands outside the conflicting interests.  He is the only reliable witness."

Broey stirred, looked at Ceylang, and McKie realized how strange the Wreave must appear to a Dosadi.  This did not deter Broey, however.

"Did you protest?"

It was a direct question from the bench.  Ceylang was required to answer.  She looked to Bildoon for help but he remained silent.  Parando also refused to help her.  She glanced at Darak.  The terrified attendant could not take his attention from the instruments of pain.  Perhaps he knew something specific about their presence in the arena.

Ceylang tried to explain.

"When Defense Legum suggested an illegal . . ."

"Did you protest?"

"But the . . ."

"This court decides on all matters of legality.  Did you protest?"

"I did."

It was forced out of her.  A fit of trembling passed over the slender Wreave form.

Broey waved Darak to the witness pen, had to add a vocal order when the frightened attendant failed to understand.  Darak almost ran to the shelter of the pen.

Silence pervaded the arena.  The silence of the audience was an explosive thing.  They sat poised in the watching ovals, all of those species and factions with their special fears.  By now, they'd heard many stories and rumors.  Jumpdoors had spread the Dosadi emigres all across the ConSentiency.  Media representatives had been excluded from Dosadi and this court on the Gowachin argument that they were "prey to uninformed subjective reactions," but they would be watching here through the transmitter eyes at the ceiling.

McKie looked around at nothing in particular but taking in every detail.  There were more than three judges in this arena and Ceylang certainly must realize that.  Gowachin Law turned upon itself, existing "only to be changed."  But that watching multitude was quite another matter.  Ceylang must be made to understand that she was a sacrifice of the arena.  ConSentient opinion stood over her like a heavy sledge ready to smash down.

It was Parando's turn.

"Will opposing Legums make their opening arguments now?"

"We can't proceed while a formal protest is undecided," McKie said.

Parando understood.  He glanced at the audience, at the ceiling.  His actions were a direct signal:  Parando knew which judges really decided here.  To emphasise it, he ran a hand from the front of his neck down his chest, the unique Rim Raider's salute from Dosadi signifying "Death before surrender."  Subtle hints in the movement gave McKie another datum:  Parando was a Gowachin in a Human body.  They'd dared put two Gowachin on that panel!

With Dosadi insight, McKie saw why they did this.  They were prepared to produce the Caleban contract here.  They were telling McKie that they would expose the body-exchange secret if he forced them to it.  All would see that loophole in the Caleban contract which confined the Dosadi-born, but released outsiders in Dosadi flesh.

They think I'm really Jedrik in this flesh!

Parando revealed even more.  His people intended to find the Jedrik body and kill it, leaving this McKie flesh forever in doubt.  He could protest his McKie identity all he wanted.  They had but to demand that he prove it.  Without the other person . . .  What had their God Wall Caleban told them?

"He is McKie, she is McKie.  He is Jedrik, she is Jedrik."

His mind in turmoil, McKie wondered if he dared risk an immediate mind contact with Jedrik.  Together, they'd already recognized this danger.  Jedrik had hidden herself on McKie's hideaway, a floating island on Tutalsee.  She was there with a special Taprisiot contract prohibiting unwanted calls which might inadvertently reveal her location.

The judges, led by Parando, were acting, however, moving for an immediate examination of Darak.  McKie forced himself to perform as a Legum.

His career in ruins, the attendant answered like an automaton.  In the end, McKie restored most of his witnesses.  There were two notable exceptions:  Grinik (that flawed thread which might have led to The Mrreg) and Stiggy.  McKie was not certain why they wanted to exclude the Dosadi weapons genius who'd transformed a BuSab wallet's contents into instruments of victory.  Was it that Stiggy had broken an unbreakable code?  That made sense only if Prosecution intended to play down the inherent Dosadi superiority.Still uncertain, McKie prepared to retire and seek a way to avoid Parando's gambit, but Ceylang addressed the bench.

"The issue of witnesses having been introduced by Defense," she said, "Prosecution wishes to explore this issue.  We note many witnesses from Dosadi called by Defense.  There is a noteworthy omission whose name has not yet been introduced here.  I refer to a Human by the name of Jedrik.  Prosecution wishes to call Keila Jedrik as . . ."

"One moment!"

McKie searched his mind for the forms of an acceptable escape.  He knew that his blurted protest had revealed more than he wanted.  But they were moving faster than he'd expected.  Prosecution did not really want Jedrik as a witness, not in a Gowachin Courtarena where the roles were never quite what they appeared to non-Gowachin.  This was a plain message to McKie.

"We're going to find her and kill her."

With Bildoon and Parando concurring, a jumpdoor was summoned and Ceylang played her trump.

"Defense knows the whereabouts of witness Keila Jedrik."

They were forcing the question, aware of the emotional bond between McKie and Jedrik.  He had a choice:  argue that a personal relationship with the witness excluded her.  But Prosecution and all the judges had to concur.  They obviously would not do this -- not yet.  A harsh lock on his emotions, McKie gave the jumpdoor instructions.

Presently, Jedrik stepped onto the arena floor, faced the judges.  She'd been into the wardrobe at his bower cottage and wore a yellow and orange sarong which emphasized her height and grace.  Open brown sandals protected her feet.  There was a flame red blossom at her left ear.  She managed to look exotic and fragile.

