The Dosadi Experiment (ConSentiency Universe #2)

The Dosadi Experiment (ConSentiency Universe #2) Page 17

We are plagued by a corrupt polity which promotes unlawful and/or immoral behavior.  Public interest has no practical significance in everyday behavior among the ruling factions.  The real problems of our world are not being confronted by those in power.  In the guise of public service, they use whatever comes to hand for personal gain.  They are insane with and for power.

- From a clandestine document circulated on Dosadi

It was dark when a disguised Jedrik and undisguised McKie emerged onto the streets.  She led them down narrow passages, her mind full of things McKie had revealed.  Jedrik wore a blonde wig and puff-out disguise which made her appear heavy and hunched.

As they passed an open courtyard, McKie heard music.  He almost stumbled.  The music came from a small orchestra - delicate tympany, soft strings, and a rich chorus of wind instruments.  He did not recognize the melody, but it moved him more deeply than any other music of his experience.  It was as though the music were played only for him.  Aritch and company had said nothing about such magnificent music here.

People still thronged the streets in numbers which astonished him.  But now they appeared to pay him little notice.

Jedrik kept part of her attention on McKie, noting the fools with their musical dalliance, noting how few people there were on the streets - little more than her own patrols in this quarter.  She'd expected that, but the actuality held an eerie mood in the dim and scattered illumination from lighted corners.

She had debated providing McKie with a crude disguise, but he obviously didn't have the cunning to carry off the double deception she required.  She'd begun to sense a real intelligence in him, though.  McKie was an enigma.  Why had he never encountered the opportunities to sharpen that intelligence?  Sensing the sharpness in him, she could not put off the thought that she had missed something vital in his accounts of that social entity which he called the ConSentiency.  Whether this failure came from actual concealment by McKie or through his inadequacies, she was not yet willing to judge.  The enigma set her on edge.  And the mood in the streets did nothing to ease her emotions.  She was glad when they crossed the line into the area completely controlled by her own personal cell.

The bait having been trailed through the streets by one who would appear a tame underling, Jedrik allowed herself a slight relaxation.  Broey would have learned by this time about the killing of Tria's double agent.  He would react to that and to the new bait.  It was almost time for phase two of her design for Broey.

McKie followed her without question, acutely aware of every strange glance cast their way.  He was emptied of all resistance, knowing he could not survive if he failed to follow Jedrik through the smelly, repellent darkness of her streets.

The food from the restaurant sat heavily in his stomach.  It had been tasty:  a stew of odd shapes full of shredded greenery, and steaming hot.  But he could not shake the realization that his stew had been compounded of someone's garbage.

Jedrik had left him very little.  She hadn't learned of the Taprisiot, or the bead in his stomach which probably would not link him to the powers of the ConSentiency if he died.  She had not learned of the standard BuSab implantation devices which amplified his senses.  And, oddly, she had not explored many of his revelations about BuSab.  She'd seemed much more interested in the money hidden about his person and had taken possession of all of it.  She'd examined the currency carefully.

"This is real."

He wasn't sure, but he thought she'd been surprised.

"This was given to you before you were sent to Dosadi?"

"Yes."

She was a while absorbing the implications, but appeared satisfied.  She'd given him a few small currency tokens from her own pockets.

"Nobody'll bother you for these.  If you need anything, ask.  We may be able to gratify some of your needs."

It was still dark, lighted only by illumination at corners, when they came to the address Jedrik sought.  Grey light suffused the street.  A young Human male of about ten squatted with his back against the stone wall at the building's corner.  As Jedrik and McKie approached, he sprang up, alert.  He nodded once to Jedrik.

She did not acknowledge, but by some hidden signal the boy knew she had received his message.  He relaxed once more against the wall.

When McKie looked back a few paces beyond where the boy had signaled, he was gone.  No sound, no sign just gone.

