"The first thing Bahrank reported about you."

"But even before that . . ."

"Yes?"

"They used Havvy to tell you I was coming . . . and he told you that you could use my body.  He had to be truthful with you up to a point.  You could read Havvy!  How clever they thought they were being!  I had to be vulnerable . . . really vulnerable."

"The first thing . . ."

". . . you found out about me."  He nodded.  "Suspicions confirmed.  All of that money on my person.  Bait.  I was someone to be eliminated.  I was a powerful enemy of your enemies."

"And you were angered by the right things."

"You saw that?"

"McKie, you people are so easy to read.  So easy!"

"And the weapons I carried.  You were supposed to use those to destroy yourselves.  The implications . . ."

"I would've seen that if I'd had first-hand experience of Aritch.  You knew what he intended for us.  My mistake was to read your fears as purely personal.  In time . . ."

"We're wasting time."

"You fear we'll be too late?"

Once more, he looked at the shimmering rods.  What was it Pcharky did?  McKie felt events rushing over him, engulfing him.  What bargain had Jedrik really driven with Pcharky?  She saw the question on his face.

"My people knew all along that Pcharky was just a tool of the God who held us prisoner.  We forced a bargain on that God - that Caleban.  Did you think we would not recognize the identity between the powers of that cage and the powers of our God Wall?  No more delays, McKie.  It's time to test our bargain."

"Very well.  I'll tell you what bothers me," Ceylang said.  "There are too many things about this problem that I fail to understand."

From her seated position, she looked across a small, round room at Aritch, who floated gently in a tiny blue pool.  His head at the pool's lip was almost on a level with Ceylang's.  Again, they had worked late into the night.  She understood the reasons for this, the time pressures were quite apparent, but the peculiar Gowachin flavor of her training kept her in an almost constant state of angry questioning.

This whole thing was so un-Wreave!

Ceylang smoothed the robe over her long body.  The robe was blue now, one step away from Legum black.  Appropriately, there was blue all around her:  the walls, the floor, the ceiling, Aritch's pool.

The High Magister rested his chin on the pool's edge to speak.

"I require specific questions before I can even hope to penetrate your puzzlement."

"Will McKie defend or prosecute?  The simulator . . ."

"Damn the simulator!  Odds are that he'll make the mistake of prosecuting.  Your own reasoning powers should . . ."

"But if he doesn't?"

"Then selection of the judicial panel becomes vital."

Ceylang twisted her body to one side, feeling the chairdog adjust for her comfort.  As usual, Aritch's answer only deepened her sense of uncertainty.  She voiced that now.

"I continue to have this odd feeling that you intend me to play some role which I'm not supposed to discover until the very last instant."

Aritch breathed noisily through his mouth, splashed water onto his head.

"This all may be moot.  By this time day after tomorrow, Dosadi and McKie may no longer exist."

"Then I will not advance to Legum?"

"Oh, I'm fairly certain you'll be a Legum."

She studied him, sensing irony, then:

"What a delicate line you walk, High Magister."

"Hardly.  My way is wide and clear.  You know the things I cannot countenance.  I cannot betray the Law or my people."

"I have similar inhibitions.  But this Dosadi thing - so tempting."

"So dangerous!  Would a Wreave don Human flesh to learn the Human condition?  Would you permit a Human to penetrate Wreave society in this . . ."

"There are some who might conspire in this!  There are even Gowachin who . . ."

"The opportunities for misuse are countless."

"Yet you say that McKie already is more Gowachin than a Gowachin."

Aritch's webbed hands folded over the pool's edge, the claws extended.

"We risked much in training him for this task."

"More than you risk with me?"

Aritch withdrew his hands, stared at her, unblinking.

"So that's what bothers you."

"Precisely."

"Think, Ceylang, how near the core of Wreavedom you would permit me to come.  Thus far and no farther will we permit you."

"And McKie?"

"May already have gone too far for us to permit his continued existence."

"I heed your warning, Aritch.  But I remain puzzled as to why the Calebans couldn't prevent . . ."

"They profess not to understand the ego transfer.  But who can understand a Caleban, let alone control one in a matter so delicate?  Even this one who created the God Wall . . ."

"It's rumored that McKie understands Calebans."

"He denies it."

She rubbed her pocked left jowl with a prehensile mandible, felt the many scars of her passage through the Wreave triads.  Family to family to family until it was a single gigantic family.  Yet, all were Wreave.  This Dosadi thing threatened a monstrous parody of Wreavedom.  Still . . .

"So fascinating," she murmured.

"That's its threat."

"We should pray for the death of Dosadi."

"Perhaps."

She was startled.

"What . . ."

"This might not die with Dosadi.  Our sacred bond assures that you will leave here with this knowledge.  Many Gowachin know of this thing."

"And McKie."

"Infections have a way of spreading," Aritch said.  "Remember that if this comes to the Courtarena."

"McKie?"

It was the familiar Caleban presence in his awareness, as though he heard and felt someone (or something) which he knew was not there.

The preparation had been deceptively simple.  He and Jedrik clasped hands, his right hand and her left, and each grasped one of the shimmering rods with the other hand.

McKie did not have a ready identity for this Caleban and wondered at the questioning in her voice.  He agreed, however, that he was indeed McKie,

shaping the thought as subvocalized conversation.  As he spoke, McKie was acutely aware of Jedrik beside him.  She was more than just another person now.  He

carried a tentative simulation model of her, sometimes anticipating her responses.

"You make mutual agreement?" the Caleban asked.

McKie sensed Pcharky then:  a distant presence, the monitor for this experience.  It was as though Pcharky had been reduced to a schematic which the Caleban followed, a set of complex rules, many of which could not be translated into words.  Some part of McKie responded to this as though a monster awakened within him, a sleeping monster who sat up full of anger at being aroused thus, demanding: