"Their law! It is a dangerous foundation for nonauthentic traditions. It is no more than a device to justify false ethics!"
- Gowachin comment on ConSentient Law
While they dressed in the dim dawn light coming through the single window, McKie began testing what Jedrik meant by being his teacher.
"Will you answer any question I ask about Dosadi?" "No."
Then what areas would she withhold from him? He saw it at once: those areas where she gained and held personal power.
"Will anyone resent it that we . . . had sex together?" "Resent? Why should anyone resent that?"
"I don't . . ."
"Answer my question!"
"Why do I have to answer your every question?"
"To stay alive."
"You already know everything I . . ."
She brushed this aside.
"So the people of your ConSentiency sometimes resent the sexual relationships of others. They are not sure, then, how they use sex to hold power over others."
He blinked. Her quick, slashing analysis was devastating.
She peered at him.
"McKie, what can you do here without me? Don't you know yet that the ones who sent you intended you to die here?"
"Or survive in my own peculiar way."
She considered this. It was another idea about McKie which she had put aside for later evaluation. Indeed, he might well have hidden talents which her questions had not yet exposed. What annoyed her now was the sense that she didn't know enough about the ConSentiency to explore this. Could not take the time right now to explore it. His response disturbed her. It was as though everything she could possibly do had already been decided for her by powers of which she knew next to nothing. They were leading her by the nose, perhaps, just as she led Broey . . . just as those mysterious Gowachin of the ConSentiency obviously had led McKie . . . poor McKie. She cut this short as unprofitable speculation. Obviously, she had to begin at once to search out McKie's talent. Whatever she discovered would reveal a great deal about his ConSentiency.
"McKie, I hold a great deal of power among the Humans and even among some Gowachin in the Warrens - and elsewhere. To do this, I must maintain certain fighting forces, including those who fight with physical weapons."
He nodded. Her tone was that of lecturing to a child, but he accepted this, recognizing the care she took with him.
"We will go first," she said, "to a nearby training area where we maintain the necessary edge on one of my forces."
Turning, she led him out into the hall and down a stairway which avoided the room of the cage. McKie was reminded of Pcharky, though, thinking about that gigantic expenditure of space with its strange e occupant.
"Why do you keep Pcharky caged?" he asked, addressing Jedrik's back.
"So I can escape."
She refused to elaborate on this odd answer.
Presently, they emerged into a courtyard nestled into the solid walls of towering buildings. Only a small square of sky was visible directly overhead and far away. Artificial lighting from tubes along the walls provided an adequate illumination. It revealed two squads facing each other in the center of the courtyard. They were Humans, both male and female; all carried weapons: a tube of some sort with a wandlike protrusion from the end near their bodies. Several other Humans stood at observation positions around the two squads. There was a guard station with a desk at the door through which McKie and Jedrik had emerged.
"That's an assault force," Jedrik said, indicating the squads in the courtyard. She turned and consulted with the two young men at the guard station.
McKie made a rough count of the squads: about two hundred. It was obvious that everything had stopped because of Jedrik's presence. He thought the force was composed of striplings barely blooded in Dosadi's cruel necessities. This forced him to a reevaluation of his own capabilities.
From Jedrik's manner with the two men, McKie guessed she knew them well. They paid close attention to everything she said. They, too, struck him as too young for responsibility.
The training area was another matter. It bore a depressing similarity to other such facilities he'd seen in the backwaters of the ConSentiency. War games were a constant lure among several species, a lure which BuSab had managed thus far to channel into such diversions as weapons fetishes.
Through the omnipresent stink, McKie smelled the faint aroma of cooking. He sniffed.
Turning to him, Jedrik spoke:
"The trainees have just been fed. That's part of their pay."
It was as though she'd read his mind, and now she watched him for some reaction.
McKie glanced around the training area. They'd just been fed here? There wasn't a scrap or crumb on the ground. He thought back to the restaurant, belatedly aware of a fastidious care with food that he'd seen and passed right over.
Again, Jedrik demonstrated the ease with which she read his reactions, his very thoughts.
"Nothing wasted," she said.
She turned away.
McKie looked where her attention went. Four women stood at the far side of the courtyard, weapons in their hands. Abruptly, McKie focused on the woman to the left, a competent-looking female of middle years. She was carrying a . . . it couldn't be, but . . .Jedrik headed across the courtyard toward the woman. McKie followed, peered closely at the woman's weapon. It was an enlarged version of the pentrate from his kit! Jedrik spoke briefly to the woman.
