“Her.”
“Her, then! Make sure she’s actually the one who fed in that data.”
Holjance was a pinch-faced woman with deep wrinkles around very bright eyes. Her hair was dark and wiry, skin almost the color of McKie’s. Yes, she was the one who’d fed the data into the computer because it had arrived on her shift, and she’d thought it too important to delegate.
“What is it you want?” she demanded.
He saw no rudeness in this. It was Dosadi directness. Important things were happening all around. Don’t waste time.
“You saw this assessment of the surrender offer?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you satisfied with it?”
“The data went in correctly.”
“That’s not my question”
“Of course I’m satisfied!”
She stood ready to defend herself against any charge that she’d slighted her job.
“Tell me, Holjance,” he said, “if you wanted the Gowachin computers to produce inaccurate assessments, what would you do?”
She thought about this a moment, blinked, glanced almost furtively at Jedrik who appeared lost in thought. “Well, sir, we have a regular filtering procedure for preventing …”
“That’s it,” Jedrik said. “If I were a Gowachin, I would not be doing that right now.”
Jedrik turned, barked orders to the guards behind her.
“That’s another trap! Take care of it.”
As they emerged from the elevator on Jedrik’s floor, there was another delay, one of the escort who’d been with McKie at Gate Eighteen. His name was Todu Pellas and McKie addressed him by name, noting the faint betrayal of pleasure this elicited. Pellas, too, had doubts about carrying out a particular order.
“We’re supposed to back up Tria’s move by attacking across the upper parkway, but there are some trees and other growth knocked down up there that haven’t been moved for two days.”
“Who knocked down those trees?” McKie asked.
“We did.”
McKie understood. You feinted. The Gowachin were supposed to believe this would provide cover for an attack, but there’d been no attack for two days.
“They must be under pretty heavy strain,” Jedrik said.
McKie nodded. That, too, made sense. The alternative Gowachin assumption was that the Humans were trying to fake them into an attack at that point. But the cover had not been removed by either side for two days.
Jedrik took a deep breath.
“We have superior firepower and when Tria … well, you should be able to cut right through there to …”
McKie interrupted.
“Call off that attack.”
“But …”
“Call it off!”
She saw the direction of his reasoning. Broey had learned much from the force which Gar and Tria had trained. And Jedrik herself had provided the final emphasis in the lesson. She saw there was no need to change her orders to Pellas.
Pellas had taken it upon himself to obey McKie, not waiting for Jedrik’s response, although she was his commander. He already had a communicator off his belt and was speaking rapidly into it.
“Yes! Dig in for a holding action.”
He spoke in an aside to Jedrik.
“I can handle it from here.”
In a few steps, Jedrik and McKie found themselves in her room. Jedrik leaned with her back against the door, no longer trying to conceal her fatigue.
“McKie, you’re becoming very Dosadi.”
He crossed to the concealing panels, pulled out the bed.
“You need rest.”
“No time.”
Yes, she knew all about the sixty-hour deadline—less than fifty-five hours now. Dosadi’s destruction was a reaction she hadn’t expected from “X,” and she blamed herself.
He turned, studied her, saw that she’d passed some previously defined limit of personal endurance. She possessed no amplifiers of muscles or senses, none of the sophisticated aids McKie could call upon in emergencies. She had nothing but her own magnificent mind and body. And she’d almost run them out. Still, she pressed on. This told him a great deal about her motivation.
McKie found himself deeply touched by the fact that she’d not once berated him for hiding that ultimate threat which Aritch held over Dosadi. She’d accepted it that someone in Aritch’s position could erase an entire planet, that McKie had been properly maneuvered into concealing this.
The alternative she offered filled McKie with misgivings.
Exchange bodies?
He understood now that this was Pcharky’s function, the price the old Gowachin paid for survival. Jedrik had explained.
“He will perform this service one more time. In exchange, we release him from Dosadi.”
“If he’s one of the original … I mean, why doesn’t he just leave?”
“We haven’t provided him with a body he can use.”
McKie had suppressed a feeling of horror. But the history of Dosadi which Jedrik unfolded made it clear that a deliberate loophole had been left in the Caleban contract which imprisoned this planet. Fannie Mae had even said it. He could leave in another body. That was the basic purpose behind this experiment.
New bodies for old!
Aritch had expected this to be the ultimate enticement, luring McKie into the Gowachin plot, enlisting McKie’s supreme abilities and his powerful position in BuSab.
A new body for his old one.
All he’d have to do would be to cooperate in the destruction of a planet, conceal the real purpose of this project, and help set up another body-trade planet better concealed.
But Aritch had not anticipated what might be created by Jedrik plus McKie. They now shared a particular hate and motivation.
Jedrik still stood at the door waiting for him to decide.
“Tell me what to do,” he said.
“You’re sure that you’re willing to …”
“Jedrik!”
He thought he saw the beginning of tears. It wasn’t that she hid them, but that they reached a suppression level barely visible and she defied them. She found her voice, pointed.
“That panel beside the bed. Pressure latch.”
