Her fists clenched. Where were all those blustering Palace octopods? Had they given up on this level, too? How could they let the mind slaves double every year? She whispered an old Brethren prayer, though the creature was beyond help. Its human mind was lost, it could barely see. But it could smell a potential victim to transmit the plague.
Quietly she turned down a side street. But here the lighting was worse, and she could not judge the pavement. Her foot caught, and she stumbled.
As Chrys fell, she recovered herself expertly, thanks to long hours of practice. But her foot still stuck. She breathed heavily, her mind racing.
A mass of something was oozing heavily up along her foot. Cancerplast; a piece of a building root that had gone wrong, like a cancer that metastasized, its cells creeping blindly in search of a power supply. Usually plast metastasized only down in the Underworld, where inspectors never came. But here was a blob of cancer right up in her neighborhood, within two blocks of her own apartment. And nearby lurked a vampire.
In the dim light, Chrys could not tell how far the plast extended, except thank the saints she had not fallen into the rest of it. She pulled out her shock wand and reached toward her feet. Avoiding her foot, she tapped the plast.
The wand crackled, and a blue flash leapt to the surface. The cancerous mass congealed and stiffened, its cells dead. But the plast had solidified around her foot. Taking a deep breath, Chris raised her hand and aimed the edge of her palm. Her arm tensed, while the rest of her body relaxed as much as possible. Her palm shot down and struck.
Pain filled her foot, and she cried out. But the plast had shattered. Her foot was numb, but she got herself up and hobbled home as fast as she could. In daylight she would have stayed to zap any blob that might have escaped; even the smallest ones could infect other buildings.
Reaching her apartment, she placed both her hands flat against the entry pad and raised her eyes to the scanner.
'Your rent is due.' The apartment's flat voice came from a speaker in its plast.
'I know,' she snapped, 'I'll get it tomorrow. Let me in— there's a vampire out here.'
'Your rent is due today.'
The time in her window read 12:09. Just past midnight. Her palms started to sweat. 'How can I get rent if the vampire gets me?'
'You have twenty-three hours and fifty minutes before expulsion is confirmed.'
'The sculpture on the mantle.' Her portrait done in crystal, the one thing of value Topaz had given her the year they lived together. 'Take that.'
'Redeemable at thirty percent.'
In the wall appeared a crack of light. The old plast creaked and stalled, then reluctantly contracted itself halfway to one side, enough for her to squeeze inside. Down a flight of stairs to the basement, her own door pealed open, shutting promptly behind her.
Her cat Merope, an orange tabby with a white bib, sidled over to brush her legs, while the all-white Alcyone explored her shelves, oblivious to the volcano exploding there. Her favorite dynamic sketches jutted out from the shelves, here a smoking shield cone, there a pyroclastic flow. On the mantle, the wall was still puckered in where it had engulfed the pawned sculpture. Chrys swallowed hard, but she had long ago given up tears over Topaz.
Now she could view her message and get to work on her new pyroscape. She sat back in the old oaken chair her father had carved for her, letting Merope jump on her lap. Merope's eyes soon closed, her white neck stretched in ecstasy beneath Chrys's stroking palm. Chrys focused her eyes on the message light in her window. The contact light blinked.
To her surprise, a doctor appeared. Chrys nudged the cat down, for if she could see the doctor, the doctor could see her, from one of the microcameras ubiquitous throughout the city, every nook of nanoplast. Like most doctors, this one was not human. It was a sentient, its plast grown to five pairs of limbs and a face full of wormlike surgical tendrils. It reminded her of the dead goat she had found once on Mount Dolomoth, its entrails crawling with maggots.
The worms of the doctor's face lifted and waved about. 'I'm Doctor Sartorius, Chrysoberyl.' Sartorius was the hospital's leading brain surgeon, as Chrys had found from her snooping online. Was it male or female, she tried to recall; sentients could be sensitive. A month before, the surgeon's staff had grilled Chrys and run a battery of tests. 'Thanks for getting back to us, Chrysoberyl. You're the top candidate for our program, and we have a culture ready.'
Her jaw fell. 'You mean, the brain enhancers?'
'The culture has matured and is ready for transfer, at eight in the morning. Remember, don't eat or drink anything after midnight.'
'But—' Confused, she shook her head. 'They told me it would take six months.' To process her tests, to grow the culture.
One of the limbs waved, and all the worms danced. Chrys understood how a surgeon could use extra fingers, but surely they could pull them in and look more human for their patients. Sentient arrogance—they could look however they pleased. But there were scandals, brain doctors who sucked the mind out of humans to feed their deviant desires. 'Six months was our best estimate, Chrysoberyl,' Sartorius reminded her. 'The cultured cells are hard to predict. Like people, they do things their own way.'
Like people—an odd way to put it. Chrys frowned. 'Can't they wait just another week?'
Doctor Sartorius hesitated. It was male, she was pretty sure. 'The culture stays fresh only so long,' he explained. 'If you can't make it this time, we'll have to pick the next candidate on our list. You could wait another year.'
Doctors had all the answers. 'I can't afford to feel sick right now.'
'Just one night in the hospital. After that you'll feel fine, with regular testing.'
Her pulse pounded in her ears. It was one thing to imagine, but to actually do it... What if it went wrong? 'You did say all this is covered?'
'You'll receive full health coverage from now on. Plan Ten.'
Plan Ten, just like Lady Moraeg. Nearly as good as Elves, who lived practically forever. 'But tomorrow I'm busy. I have to come up with my rent.'
'Your stipend for the trial starts tonight.'
In her credit line two more digits appeared. Who the devil was paying for all this, and why? 'I'll be there in the morning.' She could still say no.
Chrys had planned to stay up several more hours at her painting stage, blocking in the masses for the spattercone and the moon. But now she had to get up early. By her bedside stood three tiny figures in a holo still. Her mother and father wore their hooded robes of the Dolomite Brethren, beside Hal, her youngest of five brothers, looking deathly pale despite his brave smile. All these years on the waiting list for treatment; until then, let the saints and angels provide.
If she got Plan Ten, she would never have to worry about her heart, let alone things like losing a port inside her eyeball. And the brain enhancers could make her rich. Brain-enhanced minds filled the headlines—financiers who built Elf-sized fortunes on their calculations, cell designers who seeded miracle cures, and dynatects. The murdered dynatect Titan of Sardis, who designed monumental sentient buildings like the Comb.
If brain enhancers could do all that, what might they do for her studio? Chrys had waited long enough for saints and angels. She blinked to close her window for the night, then set the volcano above her bed to explode at seven in the morning.
TWO
