Dosadi

The Dosadi Experiment (Synopsis)

Jorj X. McKie is a Saboteur Extraordinary, one of the principals of the Bureau  of  Sabotage,  and the  only  human admitted  to practice law before the Gowachin  bar as a legum (lawyer). While meditating in a park  in BuSab  headquarters McKie  is mentally contacted by the Caleban Fanny Mae, a female member of a species of unparalleled  power  from another  dimension  whose  visible manifestation in  this  universe  is the  star  Thyone  in  the Pleiades cluster. McKie feels real love toward Fanny Mae, but is unable to have  a warm  relationship  with females  of his  own species (he has been married more than fifty times). Fannie Mae warns McKie that the full power of "nodal involvement" (her term for love) can destroy human beings.

Chapter 2

Generations ago, a secret, unauthorized experiment  was carried out with  the  help  of  the the  Caleban. They isolated  the planet Dosadi behind  an impenetrable  barrier called  "The God Wall". On the planet  were placed humans  and Gowachin  with an unstable form of government, the  Demo-Pol. The planet itself is massively poisonous  except for  a  narrow  valley, into  which nearly 90 million humans and Gowachin are crowded under terrible conditions. Senior Liator Keila  Jedrik subtly  manipulates the Demo-Pol to  eliminate the  jobs  of  fifty humans  within  the bureaucracy of the city of Chu, where humans and Gowachin exist together in a precarious balance. This is the opening gambit in a war that will change Dosadi forever.

Chapter 3

BuSab has obtained  scattered  reports about  the existence  of Dosadi  and  Jorj X.  McKie  is  tasked  to investigate. As he prepares his sabotage kit, he swallows a bead which will allow a Tapisriot  to transmit  his  memories to  another  agent in  the likely event of this  death, indicative  of the  mechanical way BuSab gnawed away at its problems.

Chapter 4

Jedrik watches as the  flaw she introduced  in the  Demo-Pol is taken  like bait  by  another  person, who  exploits  it to  add another forty humans  to  the rolls  of  the unemployed. Keila herself is "fired" and she leaves her office feigning anger, but she is secretly pleased that the events she put into motion were accelerating.

Chapter 5

The Gowachin are a species of frog-people (in  human terms) who practice a harsh  weeding-out  process on  their tadpoles,  and demand better and better decisions  as members rise  toward the very pinnacle of their society. Their legal practices are based upon a healthy disrespect for the law: the losing  legum may be killed by the winning legum; a client pronounced innocent before the court is torn to pieces by angry spectators; judges may have bias ("if I can decide for my side, I will"), but not prejudice ("I will decide for my  side, regardless"); any  participant in the trial is subject  to judgement and even questioning-by-pain, including the judges. Upon his arrival on Tandaloor,  the home world of the Gowachin, McKie is presented with  an ancient blue box that contains a knife, a book,  and a rock. He is made the legum of Aritch, High Magister of Running Phylum.

Chapter 6

The humans Gar  and his  daughter Tria  converse with  Dosadi's current ruler, the  Gowachin Elector Broey in  his citadel. Tria has identified Keila  Jedrik as  the one  who precipitated  the recent change in the  Demo-Pol. She is tasked  to go  into the warrens of Chu and contact Jedrik. They suspect she is really an agent for forces outside of Dosadi.

Chapter 7

Aritch attempts to limit  McKie's investigation into  Dosadi by intimidating him with  the presence of Ceylang,  a deadly Wreave under training to become a legum like McKie. At one point Aritch commands her to attack, but  McKie sabotages this  by snatching the sacred book from the blue box and  threatening to desecrate it with his own blood drawn by the sacred knife.

Chapter 8

As Jedrik is driven to her apartment by Havvy, he bargains with her for information about McKie which he thinks is valuable. The information is simply  that "McKie  comes from  beyond the  God Wall." She dismisses the information as garbage. Jedrik is well aware of McKie's alien origins, for she has discerned that Havvy himself comes from beyond the God Wall.

