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Ar God s as he entered the Phylue"
Naiance, that was the drill If he&039;d been a Gowachin, he&039;d have na blink to reveal the identifying Phylum tattoo on his eyelids As a non-Gowachin, he didn&039;t need a tattoo
He held his right hand extended in the Gowachin peace sign, palers wide to show that he held no weapon there and had not extended his claws Even as he entered, he s the effect this would have on any Gowachin here In a rare mood of candor, one of his old Gowachin teachers had once explained the effect of a se It is a very uncomfortable experience"
McKie understood the reason for this He possessed a thick, any skin He walked with a swiait There were Polynesians in his Old Terran ancestry, this much was known in the Family Annals Wide lips and a flat nose doe and placidly brown There was a final genetic ornamentation to confound the Gowachin: red hair He was the Hureenstone sculpture found in every Phylum house here on Tandaloor McKie possessed the face and body of the Frog God, the Giver of Law
As his old teacher had explained, no Gowachin ever fully escaped feelings of awe in McKie&039;s presence, especially when McKie smiled They were forced to hide a response which went back to the ad to his ht
Still slanced once around the room, then narrowed his attention Green crystal walls confined the sanctus It was not a large space, a gentle oval of perhaps twenty le ovaladolden sun The glowing yellow created a contrived spiritual ring directly ahead of McKie The light focused on an aged Gowachin seated in a brown chairdog which had spread itself wide to support his elbows and webbed fingers At the Gowachin&039;s right hand stood an exquisitely wrought wooden swingdesk on a scrollwork stand The desk held one object: a , ten wide, and six deep Standing behind the blue box in the servant-guard position was a red-robed Wreave, her fighting mandibles tucked neatly into the lower folds of her facial slit
This Phylu a Wreave!
The realization filled McKie with disquiet Bildoon had not warned him about Wreaves on Tandaloor The Wreave indicated a sad shift a the Gowachin toward a particular kind of violence Wreaves never danced for joy, only for death And this was the nizable as such by the jaw pouches behind her mandibles There&039;d be twotriad Wreaves never ventured froer was s These damnable Gowachin! They&039;d&039; known the effect a Wreave female would have on him Except in the Bureau, where a special dispensation prevailed, dealing with Wreaves required theoffence And because they periodically exchanged triad antic proportions wherein offending one member was to offend them all
These reflections did not sit ith the chill he&039;d experienced at sight of the blue box on the swingdesk He still did not know the identity of this Phylum, but he knehat that blue box had to be He could smell the peculiar scent of antiquity about it His choices had been narrowed
"I know you, McKie," the ancient Gowachin said
He spoke the ritual in standard Galach with a pronounced burr, a fact which revealed he&039;d seldom been off this planet His left hand le to his right beyond the swingdesk, yet ithin striking range of the silent Wreave
"Please seat yourself, McKie"
The Gowachin glanced at the Wreave, at the blue box, returned his attention to McKie It was a deliberate e beneath bleached green brows He wore only a green apron hite shoulder straps which outlined crusted white chest ventricles The face was flat and sloping with pale, puckered nostrils below a faint nose crest He blinked and revealed the tattoos on his eyelids McKie saw there the dark, swiend said had been the first to accept Gowachin Law fro God
His worst fears confir adjust to his body He cast an uneasy glance at the Wreave, who towered behind the swingdesk like a red-robed executioner The flexing bifurcation which served as Wreave legs moved in the folds of the robe, but without tension This Wreave was not yet ready to dance McKie reminded himself that Wreaves were careful in all matters This had prompted the ConSentient expression, "a Wreave bet" Wreaves were noted for waiting for the sure thing
"You see the blue box," the old Gowachin said
It was a state, no answer required, but McKie took advantage of the opening
"However, I do not know your co nodded acknowledgent had once told McKie how to count the nues in which a Wreave female had participated
"A tiny bit of skin is nipped fro companion It looks like a little pock&039;s pouches were peppered with exchange pocks McKie nodded to her, foriven He glanced at the box which she served
McKie had been a Servant of the Box once This here you began to learn the lial ritual The Gowachin words for this novitiate translated as "The Heart of Disrespect" It was the first stage on the road to Legum The old Gowachin here was not mistaken: McKie as one of the few non-Gowachin ever adum status, to the practice of law in this planetary federation, would see that blue box and knohat it contained There would be a seless s dried on its black surface, and lastly a grey rock, chipped and scratched over the millennia in which it&039;d been used to pound on wood and call Gowachin courts into session The box and its contents symbolized all that was mysterious and yet practical about Gowachin Law The book was ageless, yet not to be read and reread; it was sealed in a box where it could be thought upon as a thing which The knife carried the bloody residue of s And the rock - that cainning or ending The entire assee, box and contents, represented ainto the soul of the Frog God&039;sa Wreave as Servant of the Box
McKie wondered why the Gowachin had chosen a deadly Wreave, but dared not enquire The blue box, however, was another matter It said with certainty that a planet called Dosadi would be na which BuSab had uncovered was about to become an issue in Gowachin Law That the Gowachin had anticipated Bureau action spoke well of their infor radiated from this room McKie assumed a mask of relaxation and remained silent
The old Gowachin did not appear pleased by this He said:
"You once afforded ht be a compliment, probably not Hard to tell Even if it were a conal reservations, especially in legal matters McKie held his silence This Gowachin was big power and no ed him would hear the Courtarena&039;s final truue your first case in our courts," the Gowachin said "Betting was nine-point-three to three-point-eight that we&039;d see your blood But when you concluded by de that eternal sloppiness was the price of libertyahhh, that was a uh 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&039;d been amusement for anyone in that first case Present circuued for truthfulness fro that first case, McKie tried to reassess it in the light of this revelation He reed a Low Magister na his most sacred vows in an issue of justice Klodik&039;s crime was the release of thirty-one felloachin froiance to Gowachin Law and the purpose of that was to qualify the thirty-one for service in BuSab The hapless prosecutor, a utud, had aspired to Klodik&039;s position and hadfor a direct conviction McKie had thought at the time that the wiser choice would&039;ve been to atteal structure under which Klodik had been arraigned This would have thrown judgment into the area of popular choice, and there&039;d been no doubt that Klodik&039;s early de 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&039;d been no question of selling Pirgutud back to his own Phyluumthe whole non-Gowachin universe had needed this The few other non-Gowachin who&039;d attained Legum status were all dead, every last one of them in the Courtarena A current of ani Suspicion fed on suspicion
Pirgutud had to die in the traditional, the formal, way He&039;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 sto a point of reference
The purely academic anatomy lessons and the practice sessions on lifelike dummies had come to deadly focus
"Just to the left of the stole 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 aedfor theeprovided McKie with a polite period for reflection, the old Gowachin continued:
"I&039;d bet against you, McKie The odds, you understand? You delightedyour case in a classic manner which would&039;ve done credit to the best of us That is one of the Law&039;s purposes, of course: to test the qualities of those who choose to employ it Nohat did you expect to find when you answered our latest summons to Tandaloor?"
The question&039;s abrupt shift al away froht I can&039;t relax even for an instant