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:
“Who is it that dares awaken me?”
McKie felt his body trembling, felt Jedrik trembling beside him. The Caleban/Taprisiot-trembling, the sweaty response to trance! He saw these phenomena now in a different light. When you walked at the edge of this abyss …
While these thoughts passed through his mind, he felt a slight shift, no more than the blurred reflection of something which was not quite movement. Now, while he still felt his own flesh around him, he also felt himself possessed of an inner contact with Jedrik’s body and knew she shared this experience.
Such a panic as he had not thought possible threatened to overwhelm him. He felt Jedrik trying to break the contact, to stop this hideous sharing, but they were powerless in the grip of a force which would not be stopped.
No time sense attached itself to this experience, but a fatalistic calm overcame them almost simultaneously. McKie felt awareness of Jedrik/flesh deepen. Curiosity dominated him now.
So this is woman!
This is man?
They shared the thoughts across an indistinct bridge.
Fascination gripped McKie. He probed deeper.
He/She could feel himself/herself breathing. And the differences! It was not the genitalia, the presence or lack of breasts. She felt bereft of breasts. He felt acutely distressed by their presence, self-consciously aware of profound implications. The sense of difference went back beyond gamete McKie/ Jedrik.
McKie sensed her thoughts, her reactions.
Jedrik: “You cast your sperm upon the stream of time.”
McKie: “You enclose and nurture …”
“I cast/I nurture.”
It was as though they looked at an object from opposite sides, aware belatedly that they both examined the same thing.
“We cast/we, nurture.”
Obscuring layers folded away and McKie found himself in Jedrik’s mind, she in his. Their thoughts were one entity.
The separate Dosadi and ConSentient experiences melted into a single relationship.
“Aritch … ah, yes. You see? And your PanSpechi friend, Bildoon. Note that. You suspected, but now you know …”
Each set of experiences fed on the other, expanding, refining … condensing, discarding, creating …
So that’s the training of a Legum.
Loving parents? Ahhh, yes, loving parents.
“I/we will apply pressure there … and there … They must be maneuvered into choosing that one as a judge. Yes, that will give us the required leverage. Let them break their own code.”
And the awakened monster stirred within them. It had no dimension, no place, only existence. They felt its power.
“I do what I do!”
The power enveloped them. No other awareness was permitted. They sensed a primal current, unswerving purpose, a force which could override any other thing in their universe. It was not God, not Life, not any particular species. It was something so far beyond such articulations that Jedrik/McKie could not even contemplate it without a sense that the next instant would bring obliteration. They felt a question hurled at their united, fearful awareness. The question was framed squarely in anger, astonishment, cold amusement, and threat.
“For this you awaken me?”
Now, they understood why the old body and donor-ego had always been slain immediately. This terrible sharing made a … made a noise. It awakened a questioner.
They understood the question without words, knowing they could never grasp the full meaning and emotive thrust, that it would burn them out even to try. Anger … astonishment … cold amusement … threat. The question as their own united mind(s) interpreted it represented a limit. It was all that Jedrik/ McKie could accept.
The intrusive questioner receded.
They were never quite sure afterward whether they’d been expelled or whether they’d fled in terror, but the parting words were burned into their combined awareness.
“Let the sleeper sleep.”
They walked softly in their minds then. They understood the warning, but knew it could never be translated in its fullest threat for any other sentient being.
Concurrent: McKie/Jedrik felt a projection of terror from the God Wall Caleban, unfocused, unexplained. It was a new experience in the male-female collective memory. Caleban Fannie Mae had not even projected this upon original McKie when she’d thought herself doomed.
Concurrent: McKie/Jedrik felt a burntout fading from Pcharky. Something in that terrible contact had plunged Pcharky into his death spiral. Even as McKie/Jedrik realized this, the old Gowachin died. It was a slammed door. But this came after a blazing realization by McKie/Jedrik that Pcharky had shared the original decision to set up the Dosadi experiment.
McKie found himself clothed in living, breathing flesh which routed its messages through his awareness. He wasn’t sure which of their two bodies he possessed, but it was distinct, separate. It wrapped him in Human senses: the taste of salt, the smell of perspiration, and the omnipresent Warren stink. One hand held cold metal, the other clasped the hand of a fellow Human. Perspiration drenched this body, made the clasped hands slippery. He felt that knowing which hand held another hand was of utmost importance, but he wasn’t ready to face that knowledge. Awareness of self, this new self, and a whole lifetime of new memories, demanded all of the attention he could muster.
Focus: A Rim city, never outside Jedrik’s control because she had fed the signals through to Gar and Tria with exquisite care, and because those who gave the orders on the Rim had shared in the generations of selective breeding which had produced Jedrik. She was a biological weapon whose sole target was the God Wall.
Focus: Loving parents can thrust their child into deadly peril when they know everything possible has been done to prepare that child for survival.
The oddity to McKie was that he felt such things as personal memories.
“I did that.”
Jedrik suffered the throes of similar experiences.
Which body?
So that was the training of a BuSab agent. Clever … almost adequate. Complex and full of much that she found to be new, but why did it always stop short of a full development?
