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[Radix Tetrad 01] – Radix
By A. A. Attanasio
Scanned, formatted and proof-read by BW-SciFi
Release Date: 18th, July, 2003
Ebook Version 1.0
Acknowledgments
The inwardness of this effort has indebted me to many people. I am
particularly grateful to my family for their compassionate support;
the poet Jon Lang for sharing his visions and for allowing me to
transmogrify his poem "The Other" into the Voor Litany (pages 299-
300); the editor Maria Guarnaschelli for ennobling this book with her
clarity and caring; the composer Victor Bongiovanni for permission
to use a voice from his musical composition "Berceuse from Suite for
Piano Four-Hand"* as Sumner's undersong (page 445); and the copy
editor Betsy Cenedella for closing the circle.
Robert Silverberg published an early and greatly re-visioned excerpt
of "The Blood's Hori-zon" in hisNew Dimensions 7 (Harper & Row,
1977).
I also want to thank Artie Conliffe for the map of the hemisphere and
Fred Marcellino for the cover art.
*"Berceuse from Suite for Piano Four-Hand" copyright© 1979 by
Victor Bongiovanni.
Contents
Distorts
Firstness
Pictures of the Real
Universe
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Teeth Dreams
Voors
The Mysteries
The Emptying
The Blood's Horizon
Godmind
Destiny as Density
Trance Port
The Untelling
Epilogue
Appendix
Worldline
Profiles
Argot
Thingscanbe—
and their Being is grounded
inNothing's ability tonoth.
—kenneth burke,
Language as Symbolic Action
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DISTORTS
No man knows himself.—Iching
Firstness
Blinded by the headlights, Sumner Kagan lunged off the road and slid
down the dirt embankment into the dark. Above and behind him
braking tires squealed furiously. Sav-age voices yowled as the
Nothungs, in leather streetgear, rolled out of their Death Crib and
chased after him. They were five viper-thin men with blood-bruised
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eyes and teeth filed to points.
"Run, Wad—run!" the Nothungs yelled.
At the bottom of the incline Sumner veered into the marsh. He looked
like a spooked cow in the dark, waddling heftily from side to side,
with only the Death Crib's head-lights shimmering off his smudged
and tattered shirt. He pushed into the tall grass, arms flailing wildly.
His night vision had returned and he could see clearly the squat
silhou-ette of the alkaloid factory on the horizon. He knew there was a
packed dirt path somewhere around here.
Not far behind, the Nothungs were whistling chains through the air,
howling, and cracking stones together. If he merely stumbled he
would be torn to pieces—the police could search the marshes for
weeks and still they wouldn't find all of him.
He thrashed through a brake of cattails, and then his feet hit hard
earth. It was the path, a straight run to the alkaloid factory. In the
west the Goat Nebula was rising. He screwed his mind into that
brilliant green spark and kept his thick legs pumping.
When he reached the chain-link fence of the factory the Nothungs
were close enough to pelt his broad, stoop-shouldered back with
scattered handfuls of gravel. There was barely time to find the hole
that he had sheared through the fence earlier that day. He found it
beneath the massive and mud-streaked billboard: NO GO!
TRESPASSERS SHOT!
He bellycrawled through and had to strain to haul his corpulent body
to its feet. He banged up a long metal ramp toward a broad staircase
that ascended into the dark galleries of the factory.
It was bad planning, he told himself, to have to climb stairs after such
a long run. It might all end here.Rau! His feet and legs were numb
with fatigue and his heart was slamming in his throat. He fixed his
eyes on the dark shadows at the head of the stairs and ignored the
pain that stabbed him more sharply with each step.
Just as he made it to the top, one of the Nothungs clutched at his
pants and ripped off his back pocket. Desper-ately, spastically, he
sprawled forward and kicked free. Strug-gling with his own
pendulous weight, he pulled himself to his feet as the Nothungs came
bellowing over the top.
Exhaustion staggered him but he fought against it. The big vat was up
ahead. He could see it below through the wire mesh of the ramp.
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The Nothungs were now coming up strong directly be-hind him,
ricocheting their chains off the pipes on either side. They thought they
had him trapped. Alone, in an aban-doned factory. That appealed to
their imaginations. Sumner had known it would.
