The Dosadi Experiment (ConSentiency Universe #2)

The Dosadi Experiment (ConSentiency Universe #2) Page 23

QUESTION:  Who governs the governors?

ANSWER:  Entropy.

- Gowachin riddle

Many things conspired to frustrate McKie.  Few people other than Jedrik answered his questions.  Most responded as though to a cretin.  Jedrik treated him as though he were a child of unknown potential.  At times, he knew he amused her.  Other times, she punished him with an angry glance, by ignoring him, or just by going away - or worse, sending him away.

It was now late afternoon of the fifth day in the battle for Chu, and Broey's forces still held out in the heart of the city with their slim corridor to the Rim.  He knew this from reports he'd overheard.  He stood in a small room off Jedrik's command post, a room containing four cots where, apparently she and/or her commanders snatched occasional rest. One tall, narrow window looked out to the south Rim.  McKie found it difficult to realize that he'd come across that Rim just six days previously.

Clouds had begun to gather over the Rim's terraced escarpments, a sure sign of a dramatic change in the weather.  He knew that much, at least, from his Tandaloor briefings.  Dosadi had no such thing as weather control.  Awareness of this left him feeling oddly vulnerable.  Nature could be so damnably capricious and dangerous when you had no grip on her vagaries.

McKie blinked, held his breath for a moment.

Vagaries of nature.

The vagaries of sentient nature had moved the Gowachin to set up this experiment.  Did they really hope to control that vast, seething conglomerate of motives?  Or had they some other reason for Dosadi, a reason which he had not yet penetrated?  Was this, after all, a test of Caleban mysteries?  He thought not.

He knew the way Aritch and aides said they'd set up this experiment.  Observations here bore out their explanations.  None of that data was consistent with an attempt to understand the Calebans.  Only that brief encounter with Pcharky, a thing which Jedrik no longer was willing to discuss.

No matter how he tried, McKie couldn't evade the feeling that something essential lay hidden in the way this planet had been set upon its experimental course; something the Gowachin hadn't revealed, something they perhaps didn't even understand themselves.  What'd they done at the beginning?  They had this place, Dosadi, the subjects, the Primary . . . yes, the Primary.  The inherent inequality of individuals dominated Gowachin minds.  And there was that damnable DemoPol.  How had they mandated it?  Better yet:  how did they maintain that mandate?

Aritch's people had hoped to expose the inner workings of sentient social systems.  So they said.  But McKie was beginning to look at that explanation with Dosadi eyes, with Dosadi skepticism.  What had Fannie Mae meant about not being able to leave here in his own body/node?  How could he be Jedrik's key to the God Wall?  McKie knew he needed more information than he could hope to get from Jedrik.  Did Broey have this information?  McKie wondered if he might in the end have to climb the heights to the Council Hills for his answers.  Was that even possible now?

When he'd asked for it, Jedrik had given him almost the run of this building, warning:

"Don't interfere."

Interfere with what?

When he'd asked, she'd just stared at him.

She had, however, taken him around to familiarize everyone with his status. He was never quite sure what that status might be, except that it was somewhere between guest and prisoner.

Jedrik had required minimal conversation with her people.  Often, she'd used only hand waves to convey the necessary signals of passage.  The whole traverse was a lesson for McKie, beginning with the doorguards.

"McKie."  Pointing at him.

The guards nodded.

Jedrik had other concerns.

"Team Nine?"

"Back at noon."

"Send word."

Everyone subjected McKie to a hard scrutiny which he felt certain would let them identify him with minimal interruption.

There were two elevators:  one an express from a heavily guarded street entrance on the side of the building, the other starting above the fourth level at the ceiling of Pcharky's cage.  They took this one, went up, pausing at each floor for guards to see him.

When they returned to the cage room, McKie saw that a desk had been installed just inside the street door.  The father of those three wild children sat there watching Pcharky, making occasional notations in a notebook.  McKie had a name for him now, Ardir.

Jedrik paused at the desk. .

"McKie can come and go with the usual precautions."

McKie, addressing himself finally to Jedrik, had said:

"Thanks for taking this time with me."

"No need to be sarcastic, McKie."