Chapter 9

With Ceylang dismissed,  Aritch  answers  McKie's questions  as required  under  Gowachin  Law. The apparent  purpose  of  the experiment was to  subject  sentients to  the worst  conditions possible for survival and see what behaviors and instincts were bred as a response. The Dosadi have become terrifying creatures with heightened  perceptions,  intelligence,  and  a  drive  to survive  and  prosper;  if  they  were to  be  loosed  upon  the universe, they would  quickly conquer  it. Aritch will destroy Dosadi rather than  allow that  possibility to  materialize. By intense probing, McKie finds a line of  questioning that Aritch refuses to answer: What benefits  were expected to  accrue from conducting the Dosadi Experiment?. Aritch proposes that McKie journey to Dosadi itself to learn the answer first-hand.

Chapter 10

Elector Broey communes with the Caleban who poses  as the deity of Dosadi. The Caleban, as  ordered  by  Aritch who  holds  a contract, informs Broey  that McKie is arriving  through the God Wall. Aritch wants Broey to capture McKie before  he falls into the hands of Jedrik. Broey takes pride in the fact that he is a pure servant of "God" who knows what  it is to be both human and Gowachin.

Chapter 11

McKie arrives on Dosadi via jump-door and waits for his contact to arrive. He clears his mind and contacts Fannie  Mae through the God Wall, requesting  that she help  the Bureau  obtain his final memories in the event of his death on Dosadi. She refuses, citing the Gowachin  contract, and  offers to  remove him  from Dosadi immediately. Soon McKie will not be permitted to leave in his own "body/node" but she refuses to  elaborate, again citing the terms of the contract.

Chapter 12

Tria and a small squad of lieutenants foray into the warrens of Chu looking  for Jedrik at  her last known residence. The first race-riots between human and Gowachin have occured, triggered by Jedrik's "adjustment". When Tria arrives at Jedrik's apartment, she finds her quarry gone and her own agent murdered.

Chapter 13

McKie is contacted by a Gowachin named Bahrank and driven in an armored military vehicle  through a no-man's land on  the rim to the  city of  Chu,  dodging  mortar and  gun-fire  all the  way. Bahrank manages to evade Broey's forces and enter Gate Nine. In the city McKie is overwhelmed by  the stink and the  poverty of the inhabitants. Bahrank leaves him standing in  the street and drives away, cutting off McKie's last link to the ConSentiency.

Chapter 14

The rioting  continues  to  worsen. Broey is  hoping  for  the situation to become less ambiguous, but Gar is exasperated that Broey is  reacting exactly  as  Jedrik  has anticipated. Broey begins to distrust Gar and wants him to leave. Gar reveals that his forces have begun a second City on the  Rim, and proposes a separation  of the  species,  but his  continued obsession  with Jedrik makes Broey realize  that Gar  is not  part of  her plot after all. He permits Gar to remain as his advisor.

Chapter 15

McKie makes contact with  Jedrik, who says,  "Well...welcome to Dosadi, McKie." He had been told that the Dosadi did not suspect his off-world origins and warned not to give  this secret away. Realizing he has been betrayed by Aritch, McKie becomes utterly submissive. She makes him hand  over his toolkit and  begins to interrogate him.

Chapter 16

On the second  day  of  rioting Elector  Broey  meets with  his Gowachin aids and angrily  demands they  search for  the hidden cache of food and the "blasphemous" second city on the Rim, even if it means angering the humans in the warrens and accelerating the unrest. He begins to  admire  Jedrik's warlord  mind  and puzzles over why his "God" failed to warn him.

Chapter 17

Keila Jedrik takes McKie to meet a caged Gowachin named Pcharky. Jedrik says Pcharky has helped many people escape Dosadi. Later in her protected quarters they make love, and Jedrik undertakes to make McKie understand about Dosadi "one lesson at a time."

Chapter 18

Aritch and  Ceylang discuss  the  possibility  that the  Dosadi Affair will come to  trial in  the Courtarena. Ceylang reminds Aritch that McKie dares not draw her blood,  or even publically shame her, lest the entire Wreave universe come hunting for him with "death in their mandibles." Aritch angrily reminds her that McKie adapts, and he will find a way to defeat her in such a way that her Wreave universe would "shower him with adulation".

