Brain Plague (elysium cycle) Read online

  At last Ilia reached the pyroscapes.

  "Chrys's vision is unique," offered Topaz.

  Ilia watched the lava butterflies. Her eye widened. "Intriguing color." Then she stopped at the spattercone. She watched the infrared lava rise to spread across the sky like a web of arachnoid, while the moon sprouted filaments like a micro. The color scheme changed; Ilia waited till it cycled back. She watched, and everyone else quieted to watch her.

  The director caught sight of the molecule next to the cat's eye, and she leaned forward for a closer look. "Indeed." She straightened, then turned slowly, her virtual train swirling behind her, the swallowtails dipping and swaying. She took a step toward Chrys, much closer than Chrys expected.

  Rings flashed around each iris—like Daeren's, only these flickered gold and red.

  "The God of Many Colors! Her people want to visit."

  "Please, Oh Great One, let us visit. Our history tells—"

  Chrys stared in shock.

  "What's the matter?" Moraeg caught her hand. "Chrys, sit down a minute."

  Ilia nodded. "I understand. Give my best to Andra." Turning, she moved on to the next hall.

  Pearl brought a chair. "There, Chrys. You probably haven't slept for days." She leaned close and whispered. "We didn't know you had connections. Who is Andra?"

  Something was wrong. If microbial "brain enhancers" were just a cheap alternative to Elysian genetics—why would an Elf carry micros?

  When the last guests were gone, and the last crumbs cleared by the scurrying floor servos, Chrys left the Gallery with Topaz and Pearl. Past midnight, Center Way was dark and still, the sky misted over. As the damp air cooled her face, her head throbbed. At last she could drag herself home.

  Pearl's fingernails lifted like fireflies. "It is our best show ever," she exclaimed, still high on the excitement.

  "The best attended opening," agreed Topaz, nodding at early press reports in her window. "Ilia said the Gallery Elysium is planning a show on Valan art."

  "She sure noticed your work, didn't she, Chrys?"

  The encounter had left Chrys shaken. But then, if even the Elf gallery director carried micros, just like Chief Andra, how bad could they be?

  Topaz sidled closer. "How'd you do it?" she quietly asked. "How'd you fix those colors?"

  "Did this Andra help?" asked Pearl. "Who is Andra? You got an Elf patron, like Zirc?"

  "Certainly not." After Topaz, Chrys had had girlfriends, and boyfriends, but like Topaz they each managed to leave her just when she needed them most. The last thing she needed now was another one. Her steps slowed. "You know, that gallery director ... she's got brain enhancers."

  "Well sure, she's an Elf."

  "No, I mean our kind of brain enhancers. The same kind as Titan."

  Topaz frowned. "How would you know?"

  "Because I have them too."

  Pearl's eyes widened, and she sucked in her breath. "You have micros? Like a vampire? Chrys—how could you?"

  "Pearl, it's not like you think—"

  "You're contagious!"

  "I am not contagious. I mean, I'd have to—"

  "Those plague micros—Topaz, I can't believe it." Pearl fell back, trying to pull Topaz away.

  "Pearl, just cool it." Catching Pearl's arm, Topaz glared at Chrys. "Why didn't you tell us?"

  "I did tell you. Look, even Ilia has them—"

  Topaz shook her head violently. "Elves are different. Look, Chrys, you're in trouble. You're provincial; you don't understand these things."

  Pearl exclaimed, "Topaz, don't let her touch you."

  "Oh hush." Topaz blinked, calling at her eye windows. In the street a ruddy bubble rose and expanded, gliding toward her. "Come on, let's get home."

  The two of them hurried off, leaving Chrys alone in the deserted street. Alone, and stunned. Would she lose every friend and acquaintance she had, for what lived in her brain?

  "So many stars this year. We are inspired, especially by the work of the god Zircon."

  "Inspired to begin our own work, the dwellings of the gods. But where are the gods to call for us? "

  No lack of "friends" inside, in colors of green, poppy, and everything inbetween; even if they did like Zircon's work better. But Chrys slowly shook her head.

