Does a populace have informed consent when a ruling minority acts in secret to ignite a war, doing this to justify the existence of the minority's forces?  History already has answered that question.  Every society in the ConSentiency today reflects the historical judgment that failure to provide full information for informed consent on such an issue represents an ultimate crime.

- from The Trial of Trials

Less than an hour after closing down at Gate Eighteen, McKie and his escort arrived back at Jedrik's headquarters building. He led them to the heavily guarded side entrance with its express elevator, not wanting to pass Pcharky at this moment.  Pcharky was an unnecessary distraction.  He left the escort in the hallway with instructions to get food and rest, signaled for the elevator.  The elevator door was opened by a small Human female of about fifteen years who nodded him into the dim interior.

McKie, his natural distrust of even the young on this planet well masked, nevertheless kept her under observation as he accepted the invitation.  She was a gamin child with dirty face and hands, a torn grey single garment cut off at the knees.  Her very existence as a Dosadi survivor said she'd undoubtedly sold her body many times for scraps of food.  He realized how much Dosadi had influenced him when he found that he couldn't raise even the slightest feeling of censure at this knowledge.  You did what the conditions around you demanded when those conditions were overwhelming.  It was an ultimate question:  this or death?  And certainly some of them chose death.

"Jedrik," he said.

She worked her controls and he found himself presently in an unfamiliar hallway.  Two familiar guards stood at a doorway down the hall, however.  They betrayed not the slightest interest in him as he opened the door between them swiftly and strode through.

It was a tiny anteroom, empty, but another door directly in front of him.  He opened this with more confidence than he felt, entered a larger space full of projection-room gloom with shadowed figures seated facing a holographic focus on his left.  McKie identified Jedrik by her profile, slipped into a seat beside her.

She kept her attention on the h-focus where a projection of Broey stood looking out at something over their shoulders.  McKie recognized the subtle slippage of computer simulation.  That was not a flesh-and-blood Broey in the focus.

Someone on the far side of the room stood up and crossed to sit beside another figure in the gloom.  McKie recognized Gar as the man moved through one of the projection beams.

McKie whispered to Jedrik, "Why simulation?"

"He's beginning to do things I didn't anticipate."

The suicide missions.  McKie looked at the simulation, wondered why there was no sync-sound.  Ahhh, yes.  They were lip-reading, and it was silent to reduce distractions, to amplify concentration.  Yes, Jedrik was reworking the simulation model of Broey which she carried in her head.  She would also carry another model, even more accurate than the one of Broey, which would give her a certain lead time on the reactions of one Jorj X. McKie.

"Would you really have done it?" he asked.

"Why do you distract me with such nonsense?"

He considered.  Yes, it was a good question.  He already knew the answer.  She would have done it:  traded bodies with him and escaped outside the God Wall as McKie.  She might still do it, unless he could anticipate the mechanics of the transfer.

By now, she knew about the sixty-hour limit and would suspect its significance.  Less than sixty hours.  And the Dosadi could make extremely complex projections from limited data.  Witness this Broey simulation.

The figure in the focus was talking to a fat Human female who held a tube which McKie recognized as a communicator for field use.

Jedrik spoke across the room to Gar.

"She still with him?"

"Addicted."

A two-sentence exchange, and it condensed an entire conversation about possible uses of that woman.  McKie did not ask addicted to what.  There were too many such substances on Dosadi, each with peculiar characteristics, often involving odd monopolies with which everyone seemed familiar.  This was a telltale gap in Aritch's briefings:  the monopolies and their uses.

As McKie absorbed the action in the focus, the reasons behind this session became more apparent.  Broey was refusing to believe the report from Havvy.

And there was Havvy in the focus.

Jedrik favored McKie with one flickering glance as Havvy-simulation appeared.  Certainly.  She factored McKie into her computations.

McKie compressed his lips.  She knew Havvy would contaminate me.  They couldn't say "I love you" on this damned planet.  Oh, no.  They had to create a special Dosadi production number.

"Most of the data for this originated before the breakup," McKie said.  "It's useless.  Rather than ask the computer to play pretty pictures for us, why don't we examine our own memories?  Surely, somewhere in the combined experiences with Broey . . ."

A chuckle somewhere to the left stopped him.

Too late, McKie saw that every seat in the room had an arm keyed to the simulations.  They were doing precisely what he'd suggested, but in a more sophisticated way.  The figures at the focus were being adjusted to the combined memories.  There was such a keyed arm at McKie's right hand.  He suddenly realized how tactless and lecturing he still must appear to these people.  They didn't waste energy on unnecessary words.  Anyone who did must be subnormal, poorly trained or . . . or not from Dosadi.

"Does he always state the obvious?" Gar asked.

McKie wondered if he'd blown his lieutenancy, lost the opportunity to explore the mystery of the Rim, but . . . no, there wasn't time for that now.  He'd have to penetrate the Rim another way.

"He's new," Jedrik said.  "New is not necessarily naive, as you should know."

"He has you doing it now," Gar said.

"Guess again."

McKie put a hand to the simulation controls under his right hand, tested the keys.  He had it in a moment.  They were similar to such devices in the ConSentiency, an adaptation from the DemoPol inputs, no doubt.  Slowly, he changed the Broey at the focus, heavier, the sagging jowls and node wattles of a breeding male Gowachin.  McKie froze the image.

"Tentative?" Gar asked.

Jedrik answered for him.

"It's knowledge he brought here with him."  She did something to her controls, stopped the projection, and raised the room lights.

McKie noted that Tria was nowhere in the room.

"The Gowachin have sequestered their females somewhere," McKie said.  "That somewhere should not be difficult to locate.  Send word to Tria that she must not mount her attack on Broey's corridor just yet."

"Why delay?" Gar demanded.

"Broey will have all but evacuated the corridor by now." McKie said.

Gar was angry and showing it.

"Not a single one of them has gone through that Rim gate."

"Not to the Rim," Jedrik said.

It was clear to her now.  McKie had supplied the leverage she needed.  It was time now to employ him as she'd always intended.  She glanced at McKie.

"We have unfinished business.  Are you ready?"

He held his silence. How could he answer such a Dosadi-weighted question?  There were so many things left unspoken on this planet, only the native-born could understand them all.  McKie felt once more that he was a dull outsider, a child of dubious potential among normal adults.

Jedrik arose, looked across at Gar.

"Send word to Tria to hold herself in readiness for another assignment.  Tell Broey.  Call him on an open line.  We now have an excellent use for your fanatics.  If only a few of your people fight through to that Graluz complex, it'll be enough and Broey will know it."

McKie noted that she spoke to Gar with a familiar teaching emphasis.  It was the curiously weighted manner she'd once used with McKie, but no longer found necessary.  His recognition of this amused her.

"Come along, McKie.  We haven't much time."