Chapter 19

Jedrik takes McKie  to a  training facility  where some  of her commandos are learning to use new weapons. McKie is shocked to discover they  are larger  copies of the  tools in  his sabotage kit. The speed with which they had been copied gives McKie a new appreciation as to why Aritch feared the Dosadi.

Chapter 20

The unrest in Chu has passed from the level  of mere rioting to full  urban warfare. More than 100  battles  rage between  the species. Broey anticipates things will go worse  and orders the sequestration of a number of Gowachin females  within the inner bastions.

Chapter 21

McKie examines his life and equates his personal loneliness with the loneliness of the entire world of Dosadi, cut  off from the rest of the universe. In a subtle shift he finds his loyalties siding with Dosadi. No longer serving to try to contain Dosadi, he realizes that the planet's freedom and subsequent diaspora of its inhabitants  could  be  the greatest  cleansing  force  the universe had ever experienced.

Chapter 22

The fourth day  of  the Battle  for  Chu has  Tria  and Gar  in possession of  only one-eighth  of the warren  area, but  with a population  density  triple  the norm. Jedrik had  effectively cleaved them from any alliance with Broey. Tria asserts herself over her father and decides to surrender to Jedrik.

Chapter 23

On the fifth day  of the  Battle for  Chu McKie  interrogates a captive Tria and Gar, and suspects  that Tria was trained by the Pan-Spechi race. Jedrik sees McKie  transformed into  a Dosadi before her very eyes. She makes McKie her lieutenant and sends him back with Gar and Tria to their enclave to observe.

Chapter 24

Broey recognizes that unless Jedrik makes a  stupid mistake, it is only a matter of time until she defeated him. He acknowledges that she is more Dosadi than him and deserves  the victory, but he dispatches suicide bombers to make her inevitable victory as costly as possible.

Chapter 25

On the front lines of the battle, McKie takes captive a Gowachin named Grinik who reveals that his orders from Mrreg  are to get his people out of Dosadi before it is destroyed in sixty hours. McKie has also  captured Havvy,  who reveals  much. The actual purpose of the experiment is to perfect ego transfer. New Dosadi bodies for old ConSentiency ones. Havvy alerts McKie to the fact that Jedrik plans to  swap bodies with  him and  escape Dosadi, because the  Caleban contract  states  that  no one  may  leave Dosadi in  their original  body. McKie realizes that  someone else is looking  through Havvy's  eyes. He speaks directly  to Aritch  through Havvy  and admonishes  him to  honor the  sacred relationship between Legum and client.

Chapter 26

Not a single one of  Broey's people  have left the  city. McKie recognizes that Broey  has sequestered  the females  somewhere. Jedrik plans to use Gar's shock troops to gain entrance to that place. Even a few  would  be enough,  if  armed  with the  new weapons, and Broey would be compelled to yield.

Chapter 27

Ceylang is  obsessed with  the  remote  observations of  McKie, knowing that her life is  at stake. When the cameras are shut down Aritch  speculates that  Jedrik  ordered  it, which  makes Ceylang shudder at the implication that Jedrik  is playing them like a fine instrument.

Chapter 28

By perfecting  ego  transfer,  the  power  brokers  behind  the experiment give themselves a kind of immortality:  As they near death, they switch egos with a young person, taking  a new body and extending their ego  lifespan through  several generations, and theoretically forever. Pcharky mediates this,  through the power of the God Wall Caleban. He will do this one more time, and in exchange Jedrik will provide a body  for Pcharky himself to escape Dosadi. Jedrik convinces McKie that it is the only way out.

Chapter 29

Ceylang is   fascinated  by   the  possibilities   inherent  in ego-transfer,  but   Aritch  warns   her  that  it   could  mean infiltration into  one  race   by  another. He considers  her fascination to be an infection that could spread out of control if the Dosadi Affair comes to the Courtarena.

Chapter 30

Jedrik and  McKie  swap  bodies, but  the  exchange  awakens  a "sleeper"  deep in  their cells  that terrifies  them and  kills Pcharky. Something has gone wrong, and now Jedrik and McKie find they can swap egos and bodies at will. Broey shows up alone to surrender, because the sky of Dosadi has gone black. The Caleban has sealed the planet in to conceal the final explosion.

