McKie interrupted.

"Call off that attack."

"But. . ."

"Call it off!"

She saw the direction of his reasoning. Broey had learned much from the force which Gar and Tria had trained. And Jedrik herself had provided the final emphasis in the lesson. She saw there was no need to change her orders to Pellas.

Pellas had taken it upon himself to obey McKie, not waiting for Jedrik's response, although she was his commander.  He already had a communicator off his belt and was speaking rapidly into it.

"Yes!  Dig in for a holding action."

He spoke in an aside to Jedrik.

"I can handle it from here."

In a few steps, Jedrik and McKie found themselves in her room.  Jedrik leaned with her back against the door, no longer trying to conceal her fatigue.

"McKie, you're becoming very Dosadi."

He crossed to the concealing panels, pulled out the bed.

"You need rest."

"No time."

Yes, she knew all about the sixty-hour deadline - less than fifty-five hours now.  Dosadi's destruction was a reaction she hadn't expected from "X," and she blamed herself.

He turned, studied her, saw that she'd passed some previously defined limit of personal endurance.  She possessed no amplifiers of muscles or senses, none of the sophisticated aids McKie could call upon in emergencies.  She had nothing but her own magnificent mind and body.  And she'd almost run them out.  Still, she pressed on.  This told him a great deal about her motivation.

McKie found himself deeply touched by the fact that she'd not once berated him for hiding that ultimate threat which Aritch held over Dosadi.  She'd accepted it that someone in Aritch's position could erase an entire planet, that McKie had been properly maneuvered into concealing this.

The alternative she offered filled McKie with misgivings.

Exchange bodies?

He understood now that this was Pcharky's function, the price the old Gowachin paid for survival.  Jedrik had explained.

"He will perform this service one more time.  In exchange, we release him from Dosadi."

"If he's one of the original . . . I mean, why doesn't he just leave?"

"We haven't provided him with a body he can use."

McKie had suppressed a feeling of horror.  But the history of Dosadi which Jedrik unfolded made it clear that a deliberate loophole had been left in the Caleban contract which imprisoned this planet.  Fannie Mae had even said it.  He could leave in another body.  That was the basic purpose behind this experiment.

New bodies for old!

Aritch had expected this to be the ultimate enticement, luring McKie into the Gowachin plot, enlisting McKie's supreme abilities and his powerful position in BuSab.

A new body for his old one.

All he'd have to do would be to cooperate in the destruction of a planet, conceal the real purpose of this project, and help set up another body-trade planet better concealed.

But Aritch had not anticipated what might be created by Jedrik plus McKie. They now shared a particular hate and motivation.

Jedrik still stood at the door waiting for him to decide.

"Tell me what to do," he said.

"You're sure that you're willing to . . ".

"Jedrik!"

He thought he saw the beginning of tears.  It wasn't that she hid them, but that they reached a suppression level barely visible and she defied them.  She found her voice, pointed.

"That panel beside the bed.  Pressure latch."

The panel swung wide to reveal two shimmering rods about two centimeters in diameter.  The rods danced with the energies of Pcharky's cage.  They emerged from the floor, bent at right angles about waist height and, as the panel opened, they rotated to extend into the room - two glowing handles about a meter apart.

McKie stared at them.  He felt a tightness in his breast.  What if he'd misread Jedrik?  Could he be sure of any Dosadi?  This room felt as familiar to him now as his quarters on CC.  It was here that Jedrik had taught him some of the most essential Dosadi lessons.  Yet . . . he knew the old pattern of what she proposed.  The discarded body with its donor ego had always been killed immediately.  Why?

"You'll have your answer to that question when we've done this thing."

A Dosadi response, ambiguous, heavy with alternatives.

He glanced around the room, found it hard to believe that he'd known this place only these few days.  His attention returned to the shimmering rods.  Another trap?

He knew he was wasting precious time, that he'd have to go through with this.  But what would it be like to find himself in Jedrik's flesh, wearing her body as he now wore his own?  PanSpechi transferred an ego from body to body.  But something unspeakable which they would not reveal happened to the donor.

McKie took a trembling breath.

It had to be done.  He and Jedrik shared a common purpose.  She'd had many opportunities to use Pcharky simply to escape or to extend her life . . . the way, he realized now, that Broey had used the Dosadi secret.  The fact that she'd waited for a McKie forced him to believe her.  Jedrik's followers trusted her - and they were Dosadi.  And if he and Jedrik escaped, Aritch would find himself facing a far different McKie from the one who'd come so innocently across the Rim.  They might yet stay Aritch's hand.

The enticement had been real, though.  No doubting that.  Shed an old body, get a new one.  And the Rim had been the major source of raw material:  strong, resilient bodies.  Survivors.

"What do I do?" he asked.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and she spoke from beside him.

"You are very Dosadi, McKie.  Astonishing."

He glanced at her, saw what it had cost her to move here from the door.  He slipped a hand around her waist, eased her to a sitting position on the bed and within reach of the rods.

"Tell me what to do."

She stared at the rods, and McKie realized it was rage driving her, rage against Aritch, the embodiment of "X," the embodiment of a contrived fate.  He understood this.  The solution of the Dosadi mystery had left him feeling empty, but on the edges there was such a rage as he'd never before experienced.  He was still BuSab, though.  He wanted no more bloodshed because of Dosadi, no more Gowachin justifications.

Jedrik's voice interrupted his thoughts and he saw that she also shared some of his misgivings.

"I come from a long line of heretics.  None of us doubted that Dosadi was a crime, that somewhere there was a justice to punish the criminals."

McKie almost sighed.  Not the old Messiah dream!  Not that!  He would not fill that role, even for Dosadi.

It was as though Jedrik read his mind.  Perhaps, with that simulation model of him she carried in her head, this was exactly what she did.

"We didn't expect a hero to come and save us.  We knew that whoever came would suffer from the same deficiencies as the other non-Dosadi we saw here.  You were so . . . slow.  Tell me, McKie, what drives a Dosadi?"

He almost said, "Power."

She saw his hesitation, waited.

"The power to change your condition," he said.

"You make me very proud, McKie."

"But how did you know I was . . ."

"McKie!"

He swallowed, then: "Yes, I guess that was the easiest part for you."

"It was much more difficult finding your abilities and shaping you into a Dosadi."

"But I might've been . . ."

"Tell me how I did it, McKie."

It was a test.  He saw that.  How had she known absolutely that he was the one she needed?

"I was sent here in a way that evaded Broey."

"And that's not easy."  Her glance flickered ceilingward.  "They tried to bait us from time to time.  Havvy . . ."

"Compromised, contaminated . . ."

"Useless.  Sometimes, a stranger looks out of Havvy's eyes."

"My eyes are my own."