Radix, page 5
part #1 of Radix Tetrad Series
He shook his head. The sex-ed program that accompanied the gene test hadn’t covered voor sexual behavior.
“We’re distorts, you know. Our children are only strong when we mate with outsiders. If our race is to survive, we need new genes.”
Sumner popped his knuckles.
“Finding someone as unmarred as you is difficult. These are unsteady times. Howlies—people like yourself who have to make sounds to be heard—are dangerous. We have to make the best—” She stopped short, and her eyes narrowed. “I didn’t know that. You’re so young.” She seemed to look more closely at him. “You’ve killed recently.”
“Yes,” Sumner said, knowing it was useless to lie. Three weeks before, he had doused the Black Touch marauders in homemade fire-gum. His first kill.
Jeanlu shook her head and said with mock gravity, “So young. And so scared.”
“I’m not scared,” Sumner slammed back. He stared at her sullenly, legs swinging. It made him uneasy to know that she was watching him think. “I burned them because they abused me. You can’t let people abuse you, or they’ll never stop.”
Jeanlu nodded compassionately. “That’s what your father used to say, isn’t it?”
Sumner glared. His father had died almost a year ago. A large, powerful man, Klaus always got his way. Every week, he would take Sumner downtown to play pins or kili. One day he went out hunting and never came back. Carrying a loaded shotgun, he had been chasing a pangolin when he tripped. The gunstock hit the ground, discharging the firearm and blowing away the top of his head. Sumner went berserk when he found out, and Zelda had to tie him down. Weeks later, when he was able to control himself again, he went downtown to play pins and try to forget about his grief. On the way back, he confronted the Black Touch gang, slinky, mushroom-skinned distort kids who never left the shadows when he went through their neighborhood with his father. Now that he trespassed alone, they dragged him into a back alley, shit-smeared him, and left him hanging upside down for a whole afternoon. He was sick for days afterward and spent the bedtime wondering how his father would have handled it. It was then that he decided to kill them.
Just thinking about it infuriated him, and he could feel his heart thudding.
“I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to bring up such painful memories.” Jeanlu sounded genuinely contrite. “You were brave to do what you did. Fear is a tool in the hands of a clever man.”
Sumner nodded, feeling his anger cool in the face of being called a man.
Jeanlu laughed and clapped her hands. “I wonder if you’re going to be as fiery in bed?”
Sumner stiffened, feeling a twinge between his legs. Spreading warmth pulsing over his belly turned positively hot when Jeanlu leaned forward and rested a hand on his knee. “But I want you to know I won’t force you into this. If you don’t want to be with me, you can go home now.”
The offer, almost too good to believe, appealed to him, and he almost moved to go. But the sensual warmth in Jeanlu’s hand turned magnetic. At first, he thought this was the afterglow of his anger, until it swirled tighter and fired his loins with sudden heat. The feathery scent of Jeanlu’s hair misted over him, and he knew for sure that something wonderful was going to happen. “N-no,” he stammered. “I’d like to stay.”
“Wonderful.” With a radiant smile, she stood up and loosened the cord binding the front of her dress. “But I have to tell you before you finally decide—” The cream white curves of her breasts appeared between the blue edges of her dress. “The pastry you ate was laced with a mild aphrodisiac. Nothing to take your wits away. Just something to make your first time more memorable.”
Sumner couldn’t have cared less. He writhed in the chair as she ran a finger down between her breasts to the cloud of hair below. She took his arm and coaxed him out of the chair and over to the bed. His reluctance evaporated when her cool hands moved under his shirt and over his body. Her touch felt electric. In a few minutes, he was struggling out of his clothes.
Naked, Jeanlu’s body didn’t prove as attractive as it had promised to be beneath the folds of her dress. Firm yet soft and well proportioned, her flesh displayed large dark scales on her thighs and stomach. She said they were nothing to be concerned about, not a disease, nothing contagious, just a deformity. Sumner looked at them only once and then fixed his attention on the strawberry-gold specks of her eyes and made love to her as best his cumbersome inexperienced body could.
