Brain Plague (elysium cycle) Read online

  "Only two have been called to be priests," he explained. "You may call others, as you wish."

  She shook her head. "Two are enough."

  "Greetings, God of Mercy." These letters were blue.

  Chris blinked twice. "Who are you?"

  "We are called the blue angels," the visitor said. "Your new people are growing well, though they need to curb their lifestyle. They are rather frivolous, I'm afraid, but they'll mature." Maybe this one was a bishop.

  Behind the doctor, the wall puckered in. It seemed to change its mind, then went ahead and opened. As its edges gathered back, there came a sound of scuffling, then a shout.

  In the corridor outside struggled a stranger, held between two black-limbed octopods. The man was tossing his head one way then the other, his eyes bright with terror. His nanotex hung loose, as if its power had run down. Extending from the wall, ropelike appendages caught the man's wrists and ankles. His arm was gripped by a woman in gray, a tall Sardish blonde.

  The woman in gray turned her piercing eyes toward the doctor. "Sar, the clinic's full. We need to extend." Her voice had a tone of finality, expecting obedience.

  "Excuse me." The doctor glided out to join them.

  Chrys stared until the door resealed.

  Daeren still watched where the door had closed in, his expression grim. "A slave, he turned himself in. His masters objected. Sorry, it's been a long night at the clinic."

  Master microbes. Chrys frowned. "That could happen to me."

  "Not if you stick to the rules, and get tested twice a month."

  "What? Like some addict?"

  "We all do, even the chief of security."

  She eyed him coldly. "You said these micros would keep me safe."

  "Safer than you were before."

  "But—" That vampire up on level one, the night before. More slaves every year, turning into vampires, or hauling captives to the Slave World for its microbial Enlightened Leader. "It's a cancer," she realized. "Like the building root cancers. It threatens all the city."

  "Not just the city. It's reached—" He stopped, hesitant.

  "How can it go on? Why can't the Palace just round up all the vampires?"

  Daeren shook his head. "The vampires are the least of it. The problem already reaches too far up."

  "Far up? What do you mean?"

  "Sar runs run a private clinic for the Great Houses."

  Smart cocaine. Chrys felt a chill down to her toes. Then she frowned and shook herself. "Well, I want no part of it one way or another. I just want to make art."

  "Of course you do," said Daeren. "Nobody says, 'I'll grow up to be a slave.'" He looked her closely in the eye, blue rings flashing. "Your people pass. You can have them back now, and return mine."

  "Nothing but insulting questions, interminable," complained Poppy.

  "Before you leave," Daeren added, "the chief has to certify."

  The wall parted smartly. A woman entered, the Sardish blonde who had brought in the plague victim. Her skin was exceptionally fair; Chrys could see every vein, like ivy on her arms and face. She carried herself stiff as a Palace guard. Her mouth was small, as if she would only release her words on good behavior. "I am Andradite of Sardis, Chief of Security."

  "Our ancient history tells of the god among gods," said Fern. "The Thundergod."

  Nodding to Daeren, Andradite put a transfer patch at her neck, then immediately pressed to his. He did the same for her, swiftly, as if it were something they had done many times. Chrys felt her scalp prickle.

  Then the chief's eyes faced Chrys. Her irises flashed bluish violet, a shade deeper than Daeren's.

  "The judges," announced Poppy. "Throughout history, they brought trouble."

  "We have nothing to hide," insisted Fern.

  Chrys tried to look unconcerned.

  "You've done well, so far." Andradite offered her a patch.

  "Much better than some of us expected." The chief had expected her to fail, Chrys realized. Both agents were hiding something. Why?

  "Once you're home, you will hear from us," the chief told her. "You will join the community of controlled carriers—a highly exclusive group."

  Chrys doubted that. How exclusive could a group be, to take her?

  In her window, next to Plan Ten, appeared another call button, with no label, just the color purple that the chief's eyes flashed. "If you're ever in trouble," the chief told her, "the kind of trouble even Plan Ten can't help, call us. Forget your own name, but remember that."

