Radix, page 29
part #1 of Radix Tetrad Series
He backwatered and slipped through a rush brake and froze. Three peccaries rooted truffles out of a massive dead tree. They raised their bristles, backed into a circle, and began clicking tusks. With his cricket whistle, Sumner alerted the other hunters. The catch that day was great.
Sumner’s failures over the following days convinced him to try the sacred names again, though the sounds to him carried no meaning. Each time he used them, though, he encountered exceptional lifeforms: a sabalo trout huge as a salmon, a grandfather manatee happy to die and heavy with useful blubber, and two giant wild turkeys.
The Mothers, startled by how thoroughly Sumner had taken to their knowledge, resolved to show him no more, fearing that when his thrall to Bonescrolls concluded he would reveal everything to the profane. Already he had surpassed many of the Mothers themselves in his ability to send and receive psynergy.
Drift, too, could see that Sumner amassed tremendous strength. It watched his bodylight whirl faster and stronger in his abdomen and gather into a balled, furry gold light above his buttocks. But Sumner lacked awareness of this change. The waters ebbed, and he could no longer tell whether the sacred names or just the return of the creatures to their former habitats provided his bounty. When Bonescrolls called him to his desert abode, he asked the magnar.
“It’s all you,” Bonescrolls said in his perfect Massel. “You put on masks and pretend to be a pig or a turkey or a Serbota hunter. But it’s all you.”
Sumner frowned. “Why then does anyone starve?”
Bonescrolls grinned as though Sumner had seen his sleight of hand. “We play a rough game. What fun would it be if we didn’t die sometimes? What would we do with the masks we were tired of?”
Sumner was still frowning when Bonescrolls clapped his hands. “Enough of this banter. I have only two more assignments for you. They’re both very important, and I hope you’ll do your best.”
“As important as a nut and strawberry omelet?”
Bonescrolls gave him a reproving look. “Someday you will understand the importance of a truly great omelet.” With luminous eyes, he stared down Sumner’s scowl.
“What do I have to do?”
“Deliver this.” The old man rolled his hand on his wrist like a magician and produced a green brood jewel. It caught the light deeply and held it, glowing from within like a flower. “Take Drift with you. It knows where to go. Tell it to take you to the yawps.”
The jewel tingled with electrical force in Sumner’s grasp. It raised the hairs on the back of his hand, and when he gazed into it the soft light curved into fulgent tunnelings. Deep within, past the purring reflections, a white flake trembled, shivering to star brightness. The radiant spicules of light shifted and reformed, and Sumner thought of spring clouds ballooning over green ponds. Then the gleaming threads knotted and tightened to an image—a child’s face of white porcelain with dreamy, colorless eyes. Sumner would have dropped the stone if Bonescrolls hadn’t steadied his hand.
“You’re still in lusk, young brother.” He took the brood jewel and wrapped it in black silk. “It’s best that you stay away from all voorish things.”
“I just saw—”
“I know what you saw.”
Sumner palmed his eyes. “Why?”
Bonescrolls shrugged and handed him the wrapped jewel.
Sumner hefted it and tried to feel the energy through the cloth. “How does this thing work?”
“The voor in you knows. If you really want to understand, you’ll find out.”
“You won’t tell me?”
Bonescrolls vigorously shook his head and flapped air through his lips like a horse. “You leave too many tracks as it is. I don’t want to make you heavier. Can’t you see? I’m trying to empty you.”
***
The journey back to Miramol fogged over with memories of Corby. He thought again of the one-eyed stranger who had stopped his car in Rigalu Flats and told him about the Delph—and he thought of Jeanlu and how, his whole life, he had been led by deception and error. It took all of his selfscanning discipline to overcome the clumsy nostalgia Corby’s image had sent banging through his head. Even so, when he got to Miramol, Drift could see the warrior’s distress.
The golden energy that had tufted like a tail at the bottom of his spine had diffused, and the slippery burn scar on his face seemed darker than ever. What’s troubling you? Drift asked.
Sumner told it about Corby’s visage and his heavy memories.
