Radix

"We want you with us," Ignatz told him. "You'll be trained in Dhalpur, our secret school, for four to ten years—until you develop the skills to make the cut. Then you'll start earning more zords than the highest-paid officers in any other divi-sion. Also, you get four months off a year, and the time accumulates if you waive." The sketchy eyebrows of the taut, sundark face went up in a silent "Well?"
Sumner replied simply: "My squad owns me."
"You can get a transfer," Ignatz said. "The Rangers have weight."
"Look, we're interested in you," Gage picked up. "We know about Sugarat. We know about Meat City. We know about Broux. And we know how you killed him." He smiled with his eyes but not his mouth. "Face it, Kagan, you're death-fixed. You're not going to be happy protecting prawn ships and finding lost buoys. You need risk."
Sumner's jaw pulsed. "It's all shit," he said darkly. "I die and that's that. I'm dead. It's all shit." He stared at them with the solemnity of a bull. "As long as I'm doing something, as long as I'm moving, I'm not thinking, just moving and not knowing. The Rangers or the Corps, what's the difference?"
"The world, mister," Ignatz snarled.
"You're young," Gage cut in quietly. "You don't know the strange. The Masseboth are holed up in these cheap cities with their backs to the ocean. Why? What's got us with our strohlkraft and our artillery sitting
tight on the edge of nowhere? There's a world out there you won't believe. And the only way you're going to see it is as a ranger. We're the front line. Nobody else goes as far north as we do. But only the best are asked to join us. We want men who have no shadows, men who are already dead, men who don't know the word future. Is that you—or have we made a mistake?"
The transfer papers were waiting for Sumner when he returned to the Corps camp, and he didn't have to think long about joining the Rangers. The remoteness of the other men in his squad and the monotony of his training decided for him.
Two days after he signed the papers and returned to camp, a black swayvan arrived at dawn to take him away. The dogfaced driver said nothing during their seven-hour drive into the desert. The rough ride ended in the heat-rippled air of a glaring salt bed, where a strohlkraft was idling with its cargo hatch open. Sumner rode alone in the carryhold, clutch-ing an airstrap during the shuddering flight. The strohlkraft touched down in several nameless military posts for intermi-nable lengths of time, and since no one came to let him out, he spent much of the day sleeping.
They flew long into the night. When they landed, there was a bonfire blazing in the middle of a bayou. Twelve men with mud-smeared faces were waiting for him.
Sumner threw open the port hatch and hopped out. The officer he saluted smashed him in the face and shouted at him to strip down. The mysteries were about to begin.
The dark, serpent-lean officer took Sumner's collar and ripped the shirt from his back. He slammed Sumner on the side of his head, grabbed his arm and twisted it back until pain crackled up his shoulder and into his skull. With a double-handed blow he pounded Sumner's spine and knocked all the breath out of him.
Sumner flopped to his back and the officer dropped with both of his knees onto his stomach. His fists flicked out and boxed Sumner's ears, then finger-gouged the muscles in his throat.
His face emotionless as a cobra, the officer stood up and a broad knife whispered into his hand. The blade flashed for Sumner's groin, and the fabric of his trousers ribboned away.
The officer booted Sumner in the knees, and when he reflex-ively pulled his legs away, the ranger heel-gouged his thighs.
The pain was sharp. With fear-humming eyes, Sumner watched the officer and the twelve men board the strohlkraft. He was still doubled up when the kraft roared up into the darkness and dwindled out of hearing. Heavenward, the skyfires glittered like snakeskin.
"Stand up."
The hard voice that broke through the darkness boomed in Sumner's ears, and he rolled to his side in the direction it had come from, expecting barbed pain from his beating. But his body felt whole.
"You're not hurt," the thick voice said. "You've been deep-massaged. Your muscle armoring has been knocked loose. You see, to begin the mysteries, you must stand naked." A nightbird squawked. "Stand up."
Sumner rose to his feet, amazed by the ease of his effort. He winged his shoulders, still not believing that so much violence could be creative—but there was no pain, not even a bruise. "Who are you?" he asked the bayou shadows.
"You're naked and alone in a swamp," the voice said from his side, and Sumner turned to peer in that direction. "Forget your questions. Listen, so that you have a chance of surviving."
At knee level, a shadow stirred. Sumner backed a step, expecting an animal to come through the shrubs. Instead, the head of a man appeared and the silhouetted darkness of a stumped body. A flame winced brightly, and a long taper of snakeweed caught the spark and brightened.
In the sudden smokelight, Sumner saw an old warrior with collapsed cheeks, a twisted nose, and eyes as deep as the sky. The man had no legs, and large portions of his skull were missing, giving his head an odd, angular shape. "I am Mauschel," the man said in his sinewed voice, "your docent. I am directly responsible for your training here in Dhalpur."
Sumner gawked, and the legless man waved the snake-weed taper closer to his face to better reveal himself. "I lost my legs in the field," Mauschel explained. "I've been teach-ing here at Dhalpur for a lifetime. Only one in ten completes tutelage under me."
"And the rest?" Sumner asked, his voice honed to a whisper.
"Some die. Some run away. But I'll tell you—the ones that complete my training are the best of the Rangers. It takes a halfman like myself to complete men who only think they are whole." He placed the snakeweed taper in the knot of his headband. "Only absence can make a man whole."
Sumner swatted at the mosquitoes that were swarming about him.
"You'll learn to love this swamp," Mauschel said, armwalking closer. "The best killers are those who can love, for they know life's strengths. You love to kill, like all those who are sent to me. But this swamp will
teach you to love living."
Mauschel reached out and touched Sumner's knees. "Sit down."
Facing the docent, cross-legged, immersed in the insect-repelling odor of the snakeweed, Sumner experienced a rush of wonder.
"For now, you are a victim of yourself," the docent told him. "Your moods determine what you don't see. But after you calm yourself, you will see everything. That's what I must teach you—to see what is hidden."
Mauschel turned Sumner's head with his thumb and pointed to a rivulet of water that was running beside them, black with night. "Second sight is merely persistence," he said. "If you can silence your mind deep enough, you will see into everything and everyone. Silence is power."
Mauschel and Sumner sat watching the rivulet curl over jumbled rocks, listening to the songs of nightbirds gleaming in the air for what seemed an endless time. At first it was a struggle for Sumner to stay awake. Each bubble skimming over the pebbles at his feet was a complete world, swarming with light and motion. No number for the worlds . . .
"Don't dream," Mauschel warned him. "Just watch. Selfscan is just watching. You have to know how to do noth-ing before you can do anything well."
At dawn, staring into the sunflashing torrent, water became fire in Sumner's mind and took on the forms of his sleep: flames the color of carp, the shape of prehistoric fish. …
Mauschel slapped him. "It'll be years before you wake up."