Radix

["I'm an ort," I tell them. "My name is Rubeus. I have no gender—but I have a soul. It hurt a great deal to find that out." My smile must be more than ironic, for Jac looks ready to vomit. "What Voice told you is true, Jac, because Voice is me, the elemental mind, the soul of strategy. We don't belong to ourselves. It took the eth to teach me that—to make me see that I'm bigger than I've let myself believe. I'm not a servort. I'm a being. That knowledge cost me almost everything." I cross over to a black boulder and split it asunder with the side of my hand. "Beyond what limits— beyond what despair and joy does a being become human? I have the feelings, Jac. But I need one thing more. You burn in me, creator. Sometimes I can almost hear your Voice in mine. Your face is an account of everything I've left unfin-ished. I can see by your eyes that you understand what it's taken me so long to know."
[I have more to say—more pain to share before I can kill with satisfaction—but both Jac and Assia are looking over and beyond me. The loss of my orts has left me with an immense faithlessness. I don't face about until it's obvious that some-thing is approaching. Behind me, a lion-waisted, black-armored man has landed in a flume of dust at the top of a sand hill. Even before the sand clears, I can see that it's the eth, Nefandi's silver-gold blade unsheathed in his hand. Foolishly, he is helmetless.
[A blast from my seh explodes the sand hill under him, but he lifts and sweeps over to me, landing an arm's length away. He tries his proton-pistol on me, but the gun is useless against this ort-body's natural shield, and I slap it away with a derisive laugh. But I am terrified. I thought he was dead, and seeing him now, an undertow pulls against my stomach. The holy river of chance curves between us, and the future tight-ens to this one moment.
[He lunges forward, and our fields negate each other, shutting down. And here we are, the tight shapes of our skulls staring into each other. "I, too, am a child of the cosmos, Kagan." Immensity speaks these words, interknitting my anger and fear into the cadence of a mesmer-ploy. "I am as much light as you. Perhaps more so, for I am monogenes, the only begotten one, and you are legion."
note 37
The instant Rubeus seized him, the mysteries clicked. Automatically, eyes sand-sealed, Sumner gauged the extent and swung his blade-arm out with the full twisting strength of his body. The blade caught Rubeus as he bent forward, cutting fiercely through the side of his neck and lopping off his head. Spinning blood, the head whirled down the beach and into the sea with the huge eyes spasmed open.
Sumner shoved the twitching body away and rolled to his feet. He stepped over the blood streaming among the sand monticules and approached the tidewall where Jac and Assia were both standing, holding each other. He nodded once to Assia and looked squarely at Jac. The man appeared exactly as he had in Corby's shadowshooting of CIRCLE: a dark, slender, throatlumped man.
Assia's eyes were bright jewels. "We found our own strength." She took Sumner's hand. "But it wouldn't have counted for much if you hadn't—"
Sumner faced away and pointed south. "There's a lynk a few kilometers that way. Ausbok's survived." Then he turned and took both of their hands. "Maybe all our demons are dead now."
Drift was in-tranced in Ausbok, feeling the etheric tug of Sumner's lifeforce and, with a sinister eroticism, the dulling glitter of Rubeus' kha dissolving into the earthdark. It opened its eyes, and a weightless wonder boosted it to its feet. The ort-lord was dead. Bonescrolls was avenged.
An ooze of brown smoke was enclosing the alcove where the ne stood, and blue-hot sparks snarled from the ruptured ceiling. But the seer kept its mind centered in one-with: Jac and Assia's psynergy glowed with the lucent drunkenness of godmind. They were returning here to Ausbok, and Drift followed his one-with through feverstreams of smoke and floating sparks to the lynk where they would arrive.
The corridors along the way were fractured and often caved in; the rubble was smothered in a green foam fire-suppressant. Round mechanized repair units hovered every-where, arc-fusing the broken hull and removing detritus. Masseboth soldiers, the few that had been inside Ausbok when the killinglight raged, were clustered in the antecham-bers and corridor-studios that weren't blacked out. Blue-robed eo consulted with them, using their wand-sehs to show them graphically that they were the last: The surface of Graal, image-floating in the air above the troops, was a blis-tered black desert. Many of the soldiers gazed about at the frenzy of eo and flying servox spheres with numb eyes. A siren whirled eerily.
Drift had cursed itself for not going after Rubeus with Sumner, but now it was glad it had stayed behind. Gorged with stillness, it had maintained one-with Sumner the whole time, keeping him calm with a dulcet flow of psynergy. They shared a triumph, and as Drift entered the high-vaulted lynk chamber, it experienced its heaven-balanced power flux stronger.
The in-moiety eo who were gathered at the lynk turned as Drift joined them, and their glabrous faces were sheened with gratitude and love. Pleroma music tracked over the ambient noise of alarms and shouting voices, and a temple calm belled the chamber.
Drift took a moment to reflect some of this poem-silence outward, beyond one-with, as a prayer to Paseq, its God. Whatever is more than pattern is You, it chanted. Pain-eater, hidden in my unknowing —thank you for this life.
The lynk chimed, and out of nothing Sumner emerged, dust-veiled and blood-splattered. Behind him Jac and Assia appeared, hand in hand. An alchemic blue candesced around them as they stepped laughing into the circle of eo and began to touch everyone. Their features were oracular with happi-ness, and when they embraced Drift, its mind went bandy with paradise-feeling.
Solar-vested eo dusted Sumner off with fragrant air blow-ers, while others misted the air with wine-dark clouds of a rare and peaceful olfact.
Assia and Jac raised their free hands, and the shadow of a jubilant song spelled over everyone. The godmind strength in them swelled in everyone's head with an inebriated clarity. Jac looked up at the vaulted ceiling where a floating servox was welding a buttress crack. The flare of the welder larked brighter, and the sparks flashed into white rose-petals that showered over the gathering.
Sumner and Drift sat cross-legged beside the lynk among the whiteness of petals. The eo had taken Jac and Assia to tour the war damage, and they were alone.
"Where does the Road go now, seer?" Sumner asked with joking seriousness. The plumose radiance of the godmind's presence still feathered his brain, and a simple grin softened is face.
You have a longer Road ahead of you than you know, Lotus Face. The ne's thought-voice was slow and close. Jac and Assia's godmind is dwindling as the planet swings farther from the Line. The Delph isn't strong enough to heal this whole planet. Or even this one city. I already feel the thick-ness of their decision widening through them: They'll leave earth as soon as the other godminds return with the Liners. Those are ships, Lotus Face. They ride Iz, sailing the light-stream between realities. I see them so clearly in the eo's memory.
"And my responsibility?"
You 're the eth. With the Delph gone, the administration of Graal will be passed to you.
Sumner's eyes wearied. "I'm tired of myself, Drift. I have to get lost for a while."
I know. Drift's round face sombered. We 're both lucky not to be instantly devoured by our feeling. We ve lost too much. It's not time to take on more. But how can you refuse? You are chanced.
Sumner absently pinched four petals into the design of a voor stalk charm, his gaze withdrawn. Then a smile lifted through his face muscles, and Drift, looking into the space of his mind, smiled back mischievously: That's a good strategy, Lotus Face. I should have thought of that. The snake biting its ass.

Note37

My left hand knifes for the eth's exposed head—but he's faster than my blow, pulled down and away by the strength of his eo-armor. My feet shuffle with ort speed, kicking a veil of sand over him and pressing me closer to where he's lying. His eyes are squeezed tight. With my sensex vision, I can see through the shriek of sand. It's a simplicity now, reaching out and seizing his throat. "Blessed is he who was—"