She reviewed the sessions with Aritch and Ceylang. A matched pair. The choice of Ceylang and the role chosen for her appeared obvious. How innocent! Jedrik felt herself free to pity Ceylang. When allowed to run its course, this was an interesting emotion. She had never before felt pity in uncolored purity.
Focus: McKie actually loved her. She savored this emotion in its ConSentient complexity. The straight flow of selected emotions fascinated her. They did not have to be bridled!
In and out of this creative exchange there wove an intimacy, a pure sexuality without inhibitions.
McKie, savoring the amusement Jedrik had felt when Tria had suggested a McKie/Jedrik breeding, found himself caught by demanding male eroticism and knew by the sensation that he retained his old body.
Jedrik, understanding McKie’s long search for a female to complete him, found her amusement converted to the desire to demonstrate that completion. As she turned toward him, releasing the dull rod which had once shimmered in contact with Pcharky, she found herself in McKie’s flesh looking into her own eyes.
McKie gasped in the mirror experience.
Just as abruptly, driven by shock, they shifted back into familiar flesh: McKie male, Jedrik female. Instantly, it became a thing to explore—back—and forth. Eroticism was forgotten in this new game.
“We can be either sex/body at will!”
It was something beyond Taprisiots and Calebans, far more subtle than the crawling progression of a
PanSpechi ego through the bodies from its creche.
They knew the source of this odd gift even as they sank back on the bed, content to be familiar male and female for a time.
The sleeping monster.
This was a gift with barbs in it, something loving parents might give their child in the knowledge that it was time for this lesson. Yet they felt revitalized, knowing they had for an instant tapped an energy source without limits.
A pounding on the door interrupted this shared reverie.
“Jedrik! Jedrik!”
“What is it?”
“It’s Broey. He wishes to talk to McKie.”
They were off the bed in an instant.
Jedrik glanced at McKie, knowing she had not one secret from him, that they shared a reasoning base. Out of the mutual understanding in this base, she spoke for both of them.
“Does he say why?”
“Jedrik …”
They both recognized the voice of a trusted aide and heard the fear in it.
“ … it’s midmorning and there is no sun. God has turned off the sun!”
“Sealed us in …”
“ … to conceal the final blast.”
Jedrik opened the door, confronted the frightened aide.
“Where is Broey?”
“Here—in your command post. He came alone without escort.”
She glanced at McKie. “You will speak for us.”
Broey waited near the position board in the command post. Watchful Humans stood within striking distance. He turned as McKie and Jedrik entered. McKie noted that the Gowachin’s body was, indeed, heavy with breeding juices as anticipated. Unsettling for a Gowachin.
“What are your terms, McKie?”
Broey’s voice was guttural, full of heavy breathing.
McKie’s features remained Dosadi-bland, but he thought: Broey thinks I’m responsible for the darkness. He’s terrified.
McKie glanced at the threatening black of the windows before speaking. He knew this Gowachin from Jedrik’s painstaking study. Broey was a sophisticate, a collector of sophistication who surrounded himself with people of the same stripe. He was a professional sophisticate who read everything through that peculiar Dosadi screen. No one could come into his circle who didn’t share this pose. All else remained outside and inferior. He was an ultimate Dosadi, a distillation, almost as Human as Gowachin because he’d obviously once worn a Human body. He was Gowachin at his origins, though—no doubt of it.
“You followed my scent,” McKie said.
“Excellent!”
Broey brightened. He had not expected a Dosadi exchange, pared to the nonemotional essentials.
“Unfortunately,” McKie said, “You have no position from which to negotiate. Certain things will be done. You will comply willingly, your compliance will be forced, or we will act without you.”
It was a deliberate goading on McKie’s part, a choice of non-Dosadi forms to abbreviate this confrontation. It said more than anything else that McKie came from beyond the God Wall, that the darkness which held back the daylight was the least of his resources.
Broey hesitated, then:
“So?”
The single word fell on the air with countless implications: an entire exchange discarded, hopes dashed, a hint of sadness at lost powers, and still with that sophisticated reserve which was Broey’s signature. It was more subtle than a shrug, more powerful in its Dosadi overtones that an entire negotiating session.
“Questions?” McKie asked.
Broey glanced at Jedrik, obviously surprised by this. It was as though he appealed to her: they were both Dosadi, were they not? This outsider came here with his gross manners, his lack of Dosadi understanding. How could one speak to such one? He addressed Jedrik.
“Have I not already stated my submission? I came alone, I …”
Jedrik picked up McKie’s cue.
“There are certain … peculiarities to our situation.”
“Peculiarities?”
Broey’s nictating membrane blinked once.
Jedrik allowed her manner to convey a slight embarrassment.
“Certain delicacies of the Dosadi condition must be overlooked. We are now, all of us, abject supplicants … and we are dealing with people who do not speak as we speak, act as we act …”
“Yes.” He pointed upward. “The mentally retarded ones. We are in danger then.”
It was not a question. Broey peered upward, as though trying to see through the ceiling and intervening floors. He drew in a deep breath.
“Yes.”