Broey spoke for the judges.

"Do you have knowledge of the issues at trial here?"

"What issues are at trial?"

She asked it with a childlike innocence which did not even fool Bildoon.  They were forced to explain, however, because of those other judges to whom every nuance here was vital.  She heard them out in silence.

"An alleged experiment on a sentient population confined to a planet called Dosadi . . . lack of informed consent by subject population charged . . . accusations of conspiracy against certain Gowachin and others not yet named . . ."

Two fingers pressed to his eyes in the guise of intense listening, McKie made contact with Jedrik, suggesting, conferring.  They had to find a way out of this trap!  When he looked up, he saw the suspicions in Parando's face:  Which body, which ego?  McKie?  Jedrik?

In the end, Ceylang hammered home the private message, demanding whether Jedrik had "any personal relationship with Defense Legum?"

Jedrik answered in a decidedly un-Dosadi fashion.

"Why . . . yes.  We are lovers."

In itself, this was not enough to exclude her from the arena unless Prosecution and the entire judicial panel agreed.  Ceylang proposed the exclusion.  Bildoon and Parando were predictable in their agreement.  McKie waited for Broey.

"Agreed."

Broey had a private compact with the shadow forces then.  Jedrik and McKie had expected this, but had not anticipated the form confirmation would take.

McKie asked for a recess until the following morning.

With the most benign face on it, this was granted.  Broey announced the decision, smiling down at Jedrik.  It was a measure of McKie's Dosadi conditioning that he could not find it in himself to blame Broey for wanting personal victory over the person who had beaten him on Dosadi.

Back in his quarters, Jedrik put a hand on McKie's chest, spoke with eyes lowered.

"Don't blame yourself, McKie.  This was inevitable.  Those judges, none of them, would've allowed any protest from you before seeing me in person on that arena floor."

"I know."

She looked up at him, smiling.

"Yes . . . of course.  How like one person we are."

For a time after that, they reviewed the assessment of the aides chosen for Broey.  Shared memories etched away at minutiae.  Could any choice be improved?  Not one person was changed -- Human or Gowachin.  All of those advisors and aides were Dosadi-born.  They could be depended upon to be loyal to their origins, to their conditioning, to themselves individually.  For the task assigned to them, they were the best available.

McKie brought it to a close.

"I can't leave the immediate area of the arena until the trial's over."

She knew that, but it needed saying.

There was a small cell adjoining his office, a bedog there, communications instruments, Human toilet facilities.  They delayed going into the bedroom, turned to a low-key argument over the advisability of a body exchange.  It was procrastination on both sides, outcome known in advance.  Familiar flesh was familiar flesh, less distracting.  It gave each of them an edge which they dared not sacrifice.  McKie could play Jedrik and Jedrik could play McKie, but that would be dangerous play now.

When they retired, it was to make love, the most tender experience either had known.  There was no submission, only a giving, sharing, an open exchange which tightened McKie's throat with joy and fear, sent Jedrik into a fit of un-Dosadi sobbing.

When she'd recovered, she turned to him on the bed, touched his right cheek with a finger.

"McKie."

"Yes?"

"I've never had to say this to another person, but . . ."  She silenced his attempted interruption by punching his shoulder, leaning up on an elbow to look down at him.  It reminded McKie of their first night together, and he saw that she had gone back into her Dosadi shell . . . but there was something else, a difference in the eyes.

"What is it?"

"Just that I love you.  It's a very interesting feeling, especially when you can admit it openly.  How odd."

"Stay here with me."

"We both know I can't.  There's no safe place here for either of us, but the one who . . ."

"Then let's . . ."

"We've already decided against an exchange."

"Where will you go?"

"Best you don't know."

"If . . ."

"No! I wouldn't be safe as a witness; I'm not even safe at your side.  We both . . ."

"Don't go back to Dosadi."

"Where is Dosadi?  It's the only place where I could ever feel at home, but Dosadi no longer exists."

"I meant . . ."

"I know."

She sat up, hugged her knees, revealing the sinewy muscles of her shoulders and back.  McKie studied her, trying to fathom what it was she hid in that Dosadi shell.  Despite the intimacy of their shared memories, something about her eluded him.  It was as though he didn't want to learn this thing.  She would flee and hide, of course, but . . .  He listened carefully as she began to speak in a faraway voice.

"It'd be interesting to go back to Dosadi someday.  The differences . . ."

She looked over her shoulder at him.

"There are those who fear we'll make over the ConSentiency in Dosadi's image.  We'll try, but the result won't be Dosadi.  We'll take what we judge to be valuable, but that'll change Dosadi more than it changes you.  Your masses are less alert, slower, less resourceful, but you're so numerous.  In the end, the ConSentiency will win, but it'll no longer be the ConSentiency.  I wonder what it'll be when . . ."

She laughed at her own musings, shook her head.

"And there's Broey.  They'll have to deal with Broey and the team we've given him.  Broey Plus!  Your ConSentiency hasn't the faintest grasp of what we've loosed among them."

"The predator in the flock."

"To Broey, your people are like the Rim -- a natural resource."

"But he has no Pcharkys."

"Not yet."

"I doubt if the Calebans ever again will participate in . . ."

