McKie smelled familiar flowers, glimpsed the bowers of his Tutalsee island before the door blinked out of existence, hiding Jedrik and the island from him.  Tutalsee?  The moment of shocked understanding delayed him.  She'd counted on that!  He recovered, sent his mind leaping after her.

I'll force an exchange!  By the Gods . . .

His mind met pain, consuming, blinding pain.  It was agony such as he'd not even imagined could exist.

Jedrik!

His mind held an unconscious Jedrik whose awareness had fled from pain.  The contact was so delicate, like holding a newborn infant.  The slightest relaxation and he knew he would lose her to . . .  He felt that terrifying monster of the first exchange hovering in the background, but love and concern armed him against fear.

Frantic, McKie held that tenuous contact while he called a jumpdoor.  There was a small delay and when the door opened, he saw through the portal the black, twisted wreckage which had been his bower island.  A hot sun beat down on steaming cinders. And in the background, a warped metal object which might have been one of Tutalsee's little four-place flitters rolled over, gurgled, and sank.  The visible wreckage said the destructive force had been something like a pentrate, swift and all-consuming.  The water around the island still bubbled with it.  Even while he watched, the island began breaking up, its cinders drifting apart on the long, low waves.  A breeze flattened the steaming smoke.  Soon, there'd be nothing to show that beauty had floated here.  With a pentrate, there would be nothing to recover . . . not even bodies to . . .

He hesitated, still holding his fragile grasp on Jedrik's unconscious presence.  The pain was only a memory now.  Was it really Jedrik in his awareness, or only his remembered imprint of her?  He tried to awaken the sleeping presence, failed.  But small threads of memory emerged, and he saw that the destruction had been Jedrik's doing, response to attack.  The attackers had wanted a live hostage.  They hadn't anticipated that violent, unmistakable message.

"You won't hold me over McKie's head!"

But if there were no bodies . . .

Again, he tried to awaken that unconscious presence.  Her memories were there, but she remained dormant.  The effort strengthened his grip upon her presence, though.  And he told himself it had to be Jedrik, or he wouldn't know what had happened on the bower island.

Once more, he searched the empty water.  Nothing.  A pentrate would've torn and battered everything around it.  Shards of metal, flesh reduced to scattered cinders . . .

She's dead.  She has to be dead.  A pentrate . . .

But that familiar presence lay slumbering in his mind.

The door clacker interrupted his reverie.  McKie released the jumpdoor, turned to look through the bedside viewer at the scene outside his Legum quarters.  The expected deputation had arrived.  Confident, the puppet masters were moving even before confirmation of their Tutalsee gambit.  They could not possibly know yet what McKie knew.  There could be no jumpdoor or any other thread permitted to connect this group to Tutalsee.

McKie studied them carefully, keeping a bridle on his rage.  There were eight of them, so contained, so well schooled in Dosadi self-control.  So transparent to a Jedrik-amplified McKie.  They were four Humans and four Gowachin.  Overconfident.  Jedrik had seen to that by leaving no survivors.

Again, McKie tried to awaken that unconscious presence.  She would not respond.

Have I only built her out of my memories?

There was no time for such speculation.  Jedrik had made her choice on Tutalsee.  He had other choices to make here and now - for both of them.  That ghostly presence locked in his mind would have to wait.

McKie punched the communicator which linked him to Broey, gave the agreed-upon signal.

"It's time."

He composed himself then, went to the door.

They'd sent no underlings.  He gave them that.  But they addressed him as Jedrik, made the anticipated demands, gloated over the hold they had upon him.  It was only then that McKie saw fully how well Jedrik had measured these people; and how she had played upon her McKie in those last hours together like an exquisitely tuned instrument.  Now, he understood why she'd made that violent choice.

As anticipated, the members of the delegation were extremely surprised when Broey's people fell upon them without warning.

The eight prisoners were dumped on the arena floor, bound and shackled.  McKie stopped near them, waiting for Ceylang to arrive.  It was not yet dawn.  The ceiling above the arena remained dark.  A few of the transmitter eyes around the upper perimeter glittered to reveal that they were activated.  More were coming alive by the moment.  Only a few of the witness seats were occupied, but people were streaming in as word was passed.  The judicial bench remained empty.

The outer areaway was a din of Courtarena security forces coming and going, people shouting orders, the clank of weapons, a sense of complete confusion there which gradually resolved itself as Broey led his fellow judges up onto their bench.  The witness pen was also filling, people punching sleep from their eyes, great gaping yawns from the Gowachin.

McKie looked to Broey's people, the ones who'd brought in the prisoners.  He nodded for the captors to leave, giving them a Dosadi hand signal to remain available.  They left.

Ceylang passed them as she entered, still fastening her robe.  She hurried to McKie's side, waited for the judges to be seated before speaking.

"What is the meaning of this?  My attendants . . ."

Broey signaled McKie.

McKie stepped forward to address the bench, pointed to the eight bound figures who were beginning to stir and push themselves upright.

"Here you see my client."

Parando started to speak, but Broey silenced him with a sharp word which McKie did not catch.  It sounded like "frenzy."

Bildoon sat in fearful fascination, unable to wrest his attention from the bound figures, all of whom remained silent.  Yes, Bildoon would recognize those eight prisoners.  In his limited, ConSentient fashion, Bildoon was sharp enough to recognize that he was in personal danger.  Parando, of course, knew this immediately and watched Broey with great care.

Again, Broey nodded to McKie.

"A fraud has been perpetrated upon this court," McKie said.  "It is a fraud which was perpetrated against those great and gallant people, the Gowachin.  Both Prosecution and Defense are its victims.  The Law is its ultimate victim."

It had grown much quieter in the arena.  The observer seats were jammed, all the transmitter eyes alive.  The faintest of dawn glow touched the translucent ceiling.  McKie wondered what time it was.  He had forgotten to put on any timepiece.

There was a stir behind McKie.  He glanced back, saw attendants belatedly bringing Aritch into the arena.  Oh, yes - they would have risked any delay to confer with Aritch.  Aritch was supposed to be the other McKie expert.  Too bad that this Human who looked like McKie was no longer the McKie they thought they knew.

Ceylang could not hold her silence.  She raised tendril for attention.

"This Tribunal . . ."

McKie interrupted.

". . . is composed of three people. Only three."

He allowed them a moment to digest this reminder that Gowachin trial formalities still dominated this arena, and were like no other such formalities in the ConSentiency.  It could've been fifty judges up there on that bench.  McKie had witnessed Gowachin trials where people were picked at random off the streets to sit in judgment.  Such jurists took their duties seriously, but their overt behavior could lead another sentient species to question this.  The Gowachin chattered back and forth, arranged parties, exchanged jokes, asked each other rude questions.  It was an ancient pattern.  The jurists were required to become "a single organism."  Gowachin had their own ways of rushing that process.