The old Gowachin did not appear pleased by this.  He said:

"You once afforded me much amusement, McKie."

That might be a compliment, probably not.  Hard to tell.  Even if it were a compliment, coming from a Gowachin it would contain signal reservations, especially in legal matters.  McKie held his silence.  This Gowachin was big power and no mistake.  Whoever misjudged him would hear the Courtarena's final trumpet.

"I watched you argue your first case in our courts," the Gowachin said.  "Betting was nine-point-three to three-point-eight that we'd see your blood.  But when you concluded by demonstrating that eternal sloppiness was the price of liberty . . . ahhh, that was a master stroke.  It filled many a Legum with envy.  Your words clawed through the skin of Gowachin Law to get at the meat.  And at the same time you amused us.  That was the supreme touch."

Until this moment, McKie had not even suspected that there'd been amusement for anyone in that first case.  Present circumstances argued for truthfulness from the old Gowachin, however.  Recalling that first case, McKie tried to reassess it in the light of this revelation.  He remembered the case well.  The Gowachin had charged a Low Magister named Klodik with breaking his most sacred vows in an issue of justice.  Klodik's crime was the release of thirty-one fellow Gowachin from their primary allegiance to Gowachin Law and the purpose of that was to qualify the thirty-one for service in BuSab.  The hapless prosecutor, a much-admired Legum named Pirgutud, had aspired to Klodik's position and had made the mistake of trying for a direct conviction.  McKie had thought at the time that the wiser choice would've been to attempt discrediting the legal structure under which Klodik had been arraigned.  This would have thrown judgment into the area of popular choice, and there'd been no doubt that Klodik's early demise would've been popular.  Seeing this opening, McKie had attacked the prosecutor as a legalist, a stickler, one who preferred Old Law.  Victory had been relatively easy.

When it had come to the knife, however, McKie had found himself profoundly reluctant.  There'd been no question of selling Pirgutud back to his own Phylum.  BuSab had needed a non-Gowachin Legum . . . the whole non-Gowachin universe had needed this.  The few other non-Gowachin who'd attained Legum status were all dead, every last one of them in the Courtarena.  A current of animosity toward the Gowachin worlds had been growing.  Suspicion fed on suspicion.

Pirgutud had to die in the traditional, the formal, way.  He'd known it perhaps better than McKie.  Pirgutud, as required, had bared the heart area beside his stomach and clasped his hands behind his head.  This extruded the stomach circle, providing a point of reference.

The purely academic anatomy lessons and the practice sessions on lifelike dummies had come to deadly focus.

"Just to the left of the stomach circle imagine a small triangle with an apex at the center of the stomach circle extended horizontally and the base even with the bottom of the stomach circle.  Strike into the lower outside corner of this triangle and slightly upward toward the midline."

About the only satisfaction McKie had found in the event was that Pirgutud had died cleanly and quickly with one stroke.  McKie had not entered Gowachin Law as a "hacker."

What had there been in that case and its bloody ending to amuse the Gowachin?  The answer filled McKie with a profound sense of peril.

The Gowachin were amused at themselves because they had so misjudged me!  But I'd planned all along for them to misjudge me.  That was what amused them!

Having provided McKie with a polite period for reflection, the old Gowachin continued:

"I'd bet against you, McKie.  The odds, you understand?  You delighted me nonetheless.  You instructed us while winning your case in a classic manner which would've done credit to the best of us.  That is one of the Law's purposes, of course:  to test the qualities of those who choose to employ it.  Now what did you expect to find when you answered our latest summons to Tandaloor?"

The question's abrupt shift almost caught McKie by surprise.

I've been too long away from the Gowachin, he thought. I can't relax even for an instant.

It was almost a palpable thing:  if he missed a single beat of the rhythms in this room, he and an entire planet could fall before Gowachin judgment.  For a civilization which based its law on the Courtarena where any participant could be sacrificed, anything was possible.  McKie chose his next words with life-and-death care.

"You summoned me, that is true, but I came on official business of my Bureau.  It's the Bureau's expectations which concern me."

"Then you are in a difficult position because you're also a Legum of the Gowachin Bar subject to our demands.  Do you know me?"

This was a Magister, a Foremost-Speaker from the "Phylum of Phylums," no doubt of it.  He was a survivor in one of the most cruel traditions known to the sentient universe.  His abilities and resources were formidable and he was on his home ground.  McKie chose the cautious response.

"On my arrival I was told to come to this place at this time.  That is what I know."

The least thing that is known shall govern your acts.

This was the course of evidence for the Gowachin.  McKie's response put a legal burden on his questioner.

The old Gowachin's hands clutched with pleasure at the level of artistry to which this contest had risen.  There was a momentary silence during which Ceylang gathered her robe tightly and moved even closer to the swingdesk.  Now, there was tension in her movements.  The Magister stirred, said:

"I have the disgusting honor to be High Magister of the Running Phylum, Aritch by name."

As he spoke, his right hand thrust out, took the blue box, and dropped it into McKie's lap.  "I place the binding oath upon you in the name of the book!"

As McKie had expected, it was done swiftly.  He had the box in his hands while the final words of the ancient legal challenge were ringing in his ears.  No matter the ConSentient modifications of Gowachin Law which might apply in this situation, he was caught in a convoluted legal maneuvering.  The metal of the box felt cold against his fingers.  They'd confronted him with the High Magister.  The Gowachin were dispensing with many preliminaries.  This spoke of time pressures and a particular assessment of their own predicament.  McKie reminded himself that he was dealing with people who found pleasure in their own failures, could be amused by death in the Courtarena, whose most consummate pleasure came when the currents of their own Law were changed artistically.

McKie spoke with the careful formality which ritual required if he were to emerge alive from this room.

"Two wrongs may cancel each other.  Therefore, let those who do wrong do it together.  That is the true purpose of Law."

Gently, McKie released the simple swing catch on the box, lifted the lid to verify the contents.  This must be done with precise attention to formal details.  A bitter, musty odor touched his nostrils as the lid lifted.  The box held what he'd expected:  the book, the knife, the rock.  It occurred to McKie then that he was holding the original of all such boxes.  It was a thing of enormous antiquity - thousands upon thousands of standard years.  Gowachin professed the belief that the Frog God had created this box, this very box, and its contents as a model, the symbol of "the only workable Law."

Careful to do it with his right hand, McKie touched each item of the box in its turn, closed the lid and latched it.  As he did this, he felt that he stepped into a ghostly parade of Legums, names imbedded in the minstrel chronology of Gowachin history.

Bishkar who concealed her eggs . . .