Brain Plague (elysium cycle) Read online

  Opal sighed. "Seeing her the first time, you could just faint."

  "What an ancient monument," Jonquil said of the year-old building. "I'm amazed it's not yet in ruins."

  "Fern?" Chrys was anxious to reach someone with a better attitude.

  "Fern feels unwell," replied Aster. "She asks leave to rest."

  Chrys stopped. Fern was sick? "7s there no 'Plan Ten' for micros?"

  A moment's hesitation. "I will visit the Deathlord to share our model with the minions."

  Chrys passed the patch to Selenite. Still uneasy, she followed Opal toward the main entrance. The entrance was a hexagonal plate of light, shimmering in every color known, Chrys suspected, even colors beyond what she could see.

  Selenite's black curls fluttered in the breeze. "What do you think?"

  "The flow of space, soaring ever upward; it's extraordinary." Chrys could scarcely imagine living and working here every day. "The windows are magnificent."

  "Everyone says that. But just two levels below, where the roots house a nano fabrication plant, the panes are all cracked, due to a complex set of vertical and lateral stresses. The stresses extend upward, though not yet visible." Selenite blinked to send Chrys a stress map.

  In her window, virtual red lines crisscrossed the surface of the Comb, clustering like broken veins. Along the tier nearest street level, the lines clustered so thick they obscured the panes. Chrys felt her scalp crawl. "Why? What caused this?"

  "Your Eleutherians blame the client. They say the Institute took on new tenants too fast; it wasn't meant to double in size in six months." Her tone chilled, as if the claim displeased her.

  "There was no design error," insisted Aster. "The occupancy of this edifice increased at a rate far greater than our ancestors projected."

  "Titan knew damn well," muttered Selenite. "He knew how fast the Institute needed to grow. Why else would they want a dynamic building?"

  Chrys spread her hands. "So what am I to do?"

  "First, your people need to collect raw data, direct from the Comb."

  Opal waved them over to the entrance. "Let Chrys tour the interior, dear. Remember, the interior has to grow, too."

  The entrance was a shimmering curtain. Chrys paused and took a breath.

  "Welcome, Eleutherians." The voice reverberated out of the halls of the sentient building. "I am pleased indeed that you return to tend my growth and fine-tune my perfection."

  This sentient was a real queen bee, even worse than Eleutheria. Chrys followed Opal through the virtual curtain. In the hallway passed a human and a sentient, engrossed in conversation. The hexagonal corridor extended in the distance with a slight curve. All along the lower walls projected model designs: nanos to regenerate liver and lungs, and live drug factories; seeds to sprout bubble cars, interstellar ships, even entire planetary satellites. The sight of it all made her blood race.

  Something tripped her toe. Chrys stumbled and caught herself, cursing her lack of exercise; she had to retune the coordination of her new muscles. In the brilliance of the floor, she saw a gap. The gap widened and made an angle toward the wall, where it closed, dissolving into the uprising part of the hexagon where a model spaceship hovered above a distant world.

  "Just a crack in the floor," said Opal.

  "Excessive lateral expansion," explained Selenite, "due to torsional stress."

  In the wall shimmered a curtain of light. Opal nodded. "This way to my office." As she passed through, a stairway step molded to her feet, taking her up a half level to another hexagonal corridor. Avoiding more cracks in the floor, Chrys tried to puzzle out how the corridors and levels related. How the devil did people find their own offices?

  The fixtures and trim fit seamlessly with the aesthetic theme. Recessed lighting grew out of hexagonal cells, and even the water fountains looked as if you might sip at honey. On the floor near the wall stood a hemispherical bowl of reflective material, half-filled with an unknown liquid. Farther down the hexagonal corridor stood a similar silver bowl, containing a smaller amount of liquid with what looked like bits of debris floating in it. "What are those?"

  Opal pointed overhead, where the ceiling appeared discolored. "The coolant fluid leaks."

  Selenite explained, "More excessive lateral expansion." No doubt due to torsional stress.

  Chrys shook her head. "Like, I hate to say it, but this place could use some work."

