He almost said, “Power.”
She saw his hesitation, waited.
“The power to change your condition,” he said.
“You make me very proud, McKie.”
“But how did you know I was ⦔
“McKie!”
He swallowed, then: “Yes, I guess that was the easiest part for you.”
“It was much more difficult finding your abilities and shaping you into a Dosadi.”
“But I might've been ⦔
“Tell me how I did it, McKie.”
It was a test. He saw that. How had she known absolutely that he was the one she needed?
“I was sent here in a way that evaded Broey.”
“And that's not easy.” Her glance flickered ceilingward. “They tried to bait us from time to time. Havvy ⦔
“Compromised, contaminated ⦔
“Useless. Sometimes, a stranger looks out of Havvy's eyes.”
“My eyes are my own.”
“The first thing Bahrank reported about you.”
“But even before that ⦔
“Yes?”
“They used Havvy to tell you I was coming ⦠and he told you that you could use my body. He had to be truthful with you up to a point. You could read Havvy! How clever they thought they were being! I had to be vulnerable ⦠really vulnerable.”
“The first thing ⦔
“ ⦠you found out about me.” He nodded. “Suspicions confirmed. All of that money on my person. Bait. I was someone to be eliminated. I was a powerful enemy of your enemies.”
“And you were angered by the right things.”
“You saw that?”
“McKie, you people are so easy to read. So
easy
!”
“And the weapons I carried. You were supposed to use those to destroy yourselves. The implications ⦔
“I would've seen that if I'd had first-hand experience of Aritch. You
knew
what he intended for us. My mistake was to read your fears as purely personal. In time ⦔
“We're wasting time.”
“You fear we'll be too late?”
Once more, he looked at the shimmering rods. What was it
Pcharky did? McKie felt events rushing over him, engulfing him. What bargain had Jedrik really driven with Pcharky? She saw the question on his face.
“My people knew all along that Pcharky was just a tool of the God who held us prisoner. We forced a bargain on that Godâthat Caleban. Did you think we would not recognize the identity between the powers of that cage and the powers of our God Wall? No more delays, McKie. It's time to test our bargain.”
Geriatric or other life extension for the powerful poses a similar threat to a sentient species as that found historically in the dominance of a self-perpetuating bureaucracy. Both assume prerogatives of immortality, collecting more and more power with each passing moment. This is power which draws a theological aura about itself: the unassailable Law, the God-given mandate of the leader, manifest destiny. Power held too long within a narrow framework moves farther and farther away from the adaptive demands of changed conditions. The leadership grows ever more paranoid, suspicious of inventive adaptations to change, fearfully protective of personal power and, in the terrified avoidance of what it sees as risk, blindly leads its people into destruction.
Â
âBuSab Manual
“
V
ery well, I'll tell you what bothers me,” Ceylang said.
“There are too many things about this problem that I fail to understand.”
From her seated position, she looked across a small, round room at Aritch, who floated gently in a tiny blue pool. His head at the pool's lip was almost on a level with Ceylang's. Again, they had worked late into the night. She understood the reasons for this, the time pressures were quite apparent, but the peculiar Gowachin flavor of her training kept her in an almost constant state of angry questioning.
This whole thing was so un-Wreave!
Ceylang smoothed the robe over her long body. The robe was blue now, one step away from Legum black. Appropriately,
there was blue all around her: the walls, the floor, the ceiling, Aritch's pool.
The High Magister rested his chin on the pool's edge to speak.
“I require specific questions before I can even hope to penetrate your puzzlement.”
“Will McKie defend or prosecute? The simulator ⦔
“Damn the simulator! Odds are that he'll make the mistake of prosecuting. Your own reasoning powers should ⦔
“But if he doesn't?”
“Then selection of the judicial panel becomes vital.”
Ceylang twisted her body to one side, feeling the chairdog adjust for her comfort. As usual, Aritch's answer only deepened her sense of uncertainty. She voiced that now.
“I continue to have this odd feeling that you intend me to play some role which I'm not supposed to discover until the very last instant.”
Aritch breathed noisily through his mouth, splashed water onto his head.
“This all may be moot. By this time day after tomorrow, Dosadi
and
McKie may no longer exist.”
