Radix

That evening, after a soothing sonic shower, a change of clothes, and a meal of geepa beans and mentis beer, Sumner and Drift were escorted to the surface of Ausbok. The eo wanted to show them one of the wonders of Graal.
The charred, flat land curved north and south as far as sight. In the east the sun quivered like a red bubble over the sea. And as Sumner's eyes adjusted to the twilight, spidery, ghostlight shapes could be seen
on the beach. Drift was aware of them, too—even more clearly, since it could see the eloquence of psynergy that was stressing the air violet and indigo.
Liners.
"Yes," an eo concurred. "They have returned."
Sumner probed the crisped ground beyond the lynk-shield with a tentative boot-toe before walking out onto the ash.
"If you wish, you can leave this world now," the eo told them. "You're free."
Sumner and the ne slogged over to a tall, blackened sandrise close to the Liners and sat down. An hour passed in surfsounds as they peered into the fibrous, soft-green luminence of the craft. Occasionally a shrill, frothing color spilled out of the ships and over the sand, deliquescing into the night.
Those are godminds, Drift said through the concatena-tion of rainbows webbing its mindark. Endless worlds.
Two of the Liners vanished. Nothing remained where they had been: no support-marks or burn-scars. Night-heavy dunes rolled laggardly into the sea.
"When you lift out of time in a Liner, you can never come back." Jac's voice spoke from behind them. "They're a passage to infinity: the multiverse. They never return to the same place. Always forward. Like our lives." He and Assia walked out of the darkness and sat down facing them. They were young with happiness. "We spent the day with the eo. Repairing." He rubbed the air, and it glowed bluely.
"Life is a fantasy again," Assia said, the light from a Liner brimming behind her. "But the deeper we go into each other, the more we feel the Line dimming—the magic fading."
"Drift told you that we're leaving and why," Jac acknowl-edged. Beside him, in the glow of a Liner, a tall firehaired being came and went, and wisps of pink light flitted from the ship and gathered on a nearby dune. "You know you'll be seneschal of Graal when we leave. We also know you don't want that." He nodded compassionately. "You're a wanderer. Why not go vertical with us? We'll cross the universe like voors."
A moment threaded silently while Sumner watched a Liner materialize in the sea shallows. Chrome orange spheres bobbed out of the ship and burbled into a silent scream of olivaceous light that faded into the skyfires. "I've got a feel of where you're going, from Corby," Sumner said to them. "It's too strange for me."
Assia smiled sadly. "We want to stay here with you and share what we've redeemed together, but it's too dangerous. You're the eth, and our godmind psynergy curves weirdly around you. Anything could happen. This far out of Line, the dread gets thick."
"And it's magic." Jac fingered hot fluid lines in the air. "It's not ours. We belong to it."
Yes. Drift shared their understanding. If you don't use the power, the power uses you.
The fire wisps on the adjacent dune circled closer over the sand.
Jac's eyes fluttered, and he nodded. "The others are calling. They want to leave now."
The lynk they had come through earlier bluebrightened against the night, and a line of eo began to emerge.
Assia leaned closer to Sumner. Her face was warm with light. "Won't you come with us? We're strong together— we've proven that. But if we separate here, we'll never meet again."
Sumner looked hard at her, seeing her kha as a blue outline against the sky. "I think our psynergy will bring us together again. We'll meet further downstream."
Jac faced Drift, and the ne smiled into the sound of dreaming. "You can come with us, seer. It's a journey for a big heart."
Drift shook its head. I can't go. I owe too much feeling to the earth.
The wisps of godmind fire flickered sharply, and Jac and Assia's faces seemed to blur. "Okay," Jac said, rising and offering a hand to Assia. "We part here, then." Electricity danced in his other hand, and suddenly he was holding an amber-ferruled wand-seh. He handed it to Sumner. "To re-member that the eth and the Delph have met. As brothers."
Sumner rose and took the wand. Assia kissed him, and he swayed in a cloudy, flowering euphoria. She placed a blue rose in his hand. "We love you," she said to them and the eo behind them. And then they waved and ambled down the beach and into the bristling illumination of a Liner. Almost instantly, the craft unflickered into pure radiance and was gone.
A cold ocean breeze carved the heat off their faces and hands, and they turned toward the lynk. A delegation of in– and out-moiety eo were arrayed on the beach, their robes lush with wind.
"Eth," an ort said in an oboe voice, its eyes ambiguous as fortune, "you are now seneschal of Graal. We need your full cooperation. There are some crucial decisions that must be made immediately."
Sumner tightened, ready to decline. Remember your strategy. Drift touched his arm, and the vaporous lifelove that filled him was enough to bland his uneasiness. We 're only briefly alive, the seer thought into
him. Let's be creative for now.
With a deep bow, Sumner accepted. "Seneschal, eh?" He smiled coolly. "Let's get to work."
The eo filed back through the lynk, and Sumner waited to go last. In the foot-chewed ash at the edge of the lynk-shield, he left the rose and the wand.
Drift sat outdoors in an open, seared area that had once been a treeform. A steady wind carried a tune of mulch and water up from the river, and black clouds blew overhead like smoke. In the far distance, darkness clotted the horizon.
The weather control for Graal had been built into Oxact. At its collapse, a black-green wall of thunderheads began to rise in the north, mounting on the immense polar currents toward a raga storm. Ausbok had been too heavily damaged in its war with Rubeus to do anything about it, and most of the remaining eo had gone vertical.
An ort stepped through the lynk at the edge of the burn-circle and bowed. "This is the Masseboth the eth re-quested you to meet. He said he would ask for your personal and candid assessment later."
The lynk drumthrobbed, and lanky, wolf-faced Anareta strode through.
With a soft nudge at Drift's side, an olfact palette an-nounced its presence. The palette rotated slowly, presenting an endless variety of moods: Dawning Wonder, Acceptance, Zonk, Cock Rise, Orph. . , .
Drift pushed the hovering gyroplate aside and walked up to the Masseboth. I am Drift— the eth's seer.
By Mutra's third tit! Anareta startled.
Yes. Drift opened its arms, exposing the smallness of its body. I'm a distort. But I'm useful.
Anareta bowed, immediately composing himself. "Seer, why am I here? All the other Masseboth have been returned to the Protectorate."
Your destiny is bigger than the Masseboth. Drift glowed inwardly with approval. This man was cool-nerved and gen-tle. His green kha was crystalline around his head, textured for long periods of thinking. Lotus Face had chosen well.
"No one's told me anything," Anareta complained. "Who ordered me here?"
"I did," Sumner's voice came from behind, and Anareta turned to see him standing in the mouth of the lynk. "I am the eth."
Anareta peered at him curiously, intuiting something familiar. "I don't understand."
Sumner stepped closer. "Godmind stricture makes me the lord of Graal now. Apart from the yawps in Sarina, we're the most advanced culture on the planet. We're even wiser than the kro, Chief."