  FOUR

  Fern tumbled through the city of the great Cisterna Magna, tasting its intricate molecules. Throughout the Cisterna, libraries of triplex DNA stored all the learning of Eleutheria. Nightclubs flashed with light-producing enzymes, singing colored music. Through the singing halls tumbled children ripe for breeding, their filaments tasting each other, hungering for just the right mate to merge.

  "Fern?" Poppy's light flashed through the optic fibers. "We need help. A merged pair is having trouble giving birth."

  Fern's spiral tails whirled and sent her spinning down the hall. Between two columns of fibroblast, a nest of dendrimers formed the breeding chamber. Inside, two breeders had come together. Their filaments had dissolved, allowing their surface membranes to merge. As the pair merged, their DNA triplexes came together to exchange genes. Once the two triplex chromosomes recombined, the membranes would pucker and pinch in, and the new children would come apart—as three. The three newborn children would each have duplex DNA, until they each grew a third strand in order to breed again.

  But this time, something had gone wrong. "The offspring can't come apart," flashed Poppy. The edges of the three rings puckered in all around, as the membranes sought to pinch through, but still they remained attached.

  "Get the enzymes," Fern told her. "Enzymes to cut the membrane, slowly." Carefully her filaments applied the enzymes to the grooves between the three half-separated children. Poppy did the same around the other side; it was vital to cut evenly, lest a child tear open. The grooves deepened. At last the three rings fell apart, three different lights flashing their cries: yellow, yellow-green, and green-blue. Three children, where there had been two.

  "There are so many children now," Fern told Poppy, her filaments tasting the children to calm them. "Ten times more than I've ever known."

  "They'll turn into elders soon enough," flashed Poppy.

  "The young elders are as careless as the children. And few of the children are becoming elders. Most just keep merging and dividing."

  "How else can our people grow?"

  One lovely child, a ring of pink violet, seemed quieter than the rest. She had just grown her third strand of DNA, but she seemed in no hurry to join a mate. Instead, she spent all her time tasting the records of Eleutheria, studying the plans of the Comb. "I've figured out something," she flashed to Fern. "The windows of the dwelling the gods call the Comb. The legendary windows that gather starlight. I can show how they were grown."

  Fern was pleased, but kept herself from revealing how much. "You're a good student, Pink-violet. But you have less than a year to find a mate to merge." After a year, a god's hour, the breeder's mating structures would dissolve, and she would inevitably become an elder.

  The pink-violet one pulled in her filaments. "Merging is for gods and children. Not elders."

  "Are you sure of your choice?"

  "When I become an elder, Fern, will I earn a name from the god?"

  At home, Merope kept brushing around Chrys's legs till she tripped, and even Alcyone deigned to sniff her hand. Rarely had she been away from her studio so long.

  Above the painting stage hovered the virtual palette. Chrys dipped her fingers in cerulean blue and a touch of brown, then brushed her hands through the air, leaving a trail of indigo. She blocked in the spattercone of congealed rock, then the Elf moon, then added local colors: cool violet grays for the volcanic peaks, amber and gold for the opening spurt of lava; sky of deep cobalt, bearing the sev
en stars and their hunter.

  "Oh Great One, may we taste a sign of your favor?"

  She thought of something. "Poppy, I'll give you a sign if you can help me out."

  "Of course—anything, to serve our God of Mercy."

  The room darkened, and the new painting vanished. In its place appeared the lava fountain falling into butterflies.

  "A river of stars," said Poppy.

  "Poppy . . . how can I help other people to see it as I do?"

  "All the people can see it through your eyes. They're just busy right now."

  "I mean, the other... gods."

  A tiny replica of the volcano appeared in her eyes, hovering just before her. The replica looked washed out in black, crucial details missing, like an old oil color darkened with age. Chrys nodded. "That is how other gods see." That was why Pearl called her butterflies too dark.

  "Try this."

  The replica changed. Its details returned, in a subtly different spectrum. No more infrared lava, but the reds and golds had their own distinctive range. Not the palette she would have chosen, yet compelling in its own way. Her pulse raced—she could hardly wait to show Topaz.

  "Do we please you, Oh Great One?"

  She reached for an AZ and placed the wafer on her tongue.

