He blinked at the brightness, took a deep breath.

The Bureau.  The omnipresent, omniscient, omnivorous Bureau.  The one source of unmonitored governmental violence remaining in the ConSentiency.  Here lay the norm against which sanity measured itself.  Each choice made here demanded utmost delicacy.  Their common enemy was that never-ending sentient yearning for absolutes.  And each hour of every waking workday, BuSab in all of its parts asked itself:

"What are we if we succumb to unbridled violence?"

The answer was there in deepest awareness:

"Then we are useless."

ConSentient government worked because, no matter how they defined it, the participants believed in a common justice personally achievable.  The Government worked because BuSab sat at its core like a terrible watchdog able to attack itself or any seat of power with a delicately balanced immunity.  Government worked because there were places where it could not act without being chopped off.  An appeal to BuSab made the individual as powerful as the ConSentiency.  It all came down to the cynical, self-effacing behavior of the carefully chosen BuSab tentacles.

I don't feel much like a BuSab tentacle this morning, McKie thought.

In his advancing years, he'd often experienced such mornings.  He had a personal way of dealing with this mood:  he buried himself in work.

McKie turned, crossed to the baffle into his bath, where he turned his body over to the programmed ministrations of his morning toilet.  The psyche-mirror on the bath's far wall reflected his body while it examined and adjusted to his internal conditions.  His eyes told him he was still a squat, dark-skinned gnome of a Human with red hair, features so large they suggested an impossible kinship with the frog people of the Gowachin.  The mirror did not reflect his mind, considered by many to be the sharpest legal device in the ConSentiency.

The Daily Schedule began playing to McKie as he emerged from the bath.  The DS suited its tone to his movements and the combined analysis of his psychophysical condition.

"Good morning, ser," it fluted.

McKie, who could interpret the analysis of his mood from the DS tone, put down a flash of resentment.  Of course he felt angry and concerned.  Who wouldn't under these circumstances?

"Good morning, you dumb inanimate object," he growled.  He slipped into a supple armored pullover, dull green and with the outward appearance of cloth.

The DS waited for his head to emerge.

"You wanted to be reminded, ser, that there is a full conference of the Bureau Directorate at nine local this morning, but the . . ."

"Of all the stupid . . ." McKie's interruption stopped the DS.  He'd been meaning for some time to reprogram the damned thing.  No matter how carefully you set them, they always got out of phase.  He didn't bother to bridle his mood, merely spoke the key words in full emotional spate:  "Now you hear me, machine:  don't you ever again choose that buddy-buddy conversational pattern when I'm in this mood!  I want nothing less than a reminder of that conference.  When you list such a reminder, don't even suggest remotely that it's my wish.  Understood?"

"Your admonition recorded and new program instituted, ser."  The DS adopted a brisk, matter of fact tone as it continued:  "There is a new reason for alluding to the conference."

"Well, get on with it."

McKie pulled on a pair of green shorts and matching kilt, of armored material identical to that of the pullover.

The DS continued:

"The conference was alluded to, ser, as introduction to a new datum:  you have been asked not to attend."

McKie, bending to fit his feet into self-powered racing boots, hesitated, then:

"But they're still going to have a showdown meeting with all the Gowachin in the Bureau?"

"No mention of that, ser.  The message was that you are to depart immediately this morning on the field assignment which was discussed with you.  Code Geevee was invoked.  An unspecified Gowachin Phylum has asked that you proceed at once to their home planet.  That would be Tandaloor.  You are to consult there on a problem of a legal nature."

McKie finished fitting the boots, straightened.  He could feel all of his accumulated years as though there'd been no geriatric intervention.  Geevee invoked a billion kinds of hell.  It put him on his own with but one shopside backup facility:  a Taprisiot monitor.  He'd have his own Taprisiot link sitting safely here on CC while he went out and risked his vulnerable flesh.  The Taprisiot served only one function:  to note his death and record every aspect of his final moments - every thought, every memory. This would be part of the next agent's briefing.  And the next agent would get his own Taprisiot monitor etcetera, etcetera, etcetera . . . BuSab was notorious for gnawing away at its problems.  The Bureau never gave up.  But the astronomical cost of such a Taprisiot monitor left the operative so gifted with only one conclusion:  odds were not in his favor.  There'd be no accolades, no cemetery rites for a dead hero . . . probably not even the physical substance of a hero for private grieving.

McKie felt less and less heroic by the minute.

Heroism was for fools and BuSab agents were not employed for their foolishness.  He saw the reasoning, though.  He was the best qualified non-Gowachin for dealing with the Gowachin.  He looked at the nearest DS voder.

"Was it suggested that someone doesn't want me at that conference?"

"There was no such speculation."

"Who gave you this message?"

"Bildoon.  Verified voiceprint.  He asked that your sleep not be interrupted, that the message be given to you on awakening."

"Did he say he'd call back or ask me to call him?"

"No."

"Did Bildoon mention Dosadi?"

"He said the Dosadi problem is unchanged.  Dosadi is not in my banks, ser.  Did you wish me to seek more info . . ."

"No! I'm to leave immediately?"

"Bildoon said your orders have been cut.  In relationship to Dosadi, he said, and these are his exact words:  'The worst is probable.  They have all the motivation required.' "

McKie ruminated aloud: "All the motivation . . . selfish interest or fear. . ."

"Ser, are you inquiring of . . ."

"No, you stupid machine!  I'm thinking out loud.  People do that.  We have to sort things out in our heads, put a proper evaluation on available data."

"You do it with extreme inefficiency."

This startled McKie into a flash of anger.  "But this job takes a sentient, a person, not a machine!  Only a person can make the responsible decision.  And I'm the only agent who understands them sufficiently."

"Why not set a Gowachin agent to ferret out their . . ."

"So you've worked it out?"

"It was not difficult, even for a machine.  Sufficient clues were provided.  And since you'll get a Taprisiot monitor, the project involves danger to your person.  While I do not have specifics about Dosadi, the clear inference is that the Gowachin have engaged in questionable activity.  Let me remind McKie that the Gowachin do not admit guilt easily.  Very few non-Gowachin are considered by them to be worthy of their company and confidence.  They do not like to feel dependent upon non-Gowachin.  In fact, no Gowachin enjoys any dependent condition, not even when dependent upon another Gowachin.  This is at the root of their law."

This was a more emotionally loaded conversation than McKie had ever before heard from his DS.  Perhaps his constant refusal to accept the thing on a personal anthropomorphic basis had forced it into this adaptation.  He suddenly felt almost shy with the DS.  What it had said was pertinent, and more than that, vitally important in a particular way:  chosen to help him to the extent the DS was capable.  In McKie's thoughts, the DS was suddenly transformed into a valued confidante.