Radix

Next to food, the scansule was the main reason Sumner spent time at home. It was, indirectly, a gift from Klaus, Sumner's dead father. Klaus had been a very successful plant foreman. He had seemed to understand what life was all about, though he had died before Sumner could ask. Sumner was ten at the time, but already his father had put enough money aside for his education. He had had dreams of his son becoming a craftsman, but Sumner was too reclusive and short-tempered to go to school. After Sumner's two years of mandatory civil education and another two years in nine different training programs, Zelda succumbed to the swarm of disciplinary sheets that followed him from one classroom to another and withdrew him from school. She rented a scansule, a self-study device that was connected to McClure's univer-sity center. It was with this device that Sumner learned how to make firegum and gunpowder. Otherwise, he wasn't inter-ested in learning.
The other things that fascinated him about the scansule, apart from the sex-ed programs he played back now and then, were the tectonic displays—structural programs in which stu-dents could analyze various stoichiometric combinations: crys-tal stress patterns, principles of wave propagation, and maze properties. Sumner enjoyed sitting in front of the screen and letting those abstract patterns lull him into a soporific trance. It was a form of self-hypnosis, a way of getting beyond his dread and relaxing enough to sleep.
He despised sleep. Slumped out in the sag of his filthy mattress, he was prey to nightmares and their garble of screamshapes and barely heard whispers. He much preferred the slow descent in the pale light of the scansule, letting the meaningless but intricately beautiful patterns ease him into a sprawled slumber. His dreams were tamer then, and he woke without thrashing or howling.
Sumner caressed the cool metal rim of the scansule. He flicked on the power switch, waited a moment, then banged the set, waited another moment, then physically lifted and dropped the set. He waited a final
moment before urgently looking around for something to ram through the screen. Fortunately, the only thing handy was a frayed toothbrush, and he decided instead to check the battery. It was missing.
He thought about it for a moment and then realized with a pang of humiliation that there was only one answer. The battery was too securely connected for Zelda or Johnny Yes-terday to have removed it. Only a scansule agent could have taken it out, which meant, quite simply, that his dead father's funds were exhausted.
He leaned against the voided scansule and rubbed his eyes, trying to absorb the full import of his situation. For months he had been fearing this day, but now that his father was truly gone, no longer represented even by his zords, the sadness was thicker than dread. Soon they would be coming not only for the scansule but the car. It had belonged to Klaus while he was alive, but like most everything else in Masseboth society, it was on loan from the government. As long as there were funds to pay for its upkeep and re-charging, it was Sumner's to do with as he pleased. Now there wouldn't even be enough to cover the three traffic violations he had picked up over the last two months.
Sumner gazed forlornly at the two tickets taped above his desk and reached into his back pocket to pull out the latest one. He had gotten it two days before for speeding down a residential street. One of the women he admired had abruptly appeared at her doorstep.
He froze—hand to fabric-torn hip—and an iciness gripped him so severely he couldn't breathe.
The ticket was gone. It had been in the pocket that one of the Nothungs had ripped off, and it was probably left lying on the wire mesh ramp below the broad steam pipe on which he had defiantly sprayed SUGARAT.
He moaned aloud and dropped to his knees. It was all over. Lazy nights blinking out to the scansule, slow drives down the love streets, the Tour—all of it, gone. And worst, most horrible of all, the Sugarat was through.
Sumner swayed to his feet, grabbed the edge of his desk, and heaved it over. The scansule tube exploded, and before the crash and bang thinned out, the door to his room swung open. Zelda stood ready to swoop over him, but when she saw the fury on his face she clutched her two black feathers and quietly closed the door.
Sumner couldn't think. He needed some air. He thud-ded out of the room and stood for a moment beside the bust with the furious expression. Zelda was leaning against the table with the brocaded legs, still clutching her feathers.
"Who are you?" she demanded with indignation. "Who are you?" She reached between her legs and pulled out her horn of elk marrow dust. Swinging her arm in a wide arc, afraid to get too close, she tried to scatter the dust on her son. "Out mind-mauler! Out nerve-squelcher! Get out of the body I created! In the name of Mutra. Out!"
Sumner swung past her and went to the door that led up to the roof.
"No!" Zelda shrieked. "I won't let you kill my son!" She ran up to him and emptied the detergent and bread crumbs on his head.
Sumner jerked aside the bolt, kicked open the door, and spun around. Zelda leaped back and, casting a warding sign with her thumb and little finger, mumbled something under her breath.
"Ma! Relax!"
"Me relax?"
"I'm just a little wound up. I need some air. I'll be all right."
"Why go up on the roof? It's windy up there. You could get sick."
Sumner turned and bounded up the stairs, his mother calling after him. "If you jump, I'll never forgive you. I'll trap your wangol in a jar and torment it as long as I live. We can renew the scansule. We can buy a new one. Don't—"
Sumner banged through the outer door and stepped out of sight onto the roof.
Zelda sighed and threw up her hands. He'll kill me yet, she thought. Why does he have to be such a loner? And foul-tempered, too. She shook her head. "It's all your fault," she said silently to her husband. "You were the one that wanted him to be free. You trained him that way. Not me. I wanted him to play with other boys. Be sociable. Make friends, I told him. But no. There'll be time for that later, you said. Now he's got to be self-reliant. He has to learn to be comfortable with himself. That's the way it is in this world. You're on your own. Nobody's going to help you. Ha!" She leaned back against the filigreed table, suddenly feeling very heavy. "Well, I wish you were here now, Klaus. I wish you could see what he's become."
Zelda sighed again and pushed away from the table. It was time to see how the chowder was doing. She went down two flights of stairs to a small, cramped kitchen where a heavy-bottomed pot was purring on the stove. She always had something cooking down there. Food was the only way she had of reaching
her son. "And that's your fault, too," she told Klaus, "going Beyond like that when he was so young. What am I supposed to do? He only listens to me when I have something to eat."
She lifted the top off the pot and let the steam billow out before sniffing the broth. It smelled good. From experience she knew that Sumner would be hungry soon, so she took down a bowl from a heat-faded wood cabinet and ladled out the thick clam chowder. She selected from the spice rack two jars marked Onion Salt and Turnip Chips. They were really powdered John the Conqueror Root (for energy and defense against sickness) and wangol e-z brew (for calming nerves). Gingerly she sprinkled some of both into the bowl.
Zelda was a good mother. It was her responsibility, she knew, to reform her son, to undo all the harm that Klaus had done. But so far she was getting nowhere. Talking was use-less. He never listened to her. So she had resorted to herbal cures and wangol fortifiers. Yet even these hadn't helped. Sumner was as close-minded and reclusive as ever.