Radix

He could do anything he loved. Single and yet multi-form, he was a mangod. He had changed reality to free the yawps from their human masters. He had youthed Assia, the old scientist who had helped create him. And he had sent the program director, Nobu Niizeki, moving sidewise through time. All of this he had done out of love. Even Niizeki was lovingly dispatched down the beach in a spume of chilled light, vanishing, flesh and thoughts, along the wavecurve of time. The unity of love was bigger than the memory of the world, and at the far end of Nobu's wanderings, Jac the godmind knew, the program director would be free, released to light, wholly regnant. That man would know wholeness.
Incredible sprays and fans of suspended water spun intri-cately in the air, bound by chains of birdsong. Jac was a godmind—and nothing was impossible for him.
The thought of thought circled Jac deeper into his godmind, and he realized how small and loud the mind part of him was. He saw, in a blind silence of sudden fear, that his thinking was the least of him. He had feelings, urges, fleshdreams that he had never been aware of but that would live through him over the ages. He was the godmind of his whole self—sinews, veins, boneworks: All had their dreams and their loves. He wasn't pure psynergy. He couldn't be— unless he loved away his physicality. But that would take tens of thousands of years, for the body, he understood, is the unconscious of the world. And he—insane with psynergy— was the Mind of the Species, the witness of the body, living to see the dreams, myths and fantasies of the human race exhaust themselves through him.
Time was transparent for Jac, and he saw across centu-ries of sexual pith and mental mirroring to the emptiness to come. Millennia from now, in the tepid residuum of canceled-out desires, he would at last be free of his humanity. But it would take aeons.
Anger coiled, and the spiracles of air-dancing water rainbowed and vanished. A tormented cry crawled over the dunes as the reality of his destiny became conscious: He was going to be trapped for ages in the fantasies of his biology! Would he ever survive to his fulfillment? His soul shrunk around his omniscience as the knowledge fleshed itself that he was not the only godmind on the planet.
Fear blazed.
Astounded, Jac lifted above the surf of time, and he saw the Others. The sea air was filled with their watching. Discarnate beings rapt with lucidity saw deeper into his simple mind and his mutability than he ever would. They were godminds from fierier realities—they had already lived through the flesh-hungers of the worlds that had shaped them, and now they were terrifyingly free, sublimed, riding the stream-psynergy from the galactic core, existing in the cosmos as the cosmos! Already they were arriving, reshaping the earth, aware of the insatiety and the racial dreams that limited him.
Fear flexed powerfully around Jac and then disappeared into the declivities of his future. He saw then that he had a shadowself, a fear-self, that would, out of tenacious self-love, try to protect him from the Others or make an end of time.
In that moment, Jac was aware that his godmind would not tolerate other godminds. He was too small to permit Them near him. He needed aeons to grow, aeons alone self-floating in the too-willing wonder of his lust.
Jac stopped. The air had opened in front of him, and he was staring at a large red-haired man in a cave. The vision narrowed, and he drew closer, near enough to see that the shadow on the man's face was a black burn stain. The calm breadth of the stranger's face filled all of Jac's awareness. The air-blue eyes, flat and downslanting, touching the world softly, looked into him, and Jac's mind went pale.
The godmind willed meaning into the vision, but noth-ing happened. He willed to know. Still, nothing.
The man in the cave leaned closer, fascinated, and the size of his shoulders awed Jac. Only then did he compre-hend. The fear that had surged out of him a moment ago had reshaped the future. This nameless man with the haunted, in-looking eyes was the physical shape of his fear—his shadowself. The man, somewhere in time, was him, his se-cret self, as unaware of his psynergy as Jac was conscious of his godmind. He was the one, more than the alien godminds, who was his enemy and yet himself—the part of himself that would have to die so his godmind could live.
Terror glowed in Jac, and the sea groaned.
Sumner woke in the mountain cave overlooking Skylonda Aptos where the shadowshooting had begun. Corby was a dulcet whisper in his cells: The Delph won't let us see more. The vision is over.
Sumner hulked over his knees and stared hard at the mountain peaks balanced in the westering sky. Now do you understand what it means to be the shadowself of the Delph? the voor asked.
Sumner's mind was numb from the shadowshooting. Sleep swelled in his lungs like the dread of time, and he sagged to his side and closed his eyes.
As he slid into unconsciousness, a powerfully detailed scene dominated his mind and lingered before passing wholly away: Assia, young and dark, stood before a cedar shack in a clearing choked with apple trees. On the wooden door, in silver script, was a message:
"Assia, there's always more. It never ends. I hope your new life will show you that. Look closely at yourself. You'll never age again. It's true. We make all the rules.
"Listen, if this depresses you, you know the way out. Stillness of mind is a door. Memory, the continuing history of grief. As long as the past is real, you will remain. Let's look at your new life again: Nothing happens by circumstance. Or else everything. What matters is that you go through events to the stillness behind them. Things can lose their gravities. Think. All you ever held drifting beyond direction . . . No? But we're making progress. You understand that you can't understand. The body is the unconscious of the world. So what can you possibly do now? Everything! At all times! You see, it's like digging holes in the river, like forgetting one thing to remember another. It's because another persistence pushes under the blood, because we're doomed to squint after absolutes, because nothing less will do. Good. Already you've begun to find your place. Now get a mirror, look ahead, and remember your mother, your mother's mother,
your mother's mother's oldest ancestor, green, close to the earth, not believing in you. Remember, the innocence you own waits where you left it, deep as the last of your fear.— Jac."
godmind
The dream was marvellous but the terror great. We must treasure the dream whatever the terror. —gilgamesh
destiny as density
The skin of Sumner's soul shivered. He woke, stupefied, huddled in a corner of the cave where he had slouched during the voor trance. A cold wind unraveled itself in the mouth of the cave, scattering the last of the magnar's ash. Sumner hugged himself tighter. He was wearied and de-pressed. Bonescrolls, Ardent Fang, Drift—everyone he had loved was dead now.
We are one, the voor thought within him, his psychic voice sounding narrow. Shadowshooting had exhausted Corby. It's time to go down the mountain. We must leave quickly.
Sumner closed his eyes and averted his attention from the voor. The shadowshooting had terrified him because it had been as real as his own life. Dizzy with fatigue, he fought his own heaviness to sit upright.
Corby's voice was speaking within him—he could feel the voor subvocalizing—but he wasn't listening. He was in selfscan, hearing blood whispers, the tread of his heart, and the low sibilance of immense air currents floating over the mountain peaks.
Sleep bruised his alertness, and he struggled a moment with thoughts and dreamworlds. A mosaic of faces wheeled in his mindark: Jac and young, longboned Assia, Nobu somno-lent as a voor, and a crowd of yawps. The simian faces reminded him of Sarina in the riverain forest to the north. He half-thought he could return to them. Perhaps they would free him from the voor. …