"There may be other ways. Look how easy it is for us."

"But we were printed upon each other by . . ."

"Exactly!  And they continue to suspect that you're in my body and I'm in yours.  Their entire experience precludes the free shift back and forth, one body to another . . ."

"Or this other thing . . ."

He caressed her mind.

"Yes!  Broey won't suspect until too late what's in store for him.  They'll be a long time learning there's no way to sort you from . . . me!"

This last was an exultant shout as she turned and fell upon him.  It was a wild replay of their first night together.  McKie abandoned himself to it.  There was no other choice, no time for the mind to dwell on depressing thoughts.

In the morning, he had to tap his implanted amplifiers to bring his awareness to the required pitch for the arena.  The process took a few minutes while he dressed.

Jedrik moved softly with her own preparations, straightened the bedog and caressed its resilient surface.  She summoned a jumpdoor then, held him with a lingering kiss.  The jumpdoor opened behind her as she pushed away from him.

McKie smelled familiar flowers, glimpsed the bowers of his Tutalsee island before the door blinked out of existence, hiding Jedrik and the island from him.  Tutalsee?  The moment of shocked understanding delayed him.  She'd counted on that!  He recovered, sent his mind leaping after her.

I'll force an exchange!  By the Gods . . .

His mind met pain, consuming, blinding pain.  It was agony such as he'd not even imagined could exist.

Jedrik!

His mind held an unconscious Jedrik whose awareness had fled from pain.  The contact was so delicate, like holding a newborn infant.  The slightest relaxation and he knew he would lose her to . . .  He felt that terrifying monster of the first exchange hovering in the background, but love and concern armed him against fear.

Frantic, McKie held that tenuous contact while he called a jumpdoor.  There was a small delay and when the door opened, he saw through the portal the black, twisted wreckage which had been his bower island.  A hot sun beat down on steaming cinders. And in the background, a warped metal object which might have been one of Tutalsee's little four-place flitters rolled over, gurgled, and sank.  The visible wreckage said the destructive force had been something like a pentrate, swift and all-consuming.  The water around the island still bubbled with it.  Even while he watched, the island began breaking up, its cinders drifting apart on the long, low waves.  A breeze flattened the steaming smoke.  Soon, there'd be nothing to show that beauty had floated here.  With a pentrate, there would be nothing to recover . . . not even bodies to . . .

He hesitated, still holding his fragile grasp on Jedrik's unconscious presence.  The pain was only a memory now.  Was it really Jedrik in his awareness, or only his remembered imprint of her?  He tried to awaken the sleeping presence, failed.  But small threads of memory emerged, and he saw that the destruction had been Jedrik's doing, response to attack.  The attackers had wanted a live hostage.  They hadn't anticipated that violent, unmistakable message.

"You won't hold me over McKie's head!"

But if there were no bodies . . .

Again, he tried to awaken that unconscious presence.  Her memories were there, but she remained dormant.  The effort strengthened his grip upon her presence, though.  And he told himself it had to be Jedrik, or he wouldn't know what had happened on the bower island.

Once more, he searched the empty water.  Nothing.  A pentrate would've torn and battered everything around it.  Shards of metal, flesh reduced to scattered cinders . . .

She's dead.  She has to be dead.  A pentrate . . .

But that familiar presence lay slumbering in his mind.

The door clacker interrupted his reverie.  McKie released the jumpdoor, turned to look through the bedside viewer at the scene outside his Legum quarters.  The expected deputation had arrived.  Confident, the puppet masters were moving even before confirmation of their Tutalsee gambit.  They could not possibly know yet what McKie knew.  There could be no jumpdoor or any other thread permitted to connect this group to Tutalsee.

McKie studied them carefully, keeping a bridle on his rage.  There were eight of them, so contained, so well schooled in Dosadi self-control.  So transparent to a Jedrik-amplified McKie.  They were four Humans and four Gowachin.  Overconfident.  Jedrik had seen to that by leaving no survivors.

Again, McKie tried to awaken that unconscious presence.  She would not respond.

Have I only built her out of my memories?

There was no time for such speculation.  Jedrik had made her choice on Tutalsee.  He had other choices to make here and now -- for both of them.  That ghostly presence locked in his mind would have to wait.

McKie punched the communicator which linked him to Broey, gave the agreed-upon signal.

"It's time."

He composed himself then, went to the door.

They'd sent no underlings.  He gave them that.  But they addressed him as Jedrik, made the anticipated demands, gloated over the hold they had upon him.  It was only then that McKie saw fully how well Jedrik had measured these people; and how she had played upon her McKie in those last hours together like an exquisitely tuned instrument.  Now, he understood why she'd made that violent choice.

As anticipated, the members of the delegation were extremely surprised when Broey's people fell upon them without warning.

For the Gowachin, to stand alone against all adversity is the most sacred moment of existence.

-The Gowachin, a BuSab analysis

The eight prisoners were dumped on the arena floor, bound and shackled.  McKie stopped near them, waiting for Ceylang to arrive.  It was not yet dawn.  The ceiling above the arena remained dark.  A few of the transmitter eyes around the upper perimeter glittered to reveal that they were activated.  More were coming alive by the moment.  Only a few of the witness seats were occupied, but people were streaming in as word was passed.  The judicial bench remained empty.