  "Of course," boomed the Comb's ubiquitous voice, "my thirty-six maintenance engineers work full-time to keep me in shape."

  Opal whispered, "They keep the place barely functioning."

  "One must have patience with a totally innovative design," insisted the Comb.

  Selenite raised her hands. "Okay, we know all the problems. Chrys is here to address one of them. My people have analyzed Eleutheria's latest fenestration plan, and we're ready to pass it on to you."

  A light blinked in the slanting wall. "Right here."

  "Come closer and stare at the spot," Selenite told Chrys. "The micros will beam their data from your cornea. Try not to blink."

  Chrys stared until the spot of wall swam before her eyes.

  "It's a good start," observed the Comb at last, "but I don't like being inoculated at the end of my roots." Like a kid, thought Chrys—don't stick me with a needle.

  Selenite said, "It's the only way to assure complete correction of future fenestration. We promise we'll be careful." The conversation went on for some time, its technicalities beyond Chrys, until the Comb beamed a revised model back to Chrys for review.

  Opal led the way out. "At least it sends business your way," she told Selenite as they walked down toward the waiting lightcraft.

  Selenite nodded. "Every client wants the biggest damned ego they can find to build the fanciest tower. Afterward, they call on me to make it habitable."

  "Not habitable," Opal corrected. "Respectable, from the outside. You weren't hired to fix the interior." Before her the door of the lightcraft popped open.

  "But this one had even me beat," said Selenite. "Titan was exceptionally secretive about his plans. He provided a set, of course, but they lacked key elements of source code. The spiral fenestration—god forbid anyone might copy that, ever." Selenite looked at Chrys. "If it weren't for you, I don't know what I would have done. I nearly returned my fee."

  Selenite must have been paid ten times what she passed on to Chrys, and Talion yet another ten-fold more. How many millions were wasted on supposed habitations that belonged in an art museum, while half the Underworld slept on the street?

  A thunderous crash, as if Merope had knocked a thousand crystal bowls off the table. Instinctively Chrys covered her ears and crouched low, but a sharp pain stabbed her back. She cried out. In her window, the Plan Ten light came on.

  From behind came more crashing and shattering. Chrys felt blood seeping beneath her nanotex. "Don't move," Opal warned. "Something caught in your side. Help will come soon."

  Slowly Chrys turned to look. From the face of the Comb, a pair of adjacent windows had fallen, leaving two gaping black eyes. Below on the walkway, where the three carriers had just passed, all thirty-six maintenance engineers were swarming to clean up the jagged shards. The shards had spread across the lawn, each glinting with a spark of the setting sun.

  "The damn stuff's not supposed to shatter," exclaimed Selenite. "The stress must have wreaked its program and stiffened the panes. Every one of those panes could be ready to shatter."

  A worm-faced medic hurried up the path. Not quite a doctor, it had only three grasping limbs. "Plan Ten here," the sentient called. "We'll have you clean in no time." His arm, or hers, Chrys could never tell, made disgusting sucking noises as it cleaned the blood and shrapnel out of Chrys's flesh. Then the other two arms sucked all over Opal and Selenite, just in case.

  Chrys cleared her throat. "Do dynatects ever offer, like, a service contract?"

  Opal laughed and caught Chrys's arm. "Service contract! There's a new one."

  "
I don't know," said Selenite. "Would you offer a service contract for your paintings?"

  "My paintings are all virtual. I keep the code and give a lifetime replacement guarantee."

  Selenite eyed Chrys speculatively. "There's an idea. I'll talk to the Board of Directors."

  Opal eyed Chrys watchfully. "Would the Eleutherians do it?" The carriers all seemed to doubt her control of Eleutheria.

  "Where is Fern?" demanded Chrys.

  "1 am here," flashed Aster.

  "And I am here," flashed Jonquil.

  Chrys's eyes flew across the letters. "Let's offer a service contract for the Comb."

  Jonquil flashed quickly, "Service is for maintenance engineers. We build new."

  "Service is a new idea," returned Chrys. "Never before tried in all the universe."

  "We pursue aesthetic design," said Aster. "We're not trained for maintenance."

  "Is it too hard to learn?"

