Radix

"I—I'm sorry," Sumner said shrilly. He looked again to where he had seen his father. There was nothing but rocks and ragged shadows, hazy in the dull glow from the Flats.
"It's my fault," Corby said, taking the lead toward the top of the rise. "The bond is still strong between us: You're seeing the world like a voor. You'll be all right tomorrow."
Sumner wiped the cold sweat from his neck and face and plodded after the boy. All his strength was gone, and his legs felt gelatinous. But he didn't stop at the crown of the rise. He saw his car was where he had parked it, and he walked at a steady lumbering pace toward it. When he was leaning against the hood he looked over his shoulder. Corby was still standing on the rise. Before getting into the car, he waved, but the boy didn't wave back.
Sumner didn't wait to catch his breath before shoving the starter chip in and wheeling onto the road. He felt nauseous and sticky with fear, and he was grateful for the solidity of the wooden wheel.
The ride home was maddening. Eerie shadows flickering out of the Flats made him swerve and jam on the brakes several times. Twice he saw his father standing by the side of the road, his hands and the mangled flesh of his face burning with a blue phosphorescence.
When he finally pulled into the driveway at home he was shivering uncontrollably and vomited twice in the street be-fore he was steady enough to put the latchkey in the lock. He crept as silently as he could up the stairs. At each creak of the old wood he expected to hear Zelda's piercing voice. But he made it to his room alone, his heart booming in his ears.
He woke at midday and fell back in a drowse. It was evening before he was able to get out of bed. His hands, face, and clothes were crusted with dirt, but even so he found it hard to believe that he had been with Jeanlu and Corby. His thoughts of the previous day were mistrustfully dark and charged with fear. Recalling the strange hours he had spent on the Flats with Corby made him tremble, and he had to splash his face with cold water to calm himself. Hallucination, he rationalized. That gopping fish I ate. But Corby was real, and the boy's face, with its dead whiteness and ghostly re-semblance to his own, loomed in his memory.
After cleaning himself up he went downstairs to the kitchen. Zelda had some stew prepared, and he ate hungrily. When he was finished she opened a cabinet, lifted out a bundle of black crushed leather, and laid it on the table.
Sumner nearly threw up. "Where'd you get that?"
"Don't get excited," she warned him. "You'll throw up."
"Ma!"
"I found it in your car. Which was missing with you in it all day yesterday."
Sumner picked up the package and tried to feel its contents through the leather. He reasoned that Jeanlu had put it in the car while he was with Corby. "Did you open it?"
"Of course not. How do I know what moody wangol you've got in there?"
Sumner inhaled deeply, wondering if he could believe her. "It's not wangol, Ma. It's film. I didn't want it exposed."
"Well, if it's exposed, it wasn't me that opened it."
He decided to believe her. She'd be crawling all over me now if she'd seen the brood jewel, he figured.
She was frowning. "What film do you have in there anyway? You don't have a camera."
Sumner got up and stuck the package under his arm. "They're photos. I'm going to get them developed. A friend of mine'll do it for free."
Zelda thinned her eyes suspiciously. "Photos? Photos of what?"
Sumner smiled. "Naked girls, Ma. And people in rut." He hopped out of the kitchen before she could snag him.
He hung the stalk charm from the ceiling in his car to remind himself that his nightmare of Corby and the Flats was real. The experience had been like a dream—vivid, colorful, and full of malevolent beauty—so that finally he had to be-lieve it was a hallucination. There was no other way to come to grips with it. And besides, he had some kiutl and a brood jewel to move.
Sumner toyed with the idea of trying the kiutl himself, but he was leery, and eventually his dread won out. Just to see how potent it was, though, he crumbled one of the leaves and boiled it until the water was wine-red. It smelled sweet, even tempting. So he gave it to Johnny Yesterday. The old man took it eagerly and drank it all off in a few gulps.
Sumner watched him closely for an hour. Nothing hap-pened. A while later, he gave up on it and went out in his car for a cruise. When he came back, old Johnny Yesterday was floating cross-legged above the stairs, oranges and pears drift-ing around his head. His ears were twitching, and a wicked smile was smeared across his face.
As best as he could time it, the stuff lasted six hours. He figured it was potent enough to sell. But he didn't know how to move it.
He had the same problem with the brood jewel. Just gazing into its receding depths, the blue facets splintering with fans of curved light, he knew it was exceptional. At first, he thought he might be able to use it himself. If it really could reveal the true nature of people, perhaps it would offer up secrets he could cash in on. But that dream was short-lived.
Sitting bent over the jewel, he saw nothing but hazings of shadowlight and his own bulging reflection. Then, slowly, a form began shaping itself out of the coal-blue depths. When the skin at the back of his neck crawled in a chill breeze of recognition, he tried to pull away. He was seeing himself dead, sprawled face up, hair droozed with blood, a white curve of bone pushing through the split skin of his jaw. But he couldn't
move. Transfixed, he sat looking for hours at the crushed mouth, the violet bruises, the puffed bellybutton, the gelled eyes. . . . The daylight faded and he sagged away, crazed with revulsion and fear.
Later he picked up the jewel and thrust it under a heap of soiled clothes. He wanted to get rid of it quickly. It was a devilstone, another of Jeanlu's evil tricks. Clearly, he real-ized, the safest thing to do would be to crush it and scatter its dust into the sewer. But it was a rarity, even if a monstrous one. The least he could do was get some zords for it. Mutra knew he deserved it.
After a month of seeding questions in a dozen port taverns, Sumner learned of a man in McClure who some-times bought unusual items from strangers. His name was Parlan Camboy. He was a shipping magnate with out-of-town connections. His office was in a turret of the Commerce building in center-city.
Sumner went there and waited in a posh anteroom sev-eral hours before being turned away for the day. The next day was the same. And the next. On the fourth day he told the spectacled, pigeon-chested man who was the merchant's secretary that he had some information. "One of Camboy's ships is going to be pirated. I know how and when."
A few minutes later he was invited into the main office. The room was opulent. There were cedar rafters with lux-tubes built into them, latticed wall-panels, amber-glossed paintings of naval heroes, deep leather chairs, an intricate parquet floor, and richly carved molding.
Parlan Camboy was sitting behind a dark crimson desk backed by a semicircle of mullioned windows. He appeared to be in his fifties. His sparse hair was the color of hemp, brown and yellow streaked with gray. His face was granite like his eyes—a well-used face. A gold ring hung from his left ear and a shiny scar creased his right cheek.
When Sumner walked in, an undisguised look of disgust crossed Camboy's face. Sumner was dressed as he usually was, in a sweat-ringed, crumpled shirt and dirty sag-seat pants.
Camboy motioned for him to sit down, and Sumner moved toward one of the leather chairs. Camboy's eyes wid-ened. "Not there," he snapped. He pointed to a wooden stool that Sumner hadn't noticed. After he was seated, the mer-chant turned and opened a window. He adjusted his chair so that there was a draft between them. Then he growled, "Where and when?" Both his hands were under the table.