The Dosadi Experiment

And they could not stamp out (not yet) Keila Jedrik because she had seen what she had seen.  Two by two the incompatible things ebbed and flowed around her, in the city of Chu and the surrounding Rim.  It was the same in every case:  a society which made use of one of these things could not naturally be a society which used the other.

Not naturally.

All around her, Jedrik sensed Chu with its indigestible polarities.  They had only two species:  Human and Gowachin.  Why two? Were there no other species in this universe?  Subtle hints in some of Dosadi's artifacts suggested an evolution for appendages other than the flexible fingers of Gowachin and Human.

Why only one city on all of Dosadi?

Dogma failed to answer.

The Rim hordes huddled close, always seeking a way into Chu's insulated purity.  But they had a whole planet behind them.  Granted it was a poisonous planet, but it had other rivers, other places of potential sanctuary.  The survival of both species argued for the building of more sanctuaries, many more than that pitiful hole which Gar and Tria thought they masterminded.  No . . . Chu stood alone - almost twenty kilometers wide and forty long, built on hills and silted islands where the river slowed in its deep canyon.  At last count, some eighty-nine million people lived here and three times that number eked a short life on the Rim - pressing, always pressing for a place in the poison-free city.

Give us your precious bodies, you stupid Rimmers!

They heard the message, knew its import and defied it.  What had the people of Dosadi done to be imprisoned here?  What had their ancestors done?  It was right to build a religion upon hate for such ancestors . . . provided such ancestors were guilty.

Jedrik leaned toward the window, peered upward at the God Wall, that milky translucence which imprisoned Dosadi, yet through which those such as this Jorj X. McKie could come at will.  She hungered to see McKie in person, to confirm that he had not been contaminated as Havvy had been contaminated.

It was a McKie she required now.  The transparently contrived nature of Dosadi told her that there must be a McKie.  She saw herself as the huntress, McKie her natural prey.  The false identity she'd built in this room was part of her bait.  Now, in the season of McKie, the underlying religious cant by which Dosadi's powerful maintained their private illusions would crumble.  She could already see the begi

She took a deep breath.  There was a purity in what was about to happen, a simplification.  She was about to divest herself of one of her two lives, taking all of her awareness into the persona of that other Keila Jedrik which all of Dosadi would soon know.  Her people had kept her secret well, hiding a fat and sleazy blonde person from their fellow Dosadis, exposing just enough of that one to "X" that the powers beyond the God Wall might react in the proper design.  She felt cleansed by the fact that the disguise of that other life had begun to lose its importance.  The whole of her could begin to surface in that other place.  And McKie had precipitated this metamorphosis.  Jedrik's thoughts were clear and direct now:

Come into my trap, McKie.  You will take me higher than the palace apartments of the Council Hills.

Or into a deeper hell than any nightmare has imagined.

***

How to start a war?  Nurture your own latent hungers for power.  Forget that only madmen pursue power for its own sake.  Let such madmen gain power - even you.  Let such madmen act behind their conventional masks of sanity.  Whether their masks be fashioned from the delusions of defense or the theological aura of law, war will come.

The odalarm awoke Jorj X. McKie with a whiff of lemon.  For just an instant his mind played tricks on him.  He thought he was on Tutalsee's gentle planetary ocean floating softly on his garlanded island.  There were lemons on his floating island, banks of Hibiscus and carpets of spicy Alyssum.  His bowered cottage lay in the path of perfumed breezes and the lemon . . .

Awareness came.  He was not on Tutalsee with a loving companion; he was on a trained bedog in the armored efficiency of his Central Central apartment; he was back in the heart of the Bureau of Sabotage; he was back at work.

McKie shuddered.

A planet full of people could die today . . . or tomorrow.

It would happen unless someone solved this Dosadi mystery.  Knowing the Gowachin as he did, McKie was convinced of it.  The Gowachin were capable of cruel decisions, especially where their species pride was at stake, or for reasons which other species might not understand.  Bildoon, his Bureau chief, assessed this crisis the same way.  Not since the Caleban problem had such enormity crossed the ConSentient horizon.

But where was this endangered planet, this Dosadi?

After a night of sleep suppression, the briefings about Dosadi came back vividly as though part of his mind had remained at work sharpening the images.  Two operatives, one Wreave and one Laclac, had made the report.  The two were reliable and resourceful.  Their sources were excellent, although the information was sparse.  The two also were bucking for promotion at a time when Wreaves and Laclacs were hinting at discrimination against their species.  The report required special scrutiny.  No BuSab agent, regardless of species, was above some internal testing, a deception designed to weaken the Bureau and gain coup merits upon which to ride into the director's office.

However, BuSab was still directed by Bildoon, a PanSpechi in Human form, the fourth member of his creche to carry that name.  It had been obvious from Bildoon's first words that he believed the report.

"McKie, this thing could set Human and Gowachin at each others' throats."

It was an understandable idiom, although in point of fact you would go for the Gowachin abdomen to carry out the same threat.  McKie already had acquainted himself with the report and, from internal evidence to which his long association with the Gowachin made him sensitive, he shared Bildoon's assessment.  Seating himself in a grey chairdog across the desk from the director in the rather small, windowless office Bildoon had lately preferred, McKie shifted the report from one hand to the other.  Presently, recognizing his own nervous ma

"Why couldn't they pinpoint this Dosadi's location?"  McKie asked.

"It's known only to a Caleban."

"Well, they'll . . ."

"The Calebans refuse to respond."

McKie stared across the desk at Bildoon.  The polished surface reflected a second image of the BuSab director, an inverted image to match the upright one.  McKie studied the reflection.  Until you focused on Bildoon's faceted eyes (how like an insect's eyes they were), this PanSpechi appeared much like a Human male with dark hair and pleasant round face.  Perhaps he'd put on more than the form when his flesh had been molded to Human shape.  Bildoon's face displayed emotions which McKie read in Human terms.  The director appeared angry.

McKie was troubled.

"Refused?"

"The Calebans don't deny that Dosadi exists or that it's threatened.  They refuse to discuss it."

"Then we're dealing with a Caleban contract and they're obeying the terms of that contract."

Recalling that conversation with Bildoon as he awakened in his apartment, McKie lay quietly thinking.  Was Dosadi some new extension of the Caleban Question?

It's right to fear what we don't understand.

The Caleban mystery had eluded ConSentient investigators for too long.  He thought of his recent conversation with Fa