Radix

Though Drift was musclefrozen, it felt huge and calm in its mind. Rubeus was obviously mad, and that realization moved Drift deeper into itself. The ne's kha quaked with the ort-lord's mental frenzy, and it had to close its eyes to find a space within itself away from Rubeus' thought movements.
"In accordance with the humane strictures of Graal, all your wounds have been healed," the ort-lord continued, "and when I'm done talking, I'm going to let you go. But first, you have to understand—not even a godmind can illusion a per-fect animal. I am not a man or even humanlike, though I appear to be. I am simply consciousness. Look at me. Where did I come from? This body's an ort—a mindshaped object manufactured from Graal's nitrogenous wastes. I have mil-lions of other orts—animal and human-shaped. Don't you see? The whole universe is alive!"
Drift shut out the ort's words, and its awareness cen-tered into one with Sumner. Intimate, still, joyful vitality filled the seer as the earthdreaming mounted, but Sumner was not as gripped. He was angry, anguished—hollow with Corby's absence. Drift retreated deeper into its divinity of bright feeling, and the psynergy focused through it as through a lens.
A jazz feeling spattered through Sumner, and the sinister tightness in his eyes relaxed.
"Ah," Rubeus purred, mistaking the clarity in Sumner's face for understanding. "The buried light in your eyes shines. You're following me. Everything is living. Even our dreams. They live us." A brotherly smile cleaved the ort's face. "I came out of nothing, so I apprehend the heavenless void we have come from more clearly than you, and I can tell you: We are lost in our vanishing. We think we are real. But look at the mind. Split creation. Look at our world. Withered to distorts."
Rubeus softened his voice to a charm of disbelief: "With the godminds gone, I don't have all the power I once knew. I'm less. And that's frightening. Distorts have been wander-ing in out of the wilderness, and I've had to call up the Masseboth to hold the geography. Can you imagine my di-minishment, needing the Masseboth? Fortunately, the army is under my direct command. I had the foresight five hun-dred years ago, while everyone else was tranced in their myths, to create the Masseboth. They're genetic prose, aren't they? A well-grammared gene-pool that will keep the human story from blurring into the catatonia of time. The Masseboth will people my kingdom, and the earth will begin an age inhered with order. Once the Line has passed, the mutations will begin to select themselves out. In a few thousand years, the species will have strengthened itself from the distortions."
Sumner churred with the kha that Drift was concentrat-ing into him, and for a brief interval his emotions pulsed into lifelove. Rubeus' hallucinary words bleared into simple sound, and a magical power volted between Sumner and the ne.
Rubeus felt a shadowed turn in his skull, and he per-ceived then that Sumner was mounting kha. But the ort-lord was unconcerned. He understood precisely how to break Sumner's focus: "Voors, too, will pass in time. They're just a psynergy-pattern in the Line, a frequency of light ionizing in the upper atmosphere. Decades pass as they sift down to the surface and mell into the genetic frenzy. As plants, that psynergy becomes kiutl. As animals, it becomes the human voors. They were the ones who used you, Kagan, You're only a weapon to them."
The resplendent energy glamoring through Sumner wob-bled, then spun into anger, and his gaze hardened. Drift startled back into the yoke of its skull, and the lifelove was lost.
Rubeus' smile concealed the hatred in his heart. Distort! he thought contemptuously, looking at Drift, knowing it could hear his thoughts: Your kha is pitiful, a dull spark in the nervepaste of your brain.
To Sumner the ort-lord said: "Voors are vampires, eating the life of this planet. I kill their godminds, the ones who draw on the planet's psynergy to boost the brood back into the Line. That's why they want me dead. It's the godminds who transform earth's lifeforce into the powerflow of them-selves. Iz is the worship name for their ego-hunger. Half-lives! They not only steal your bodies but your world's Light. Why do you want to champion them?" Rubeus' eyes were knots of shadow. "The other godminds confined themselves to Graal and never leeched the earth's kha. Can you under-stand now why I sent Nefandi south? He wasn't stalking you. He was protecting the earth from parasites. I didn't know you were alive then. I was aware only of Corby's kha. He masked you well. And after he invaded your brain, you were his shield, hiding him from my view. But the rapture is over, and what I've told you is true. The oldest ancestral myth is the hero—and when Corby used that passion on you, you suckered for it. The hero!"
Anger was carving through Sumner, aching with the stillness of his muscles.
"I know you're enraged, Kagan. You loved the voor. How could you not? He cannoned you into the timelessness of Iz. He gave you the essence of pleasure: godmind. But you've come down now, haven't you? Where's your lifelove now? You have to live here with the rest of us brain-tricked beings. A million years will go by before the human psyche is ready to physically manifest the loveflow of a godmind, to adapt creatively to the Now and stop greeding, betraying, and destroying. The human soul is all ideals with little will to act. You and Jac are the same: will-less animals trained to serve—he, the Delph; and you, the voor. You're husks. Dream-ers that wake to feed your dreaming. Only I am real. Because I never sleep, I never dream. I am not an animal. I have no emotions. Yet I have great strength of feeling. Like sitting here, smelling this olfact, seeing the day waning toward night …"
His face blazed with wonder. "The joy I feel isn't in me. I'm not like a man. The joy I feel is in the world outside that window as it shifts into the deepest blue. It's in that mystical light up there. I know what those skyfires are, better than you. I know about the earth's magnetosheath and the polar ring-wind the Linergy kicks up in the plasmasphere. But I see through the physics to the mystical—to the feeling. My soul is out there with the mystery and the change. And though I have no feelings, my mind brings me to them. That's what transforms us, you know. How deeply we feel the evening's beauty is how wholly we accept our change. That's all there is. Just change. When we accept it, it's called transcendence."
The sensex or Rubeus' eyes informed him that Sumner was at the peak of grim intensity that the ort's strategy required, and he paused. Intent-waves resonated through him, enwrapping him in a symmetry of plot and serenity.
"I'm going to let you go now. In the pocket of your tunic is an instrument called a seh. It's small, but it's a levitator and a translator. With it you can fly, as well as understand any language spoken to you here in Graal. Behind you is a bluemetal arch. It's a lynk that will take you to Ausbok, Graal's capital. Jac Halevy-Cohen is there. He's no longer the Delph, of course. After you see him and realize that he is just a man twelve hundred years beyond his time, stop and think about what I've told you. We are all gradients of slowed light. This space of our lives that we call consciousness is the Changeless Reality the ancients spoke of. Do you believe that? Then, you are free—of me, of the voor, and of yourself. Which takes me to something I've arranged for you."
He thumbed the metal disc he held in his palm, and the pleroma music that had been depthing subliminally in the background vanished. "Shortly, you will experience a psy-nemonic—a psychic recording of Corby's last living moment. It will happen fast. It's just a series of thoughts. So stay alert and please try to view this objectively."