'1 am here,' flashed Aster.
'And I am here,' flashed Jonquil.
Chrys's eyes flew across the letters. 'Let's offer a service contract for the Comb.'
Jonquil flashed quickly, 'Service is for maintenance engineers. We build new.'
'Service is a new idea,' returned Chrys. 'Never before tried in all the universe.'
'We pursue aesthetic design,' said Aster. 'We're not trained for maintenance.'
'Is it too hard to learn?'
No response. How could she manage a million people she couldn't see?
'Where is Fern? I need her.'
'I am here, Oh Great One.' At last the green letters, more slowly than usual. 'I have been with you always. But I will not be here much longer.'
Not much longer—what did that mean?
'I offered you Jonquil, lest my time end before you left the Comb. Now 1 remain, but soon I will pass on to the world beyond time.'
Chrys felt a chill. 'I will call Plan Ten.' The medic was just leaving.
'Plan Ten is not for people. Only the gods are immortal. But I leave a gift for you, and for the people of Eleutheria. The Laws of Righteousness, for all to follow, numbering six hundred and thirteen.'
'Don't tire yourself reciting them,' Chrys quickly rejoined.
'As my last act in this world of flesh, I call on Eleutheria to
heed the words of the God of Mercy, to hold and cherish our past
creations. To the Seven Lights, let us add an Eighth: the Light of
Mercy. As we would receive mercy, so must we grant it in
turn'
Someone was touching her arm. 'Chrys?' It was Opal. 'Are you all right?'
Opal would fuss and take care of her. But Chrys was determined to handle this herself. 'I'll be all right,' she said firmly. 'I just need to get home.' How would she survive without Fern?
Aster wondered, how could she ever manage without Fern? The green one had persuaded the Lord of Light to let them go, then the God of Mercy to let them live. For generations Fern had raised the children and guided the elders. Now she suffered the final agonies of impending death, barely able to flash a word.
Aster was left with jonquil to guide the Council of Thirty, and all the fractious young elders. Three of the blue Watchers remained alive, but they merely watched and bade her remember Fern's laws. To be sure, Fern had left the six hundred laws to live by, but how to put them in practice? For example, 'When you harvest nutrients from the bloodstream, leave some behind to be gleaned by the poor.' Did this really mean the farmers should be inefficient? Or would it be better to put the poor to work in public service, as the Council of Thirty had voted?
'How can there be poor Eleutherians?' wondered Jonquil. 'We are a wealthy people, and there's so much work to do.'
Aster wondered the same. But she tasted the poor ones, floating through the cerebrospinal fluid, their filaments bent and chemically deformed from lack of vitamins. How could this be? In the old days, everyone shared alike; but now, as their world neared a million strong, some, like Jonquil, grew rich enough to spend all their palladium in the nightclubs, whereas others floated by with nothing.
'There are mutants,' Aster reminded jonquil. Microbial cells mutated much faster than the gods. Mutant children with deficient brains could do nothing but float by, absorbing food like ordinary germs.
'Too many mutants,' agreed jonquil. 'We need to refine our eugenics. Don't let the mutants breed.'
'But a few mutants have the most valuable traits.' Aster felt overwhelmed. A scholar, she had schooled herself to design for the gods, not to rule a crowd of unruly people. Yet Fern and the Council of Thirty had chosen her to carry on.
'It takes so much time to pick the good mutants,' said Jonquil. 'And then, this fixing the Comb is taking all our time for creative work. It's unbelievably tedious, worse than starting from seed.'
The Eleutherians had refined their model of the growth of the Comb, with help from some new math prodigies recruited from the wizards of Wisdom. The new model revealed a structural fault reaching down to the very roots. The entire Comb, as she grew, was about to split into three more or less equal portions, like a merged pair making children. The correction would take a million times more calculation than planned. What had seemed a quick fix was turning into a nightmare.
'Why did the Great One make us do this?' demanded Jonquil.
'To make us design better in the future,' said Aster. 'That's what Fern thought.'
'The Comb will look fine, dividing in three; I like it. As for the Deathlord's minions —their regime is so repressive. Why did the Great One make us work with them?'
'They're a democracy,' Aster insisted, not sure she believed it. The minions barely thought for themselves; the slightest error, the slightest hue too red or too orange, was enough to get them expelled into oblivion. No mutant survived the Deathlord. 'They just lack the nerve to face their god. We have to get along with all the gods, and their diverse peoples.'
'But why can't we influence our own god? 'Why can't we touch the Center? Just a trace of dopamine, now and then. I know, it's a new idea—'
Aster was aghast. 'Have you lost your mind? It's not a new idea—it's the oldest idea in the blood. Remember Poppy, and our dead children.' Fern had been so good, she was blind to the moral failing of others. Blind for Poppy, she had been blind again to promote Jonquil.
Back at her new home on Rainbow Row, Chrys dragged herself up the stairs past the staring caryatids. 'Aster? Is Fern still there?'
'Fern is here. She can no longer speak, but she still knows you.'
'Is there anything I can do to help her feel better?'
'We've done what we can. We have all her six hundred laws stored in memory. We will remember.'
Chrys felt helpless. How could these people respect a god who could do so little? After all Fern had done for her. Listlessly she looked around the painting stage. The lights of her palette hung suspended along the side, like colored lights for the midsummer festival of the Brethren. Like ...
The stars. Someday a god will place us in the stars. She stood for a moment, transfixed by her idea.
'Aster, I will make her portrait. I will place her in the stars.'
'A place in the stars! Oh Great One, that will please her beyond imagining.'
Chrys pulled a line between white and forest green, then hurriedly picked several related greens. 'What does Fern look like? Can you show me?'
'Here is how she looked before, when she could speak.'
In her eyes appeared the little green ring, its filaments twinkling in all directions. Chrys sketched swiftly, with broad bold strokes of color, hoping Fern could at least see some of it before she died. 'Aster, is she still there?'
