Radix

Anareta took the boy's arm and led him to the narrow side door of his office. The uniformed men followed, but the chief waved them off. "You're dismissed," he said, opening the door and pushing Sumner in. The police balked, and he added more gruffly: "Your job's done. Go home." He had been careful in his selection of those he had sent to pick up the Sugarat. They were mostly army transfers and young recruits, and they were uneasy about disobeying a field chief. With disgruntled mumbles they dispersed.
Chief Anareta's office was cramped by a long map of McClure and a metal desk cluttered with unfiled reports. He signaled Sumner to a wooden stool and sat on the edge of his desk beside a keypunch communicator. An hour earlier he had notified both the White and Black Pillar agencies that the Sugarat had been identified and was being apprehended. Now he typed in the endcode signal that announced the boy was in custody.
Anareta looked into his prisoner's porcine blue eyes. A laugh jerked deep inside him when he imagined this fat-round boy luring streetgangs to their deaths. "What did you think you were doing out there?"
Sumner's gaze wobbled beneath the chief's slow, omniv-orous stare. "What do you mean?"
"Why'd you do it?" The darkness in Anareta's long eyes was chasmal. "You're a white card. I know what that's like. I'm one. It's a good life. The military will leave you alone, and the Conclave will give you women and time for your whims. Why'd you risk it all to be the Sugarat?"
Sumner's look was empty as a wish. "I don't know what you're talking about."
The chiefs face narrowed, and the ravelings of Sumner's body tightened and quivered. "I've always
liked the Sugarat," Anareta said tightly. Without looking at the keys, he typed the endcode into the communicator again, this time punching the send-key twice for emphasis. "Sugarat's a distort killer. I liked him even more when I found out he had a white card. He's not a common green card. He has something, and he chucked it all to jooch distorts. I like the Sugarat. But I don't think I like you."
Sumner's voice shivered as he spoke: "I'm not the Sugarat."
"Don't make yourself uglier than you are, Kagan." Anareta's lips pinched with disgust. "My men found spraycans in your room with the same paint the Sugarat uses. I'll wager the tire tracks near most of the killsites fit your car's tires. And now we have foot plasters. You think they're not going to match?"
Sumner faced meekly into the chief's gritful stare and shook his head. "I'm not the Sugarat."
"Your driving ticket found its own way to the alkaloid factory?"
Sumner's whole face throbbed. "It's not me. I don't know how it got there."
Outside the gray inner door, in the long corridor leading to the locker room, a razor-apt chant became audible: "Zh-zh—zh-zh—zh-zh!"
Sumner quaked to hear the Sugarat's call.
"It's you, Kagan," Anareta said in a voice flawed with anger. He knew he couldn't control his men—and his men knew that as well. "It's you they want." He typed in the endcode signal again, forwarding it only to the Conclave.
Kagan's white card was his one hope of surviving the night— but only if the White Pillar acknowledged his genetic value. "Zh-zh—zh-zh!" The chanting hissed closer through the gray inner door.
Sumner whimpered and edged off the stool. "It's not me."
"Sit down!" the chief snapped. "Why'd you kill if you weren't ready for this?"
"I didn't!" Sumner's eyes were drunk with terror. He leaned close to the chief, the hot stink of his body thick as a spasm. "It's not me. Please believe me. I never killed anybody."
A light dulled in the chief's face, and he pushed Sumner away. "I might have tried to help you," he said as the gray door rattled and the pounding began. "But I'm not going to risk my job and my life for gutpaste like you."
"Zh-zh! Zh-zh! Zh-zh!"
"Open it up, Chief," a gruff voice called through the door. "We know he's with you. Open it up or we'll take you with him!" The heavy door buckled in a seizure of pounding.
Sumner grabbed the chief's arm and begged him with his whole body. But whatever sympathy had remained in Anareta withered away. He twisted his arm free and strode over to the gray door stenciled with the black and white Masseboth pillars.
"Don't!" Sumner crouched behind the chiefs desk. "I am the Sugarat—but don't let them have me."
"Zh-zh! Foc Anareta—open the door! Zh-zh!"
Anareta turned to Sumner with a brightness like joy in his face. "Why'd you do it, Kagan? I want to know."
Sumner was baffled. "I don't know."
The chief went over to the keypunch and re-entered the request to turn Sumner over to the Conclave. He thumbed the send-key again and again.
"I was scared." The boy was weeping. "I've been scared all my life. I had to kill what scared me. The dread, it—"
"Zh-zh!" The door cracked at the joint and splintered inward. At the other door leading to the outside, a heavy pounding began and voices shouted for the Sugarat. Anareta was moving toward his gun locker when the inner door burst open, throwing him to the side.
Half a dozen men rushed into the room, their faces tight with animal rage. They found Sumner cowering beneath the chief's desk. He kicked and bucked, and they had to heave the desk over to get at him. They dragged him screaming out of the office and down the corridor to the locker room where the other men were waiting.
Anareta was left behind, and he struggled to right the toppled keypunch communicator. Minutes passed before he was able to reconnect the bent input-plug. Sumner's howls had fractured to wracked cries and sobs by the time a channel chattered open and the chief was able to link with the Con-clave. More minutes echoed with screams as the transfer authorization from both the White and Black Pillars typed itself out. Anareta ripped the sheet off before the endcode signal was complete and surged out of the room.
Ahead, the screams had stopped, and only the jeers of the men and the sound of the beating could be heard.
The chief had to push men out of his way to get to Sumner. With a yell he silenced everyone: "Let up! This boy isn't ours. If he dies, we're all dorgas!"
The men on the periphery pulled back, and Anareta glimpsed Sumner's hunched body, the clothes ripped away from a raw, bloody bulk. Then the men who had lost family in the Sugarat riots were before him—thick men stripped to the waist, their eyes smoky with red rage and contempt for his soft life. Both had blood-grimed rubber hosing in their hands, and one of them shoved the end of the tubing up to Anareta's face. "Chief, you're dead meat if you try to stop us."
The chief pushed aside the bludgeon and held up the authorization order. "I'm not trying anything. The White Pillar owns Kagan now. They know he's alive. If he's dead— we're worse than dead. All of us."
One of the two men stepped back, and the other pressed dangerously closer. His face was emotionless and speckled with Sumner's blood. His voice was atonic: "I'd rather be a dorga than let this dungball live."
The chief stood fast, though the man was an inch away and his hard rubber hose was pressing sharply against his sternum. Anareta held the typed authorization high. "To defy the Black Pillar is death," he quoted the Codex of the Protectorate, "but to defy the White Pillar is suffering. Who else here wants to live a long life in the dorga pits?"
"The chief's right," one of the nearby men said loudly, and grumbles of agreement followed. "The tud's hurt. He won't walk straight again." Several of the closest men took the angry man's arms and gently moved him away from the chief.
Anareta's insides relaxed and then cramped even more fiercely when he saw what had become of Sumner. The boy's face was unrecognizable—a mask of stringing blood, torn tissue, and pink bone. Both of his arms were broken, winged at odd angles, the hands pulp white and lifeless. His legs, too, were cracked, and a shaft of broken bone gouged through his thigh. "Mutra," the chief gasped. "Get a shock unit. Somebody—get help!"