The silver scars on the metal post, where the DANGER sign had once
been, blurred past him, and Sumner took its cue and leaped. The
knotted rope was there all right, and its stiff threads stung his pulpy
hands as he swung heavily to the other side. There were two sharp
screams behind him, two splashes.
Swiftly he looped the rope around the railing and, plod-ding off into
the darkness, found the broad pipe that would carry him back to the
other side. He staggered along it, adjacent to the ramp where three
silent Nothungs were meekly peering down into the darkness. An
emergency waterhose was just where he had left it. He had tested it
that morning.
One of the Nothungs was yelling across the darkness: "We'll find you,
fat boy! We'll rip you!"
"Aw, blow it out, screwfaces," Sumner said, just loud enough to be
heard. He had already turned the waterpower on, and as three rage-
dark faces spun around, he opened the valve. The blast clipped their
legs out from under them and logrolled them off the ramp, their wails
lost in the hiss and bang of water hitting acid.
Sumner listened deeply to the hissing water as he crouched with
fatigue over the limp hose. His breath was tight in his throat, and his
leg muscles were spasming from the hard run. He paused only briefly
before taking a canister of red spraypaint from its hiding place beside
the waterhose. With an unsteady arm he mist-scrawled on one of the
broad overhead pipes: SUGARAT.
Sumner didn't stop to rest until he got to his car in a lot behind the
factory. It was a standard bottle-green electric car, squarebacked,
with three small hard rubber tires and two scoop seats. He loved it
more than anything else. It was his home, more of a place of fealty
and comfort than the rug-walled residence he shared with his mother.
He slumped over and laid his head and arms on the cool metal roof.
When he caught his breath he opened the door and dropped into the
driver's seat, his head lolling back against the headrest. One hand
fingered the wooden steering wheel and the other dangled over a
carton of stale crumbcake. He stuffed a morsel in his mouth, and
though it was dry and powdery, a fossil of its original flavor spread
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over his tongue. He closed his eyes to savor it. He hadn't eaten in two
days. He had had to settle this thing with the Nothungs, and he
couldn't enjoy eating when he was thinking about killing. But now
that was over. It was time for the Tour. His stomach grumbled in
anticipation.
Stuffing another block of cake in his mouth, he slid the starter chip
into the ignition slot. He felt a warmth spread over him as he opened
the clutch, set the car in gear, and wheeled out through the elephant
grass.
Sumner and his car had a lot in common. They were both bulky,
squarebacked, and sloppy. Dunes of crumbs drifted out of the corners
and over stains of beer, gravy, and pastry fillings. Shreds of wrapping
paper, crushed cookie cartons, a bedraggled sock, and numerous
bottle caps were wedged between the seats and under the dash. And
there, beneath the particolored triangular Eye of Lami—which Jeanlu
the witch-voor had given him to protect him from his enemies—were
three words: BORN TO DREAD. Their am-biguity pleased him.
Besides eating, the thing he did most consistently and with the most
fervor was dread.
Anxiety sparked through him constantly. And though he hated its hot
taste in the back of his throat, he accepted it as one of the necessary
indignities of life. So he ate, as if his dread were something that could
be smothered somewhere deep in his gut, broken down, and digested.
But his real obsession wasn't food or anxiety. He wanted to be
dreaded. He wanted to be the legendary Dark One— magic shining
through his ugliness, indifferent to loneliness, deep and calm with
violence. He wanted everyone to know he was dangerous.
The problem was that no one ever witnessed his daring deceptions.
He was the Sugarat. And no one knew.
In the past six years the Sugarat had achieved a notori-ety that
fringed on myth. At first he had singled out streetgangs who had
humiliated or abused him. He had trapped and destroyed them for his
own gratification, never considering that there would be
repercussions. But his first few kills had created such a power
imbalance among the many gangs of McClure that street warfare
raged as it never had before. Rival gangs warred to fill the vacancies
the Sugarat had opened up. Firebombs exploded in the homes of gang
lead-ers. Assassinations bloodied commuter trains. Hand to hand
combat in the markets and shops became commonplace in the days
that followed each of the Sugarat's vendettas.
