Brain Plague

Out of the haze crawled Merope. Chrys gathered the furry bundle into her arms. Then she approached the collapsed darkness that had been her front door. A patch of white caught her gaze. Across the threshold, placed quite deliberately, lay the limp body of Alcyone. The cat's face was blackened in, straight through the eyes.

SEVEN

The blue Watchers floated near the Council of Thirty, missing nothing. For Fern, their presence was a relief, but a reproach. The death of Poppy and the rebel children seared her memory.

'You were warned,' blinked Delphinium, her blue light dim with age. 'People are not meant to outlive their god.' As they had once—and nearly had again. Gods hurting gods was not a thing for people to see.

'The God of Mercy let us live,' Fern insisted. 'And soon we'll be a million strong.'

'People are judged not by numbers.'

'Not by numbers. By truth and beauty.' Truth, beauty, and memory....

And now, they returned to the beauty and memory of their ancient monument to the gods—the Comb.

From the minions of the Deathlord, the Eleutherians received memory cells encoding all the development of the Comb, since the seed had first germinated. Within the cells, the plans were written on strands of DNA, crisscrossed with chains of atoms conducting electrons. The long chains carried their electrons to the membrane surface of the cell, where the current drove molecular pinwheels to rotate. Fern and Aster felt the arms of the rotating pinwheels, tasted the results, and compared their original plans.

'As I thought,' blinked Aster. 'A small deviation in the plan gets magnified as the building grows, straining the windows.'

'Are you certain?' asked Fern. 'The Comb was seeded before my time, but it is written that a million checks and tests were done.'

'Our ancestors tested the model out to the billionth iteration. But the Deathlord's minions tell us the Comb grew faster than the gods planned. Larger than they had asked of us.'

The gods themselves tasted hubris, Fern thought, but kept to herself. 'Nonetheless, we will restore what we made.'

'We'll model a correction,' said Aster. 'But to test the model, we must inspect the Comb and taste it directly.' Aster's light flashed with the sureness of the young. Her filaments brushed the wheels of the cell, feeding them protons to run further calculations.

Some of the young designers were less patient. 'Why must we return to this monument?' demanded a restless young elder, golden yellow. 'Why build for the gods, if they can't even maintain our creation? Restoration is not our job. Let the ancient work fall into ruin.'

'Memory,' reminded Fern. 'We build not for today, but for the memory of all time.'

'When will we build our new monument for the God of the Map of the Universe?'

'When we find that legendary god again.' The God of the Map of the Universe was nowhere to be found. None of his people had been seen, although the Cisterna Magna now filled with foreigners flashing new hues of green and orange, swimming past the columns of arachnoid. Visitors from other gods: the wizards of Wisdom and the minions of the Deathlord. Some came just to trade credits for good-tasting organic molecules, or for precious atoms of gold, iron, palladium, anything but arsenic, which belonged to the gods. Other visitors stayed on for a generation, to learn the ways of Eleutheria. And the very brightest of foreign children were recruited to merge with Eleutherians.

But Fern grew weary of the generations. Her own proteins were breaking down; she was nearly as old as Delphinium. Soon, she thought, they all will have to carry on without me. She knew what she must do, in the final years she had left.

Back at Opal's home, the virtual setting sun cast a warm glow on the bark of the trees, trilling with finches and warblers. Still dazed, Chrys sat on a redwood stump, which molded to her seat in a most unwooden fashion. In her lap curled Merope, the lucky survivor, nosed tucked under her paws, her tail waving gently.

Opal sat close to Chrys, while Selenite listened intently to Andra. Andra's namestones marched in precise rows across her nanotex. 'It's a hate crime. We'll press charges.'

Beside Andra, Daeren had not looked up since he arrived. What did he think of it all, Chrys wondered; her burnt-out apartment, her slain cat, the ravaged Underworld? Her eyes defocused, and for a moment she wished she could step back three weeks in time, just another artist getting by.

Opal clasped Chrys's hand. 'Are you sure, Andra? Will the Palace take us seriously?'

Selenite said, 'Burnt through the eyes is always an anti-carrier sign. Andra's right; we have to make them investigate.'

Andra agreed. 'It strengthens our case on Titan.'

Titan, the Blind God, his eyes scorched by whoever would destroy what lived within. Just three weeks ago, the deed had haunted her window; now she had nearly ended the same.

Selenite crossed her arms. 'The Palace needs to root out the Sapiens and end their war against us.'

Chrys looked up. 'Not just us. The whole Underworld.'

'The Sapiens hate carriers even worse than sims.'

Chrys scratched behind Merope's ears. 'What do Sapiens have against carriers?'

Opal sighed. 'They hate any intermingling of human and other. 'Pollution of the blood.' '

'But micros just live inside us. They don't mix with us genetically, like the simian ape ancestors.'

'We all have ape ancestors. And we all have microbial ancestors—a billion years back, but still. It's not a question of reason.' Opal shook her head. 'You can't expect the virgins to understand.'

'The what?'

'Well, what do you call a wilderness without people in it?'

The carriers were silent. Behind a tree something moved, a flash of tan lifting a dark eye. A deer, feeding in the woods, an illusory world of peace.

'Who knows if it was Sapiens after Chrys?' Opal added. 'It could have been anyone. A copycat criminal.'

Perhaps a 'virgin' neighbor of Chrys who glimpsed the colored rings in her eyes. She stared bleakly past her seven-digit credit line. 'Why does the Palace let Sapiens get away with it?' Chrys exclaimed. 'They burn out the Underworld, and nothing comes of it. This time, the signs were all there—everyone knew what was coming.'

Andra stared ahead coldly. 'It's the cheap way to clean out the slave trade.'

Selenite passed Opal a patch of micro visitors. 'Not quite.' Her voice dripped with sarcasm. 'We wouldn't want to lose all the slaves, would we.'

Chrys blinked, puzzled.

'The clinic,' Opal explained. 'The good doctor serves ... friends of the Palace. When they convert to second stage and fear the third. Or when their families turn them in.'

'They go clean for six months, on average,' said Selenite. 'Then they get resupplied.'

Chrys had seen enough fur-dressed customers sidling up to the plague bar. But to think that it reached the Palace ...

Andra rose from her seat and paced between two redwoods, stepping precisely one foot ahead of the other. 'Sar conducts research to improve our defenses.'

'Right,' said Selenite. 'We tell the Palace we're walking culture dishes.'

Andra frowned. 'What we learn from the slaves protects us as well. Right now, carriers are safer than virgins—but the microbial masters are always learning new tricks.' She rose from her seat, and light from between the branches glinted on her hair. 'Bad micros, bad humans. Some day, we'll bring them all to justice.'

'Good luck.' Opal's smile brightened. 'For now, Chrys, we'll find you a safe place to live. I checked out that townhouse—it's lovely, just down the block from Lord Garnet of Hyalite—'