A silk purse from a sow's ear!

His teachers had appeared to lead conventional Gowachin lives, keeping the usual numbers of fertile females in family tanks, weeding the Graluz tads with necessary Gowachin abandon.  On the surface of it, the whole thing had assumed a sense of the ordinary.  They had introduced him to intimate aspects of their lives when he'd inquired, answered his questions with disarming frankness.

McKie's Jedrik-amplified awareness saw this in a different light now.  The contests between Gowachin phylums stood out sharply.  And McKie knew now that he had not asked the right questions, that his teachers had been selected by different rules than those revealed to him at the time, that their private instructions from their Gowachin superiors contained nuances of vital importance which had been hidden from their student.

Poor Ceylang.

These were unsettling reflections.  They changed his understanding of Gowachin honor, called into question all of those inadvertent comparisons he'd made between Gowachin forms and the mandate of his own BuSab.  His BuSab training came in for the same questioning examination.

Why . . . why . . . why . . . why . . .

Law?  Gowachin Law?

The value in having a BuSab agent as a Legum of the Gowachin had gained a new dimension.  McKie saw these matters now as Jedrik had once seen through the God Wall.  There existed other forces only dimly visible behind the visible screen.  An unseen power structure lay out there - people who seldom appeared in public, decision makers whose slightest whim carried terrible import for countless worlds.  Many places, many worlds would be held in various degrees of bondage.  Dosadi had merely been an extreme case for a special purpose.

New bodies for old.  Immortality.  And a training ground for people who made terrible decisions.

But none of them would be as completely Dosadi as this Jedrik-amplified McKie.

He wondered where the Dosadi decision had been made.  Aritch had not shared in it; that was obvious.  There were others behind Aritch - Gowachin and non-Gowachin.  A shadowy power group existed.  It could have its seat on any world of the ConSentiency.  The power merchants would have to meet occasionally, but not necessarily face to face.  And never in the public eye.  Their first rule was secrecy.  They would employ many people who lived at the exposed fringes of their power, people to carry out shadowy commands - people such as Aritch.

And Bildoon.

What had the PanSpechi hoped to gain?  A permanent hold on his creche's ego?  Of course.  That . . . plus new bodies - Human bodies, undoubtedly, and unmarked by the stigmata of his PanSpechi origins.

Bildoon's behavior - and Aritch's - appeared so transparent now.  And there'd be a Mrreg nearby creating the currents in which Aritch swam.  Puppet leads to Puppet Master.

Mrreg.

That poor fool, Grinik, had revealed more than he thought.

And Bildoon.

"We have two points of entry," McKie said.

She agreed.

"Bildoon and Mrreg.  The latter is the more dangerous."

A crease beside McKie's nose began to itch.  He scratched at it absently, grew conscious that something had changed.  He stared around, found himself standing at the window and clothed in a female body.

Damn!  It happened so easily.

Jedrik stared up at him with his own eyes.  She spoke with his voice, but the overtones were pure Jedrik.  They both found this amusing.

"The powers of your BuSab."

He understood.

"Yes, the watchdogs of justice."

"Where were the watchdogs when my ancestors were lured into this Dosadi trap?"

"Watchdogs of justice, very dangerous role," he agreed.

"You know our feelings of outrage," she said.

"And I know what it is to have loving parents."

"Remember that when you talk to Bildoon."

Once more, McKie found himself on the bed, his old familiar body around him.

Presently, he felt the mental tendrils of a Taprisiot call, sensed Bildoon's awareness in contact with him.  McKie wasted no time.  The shadow forces were taking the bait.

"I have located Dosadi.  The issue will come to the Court arena.  No doubt of that.  I want you to make the preliminary arrangements.  Inform the High Magister Aritch that I make the formal imposition of the Legum.  One member of the judicial panel must be a Gowachin from Dosadi.  I have a particular Gowachin in mind.  His name is Broey."

"Where are you?"

"On Tandaloor."

"Is that possible?"

McKie masked his sadness.  Ahhh, Bildoon, how easily you are read.

"Dosadi is temporarily out of danger.  I have taken certain retaliatory precautions."

McKie broke the contact.

Jedrik spoke in a musing voice.

"Ohh, the perturbations we spread."

McKie had no time for such reflections.

"Broey will need help, a support team, an extremely reliable troop which I want you to select for him."

"Yes, and what of Gar and Tria?"

"Let them run free.  Broey will pick them up later."

McKie looked around the Legum office they'd assigned him.  Afternoon smells from Tandaloor's fern jungles came in an open window.  A low barrier separated him from the Courtarena with its ranks of scats all around.  His office and adjoining quarters were small but fitted with all requisite linkages to libraries and the infrastructure to summon witnesses and experts.  It was a green-walled space so deceptively ordinary that its like had beguiled more than one non-Gowachin into believing he knew how to perform here.  But these quarters represented a deceptive surface riding on Gowachin currents.  No matter that the ConSentient Pact modified what the Gowachin might do o here, this was Tandaloor, and the forms of the frog people dominated.

Seating himself at the single table in the office space, McKie felt the chairdog adjust itself beneath him.  It was good to have a chairdog again after Dosadi's unrelenting furniture.  He flipped a toggle and addressed the Gowachin face which appeared on the screen inset into his table.

"I require testimony from those who made the actual decision to set up the Dosadi experiment.  Are you prepared to meet this request?"

"Do you have the names of these people?"

Did this fool think he was going to blurt out:  "Mrreg"?

"If you force me to it," McKie warned, "I will bind Aritch to the Law and extract the names from him."

This had no apparent effect on the Gowachin.  He addressed McKie by name and title, adding:

"I leave the formalities to you.  Any witness I summon must have a name."

McKie suppressed a smile.  Suspicions confirmed.  This was a fact which the watchful Gowachin in the screen was late recognizing.  Someone else had read the interchange correctly, however.  Another, older, Gowachin face replaced the first one on the screen.

"What're you doing, McKie?"

"Determining how I will proceed with this case."

"You will proceed as a Legum of the Gowachin Bar."

"Precisely."

McKie waited.

The Gowachin peered narrowly at him from the screen.

"Jedrik?"

"You are speaking to Jorj X. McKie, a Legum of the Gowachin Bar."

Belatedly, the older Gowachin saw something of the way the Dosadi experience had changed McKie.

"Do you wish me to place you in contact with Aritch?"

McKie shook his head.  They were so damned obvious, these underlings.

"Aritch didn't make the Dosadi decision.  Aritch was chosen to take the blow if it came to that.  I will accept nothing less than the one who made that ultimate decision which launched the Dosadi experiment.