Radix

After the incident in Laguna, Sumner had been kept under close observation. The Rangers had no idea what had happened to their man, but any wound inflicted by voors did not bode well. Their fears were confirmed when the physi-cians gave up on him. The face burn looked like nothing they had ever seen. And as for the haunting noises he claimed to hear, what could they do? There was no cure for madness.
Soon it had become obvious that Sumner was seriously impaired. Not only had he been reduced to the level of animal sentience, but in his sleep he rose from his cot and walked circles. Unable to carry out the normal functions of a ranger, he was stripped of all weapons but his knife, and was sent north to monitor tribal activities.
For a while Sumner had complied, meandering along the borders of a riverain forest, secretly peering through grease fires at jumbled frond-huts and the grotesquely mis-shapen bodies of distorts. But his mind was a holocaust of lunatic sounds, and each dawn he woke in a place he had not selected during the night. Terrified of being ambushed and humiliated by distorts during his mindless nightwalks, he had sought out the
deadness of Skylonda Aptos. If he was going to die, it would be with anonymous dignity.
* * *
Sumner's thin downward-slanting eyes flicked open. What stared out of them was not human. Lizard shapes of fire flashed across the space behind those eyes, and globes of eerie sounds burst and reformed. Corby struggled to concen-trate. The scene floating on his retinas wavered: sun-hot stone and sky the color of metal. He was having difficulty fitting himself into that scene. Iz raged within him, threaten-ing to sweep him away, far out of the body, far out of time.
No! Corby marshalled all his strength. Come to center and extent!
The noises coalesced to frantic jabbering, then narrowed to a babel. The vibrant light of Iz patterned itself into a cellular mosaic. The body was accepting him.
Clumsily, he stood Sumner's body up—his body now, for the lusk was almost complete. For years, locked shape-lessly in a cocoon, carried from brood to brood by the voors, he had used his psynergy to Iz-call for Sumner. And Iz had answered him by leading Sumner to Laguna. Too many voors had died that day on the beach. He would have to redeem their deaths by using this body well.
Corby tottered and placed a hand on the pink rock turret to steady himself. Erumpent noises still clouded his hearing. That was the crackling, insane current of Iz, rushing through him, threatening to prise apart his world.
Iz—the windy continuum of psynergy that his people rode between realities. Without his own body to anchor him in time, it was almost impossible to resist the tow of that power.
In the dark cupola of his mind he sensed Sumner's thought forms: an oil-still pond with ghostly shapes turning below the surface. Sumner was enranged but locked into selfscan. Like a virus, Corby had permeated Sumner's ner-vous system. Sumner's mind was immobilized, unable to think without the reverberations of Iz paralyzing him. Corby could have dampened the Iz-noise, but then his control over Sumner would also weaken—and he needed complete control of this howlie body.
Corby moved out over the red gravel, weaving and staggering. His heart pounded turgidly, and his vision soared as his head lolled from side to side. He insisted on control and sidled along a huge ribbon of rock, trying to straighten his walk. Bare, bony plains with only a whisper of grass appeared at the edge of his sight, and he turned himself in that direction.
He was being hunted. As dulled as his deep-mind had become in this new body, he was still aware of the others closing in on him. Two had bodies, one was shapeshifting. So far he had had no trouble evading them, but he was con-cerned. Who were they? What did they want from him?
He stumbled and fell to the ground in a splash of sand and dust. Quickly but awkwardly he twisted to his feet, staggered forward, and regained his pace.
Only after he had learned to use this body, he had decided, would he risk communicating with Sumner. Then, even if his father didn't agree with his plans, he would have a slim chance of carrying them out himself.
His father— Odd that this adult had so much in common with his old childform. It would have been interesting to watch his own body developing. But Nefandi had betrayed him. Now the most he could hope for was to eliminate the proven enemies of his people. Nefandi and the godmind called the Delph—sooner or later he would confront both of them with this new killing-wise body.
He slid on his heels down the slope of a scarlet dune, exultant in his freedom. Holding his head straight, vision stammering in his eyes, he strode purposefully forward. But the effort to maintain control thinned his will. Time—it would take time.
He stopped beside a boulder and sat back against it. The cells of his body were singing, and he listened closely.
Sumner shrugged awake and groaned to see where he was. A wind, thin and persistent as a rumor, had already begun to smear his tracks. Vaguely he recalled a dream full of weird sounds. He rubbed his face and stood up, shivering in the tawny heat.
"Do you believe the whorl is in all things?" Ardent Fang asked, cutting open a cactus with his obsidian knife.
The ne whistled, dull and low, and its soft voice spoke inside the tribesman's head: More nonsense from the Mothers?
"Nonsense?" Ardent Fang spoke without looking at Drift: "You say that because you're ne."
I say that because it's true. Nonsense is all that the Mothers have to offer.
They paused to chew the sweetness out of the cactus, Drift expressionless, Ardent Fang squinting his yellow eyes with pleasure. Done, the tribesman spit the cactus pulp into the sand. "Ne—do you believe the whorl is in all things?"
Drift shutter-blinked like a lizard. What is the whorl?
"The turning, the return," Ardent Fang answered. "What is full becomes empty, empty full. Like breathing."
Cycles? In all things?
"Yes."
Drift spit cactus pulp over its shoulder and spoke with its voice at the back of its throat, chewed almost to a garble: "I-am-ne. Will-I-ever-be-gendered?"
The dark blade hissed as Ardent Fang sheathed it. "It's said we return—each time different."
Nonsense.
"It's said."
You mean, the Mothers have told you.
Ardent Fang frowned, his blunt features narrow as a wolf's. "The Mothers would know."
Pizzle rind.
"How then, ne, do they know which of us to breed?"
They don't.
A tic screamed silently at the corner of Ardent Fang's mouth.
Drift splashed his bony hands in front of him, shrugging. The Mothers breed the ones that look the strongest. The truly exceptional ones, usually those with the most face, are chosen as leaders—like yourself. But the Mothers don't know any more than anybody with eyes.
A thin, knowing smile floated across Ardent Fang's lips. "There are mother-mysteries, ne, revealed only to a few."
No, breeder, there's just dying. Drift's waterdrop eyes did not blink. No mysteries. No whorl.
Ardent Fang stared at the seer as if he were looking a long way out to sea. He slapped his knees and stood up. "It's late," he announced. "We should find a place and send."
Drift watched him scout about for hidden cacti, and it felt a twinge of remorse at having challenged this man's simple beliefs. Ardent Fang was a good leader, just and sympathetic to folk and ne. His faith was part of his openness. The seer looked inward and shouted at himself: No more foisting hatred of the Mothers onto friends. It stood up and went around to the far end of the rock lip pool where the water was unsullied by their earlier frolicking. Bending for a last sip, the seer eyed swamp-puma prints in the silt, fresh as black petals. Fang!