  No response. How could she manage a million people she couldn't see?

  "Where is Fern? I need her."

  "I am here, Oh Great One." At last the green letters, more slowly than usual. "I have been with you always. But I will not be here much longer."

  Not much longer—what did that mean?

  "I offered you Jonquil, lest my time end before you left the Comb. Now 1 remain, but soon I will pass on to the world beyond time."

  Chrys felt a chill. "I will call Plan Ten." The medic was just leaving.

  "Plan Ten is not for people. Only the gods are immortal. But I leave a gift for you, and for the people of Eleutheria. The Laws of Righteousness, for all to follow, numbering six hundred and thirteen."

  "Don't tire yourself reciting them," Chrys quickly rejoined.

  "As my last act in this world of flesh, I call on Eleutheria to

  heed the words of the God of Mercy, to hold and cherish our past

  creations. To the Seven Lights, let us add an Eighth: the Light of

  Mercy. As we would receive mercy, so must we grant it in

  turn"

  Someone was touching her arm. "Chrys?" It was Opal. "Are you all right?"

  Opal would fuss and take care of her. But Chrys was determined to handle this herself. "I'll be all right," she said firmly. "I just need to get home." How would she survive without Fern?

  EIGHT

  Aster wondered, how could she ever manage without Fern? The green one had persuaded the Lord of Light to let them go, then the God of Mercy to let them live. For generations Fern had raised the children and guided the elders. Now she suffered the final agonies of impending death, barely able to flash a word.

  Aster was left with jonquil to guide the Council of Thirty, and all the fractious young elders. Three of the blue Watchers remained alive, but they merely watched and bade her remember Fern's laws. To be sure, Fern had left the six hundred laws to live by, but how to put them in practice? For example, "When you harvest nutrients from the bloodstream, leave some behind to be gleaned by the poor." Did this really mean the farmers should be inefficient? Or would it be better to put the poor to work in public service, as the Council of Thirty had voted?

  "How can there be poor Eleutherians?" wondered Jonquil. "We are a wealthy people, and there's so much work to do."

  Aster wondered the same. But she tasted the poor ones, floating through the cerebrospinal fluid, their filaments bent and chemically deformed from lack of vitamins. How could this be? In the old days, everyone shared alike; but now, as their world neared a million strong, some, like Jonquil, grew rich enough to spend all their palladium in the nightclubs, whereas others floated by with nothing.

  "There are mutants," Aster reminded jonquil. Microbial cells mutated much faster than the gods. Mutant children with deficient brains could do nothing but float by, absorbing food like ordinary germs.

  "Too many mutants," agreed jonquil. "We need to refine our eugenics. Don't let the mutants breed."

  "But a few mutants have the most valuable traits." Aster felt overwhelmed. A scholar, she had schooled herself to design for the gods, not to rule a crowd of unruly people. Yet Fern and the Council of Thirty had chosen her to carry on.

  "It takes so much time to pick the good mutants," said Jonquil. "And then, this fixing the Comb is taking all our time for creative work. It's unbelievably tedious, worse than starting from seed."

  The Eleutherians had refined their model of the growth of the Comb, with help from some new math prodigies recruited from the wizards of Wisdom. The new model revealed a structural fault reaching down to the very roots. The entire Comb, as she grew, was about to split into three more or less equal portions, like a merged pair making children. The correction would take a million times more calculation than planned. What had seemed a quick fix was turning into a nightmare.

  "Why did the Great One make us do this?" demanded Jonquil.

  "To make us design better in the future," said Aster. "That's what Fern thought."

  "The Comb will look fine, dividing in three; I like it. As for the Deathlord's minions—their regime is so repressive. Why did the Great One make us work with them?"

  "They're a democracy," Aster insisted, not sure she believed it. The minions barely thought for themselves; the slightest error, the slightest hue too red or too orange, was enough to get them expelled into oblivion. No mutant survived the Deathlord. "They just lack the nerve to face their god. We have to get along with all the gods, and their diverse peoples."

