The Dosadi Experiment by Frank Herbert

slipped into the passenger harness. Havvy slammed the door a touch too hard. Nervous. Good. He took his place at the power bar to her left, kept his profile to her when he spoke.
    â€œWhere?”
    â€œHead for the apartment.”
    A slight hesitation, then he activated the grapple tracks. The skitter jerked into motion, danced sideways, and slid smoothly down the diveway to the street.
    As they emerged from the parking spire’s enclosing shadows, even before the grapple released and Havvy activated the skitter’s own power, Jedrik firmed her decision not to look back. The Liaitor building had become part of her past, a pile of grey-green stones hemmed by other tall structures with, here and there, gaps to the cliffs and the river’s arms. That part of her life she now excised. Best it were done cleanly. Her mind must be clear for what came next. What came next was war.
    It wasn’t often that a warrior force lifted itself out of Dosadi’s masses to seek its place in the power structure. And the force she had groomed would strike fear into millions. It was the fears of only a few people that concerned her now, though, and the first of these was Havvy.
    He drove with his usual competence, not overly proficient but adequate. His knuckles were white on the steering arms, however. It was still the Havvy she knew moving those muscles, not one of the evil identities who could play their tricks in Dosadi flesh. That was Havvy’s usefulness to her and his failure. He was Dosadi-flawed, corrupted. That could not be permitted with McKie.
    Havvy appeared to have enough good sense to fear her.
Jedrik allowed this emotion to ferment in him while she studied the passing scene. There was little traffic and all of that was armored. The occasional tube access with its sense of weapons in the shadows and eyes behind the guard slits—all seemed normal. It was too soon for the hue and cry after an errant Senior Liaitor.
    They went through the first walled checkpoint without delay. The guards were efficiently casual, a glance at the skitter and the identification brassards of the occupants. It was all routine.
    The danger with routines, she told herself, was that they very soon became boring. Boredom dulled the senses. That was a boredom which she and her aides constantly guarded against among their warriors. This new force on Dosadi would create many shocks.
    As Havvy took them up the normal ring route through the walls, the streets became wide, more open. There were garden plantings in the open here, poisonous but beautiful. Leaves were purple in the shadows. Barren dirt beneath the bushes glittered with corrosive droplets, one of Dosadi’s little ways of protecting territory. Dosadi taught many things to those willing to learn.
    Jedrik turned, studied Havvy, the way he appeared to concentrate on his driving with an air of stored-up energy. That was about as far as Havvy’s learning went. He seemed to know some of his own deficiencies, must realize that many wondered how he held a driver’s job, even for the middle echelons, when the Warrens were jammed with people violently avaricious for any step upward. Obviously, Havvy carried valuable secrets which he sold on a hidden market. She had to nudge that hidden market now. Her act must appear faintly clumsy, as though events of this day had confused her.
    â€œCan we be overheard?” she asked.
    That made no difference to her plans, but it was the kind of clumsiness which Havvy would misinterpret in precisely the way she now required.
    â€œI’ve disarmed the transceiver the way I did before,” he said. “It’ll look like a simple-breakdown if anyone checks.”

    To no one but you , she thought.
    But it was the level of infantile response she’d come to expect from Havvy. She picked up his gambit, probing with real curiosity.
    â€œYou expected that we’d require privacy today?”
    He almost shot a startled look at