Radix, page 7
part #1 of Radix Tetrad Series
A fire-wind blows through the Lion’s belly, so old and far-traveled its beginnings are forgotten. When it reaches this small time-drenched world, it flares in the ozone and scatters. Only some of it sifts through the atmosphere. Some of it takes on the shapes that it finds and becomes voors, simply by arriving. We are older than you know. We’ve been on this planet before. Perhaps this time we’ll stay until the sun mists and the fire-wind, our journey and life, pushes on, scattering us into the future.
They came to the rocky rise, and the inner voice slipped away. At his side, Corby stalled, too tired to climb. Sumner looked up at the rise. The supple energy of the trance still coursed through him, and he knew he could make it to the top. He bent down and let Corby straddle his shoulders, then he started climbing. He felt exhilarated, full of strength, and the rock face seemed to conspire with his need to ascend. He thought about the words that had drifted across his mind and wondered how many other worlds the fire-wind of the voors had crossed—how many others like himself had fathered alien flesh.
About three-quarters of the way to the top, he pulled up short. On the ground in front of him, where his eyes had been assiduously picking out a trail in the broken rock, a shadow fell—a human shadow. He looked up, expecting to see Jeanlu or a voor waiting to help them, and he shrieked. Klaus, his dead father, stood there, one eye and most of his forehead missing, violently ripped away. The one good eye, set in a face of mottled gray flesh, gazed down at him sadly. The lips pulled back in a berserk grimace.
Sumner shrieked again and jerked back violently, sending Corby flying. Instinctively, he spun about to catch the boy, too late. Corby dropped into the darkness head first, careening toward a jagged ridgerock. Sumner gasped and looked quickly over his shoulder. The specter of his father had vanished. Corby walked up from where he had landed, looking a little shaken.
“I—I’m sorry,” Sumner said shrilly. He looked again to where he had seen his father. Nothing but rocks and ragged shadows occupied that space, hazy in the dull glow from the Flats.
“It’s my fault,” Corby said, taking the lead toward the top of the rise. “The bond is still strong between us: You’re seeing the world like a voor. You’ll be all right tomorrow.”
Sumner wiped the cold sweat from his neck and face and plodded after the boy. All his strength had evaporated, and his legs felt gelatinous. But he didn’t stop at the crown of the rise. He spotted his car where he had parked it, and he walked at a steady lumbering pace toward it. Once he leaned against the hood, he looked over his shoulder. Corby was still standing on the rise. Before getting into the car, he waved, but the boy didn’t wave back.
Sumner didn’t wait to catch his breath before shoving the starter chip in and wheeling onto the road. He felt nauseated and sticky with fear, and he was grateful for the solidity of the wooden wheel.
The maddening ride home nearly killed him. Eerie shadows flickering out of the Flats made him swerve and jam on the brakes several times. Twice he saw his father standing by the side of the road, his hands and the mangled flesh of his face burning with blue phosphorescence.
When he finally pulled into his driveway, his whole body shivered uncontrollably, and he vomited twice in the street before steadying himself enough to put the latchkey in the lock. He crept as silently as he could up the stairs. At each creak of the old wood, he expected to hear Zelda’s piercing voice. He made it to his room alone, heart booming in his ears.
At midday, he woke and fell back in a drowse. Evening settled softly into the room before he found the strength to get out of bed. Even with his hands, face, and clothes crusted with dirt, he found it hard to believe that he had been with Jeanlu and Corby. His thoughts of the previous day lingered mistrustfully dark and charged with fear. Recalling the strange hours he had spent on the Flats with Corby made him tremble, and he had to splash his face with cold water to calm himself. Hallucinations, he rationalized. That gopping fish I ate. But Corby was real, and the boy’s face, with its dead whiteness and ghostly resemblance to his own, loomed in his memory.
After cleaning himself up, he went downstairs to the kitchen. Zelda had some stew prepared, and he ate hungrily. When he finished, she opened a cabinet, lifted out a bundle of black crushed leather, and laid it on the table.
Sumner nearly threw up. “Where’d you get that?”
“Don’t get excited,” she warned him. “You’ll throw up.”
“Ma!”
“I found it in your car. Which was missing with you in it all day yesterday.”
