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 ârockets,' which is to say you are like a display which shoots up into the skyâand 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 PanSpechiâthat 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 heldâminimum 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 Rimâthe 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, McKieâfree us!”
Given the proper leverage at the proper point, any sentient awareness may be exploded into astonishing self-understanding.
Â
âfrom an ancient Human mystic
“
U
nless she makes a mistake, or we find some unexpected advantage, it's only a matter of time until she overruns us,” Broey said.
He sat in his aerie command post at the highest point of the dominant building on the Council Hills. The room was an armored oval with a single window about fifteen meters away directly in front of Broey looking out on sunset through the river's canyon walls. A small table with a communicator stood just to his left. Four of his commanders waited near the table. Maps, position boards, and the other appurtenances of command, with their attendants, occupied most of the room's remaining space.
Broey's intelligence service had just brought him the report that Jedrik had taken Gar and Tria captive.
One of his commanders, slender for a Gowachin and with other deprivation marks left from birth on the Rim, glanced at his three companions, cleared his throat.
“Is it time to capitulate?”
Broey shook his head in a Human gesture of negation.
It's time I told them,
he thought.
He felt emptied. God refused to speak to him. Nothing in his world obeyed the old mandates.
We've been tricked.
The Powers of the God Wall had tricked him, had tricked his world and all of its inhabitants. They'd â¦
“This McKie,” the commander said.
Broey swallowed, then:
“I doubt if McKie has even the faintest understanding of how she uses him.”
He glanced at the reports on his communicator table, a stack of reports about McKie. Broey's intelligence service had been active.
“If we captured or killed him ⦔ the commander ventured.
“Too late for that,” Broey said.
“Is there a chance we won't have to capitulate?”
“There's always that chance.”
None of the four commanders liked this answer. Another of them, fat and silky green, spoke up:
“If we have to capitulate, how will we know the ⦔
“We must never capitulate, and we must make certain she knows this,” Broey said. “She means to exterminate us.”
There! He'd told them.
They were shocked but beginning to understand where his reasoning had led him. He saw the signs of understanding come over their faces.
“The corridor ⦔ one of them ventured.
Broey merely stared at him. The fool must know they couldn't get more than a fraction of their forces onto the Rim before Jedrik and Tria closed off that avenue. And even if they could escape to the Rim, what could they do? They hadn't the faintest idea of where the damned factories and food stores were buried.
“If we could rescue Tria,” the slim commander said.
Broey snorted. He'd prayed for Tria to contact him, to open negotiations. There'd been not a word, even after she'd fallen back into that impossible enclave. Therefore, Tria had lost control of her people outside the city. All the other evidence supported this conclusion. There was no contact with the Rim. Jedrik's people had taken over out there. Tria would've sent word to him the minute she recognized the impossibility of
her position. Any valuable piece of information, any counter in this game would've leaped into Tria's awareness, and she'd have recognized who the highest bidder must be.
Who was the highest bidder? Tria, after all, was Human.
Broey sighed.
And McKieâan idiot savant from beyond the God Wall, a
weapons
expert. Jedrik must've known. But how? Did the Gods talk to her? Broey doubted this. Jedrik gave every evidence of being too clever to be sucked in by trickster Gods.
More clever, more wary, more Dosadi than I.
She deserved the victory.
Broey arose and went to the window. His commanders exchanged worried glances behind him. Could Broey
think
them out of this mess?
A corner of his slim corridor to the Rim was visible to Broey. He could not hear the battle, but explosive orange blossoms told him the fighting continued. He knew the gamble Jedrik took. Those Gowachin beyond the God Wall, the ones who'd created this hellish place, were slowâterrifyingly slow. But eventually they would be unable to misunderstand Jedrik's intentions. Would they step in, those mentally retarded Gowachin out there, and try to stop Jedrik? She obviously thought they would. Everything she did told Broey of the care with which Jedrik had prepared for the stupids from Outside. Broey almost wished her success, but he could not bear the price he and his people would have to pay.
Jedrik had the time-edge on him. She had McKie. She had played McKie like a superb instrument. And what would McKie do when he realized the final use Jedrik intended to make of him? Yes ⦠McKie was a perfect tool for Jedrik. She'd obviously waited for that perfect instrument, had known when it arrived.
Gods! She was superb!
Broey scratched at the nodes between his ventricles. Well, there were still things a trapped people could do. He returned to his commanders.
“Abandon the corridor. Do it quietly, but swiftly. Fall back to the prepared inner walls.”
As his commanders started to turn away, Broey stopped them.
“I also want some carefully selected volunteers. The fix we're in must be explained to them in such a way that there's no misunderstanding. They will be asked to sacrifice themselves in a way no Gowachin has ever before contemplated.”
“How?”
It was the slender one.
Broey addressed himself to this one. A Gowachin born on the Rim should be the first to understand.
“We must increase the price Jedrik's paying. Hundreds of their people for every
one
of ours.”
“Suicide missions,” the slender one said.
Broey nodded, continued:
“One more thing. I want Havvy brought up here and I want orders issued to increase the food allotment to those Humans we've held in special reserve.”
Two of his commanders spoke in unison:
“They won't sacri ⦔
“I have something else in mind for them.”
Broey nodded to himself. Yes indeed. Some of those Humans could still serve his purposes. It wasn't likely they could serve him as McKie served Jedrik, but there was still a chance ⦠yes, a chance. Jedrik might not be certain of what Broey could do with his Humans. Havvy, for example. Jedrik had certainly considered and discarded Havvy. In itself, that might be useful. Broey waved for his commanders to leave and execute his orders. They'd seen the new determination in him. They'd pass that along to the ones beneath them. That, too, would serve his purposes. It would delay the moment when his people might suspect that he was making a desperate gamble.
He returned to his communicator, called his search people, urged them to new efforts. They might still achieve what Jedrik obviously had achieved with Pcharky ⦠if they could find a Pcharky.