Jeanlu was patient. She guided their slewed bodies craftily, helping Sumner discover for himself how to please her with his turgid strength. Lust immixed with his uncertainty, and soon he was wauling with pleasure, doing things he had never thought possible. He did them again and again, until mist rose blue in the tamarind trees and the spiderwebs started shining in the falling light.
Sumner, orgasm-wearied, exultant and proud, prepared to urge himself on again as the room fogged into crepuscular shadows. But Jeanlu had become silent. She lay in the bed, eyes glazed over, breath soft. As Sumner bent over her and stroked the sweat-strung hair from her eyes, the door swung open and the two voors stepped in.
“Get your clothes on, waddle,” the old voor said. “Time to go.”
Sumner slunk out of the bed and swiftly tugged his clothes on. The old voor led him out by his elbow, and the boy glanced back only once. Jeanlu, lying on her back, stared up mute-eyed, her face serene and pale as ivory.
He was still buttoning his shirt when the metal doors of the truck banged shut behind him. He got a good grip on the wire mesh before they jolted off into the dusk.
The ride back sped by uneventfully. In the dark, Rigalu Flats disclosed a lattice of shadows suffused with a dusty green light. Sumner asked what made it glow, but the old voor shrugged and the cowled driver remained silent.
Without asking where he lived they drove him right to his doorstep. As soon as he hopped out, they sped off.
A SMALL TIME-DRENCHED WORLD
Sumner ran a hand over his face, feeling the memories stirring just an inch behind his eyes. He sighed and glanced at the dashboard. The battery indicator showed a full charge, enough power to run continuously for perhaps three days. In that time, he could make it to one of the large eastern cities—Vortex, Prophesy, maybe even Xhule. All three of them, larger than McClure, offered the prospect of finding work. But doing what? He wasn’t trained or licensed to do anything. He had a white card, and though that would certainly get him cash for sperm donations, it would also expose him to the police. And if they caught him, they would kill him. At least he hoped they would, because if they didn’t, he would wind up in the dorga pits.
Dorgas, the lowest rung in Massebôth society, served as corpse-carriers, garbage burners, and street laborers. Legally, as functional distorts, criminals, or captured and conditioned tribesfolk, they didn’t exist. When they worked, they were made to wear drone straps, headbands that amplified their strength at the same time that they dulled their minds. The characteristic X-scars on dorga brows came from the drone straps and so did their sullen lethargy. Most dorgas lived many years as mindnumbed zombies.
Sumner shivered and brought his attention firmly back to the road in front of him. Sure I’m a renegade, he admitted to himself. But I know I can make it. There’s still Jeanlu. I’m not dorga meat yet.
He reached for an apple and bit off a large chunk. The crisp, cool flavor eased him, and he breathed deeply. A strohlkraft, one of the Massebôth vertical-ascent planes, cruised about ten kilometers to the south and five kilometers high. It moved as a silver spark against the brisk, high wind that broomed the sky and advanced a line of cumulus clouds. He wondered if they could see him, or if they would be curious about a three-wheeler heading for the Flats.
With angry chomps, he finished the apple and dismissed the fear. Too late to be tailtucked, he told himself, though dread still spellbound him.
He flicked the core out the window and fixed his mind on Jeanlu again. Perhaps she would have some brood jewels for him. Maybe some kiutl she wanted moved. It would be a start, a way to earn some zords. Maybe enough for him to buy a new name, join a craft’s league and become a carpenter. He was still young enough.
One hand low on the wheel and the other groping in the greasy bag of beef strips, Sumner thought back to his first experience with brood jewels and kiutl—and Corby. He laughed softly at himself, remembering his ignorance, his initial fear—
***
At sixteen, he went to see Jeanlu again. Though five years had lapsed since his last visit, he remembered the route exactly. Everything remained as it had been, except that now a neat round hut with a blue tile roof reposed beyond the tamarind trees and the crater pool.
When he got out of his car, Jeanlu stood in the doorway. She waved happily, and the timidity that had been building in him since he left McClure dissolved. He had wanted to see Jeanlu again for a long time. He needed answers to some questions that had been bothering him, but he had been too afraid of the voors to seek her out. He wasn’t sure if she would be living in the same place, and he worried that the two voors who had kidnapped him might lurk there. Then one day, that seemed not to matter. He had grown bigger and smarter. And danger had become a lot more familiar—something his dread needed. So he had driven out, and now here she was, older-looking, her hair clawed with gray, face lined, yet as beautiful and gracious as he remembered her.
