Free The Dosadi Experiment by Frank Herbert Page B

delays and red tape wherever found. There was little deliberation. Unaware that they acted out of an unconscious compulsion to prevent all change, the tyrants tried to enforce a grey sameness upon every population.
    â€œThus the powerful governmental machine blundered along at increasingly reckless speed. It took commerce and all the important elements of society with it. Laws were thought of and passed within hours. Every society came to be twisted into a suicidal pattern. People became unprepared for those changes which the universe demands. They were unable to change.
    â€œIt was the time of brittle money , ‘appropriated in the morning and gone by nightfall,’ as you learned earlier. In their passion for sameness, the tyrants made themselves more and more powerful. All others grew correspondingly weaker and weaker. New bureaus and directorates, odd ministries, leaped into existence for the most improbable purposes. These became the citadels of a new aristocracy, rulers who kept the giant wheel of government careening along, spreading destruction, violence, and chaos wherever they touched.
    â€œIn those desperate times, a handful of people (the Five Ears, their makeup and species never revealed) created the Sabotage Corps to slow that runaway wheel of government. The original corps was bloody, violent, and cruel. Gradually, the original efforts were replaced by more subtle methods. The governmental wheel slowed, became more manageable. Deliberation returned.
    â€œOver the generations, that original Corps became a Bureau,
the Bureau of Sabotage, with its present Ministerial powers, preferring diversion to violence, but ready for violence when the need arises.”
    They were words from McKie’s own teens, generators of a concept modified by his experiences in the Bureau. Now, he was aware that this directorate composed of all the known sentient species was headed into its own entropic corridors. Someday, the Bureau would dissolve or be dissolved, but the universe still needed them. The old imprints remained, the old futile seeking after absolutes of sameness. It was the ancient conflict between what the individual saw as personal needs for immediate survival and what the totality required if any were to survive. And now it was the Gowachin versus the ConSentiency, and Aritch was the champion of his people.
    McKie studied the High Magister carefully, sensitive to the unrelieved tensions in the Wreave attendant. Would there be violence in this room? It was a question which remained unanswered as McKie spoke.
    â€œYou have observed that I am in a difficult position. I do not enjoy the embarrassment of revered teachers and friends, nor of their compatriots. Yet, evidence has been seen …”
    He let his voice trail off. Gowachin disliked dangling implications.
    Aritch’s claws slid from the sheaths of his webbed fingers.
    â€œYour client wishes to hear of this evidence.”
    Before speaking, McKie rested his hand on the latch of the box in his lap.
    â€œMany people from two species have disappeared. Two species: Gowachin and Human. Singly, these were small matters, but these disappearances have been going on for a long time—perhaps twelve or fifteen generations by the old Human reckoning. Taken together, these disappearances are massive. We’ve learned that there’s a planet called Dosadi where these people were taken. Such evidence as we have has been examined carefully. It all leads to the Gowachin Federation.”
    Aritch’s fingers splayed, a sign of acute embarrassment. Whether assumed or real, McKie could not tell.

    â€œDoes your Bureau accuse the Gowachin?”
    â€œYou know the function of my Bureau. We do not yet know the location of Dosadi, but we’ll find it.”
    Aritch remained silent. He knew BuSab had never given up on a problem.
    McKie raised the blue box.
    â€œHaving thrust this upon me, you’ve made me guardian of your fate, client.