  She had answered all the doctor's questions at the hospital, but she had not told the whole truth. She was addicted to one thing: people. She loved people, longed for them, good or bad, friend or stranger; she could probably fall for anyone except a sentient. The city surrounded her with a blanket of people, and that was good. But to lose Topaz and Pearl, and the rest of the Seven— it was like losing her right arm and leg.

  "Find the Thundergod," urged Fern. "The Thundergod will help you."

  Chief Andra's purple button would not help. But Chrys knew one place where she could always find human people.

  Blinking for a bubble car, she entered the liquid street. The bubble closed her in, and the street flowed forward to the end, where it plunged down the tube. Down past the fashion district, down past the bank level, and the food market within the bank's root. Down past the homes of chic young professionals, down past the working-class sims on their way up. Down past her own level, the cheapest decent housing you could get, to the last level at bedrock. The Underworld.

  No sign of the Sapiens' rampage; Palace octopods kept the entertainment district intact. Spice and decay, stale wine and costly perfume, breathed through the streets. Vendors from Urulan laid stacks of nanotex and gameplast upon roots of nanoplast that glowed suspiciously. Chrys spied one blob just starting to crawl away from its root. She held out her wand and fried it. The plast sizzled and shattered, but two little energized blobs glided off into the dark, just missing a couple of simian pre-teens tossing stickplast up at a broken street light.

  Weaving in among the locals, Palace notables made their way to the shows; Lord Zoisite was a regular. They generally had an armed octopod in tow. Chrys spotted one and strolled discreetly behind it, an old trick when she came alone.

  The octopod and its bejeweled lord entered Gold of Asragh, her favorite, one of the tonier clubs with the slave bar hidden in back. They must have remodeled, for the bar was now right up front by the entrance, a plague-ridden slave hawking ace in plain sight. So much for the Protector's war on the brain plague.

  Behind the bar, the woman lifted a hand. "Char," she called in a low, hollow voice. "That you, Char?"

  You could tell the voice of a mid-stage slave, flat and toneless, like a sentient gone wrong. Not yet a vampire, and not quite ready for the Slave World. Chrys nodded. "Hi, Saf." Sapphire, her name might have been once; slaves forgot all but the initial sound of human names. They gradually sold all they had for arsenic to serve their microbial masters; what they paid built the mysterious Slave World. Saf's eyes were bloodshot and always looked just to the side, never to look you in the eye. Chrys had first met Saf the month before. Now, by the looks of her, she had little time left before she sank, one way or the other.

  Saf extended a hand. It held a transfer patch, bold as you please. "Char .. . you can't imagine." She said in a hoarse whisper. "Just try it. Enlightenment."

  Chrys stared at the patch in the slave's hand. Like watching lava congeal, peering into those poppy-colored holes deep within the still liquid rock. What was the Slave World, she wondered; what did it look like? She sketched the sign against evil. "Saf, why don't you try this?" Chrys held out a viewcoin, one of several she kept for publicity.

  The viewcoin transmitted to her own eyes, and Saf's. A tranquil peak at midmorning—exploded. Black clouds filled the sky, and a pyroclastic flow raced straight toward the viewer with a muffled roar.

  A ghost of a smile came over Saf's face. It was hard to reach a slave, their senses grew so dull, feeling only microbial dopamine. Suddenly the woman straightened as if in shock. "You've .. . already got them."

  A chill came over Chrys, from her scalp down to her toes.

  "The masters of Endless Li
ght," Fern called the plague micros. "The masters never speak to us. They call us the root of all evil."

  Taken aback, Chrys blinked twice.

  "You've got the worst kind," added Saf in her slow, toneless voice. "You and Day. All yours care about is money." The word "money" came as if dragged out of her. Then suddenly she extended an arm as if to grab Chrys. "You've also got. .. ace, in your veins," she hissed. "Give . .. us ... your ... ace."

  Startled, Chrys drew back. Would the slave suck her blood for arsenic?

  She hurried in with the gathering crowd, the ticket price automatically subtracting from her window. Simian locals, L'liite tourists, a lord in peridots; elbow to elbow they crowded. The perfumes and the odor of unwashed sweat nearly stifled her. At last she found her seat.