The outer areaway was a din of Courtarena security forces coming and going, people shouting orders, the clank of weapons, a sense of complete confusion there which gradually resolved itself as Broey led his fellow judges up onto their bench.  The witness pen was also filling, people punching sleep from their eyes, great gaping yawns from the Gowachin.

McKie looked to Broey's people, the ones who'd brought in the prisoners.  He nodded for the captors to leave, giving them a Dosadi hand signal to remain available.  They left.

Ceylang passed them as she entered, still fastening her robe.  She hurried to McKie's side, waited for the judges to be seated before speaking.

"What is the meaning of this?  My attendants . . ."

Broey signaled McKie.

McKie stepped forward to address the bench, pointed to the eight bound figures who were beginning to stir and push themselves upright.

"Here you see my client."

Parando started to speak, but Broey silenced him with a sharp word which McKie did not catch.  It sounded like "frenzy."

Bildoon sat in fearful fascination, unable to wrest his attention from the bound figures, all of whom remained silent.  Yes, Bildoon would recognize those eight prisoners.  In his limited, ConSentient fashion, Bildoon was sharp enough to recognize that he was in personal danger.  Parando, of course, knew this immediately and watched Broey with great care.

Again, Broey nodded to McKie.

"A fraud has been perpetrated upon this court," McKie said.  "It is a fraud which was perpetrated against those great and gallant people, the Gowachin.  Both Prosecution and Defense are its victims.  The Law is its ultimate victim."

It had grown much quieter in the arena.  The observer seats were jammed, all the transmitter eyes alive.  The faintest of dawn glow touched the translucent ceiling.  McKie wondered what time it was.  He had forgotten to put on any timepiece.

There was a stir behind McKie.  He glanced back, saw attendants belatedly bringing Aritch into the arena.  Oh, yes -- they would have risked any delay to confer with Aritch.  Aritch was supposed to be the other McKie expert.  Too bad that this Human who looked like McKie was no longer the McKie they thought they knew.

Ceylang could not hold her silence.  She raised tendril for attention.

"This Tribunal . . ."

McKie interrupted.

". . . is composed of three people. Only three."

He allowed them a moment to digest this reminder that Gowachin trial formalities still dominated this arena, and were like no other such formalities in the ConSentiency.  It could've been fifty judges up there on that bench.  McKie had witnessed Gowachin trials where people were picked at random off the streets to sit in judgment.  Such jurists took their duties seriously, but their overt behavior could lead another sentient species to question this.  The Gowachin chattered back and forth, arranged parties, exchanged jokes, asked each other rude questions.  It was an ancient pattern.  The jurists were required to become "a single organism."  Gowachin had their own ways of rushing that process.

But this Tribunal was composed of just three judges, only one of them visibly Gowachin.  They were separate entities, their actions heavy with mannerisms foreign to the Gowachin.  Even Broey, tainted by Dosadi, would be unfamiliar to the Gowachin observers.  No "single organism" here holding to the immutable form beneath Gowachin Law.  That had to be deeply disturbing to the Legums who advised Ceylang.

Broey leaned forward, addressed the arena.

"We'll dispense with the usual arguments while this new development is explored."

Again, Parando tried to interrupt.  Broey silenced him with a glance.

"I call Aritch of the Running Phylum," McKie said.

He turned.

Ceylang stood in mute indecision.  Her advisors remained at the back of the arena conferring among themselves.  There seemed to be a difference of opinion among them.

Aritch shuffled to the death-focus of the arena, the place where every witness was required to stand.  He glanced at the instruments of pain arrayed beneath the judicial bench, cast a wary look at McKie.  The old High Magister appeared harried, and undignified.  That hurried conference to explore this development must've been a sore trial to the old Gowachin.

McKie crossed to the formal position beside Aritch, addressed the judges.

"Here we have Aritch, High Magister of the Running Phylum.  We were told that if guilt were to be found in this arena, Aritch bore that guilt.  He, so we were led to believe, was the one who made the decision to imprison Dosadi.  But how can that be so?  Aritch is old, but he isn't as old as Dosadi.  Then perhaps his alleged guilt is to be found in concealing the imprisonment of Dosadi.  But Aritch summoned an agent of BuSab and sent that agent openly to Dosadi."

A disturbance among the eight shackled prisoners interrupted McKie.  Several of the prisoners were trying to get to their feet, but the links of the shackles were too short.

On the judicial bench, Parando started to lean forward, but Broey hauled him back.

Yes, Parando and others were recalling the verities of a Gowachin Courtarena, the constant reversals of concepts common throughout the rest of the ConSentiency.

To be guilty is to be innocent.  Thus, to be innocent is to be guilty.

At a sharp command from Broey, the prisoners grew quiet.

McKie continued.

"Aritch, conscious of the sacred responsibilities which he carried upon his back as a mother carries her tads, was deliberately named to receive the punishment blow lest that punishment be directed at all Gowachin everywhere.  Who chose this innocent High Magister to suffer for all Gowachin?"

McKie pointed to the eight shackled prisoners.

"Who are these people?" Parando demanded.

McKie allowed the question to hang there for a long count.  Parando knew who these eight were.  Did he think he could divert the present course of events by such a blatant ploy?