“I’ve been expecting you,” she greeted as he stepped up the cedar steps. She wore a sack-like dress of ruddy brown that dropped to her ankles and hung wide open at the sleeyes. “What took you so long?”
Sumner looked at her quizzically. He stood a head taller than she now, and she looked small and frail.
“I’ve been trying to get you here for the past week.”
The interior of the cottage seemed smaller, too. Everything rested where it had been, only the dense curtains of drying herbs, flowers, and roots were gone. In their place dangled hundreds of small, delicate-looking ornaments, deep brown and black and obviously woven from dried plants. To Sumner, they looked like trinkets: circles, stairs, all manner of geometric shapes, from rectangles and squares to the intricate oddity of a latticed cone within a latticed cube within a latticed sphere.
She offered him a chair. “How about something to eat or drink?”
Sumner fought back an immediate surge of hunger. “No thanks.” He remembered the almond pastry spiked with an aphrodisiac.
“You think I’d hurt you?” She tightened her face with mock-annoyance.
“I came to ask some questions,” Sumner replied, sticking to his plan to face her absolutely straightforwardly. “But you said you’ve been trying to get me here?”
“Not to hurt you. Relax.” She removed a bone-white plate from the stove. It had sliced green peppers and strips of fish on it. “Redfish sizzled in tangerine juice. I think you’ll like it.”
Sumner couldn’t turn it down, though he had already promised himself that he would refuse anything she offered. It tasted very good—tart with a sweet afterglow. The crisp peppers refreshed perfectly between bites of fish. “My questions can wait,” he said around a mouthful. “Why did you want me here?”
“I have something for you.” She reached behind and took a large bundle of black crushed leather from one of the shelves. Unwrapping it, she revealed three packages covered with faded chamois, which she arranged next to each other on the table. “These are retribution, or a gift, if you will, for your part in the creation of our son.”
Sumner glanced at the packages and then looked up at Jeanlu.
“Yes,” she said. “We have a son. I’ve named him Corby.”
Sumner began to speak, and she raised a hand. “There’s so much to do today, there’s no sense dragging this on and on. I know what you’re thinking. Let me answer your questions.”
Sumner sat back, swamped with uncertainty.
“I called you here because I want you to participate in a timeless ritual that will probably make little sense to you. It may even frighten you. But it means a lot to Corby, and I beg you to be patient and accept my assurance that no harm will come to you.”
Rauk! Sumner wriggled in his chair. He hated being manipulated, and the fact that he had been called here by a power beyond his comprehension only made his dread that much worse. “Please relax.” Jeanlu smiled, and for the first time Sumner noticed that the gold flecks in her eyes had expanded since the last time he had seen her. Her irises gleamed like polished gold rings rimmed with turquoise.
“It’s a custom among voors,” she continued, “for the child to experience the lives of the parents. Because both Corby and I are voors, he’s known my life since before he was born. But to him, you’re a stranger. He knows you only through your chromosomes. Fortunately, considering how violently you live, you’re still alive, and now may be his only chance to know you directly. In exchange for your cooperation, I’d like you to have these.”
She carefully unwrapped one of the packages, revealing a small triangular ornament similar to the many geometric shapes dangling throughout the room. “It’s a stalk charm. I made it myself from plant fiber. That’s my job—working with sunlight.”
“Your job?” Sumner asked, trying to move his mind past his anxiety.
“Yes. Every voor has a specific function. Mine is crafting stalk charms—forms of shaped-energy that we use for different purposes. This particular shape is called an Eye of Lami. It wards off influences detrimental to its possessor.”
The stalk charm consisted of a tight weave of brown, yellow, and green fibers with a faded red flower netted at its center. He held it in his hand, and its nubbled texture pleased him. Coming away with gifts was more than he had expected when he traveled out here. Suddenly his mind swarmed with questions, and the idea of shaped-energy reached the tip of his tongue.