He had not intended sarcasm and reminded himself once more that the usual amenities of the ConSentiency suffered a different interpretation here.

Jedrik glanced through Ardir's notes, looked up at Pcharky, back to McKie.  Her expression did not change.

"We will meet for dinner."

She left him then.

For his part, McKie had approached Pcharky's cage, noting the tension this brought to the room's guards and observers.  The old Gowachin sat in his hammock with an indifferent expression on his face.  The bars of the cage emitted an almost indiscernible hissing as they shimmered and glowed.

"What happens if you touch the bars?" McKie asked.

The Gowachin jowls puffed in a faint shrug.

McKie pointed.

"There's energy in those bars.  What is that energy?  How is it maintained?"

Pcharky responded in a hoarse croaking.

"How is the universe maintained?  When you first see a thing, is that when it was created?"

"Is it a Caleban thing?"

Shrug.

McKie walked around the cage, studying it.  There were glistening bulbs wherever the bars crossed each other.  The rods upon which the hammock was suspended came from the ceiling. They penetrated the cage top without touching it.  The hammock itself appeared to be fabric.  It was faintly blue.  He returned to his position facing Pcharky.

"Do they feed you?"

No answer.

Ardir spoke from behind him.

"His food is lowered from the ceiling.  His excreta are hosed into the reclamation lines."

McKie spoke over his shoulder.

"I see no door into the cage.  How'd he get in there?"

"It was built around him according to his own instructions."

"What are the bulbs where the bars cross?"

"They came into existence when he activated the cage."

"How'd he do that?"

"We don't know.  Do you?"

McKie shook his head from side to side.

"How does Pcharky explain this?"

"He doesn't."

McKie had turned away to face Ardir, probing, moving the focus of questions from Pcharky to the planetary society itself.  Ardir's answers, especially on matters of religion and history, were banal.

Later, as he stood in the room off the command post reviewing the experience, McKie found his thoughts touching on a matter which had not even come into question.

Jedrik and her people had known for a long time that Dosadi was a Gowachin creation.  They'd known it long before McKie had appeared on the scene.  It was apparent in the way they focused on Pcharky, in the way they reacted to Broey.  McKie had added one significant datum:  that Dosadi was a Gowachin experiment.  But Jedrik's people were not using him in the ways he might expect.  She said he was the key to the God Wall, but how was he that key?

The answer was not to be found in Ardir.  That one had not tried to evade McKie's questions, but the answers betrayed a severely limited scope to Ardir's knowledge and imagination.

McKie felt deeply disturbed by this insight.  It was not so much what the man said as what he did not say when the reasons for speaking openly in detail were most demanding.  Ardir was no dolt.  This was a Human who'd risen high in Jedrik's hierarchy.  Many speculations would've crossed his mind.  Yet he made no mention of even the more obvious speculations.  He raised no questions about the way Dosadi history ran to a single cutoff point in the past without any trace of evolutionary beginnings.  He did not appear to be a religious person and even if he were, Dosadi would not permit the more blatant religious inhibitions.  Yet Ardir refused to explore the most obvious discrepancies in those overt religious attitudes McKie had been told to expect.  Ardir played out the right attitudes, but there was no basis for them underneath.  It was all surface.

McKie suddenly despaired of ever getting a deep answer from any of these people - even from Jedrik.

An increase in the noise level out in the command post caught McKie's attention.  He opened the door, stood in the doorway to study the other room.

A new map had been posted on the far wall.  There was a position board, transparent and covered with yellow, red, and blue dots, over the map.  Five women and a man - all wearing earphones - worked the board, moving the colored markers.  Jedrik stood with her back to McKie, talking to several commanders who'd just come in from the streets.  They still carried their weapons and packs.  It was their conversation which had attracted McKie.  He scanned the room, noted two communications screens at the left wall, both inactive.  They were new since his last view of the room and he wondered at their purpose.

An aide leaned in from the hallway, called out:

"Gate Twenty-One just reported.  Everything has quieted there.  They want to know if they should keep their reserves on the alert."

"Have them stand down," Jedrik said.

"The two prisoners are being brought here," the aide added.