The past is a disguise, it said, inflecting its telepathic voice as much as it could with fellow-feeling. You’re not really concerned about that. It’s something going on now that worries you. Your year of thralldom is more than half up—
Sumner nodded. That was it, he knew. Having someone to direct his life completed him. It didn’t matter whether the Rangers or Bonescrolls commanded—he needed direction.
Do you really? Drift looked like a molting insect sitting up in the hammock it had strung between two flower-vined trees. Your life, as I see it, has been strong and solitary. But the lusk was terrible. Much better to be a slave than to have to face that alone. Drift’s teeth cracked in its head as it recalled the snake-pit rasp of voor psynergy and the depth-terror, vaster than oceans, that had gulfed its mind.
Sumner sat on a lacquered tree stump and fingered a cluster of jonquils. “What can I do?”
Just what Bonescrolls has ordered. The yawps will amaze you and make you forget your fear. It lowered its gaze to meet Sumner’s. And besides, it is pointless to look for a new path—unless that path is already there.
***
Sumner and Drift traveled upriver that day, talking about yawps. Still clouds, waxy with their burden of rain, loomed above the green plateau of treetops. Drift relaxed, pleased to see that Sumner’s psynergy had filled out again and whirled tight through the lifelock in his abdomen. I’ve only been with the yawps once, but that one encounter taught me the importance of keeping a clean mind.
Sumner paddled with long, graceful strokes, his whole body swaying, urging the dugout over the amber surface. “Clean?”
Mirror-mind—simply watching. Drift perched behind Sumner, also paddling, trying to match his rhythm but skipping every third or fourth stroke. The yawps are very serene. Very quiet. Loud minds make them uneasy.
“They’re all telepathic?”
The ones I met were.
A sprawling tangle of leafed branches swam toward them, and Sumner signaled Drift to up paddle. He angled the dugout around jutting driftwood and stroked again for the middle of the stream where paddling eased up. “What kind of people are the yawps?”
Not people, really.
Sumner peered over his shoulder.
About a thousand years ago, they were apes. The kro used them for labor. But then the world changed, and they have been on their own since.
“Apes?”
Once. Now they are a very spiritual tribe. You will see.
Drift had given no clue as to how close they approached, so when mossy buildings swung into sight Sumner stiffened with surprise. None of the usual telltale refuse had floated downstream to announce a river settlement. The cypress had simply parted and there among nodding firetrees rose a mound of modular pinkstone buildings virtually overgrown with jungle. Figures moved along ribbon-ramps, and in the distance towers loomed, sunlight blustery against elegant minarets of glass and white stone.
Someone approached over the water—a tall creature glistening with red hair, standing on the water. As it drew closer, they saw that it rode a white disc, skimming effortlessly above the surface without controls or even a handhold. The disc-rider swooped up alongside, and Sumner gawked at the red, glossy-furred being. Its simian face displayed a lightning-blue muzzle, stiff head fur, and large, black, expressive eyes. It wore nothing more than a purple, leather-banded breechcloth and simple cork sandals. Shay, Serbota—welcome to Sarina. Its voice resonated in their minds. You are expected. Please, follow me.
It backed off and floated toward the jungle-city. Sumner lifted out of his amazement and paddled after it. “A yawp?”
A young one.
The city became more wonderful the closer they got: a tree-flowering island where towers of silk-white stone stood about, lean and graceful as women. The technology enraptured Sumner.
“What is that water-disc? How the—”
Mirror-mind, Lotus Face. We will talk later.
They left their dugout in a bluestone berth and followed their guide to a glade of great holy trees. The yawp left them there, and they stared around at floating fountains whose spray fell like diamond dust in the breeze.
From across a distance, liquid music surfed over blue lawns. Along a wooden walkway with yellow rose-braided posts, a silver-furred yawp approached.
Shay, Drift. Shay, Lotus Face.
Shay, Bir, Drift sent.
Bir bowed before Sumner. This is your first visit to Sarina. I hope you don’t find it too other.
“I didn’t know such marvels existed.” Sumner stared beyond the trees where slender buildings the color of moonlight slanted. “How did you build all this?”