"Is that the new one?"
"Yes. Stiggy brought it up this morning."
"Useful?"
"We think so. It focuses the explosion with somewhat more concentration than our equipment."
"Good. Carry on."
There were more training cadre near the wall behind the women. One, an older man with one arm, tried to catch Jedrik's attention as she led McKie toward a nearby door.
"Could you tell us when we . . ."
"Not now."
In the passage beyond the door, Jedrik turned and confronted McKie.
"Your impressions of our training? Quick!"
"Not sufficiently versatile."
She'd obviously probed for his most instinctive reaction, demanding the gut response unmonitored by reason. The answer brought a glowering expression to her face, an emotional candor which he was not to appreciate until much later. Presently, she nodded.
"They are a commando. More functions of a commando should be interchangeable. Wait here."
She returned to the training area. McKie, watching through the open door, saw her speak to the woman with the pentrate. When Jedrik returned, she nodded to McKie with an expression of approval.
"Anything else?"
"They're awfully damned young. You should have a few seasoned officers among them to put a rein on dangerous impetuosity."
"Yes, I've already set that in motion. Hereafter, McKie, I want you to come out with me every morning for about an hour. Watch the training, but don't interfere. Report your reactions to me."
He nodded. Clearly, she considered him useful and that was a step in the right direction. But it was an idiotic assignment. These violent infants possessed weapons which could make Dosadi uninhabitable. There was an atavistic excitement in the situation, though. He couldn't deny that. Something in the Human psyche responded to mass violence - really, to violence of any sort. It was related to Human sexuality, an ancient stirring from the most primitive times.
Jedrik was moving on, however.
"Stay close."
They were climbing an inside stairway now and McKie, hurrying to keep up, found his thoughts locked on that pentrate in the hands of one of Jedrik's people. The speed with which they'd copied and enlarged it dazzled him. It was another demonstration of why Aritch feared Dosadi.
At the top of the stairs, Jedrik rapped briefly at a door. A male voice said, "Come in."
The door swung open, and McKie found himself presently in a small, unoccupied room with an open portal at the far wall into what appeared to be a larger, well-lighted area. Voices speaking so softly as to be unintelligible came from there. A low table and five cramped chairs occupied the small room. There were no windows, but a frosted overhead fixture provided shadowless illumination. A large sheet of paper with colored graph lines on it covered the low table.
A swish of fabric brought McKie's attention to the open portal. A short, slender woman in a white smock, grey hair, and the dark, penetrating stare of someone accustomed to command entered, followed by a slightly taller man in the same white. He looked older than the woman, except his hair remained a lustrous black. His eyes, too, held that air of command. The woman spoke.
"Excuse the delay, Jedrik. We've been changing the summation. There's now no point where Broey can anticipate and change the transition from riots to full-scale warfare."
McKie was surprised by the abject deference in her voice. This woman considered herself to be far below Jedrik. The man took the same tone, gesturing to chairs.
"Sit down, please. This chart is our summation."
As the woman turned toward him, McKie caught a strong whiff of something pungent on her breath, a not unfamiliar smell. He'd caught traces of it several times in their passage through the Warrens. She went on speaking as Jedrik and McKie slipped into chairs.
"This is not unexpected." She indicated the design on the paper.
The man intruded.
"We've been telling you for some time now that Tria is ready to come over."
"She's trouble," Jedrik said.
"But Gar . . ."
It was the woman, arguing, but Jedrik cut her off.
"I know: Gar does whatever she tells him to do. The daughter runs the father. He thinks she's the most wonderful thing that ever happened, able to . . ."
"Her abilities are not the issue," the man said.
The woman spoke eagerly.
"Yes, it's her influence on Gar that . . ."
"Neither of them anticipated my moves," Jedrik said, "but I anticipated their moves."
The man leaned across the table, his face close to Jedrik's. He appeared suddenly to McKie like a large, dangerous animal - dangerous because his actions could never be fully predicted. His hands twitched when he spoke.
"We've told you every detail of our findings, every source, every conclusion. Now, are you saying you don't share our assessment of . . ."
"You don't understand," Jedrik said.