"I see it," Jedrik said.

She nodded toward the position board.

McKie, following the direction of her gaze, saw two yellow markers being moved with eight blue companions.  Without knowing how he understood this, he saw that this must be the prisoners and their escort.  There were tensions in the command post which told him this was an important event.  Who were those prisoners?

One of Jedrik's commanders spoke.

"I saw the monitor at . . ."

She was not listening to him and he broke off.  Two people on the position board exchanged places, trading earphones.  The messenger who'd called out the information about the gate and the prisoners had gone.  Another messenger came in presently, conferred in a soft voice with people near the door.

In a few moments, eight young Human males entered carrying Gar and Tria securely trussed with what appeared to be shining wire.  McKie recognized the pair from Aritch's briefings.  The escort carried their prisoners like so much meat, one at each leg and each arm.

"Over here," Jedrik said, indicating two chairs facing her.

McKie found himself suddenly aware, in an extremely Dosadi way, of many of the nuances here.  It filled him with elation.

The escort crossed the room, not bothering to steer clear of all the furniture.  The messenger from the hallway delayed his departure, reluctant to leave.  He'd recognized the prisoners and knew something important was about to happen.

Gar and Tria were dumped into the two chairs.

"Release their bindings," Jedrik said.

The escort obeyed.

Jedrik waited, staring across at the position board.  The two yellow and eight blue markers had been removed.  She continued to stare at the board, though.  Something there was more important than these two prisoners.  She pointed to a cluster of red markers in an upper corner.

"See to that."

One of her commanders left the room.

McKie took a deep breath.  He'd spotted the flicker of her movement toward the commander who'd obeyed.  So that was how she did it!  McKie moved farther into the room to put Jedrik in profile to him.  She made no response to his movement, but he knew she was aware of him.  He stepped closer to what he saw as the limit of her tolerance, noted a faint smile as she turned toward the prisoners.

There was an abrupt silence, one of those uncomfortable moments when people realize there are things they must do, but everyone is reluctant to start.  The messenger still stood by the door to the hall, obviously wanting to see what would happen here.  The escort who'd brought the prisoners remained standing in a group at one side.  They were almost huddled, as though seeking protection in their own numbers.

Jedrik glanced across at the messenger.

"You may go."

She nodded to the escort.

"And you."

McKie held his cautious distance, waiting, but Jedrik took no notice of him.  He saw that he not only would be allowed to stay, but that he was expected to use his wits, his off-world knowledge.  Jedrik had read things in his presence:  a normal distrust, caution, patience.  And the fears, of course.

Jedrik took her time with the prisoners.  She leaned forward, examined first Tria, then Gar.  From the way she looked at them, it was clear to McKie she weighed many possibilities on how to deal with this pair.  She was also building the tensions and this had its effect.  Gar broke.

"Broey has a way of describing people such as you." Gar said.  "He calls you 'rockets,' which is to say you are like a display which shoots up into the sky - and falls back."

Jedrik grinned.

McKie understood.  Gar was not managing his emotions very well.  It was a weakness.

"Many rockets in this universe must die unseen," Jedrik said.

Gar glared at her.  He didn't like this response, glanced at Tria, saw from her expression that he had blundered.

Tria spoke now, smiling faintly.

"You've taken a personal interest in us, Jedrik."

To McKie, it was as though he'd suddenly crossed a threshold into the understanding of another language. Tria's was a Dosadi statement, carrying many messages.  She'd said that Jedrik saw an opportunity for personal gain here and that Tria knew this.  The faint smile had been the beginning of the statement.  McKie felt a new awe at the special genius of the Dosadi awareness.  He moved a step closer.  There was something else about Tria . . . something odd.

"What is that one to you?"

Tria spoke to Jedrik, but a flicker of the eyes indicated McKie.

"He has a certain utility," Jedrik said.

"Is that the reason you keep him near you?"

"There's no single reason."

"There've been certain rumors . . ."

"One uses what's available," Jedrik said.

"Did you plan to have children by him?"

Jedrik shook with silent mirth.  McKie understood that Tria probed for weaknesses, found none.

"The breeding period is so incapacitating for a female," Tria said.

