Radix

"The deeps were selective about my past," Anareta clari-fied. "They were more interested in my white card and my recent sexual exploits than what happened twenty years ago. All they really saw was that I'd rather study kro than manage a street division—so they relieved me. I'm off to Xhule tonight. By tomorrow
I'll be studding in some forest bungalow."
Kempis' hard face shone. "I'm happy for you, Chief. Thirty years and the Pillars never suspected you were as much with the kro as with them. What broke it?"
"I was caught trying to pull out another white card—a fat kid who'd been jooching distort gangs into deathtraps."
"I'd think the Pillars would medal him for that."
"The Sugarat enraged the gangs more than he hurt them. The past five years, the distorts have been tearing up Mc-Clure like this was outland. When this kid was finally dragged in, I was the only one that wanted to see him live. That look on your face asks why." Anareta shrugged, and uncertainty inscribed his brow with one long line. "Why'd I pull you out? He's unique—an individual, not a distort or a simplewit. But my own men got to him. And that's why I'm here."
Kempis took the chief's elbow and led him to the side of the bluerose shrubbery where they were out of sight of the Berth. "What can I do for you?"
"Kempis, they're going to kill this kid."
"You said he was a white card."
"Yes, but he's very ugly. Even before my men broke his face, he was the kind of clumsy grossness that a stud mate would laugh at. His white card will keep him out of the dorga pits, but he's too dwarfed inside to make the mating circuit. I know they're going to send him to one of the heavy work camps—Carnou, Tred, maybe Meat City."
Kempis' head was awry. "How can I help him—and why do you want to?"
"He's a white card like me," Anareta said, looking strongly at Kempis. "I can't rut in peace without at least warning this kid. I want to tell him to get out—to leave the Protectorate."
Kempis' raspy voice became almost soundless: "Chief, he'll die on the outland."
"You survived—and thrived for many years."
"I was reared out there."
Anareta slapped a bluerose to a splatter of petals. "Look—I can't reach the kid. I'm leaving tonight. But I want you to talk with him."
Kempis wheezed a sigh. "He's locked up, isn't he?" Anareta pulled a leather pouch from his trousers pocket and handed it to the savant. The pouch was heavy with coins. "I still have friends in the Black Pillar. One of them will notify you when the kid's guard rotates to someone compli-able. Use these zords to speak with the boy alone. Tell him to run if he can. Tell him it could be death out there, but make him know it will be death if he stays."
The chief placed both of his hands on the monk's arms. "He's my last prisoner—and I'm leaving for an easy life. I want to feel good about that life. Talk to the kid. Tell him who you are. That saved your life once. It might save him."
Very early one morning Sumner was shaken awake by a chunky uniformed guard, and his green infirmary smock was replaced with brown fatigues and work boots. He was marched out of the infirmary into the gray smudged light of early dawn, across a flagstone courtyard and into the Berth. Icy green arc lights burned at uneven intervals along the top of the massive bellied wall. Inside, the air was close and fuscous.
After a brief pass-check, Sumner was prodded forward. He shuffled through opulent colubrine hallways lined with frescoes of the Mutric Redemption. Aloe incense scrolled out of side niches occupied by votive tallows and blue glass icons. Several times Sumner was stopped and his head tugged for-ward in obeisance as red-cowled savants strode by. Sumner replied woodenly, too hollowed out to care. At last they entered a tiny pocket-garden, and Sumner was ordered to sit.
The tight garden was open to the dawn sky, and the curving walls were tangled with vines. It was like a well of ivy. Sumner sat on a round stone bench beside a moss-speckled trough of curkling water. A lunette above the oval doorway depicted Sita's Firewalk, and Sumner fixated on the realistic rendering of limbs shriveled to smoldering twists of black, bubbled tar.
He was still gazing into the painting when the guard fiercely rapped the back of his head. "Rise!" he hissed.
A red-cowled savant was standing in the door. Sumner rose and automatically bowed his head.
"Relax, please." The savant entered and placed a hand on Sumner's shoulder. "Sit down."
Sumner sat and watched with an empty expression as the savant reached beneath his robes and produced a small leather bag for the guard. With eyes reverently averted, the guard bowed, his fingers twitching over the bag, counting the silver through the leather.
After he had backed out of the garden, the savant folded back his cowl. He was a huge man, theandric, with short brindled hair and a face like granite: pale but hard, square and etched with many fine lines. "I'm Kempis," he said in a hoarse voice. "Legally, we can't talk. I'm a White Pillar savant—the laws you violated were Black Pillar. It's costing me more in risk than in silver for this audience."
Sumner stared through him, vague as fog.
A long minute of silence widened between them as Kempis studied the boy. Sumner was gangly and haggard from all the weight he had lost. The flesh around his eyes looked sunken and stained. The eyes themselves were clear but unfocused, gazing in a wide, depthless stare through a harrowing mask of scars.
When the savant spoke, an asthmatic rasp undercut his words: "I've paid the Black Pillar so that I could speak with you. I think you should understand where you're going." He drew in a whistling breath. "The police, you know, want you dead. Regrettably, they never finished. Some savants found out about your white card. Because your genes are so rare, they think you're sacred, an envoy of Mutra, the last hope of our species. They're very devout but slimbrained. So now you're caught between the Black Pillar of the police and the White Pillar of the savants' Conclave.
"Do you know what it means to have a white card, son?" The darkness in Kempis' eyes thickened. "There aren't a thousand in this city—less than a hundred thousand in the whole Protectorate. Even voors revere what that card repre-sents. It means you're whole—one of the few in this broken world."
Kempis leaned closer. "A dark bargain's been struck. The police have agreed to let you live so that, perhaps, the Conclave will get you to breed other white cards. The preser-vation of the Masseboth is at stake. But I assure you, the Masseboth are going to make living worse than dying."
Sumner watched him sleepily, the blue, vapid loneliness of the sky threading itself through his eyes.
Kempis sighed, his breath making a noise in his chest like fire. "I have some advice for you." His fingers moved slowly, unlacing the breast of his cowl. "I'm not a typical savant. I know pretty well what you're going through. You see, before I entered the Conclave I was a corsair. I had dreams like the Sugarat. But I worked the coasts instead of the streets. I moved by night, and on the sea, that takes as much guts as skill. I ran kiutl and renegades. I raided the reef colonies and the island outposts. And I killed only in defense and vengeance. It was a lonely, crazy-alive, hungry, stupen-dous way to live. And I'd be doing it today, except for this."
He opened his cowl and revealed a chest livid with puckered scars. "Knifed in a tavern brawl. Thirty-two wounds. When I recovered I entered the Conclave. What else could I do with half a lung?"
Sumner's gaze suddenly crisped. He understood the pain that had flowered into those scars, and he looked more di-rectly at the man they had shaped.
Kempis laced up his cowl. "My advice isn't some reli-gious rauk. Mutra with her gory myths and sacred mumblings is just a throwback to the ancient Christom. It's not real. Nothing's real—but you. Your life. Your pain."