  For the next hour, Poppy helped redo two other pieces. It was more than just a shifted wavelength; an aesthetic choice was made, a choice Chrys could not have made herself. The results were exciting; but were they hers alone?

  Slowly she smiled. From the public archive she downloaded an image of AZ, azetidine acid, the four-atom square with the forked tail. She set the molecule in the corner of each piece, next to her own cat's eye.

  If she worked fast, she could revise all her pieces in the gallery, and still get the moon piece done for the Elf gallery director and Zircon's Elf patron. But then, Elves could see the infrared. Which version should she show?

  With a blink at her window, she called Topaz. Topaz's sprite floated beside a towering portrait of a fur-cloaked client from one of the Great Houses. Her finger was shaping the last stroke of eyelash and a blush on the cheek. She turned to Chrys. "How's it going, Cat's Eye?"

  "Topaz, any chance I could have a dozen more spots at the show?"

  "Are you kidding? You're doing a dozen more pieces this week?"

  Chrys looked away. She should have known better.

  "The show's important, but don't kill yourself. I'm sure the Elves will love Lava Butterflies.'" Her voice had a trace of condescension.

  Chrys looked up. "I found out some things. Brain enhancers are actually self-aware. Like sentients."

  Topaz frowned. "Cat's Eye, everyone knows a nanoservo can't be self-aware. How could it pack a trillion neurons?"

  She wondered that herself. As the sprite dissolved, Chrys realized that Topaz still thought of her as the Dolomite sophomore who knew nothing. But this time, Topaz was wrong.

  Another sprite flashed into her window. Zircon looked out at her from the club; the late afternoon hour, it was full of mountainous biceps flexing. "Chrys, where have you been? The second workout you've missed."

  "Hey, I'm sorry." Actually, she felt as if she had ten workouts that morning. "Don't worry. Things are getting back to ... normal."

  On his chest, the large crystal gems swam out in spirals.

  "Stars, Oh Great One," flashed Poppy's letters beneath. "When will you show us the stars?"

  Startled, Chrys tried to keep her face straight. But Zircon gave her a puzzled look. "Chrys, if you're in trouble, let me know, okay?"

  She made herself smile. "I had to crack cancerplast the other night." Just the night before last—it felt like forever.

  Zircon shook his head. "You couldn't pay me to live on your level."

  "Nobody pays me to live elsewhere."

  He grinned infectiously, and lines appeared in his forehead. Not as young as he used to be, but always up for something new. "Hey, I could fix you up. I know Elves, men or women, who'd just die to have you."

  Chrys liked Zirc, and she could have fallen for him, once upon a time. "I've had enough of people. I'd sooner date a worm-face."

  "Mind-suckers!" Zircon shuddered. "Don't even say that. It's . .. perverted."

  That evening Chrys took a break and strolled up Center Way. The lightcraft flitting up and down, the glowing signs, the virtual decor of the Great Houses—through her eyes, the micros exclaimed at all the lights, which they called stars. For the micros, she realized, ten meters might as well be ten light-years. How could they distinguish city lights from those across the universe?

  "Wait," flashed Poppy. "Wait—/ see something most important. Something from our records; the oldest records of our people."

  Chrys blinked. Her eyes came to rest upon the Comb.

  "That's it! Fern, come quickly—call the others to see. ..."

  The Comb's hexagonal facets shone as always, in shifting tones of gold, red, even lava. Curious, Chrys asked, "What do your records say?"

  "They say that we made the Comb."

  Chrys was taken aback. "You made the Comb? How can that be?" The same strain as Titan's, Eleutheria. But had they come from Titan himself?

  "It is true," added Fern. "Our ancestors designed the seed that grew the Comb. We have all the plans. We made it for The Blind God."

  "The Blind God?" Chrys asked. "Not the Lord of Light?" She remembered what had puzzled her before: How could her own "people" be so different from Daeren's, if they came from his own head?

  "The Blind God was our world, before the great exodus, when the Lord of Light took us in."

  She stared, unseeing, her pulse racing. How could these micros have "made" the Comb, and still have the plans? Who was the Blind God? What had those doctors not told her?