Sumner picked up the package and tried to feel its contents through the leather. He reasoned that Jeanlu had put it in the car while he communed with Corby. “Did you open it?”
“Of course not. How do I know what moody wangol you’ve got in there?”
Sumner inhaled deeply, wondering if he could believe her. “It’s not wangol, Ma. It’s film. I didn’t want it exposed.”
“Well, if it’s exposed, it wasn’t me that opened it.”
He decided to believe her. She’d be crawling all over me now if she’d seen the brood jewel, he figured.
She frowned. “What film do you have in there anyway? You don’t have a camera.”
Sumner got up and stuck the package under his arm. “They’re photos. I’m going to get them developed. A friend of mine’ll do it for free.”
Zelda thinned her eyes suspiciously. “Photos? Photos of what?”
Sumner smiled. “Naked girls, Ma. And people in rut.” He hopped out of the kitchen before she could snag him.
He hung the stalk charm from the ceiling in his car to remind himself that his nightmare of Corby and the Flats was real. The experience had been like a dream—vivid, colorful, and full of malevolent beauty—so that finally he had to believe it was a hallucination. There was no other way to come to grips with it. And besides, he had some kiutl and a brood jewel to move.
Sumner toyed with the idea of trying the kiutl himself, but he was leery, and eventually his dread won out. Just to see how potent it was, though, he crumbled one of the leaves and boiled it until the water turned wine-red. It smelled sweet, even tempting. So he gave it to Johnny Yesterday. The old man took it eagerly and drank it all off in a few gulps.
Sumner watched him closely for an hour. Nothing happened. A while later, he gave up on it and went out in his car for a cruise. When he came back, old Johnny Yesterday grinned down at him, floating cross-legged above the stairs, oranges and pears drifting around his head. His ears twitched, and a wicked smile smeared across his face.
As best as he could time it, the stuff lasted six hours. He figured it was potent enough to sell. Except he didn’t know how to move it.
He had the same problem with the brood jewel. Just gazing into its receding depths, the blue facets splintering with fans of curved light, he knew it exhibited exceptional qualities. At first, he thought he might use it himself. If it really could reveal the true nature of people, perhaps it would offer up secrets he could cash in on. That dream did not last long.
Sitting bent over the jewel, he saw nothing but hazings of shadowlight and his own bulging reflection. Then, slowly, a form began shaping itself out of the coal-blue depths. When the skin at the back of his neck crawled in a chill breeze of recognition, he tried to pull away. He beheld himself dead, sprawled face up, hair droozed with blood, a white curve of bone pushing through the split skin of his jaw. He couldn’t move. Transfixed, he sat looking for hours at the crushed mouth, the violet bruises, the puffed bellybutton, the gelled eyes...Daylight faded, and he sagged away crazed with revulsion and fear.
Later he picked up the jewel and thrust it under a heap of soiled clothes. He wanted to get rid of it quickly. It was a devilstone, another of Jeanlu’s evil tricks. Clearly, he realized, the safest thing to do would be to crush it and scatter its dust into the sewer. But it was a rarity, even if a monstrous one. The least he could do was get some zords for it. Mutra knew he deserved it.
After a month of seeding questions in a dozen port taverns, Sumner learned of a man in McClure who sometimes bought unusual items from strangers. Parlan Camboy, a shipping magnate with out-of-town connections, invited Sumner to his office in a turret of the Commerce building at the city center.
Sumner went there and waited in a posh anteroom several hours before the secretary turned him away for the day. The next day, he received the same treatment. And the next. On the fourth day, he told the merchant’s secretary, a spectacled, pigeon-chested man, that he had some information. “One of Camboy’s ships is going to be pirated. I know how and when.”
A few minutes later, the secretary ushered him into the main office, an opulent room of cedar rafters with lux-tubes built into them, latticed wall-panels, amber-glossed paintings of naval heroes, deep leather chairs, an intricate parquet floor, and richly carved molding. Parlan Camboy sat behind a dark crimson desk backed by a semicircle of mullioned windows. He appeared to be in his fifties with sparse hair the color of hemp, brown and yellow streaked with gray. His face, granite like his eyes, seemed a well-used face. A gold ring hung from his left ear and a shiny scar creased his right cheek.