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Sumner thrived on this power. He began to kill more often, for
insults and slights he wouldn't have noticed before. He had become
important. He had found a way of shaking the world. Of course, there
was always the very real likeli-hood that one of his ploys would
backfire, but the dread of being mauled by a gang in no way matched
the loathing he felt for himself when he was alone and bored. It was
only dread and a little luck that had kept him alive this long.
But now the police wanted Sugarat, and that was some-thing else. For
six years they had known he was behind the spasms of violence
wrenching the city. They wanted him at any price, but there was
nobody, not one weaselly informer, not one witness or skinny-
shanked clue to point him out. Nobody knew the Sugarat.
That was why Sumner needed the Tour—to feel what he had done in
the past, to know who he was now.
He drove first along a rutted dirt road that smoothed into a causeway
and arced out of the industrial district. In a few moments he was at
the edge of his hometown, McClure. He parked the car in a dirt field
crowded with the hulks of convoy trucks and ambled into The Bent
Knife. Ignoring the stares of the dogfaced truckers, he wedged himself
into a phone stall and called the police.
"Zh-zh," he hissed when the phone was picked up. The officer at the
other end groaned, recognizing the ritual greet-ing of the Sugarat.
Sumner smiled and in a mumbled whisper told the police where they
could find the Nothung corpses. Then he hung up and, tucking his
torn shirt in as he went along, lumbered over to the counter and
ordered six sand-wiches to go.
He liked his sandwiches wide open and sloppy: horseneck clams with
miso and seaweed; chunks of veal blanketed in a mushroom sauce of
puffballs and chicken-of-the-woods. At The Bent Knife, however, he
settled for egg gumbo on toast and barley rolls stuffed with hot
pressed tongue.
He drove back into the ancient, burned-out factory dis-trict. He didn't
touch his food but let its steamy odors graze his nostrils with the
seductive promise of heartburn.
The Tour began at the site of. the first kill of his life. It was a fire-
gutted warehouse, just a sunken-in crater with three scorched
aluminum walls tottering around it. He parked his car where he could
clearly see the seared white ash of the interior and, on one of the
ribbed aluminum walls, streaked with mud and smoke, the huge
scrawled letters SUGARAT.
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He broke out one of the egg sandwiches, sniffed it ap-preciatively,
then devoured it as he reminisced. He had killed seven members of
the Black Touch here. The hardest part had been getting the gasoline.
It was expensive, and he had had to starve himself to be able to afford
enough of it. As for the liquid detergent, he had simply waited for a
shipment to come in to the local mart and then, in his old delivery boy
outfit, rolled off a barrel of it. Mixed together, the gasoline and the
thick detergent made an extremely viscous incendi-ary. He had
stacked three drums of it in the rafters of the warehouse. The strategy
had been the same. When the razor-fisted headbreakers of the Black
Touch chased him into the building, he had doused them with the
firegun and touched them off with a torch flare. The burn had been
beautiful, the screaming brief. It was his best kill. A perfect dupe.
Every-thing he had done in the six years since was derivative.
Sumner cruised his kill-sites, enjoying his food and re-playing his
strategies. Stacked vertically on the I-beam of a broken trestle were
the letters SUGARAT. Beside it was a black tumulus of rail gravel. This
was where Sumner had lured a whole gang of Bigbloods beneath the
drop-site of a gravel loader. When the chute opened they had been
sight-ing him with their makeshift nail-slings. They never got off a
shot.
At another table, with the dank susurrus of a bog twirl-ing about him,
he sat on the hood of his car nibbling a barley roll. He gazed into the
darkness and the shape of dead trees where the Slash headbreakers
had pursued him over a swampbridge. The bridge had been tricked to
collapse, of course. But the real shocker for the headbreakers came
after they sloshed into the bog—when Sumner ignited the firegum
coating the mud they were in.
When his last sandwich was eaten, Sumner was parked again outside
the alkaloid factory. He figured the police had come and gone,
because the Death Crib had been taken away.
He only vaguely remembered why he had killed the Slash, the Black
Touch, and the Bigbloods. It was hard to remember. He didn't think
about it much. He wasn't one to brood, though his problems loomed
larger each day. He had been out of work for a year and, at seventeen,
was already the father of a five-year-old boy he was terrified of. Yet he
rarely mulled over his life. He was motivated by a muscular intuition,
an urging in the meat of his body to eat, to kill, to find sex. It was his
dread.
