The Dosadi Experiment by Frank Herbert Page B

your protection then.”
    â€œWhy should I protect you when you’re no longer of value?”
    â€œWhat makes you think this is all the information I can get?”
    Jedrik allowed herself a sigh, wondered why she continued this empty game.
    â€œWe might both run into a taker, Havvy.”
    Havvy didn’t respond. Surely, he’d considered this in his foolish game plan.
    They passed a squat brown building on the left. Their street curved upward around the building and passed through a teeming square at the next higher level. Between two taller buildings on the right, she glimpsed a stretch of a river channel, then it was more buildings which enclosed them like the cliffs of Chu, growing taller as the skitter climbed.
    As she’d known, Havvy couldn’t endure her silence.
    â€œWhat’re you going to do?” he asked.
    â€œI’ll pay one year of such protection as I can offer.”
    â€œBut this is …”
    â€œTake it or leave it.”
    He heard the finality but, being Havvy, couldn’t give up. It was his one redeeming feature.
    â€œCouldn’t we even discuss a …”
    â€œWe won’t discuss anything! If you won’t sell at my price, then perhaps I should become a taker.”
    â€œThat’s not like you!”
    â€œHow little you know. I can buy informants of your caliber far cheaper.”
    â€œYou’re a hard person.”
    Out of compassion, she ventured a tiny lesson. “That’s how to survive. But I think we should forget this now. Your information is probably something I already know, or something useless.”

    â€œIt’s worth a lot more than you offered.”
    â€œSo you say, but I know you, Havvy. You’re not one to take big risks. Little risks sometimes, big risks never. Your information couldn’t be of any great value to me.”
    â€œIf you only knew.”
    â€œI’m no longer interested, Havvy.”
    â€œOh, that’s great! You bargain with me and then pull out after I’ve …”
    â€œI was not bargaining!” Wasn’t the fool capable of anything?
    â€œBut you …”
    â€œHavvy! Hear me with care. You’re a little tad who’s stumbled onto something you believe is important. It’s actually nothing of great importance, but it’s big enough to frighten you. You can’t think of a way to sell this information without putting your neck in peril. That’s why you came to me. You presume to have me act as your agent. You presume too much.”
    Anger closed his mind to any value in her words.
    â€œI take risks!”
    She didn’t even try to keep amusement from her voice. “Yes, Havvy, but never where you think. So here’s a risk for you right out in the open. Tell me your valuable information. No strings. Let me judge. If I think it’s worth more than I’ve already offered I’ll pay more. If I already have this information or it’s otherwise useless, you get nothing”
    â€œThe advantage is all on your side!”
    â€œWhere it belongs.”
    Jedrik studied Havvy’s shoulders, the set of his head, the rippling of muscles under stretched fabric as he drove. He was supposed to be pure Labor Pool and didn’t even know that silence was the guardian of the LP: Learning silence, you learn what to hear . The LP seldom volunteered anything. And here was Havvy, so far from that and other LP traditions that he might never have experienced the Warren. Had never experienced it until he was too old to learn. Yet he talked of friends on the Rim, acted as though he had his own conspiratorial cell. He held a job for which he was barely competent. And
everything he did revealed his belief that all of these things would not tell someone of Jedrik’s caliber the essential facts about him.
    Unless his were a marvelously practiced act.
    She did not believe such a marvel, but there was a cautionary element in recognizing