In the eyeblink this evaluation took, Jedrik read him:

"We have not left Dosadi.  We've taken it with us."

So that was why she'd made this contact, to be certain he mixed this datum into his evaluations.  McKie looked out the open window.  It would be dusk soon here on Tandaloor.  The Gowachin home planet was a place which had defied change for thousands of standard years.  In some respects, it was a backwater.

The ConSentiency will never be the same.

The tiny trickle of Dosadi which Aritch's people had hoped to cut off was now a roaring cataract. The people of Dosadi would insinuate themselves into niche after niche of ConSentient civilization.  What could resist even the lowliest Dosadi?  Laws would change.  Relationships would assume profound and subtle differences.  Everything from the most casual friendship to the most complex business relationship would take on some Dosadi character.

McKie recalled Aritch's parting question as Aritch had sent McKie to the jumpdoor which would put him on Dosadi.

"Ask yourself if there might be a price too high to pay for the Dosadi lesson."

That had been McKie's first clue to Aritch's actual motives and the word lesson had bothered him, but he'd missed the implications.  With some embarrassment, McKie recalled his glib answer to Aritch's question:

"It depends on the lesson."

True, but how blind he'd been to things any Dosadi would have seen.  How ignorant.  Now, he indicated to Jedrik that he understood why she'd called such things to his attention.

"Aritch didn't look much beyond the uses of outrage and injustice . . ."

"And how to turn such things to personal advantage."

She was right, of course.  McKie stared out at the gathering dusk.  Yes, the species tried to make everything its own.  If the species failed, then forces beyond it moved in, and so on, ad infinitum.

I do what I do.

He recalled those words of the sleeping monster with a shudder, felt Jedrik recoil.  But she was proof even against this.

"What powers your ConSentiency had."

Past tense, right.  And not our ConSentiency because that already was a thing of the past.  Besides . . . she was Dosadi.

"And the illusions of power," she said.

He saw at last what she was emphasizing, and her own shared memories in his mind made the lesson doubly impressive.  She'd known precisely what McKie's personal ego-focus might overlook.  Yet, this was one of the glues which held the ConSentiency together.

"Who can imagine himself immune from any retaliation?" he quoted.

It was right out of the BuSab Manual.

Jedrik made no response.

McKie needed no more emphasis from her now.  The lesson of history was clear.  Violence bred violence.  If this violence got out of hand, it ran a course depressing in its repetitive pattern.  More often than not, that course was deadly to the innocent, the so-called "enlistment phase."  The ex-innocents ignited more violence and more violence until either reason prevailed or all were destroyed.  There were a sufficient number of cinder blocks which once had been planets to make the lesson clear.  Dosadi had come within a hair of joining that uninhabited, uninhabitable list.

Before breaking contact, Jedrik had another point to make.

"You recall that in those final days, Broey increased the rations for his Human auxiliaries, his way of saying to them:  'You'll be turned out onto the Rim soon to tend for yourselves."'

"A Dosadi way of saying that."

"Correct.  We always held that thought in reserve:  that we should breed in such numbers that some would survive no matter what happened.  We would thus begin producing species which could survive there without the city of Chu . . . or any other city designed solely to produce nonpoisonous foods."

"But there's always a bigger force waiting in the wings."

"Make sure Aritch understands that."

The senior attendant of the Courtarena, a squat and dignified Gowachin of the Assumptive Phylum, confronted McKie at the arena door with a confession:

"I have delayed informing you that some of your witnesses have been excluded by Prosecution challenge."

The attendant, whose name was Darak, gave a Gowachin shrug, waited.

McKie glanced beyond the attendant at the truncated oval of the arena entrance which framed a lower section of the audience seats.  The seats were filled.  He had expected some such challenge for this first morning session of the trial, saw Darak's words as a vital revelation.  They were accepting his gambit.  Darak had signaled a risky line of attack by those who guided Ceylang's performance.  They expected McKie to protest.  He glanced back at Aritch, who stood quietly submissive three steps behind his Legum.  Aritch gave every appearance of having resigned himself to the arena's conditions.

"The forms must be obeyed."

Beneath that appearance lay the hoary traditions of Gowachin Law - The guilty are innocent.  Governments always do evil.  Legalists put their own interests first.  Defense and prosecution are brother and sister.  Suspect everything.

Aritch's Legum controlled the initial posture and McKie had chosen defense.  It hadn't surprised him to be told that Ceylang would prosecute.  McKie had countered by insisting that Broey sit on a judicial panel which would be limited to three members.  This had caused a delay during which Bildoon had called McKie, probing for any betrayal.  Bildoon's approach had been so obvious that McKie had at first suspected a feint within a feint.

"McKie, the Gowachin fear that you have a Caleban at your command.  That's a force which they . . ."

"The more they fear the better."

McKie had stared back at the screen-framed face of Bildoon, observing the signs of strain.  Jedrik was right:  the non-Dosadi were very easy to read.

"But I'm told you left this Dosadi in spite of a Caleban contract which prohibited . . ."

"Let them worry.  Good for them."

McKie watched Bildoon intently without betraying a single emotion.  No doubt there were others monitoring this exchange.  Let them begin to see what they faced.  Puppet Bildoon was not about to uncover what those shadowy forces wanted.  They had Bildoon here on Tandaloor, though, and this told McKie an essential fact.  The PanSpechi chief of BuSab was being offered as bait.  This was precisely the response McKie sought.

Bildoon had ended the call without achieving his purpose.  McKie had nibbled only enough to insure that Bildoon would be offered again as bait.  And the puppet masters still feared that McKie had a Caleban at his beck and call.

No doubt the puppet masters had tried to question their God Wall Caleban.  McKie hid a smile, thinking how that conversation must have gone.  The Caleban had only to quote the letter of the contract, and if the questioners became accusatory the Caleban would respond with anger, ending the exchange.  And the Caleban's words would be so filled with terms subject to ambiguous translation that the puppet masters would never be certain of what they heard.

As he stared at the patiently waiting Darak, McKie saw that they had a problem, those shadowy figures behind Aritch.  Laupuk had removed Mrreg from their councils and his advice would have been valuable now.  McKie had deduced that the correct reference was "The Mrreg" and that Aritch headed the list of possible successors.  Aritch might be Dosadi-trained but he was not Dosadi-born.  There was a lesson in this that the entire ConSentiency would soon learn.

And Broey as a judge in this case remained an unchangeable fact.  Broey was Dosadi-born.  The Caleban contract had kept Broey on his poison planet, but it had not limited him to a Gowachin body.  Broey knew what it was to be both Human and Gowachin.  Broey knew about the Pcharkys and their use by those who'd held Dosadi in bondage.  And Broey was now Gowachin.  The forces opposing McKie dared not name another Gowachin judge.  They must choose from the other species.  They had an interesting quandary.  And without a Caleban assistant, there were no more Pcharkys to be had on Dosadi.  The most valuable coin the puppet masters had to offer was lost to them.  They'd be desperate.  Some of the older ones would be very desperate.