When Sumner walked in, an undisguised look of disgust crossed Camboy’s face. Sumner as usual wore a sweat-ringed, crumpled shirt and dirty sag-seat pants.
Camboy motioned for him to sit down, and Sumner moved toward one of the leather chairs. Camboy’s eyes widened. “Not there,” he snapped. He pointed to a wooden stool that Sumner hadn’t noticed. After the obese youth sat, the merchant turned and opened a window. He adjusted his chair so that a draft cleared the air between them. Then, with both hands out of sight under the table, he growled, “Where and when?”
“I lied,” Sumner confessed, flinching as Camboy’s eyes hardened. “But I had to speak with you. I have something to sell.”
“What?” A question like a lash.
“A brood jewel.”
Camboy’s face softened, yet his eyes remained flinty. “When can I see it?”
“Now, if you like.” Sumner smiled inside at the surprise that showed on the merchant’s face. “Now? You brought it with you?”
“I want to sell it quickly.” He reached into his pocket, and Camboy tensed. When he brought out the jewel the older man leaned forward.
“Let me see that.” His hand came out of hiding and grasped, but Sumner shook his head.
“First this.” He pulled out a handwrench whose jaws had been fitted with cloth. He worked the jewel between the jaws and held it up. “You try to jooch me and I’ll crush it.”
Camboy smirked. “You’re the kind who would.” He stood up and bent closer.
“Hands behind your back,” Sumner ordered. Camboy reluctantly complied, and Sumner brought the jewel up close enough to be inspected.
The merchant’s face remained impassive, but Sumner heard awe in his voice: “Where’d you get this?”
“Where do you think?”
“You have voor connections?” The scar along his cheek writhed. “How much do you want?”
Sumner smiled.
“Five thousand zords,” Camboy offered.
Sumner almost dropped the stone. Five thousand! That was five times more than he had hoped to get. “Ten thousand,” he said, keeping the excitement out of his voice.
Camboy’s eyes stayed on the jewel, and Sumner thought he saw them smile. “Why are you selling it?”
“I need the money.”
Camboy sighed sadly. “This is such an exquisite jewel. Don’t you see anything in it?”
“I never looked.” He moved the jewel closer to the merchant. “What do you see in it?”
After a lengthy pause, Camboy replied: “A frightened boy who lives with his mother. She’s a spirit guide, isn’t she? Zelda, I believe?”
Sumner’s jaw sagged.
“I also see you have a white card. Congratulations. And that you’ve been living off your father’s savings all your life. And what’s this? Sugar?”
Sumner squeezed down hard on the wrench, and that instant the edge of the desk whipped up and forward and caught him in the belly. The impact kicked the wind out of him and sent him hurtling backward. The wrench and the jewel flew out of his grip, and he landed on his rump against the far wall.
The jewel dropped into Camboy’s hand, and he held it between his fingers appreciatively.
Sumner’s fury boiled up. The jubilant smile on the merchant’s face burned into him, and he flung himself toward the desk with a howl. Camboy caught his striking hand without effort and twisted the thumb far back. With a squeal, Sumner submitted. Powerful hands bent him close to the desktop and thrumped his head against the wood several times—hard. “The next time you lose control, I’ll gouge out your eyes.” He shoved him back to the floor.
Sumner wanted desperately to restrain his rage and pain. His eyes fogged, and soon tears streaked his grimy face. This merchant had dominated him, and the humiliation hurt worse than the throb in his head or the deep, aching bruise inside his thumb.
“Get up,” Camboy ordered, voice metallic.
Sumner pulled himself to his feet by the edge of the desk. He observed the secret insides of the panel that had struck him. He glimpsed a glint of metal and realized that Camboy, obviously using a foot pedal, could just as easily have released a slashing blade from the desk. He sat on the stool and tried to rub the pain out of his hand.
“You know, you’re a lune to sell a jewel as fine as this.” Camboy opened a drawer. “But seeing as you are a lune, I can’t blame you for not looking at yourself. Here—” He counted out ten thousand zords in hundred-zord bills and threw the money onto the desk. “Take what you asked for.”
