her work seen by someone who could see.
Topaz approached the door, arm in arm with Pearl. The door obligingly reopened, its nanoplast gathering outward to each side. Chrys and Zircon followed them out to Center Way, the fifteenth and uppermost level of the ancient skystreet. Swallowing her pride, she made up her mind to borrow her rent from Zircon.
A breeze from the sea swept her face as it keened across the towers of plast—nanoplast, the intelligent material that grew vast sentient buildings, as easily as it grew the nanotex bodysuits the artists wore. Plast formed the bubble cars that glided over the intelligent pavement like oil droplets on a griddle. A million trillion microscopic processors connecting and propelling. Bubbles and pavement glowed infrared, a flow of urban lava. One bubble popped, and a lord and lady emerged in formal talars of fur, the long folds swishing as they strolled past vendors of viewcoins, importuned by beggars until an octopod shooed them down level. From above descended a lightcraft beneath a cone of glowing plasma, powered by a microwave generator in orbit around Valedon. The lightcraft settled in the street and let out two Elves.
The Elves trailed trains of virtual butterflies, their light streaking over anyone who happened to pass behind. Their height barely reached Chrys's shoulder; Elves were bred short, preferring mental size over physique. The couple suddenly laughed in unison, as if sharing a joke through their electronic 'sixth sense.' Then they joined the Valan lords and ladies in their furs. Just remember, Chrys imagined telling the parentless Elves: You were not born, you were hatched.
'Oh, hell.' Pearl stopped and covered her eyes. 'My port came loose; it's floating around my eyeball.'
'What a nuisance,' agreed Topaz. 'Back to the clinic and wait two hours.' Topaz and Pearl had Comprehensive Health Care Plan Three. They could afford Plan Three, thanks to the sale of Topaz's portraits. Lady Moraeg, on Plan Ten, looked twenty years for her two hundred. Chrys got by on Plan One, which provided neuroports but did not service them.
The night air was clear enough to make out the stars of the seven sisters and their unrequited lover, placed there by the ancient gods. And the moon of Elysium, an ocean-covered world nearly the size of Valedon. The Elf world, a turquoise bauble amid the stars. Chrys's heart pounded—an idea for a new pyroscape, one the Elf director would like. She blinked at her window, her eyes darting back and forth to trace her idea. The eye movements signaled her neuroports, which recorded the sketch and beamed it off to her public memory space.
Below, her message light flashed again. What was the damn thing about? A twitch of her eyelid, and the title sailed before her:
What test? Hospitals never chased after Ones.
Then she remembered: the tests for the brain enhancers.
Like neuroports, 'brain enhancers' were an inexpensive alternative to the genetic engineering the Elves used to extend their minds. But brain enhancers were still experimental. To earn a few credits, Chrys had volunteered for the trial. But why would the hospital send test results at this hour? How could they be urgent?
A flash invaded her eyes. She winced. Before her hovered Valedon's High Protector. She had opened the remote window for her message, and a public service ad had slipped through. She blinked hard, trying to close, but was too late. The translucent sprite stood tall in his silver talar, bedecked with gems of every color and cut.
'Beware of the brain plague.' The Protector's voice blared from receivers in her teeth. 'The plague endangers not Valedon alone, but all the worlds of the Fold. And not only from deep space, where the slaves hijack our ships.' Raising his bejeweled arm, he shook his fist. 'The danger lurks in the very streets of Iridis. Beware the mind slaves, addicted to the micros in their brains. Beware their seductive promise, lest they hijack your own brain. If any friend or stranger ever asks you to carry their insidious micros—' The Protector pointed his finger. 'Just say no.'
'Like you hijack our eyeballs,' muttered Chrys. Let the Protector preach to the Underworld and clean out the vampires. It was useless to read her message; she would save it for home.
Pearl stretched and breathed the sea air. 'Zirc, I've got some new psychos.' Pearl supplemented her income selling patches of psychotropic plast.
Zircon turned, his nanotex swirling gold and crimson along his pectorals. 'What kind?'
'Chocolate, summer sun, pure lust. Take your pick.' Pearl held out a microneedle patch.
'I'll try all three.' He blinked to send her the credits.
Chrys rolled her eyes. 'Zirc, when did you last sleep?'
'I won't sleep again till after the show.' Each of them worked like mad to finish that last piece—Chrys had just got that idea for a new scene, the moon Elysium above the spattercone. As soon as she got home, she'd get to work.
Suddenly Zircon stopped and seized her arm. His eyes, bright with wine, stared to the end of Center Way. 'The Comb. Has she ever looked more splendid?'
At the far end of Center Way, the flow of bubbles dipped under, before the Comb. The most breathtaking, the most talked about edifice ever seen, the Comb, a sentient, self-aware building, had begun with a nanoplastic seed. A seed from a mind full of brain enhancers.
'Such mastery of space,' mused Zircon, 'the plastic flow of form from ground to sky. Great as a world, yet plain as an eggshell.'
The seed with its genetic program had grown a honeycomb of rooms and hallways, the facade of hexagons bordered with windows, long ribbons of windows that were the hallmark of its creator. The Comb housed the new Institute for Nano Design; from designer drugs to designer buildings, it embraced all the creative power of the very small. Her facade flickering red and infrared against the night sky, the Comb continued to grow as needed, developing new rooms and hallways at her base while pushing the older ones to dizzying heights.
Pearl warned, 'Not everyone likes the Comb.'
The brain-enhanced dynatect who built the Comb, Titan of Sardis, had been burnt down by a laser, right here on Center Way, just the week before. The laser had streaked Titan's eyes, searing through to the back of his skull. Gang crossfire, the news said, though gangs generally stayed below. All week, every newscast, the blackened specter of his body had haunted Chrys's eyes.
'To think that all Titan's genius ends with the Comb.' Still staring, Zircon shook his head. 'What I'd give to create like that.'
Chrys smiled slyly. 'What would you take?'
'Brain enhancers? I don't know.'
'Brain enhancers,' said Topaz thoughtfully. 'To compete with Elves.'
Pearl shook her head. 'Brain enhancers come from the mind slaves.'
'No,' said Chrys. 'Brain enhancers are cultured cells. They boost brainpower—like mental mitochondria.'
Zircon repeated, 'I don't know.' His eyes widened. 'What if they turned out smarter than me?'
'Smarter than you? Microscopic cells?' Chrys rolled her eyes. 'Saints and angels preserve us.' She turned for her transit stop.
Zircon patted her head. 'See you at the gym.' She'd get the rent from him then, Chrys thought, if nothing had sold by tomorrow.
Chrys stepped into the pulsing street, and a bubble slowed to pop open. As she stepped inside, the bubble swallowed her up, gliding forward until it plunged down the tube, to descend twenty levels below. As the bubble descended, Chrys reviewed the sketch in her eyes: a spattercone by night, with a full Elysian moon. The Elf gallery director would love it.
At last the tube opened, just one level above the Underworld. Chrys inhaled the scent of sewage and shorted-out plast. It was not the worst neighborhood, mainly decent immigrant 'simians,' with
From many levels above, the bank's nanoplastic roots reached down like a tooth. The roots slanted slightly into the street, then on down to the Underworld, where they sheltered squatters and mind slaves. On this level, between the roots nestled cruder housing units and storefronts, barely sentient, next to shacks of dead cellulose like dirt caught between unbrushed molars.
Then she froze. Just ahead shuffled a stranger. The stranger's breath rasped and the legs plodded heavily, swinging from side to side. That peculiar gait and labored breathing Chrys recognized from the Underworld. A vampire had wandered up to level one.
