Brain Plague

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 Light,' 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?'