Jedrik stopped at a shadowed entryway.  It was barred by an openwork metal gate flanked by two armed guards.  The guards opened the gate without words.  Beyond the gate there was a large, covered courtyard illuminated by glowing tubes on right and left.  Three of its sides were piled to the courtyard cover with boxes of various sizes - some taller than a Human and narrow, others short and fat.  Set into the stacks as though part of the courtyard's walls was one narrow passage leading to a metal door opposite the gateway.

McKie touched Jedrik's arm.

"What's in the boxes?"

"Weapons."  She spoke as though to a cretin.

The metal door was opened from within.  Jedrik led McKie into a large room at least two stories tall.  The door clanged shut behind them.  McKie sensed several Humans along the courtyard wall on both sides of him, but his attention had been captured by something else.

Dominating the room was a gigantic cage suspended from the ceiling.  Its bars sparkled and shimmered with hidden energies.  A single Gowachin male sat cross-legged in a hammock at the cage's center.  McKie had seldom seen a ConSentient Gowachin that aged.  His nose crest was fringed by flaking yellow crusts.  Heavy wrinkles wormed their way beneath watery eyes beginning to glaze with the degeneration which often blinded Gowachin who lived too long away from water.  His body had a slack appearance, with loose muscles and pitted indentations along the nodes between his ventricles.  The hammock suspended him off the cage floor and that floor shimmered with volatile energies.

Jedrik paused, divided her attention between McKie and the old Gowachin.  She seemed to expect a particular reaction from McKie, but he wasn't certain she found what she sought.

McKie stood a moment in silent examination of the Gowachin.  Prisoner?  What was the significance of that cage and its shimmering energies?  Presently, he glanced around the room, recording the space.  Six armed Human males flanked the door through which he and Jedrik had entered.  A remarkable assortment of objects crammed the room's walls, some with purpose unknown to him but many recognizable as weapons:  spears and swords, flame-throwers, garish armor, bombs, pellet projectors . . .

Jedrik moved a pace closer to the cage.  The occupant stared back at her with faint interest.  She cleared her throat.

"Greetings, Pcharky.  I have found my key to the God Wall."

The old Gowachin remained silent, but McKie thought he saw a sparkle of interest in the glazed eyes.

Jedrik shook her head slowly from side to side, then:  "I have a new datum, Pcharky.  The Veil of Heaven was created by creatures called Calebans.  They appear to us as suns."

Pcharky's glance flickered to McKie, back to Jedrik.  The Gowachin knew the source of her new datum.

McKie renewed his speculations about the old Gowachin.  That cage must be a prison, its walls enforced by dangerous energies.  Bahrank had spoken of conflict between the species.  Humans controlled this room.  Why did they imprison a Gowachin?  Or . . . was this caged Gowachin, this Pcharky, another agent from Tandaloor?  With a tightening of his throat, McKie wondered if his own fate might be to live out his days in such a cage.

Pcharky grunted, then:

"The God Wall is like this cage but more powerful."  His voice was a husky croaking, the words clear Galach with an obvious Tandaloor accent.  McKie, his fears reinforced, glanced at Jedrik, found her studying him.  She spoke.

"Pcharky has been with us for a long time, very long.  There's no telling how many people he has helped to escape from Dosadi.  Soon, I may persuade him to be of service to me."

McKie found himself shocked to silence by the possibilities glimpsed through her words.  Was Dosadi in fact an investigation of the Caleban mystery?  Was that the secret Aritch's people concealed here?  McKie stared at the shimmering bars of Pcharky's cage.  Like the God Wall?  But the God Wall was enforced by a Caleban.

Once more, Jedrik looked at the caged Gowachin.

"A sun confines enormous energies, Pcharky.  Are your energies inadequate?"

But Pcharky's attention was on McKie.  The old voice croaked.

"Human, tell me:  Did you come here willingly?"

"Don't answer him," Jedrik snapped.

Pcharky closed his eyes.  Interview ended.

