The Dosadi Experiment (ConSentiency Universe #2)

The Dosadi Experiment (ConSentiency Universe #2) Page 11

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

- The Dosadi Papers, BuSab reference

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

McKie, staring around him, saw no Dosadi.

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

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

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

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

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

"Should adjust?"

"Give it time."

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

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

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

They'd considered this, then:

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

Again, McKie glanced around.

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

Something stirred in the hole's blackness.

The lizard crouched, continued to whistle.

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

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

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

He wondered now what he had just seen.

The whistling had stopped.

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

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

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

Why a sonabarrier? he wondered.

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

Things are seldom what they seem.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There were always unfathomed mysteries when dealing with Gowachin.

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

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

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

Justification.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The bland answer to these frequent questions enraged McKie.

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

He'd finally fallen into a counterirritant patter:

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

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

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

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

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

A Wreave in the Bureau had tried to explain this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Who calls?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Words echoed in his head:

"One Caleban, all Caleban."

"I wish converse with Fannie Mae."

"You are not satisfied with your present body?"

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

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

"All Calebans know this debt."

"Then honor your debt."

He waited, trying not to grow tense.

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

"Fannie Mae!"

"What does McKie require?"

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

"I require your help."

"Explain."

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

"Dosadi's wave," she corrected him.

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

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

"But if Dosadi is destroyed . . .

"Contract promise passes no ending, McKie."

"You cannot help me?"

"You wish advice from Fannie Mae?"

"Yes."

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

Constant trance?  McKie was shocked.

She caught this.

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

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

"Bad choice."

She was petulant.

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

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

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

"Caleban contract, McKie."

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

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

"Body/node?"

"Answer not permitted."

Not permitted!

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

Warmth suffused him.

"Fannie Mae possesses friendship for McKie."

"Then why won't you help me?"

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

"No!"

"Then Fannie Mae cannot help."

Angry, McKie began to break the contact.

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

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

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

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

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

The Gowachin nodded companionably.

"You are ill?"