  At the hospital again the next morning, Doctor Sartorius listened to the nanos reporting from Chrys's bloodstream. His worm-like arms extended to plug into the hospital wall. Chrys still couldn't help expecting flies. "No sign of inflammation," he said. "The nanos are doing their job."

  Chrys eyed him skeptically. "Nano-cells are 'intelligent,' but never as smart as people. How can micros be so smart? They're too small to have neurons."

  One of the worms flicked toward the holostage, extending like an antenna. "Micros are about the size of a white blood cell. Each cell packs an array of polymers, with ten trillion units." Above the stage glowed a cage of atoms, with links joining in all dimensions. "Units connect by a 'spiro gate' that can twist in two directions. One twist allows current to flow across the link, the other not." The model came alive with twisting connections, as if thoughts were flitting across them. "These polymers transmit information, as surely as human neurons, or sentient circuits."

  She regarded the sentient doctor curiously. "If micros that small can be 'people,' then why can't nano-cells be 'sentient,' like you?"

  The doctor's worms retracted and were still. The spiro-gated molecules gave way to legal documents, the kind Daeren liked to quote, scrolling down the holostage. "When machines first... claimed sentience, the Fold Council set a lower limit for size at ten cubic centimeters. Nothing smaller could be a 'person,' with 'personal rights.' "

  "What?" Chrys spread her hands. "How can you just decree what's a person and what's not?"

  Doctor Sartorius returned to the holostage. "If you have no further questions, the Plan Ten representative is here today, to inform you of your benefits."

  The Plan Ten rep was a human female, of model proportions, the kind all art students drew their first year. Her nanotex was modest gray, but it shifted subtly to highlight her perfect legs and ankles. Her curves were more than enough to remind Chrys how long it had been since she shared a bed, and to make her, just for a moment, rethink her resolution.

  "Chrysoberyl, I'm here to answer any questions you may have about the Comprehensive Deluxe Health Package Plan Ten." The woman's tone was professional, yet softly persuasive. "You may call us anytime, of course; from anywhere, on any world."


  "Even the Underworld?"

  The Plan rep smiled confidingly. "Our competitors, up through Plan Eight, provide instant coverage only for the more convenient parts of the city. But with Plan Ten, our emergency response time everywhere is under five minutes. You needn't give up any of your favorite night spots."

  "I see." Chrys patted her hair self-consciously, though it never would stay down.

  The Plan rep nodded to the holostage. "Now, according to our records," she observed, "you have yet to choose your age and appearance."

  "Excuse me?"

  Upon the stage appeared Chrys herself, life size. Like a mirror, only without the usual mirror reversal; at first her own face looked askew.

  "Plan Ten allows you to specify exact age, color, and so on. For most of our clients, age is the main concern. Have you thought about it?"

  Chrys blinked. "I've had other things on my mind."

  "Of course," the woman nodded understandingly. "Carriers always do. But think now." She turned to the holostage. "Our most discerning clients choose age eighteen to twenty."

  The virtual Chrys seemed to smooth out a bit, like one of Topaz's portraits. Chrys tensed and swallowed. She had not thought of herself as already having aged. But the Chrys in the holostage looked to her like a pre-teen. "I'm too small to look young," she observed, half to herself. "People still pat me on the head."

  "Stature can be increased." The Chrys on stage grew a couple of centimeters. "As for age, how old would you like to look? Distinguished? Venerable? Mother of Ages?"

  The virtual Chrys grew fine lines in her forehead, but still stood erect and authoritative. As the skin shrunk around her face and hands, she looked fierce, indomitable, an iron lady. At last she shriveled into a million wrinkles, her eyes still bright and clear. Like a saint who'd spent her life tending dying people in the street.

  "You can always change your selection," the Plan rep quietly observed.

  Chrys clenched and unclenched her hands, and swallowed again, hard. "To be real honest, I think I'd like to keep on looking exactly the age I am now."

  "Excellent—a very wise choice. Our wisest clients generally choose as you did," the Plan rep assured her. "Now, as to internal organs, of course, these can be optimized separately. Most clients simply take the age of optimal function—for the female, visual acuity peaks at age ten, muscle strength at age twenty, sexual response at age forty, and so forth. Is that fine with you?"