Jedrik, accepting this, whirled and strode to the left around the cage.

"Come along, McKie."  She didn't look back, but continued speaking.  "Does it interest you that Pcharky designed his own cage?"

"He designed it?  Is it a prison?"

"Yes."

"If he designed it . . . how does it hold him?"

"He knew he'd have to serve my purposes if he were to remain alive."

She had come to another door which opened onto a narrow stairway.  It climbed to the left around the cage room.  They emerged into a long hallway lined with narrow doors dimly lighted by tiny overhead bulbs.  Jedrik opened one of these doors and led the way into a carpeted room about four meters wide and six long.  Dark wood panels reached from floor to waist level, shelves loaded with books above.  McKie peered closely:  books . . . actual paper books.  He tried to recall where he'd ever before seen such a collection of primitive . . .  But, of course, these were not primitive.  These were one of Dosadi's strange recapitulations.

Jedrik had removed her wig, stopped midway in the room to turn and face McKie.

"This is my room.  Toilet there."  She pointed to an opening between shelves.  "That window . . ."  Again, she pointed, this time to an opening opposite the toilet door.  ". . . is one-way to admit light, and it's our best.  As Dosadi measures such things, this is a relatively secure place."

He swept his gaze around the room.

Her room?

McKie was struck by the amount of living space, a mark of power on Dosadi; the absence of people in the hall.  By the standards of this planet, Jedrik's room, this building, represented a citadel of power.

Jedrik spoke, an odd note of nervousness in voice and manner:

"Until recently, I also had other quarters:  a prestigious apartment on the slopes of the Council Hills.  I was considered a climber with excellent prospects, my own skitter and driver.  I had access to all but the highest codes in the master banks, and that's a powerful tool for those who can use it.  Now . . ."  She gestured.  ". . . this is what I have chosen.  I must eat swill with the lowest.  No males of rank will pay the slightest attention to me.  Broey thinks I'm cowering somewhere, a pallet in the Warrens.  But I have this . . ."  Again, that sweeping gesture.  ". . . and this."  One finger tapped her head.  "I need nothing more to bring those Council Hills crashing down."

She stared into McKie's eyes.

He found himself believing her.

She was not through speaking.

"You're definitely male Human, McKie."

He didn't know what to make of that, but her air of braggadocio fascinated him.

"How did you lose that other . . ."

"I didn't lose it.  I threw it away.  I no longer needed it.  I've made things move faster than our precious Elector, or even your people, can anticipate.  Broey thinks to wait for an opening against me?"  She shook her head.

Captivated, McKie watched her cross to the window, open a ventilator above it.  She kicked a wooden knob below the adjoining bookshelves, pulled out a section of paneling which trailed a double bed.  Standing across the bed from McKie, she began to undress.  She dropped the wig to the floor, slipped off the coveralls, peeled the bulging inner disguise from her flesh.  Her skin was pale cream.

"McKie, I am your teacher."

He remained silent.  She was long waisted, slim, and graceful.  The creamy skin was marked by two faint scars to the left of the pubic wedge.

"Take off your clothes," she said.

He swallowed.

She shook her head.

"McKie, McKie, to survive here you must become Dosadi.  You don't have much time.  Get your clothes off."

Not knowing what to expect, McKie obeyed.

She watched him carefully.

"Your skin is lighter than I expected where the sun has not darkened you.  We will bleach the skin of your face and hands tomorrow."

McKie looked at his hands, at the sharp line where his cuffs had protected his arms.  Dark skin.  He recalled Bahrank talking of dark skin and a place called Pylash Gate.  To mask the unusual shyness he felt, he looked at Jedrik, asked about Pylash Gate.

"So Bahrank mentioned that?  Well, it was a stupid mistake.  The Rim sent in shock troops and foolish orders were given for the gate's defenses.  Only one troop survived there, all dark-skinned like you.  The suspicion of treachery was natural."

"Oh."

