Radix

under-stand, as I think you do, that nonsense is all there is, then stay with the Rangers. They treat their own well. You'll earn your livelihood as a killer, but who's to say that's any worse than a physician for all we come to, eh? Just keep one thing in the front of your mind when you deal with moral twits or mystics who think they've seen into the heart of things: The one secret is that all things are secret."
Sumner's first assignments were in the ruins of Apis and Longstorm. Both cities had once been major seaports, centu-ries old. Fifty years before, they had been crushed by a savage raga storm, and because the Masseboth didn't have the resources to rebuild them, they were deserted. Leagues and leagues of collapsed buildings, dune-drifted boulevards, and skeletal frames rose out of steamy lagoons, all of it surrendered to distort gangs and the jungle.
Sumner was sent into these ghost cities to stalk down distort leaders who had become too influential. The work was arduous and cruel, but Sumner was well recompensed. The Club Foot, Prophecy's most famous bordello, was perennially open to him without charge, and he spent most of his leave-time there. Seeing himself clearly in the mirror-chambers, surrounded by servants and fine foods, he was surprised by what he had become.
Without the mud and swamp grease of Dhalpur and with his sun-reddened hair braided to one side in the latest fashion, Sumner was a celestial demon. His face was flat as a blade, the scars eroded to pale artistic etchings by wind and time, and his wide, silent eyes were blue as spun steel. He was almost a giant, his shoulders stooped with power, but he wasn't bulky. Big-boned, his muscles thick yet pliant, his skin burnished the color of dawn, with tight copper-red curls boiling over his chest, he was a rare animal.
The women of The Club Foot worshipped him as an avatar of the god Rut, and they fought each other to be with him—for not only was he the most relentlessly masculine creature they had known, he was also as ingenious as a magician. His lean, patient hands were barked with callus and taut with strength, but they could caress womanflesh with petal-soft tenderness, the fingers moving with a delicate and sometimes fierce cunning.
Women, however, were only a small part of Sumner's life. They pleasured him, but they couldn't fulfill him. Only the wild spaces, empty of emotion and full of deception, engaged him totally.
If it weren't for the decay of the ruins he was assigned to patrol, he would have been happy. But Apis and Longstorm were chancrous landscapes. Often when he was perched on a twisted girder enveloped in the acrid dampness of dissolving concrete or when he prowled the squalid beaches of sand-choked cars and frothy chemical pools, he wondered why the Masseboth were coming to this.
In time it became obvious to him, as it was to everyone else, that the government was corrupt. Whispers of political intrigue were audible not only among the underprivileged but in the highest military circles as well. Sumner served for more than a month as the personal bodyguard of a prominent and greatly admired general. During that time they shared meals and broke up the tedious hours of traveling between frontier posts by playing kili and talking.
The general was a humanitarian with plans for abolishing dorga pits and for establishing self-sufficient distort colonies. He smoked only the cheapest cigars and ate and traveled humbly so that he could save money to realize his dreams. Sumner was deeply impressed by his sincere commitment and his parsimonious way of life, and he listened with real interest to the general's political insights.
The general explained how for centuries a handful of families had run the Masseboth government for their own personal aggrandizement. The Unnatural Creatures Edict was employed not only to eliminate voors and distorts but also to remove suspected political competitors. Newspapers were forbidden to assess government policy, and university courses in history and society were carefully monitored. But in their eagerness to consolidate their power, the Protectorate was being denied decisive and objective leadership.
Within the last century, half the fringe colonies with all their vast agricultural resources had been lost to raga storms and distort tribes. Expansion and exploration were minimal. The workers in the dorga pits were becoming increasingly essential to maintain city life, and so even minor offenders were being branded with drone straps to keep up the work force. Taxes had quadrupled in only a few years, and most guilds and factory chiefs had to lay off workers and forestall wage increases. To quiet dissension, the military was being employed to do more police work and less defensive maneu-vers along the borders. As a result, the distort gangs and tribes were proliferating and drawing closer to the core cities. Disgruntled guildsmen and fractious government officials were even selling arms to the distort gangs for material looted from the convoys.
Sumner was disturbed to hear of the avarice of his lead-ers, but he didn't allow it to affect his work. It wasn't loyalty to the Masseboth or the Rangers that kept him active and unquestioning; rather it was devotion to himself. He had been remade in the image of a ranger. There was nothing else for him.
And that is why, a year later, when he was called back from Apis to assassinate the general, he didn't balk. Obliged by a sense of comradeship, he refrained from humiliating the military leader and didn't use the easy strategy of gunning him down in public. Instead, at great risk to himself, he approached the general at night, slithering through the hyp-nosis of barbed wire and trip lines surrounding his bivouac. It took all of his skill to merge with the moonshadows, to crawl beneath the heat-addled air of the main court and to shadow past the alert stares of well-armed guards. Finally he ad-vanced with the sultry breeze stirring the gauze curtains of the central building. Among the stupor of shadows that veiled the general's chamber, he trailed the moist scent of sleep to a canopied bed. After deftly and painlessly slicing the general's carotid with a poisoned fingerazor, he merged again with the shadows.
The general's death bothered him for a while, because he had sensed that the man had been sincere. In the same way that he knew when he was being secretly watched or when and how an enemy was about to strike, he had known that the general had told him the truth. The Masseboth were evil and their empire decaying.
Sumner felt neither outrage nor despair about this fact. Even though he served the Protectorate, he didn't consider himself a Masseboth. He was a ranger, and all his mental and physical energies were devoted to perfecting his craft. The doom of the cities was not his concern. After all, what wasn't doomed? The only control he had was over himself, and even that was limited, for he was constantly surprising himself.
One dismal rain-misted night in Vortex, with nothing better to do he followed the tug of elusive animal psynergies and found himself wandering through a tangle of stone alleys, his feet muffled in fog. Several hours later, at the end of a tight cobbled lane of antique bookstalls and slot-windowed apothecary shops, he stopped before a salt-split doorstoop. The cramped shopfront was windowless except for a crescent pane bratticed with corroded iron. He had no idea why his instincts had led him to this desolate corner of the city until his persistent knocking was answered by an old woman with skin the color of clouded silver, fire-frizzed hair, and blinking bird's eyes. It was Zelda. Surprised, but too much of a warrior to be shocked, he politely asked for a wangol reading.
Zelda didn't recognize him, and she was hesitant to admit this flat-eyed, solar-burned giant into her shop. But he was cordial, his voice flawlessly affectionate, and besides, he was wearing a clean, smart-looking uniform and probably had money. Since she had acquired her augur license, she needed zords to meet the tax. She motioned him into her reading room. It was a dingy chamber with Mutric figurines in the corners, ponderous indigo curtains, and a rotted plank floor that was so soft with age it sighed the odor of dead leaves with each step. A round black-sheened mirror hung on the wall surrounded by yellowed charts depicting the body parts and their various auguries.