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We have created a monster - enorerous Our We do not dare use this rasp upon it

-Gowachin assessainst thebehind Keila Jedrik&039;s desk, ricocheted and screamed off into the canyon street far below her office Jedrik prided herself that she had not even flinched The Elector&039;s patrols would take care of the sniper The patrols which swept the streets of Chu everywould home on the sound of the shot She held the casual hope that the sniper would escape back to the Rinized this hope as a weakness and dis far more important than an infiltrator from the Riht which illuminated the contact plates of her terminal in the Master Accountancy coers - she could almost disassociate herself fro keys The terminal was a functional instrument, symbol of her status as a Senior Liaitor It sat all alone in its desk slot - grey, green, gold, black, white and deadly Its grey screen was almost precisely the tone of her desk top

With careful precision, her fingers played their rhythms on the keys The screen produced yellow nued at her coolden shapes

Every angel carries a sword, she thought

But she did not really consider herself an angel or her weapon a sword Her real weapon was an intellect hardened and sharpened by the terrible decisions her planet required Emotions were a force to be diverted within the self or to be used against anyone who had failed to learn what Dosadi taught She knew her oeakness and hid it carefully: she&039;d been taught by loving parents (who&039;d concealed their love behind exquisite cruelty) that Dosadi&039;s decisions were indeed terrible

Jedrik studied the numbers on her computer display, cleared the screen and made a new entry As she did this, she knew she took sustenance from fifty of her planet&039;s Hu survive this callous jape In truth, her fingers eapons of death for those who failed this test She felt no guilt about those she slew The imminent arrival of one Jorj X McKie dictated her actions, precipitated the was one of satisfaction She&039;d waited for McKie like a predator beside a burrow in the earth His naiven to her by her chauffeur, Havvy, hoping to increase his value to her She&039;d taken the inforation Jedrik doubted that any other person on Dosadi could have come up with the result her sources produced: Jorj X McKie was an adult human who could not possibly exist No record of him could be found on all of Dosadi - not on the poisonous Ri power structure McKie did not exist, but he was due to arrive in Chu led into the city by a Gowachin temporarily under her control

McKie was the precision element for which she had waited He wasn&039;t ed key like Havvy) but clean and certain She&039;d never thought to attack this lock with poor instruments There&039;d be one chance and only one; it required the best

Thus fifty Dosadi Humans took their faceless places behind the numbers in her computer Bait, expendable Those who died by this act wouldn&039;t die iht never know they&039;d been deliberately submitted to early death by her deliberate choice Some would be pushed back to the Rim&039;s desperate and short existence So Others would waste away in the Warrens For most, the deadly process would extend across sufficient time to conceal her hand in it But they&039;d been slain in her computer and she knew it She cursed her parents (and the others before them) for this unwanted sensitivity to the blood and sinew behind these coht her well She ht to all but one of the fifty; still she sensed the

Jedrik sighed The fifty were bleating animals staked out to lure a special beast onto Dosadi&039;s poisonous soil Her fifty would create a fractional surplus which would vanish, sed before anyone realized their purpose

Dosadi is sick, she thought And not for the first time, she wondered: Is this really Hell?

Many believed it

We&039;re being punished

But no one knehat they&039;d done to deserve punishment

Jedrik leaned back, looked across her doorless office to the sound barrier and e Gowachin shaure on some official errand, a packet of brown paper clutched in his knobby hands His green skin shih he&039;d recently come from water

The Gowachin re McKie into her net, Bahrank who did her bidding because she controlled the substance to which he was addicted More fool he to let hi One day soon Bahrank would sell what he knew about her to the Elector&039;s spies; by then it would be too late and the Elector would learn only what she wanted him to learn when she wanted him to learn it She&039;d chosen Bahrank with the same care she&039;d used at her computer terminal, the same care which had made her wait for someone precisely like McKie And Bahrank was Gowachin Once co people were notorious for carrying out their orders in a precise way They possessed an inbred sense of order but understood the liaze traversed the office, the sparse and functional efficiency of the space filled her with quiet ae of her which she had constructed with meticulous care It pleased her that she would be leaving here soon never to return, like an insect shedding its skin The office was four paces wide, eight long Twelve black metal rotofiles lined the wall on her left, dark sentinels of hercodes and armed them to destroy their contents when the Elector&039;s toads pried into them The Elector&039;s people would attribute this to outrage, a last angry sabotage It would be so doubts would lead them to reassessment and to frustrated questions Even then they ht not suspect her hand in the elimination of fifty Humans She, after all, was one of the fifty

This thought inflicted her with a momentary sense of unfocused loss How pervasive were the seductions of Dosadi&039;s power structure! How subtle! What she&039;d just done here introduced a flaw into the computer system which ruled the distribution of non-poisonous food in Dosadi&039;s only city Food - here was the real base of Dosadi&039;s social pyraly The flaw removed her from a puissant niche in that pyramid She had worn the persona of Keila Jedrik-Liaitor for h to learn enjoy one valuable counter in Dosadi&039;s endless survival game, she must now live and act only with the persona of Keila Jedrik-Warlord This was an all-or-nothing e She felt the nakedness of it But this gao, far back in Dosadi&039;s contrived history, when her ancestors had recognized the nature of this planet and had begun breeding and training for the individual ould take this plunge

I am that individual, she told herself This is our moment

But had they truly assessed the problele hich looked out into the canyon street Her own reflection stared back: a face too narrow, thin nose, eyes andblack velvet helrow, but she kept it cropped short as a renetic sex partner, that she must rely on her wits That was the way she&039;d been bred and trained Dosadi had taught her its cruelest lessons early She&039;d grown tall while still in her teens, carrying s so that she appeared even taller when seated She looked down on most Gowachin and Huift (and lesson) fro parents and fro this Dosadi lesson

What you love or value will be used against you

She leaned forward to hide her disquieting reflection, peered far down into the street There, that was better Her fellow Dosadis no longer ar people They were reduced to distant ures in her coht, she noted Very few armored vehicles moved, no pedestrians There&039;d been only that one shot at her She still entertained a faint hope that the sniper had escaped More likely a patrol had caught the fool The Ri Chu&039;s defenses despite the boringly repetitive results It was desperation Snipers seldom waited until the day was deep and still and the patrols were scattered, those hours when even so the most powerful ventured out