Presently, McKie spoke.

"I will enlighten the court in due course.  My duty, however, comes first.  My client's innocence comes first."

"One moment."

Broey held up a webbed hand.

One of Ceylang's advisors hurried past McKie, asked and received permission to confer with Ceylang.  A thwarted Parando sat like a condemned man watching this conversation as though he hoped to find reprieve there.  Bildoon had hunched forward, head buried in his arms.  Broey obviously controlled the Tribunal.

The advisor Legum was known to McKie, one Lagag of a middling reputation, an officer out of breeding.  His words to Ceylang were low and intense, demanding.

The conference ended, Lagag hurried back to his companions.  They now understood the tenor of McKie's defense.  Aritch must have known all along that he could be sacrificed here.  The ConSentient Covenant no longer permitted the ancient custom where the Gowachin audience had poured into the arena to kill with bare hands and claws the innocent defendant.  But let Aritch walk from here with the brand of innocence upon him; he would not take ten paces outside the arena's precincts before being torn to pieces.

There'd been worried admiration in the glance Lagag had given McKie in passing.  Yes . . . now they understood why McKie had maneuvered for a small and vulnerable judicial panel.

The eight prisoners began a new disturbance which Broey silenced with a shout.  He signaled for McKie to continue.

"Aritch's design was that I expose Dosadi, return and defend him against the charge that he had permitted illegal psychological experiments upon an unsuspecting populace.  He was prepared to sacrifice himself for others."

McKie sent a wry glance at Aritch.  Let the High Magister try to fight in half-truths in that defense!

"Unfortunately, the Dosadi populace was not unsuspecting.  In fact, forces under the command of Keila Jedrik had moved to take control of Dosadi.  Judge Broey will affirm that she had succeeded in this."

Again, McKie pointed to the shackled prisoners.

"But these conspirators, these people who designed and profited from the Dosadi Experiment, ordered the death of Keila Jedrik!  She was murdered this morning on Tutalsee to prevent my using her at the proper moment to prove Aritch's innocence.  Judge Broey is witness to the truth of what I say.  Keila Jedrik was brought into this arena yesterday only that she might be traced and killed!"

McKie raised both arms in an eloquent gesture of completion, lowered his arms.

Aritch looked stricken.  He saw it.  If the eight prisoners denied the charges, they faced Aritch's fate.  And they must know by now that Broey wanted them Gowachin-guilty.  They could bring in the Caleban contract and expose the body-exchange plot, but that risked having McKie defend or prosecute them because he'd already locked them to his actual client, Aritch.  Broey would affirm this, too.  They were at Broey's mercy.  If they were Gowachin-guilty, they walked free only here on Tandaloor.  Innocent, they died here.

As though they were one organism, the eight turned their heads and looked at Aritch.  Indeed!  What would Aritch do?  If he agreed to sacrifice himself, the eight might live.  Ceylang, too, focused on Aritch.

Around the entire arena there was a sense of collective held breath.

McKie watched Ceylang.  How candid had Aritch's people been with their Wreave?  Did she know the full Dosadi story?

She broke the silence, exposing her knowledge.  She chose to aim her attack at McKie on the well-known dictum that, when all else failed, you tried to discredit the opposing Legum.

"McKie, is this how you defend these eight people whom only you name as client?" Ceylang demanded.

Now, it was delicate.  Would Broey go along?

McKie countered her probe with a question of his own.

"Are you suggesting that you'd prosecute these people?"

"I didn't charge them!  You did."

"To prove Aritch's innocence."

"But you call them client.  Will you defend them?"

A collective gasp arose from the cluster of advisors behind her near the arena doorway.  They'd seen the trap.  If McKie accepted the challenge, the judges had no choice but to bring the eight into the arena under Gowachin forms.  Ceylang had trapped herself into the posture of prosecutor against the eight.  She'd said, in effect, that she affirmed their guilt.  Doing so, she lost her case against Aritch and her life was immediately forfeit.  She was caught.

Her eyes glittered with the unspoken question.

What would McKie do?

Not yet, McKie thought.  Not yet, my precious Wreave dupe.

He turned his attention to Parando.  Would they dare introduce the Caleban contract?  The eight prisoners were only the exposed tip of the shadowy forces, a vulnerable tip.  They could be sacrificed.  It was clear that they saw this and didn't like it.  No Gowachin Mrregs here with that iron submission to responsibility!  They loved life and its power, especially the ones who wore Human flesh.  How precious life must be for those who'd lived many lives!  Very desperate, indeed.

To McKie's Dosadi-conditioned eyes, it was as though he read the prisoners' thoughts.  They were safest if they remained silent.  Trust Parando.  Rely on Broey's enlightened greed.  At the worst, they could live out what life was left to them here on Tandaloor, hoping for new bodies before the flesh they now wore ran out of vitality.  As long as they still lived they could hope and scheme.  Perhaps another Caleban could be hired, more Pcharkys found . . .

Aritch broke, unwilling to lose what had almost been his.

The High Magister's Tandaloor accent was hoarse with protest.

"But I did supervise the tests on Dosadi's population!"

"To what tests do you refer?"

"The Dosadi . . ."