“Then I will not advance to Legum?”
“Oh, I'm fairly certain you'll be a Legum.”
She studied him, sensing irony, then:
“What a delicate line you walk, High Magister.”
“Hardly. My way is wide and clear. You know the things I cannot countenance. I cannot betray the Law or my people.”
“I have similar inhibitions. But this Dosadi thingâso tempting.”
“So dangerous! Would a Wreave don Human flesh to learn the Human condition? Would you permit a Human to penetrate Wreave society in this ⦔
“There are some who might conspire in this! There are even Gowachin who ⦔
“The opportunities for misuse are countless.”
“Yet you say that McKie already is more Gowachin than a Gowachin.”
Aritch's webbed hands folded over the pool's edge, the claws extended.
“We risked much in training him for this task.”
“More than you risk with me?”
Aritch withdrew his hands, stared at her, unblinking.
“So that's what bothers you.”
“Precisely.”
“Think, Ceylang, how near the core of Wreavedom you would permit me to come. Thus far and no farther will we permit you.”
“And McKie?”
“May already have gone too far for us to permit his continued existence.”
“I heed your warning, Aritch. But I remain puzzled as to why the Calebans couldn't prevent ⦔
“They profess not to understand the ego transfer. But who can understand a Caleban, let alone control one in a matter so delicate? Even this one who created the God Wall ⦔
“It's rumored that McKie understands Calebans.”
“He denies it.”
She rubbed her pocked left jowl with a prehensile mandible, felt the many scars of her passage through the Wreave triads. Family to family to family until it was a single gigantic family. Yet, all were Wreave. This Dosadi thing threatened a monstrous parody of Wreavedom. Still â¦
“So fascinating,” she murmured.
“That's its threat.”
“We should pray for the death of Dosadi.”
“Perhaps.”
She was startled.
“What ⦔
“This might not die with Dosadi. Our sacred bond assures that you will leave here with this knowledge. Many Gowachin know of this thing.”
“And McKie.”
“Infections have a way of spreading,” Aritch said. “Remember
that
if this comes to the Courtarena.”
There are some forms of insanity which, driven to an ultimate expression, can become the new models of sanity.
Â
âBuSab Manual
“
M
cKie?”
It was the familiar Caleban presence in his awareness, as though he heard and felt someone (or some
thing
) which he knew was not there.
The preparation had been deceptively simple. He and Jedrik clasped hands, his right hand and her left, and each grasped one of the shimmering rods with the other hand.
McKie did not have a ready identity for this Caleban and wondered at the questioning in her
voice
. He agreed, however, that he was indeed McKie, shaping the thought as subvocalized conversation. As he spoke, McKie was acutely aware of Jedrik beside him. She was more than just another person now. He carried a tentative simulation model of her, sometimes anticipating her responses.
“You make mutual agreement?” the Caleban asked.
McKie sensed Pcharky then: a distant presence, the monitor for this experience. It was as though Pcharky had been reduced to a schematic which the Caleban followed, a set of complex rules, many of which could not be translated into words. Some part of McKie responded to this as though a monster awakened within him, a sleeping monster who sat up full of anger at being aroused thus, demanding:
“Who is it that dares awaken me?”
McKie felt his body trembling, felt Jedrik trembling beside him. The Caleban/Taprisiot-trembling, the sweaty response to
trance! He saw these phenomena now in a different light. When you walked at the edge of this abyss â¦
While these thoughts passed through his mind, he felt a slight shift, no more than the blurred reflection of something which was not quite movement. Now, while he still felt his own flesh around him, he also felt himself possessed of an inner contact with Jedrik's body and knew she shared this experience.
Such a panic as he had not thought possible threatened to overwhelm him. He felt Jedrik trying to break the contact, to stop this hideous sharing, but they were powerless in the grip of a force which would not be stopped.
No time sense attached itself to this experience, but a fatalistic calm overcame them almost simultaneously. McKie felt awareness of Jedrik/flesh deepen. Curiosity dominated him now.
So this is woman!
This is man?
They shared the thoughts across an indistinct bridge.
Fascination gripped McKie. He probed deeper.