He found his attention compelled toward the bed.  A dark maroon spread covered it.

Jedrik approached him around the foot of the bed.  She stopped less than a hand's width away from him . . . creamy flesh, full breasts.  He looked up into her eyes.  She stood half a head over him, an expression of cold amusement on her face.

McKie found the musky smell of her erotically stimulating.  She looked down, saw this, laughed, and abruptly hurled him onto the bed.  She landed with him and her body was all over him, hot and hard and demanding.

It was the strangest sexual experience of McKie's life.  Not lovemaking, but violent attack.  She groaned, bit at him, clawed.  And when he tried to caress her, she became even more violent, frenzied.  Through it all, she was oddly careful of his pleasure, watching his reactions, reading him.  When it was over, he lay back, spent.  Jedrik sat up on the edge of the bed.  The blankets were a twisted mess.  She grabbed a blanket, threw it across the room, stood up, whirled back to look down at him.

"You are very sly and tricky, McKie."

He drew in a trembling breath, remained silent.

"You tried to catch me with softness," she accused.  "Better than you have tried that with me.  It will not work."

McKie marshalled the energy to sit up and restore some order to the bed. His shoulder pained him where she'd scratched.  He felt the ache of a bite on his neck.  He crawled into the bed, pulled the blankets up to his chin.  She was a madwoman, absolutely mad.  Insane.

Presently, Jedrik stopped looking at him.  She recovered the blanket from across the room, spread it on the bed, joined him.  He was acutely conscious of her staring at him with an openly puzzled frown.

"Tell me about the relationships between men and women on your worlds."

He recounted a few of the love stories he knew, fighting all the while to stay awake.  It was difficult to stifle the gaping yawns.  She kept punching his shoulder.

"I don't believe it.  You're making this up."

"No . . . no.  It's true."

"You have women of your own there?"

"Women of my . . .  Well, it's not like that, not ownership . . . ahhh, not possession."

"What about children?"

"What about them?"

"How're they treated, educated?"

He sighed, sketched in some details from his own childhood.

After a while she let him go to sleep.  He awakened several times during the night, conscious of the strange room and bed, of Jedrik breathing softly beside him.  Once, he thought he felt her shoulders shaking with repressed sobs.

Shortly before dawn, there was a scream in the next block, a terrifying sound of agony loud enough to waken all but the most hardened or the most fatigued.  McKie, awake and thinking, felt Jedrik's breathing change.  He lay tense and watchful, awaiting a repetition or another sound which might explain that eerie scream.  A threatening silence gripped the night.  McKie built an image in his mind of what could be happening in the buildings around them:  some people starting from sleep not knowing (perhaps not caring) what had awakened them; lighter sleepers grumbling and sinking back into restless slumber.

Finally, McKie sat up, peered into the room's shadows.  His disquiet communicated itself to Jedrik.  She rolled over, looked up at him in the pale dawn light now creeping into the shadows.

"There are many noises in the Warrens that you learn to ignore," she said.

Coming from her, it was almost conciliatory, almost a gesture of apology, of friendship.

"Someone screamed," he said.

"I knew it must be something like that."

"How can you sleep through such a sound?"

"I didn't."

"But how can you ignore it?"

"The sounds you ignore are those which aren't immediately threatening to you, those which you can do nothing about."

"Someone was hurt."

"Very likely.  But you must not burden your soul with things you cannot change."

"Don't you want to change . . . that?"

"I am changing it."

Her tone, her attitude were those of a lecturer in a schoolroom, and now there was no doubt that she was being deliberately helpful.  Well, she'd said she was his teacher.  And he must become completely Dosadi to survive.

"How're you changing things?"

"You're not capable of understanding yet.  I want you to take it one step at a time, one lesson at a time."

He couldn't help asking himself then:

What does she want from me now?

He hoped it was not more sex.

"Today," she said, "I want you to meet the parents of three children who work in our cell."