Bir’s silver-hackled face grimaced a smile. If I tried to tell you that, I’d only confuse both of us. And why bore you with history when we can share this moment?
Bir gestured toward a tiny esplanade of green and black flagstones among the glade of giant trees. Drift led the way and sat down on the inside of a circular bench, carved whole from a petrified tree stump. Sumner sat beside it and Bir faced them. Drift, a prayer to the Infinite, Bir requested, nodding deferentially to the seer.
Drift gazed into the long stately avenue of massive trees and copper-colored grass and chanted:
Among everything that we have named
You alone remain nameless.
Help us to know you
As we know ourselves.
Bir nodded solemnly. Beautiful, seer. Your vision sees into itself. He reached into a small pouch below the knot of his maroon breechcloth and took out a sliver of glass. Now let’s celebrate. The glass splinter caught a thread of sunlight and flashed rainbow spikes. Adroitly, he spun the prism between his silver-haired fingers. The spectral rays melled to a brilliant auroral band that, as it spun faster, hazed blue. He deftly pivoted the prism in his palm, and the band swelled like a gas flame to a nebulous globe, azure-bright.
Bir cupped the globe in his hands and sat staring beyond it into the pointillist dapple of the trees. After a moment, he passed the ball of light to Drift who held it tenderly in its long spiderfingers. Then it went to Sumner.
He accepted gingerly, and as soon as the light grazed his fingers a beatific smile altered his features. The tension the Mothers had taught him to collect at the bottom of his spine uncoiled like a hypnotist’s wheel and sparkled up his back. His scalp prickled, and sudden, unshakable bliss rooted him, adamant as pain. Bir took the blue globe from his hands and collapsed it back to a glass sliver.
Deep humus smells, rich and varied as a symphony, anchored Sumner in the moment, and he watched with silent glee as opaline sunlight breezed through wind-twitched grass. For the very first time, he knew true and profound joy. Life wasn’t shit, he comprehended with a bone-seizing laugh. Life was a stream of love...
I must go now, Bir stated, hands on his knees. Thank you for sharing this moment with me.
Sumner looked about with the glee of a lune. Drift touched his knee, and he remembered the brood jewel.
Bir accepted it with both hands. A fine gift, he remarked, without removing the black silk.
Sumner stared at the yawp as if he had just seen him, noticing the age in the coarse black muzzle, the heron-colored light as it reflected off his fur, the conch-pink of his ears.
Bir walked with them to a dragon-vein brook forded by a walkway of jasper stepping-stones. A parting thought, seer.
Drift bowed deferentially and psychically intoned: The eye sees but is blind to itself. Hazard is intent at high velocity.
Bir bowed and walked off, dust motes boiling into light at his feet.
Sumner wanted to linger, but Drift insisted they go. Our purpose is done. This isn’t our place.
Pushing out of the berth with their oars, heeling into the current, Sumner refused to look back, though he churned with desire. They paddled silently atop the current, each in a private reverie of sun-glinted eddies, shadowed banks, and the muscular flow of the river.
That night, beneath a sky shot with stars, Sumner told Drift about the energy that had whirled up his spine, charging him with euphoria.
The yawps are masters of matter, Drift explained, its tiny eyes fixed on the flames of the aromatic barkfire. They have machines that can do anything—even create bodies. That’s how the magnar has lived so long. He once was a yawp himself, you know.
“Why then does he live in the desert?”
Who can say? He’s unknowable as the clouds. Drift fed small bits of bark into the flames. What I do know, from having spoken with Bir and the magnar, is that Bonescrolls is an ancient yawp—one of the first. Perhaps he has outgrown his life in Sarina. Perhaps, after so many centuries, he has grown bored of being a yawp.
The cry of a screech owl sliced across the darkness of the river. “Until today I thought everything the Mothers had taught me foolish.”
No—not foolish. The Mothers are narrow. The tribe means more to them than any person or vision. But they have knowledge. I can see myself that they have trained you well. What you experienced today you can repeat now at will, I am sure.
Sumner leaned forward and singed the hairs on his knees. “Are you serious?”
