"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.
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?"