For Sumner, finding sex was a lot more difficult than setting up a kill.
He was big and ugly: six foot five, with rolls of fat bagging under his
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eyes, coiling around his neck, swaying like tits under his shirt. His
face was glazed with the seepings of subcutaneous grease and crusty
with eruptions that never went away but only migrated across his
features. He had tried to grow a beard, but it came in mangy and
made him look diseased. It disgusted him to see himself, so he had
ripped out the rearview mirror in his car and kept apart, even from
himself.
On the way back into McClure, Sumner picked up some pastries and
cruised through the residential streets, eyeing the houses of all the
women he desired.
McClure was an old city, maybe four hundred years old, and like most
of the towns that had cropped up this deep in the interior, it was made
of stone. At least the older buildings were. It was a matter of
necessity, since the weather was dangerously unpredictable. Fierce
cyclones—raga storms—with winds of four hundred kilometers an
hour swooped across the country with little warning. Whole cities
were sometimes lost, coastlines reshaped. Nonetheless, wooden
houses were perched on hills in the more affluent sections. They were
status symbols in the truest sense, meant to be abandoned when the
raga storms came.
As part of the nexus of McClure's society, the wealthy had been able
to reserve cubicles in the Berth, a massive citadel in the center of
town. Even if the Berth were to be completely buried by a raga storm,
there was enough oxygen, food, and water inside to sustain thousands
of people until they could dig themselves out.
Sumner packed a honeytwist into his mouth and farted when he
passed the orange nite-glo sign with the Massebôth symbol on it. It
marked the inner city limits and declared that the area was under
Massebôth protection.
The symbol was two pillars. One was supposed to be ivory and the
other black obsidian. The ivory one, as Sumner remembered from his
grim two years of mandatory civil education, represented cultural
preservation and advance-ment. The secrets of petroleum refinement,
vulcanized rub-ber, antibiotics, transistor circuitry, and too much
else that had been taken for granted for years were forgotten after the
apocalypse that ended the kro-culture. Those that had survived the
holocaust and the dark centuries that followed were many
generations past any memory of civilization. Only a handful had
preserved snatches of the old technology and culture. In time they got
together and assembled a civilized community. Centuries later, the
Massebôth Protectorate emerged. The white pillar was the symbol of
its heritage.
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The obsidian pillar stood for the muscle of the Protector-ate. Though
the Massebôth were confined to the eastern seacoast, with only a few
settlements like McClure in the interior, they had the military
strength to dominate a much larger empire. What confined them was
not the threat of the tribes to the north and west but something that
was wrong with the human race. Distorts—people who were
genetically malformed—were more the rule than the exception these
days, and the Massebôth, who liked things the way they were, had
their hands full keeping their population strong.
Also, most of the planet was still unmapped. The Protec-torate just
didn't have the resources to cope with the vastness and strangeness of
their own continent, let alone the rest of the world. A lot was left
unexplained—like devas. Military reports, two famous film clips, and
rumors described the awesome power of the devas. No one knew what
they were, or even if they were intelligent. They had apparently saved
endangered explorer-craft, but they had also smashed mapping-
balloons that had journeyed too far north. Vast funnels of light were
how they were invariably witnessed. But always deep in the
unmapped north.
Sumner took the word of his teachers that there had been a time
before devas and distorts and raga storms. He didn't think about it
much, but he liked to feel that he was informed. That's why he hated
going through center-city McClure. There on the massive time-stained
walls of the Berth, which housed the university and all the
administrative buildings, were scrawls, graffiti, cerebral vomit.
Instead of the streetnames or gang slogans that were brightly
streaked throughout his neighborhood, the Berth walls were roweled
with nonsense—
YOU ARE THE PERPETUAL STRANGLE
BELIEVE IN NEVER NOTHING ALWAYS AMNESTY FOR THE DEAD!
It was infuriating. But there was no way for Sumner to get to where
he was going without passing the Berth. To-night, as the walls loomed
closer, their smoky searchlights swinging overhead, he spotted a new
scrawl, much larger than the rest—
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