Drift blinked. Of course.
Sumner looked up through the writhing skyfires at the steady stars and concentrated on calming his suddenly racing heart. When he looked back at the né, his heart still thudded. “How?”
Your body knows. It did it today. If you relax yourself, you will remember how it felt, and you will be able to do it again.
Sumner didn’t wholly believe him; even so, the idea clouded his thoughts for the rest of their journey. On their return to Miramol, he sequestered himself in the chamber the né had set aside for him, and he practiced the tension routines he had learned. His desire to repeat his experience in Sarina became his greatest obstacle, and it took him over a week finally to fix the tension at the tip of his spine. Then began the slow, awkward process of remembering exactly how it had felt to unfurl that tension. Futile days passed, and if he had not already experienced such deep joy in Sarina, he would have given up. The feelings, at first, appeared too subtle.
Guided by his memory, the tension unwound along the narrow length of his spine, so softly he might have imagined it except for the sudden itch haloing the round cope of his skull. And then came the familiar serenity. He wasn’t shaken, not as before. It arrived this time as a tensile sense of the moment expanding, opening to reveal sounds, shadings, odors that had been uninteresting before: the refraction of a fly’s wing narrowing the orbit of his vision, distant root scents dazing his nostrils with an olfaction of mud. He knew joy—not the happiness of happenstance but sincere joy.
Several years before in Dhalpur, he had known ecstasy when his body and mind became one. The joy he had felt then compared thinly to the bliss he called out from his body now. Standing up in his dugout in a glade freckled with light, he uttered the sacred name for an otter. His call resounded with exultation, not a test, because otter tokens lurked everywhere: Rocks drowsed in leaf-strewn shallows, milk fog tangled among ferns, and white roots curling out of the water.
The call did not just vibrate from his throat; it bled out of his chest and joined the invisible otter-energies in the rocks and fog and fens. With that sensation, Sumner understood that he shared a vague and pervasive energy with all the otter symbols around him. He was the glade—the spalled light, lapping water, bracken and rocks.
The length of his spine itched, and he felt the psynergy that had drained out of him suddenly returning, curving back through the antlers of the tree branches, arcing over pollen-dusted water, returning to the taut cords of his body. Just as the Mothers had said: the whorl turned in all things.
The water ruffled, and a dozen slick black heads appeared across the glade. The otters’ noses twitched as they stared about, and then several of them crawled onto flat rocks and rootloops, trailing shawls of water. They peered at Sumner, black bead eyes unflinching, dark fur sleek with wet. A giddy laugh tightened in Sumner’s belly. Everything connected. Everything was itself and the same. Bonescrolls existed as puma and raven and old man. And Sumner could also. His mind reeled, and he laughed aloud.
The otters rolled into the water and vanished. Two stood up again farther off, stared at Sumner, and then were gone.
***
From a sandbar culvert of spiny palms, Ardent Fang watched. Returning from Ladilena, a nearby Serbota village, he had been reviewing new brides. The women had been long and beautiful as the new moon, and their rituals had exalted all the good feelings in him. Yet, that rapture had dropped away when he heard the ecstatic music turning behind the sandbar. True music: bloodflow rhythms, mothertides, the desire he had always wanted to open with his devil harp. When he whisperglided up to the sandbar and peered through spiny palms, the music had gone, and he gazed with surprise at Lotus Face communing with otters.
Ardent Fang crouched in his dugout, bending far forward, the hair of his monkeyfur vest limp in the water. His hearing still frothed with the visionary music he had heard, and he clutched the dog-crucifix thonged loosely about his neck and silently invoked Paseq. At that moment, though Ardent Fang had made no sound, Lotus Face turned and stared directly at where he hid.
Ardent Fang rose, returned Sumner’s stare shamefully, and then disappeared. The boar-tusks of his prow appeared among the stilt-root palms, and he slid into the glade. As he swung his canoe around a tussock of myrtles, he heard the music again—dulcet as sunplucked water—and, like the turning of a lens, his sight sharpened. He hadn’t even realized that his vision had gone slack over the years. Reflexively, he rubbed his eyes.
