"No doubt that early lover failed to show sufficient appreciation of your abilities, outside the bedroom, that is. Which one was it . . ."
And he named several accurate possibilities, lifting them from the memories he'd taken from Jedrik.
Now, she laughed. He sensed the untainted response, real humor and unchecked.
McKie was reminded in his turn of one of his early wives, and this made him think of the breeding situation from which Jedrik had come - no confusions between a choice for breeding mate and a lover taken for the available enjoyment of sex. One might even actively dislike the breeding mate.
Lovers . . . wives . . . What was the difference, except for the socially imprinted conventions out of which the roles arose? But Jedrik did remind him of that one particular woman, and he explored this memory, wondering if it might help him now in his relationship with Jedrik. He'd been in his midthirties and assigned to one of his first personal BuSab cases, sent out with no oldtimer to monitor and instruct him. The youngest Human agent in the Bureau's history ever to be released on his own, so it was rumored. The planet had been one of the Ylir group, very much unlike anything in McKie's previous experience: an ingrown place with deep entryways in all of the houses and an oppressive silence all around. No animals, no birds, no insects - just that awesome silence within which a fanatic religion was reported forming. All conversations were low voiced and full of subtle intonations which suggested an inner communication peculiar to Ylir and somehow making sport with all outsiders not privy to their private code. Very like Dosadi in this.
His wife of the moment, safely ensconced on Tutalsee, had been quite the opposite: gregarious, sportive, noisy.
Something about that Ylir case had sent McKie back to this wife with a sharpened awareness of her needs. The marriage had gone well for a long time, longer than any of the others. And he saw now why Jedrik reminded him of that one: they both protected themselves with a tough armor of femininity, but were extremely vulnerable behind that facade. When the armor collapsed, it collapsed totally. This realization puzzled McKie because he read his own reaction clearly: he was frightened.
In the eyeblink this evaluation took, Jedrik read him:
"We have not left Dosadi. We've taken it with us."
So that was why she'd made this contact, to be certain he mixed this datum into his evaluations. McKie looked out the open window. It would be dusk soon here on Tandaloor. The Gowachin home planet was a place which had defied change for thousands of standard years. In some respects, it was a backwater.
The ConSentiency will never be the same.
The tiny trickle of Dosadi which Aritch's people had hoped to cut off was now a roaring cataract. The people of Dosadi would insinuate themselves into niche after niche of ConSentient civilization. What could resist even the lowliest Dosadi? Laws would change. Relationships would assume profound and subtle differences. Everything from the most casual friendship to the most complex business relationship would take on some Dosadi character.
McKie recalled Aritch's parting question as Aritch had sent McKie to the jumpdoor which would put him on Dosadi.
"Ask yourself if there might be a price too high to pay for the Dosadi lesson."
That had been McKie's first clue to Aritch's actual motives and the word lesson had bothered him, but he'd missed the implications. With some embarrassment, McKie recalled his glib answer to Aritch's question:
"It depends on the lesson."
True, but how blind he'd been to things any Dosadi would have seen. How ignorant. Now, he indicated to Jedrik that he understood why she'd called such things to his attention.
"Aritch didn't look much beyond the uses of outrage and injustice . . ."
"And how to turn such things to personal advantage."
She was right, of course. McKie stared out at the gathering dusk. Yes, the species tried to make everything its own. If the species failed, then forces beyond it moved in, and so on, ad infinitum.
I do what I do.
He recalled those words of the sleeping monster with a shudder, felt Jedrik recoil. But she was proof even against this.
"What powers your ConSentiency had."
Past tense, right. And not our ConSentiency because that already was a thing of the past. Besides . . . she was Dosadi.
"And the illusions of power," she said.
He saw at last what she was emphasizing, and her own shared memories in his mind made the lesson doubly impressive. She'd known precisely what McKie's personal ego-focus might overlook. Yet, this was one of the glues which held the ConSentiency together.
"Who can imagine himself immune from any retaliation?" he quoted.
It was right out of the BuSab Manual.
Jedrik made no response.
McKie needed no more emphasis from her now. The lesson of history was clear. Violence bred violence. If this violence got out of hand, it ran a course depressing in its repetitive pattern. More often than not, that course was deadly to the innocent, the so-called "enlistment phase." The ex-innocents ignited more violence and more violence until either reason prevailed or all were destroyed. There were a sufficient number of cinder blocks which once had been planets to make the lesson clear. Dosadi had come within a hair of joining that uninhabited, uninhabitable list.
Before breaking contact, Jedrik had another point to make.
"You recall that in those final days, Broey increased the rations for his Human auxiliaries, his way of saying to them: 'You'll be turned out onto the Rim soon to tend for yourselves."'
"A Dosadi way of saying that."
"Correct. We always held that thought in reserve: that we should breed in such numbers that some would survive no matter what happened. We would thus begin producing species which could survive there without the city of Chu . . . or any other city designed solely to produce nonpoisonous foods."
"But there's always a bigger force waiting in the wings."
"Make sure Aritch understands that."
Choose containable violence when violence cannot be avoided. Better this than epidemic violence.
The senior attendant of the Courtarena, a squat and dignified Gowachin of the Assumptive Phylum, confronted McKie at the arena door with a confession:
"I have delayed informing you that some of your witnesses have been excluded by Prosecution challenge."
The attendant, whose name was Darak, gave a Gowachin shrug, waited.
McKie glanced beyond the attendant at the truncated oval of the arena entrance which framed a lower section of the audience seats. The seats were filled. He had expected some such challenge for this first morning session of the trial, saw Darak's words as a vital revelation. They were accepting his gambit. Darak had signaled a risky line of attack by those who guided Ceylang's performance. They expected McKie to protest. He glanced back at Aritch, who stood quietly submissive three steps behind his Legum. Aritch gave every appearance of having resigned himself to the arena's conditions.
"The forms must be obeyed."
Beneath that appearance lay the hoary traditions of Gowachin Law - The guilty are innocent. Governments always do evil. Legalists put their own interests first. Defense and prosecution are brother and sister. Suspect everything.
Aritch's Legum controlled the initial posture and McKie had chosen defense. It hadn't surprised him to be told that Ceylang would prosecute. McKie had countered by insisting that Broey sit on a judicial panel which would be limited to three members. This had caused a delay during which Bildoon had called McKie, probing for any betrayal. Bildoon's approach had been so obvious that McKie had at first suspected a feint within a feint.
"McKie, the Gowachin fear that you have a Caleban at your command. That's a force which they . . ."
"The more they fear the better."
McKie had stared back at the screen-framed face of Bildoon, observing the signs of strain. Jedrik was right: the non-Dosadi were very easy to read.
"But I'm told you left this Dosadi in spite of a Caleban contract which prohibited . . ."
"Let them worry. Good for them."