Aritch fell silent, seeing the trap.  More than a million Dosadi Gowachin already had left their planet.  Would Aritch make targets of them?  Anything he said could open the door to proof that the Dosadis were superior to non-Dosadis.  Any Gowachin (or Human, for that matter) could well become a target in the next few minutes.  One had only to denounce a selected Human or Gowachin as Dosadi.  ConSentient fears would do the rest.  And any of his arguments could be directed into exposure of Dosadi's real purpose.  He obviously saw the peril in that, had seen it from the first.

The High Magister confirmed this analysis by glancing at the Ferret Wreaves in the audience.  What consternation it would create among the secretive Wreaves to learn that another species could masquerade successfully as one of their own!

McKie could not leave matters where they stood, though.  He threw a question at Aritch.

"Were the original transportees to Dosadi apprised of the nature of the project?"

"Only they could testify to that."

"And their memories were erased.  We don't even have historical testimony on this matter."

Aritch remained silent.  Eight of the original designers of the Dosadi project sat near him on the arena floor.  Would he denounce them to save himself?  McKie thought not.  A person deemed capable of performing as The Mrreg could not possess such a flaw.  Could he?  Here was the real point of no return.

The High Magister confirmed McKie's judgment by turning his back on the Tribunal, the ages-old Gowachin gesture of submission.  What a shock Aritch's performance must have been for those who'd seen him as a possible Mrreg.  A poor choice except at the end, and that'd been as much recognition of total failure as anything else.

McKie waited, knowing what had to happen now. Here was Ceylang's moment of truth.

Broey addressed her.

"You have suggested that you would prosecute these eight prisoners.  The matter is in the hands of Defense Legum."

Broey shifted his gaze.

"How say you, Legum McKie?"

The moment to test Broey had come.  McKie countered with a question.

"Can this Courtarena suggest another disposition for these eight prisoners?"

Ceylang held her breath.

Broey was pleased.  He had triumphed in the end over Jedrik.  Broey was certain in his mind that Jedrik did not occupy this Legum body on the arena floor.  Now, he could show the puppet masters what a Dosadi-born could do.  And McKie saw that Broey intended to move fast, much faster than anyone had expected.

Anyone except Jedrik, and she was only a silent (memory?) in McKie's awareness.

Having given the appearance of deliberation, Broey spoke.

"I can order these eight bound over to ConSentient jurisdiction if McKie agrees."

The eight stirred, subsided.

"I agree," McKie said.  He glanced at Ceylang.  She made no protest, seeing the futility.  Her only hope now lay in the possible deterrent presence of the Ferret Wreaves.

"Then I so order it," Broey said.  He spared a triumphant glance for Parando.  "Let a ConSentient jurisdiction decide if these eight are guilty of murder and other conspiracy."

He was well within the bounds of the Covenant between the ConSentiency and Gowachin, but the Gowachin members of his audience didn't like it.  Their Law was best!  Angry whistlings could be heard all around the arena.

Broey rose half-out of his seat, pointed at the instruments of pain arrayed beneath him.  Gowachin in the audience fell silent.  They, better than anyone, knew that no person here, not even a member of the audience, was outside the Tribunal's power.  And many understood clearly now why those bloody tools had been displayed here.  Thoughtful people had anticipated the problem of keeping order in this arena.

Responding to the silent acceptance of his authority, Broey sank back into his seat.

Parando was staring at Broey as though having just discovered the presence of a monster in this Gowachin form.  Many people would be reassessing Broey now.

Aritch held his attitude of complete submission.

Ceylang's thoughts almost hummed in the air around her.  Every way she turned, she saw only a tangle of unmanageable tendrils and a blocked passage.

McKie saw that it was time to bring matters to a head.  He crossed to the foot of the judicial bench, lifted a short spear from the instruments there.  He brandished the barbed, razor-edged weapon.

"Who sits on this Tribunal?"

Once, Aritch had issued such a challenge.  McKie, repeating it, pointed with the spear, answered his own question.

"A Gowachin of my choice, one supposedly wronged by the Dosadi project.  Were you wronged, Broey?"

"No."

McKie faced Parando.

"And here we have a Human from Lirat.  Is that not the case, Parando?"

"I am from Lirat, yes."

McKie nodded.

"I am prepared to bring a parade of witnesses into this arena to testify as to your occupation on Lirat.  Would you care to state that occupation?"

"How dare you question this Tribunal?"

Parando glared down at McKie, face flushed.

"Answer his question."

It was Broey.

Parando looked at Bildoon, who still sat with face concealed in his arms, face down on the bench.  Something about the PanSpechi repelled Parando, but he knew he had to have Bildoon's vote to overrule Broey.  Parando nudged the PanSpechi.  Inert flesh rolled away from Parando's hand.

McKie understood.

Facing doom, Bildoon had retreated into the creche.  Somewhere, an unprepared PanSpechi body was being rushed into acceptance of that crushed identity.  The emergence of a new Bildoon would require considerable time.  They did not have that time.  When the creche finally brought forth a functioning persona, it would not be heir to Bildoon's old powers in BuSab.

Parando was alone, exposed.  He stared at the spear in McKie's hand.

McKie favored the arena with a sweeping glance before speaking once more to Parando.