“Each shape has its own potential,” Jeanlu responded. “Geometry is essential—from the molecular bonds in your cells to the star-bridges. But just how this particular shape works requires an understanding not only of geometry but of plants. And there’s no time for that now. Trust me.”
She unfolded the second package, the largest one, and it crackled as she nudged it toward him, exposing a thick sheaf of crisp leaves the color of dried blood. “Kiutl,” she said. “When you drink the tea made from these leaves, you’ll understand better what it is to be a voor.”
Kiutl! Sumner winced with excitement. Kiutl, a psiberant, a telepathic drug smuggled by voors, originated in the far north. Although much coveted in Massebôth society, kiutl was outlawed, because telepathy translated as anarchy to the government. On the black market, the quantity of voorweed before him would make Sumner a wealthy man. He found it virtually impossible to keep his mind off the vellum shirt and snakeskin ankle-slung boots he had been coveting for months and had to pry his avid gaze from the red leaves. He stared at the final package, wondering what it was, knowing that very little could compare with what was already before him.
Jeanlu handed the package to Sumner to open. It felt heavy and hard in his hand. When he saw the vapor-blue stone within, he sucked in his breath. The jewel caught the light and warped it into a luminous star whose fine, bright threads of energy thinned and re-formed with the quivering of his hand. “A brood jewel,” he whispered.
He had seen one on display in the Berth archives. They were very rare and, in the right market, priceless.
“Before you make plans to sell it,” Jeanlu said, “consider what it is. Like the stalk charm, its secret is geometry, but it’s not designed to extend or ward off influences. Its function is more internal. If you gaze into it long enough, you will see yourself—your inner self—or the true self of anyone reflected in it. It’s necessary, though, to have a clear mind. Any kind of distraction or mental fix will garble what you see. Also, keep in mind that it’s extremely fragile. It takes very little to destroy a brood jewel.”
Through Sumner’s mind flashed all the possible merchants he might dare approach with it. Possession of a brood jewel was damning evidence of association with voors; nevertheless, there were many who would risk their lives to own such a rarity. Then it occurred to him that the jewel wasn’t his yet. He had hardly heard what Jeanlu had said to him, and he looked up at her inquisitively.
“Shall we go meet Corby now?” she asked.
Sumner balked. The gifts were more than tempting—they were provocative. He would do anything for them, yet: Is it a ruse? Unlikely, but there was no way to know. He needed some clear answers to the questions he had come to ask.
Before he could speak, Jeanlu answered him: “No. Yes. No.”
“Huh?”
“The answers to your questions,” she replied ingenuously. “No, I can’t tell you what voors are, where we’re from, or why we’re here. It would take too much time. And yes, you’re safe with us. I’m not trying to deceive you. After all, you’re the father of my son. Finally, no, a voor would never use deep mind to kill anyone.”
“But can a voor kill with deep mind?”
Jeanlu shrugged. “Yes.” Then added quickly, “but it never happens. Mind is too sacred.”
“Even if you were threatened?”
“We have other ways to defend ourselves.”
“But what if—”
“Sumner, please.” Jeanlu’s face darkened. “You’re safe here. Believe me.” Her eyes locked on his, and they softened. “Let’s go see our son.”
Sumner nodded. He folded the chamois cloth over the brood jewel and handed it back to her. When she reached for it, the wide sleeyes of her dress rode up on her arms. For an instant, Sumner glimpsed crusty scales on her elbows that he had seen once on her belly. He looked away quickly.
“Don’t be disturbed,” she told him, getting to her feet. She put the three chamois parcels back in the crushed leather wrap, folded it, and returned it to the lacquered shelf. “I told you the last time you were here that I have a deformity. Not much to do about it. Voors sometimes have trouble shaping their bodies.”
She went out the door and led Sumner around to the back. When they got to the edge of the crater pool, they stopped, facing toward the hut with the blue tile roof. Sumner looked into the west above the hut at a sky threaded with clouds. Charged with nervous energy, he wasn’t sure what to expect. My son. The thought felt unreal to him. He wet his lips with his tongue, wondering what they were waiting for, and how weird the kid might be, and just what was going to happen, and how long it was going to take.