He/She could feel himself/herself breathing. And the differences! It was not the genitalia, the presence or lack of breasts. She felt bereft of breasts. He felt acutely distressed by their presence, self-consciously aware of profound implications. The sense of difference went back beyond gamete McKie/ Jedrik.
McKie sensed her thoughts, her reactions.
Jedrik: “You cast your sperm upon the stream of time.”
McKie: “You enclose and nurture ⦔
“I cast/I nurture.”
It was as though they looked at an object from opposite sides, aware belatedly that they both examined the same thing.
“We cast/we, nurture.”
Obscuring layers folded away and McKie found himself in Jedrik's mind, she in his. Their thoughts were one entity.
The separate Dosadi and ConSentient experiences melted into a single relationship.
“Aritch ⦠ah, yes. You see? And your PanSpechi friend, Bildoon. Note that. You suspected, but now you know ⦔
Each set of experiences fed on the other, expanding, refining ⦠condensing, discarding, creating â¦
So that's the training of a Legum.
Loving parents? Ahhh, yes, loving parents.
“I/we will apply pressure there ⦠and there ⦠They must be maneuvered into choosing that one as a judge. Yes, that will give us the required leverage. Let them break their own code.”
And the awakened monster stirred within them. It had no dimension, no place, only existence. They felt its power.
“
I do what I do!
”
The power enveloped them. No other awareness was permitted. They sensed a primal current, unswerving purpose, a force which could override any other thing in their universe. It was not God, not Life, not any particular species. It was something so far beyond such articulations that Jedrik/McKie could not even contemplate it without a sense that the next instant would bring obliteration. They felt a question hurled at their united, fearful awareness. The question was framed squarely in anger, astonishment, cold amusement, and threat.
“For
this
you awaken
me
?”
Now, they understood why the old body and donor-ego had always been slain immediately. This terrible sharing made a ⦠made a noise. It awakened a questioner.
They understood the question without words, knowing they could never grasp the full meaning and emotive thrust, that it would burn them out even to try. Anger ⦠astonishment ⦠cold amusement ⦠threat. The question as their own united mind(s) interpreted it represented a limit. It was all that Jedrik/ McKie could accept.
The intrusive questioner receded.
They were never quite sure afterward whether they'd been expelled or whether they'd fled in terror, but the parting words were burned into their combined awareness.
“
Let the sleeper sleep
.”
They walked softly in their minds then. They understood the warning, but knew it could never be translated in its fullest threat for any other sentient being.
Concurrent: McKie/Jedrik felt a projection of terror from the God Wall Caleban, unfocused, unexplained. It was a new experience in the male-female collective memory. Caleban Fannie Mae had not even projected this upon original McKie when she'd thought herself doomed.
Concurrent: McKie/Jedrik felt a burntout fading from Pcharky. Something in that terrible contact had plunged Pcharky into his death spiral. Even as McKie/Jedrik realized this, the old Gowachin died. It was a slammed door. But this came after a blazing realization by McKie/Jedrik that Pcharky had shared the original decision to set up the Dosadi experiment.
McKie found himself clothed in living, breathing flesh which routed its messages through his awareness. He wasn't sure which of their two bodies he possessed, but it was distinct, separate. It wrapped him in Human senses: the taste of salt, the smell of perspiration, and the omnipresent Warren stink. One hand held cold metal, the other clasped the hand of a fellow Human. Perspiration drenched this body, made the clasped hands slippery. He felt that knowing which hand held another hand was of utmost importance, but he wasn't ready to face that knowledge. Awareness of self, this new self, and a whole lifetime of new memories, demanded all of the attention he could muster.
Focus: A Rim city, never outside Jedrik's control because she had fed the signals through to Gar and Tria with exquisite care, and because those who gave the orders on the Rim had shared in the generations of selective breeding which had produced Jedrik. She was a biological weapon whose sole target was the God Wall.
Focus: Loving parents can thrust their child into deadly peril when they know everything possible has been done to prepare that child for survival.
The oddity to McKie was that he felt such things as personal memories.
“I did that.”
Jedrik suffered the throes of similar experiences.
Which body
?
So that was the training of a BuSab agent. Clever ⦠almost adequate. Complex and full of much that she found to be new, but why did it always stop short of a full development?