"I quote that renowned expert on Gowachin Law, High Magister Aritch:  'ConSentient Law always makes aristocrats of its practitioners.  Gowachin Law stands beneath that pretension.  Gowachin Law asks:  Who knows the people?  Only such a one is fit to judge in the Courtarena.'  That is Gowachin Law according to High Magister Aritch.  That is the law in this place."

Again, McKie gave Parando a chance to speak, received only silence.

"Perhaps you are truly fit to judge here," McKie suggested.  "Are you an artisan?  A philosopher?  Perhaps you're a humorist?  An artist?  Ahhh, maybe you are that lowliest of workmen, he who tends an automatic machine?"

Parando remained silent, gaze locked on the spear.

"None of these?" McKie asked.  "Then I shall supply the answer.  You are a professional legalist, one who gives legal advice, even to advice on Gowachin Law.  You, a Human, not even a Legum, dare to speak of Gowachin Law!"

Without any muscular warning signal, McKie leaped forward, hurled the spear at Parando, saw it strike deeply into the man's chest.

One for Jedrik!

With bubbling gasp, Parando sagged out of sight behind the bench.

Broey, seeing the flash of anger in McKie's effort, touched the blue box in front of him.

Have no fear, Broey.  Not yet.  I still need you.

But now, more than Broey knew it was really McKie in this flesh.  Not Jedrik.  Those members of the shadow force watching this scene and able to plot would make the expected deduction because they did not know how freely and completely Jedrik and McKie had shared.  To the shadow force, McKie would've known Parando's background.  They'd trace out that mistake in short order.  So this was McKie in the arena.  But he'd left Dosadi.  There could be only one conclusion in the plotters' minds.

McKie had Caleban help!

They had Calebans to fear.

And McKie thought:  You have only McKie to fear.

He grew aware that grunts of Gowachin approval were sounding all around the arena.  They accepted him as a Legum, thus they accepted his argument.  Such a judge deserved killing.

Aritch set the precedent.  McKie improved on it.

Both had found an approved way to kill a flawed judge, but McKie's act had etched a Gowachin precedent into the ConSentient legal framework.  The compromise which had brought Gowachin and ConSentient Law into the Covenant of shared responsibility for the case in this arena would be seen by the Gowachin as a first long step toward making their Law supreme over all other law.

Aritch had half-turned, looking toward the bench, a glittering appraisal in his eyes which said the Gowachin had salvaged something here after all.

McKie strode back to confront Ceylang.  He faced her as the forms required while he called for judgment.

"Bildoon?"

Silence.

"Parando?"

Silence.

"Broey?"

"Judgment for Defense."

The Dosadi accent rang across the arena.  The Gowachin Federation, only member of the ConSentiency which dared permit a victim to judge those accused of victimizing him, had received a wound to its pride.  But they'd also received something they would consider of inestimable value -- a foothold for their Law in the ConSentiency, plus a memorable court performance which was about to end in the drama they loved best.

McKie stepped to within striking distance of Ceylang, extended his right hand straight out to the side, palm up.

"The knife."

Attendants scurried.  There came the sound of the blue box being opened.  Presently, the knife handle was slapped firmly into McKie's palm.  He closed his fingers around it, thinking as he did so of all those countless others who had faced this moment in a Gowachin Courtarena.

"Ceylang?"

"I submit to the ruling of this court."

McKie saw the Ferret Wreaves rise from their seats as one person.  They stood ready to leap down into the arena and avenge Ceylang no matter the consequences.  They could do nothing else but carry out the role which the Gowachin had designed for them.  Few in the arena had misunderstood their presence here.  No matter the measurement of the wound, the Gowachin did not suffer such things gladly.

An odd look of camaraderie passed between Ceylang and McKie then.  Here they stood, the only two non-Gowachin in the ConSentient universe who had passed through that peculiar alchemy which transformed a person into a Legum.  One of them was supposed to die immediately, and the other would not long survive that death.  Yet, they understood each other the way siblings understand each other.  Each had shed a particular skin to become something else.

Slowly, deliberately, McKie extended the tip of his blade toward Ceylang's left jowl, noting the myriad pocks of her triad exchanges there.  She trembled but remained firm.  Deftly, with the swiftest of flicking motions, McKie added another pock to those on her left jowl.

The Ferret Wreaves were the first to understand.  They sank back into their seats.

Ceylang gasped, touched a tendril to the wound.  Many times she had been set free by such a wound, moving on to new alliances which did not completely sunder the old.

For a moment, McKie thought she might not accept, but the increasing sounds of approval all around the arena overcame her doubts.  The noise of that approval climbed to a near deafening crescendo before subsiding.  Even the Gowachin joined this.  How dearly they loved such legal nuances!

Pitching his voice for Ceylang alone, McKie spoke.

"You should apply for a position in BuSab.  The new director would look with favor upon your application."

"You?"

"Make a Wreave bet on it."

She favored him with the grimace which passed for a smile among Wreaves, spoke the traditional words of triad farewell.

"We were well and truly wed."

So she, too, had seen the truth in their unique closeness.

McKie betrayed the extent of his esoteric knowledge by producing the correct response.

"By my mark I know you."

She showed no surprise.  A good brain there, not up to Dosadi standards, but good.

Well and truly wed.

Keeping a firm lock on his emotions (the Dosadi in him helped), McKie crossed to confront Aritch.

