The Dosadi Experiment by Frank Herbert Read Free Book Online Page B

room. McKie assumed a mask of relaxation and remained silent.
    The old Gowachin did not appear pleased by this. He said:
    â€œYou once afforded me much amusement, McKie.”
    That might be a compliment, probably not. Hard to tell. Even if it were a compliment, coming from a Gowachin it would contain signal reservations, especially in legal matters. McKie held his silence. This Gowachin was big power and no mistake. Whoever misjudged him would hear the Courtarena’s final trumpet.
    â€œI watched you argue your first case in our courts,” the Gowachin said. “Betting was nine-point-three to three-point-eight that we’d see your blood. But when you concluded by demonstrating that eternal sloppiness was the price of liberty … ahhh, that was a master stroke. It filled many a Legum with envy. Your words clawed through the skin of Gowachin Law to get at the meat. And at the same time you amused us. That was the supreme touch.”
    Until this moment, McKie had not even suspected that there’d been amusement for anyone in that first case. Present circumstances argued for truthfulness from the old Gowachin, however. Recalling that first case, McKie tried to reassess it in the light of this revelation. He remembered the case well. The Gowachin had charged a Low Magister named Klodik with breaking his most sacred vows in an issue of justice. Klodik’s crime was the release of thirty-one fellow Gowachin from their primary allegiance to Gowachin Law and the purpose of that was to qualify the thirty-one for service in BuSab. The hapless prosecutor, a much-admired Legum named Pirgutud, had aspired to Klodik’s position and had made the mistake of trying for a direct conviction. McKie had thought at the time that the wiser choice would’ve been to attempt discrediting the legal structure under which Klodik had been arraigned. This would have thrown judgment into the area of popular choice, and there’d been no doubt that Klodik’s early demise would’ve been popular. Seeing this opening, McKie had attacked the prosecutor as a legalist, a stickler, one who preferred Old Law. Victory had been relatively easy.

    When it had come to the knife, however, McKie had found himself profoundly reluctant. There’d been no question of selling Pirgutud back to his own Phylum. BuSab had needed a non-Gowachin Legum … the whole non-Gowachin universe had needed this. The few other non-Gowachin who’d attained Legum status were all dead, every last one of them in the Courtarena. A current of animosity toward the Gowachin worlds had been growing. Suspicion fed on suspicion.
    Pirgutud had to die in the traditional, the formal, way. He’d known it perhaps better than McKie. Pirgutud, as required, had bared the heart area beside his stomach and clasped his hands behind his head. This extruded the stomach circle, providing a point of reference.
    The purely academic anatomy lessons and the practice sessions on lifelike dummies had come to deadly focus.
    â€œJust to the left of the stomach circle imagine a small triangle with an apex at the center of the stomach circle extended horizontally and the base even with the bottom of the stomach circle. Strike into the lower outside corner of this triangle and slightly upward toward the midline.”
    About the only satisfaction McKie had found in the event was that Pirgutud had died cleanly and quickly with one stroke. McKie had not entered Gowachin Law as a “hacker.”
    What had there been in that case and its bloody ending to amuse the Gowachin? The answer filled McKie with a profound sense of peril.
    The Gowachin were amused at themselves because they had so misjudged me! But I’d planned all along for them to misjudge me. That was what amused them!
    Having provided McKie with a polite period for reflection, the old Gowachin continued:
    â€œI’d bet against you, McKie. The odds, you understand? You delighted me nonetheless. You