She reviewed the sessions with Aritch and Ceylang. A matched pair. The choice of Ceylang and the role chosen for her appeared obvious. How innocent! Jedrik felt herself free to pity Ceylang. When allowed to run its course, this was an interesting emotion. She had never before felt pity in uncolored purity.
Focus: McKie actually loved her. She savored this emotion in its ConSentient complexity. The straight flow of selected emotions fascinated her. They did not have to be bridled!
In and out of this creative exchange there wove an intimacy, a pure sexuality without inhibitions.
McKie, savoring the amusement Jedrik had felt when Tria had suggested a McKie/Jedrik breeding, found himself caught by demanding male eroticism and knew by the sensation that he retained his old body.
Jedrik, understanding McKie's long search for a female to complete him, found her amusement converted to the desire to demonstrate that completion. As she turned toward him, releasing the dull rod which had once shimmered in contact with Pcharky, she found herself in McKie's flesh looking into her own eyes.
McKie gasped in the mirror experience.
Just as abruptly, driven by shock, they shifted back into familiar flesh: McKie male, Jedrik female. Instantly, it became a thing to exploreâbackâand forth. Eroticism was forgotten in this new game.
“We can be either sex/body at will!”
It was something beyond Taprisiots and Calebans, far more subtle than the crawling progression of a PanSpechi ego through the bodies from its creche.
They knew the source of this odd gift even as they sank
back on the bed, content to be familiar male and female for a time.
The sleeping monster.
This was a gift with barbs in it, something
loving parents
might give their child in the knowledge that it was time for this lesson. Yet they felt revitalized, knowing they had for an instant tapped an energy source without limits.
A pounding on the door interrupted this shared reverie.
“Jedrik! Jedrik!”
“What is it?”
“It's Broey. He wishes to talk to McKie.”
They were off the bed in an instant.
Jedrik glanced at McKie, knowing she had not one secret from him, that they shared a reasoning base. Out of the mutual understanding in this base, she spoke for both of them.
“Does he say why?”
“Jedrik ⦔
They both recognized the voice of a trusted aide and heard the fear in it.
“ ⦠it's midmorning and there is no sun. God has turned off the sun!”
“Sealed us in ⦔
“ ⦠to conceal the final blast.”
Jedrik opened the door, confronted the frightened aide.
“Where is Broey?”
“Hereâin your command post. He came alone without escort.”
She glanced at McKie. “You will speak for us.”
Broey waited near the position board in the command post. Watchful Humans stood within striking distance. He turned as McKie and Jedrik entered. McKie noted that the Gowachin's body was, indeed, heavy with breeding juices as anticipated. Unsettling for a Gowachin.
“What are your terms, McKie?”
Broey's voice was guttural, full of heavy breathing.
McKie's features remained Dosadi-bland, but he thought:
Broey thinks I'm responsible for the darkness. He's terrified.
McKie glanced at the threatening black of the windows before
speaking. He knew this Gowachin from Jedrik's painstaking study. Broey was a sophisticate, a collector of sophistication who surrounded himself with people of the same stripe. He was a professional sophisticate who read everything through that peculiar Dosadi screen. No one could come into his circle who didn't share this pose. All else remained outside and inferior. He was an ultimate Dosadi, a distillation, almost as Human as Gowachin because he'd obviously once worn a Human body. He was Gowachin at his origins, thoughâno doubt of it.
“You followed my scent,” McKie said.
“Excellent!”
Broey brightened. He had not expected a Dosadi exchange, pared to the nonemotional essentials.
“Unfortunately,” McKie said, “You have no position from which to negotiate. Certain things will be done. You will comply willingly, your compliance will be forced, or we will act without you.”
It was a deliberate goading on McKie's part, a choice of non-Dosadi forms to abbreviate this confrontation. It said more than anything else that McKie came from beyond the God Wall, that the darkness which held back the daylight was the least of his resources.
Broey hesitated, then:
“So?”
The single word fell on the air with countless implications: an entire exchange discarded, hopes dashed, a hint of sadness at lost powers, and still with that sophisticated reserve which was Broey's signature. It was more subtle than a shrug, more powerful in its Dosadi overtones that an entire negotiating session.