"Client Aritch, you are innocent."

McKie displayed the fleck of Wreave blood on the knife tip.

"The forms have been obeyed and you are completely exonerated.  I rejoice with all of those who love justice."

At this point in the old days, the jubilant audience would've fallen on the hapless client, would've fought for bloody scraps with which to parade through the city.  No doubt Aritch would've preferred that.  He was a traditionalist.  He confirmed that now.

"I am glad to quit these times, McKie."

McKie mused aloud.

"Who will be the Mrreg now that you're . . . disqualified?  Whoever it is, I doubt he'll be as good as the one he replaces.  It will profit that next Mrreg to reflect upon the fragile and fugitive value to be gained from the manipulation of others."

Glowering, Aritch turned and shambled toward the doorway out of the arena.

Some of the Gowachin from the audience already were leaving, no doubt hoping to greet Aritch outside.  McKie had no desire to witness that remnant of an ancient ritual.  He had other concerns.

Well and truly wed.

Something burned in his eyes.  And still he felt that soft and sleeping presence in his awareness.

Jedrik?

No response.

He glanced at Broey who, true to his duty as a judge, would be the last to leave the arena.  Broey sat blandly contemplating this place where he'd displayed the first designs of his campaign for supremacy in the ConSentiency.  He would accept nothing less short of his own death.  Those shadowy puppet masters would be the first to feel his rule.

That fitted the plan McKie and Jedrik had forged between them.  In a way, it was still the plan of those who'd bred and conditioned Jedrik for the tasks she'd performed so exquisitely.

It was McKie's thought that those nameless, faceless Dosadis who stood in ghostly ranks behind Jedrik had made a brave choice.  Faced with the evidence of body exchange all around, they'd judged that to be a deadly choice -- the conservatism of extinction.  Instead, they'd trusted sperm and ova, always seeking the new and better, the changed, the adapted.  And they'd launched their simultaneous campaign to eliminate the Pcharkys of their world, reserving only that one for their final gamble.

It was well that this explosive secret had been kept here.  McKie felt grateful to Ceylang.  She'd known, but even when it might've helped her, she'd remained silent.  BuSab would now have time to forge ways of dealing with this problem.  Ceylang would be valuable there.  And perhaps more would be learned about PanSpechi, Calebans, and Taprisiots.  If only Jedrik . . .

He felt a fumbling in his memories.

"If only Jedrik what?"

She spoke laughingly in his mind as she'd always spoken there.

McKie suppressed a fit of trembling, almost fell.

"Careful with our body," she said.  "It's the only one we have now."

"Whose body?"

She caressed his mind.

"Ours, love."

Was it hallucination?  He ached with longing to hold her in his arms, to feel her arms around him, her body pressed to him.

"That's lost to us forever, love, but see what we have in exchange."

When he didn't respond, she said:

"One can always be watching while the other acts . . . or sleeps."

"But where are you?"

"Where I've always been when we exchanged.  See?"

He felt her parallel to him in the shared flesh and, as he voluntarily drew back, he came to rest in contact with her mutual memories, still looking from his own eyes but aware that someone else peered out there, too, that someone else turned this body to face Broey.

Fearful that he might be trapped here, McKie almost panicked, but Jedrik gave him back the control of their flesh.

"Do you doubt me, love?"

He felt shame.  There was nothing she could hide from him.  He knew how she felt, what she'd been willing to sacrifice for him.

"You'd have made their perfect Mrreg."

"Don't even suggest it."

She went pouring through his arena memories then and her joy delighted him.

"Oh, marvelous, McKie.  Beautiful!  I couldn't have done it better.  And Broey still doesn't suspect."

Attendants were taking the eight prisoners out of the arena now, all of them still shackled.  The audience benches were almost empty.

A sense of joy began filtering through McKie.

I lost something but I gained something.

"You didn't lose as much as Aritch."

"And I gained more."

McKie permitted himself to stare up at Broey then, studying the Gowachin judge with Dosadi eyes and two sets of awareness.  Aritch and the eight accused of murder were things of the past.  They and many others like them would be dead or powerless before another ten-day.  Broey already had shown the speed with which he intended to act.  Supported by his troop of Jedrik-chosen aides, Broey would occupy the seats of power, consolidating lines of control in that shadow government, eliminating every potential source of opposition he could touch.  He believed Jedrik dead and, while McKie was clever, McKie and BuSab were not a primary concern.  One struck at the real seats of power.  Being Dosadi, Broey could not act otherwise.  And he'd been almost the best his planet had ever produced.  Almost.

Jedrik-within chuckled.

Yes, with juggernaut certainty, Broey would create a single target for BuSab.  And Jedrik had refined the simulation pattern by which Broey could be anticipated.  Broey would find McKie waiting for him at the proper moment.

Behind McKie would be a new BuSab, an agency directed by a person whose memories and abilities were amplified by the one person superior to Broey that Dosadi had ever produced.

Standing there in the now silent arena, McKie wondered:

When will Broey realize he does our work for us?

"When we show him that he failed to kill me!"

In the purest obedience to Gowachin forms, without any sign of the paired thoughts twining through his mind, McKie bowed toward the surviving jurist, turned, and left.  And all the time, Jedrik-within was planning . . . plotting . . . planning . . .