  "But why can't we influence our own god? "Why can't we touch the Center? Just a trace of dopamine, now and then. I know, it's a new idea—"

  Aster was aghast. "Have you lost your mind? It's not a new idea—it's the oldest idea in the blood. Remember Poppy, and our dead children." Fern had been so good, she was blind to the moral failing of others. Blind for Poppy, she had been blind again to promote Jonquil.

  Back at her new home on Rainbow Row, Chrys dragged herself up the stairs past the staring caryatids. "Aster? Is Fern still there?"

  "Fern is here. She can no longer speak, but she still knows you."

  "Is there anything I can do to help her feel better?"

  "We've done what we can. We have all her six hundred laws stored in memory. We will remember."

  Chrys felt helpless. How could these people respect a god who could do so little? After all Fern had done for her. Listlessly she looked around the painting stage. The lights of her palette hung suspended along the side, like colored lights for the midsummer festival of the Brethren. Like ...

  The stars. Someday a god will place us in the stars. She stood for a moment, transfixed by her idea.

  "Aster, I will make her portrait. I will place her in the stars."

  "A place in the stars! Oh Great One, that will please her beyond imagining."

  Chrys pulled a line between white and forest green, then hurriedly picked several related greens. "What does Fern look like? Can you show me?"

  "Here is how she looked before, when she could speak."

  In her eyes appeared the little green ring, its filaments twinkling in all directions. Chrys sketched swiftly, with broad bold strokes of color, hoping Fern could at least see some of it before she died. "Aster, is she still there?"

  "Just barely. She can still see. All of us can see and marvel at this miracle."

  Perhaps she could animate it. "Show me her flashing. Show her telling about the Eighth Light."

  The filaments darkened and brightened, telling of the Eighth Light of Mercy. At last Chrys loaded the sketch into a viewcoin, then she raced upstairs to the roof.

  Before her all around spread the urban panorama, the ceiling of stars above, universal and human-made, the even brighter carpet below, altogether a veritable feast of lights. Chrys blinked at her window and up came the lights of Fern. A new constellation joined the heavens.

  "A miracle," flashed Aster. "A miracle never known before among all the people. People amid the stars—this event marks a new dawn of history."

  Microbial history. Chr
ys sighed. "Xenon?" she called. "Could I have a chaise or something? I'll spend the night out here."

  "Certainly, Chrysoberyl. If you like, an entire seraglio setting for your pleasure—"

  "One chair will do." She lay back and watched the green star of mercy, looming large above the others in her eyes. "And wake me every two hours."

  In the morning Chrys awoke, tired but at peace. She had gotten her people through the death of their leader and put them to work renovating the Comb. She was back in control and could return to her pyroscape. With the vast virtual canvas, it took her longer than usual to block in the dark masses of rock and shadow. No color yet, but the dark parts were crucial. You could only raise brilliant color against abyssal dark.

  "God of Mercy, I call on you."

  "Yes, Jonquil." Aster must be out again, at one of her Council meetings. She was always harried now, like poor Fern used to be.

  Fern ... Chrys kept Fern's sketch hovering with her color studies at the upper right corner of her studio, the green twinkling filaments forever cycling Fern's message of the Eighth Light.

  "May I ask a question, for information?"

  "Of course, Jonquil." Chrys plucked some dark to deepen a canyon in the foreground, before the distant volcano.

  "Even though it might offend the gods?"

  "I'm not offended."

  "Can you explain why it's forbidden to touch the Center? You are the greatest god that ever lived; why can we not reward you in full?"

  Chrys's arm fell, and a streak of charcoal gray marred the foreground. What could the yellow one be thinking? Was history to repeat itself every generation? "Look what happened to Poppy."

  "True, but it's been three generations since. Who knows? There's always new technology." Jonquil sought a rational response to a rational question. Why was it so hard to answer?

  Chrys thought carefully. "Reward is power. People lack the wisdom for such power. Control the gods, and you destroy yourselves. "

  "Thank you, Oh Great One; that helps. You are truly the greatest of gods."

  This was a hint for AZ, and Chrys promptly placed a wafer on her tongue. "Remember Fern," she added, and darkened the studio until only the sketch was lit. For a moment she watched the green star reciting; it always calmed them.