The tone was deliberately goading, and McKie waited for a response.

Jedrik nodded.

"Offspring produce many repercussions down through the generations.  Never a casual decision for those of us who understand."

Jedrik looked at Gar, forcing McKie to shift his attention.

Gar's face went suddenly bland, which McKie interpreted as shock and anger.  The man had himself under control quickly, however.  He stared at McKie, directed a question to Jedrik.

"Would his death profit us?"

Jedrik glanced at McKie.

Shocked by the directness of the question, McKie was at least as intrigued by the assumptions in Gar's question.  "Us!"  Gar assumed that he and Jedrik had common cause.  Jedrik was weighing that assumption and McKie, filled with elation, understood.  He also recognized something else and realized he could now repay all of Jedrik's patient teaching.

Tria!

Something about Tria's way of holding her head, the inflections in her spoken Galach, struck a chord in McKie's memory.  Tria was a Human who'd been trained by a PanSpechi - that way of moving the eyes before the head moved, the peculiar emphasis in her speech mannerisms.  But there were no PanSpechi on Dosadi.  Or were there?

None of this showed on McKie's face.  He continued to radiate distrust, caution, patience.  But he began to ask himself if there might be another loose thread in this Dosadi mystery.  He saw Jedrik looking at him and, without thinking about it, gave her a purely Dosadi eye signal to follow him, returned to the adjoining room.  It was a measure of how she read him that she came without question.

"Yes?"

He told her what he suspected.

"These PanSpechi, they are the ones who can grow a body to simulate that of another species?"

"Except for the eyes.  They have faceted eyes.  Any PanSpechi who could act freely and simulate another species would be only the surface manifestation.  The freely moving one is only one of five bodies; it's the holder of the ego, the identity.  This passes periodically to another of the five.  It's a PanSpechi crime to prevent that transfer by surgically fixing the ego in only one of the bodies."

Jedrik glanced out the doorway.  "You're sure about her?"

"The pattern's there."

"The faceted eyes, can that be disguised?"

"There are ways:  contact lenses or a rather delicate operation.  I've been trained to detect such things, however, and I can tell you that the one who trained her is not Gar."

She looked at him.

"Broey?"

"A Graluz would be a great place to conceal a creche but . . ."  He shook his head.  ". . . I don't think so.  From what you tell me about Broey . . ."

"Gowachin," she agreed.  "Then who?"

"Someone who influenced her when she was quite young."

"Do you wish to interrogate the prisoners?"

"Yes, but I don't know their potential value."

She stared at him in open wonder.  His had been an exquisitely penetrating Dosadi-style statement.  It was as though a McKie she thought she knew had been transformed suddenly right in front of her eyes.  He was not yet sufficiently Dosadi to trust completely, but she'd never expected him to come this far this quickly.  He did deserve a more detailed assessment of the military situation and the relative abilities of Tria and Gar.  She delivered this assessment in the Dosadi way:  barebones words, swift, clipped to an essential spareness which assumed a necessary broad understanding by the listener.

Absorbing this, McKie sensed where she limited her recital, tailoring it for his abilities.  In a way, it was similar to a response by his Daily Schedule back on Central Central.  He could see himself in her attitudes, read her assessment of him.  She was favoring him with a limited, grudging respect tempered by a certain Fondness as by a parent toward a child.  And he knew that once they returned to the other room, the fondness would be locked under a mask of perfect concealment.  It was there, though.  It was there.  And he dared not betray her trust by counting on that fondness, else it would be locked away forever.

"I'm ready," he said.

They returned to the command post, McKie with a clearer picture of how to operate here.  There was no such thing as mutual, unquestioning trust.  You always questioned.  You always managed.  A sort of grudging respect was the nearest they'd reveal openly.  They worked together to survive, or when it was overwhelmingly plain that there was personal advantage in mutual action.  Even when they united, they remained ultimate individualists.  They suspected any gift because no one gave away anything freely.  The safest relationships were those in which the niches of the hierarchy were clear and solidly held - minimum threat from above and from below.  The whole thing reminded McKie of stories told about behavior in Human bureaucracies of the classical period before deep space travel.  And many years before he had encountered a multispecies corporation which had behaved similarly until the ministrations of BuSab had shown them the error of their ways.  They'd used every dirty trick available:  bribing, spying and other forms of covert and overt espionage, fomenting dissent in the opposition, assassination, blackmail, and kidnapping.  Few in the ConSentiency had not heard of InterRealm Supply, now defunct.