The woman had drawn back. Now, she nodded.
Jedrik said:
"It isn't the first time I've had to reassess your conclusions. Hear me: Tria will leave Broey when she's ready, not when he's ready. It's the same for anyone she serves, even Gar."
They spoke in unison:
"Leave Gar?"
"Leave anyone. Tria serves only Tria. Never forget that. Especially don't forget it if she comes over to us."
The man and woman were silent.
McKie thought about what Jedrik had said. Her words were another indication that someone on Dosadi might have other than personal aims. Jedrik's tone was unmistakable: she censured and distrusted Tria because Tria served only selfish ambition. Therefore, Jedrik (and this other pair by inference) served some unstated mutual purpose. Was it a form of patriotism they served, species-oriented? BuSab agents were always alert for this dangerous form of tribal madness, not necessarily to suppress it, but to make certain it did not explode into a violence deadly to the ConSentiency.
The white-smocked woman, after mulling her own thoughts, spoke:
"If Tria can't be enlisted for . . . what I mean is, we can use her own self-serving to hold her." She corrected herself. "Unless you believe we cannot convince her we'll overcome Broey." She chewed at her lip, a fearful expression in her eyes.
A shrewd look came over Jedrik's face.
"What is it you suspect?"
The woman pointed to the chart on the table.
"Gar still shares in the major decisions. That shouldn't be, but it is. If he . . ."
The man spoke with subservient eagerness.
"He has some hold on Broey!"
The woman shook her head.
"Or Broey plays a game other than the one we anticipated."
Jedrik looked at the woman, the man, at McKie. She spoke as though to McKie, but McKie realized she was addressing the air.
"It's a specific thing. Gar has revealed something to Broey. I know what he's revealed. Nothing else could force Broey to behave this way." She nodded at the chart. "We have them!"
The woman ventured a question.
"Have we done well?"
"Better than you know."
The man smiled, then:
"Perhaps this is the time to ask if we could have larger rooms. The damn' children are always moving the furniture. We bump . . ."
"Not now!"
Jedrik arose. McKie followed her example.
"Let me see the children," Jedrik said.
The man turned to the open portal.
"Get out here, you! Jedrik wants you!"
Three children came scurrying from the other room. The woman didn't even look at them. The man favored them with an angry glare. He spoke to Jedrik.
"They've brought no food into this house in almost a week."
McKie studied the children carefully as he saw Jedrik was doing. They stood in a row just inside the room and, from their expressions, it was impossible to tell their reaction to the summons. They were two girls and a boy. The one on the right, a girl, was perhaps nine; on the left, another girl, was five or six. The boy was somewhat older, perhaps twelve or thirteen. He favored McKie with a glance. It was the glance of a predator who recognizes ready prey, but who already has eaten. All three bore more resemblance to the woman than to the man, but the parentage was obvious: the eyes, the set of the ears, nose . . .
Jedrik had completed her study. She gestured to the boy.
"Start sending him to the second training team."
"About time," the woman said. "We'll be glad to get him out of here."
"Come along, McKie."
In the hall, Jedrik said:
"To answer your question, they're pretty typical."
McKie, who had only wondered silently, swallowed in a dry throat. The petty goals of these people: to get a bigger room where they could live without bumping into furniture. He'd sensed no affection for each other in that couple. They were companions of convenience. There had been not the smallest hint of emotion for each other when they spoke. McKie found it difficult to imagine them making love, but apparently they did. They had produced three children.
Realization came like an explosion in his head. Of course they showed no emotion! What other protection did they have? On Dosadi, anything cared for was a club to beat you into somebody else's line. And there was another thing.
McKie spoke to Jedrik's back as they went down the stairs.
"That couple - they're addicted to something."
Surprisingly, Jedrik stopped, looked back up at him.
"How else do you think I hold such a pair? The substance is called dis. It's very rare. It comes from the far mountains, far beyond the . . . far beyond. The Rim sends parties of children as bearers to obtain dis for me. In a party of fifty, thirty can expect to die on such a trek. Do you get the measure of it, McKie?"
Once more, they headed down the stairs.
McKie, realizing she'd taken the time to teach him another lesson about Dosadi, could only follow, stunned, while she led him into a room where technicians bleached the sun-darkened areas of his skin.
When they emerged, he no longer carried the stigma of Pylash Gate.