Chapter 31

In Jedrik's body McKie  contacts Fannie Mae  one more  time and asks the Caleban to remove both him and Jedrik  through the God Wall. From Tandaloor McKie  contacts six  BuSab agents  using a Tapisriot  contract  and  does  a  contingency  memory  dump  of everything he learned on Dosaid. Then he contacts Aritch and as legum orders him to cancel the Caleban contract  and remove the God Wall. Dosadi is free.

Chapter 32

Making several  inquiries,  McKie confirms  the  complicity  of Bildoon's involvement in  the Dosadi Affair. He had been bought off with the promise of a body to permanently fix his ego before it migrated to one of the other four members  of his Pan-Spechi creche. McKie maneuvers  to  have only  three  judges  on  the Courtarena bench, and one of them must be Broey.

Chapter 33

McKie contacts Mrreg because he asserts that he is the Legum for "that Gowachin  who made  the  decision  to launch  the  Dosadi Experiment". Mrreg wistfully answers his  queries while  he is preparing for a ritual, unfamiliar to McKie, called Laupuk which turns out to be an alien  form of hari-kari. After Mrreg dies, Aritch steps back into his role as McKie's client.

Chapter 34

Safe on  McKie's  floating  island  on  the  oceanic  world  of Tutalsee,  Jedrik  contacts  McKie   mind-to-mind  to  make  the point that Aritch's plans  didn't extend  much beyond  the uses of outrage  and injustice,  and  how  to  turn such  things  to personal  advantage. But such  actions  always  call  forth  a greater counter-reaction, which was occuring even as they spoke, with escaping  Dosadi-born  infiltrating  every  facet  of  the ConSentiency.

Chapter 35

Broey was accepted as judge,  and Bildoon as the  second judge. The third judge, Moredes  Parando, has the  look of  the Dosadi Rim. McKie knows he was a legalist, who gives advice on Gowachin Law. Legalists were absolutely  forbidden  from  serving as  a judge. Ceylang calls Jedrik  as a  witness,  forcing McKie  to reveal her  whereabouts on Tutalsee. She testifies that she is McKie's  lover, but  this  is not  enough to  exclude  her as  a witness. However, Ceylang proposes  the  exclusion  and it  is agreed to. After McKie calls a recess, they make love once more, and Jedrik confesses that she is in love with McKie, an emotion she never felt before. She finds the sensation of being able to admit  it openly  very odd. In the morning  Jedrik returns  to McKie's home on Tutalsee, but she is killed by an explosion that rips apart the island. By this act Jedrik removes herself as a potential hostage to hold  over McKie's head. Eight conspirators arrive to gloat over him, addressing him as  Jedrik. Nothing in their experience permits them to believe it was McKie in his own body, for the Caleban  contract was  clear. Naturally they are surprised when Broey's people pounce on them.

Chapter 36

The eight shackled conspirators are dumped on  the arena floor. McKie names them his client,  and maneuvers Ceylang  into being their prosecutor. In so doing, she affirms  Aritch's innocence and her life is forfeit. McKie suggests the eight be handed over to ConSentient jurisdiction for trial, and Broey  so orders it. McKie picks up a spear, reveals  Parando to be a  legalist, and kills him with a single thrust. Bildoon's ego, overcome by the stress of the Courtarena, has already fled to the creche leaving Bildoon himself a lifeless corpse. Broey finds for the defense, and Aritch is declared innocent. In the strange, inverted system of Gowachin Law, that means his life could be taken by the court observers. He walks out  of the Courtarena  to his  doom. McKie uses the sacred knife  to make a  single pockmark  in Ceylang's flesh, as a lover would. The Wreaves stand down, accepting this as a token of honor that satisfies Gowachin law. McKie will not be hunted down. Jedrik's ego awakens in McKie's mind then, and both of them must now share  his one body. They look at Broey, knowing that he was moving to  seize the reins of  power in the ConSentiency. Jedrik/McKie find it humorous that Broey is doing their work  for them,  presenting  a  single target  for  their ministrations as the new head  of BuSab.