The panel swung wide to reveal two shimmering rods about two centimeters in diameter. The rods danced with the energies of Pcharky’s cage. They emerged from the floor, bent at right angles about waist height and, as the panel opened, they rotated to extend into the room—two glowing handles about a meter apart.
McKie stared at them. He felt a tightness in his breast. What if he’d misread Jedrik? Could he be sure of any Dosadi? This room felt as familiar to him now as his quarters on CC. It was here that Jedrik had taught him some of the most essential Dosadi lessons. Yet … he knew the old pattern of what she proposed. The discarded body with its donor ego had always been killed immediately. Why?
“You’ll have your answer to that question when we’ve done this thing.”
A Dosadi response, ambiguous, heavy with alternatives.
He glanced around the room, found it hard to believe that he’d known this place only these few days. His attention returned to the shimmering rods. Another trap?
He knew he was wasting precious time, that he’d have to go through with this. But what would it be like to find himself in Jedrik’s flesh, wearing her body as he now wore his own? PanSpechi transferred an ego from body to body. But something unspeakable which they would not reveal happened to the donor.
McKie took a trembling breath.
It had to be done. He and Jedrik shared a common purpose. She’d had many opportunities to use Pcharky simply to escape or to extend her life … the way, he realized now, that Broey had used the Dosadi secret. The fact that she’d waited for a McKie forced him to believe her. Jedrik’s followers trusted her—and they were Dosadi. And if he and Jedrik escaped, Aritch would find himself facing a far different McKie from the one who’d come so innocently across the Rim. They might y
et stay Aritch’s hand.
The enticement had been real, though. No doubting that. Shed an old body, get a new one. And the Rim had been the major source of raw material: strong, resilient bodies. Survivors.
“What do I do?” he asked.
He felt a hand on his shoulder, and she spoke from beside him.
“You are very Dosadi, McKie. Astonishing.”
He glanced at her, saw what it had cost her to move here from the door. He slipped a hand around her waist, eased her to a sitting position on the bed and within reach of the rods.
“Tell me what to do.”
She stared at the rods, and McKie realized it was rage driving her, rage against Aritch, the embodiment of “X,” the embodiment of a contrived fate. He understood this. The solution of the Dosadi mystery had left him feeling empty, but on the edges there was such a rage as he’d never before experienced. He was still BuSab, though. He wanted no more bloodshed because of Dosadi, no more Gowachin justifications.
Jedrik’s voice interrupted his thoughts and he saw that she also shared some of his misgivings.
“I come from a long line of heretics. None of us doubted that Dosadi was a crime, that somewhere there was a justice to punish the criminals.”
McKie almost sighed. Not the old Messiah dream! Not that! He would not fill that role, even for Dosadi.
It was as though Jedrik read his mind. Perhaps, with that simulation model of him she carried in her head, this was exactly what she did.
“We didn’t expect a hero to come and save us. We knew that whoever came would suffer from the same deficiencies as the other non-Dosadi we saw here. You were so … slow. Tell me, McKie, what drives a Dosadi?”
He almost said, “Power.”
She saw his hesitation, waited.
“The power to change your condition,” he said.
“You make me very proud, McKie.”
“But how did you know I was …”
“McKie!”
He swallowed, then: “Yes, I guess that was the easiest part for you.”
“It was much more difficult finding your abilities and shaping you into a Dosadi.”
“But I might’ve been …”
“Tell me how I did it, McKie.”
It was a test. He saw that. How had she known absolutely that he was the one she needed?
“I was sent here in a way that evaded Broey.”
“And that’s not easy.” Her glance flickered ceilingward. “They tried to bait us from time to time. Havvy …”
“Compromised, contaminated …”
“Useless. Sometimes, a stranger looks out of Havvy’s eyes.”
“My eyes are my own.”
“The first thing Bahrank reported about you.”
“But even before that …”
“Yes?”
“They used Havvy to tell you I was coming … and he told you that you could use my body. He had to be truthful with you up to a point. You could read Havvy! How clever they thought they were being! I had to be vulnerable … really vulnerable.”
“The first thing …”
“ … you found out about me.” He nodded. “Suspicions confirmed. All of that money on my person. Bait. I was someone to be eliminated. I was a powerful enemy of your enemies.”
“And you were angered by the right things.”
“You saw that?”
“McKie, you people are so easy to read. So easy!”
“And the weapons I carried. You were supposed to use those to destroy yourselves. The implications …”
“I would’ve seen that if I’d had first-hand experience of Aritch. You knew what he intended for us. My mistake was to read your fears as purely personal. In time …”
“We’re wasting time.”
“You fear we’ll be too late?”
Once more, he looked at the shimmering rods. What was it Pcharky did? McKie felt events rushing over him, engulfing him. What bargain had Jedrik really driven with Pcharky? She saw the question on his face.
“My people knew all along that Pcharky was just a tool of the God who held us prisoner. We forced a bargain on that God—that Caleban. Did you think we would not recognize the identity between the powers of that cage and the powers of our God Wall? No more delays, McKie. It’s time to test our bargain.”
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 yo
u 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.
The Dosadi Experiment Page 23