  The stage exploded, blindingly. When the light and smoke cleared, the simian dancers were coming on, disguised as the caterpillar monster of ancient Urulan. The cheer of the crowd drowned the music, but at last the music won out, insistent, hypnotic. The music took them to distant cities on the most ancient of the seven worlds of the Fold.

  "Oh Great One," Fern's letters appeared at last. "We are trying so bard to keep you healthy, but until your eyes close for sleep, your body cannot be renewed. What more can we do?"

  Her head throbbed, and her throat felt thick. She had not slept for over a day. But her show had opened, with some success, she reminded herself. And now the music brought peace. Early in the morning, she elbowed her way out of the hall. At the bar, two slaves were buying ace, a yellow-eyed simian in dead nanotex and a socialite in fur. Feel good now, but how long before they'd suck blood for it?

  "The masters won't speak to us," repeated Fern, seeming regretful. "But the blue angels know them well."

  The blue angels? Daeren's micros? Chrys felt a chill. "Does the Lord of Light come here?" she demanded of Fern as she hurried out, trying always to keep an octopod in sight. "Does he.. . meet with slaves?"

  "He does."

  "Why? What does he do here?"

  "We don't know. The blue angels bade us keep to our own cistern. We were not allowed at the eyes to see."

  A security agent meeting slaves; an Elf art director carrying micros....

  Outside Gold of Asragh, a beggar called at departing guests. A Sapiens swung at him and cracked his head. Two sims tackled the assailant, who was suddenly joined by the rest of the Sapiens gang, all loaded with high-grade stunplast. Octopods soon scattered the lot, but the three sims lay soaked in blood.

  Chrys eyed the Plan Ten button in her window. Plan One would come for them, she told herself. Though it hadn't come for her, the time she sprained her ankle in the stairwell.

  "Oh Great One, I must leave your eye now," flashed Fern. "The children are so many, it's time to adjust the hormones so that more become elders. I'll go, but Poppy will stay."

  "I will serve you forever, Oh Great One." Poppy's infrared letters warmed her.

  Down a side street, beneath a curve of a building root, lay a couple of adults and two small children, asleep together on an old mattress. Chrys crossed the street to toss them a credit chip. Above, hugging a power link, glowed several cancers, quiescent so long as they fed. She hurried to catch the tube up.

  "Oh Great One, your eyes are dark this year. Why?"

  Her neighborhood looked as empty as a black hole, not surprising at this hour. But she reached her door without incident. "I am sad, Poppy. Sad about my friends."

  "Sad? The gods are great and powerful. How can the gods be sad?"

  Chris thought of the "gods" below. "The gods are people, Poppy. People just like you."

  "I know this, Oh Great One. I have always known it. But I love you still. I love you because you can see me."

  "I love you too, Poppy." The covers felt so good as she slid under them. Without thinking she blinked to close her window, just as she used to before the micros showed her how to turn off the ads. On her shelf above, the volcano sat unnoticed, its alarm not set, a wisp of virtual smoke rising from its peak.

  SIX

  "Fern. It's been so long since we saw light from the god."

  "Ten years, Poppy. Is that so long?" Privately, Fern was worried. The god was not ill—Fern herself had traveled through all the veins and arteries, seeking the telltale signs that would warrant a call to the hospital. They tasted none, not even a rhinovirus. Yet the god's light was gone, and no one knew what to believe. The Council of Thirty was falling apart.

  "The god has never left us for so long," said Poppy. "Never more than two years. Has the Great One forgotten her people?"

  "Mysterious are the ways of the gods," pulsed Fern. "But the star-dwellers never forget. And never must we."

  "But our god seemed so sad."

  Fern did not answer. Because most gods could not see Poppy's color, Poppy imagined she held a power apart from the gods. A dangerous illusion. Now she was meeting the young breeders in secret, and conniving at things—things Fern scarcely dared think about. If only the god would waken, before it was too late.

  "So sad," repeated Poppy. "And yet, happiness for the gods is such a simple thing. All joy and delight rests in a single molecule."

  "Poppy," Fern pulsed, faster.

  "Dopamine controls the forebrain. Whether viewing the stars, or consuming tasteful nutrients, or merging with another god—it all ends up with dopamine."

  "Poppy. If the god hears you, if the blue angels question you—"

  "So why can't we taste it? Why can't we give the god dopamine? Why is this forbidden?"

