"What happens if you touch the bars?" McKie asked.

The Gowachin jowls puffed in a faint shrug.

McKie pointed.

"There's energy in those bars.  What is that energy?  How is it maintained?"

Pcharky responded in a hoarse croaking.

"How is the universe maintained?  When you first see a thing, is that when it was created?"

"Is it a Caleban thing?"

Shrug.

McKie walked around the cage, studying it.  There were glistening bulbs wherever the bars crossed each other.  The rods upon which the hammock was suspended came from the ceiling. They penetrated the cage top without touching it.  The hammock itself appeared to be fabric.  It was faintly blue.  He returned to his position facing Pcharky.

"Do they feed you?"

No answer.

Ardir spoke from behind him.

"His food is lowered from the ceiling.  His excreta are hosed into the reclamation lines."

McKie spoke over his shoulder.

"I see no door into the cage.  How'd he get in there?"

"It was built around him according to his own instructions."

"What are the bulbs where the bars cross?"

"They came into existence when he activated the cage."

"How'd he do that?"

"We don't know.  Do you?"

McKie shook his head from side to side.

"How does Pcharky explain this?"

"He doesn't."

McKie had turned away to face Ardir, probing, moving the focus of questions from Pcharky to the planetary society itself.  Ardir's answers, especially on matters of religion and history, were banal.

Later, as he stood in the room off the command post reviewing the experience, McKie found his thoughts touching on a matter which had not even come into question.

Jedrik and her people had known for a long time that Dosadi was a Gowachin creation.  They'd known it long before McKie had appeared on the scene.  It was apparent in the way they focused on Pcharky, in the way they reacted to Broey.  McKie had added one significant datum:  that Dosadi was a Gowachin experiment.  But Jedrik's people were not using him in the ways he might expect.  She said he was the key to the God Wall, but how was he that key?

The answer was not to be found in Ardir.  That one had not tried to evade McKie's questions, but the answers betrayed a severely limited scope to Ardir's knowledge and imagination.

McKie felt deeply disturbed by this insight.  It was not so much what the man said as what he did not say when the reasons for speaking openly in detail were most demanding.  Ardir was no dolt.  This was a Human who'd risen high in Jedrik's hierarchy.  Many speculations would've crossed his mind.  Yet he made no mention of even the more obvious speculations.  He raised no questions about the way Dosadi history ran to a single cutoff point in the past without any trace of evolutionary beginnings.  He did not appear to be a religious person and even if he were, Dosadi would not permit the more blatant religious inhibitions.  Yet Ardir refused to explore the most obvious discrepancies in those overt religious attitudes McKie had been told to expect.  Ardir played out the right attitudes, but there was no basis for them underneath.  It was all surface.

McKie suddenly despaired of ever getting a deep answer from any of these people - even from Jedrik.

An increase in the noise level out in the command post caught McKie's attention.  He opened the door, stood in the doorway to study the other room.

A new map had been posted on the far wall.  There was a position board, transparent and covered with yellow, red, and blue dots, over the map.  Five women and a man - all wearing earphones - worked the board, moving the colored markers.  Jedrik stood with her back to McKie, talking to several commanders who'd just come in from the streets.  They still carried their weapons and packs.  It was their conversation which had attracted McKie.  He scanned the room, noted two communications screens at the left wall, both inactive.  They were new since his last view of the room and he wondered at their purpose.

An aide leaned in from the hallway, called out:

"Gate Twenty-One just reported.  Everything has quieted there.  They want to know if they should keep their reserves on the alert."

"Have them stand down," Jedrik said.

"The two prisoners are being brought here," the aide added.

"I see it," Jedrik said.

She nodded toward the position board.

McKie, following the direction of her gaze, saw two yellow markers being moved with eight blue companions.  Without knowing how he understood this, he saw that this must be the prisoners and their escort.  There were tensions in the command post which told him this was an important event.  Who were those prisoners?

One of Jedrik's commanders spoke.

"I saw the monitor at . . ."

She was not listening to him and he broke off.  Two people on the position board exchanged places, trading earphones.  The messenger who'd called out the information about the gate and the prisoners had gone.  Another messenger came in presently, conferred in a soft voice with people near the door.

In a few moments, eight young Human males entered carrying Gar and Tria securely trussed with what appeared to be shining wire.  McKie recognized the pair from Aritch's briefings.  The escort carried their prisoners like so much meat, one at each leg and each arm.

"Over here," Jedrik said, indicating two chairs facing her.

McKie found himself suddenly aware, in an extremely Dosadi way, of many of the nuances here.  It filled him with elation.

The escort crossed the room, not bothering to steer clear of all the furniture.  The messenger from the hallway delayed his departure, reluctant to leave.  He'd recognized the prisoners and knew something important was about to happen.

Gar and Tria were dumped into the two chairs.

"Release their bindings," Jedrik said.

The escort obeyed.

Jedrik waited, staring across at the position board.  The two yellow and eight blue markers had been removed.  She continued to stare at the board, though.  Something there was more important than these two prisoners.  She pointed to a cluster of red markers in an upper corner.

"See to that."

One of her commanders left the room.

McKie took a deep breath.  He'd spotted the flicker of her movement toward the commander who'd obeyed.  So that was how she did it!  McKie moved farther into the room to put Jedrik in profile to him.  She made no response to his movement, but he knew she was aware of him.  He stepped closer to what he saw as the limit of her tolerance, noted a faint smile as she turned toward the prisoners.

There was an abrupt silence, one of those uncomfortable moments when people realize there are things they must do, but everyone is reluctant to start.  The messenger still stood by the door to the hall, obviously wanting to see what would happen here.  The escort who'd brought the prisoners remained standing in a group at one side.  They were almost huddled, as though seeking protection in their own numbers.

Jedrik glanced across at the messenger.

"You may go."

She nodded to the escort.

"And you."

McKie held his cautious distance, waiting, but Jedrik took no notice of him.  He saw that he not only would be allowed to stay, but that he was expected to use his wits, his off-world knowledge.  Jedrik had read things in his presence:  a normal distrust, caution, patience.  And the fears, of course.

Jedrik took her time with the prisoners.  She leaned forward, examined first Tria, then Gar.  From the way she looked at them, it was clear to McKie she weighed many possibilities on how to deal with this pair.  She was also building the tensions and this had its effect.  Gar broke.

"Broey has a way of describing people such as you." Gar said.  "He calls you 'rockets,' which is to say you are like a display which shoots up into the sky - and falls back."