Read Online The Dosadi Experiment by Frank Herbert - Free Book Online

Gowachin, who had no front rib cage, had been easily distinguishable from the white framework which had housed Human organs. Only a few rags of red and green flesh had marked where the birds had abandoned their feast when the sonabarriers herded them away.
    When he considered the sonabarriers, Broey’s thoughts grew hard and clear. The sonabarriers were one of Gar’s damned affectations! Let the birds finish it.
    But Gar insisted a few bodies be left around to make the point for the Rim survivors that their attacks were hopeless.
    The bones by themselves would be just as effective.
    Gar was bloody minded.
    Broey turned and glanced across the room past his two Human companions. Two of the walls were taken up by charts bearing undulant squiggles in many colors. On a table at the room’s center lay another chart with a single red line. The line curved and dipped, ending almost in the middle of the chart. Near this terminus lay a white card and beside it stood a Human
male statuette with an enormous erection which was labeled “Rabble.” It was a subversive, forbidden artifact of Rim origin. The people of the Rim knew where their main strength lay: breed, breed, breed …
    The Humans sat facing each other across the chart. They fitted into the space around them through a special absorption. It was as though they’d been initiated into the secrets of Broey’s citadel through an esoteric ritual both forbidding and dangerous.
    Broey returned to his chair at the head of the table, sat down, and quietly continued to study his companions. He experienced amusement to feel his fighting claws twitch beneath their finger shields as he looked at the two. Yes—trust them no more than they trusted him. They had their own troops, their own spies—they posed real threat to Broey but often their help was useful. Just as often they were a nuisance.
    Quilliam Gar, the Human male who sat with his back to the windows, looked up as Broey resumed his seat. Gar snorted, somehow conveying that he’d been about to silence the voder himself.
    Damned carrion birds! But they were useful … useful.
    The Rim-born were always ambivalent about the birds.
    Gar rode his chair as though talking down to ranks of the uninformed. He’d come up through the educational services in the Convocation before joining Broey. Gar was thin with an inner emaciation so common that few on Dosadi gave it any special notice. He had the hunter’s face and eyes, carried his eighty-eight years as though they were twice that. Hairline wrinkles crawled down his cheeks. The bas-relief of veins along the backs of his hands and the grey hair betrayed his Rim origins, as did a tendency to short temper. The Labor Pool green of his clothing fooled very few, his face was that well known.
    Across from Gar sat his eldest daughter and chief lieutenant, Tria. She’d placed herself there to watch the windows and the cliffs. She’d also been observing the carrion birds, rather enjoying their sounds. It was well to be reminded here of what lay beyond the city’s outer gates.

    Tria’s face held too much brittle sharpness to be considered beautiful by any except an occasional Gowachin looking for an exotic experience or a Warren laborer hoping to use her as a step out of peonage. She often disconcerted her companions by a wide-eyed, cynical stare. She did this with an aristocratic sureness which commanded attention. Tria had developed the gesture for just this purpose. Today, she wore the orange with black trim of Special Services, but without a brassard to indicate the branch. She knew that this led many to believe her Broey’s personal toy, which was true but not in the way the cynical supposed. Tria understood her special value: she possessed a remarkable ability to interpret the vagaries of the DemoPol.
    Indicating the red line on the chart in front of her, Tria said, “She has to be the one. How can you doubt it?”