Radix

The magnar sat down so slowly he seemed weightless. "Think of all the beings that have come together to make you. Think about it. Billions of beings agreeing to shape a human form—this human form." He took Sumner's hands, and the ether of the young man's feelings brightened. "Why? Why are you the living center of the transparent and inflexible diamond of time? All of us have a destiny. Nothing is chanced. Time is gem-perfect."
Bonescrolls let Sumner's hand go, and his breathing went deeper as though he wanted to say something wordless. "You are the eth—the shadowself of a godmind to the north called the Delph."
That name rattled in Sumner's mind with memories of Nefandi and Corby.
Bonescrolls misread Sumner's surprise as bafflement, and he guffawed. "Names! The history is this: Over a thousand years ago, the sun and its planets entered a stream of radia-tion that has no origin. The radiation comes from the axle of our galaxy where the gravity of a billion suns has opened our universe to the multiverse. There, in the galactic core, en-ergy gushes in from an infinity of other realities. Some of that timeless energy is psynergy, modes of being that you and I would recognize as sentient. When that psynergy reaches earth, it changes the genetic structure of humans, and in a generation or two it becomes voors, distorts, and sometimes godminds. These are beings orphaned from the worlds that created them. They fight hard to hold onto the patterns that anchor them to this planet, because the psynergy-stream is sliding away from us. After the skyfires are gone, there will be no more new voors—no more new godminds. Those that survive will possess the earth."
Sumner picked up a pebble and turned it in his fingers gently, wisely. "And I am the eth, the shadowself of a godmind. What does that mean?"
"Light has built a temple in your skull, young brother." Bonescrolls watched him with a long and quiet mind. "Many centuries ago, the Delph was a man. The scientists of his time altered his brain, hoping to widen his consciousness enough to find solutions for the puzzling changes in their world—the raga storms and the distorts that were appearing everywhere. Ignorantly, they opened the man's mind wide enough for a godmind from another universe to possess him. That's one theory. What's certain is, once the Delph had a physical form strong enough and specialized enough to con-tain his psynergy, he began to alter the energy patterns around him capriciously. He reshaped reality."
"But who is he? Where is he from?"
"The light from the galactic center is not like the light of the sun or the stars. The energy doesn't come from the fusion of atoms. It comes from the light of an endless number of parallel universes. An endless number! Anything can jump out of infinity!"
Sumner's face narrowed with incredulity.
"Who is he?" Bonescrolls repeated, lifting his chin in-quisitively. "A being of light. Like you are. Like everything is. But he is the light of another continuum, and when he took human form he displaced the subtle psynergies of this world. Over the centuries those echoes of psynergy have been reflecting and interfusing through the eccentricities of biology and what we call chance. And so chromatin patterns have shifted and humans have been born inside their luck, psychi-cally untouchable. These are the eth. You are one of them."
"You're not telling me anything."
Bonescrolls smiled benevolently. "What it means is that you are the one being on the planet the Delph cannot touch with his reality-shaping mind. You are the perfect shield for a voor assassin."
Comprehension softened Sumner's stare.
"Your whole life is the intention of a being bigger than your imagination," Bonescrolls said, his voice
tremulous with the excitement and fear he felt blazing in Sumner. "I've been alive over a thousand years, and all this time, it turns out, I've been waiting for you. And for the voor inside you. We want the same reality."
"No," Sumner said, almost in a cry. "I don't want to lusk. I don't want to be used by voors."
Bonescrolls' timeshaped face was loose with delight, and he laughed soundlessly for a while before saying: "You're nothing. An ego. A ghost of memories and predilections. You don't amount to much in the overview. Forget who you think you are. Psynergy follows thought, so become consciousness itself, not the shapes of consciousness. Selfscan isn't enough, because it limits you to sensation. To be whole, to be One Mind, you must be the living center in you that feels, thinks, selfscans."
"I don't follow."
"Become the quest you've already begun."
Sumner's voice was limp. "I'm not looking for anything.
Bonescrolls benignly shook his head. "The eth will al-ways look for its source. The eth is huger than you. It's me and Corby as well. It's every event that touches you. It may take your whole life, but the eth will lead you to the Delph."
"No." Sumner crossed both of his hands through the air. "I'm grateful for your help, magnar, but I'm undertaking no quests for a voor. I'm whole in myself. I'm not about to serve a voor."
"That's not for you to decide." The magnar's face had become somber. "Your mind gets in the way of your being. You can't hope to understand what you're only a part of. That's why my life has the shape it does—so that I would be here now to empty you, to free you from the limits of know-ing, and to open you to One Mind."
"What are you talking about?" Sumner looked malcontent.
"I won't let your ego interfere with my destiny. You're still in thrall to me, Kagan. What I say, you must do." The magnar reached over and took Sumner's face in the splayed grip of his hand. The throb of the man's etheric field itched Bonescrolls' palm as it melled with his psynergy. "And by that authority, I command you to forget this conversation."
When Bonescrolls took his face, Sumner glimpsed the whole cavern brightening between the old man's fingers, the hazy sunlight and the bluesunk shadows stirring with hemi-visible beings. Then Bonescrolls shoved Sumner onto his back with an abrupt straightening of his arm, and darkness slammed into him.
The instant he hit the ground, Sumner's eyes fluttered open. The magnar was hunched over the turtle shell finishing his omelette, morning sunlight aureoled in his white hair.
"Rest if you wish," Bonescrolls said through a mouthful of food. "You've journeyed far, young brother, and I'm well pleased."
Sleep wrestled like an inner problem in Sumner's chest. But he couldn't rest. Something was on his mind— The mis-chievous grin on Bonescrolls' face piqued him. Why? Sumner looked out abstractly through a windowhole at the gold stretches of dawn. Why had he worked so hard for an omelette? He was in-listening, but his mind was silent as the straws of twilight scattering across the horizon.
Sumner slept fitfully for several hours and then, with a satchel of dried fruit and a skin of water from Bonescrolls, he left for Miramol. The magnar spent the remainder of the day trying to connect with his psychic strength again, but he was too weary. When night arrived he was twitching with frustration.
The moon was a green feather above the mesaland. Bonescrolls stood tall on the top of the rocktower, feet wide apart, arms spread, his body an X against the skyfires. Long and hard, he cried to the desert: "Help—me!"
The echo of his call stretched beyond itself quickly, and he dropped his arms and sagged into his stance. Time leaked from the rocks as the last warmth of day lifted into the night, and foolishness chilled through him. He turned back toward his lair, mumbling to himself: "Go to sleep, old man."
Every day for the last two months, while Sumner had wandered Skylonda Aptos, Bonescrolls had followed. With his body swaddled in blankets, lying back in his rockstudio, his mindark had opened into the brightness of hawk and coyote, and he had stayed close to the eth.