Again, it was compressed communication. Anyone who could put the God Wall there could crush an entire planet. Therefore, Dosadi and all of its inhabitants had been brought to a common subjection. Only a Dosadi could have accepted it this quickly without more questions, and Broey was an ultimate Dosadi.
McKie turned to Jedrik. When he spoke, she anticipated every word, but she waited him out.
“Tell your people to stop all attacks.”
He faced Broey.
“And your people.”
Broey looked from Jedrik to McKie, back to Jedrik with a puzzled expression openly on his face, but he obeyed.
“Which communicator?”
Where pain predominates, agony can be a valued teacher.
—Dosadi aphorism
McKie and Jedrik had no need to discuss the decision. It was a choice which they shared and knew they shared through a memory-selection process now common to both of them. There was a loophole in the God Wall and even though that wall now blanketed Dosadi in darkness, a Caleban contract was still a Caleban contract. The vital question was whether the Caleban of the God Wall would respond.
Jedrik in McKie’s body stood guard outside her own room while a Jedrik-fleshed McKie went alone into the room to make the attempt. Who should he try to contact? Fannie Mae? The absolute darkness which enclosed Dosadi hinted at an absolute withdrawal of the guardian Caleban. And there was so little time.
McKie sat cross-legged on the floor of the room and tried to clear his mind. The constant strange discoveries in the female body he now wore interfered with concentration. The moment of exchange left an aftershock which he doubted would ever diminish. They had but to share the desire for the change now and it occurred. But this different body—ahh, the multiplicity of differences created its own confusions. These went far beyond the adjustments to different height and weight. The muscles of his/her arms and hips felt wrongly attached. The bodily senses were routed through different unconscious processes. Anatomy created its own patterns, its own instinctual behavior. For one thing, he found it necessary to develop consciously monitored movements which protected his/her breasts. The movements were reminiscent of those male adjustments by which he prevented injury to testes. These were movements which a male learned early and relegated to an automatic behavior pattern. The problem in the female body was that he had to think about such behavior. And it went far beyond the breast-testes interlock.
As he tried to clear his mind for the Caleban contact, these webbed clusters of memory intruded. It was maddening: He needed to clear away bodily distractions, but this female body demanded his attention. In desperation, he hyperventilated and burned his awareness into a pineal focus whose dangers he knew only too well. This was the way to permanent identity loss if the experience were prolonged. It produced a sufficient clarity, however, that he could fill his awareness with memories of Fannie Mae.
Silence.
He sensed time’s passage as though each heartbeat were a blow.
Fear hovered at the edges of the silence.
It came to him that something had put a terrible fear into the God Wall Caleban.
McKie felt anger.
“Caleban! You owe me!”
“McKie?”
The response was so faint that he wondered whether it might be his hopes playing tricks on him.
“Fannie Mae?”
“Are you McKie?”
That was
stronger, and he recognized the familiar Caleban presence in his awareness.
“I am McKie and you owe me a debt.”
“If you are truly McKie … why are you so … strange … changed?”
“I wear another body.”
McKie was never sure, but he thought he sensed consternation. Fannie Mae responded more strongly then.
“I remove McKie from Dosadi now? Contract permits.”
“I will share Dosadi’s fate.”
“McKie!”
“Don’t argue with me, Fannie Mae. I will share Dosadi’s fate unless you remove another node/person with me.”
He projected Jedrik’s patterns then, an easy process since he shared all of her memories.
“She wears McKie’s body!”
It was accusatory.
“She wears another body,” McKie said. He knew the Caleban saw his new relationship with Jedrik. Everything depended now on the interpretation of the Caleban contract.
“Jedrik is Dosadi,” the Caleban protested.
“So am I Dosadi … now.”
“But you are McKie!”
“And Jedrik is also McKie. Contact her if you don’t believe me.”
He broke the contact with an angry abruptness, found himself sprawled on the floor, still twitching. Perspiration bathed the female body which he still wore. The head ached.
Would Fannie Mae do as he’d told her? He knew Jedrik was as capable of projecting his awareness as he was of projecting hers. How would Fannie Mae interpret the Dosadi contract?
Gods! The ache in this head was a burning thing. He felt alien in Jedrik’s body, misused. The pain persisted and he wondered if he’d done irreparable harm to Jedrik’s brain through that intense pineal focus.
Slowly, he pushed himself upright, got to his feet. The Jedrik legs felt weak beneath him. He thought of Jedrik outside that door, trembling in the zombielike trance required for this mind-to-mind contact. What was taking so long? Had the Calebans withdrawn?
Have we lost?
He started for the door but before he’d taken the second step, light blazed around him. For a fractional heartbeat he thought it was the final fire to consume Dosadi, but the light held steady. He glanced around, found himself in the open air. It was a place he recognized immediately: the courtyard of the Dry Head compound on Tandaloor. He saw the familiar phylum designs on the surrounding walls: green Gowachin script on yellow bricks. There was the sound of water splashing in the corner pool. A group of Gowachin stood in an arched entry directly ahead of him and he recognized one of his old teachers. Yes—this was a Dry Head sanctum. These people had protected him, trained him, introduced him to their most sacred secrets.