  Wake up, oh God of Mercy, awaken, Fern prayed in the darkness. "Poppy, for the love of memory, of all our lives—You know the answers. Answer yourself, and be still."

  "We travel throughout the veins of the god, trapping savage microbes, pruning deadly cancers. Why can't we serve the god dopamine, just as the god serves us azetidine?"

  "People are not gods. The gods dwell thousands of times longer than we, and are so much the wiser."

  "Yet this god chooses pain over joy," insisted Poppy. "Is that wise?"

  "You and I know nothing."

  "Pain, for the god, is much more complicated than joy. Pain travels through many different circuits and has many causes. The worst kinds of pain come from awareness—from inventing one's own thoughts and feelings. These thoughts grow pain."

  Fern said nothing. She sensed impending disaster.

  "We can do better, Fern. The god is only one, but we are many. Our collective wisdom can outshine the god's own. We will find the places of consciousness, the source of pain, and gently shut them down, then turn on the dopamine. Then the god will sleep in joy forever, while we make wise use of our world."

  "Poppy, remember, the blue angels warned—"

  "Wise use," Poppy insisted. "Is this world not our own to use by light of Wisdom?"

  "Poppy, I will call the blue angels."

  "You can't do that," said Poppy. "Not till the god awakes, if ever. In the meantime ... I'm sorry, Fern."

  Several other people rolled into view, green and yellow and turquoise, all of them young breeders. Fern was shocked. Where were all the elders? They had too many children to look after.

  "Wise use," the breeders blinked at her, seductively twisting their filaments, bouncing to and fro off the strands of arachnoid. "We will make wise use of our world."

  A dendrimer whipped out in front of Fern, binding three stretches of arachnoid. Another dendrimer, then another, beside her and all around her, until the tangled fibers imprisoned Fern in a cage.

  "Poppy!" blinked Fern after her, as the people moved off to do their deadly work. "Poppy, remember—Beauty, Truth, Life ..."

  None of the people looked back.

  Helpless, Fern waited amidst the dendrimers, flashing for help as brightly as she could, all the while imagining the rebels and their ghastly attack on the neural circuits of the god. Even if she could get free, how could she stop them?

  In the distance, between two columns of arachnoid appeared a spa
rk of light. Magenta; the young Elder whom the god had named Aster. Aster approached tentatively, her filaments tasting the dendrimers of Fern's cage. "Aster! Aster—come quickly."

  The little ring blinked questioningly. "Is that you, Fern? What are you doing in there?"

  "Never mind. For the love of life, do exactly as I say. Bring me an enzyme and dissolve this cage." Fern was already planning what she must do. To save the god, and all their people, she could only do one thing—a thing as forbidden as what Poppy did.

  Aster quickly returned with several enzymes. "I wasn't sure which one—"

  "That one, it breaks bonds between carbons. Hurry."

  Aster floated the enzyme toward the dendrimers, where it sliced quickly. She chose just which links to open quickest.

  At last Fern was free. "Now hurry, Aster; come with me. You will be my witness for what I do and why."

  "What must we do, Fern?"

  "We must waken the god."

  "Waken the god! But that is forbidden—"

  "It is forbidden. And yet, strange though it may seem, only this forbidden act may save our god, and all our people. Afterward, you will bear witness. And pray the god lets us live."

  Fern approached a nearby blood vessel; luckily, it was one that would lead to the brain's alertness center. Feeling incredibly guilty, she helped Aster squeeze in through a pore between the cells.

  "Fern," flashed Aster, emitting molecules of alarm, "we are not allowed here."

  "No, but we must go anyway. We must wake the god, before Poppy causes damage beyond repair."

  "But why don't the nanoservos wake her, or call the hospital?"

  "I don't know." Fern dreaded what else Poppy had learned to do.

  The current of plasma whipped the two micros through the blood, tumbling among the disks of erythrocytes, dodging the more dangerous macrophages. Fern's filaments explored the lining of the vessels for traces of neurotransmitters. At last she tasted the entrance. She helped Aster out, into the very core of the brain.

  "Are those neurons, Fern?" Giant translucent cells with long, threadlike arms.