Sumner stared stunned. He forgot his pain and chagrin and just gaped at the cash.
“Take it,” Camboy barked. “You don’t expect me to give you a sight draft. Brood jewels are illegal.”
Sumner had never seen that much money before. Ten thousand zords would be enough for him and Zelda to live well for two years. He picked up the bills with excited fingers and backed out of the office.
On the street, he put the abasement in Camboy’s office out of his head and walked past the window shops feeling proud, eyeing goods he knew he could buy if it suited him. Ten thousand zords! Mutra, that’s enough to start my own shop. He mused about business and the kind of work he would like to do. A restaurant was what he wanted. Only the best food.
He was pondering what he would have on his menu when three men in black hoods stepped out from an alley and surrounded him. It happened very quickly. The hoods flanked him, and when he stumbled back a pace they seized both his arms. He tried to yank himself free, and the third one drew a stiletto and held it to Sumner’s throat. It broke the skin, and a trickle of blood threaded over his chest. Sumner’s knees jellied, his legs trembled, and he suffered a squelch in his bowels as he dumped in his pants.
Swiftly, the two men at his sides searched him. When they found the money, one of them shoved him backward and another tripped him into the gutter. The next instant, they disappeared, running off into the maze of alleys behind the shops.
Sumner got shakily to his feet and looked around. In the crowded avenue, dozens of people stared at him. Most of the faces showed shock, but a few watched amused, almost jeering. “Did you see the wad that dingo had on him?” he heard a woman say as he bolted into an alley.
He ran wildly. Exhaustion slid him to his knees, and he leaned back against a lamp obelisk. The stench of his slimed pants fluffed around him, and he wept openly.
THE GREAT SPACE WITHIN
Sumner’s stomach quivered as he remembered that day. Thinking about it had made him speed up angrily. Now he slowed and opened his window. The sun shone proud over the blue-haze horizon, filling the road with watery heat mirages. He wiped his sweat-lapped face with his sleeve.
No way that’ll happen to me again, he insisted to himself. I’ll be dead before I’m a dingo. But he wasn’t so sure. What could he do now if the police suddenly appeared? Suicide? Wog! The thought disgusted him, though still it repulsed him less than the idea of getting caught.
Several times in the past hour, he had seen distant strohlkraft glinting in the contrails of dawn. For the moment, the sky loomed empty, though a wide arc of monolithic buttes blocked half of it. Draperies of black organic stains streaked the bluff-red buttes. He imagined a strohlkraft swinging out over them and dropping in front of him to block his escape. I’ll ram it! I’ll trash the car before I let them take me.
His conviction comforted him, and after a while he relaxed again. Soon, his thoughts fetched back to the time he worked so remorselessly on his revenge.
He believed that Parlan Camboy had set him up. Who else knew about the zords? The secretary? Maybe. But he was a wiff. Camboy had given him the zords and had most probably arranged to retrieve them.
The day after the robbery, Sumner got a job painting traffic pyramids in center-city. Zelda expressed her approval, even though he never brought any of the money home. He told her he had a debt to pay off. Actually, he had put aside everything he earned, because Sugarat needed some expensive items.
Zelda glowed with pride at how her son began using his spare time. For hours on end, he sat before the scansule with the door to his room open. He had nothing to hide. He was just a curious kid learning about electricity.
When he had enough money and all the information he needed, he stopped going to work and spent a day cruising McClure. He searched out a desolate spot close to Camboy’s office. He found one six blocks away: a wide courtyard separating two shipping warehouses. Down its middle ran a high chain-link fence so that only half the court opened onto the street.
Three days later, after establishing contacts in the black market by discreetly selling bits of kiutl to lowlifes at the wharves, he had bought all the necessary material and had set his trap. Twice during those days, he had almost killed himself. The first time, underground in the sewer that doubled as a conduit for the area’s power lines, he nearly electrocuted himself. Setting up a circuit breaker to tap into the trunk line, he had lost his grip on the thick wire. He had almost dumped the charged cable into the sludge he stood knee-deep in. The second time, after connecting a lead-off line to the chain-link fence, one of the wires broke loose when he tested it and snaked dangerously through the air. He caught it just as its hot end whipped toward him.
