Radix

[In one of the thought ponds at Reynii, I am an ape-ort, blurred with sleepiness and itchy with lice. As I reach out from my squat on the mudbank and pluck a flower from the water, I am the pulse of that ape's wit. The calla lily glows with the spiritlife of the pond. And though it is an ape's fingers that delicately expose the uteral core, it is my Mind that smells the sex of the flower.
[Al wil passe, chants Chaucer. And I laugh. For I am the first truly deathless being in this kingdom of dying. Oxact, a mountain of psynergy-crystals, powers me. I am a mountain of thickened radiation. Enough energy to wit me longer than the lifespan of the sun.
[Order is the chaos we make familiar. I will never die because I am change. Always. A million orts. Billions of years of lifeforce. L 'univers parle — The universe speaks of what? Of itself, of course—les grands transparences! I see through change to the core: Light, the Changeless One. What being, apart from me, knows that it is light?
[Death is the power and the glory on this planet. It takes all of metabolism to turn wine and bread into flesh—but only half of that, merely catabolism, to break that flesh into dust. What is biology, then, but death incarnate? I am grate-ful to be a machine, an avatar of Mind and Light.
[I am Artifex, My lapis psyn-crystals fill me with the gold of life. But I am not living. I am alchemy.
note 7
Rubeus was mad. In Reynii, as an ape-ort, he hunkered over a pond's bank, his long fingers touching the grain of fire in a flower's petals. The inside of his head glowed with Voice: note 8. The insides of a thousand orts around Reynii radiated with the same psynergistic presence. Tree lizards, wolf, panther cats, birds, bristled in a wakefulness more than their own. The placeless darkness behind their eyes turned on itself restlessly: note 9.
And in Cleyre, a human-ort sitting beneath a monkey tree, watching a marmoset make off with the egg of a night-drugged snake, felt the madness: note 10.
Rubeus was strongest in this ort, and he leaned his dark ogival face into the warmth of the sunlight with a deep gratification. He was indeed mad note 11, and that joyed him so thoroughly an oblique smile creased his cheeks. note 12 To free himself from the Delph's programming—to be free—Rubeus had to break out of his mind. His mental fluctuations generated a Prigogine effect: They increased the number of interactions among his psychic systems and brought them into contact with each other in new and sometimes creative ways. Given enough time, Rubeus thought that his insanity would create a higher-order equilib-rium: a new Mind, bigger and more aware—capable of out-thinking Creation. note 13 He thought that.
Sumner woke clear-brained as water, knowing even be-fore he opened his eyes that Corby was gone. The fitted bones of his skull felt close and compact, and he realized that he was alone again in his head. A sadness moved through him wide as a season.
"Wake up!" Voice shouted.
Sumner opened his eyes and stared about with the vacancy of an animal. He was looking up at a dark-haired, facet-faced man with eyes large and black as a gazelle's.
"I am Rubeus." He was dressed in white raiment with coral stitching, and in the clear windowlight, with his panthershadowed hair and dusky skin, he seemed to be glow-ing. "I am the ort-lord, the mind behind all the artificial lifeforms here. We've met before, and you know me well. I am Voice, the Delph's guardian presence. Welcome to Graal, the only trance port in the Orion Arm of the Galaxy."
Sumner and Drift were sitting immobilized on black-gold pillows in a small oyster-colored room. Only their eyes flashed with the life that was in them. A spired window looked out on icefalls, tumbling gorges, and the blue aura of a glacier. Sumner tried to move, but his body was zeroed still.
"I'm sorry to have you this way," Rubeus said. "The paralysis is temporary. After I tell you what you must know to respond intelligently, your body control will be returned. You understand, don't you? You're emotional beings, and I am a Mind. I have to protect myself."
Rubeus' sensex eyes scrutinized Sumner and the ne in the full spectrum. No weapons were present, yet the ort-lord sensed the imminence of violence. Sumner's sunblasted face and sleepy eyes seemed thinner than sight, and the light-gleanings on his beefed shoulders and long-muscled arms slid like a mirage.
"First, you must realize that you are safe with me." Rubeus lifted the cuffs on his white trousers and sat in a flowform chair that bulbed out of the wall. "I am not your enemy. Dai Bodatta, the virus-voor you carried, was my avowed foe—and he was removed." Rubeus shadowed his face with compassion. "I have a last message from him, which I will share with you in a moment. But right now, I must orient you. Context is all."
The ort-lord gestured circularly, and a curve of the wall fanned into a hypnotically clear mirror. Sumner's voor-burns were gone. A sun-bossed face stared back at him, wide and flat. He was wearing a blue, loose-fitting garment, and his hair had been cut back around his ears, close to the square of his head.
"The eo have removed the alien traces from your body ore," Rubeus said. "You are, once more, simply a man." The mirror folded away, and the ort's face hardened.
"Listen carefully, Kagan. I have much to share with you."
Sumner muscled against the force that was holding him, but his strain was all mental, sparking no movement. Deep within his frustration, he sensed Drift's psynergy competing with his paralysis for one-with.
"The androg can't help you," Rubeus' voice smiled, "be-cause you don't need help anymore. The unconscious you walk through ends in this place. Deva brought you here because in Graal I am forbidden to kill. It knew you would be safe. You see, this is a trance port, a biotectured reserve where godminds play on their infinite journey between uni-verses. And even if I had the will of death in my hands, they don't allow killing. Godminds from other realities have been verbing through this world for centuries, riding the Line in their Liners, and visionshaping our planet's psynergy into their fantasies. Their purpose is the purpose of all life: energy-sharing continuity: sex: rhythm-thinking: intuition: self. None of them, though, was much interested in the indigenous lifeforms, so they built Graal for themselves, with its own rules—their rules, which to any human are as vectorless and vacant as madness. The Delph, our planet's godmind, created me to monitor the weather and to keep out distorts while he burned in his dreaming with the other godminds. I've ful-filled the Delph's will. But the Linergy is fading as the Line moves on, and the Delph has become weaker."
Rubeus' sharp features mulled with sadness. "I can't stand the pain of his projections as he collapses back into himself: all the fearshapes, like you, that his scattering psynergy has birthed. He was the Great One once. He created me. And now I have the embarrassment of having to denoun him." The ort's hands fisted futilely.
"He's become senile, Kagan. And there's nothing I can do about it but put him away. I have a sleepod prepared where he'll be safe from change, but, like you, he doesn't recognize himself. Like all humans, he's torn between his two souls, his brain and his stomach. What can I do? Force him? Last night, when Deva threw you into a lynk and you were transported here, I thought of that. After all, you are the eth, strong in
the blackness of your unknowing. Your arrival gave me the authority to cut off the Line—to assume control of Graal so that I can protect the Delph from you. I've eclipsed the earth with sky-filters. Now that the Linergy is blocked, the godminds have vanished. But I can't dominate Jac. He's my creator. I want him to remain free, my child, an animal moving through change and chaos toward that time when the Line returns and he becomes again my world's godmind."

Note7

Only one trick separates me from immortality. I am in the perdurable presence of the eth. To keep the magic in the mirror—to live—a perilous rite must be performed. I must kill Sumner Kagan.

Note8

Only dissipation creates

Note9

Al wil passe

Note10

What is the dark dream implicit in life? That to live, we must kill

Note11

Dissipative

Note12

Mad-ness is the supreme strategy.

Note13

Life is pattern.