McKie stopped three paces from the prisoners.

Tria spoke first.

"Have you decided what to do with us?"

"There's useful potential in both of you," McKie said, "but we have other questions."

The "we" did not escape Tria or Gar.  They both looked at Jedrik, who stood impassively at McKie's shoulder.

McKie addressed himself to Gar.

"Is Tria really your daughter, your natural child?"

Tria appeared surprised and, with his new understanding, McKie realized she was telling him she didn't care if he saw this reaction, that it suited her for him to see this.  Gar, however, had betrayed a flicker of shock.  By Dosadi standards, he was dumbfounded.  Then Tria was not his natural daughter, but until this moment, Tria had never questioned their relationship.

"Tell us," McKie said.

The Dosadi spareness of the words struck Gar like a blow.  He looked at Jedrik.  She gave every indication of willingness to wait forever for him to obey, which was to say that she made no response either to McKie's words or Gar's behavior.

Visibly defeated, Gar returned his attention to McKie.

"I went with two females, only the three of us, across the far mountains.  We tried to set up our own production of pure food there.  Many on the Rim tried that in those days.  They seldom came back.  Something always happens:  the plants die for no reason, the water source runs dry, something steals what you grow.  The Gods are jealous.  That's what we always said."

He looked at Tria, who studied him without expression.

"One of the two women died the first year.  The other was sick by the following harvest season, but survived through the next spring.  It was during that harvest . . . we went to the garden . . . ha!  The garden!  This child was there.  We had no idea of where she'd come from.  She appeared to be seven or eight years old, but her reactions were those of an infant.  That happens often enough on the Rim - the mind retreats from something too terrible to bear.  We took her in.  Sometimes you can train such a child back to usefulness.  When the woman died and the crop failed, I took Tria and we headed back to the Rim.  That was a very bad time.  When we returned . . .  I was sick.  Tria helped me then.  We've been together ever since."

McKie found himself deeply touched by this recital and hard put to conceal his reaction.  He was not positive that he did conceal it.  With his new Dosadi awareness, he read an entire saga into that sparse account of events which probably were quite ordinary by Rim standards.  He found himself enraged by the other data which could be read into Gar's words.

PanSpechi trained!

That was the key.  Aritch's people had wanted to maintain the purity of their experiment:  only two species permitted.  But it would be informative to examine PanSpechi applications.  Simple.  Take a Human female child.  Put her exclusively under PanSpechi influence for seven or eight years.  Subject that child to selective memory erasure.  Hand her over to convenient surrogate parents on Dosadi.

And there was more:  Aritch lied when he said he knew little about the Rim, that the Rim was outside the experiment.

As these thoughts went through his head, McKie returned to the small adjoining room.  Jedrik followed.  She waited while he assembled his thoughts.

Presently, McKie looked at her, laid out his deductions.  When he finished, he glanced at the doorway.

"I need to learn as much as I can about the Rim."

"Those two are a good source."

"But don't you require them for your other plans, the attack on Broey's corridor?"

"Two things can go forward simultaneously.  You will return to their enclave with them as my lieutenant.  That'll confuse them.  They won't know what to make of that.  They will answer your questions.  And in their confusion they'll reveal much that they might otherwise conceal from you."

McKie absorbed this.  Yes . . . Jedrik did not hesitate to put him into peril.  It was an ultimate message to everyone.  McKie would be totally at the mercy of Gar and Tria.  Jedrik was saying, "See!  You cannot influence me by any threat to McKie."  In a way, this protected him.  In an extremely devious Dosadi way, this removed many possible threats to McKie, and it told him much about what her true feelings toward him could be.  He spoke to this.

"I detest a cold bed."

Her eyes sparkled briefly, the barest touch of moisture, then, arming him:

"No matter what happens to me, McKie - free us!"