'...
Since five in the morning, her most creative hour, Chrys had lain with her mind half awake, sketching her new composition. A dynamic design, the cone and the moon had to grab the viewers' attention and connect in a subtle way, to make them wonder what the artist was doing, and why.
But by eight she sat in the hospital, its peach-colored walls extending examination tubes to coil around her head, whining unpleasantly, plugged into by tendrils extending from the doctor's 'face.' Up close, the worm-faced brain surgeon looked more repulsive than ever. She half expected his head to be buzzing with flies. Her hand instinctively sketched the Dolomite sign against evil.
The doctor withdrew his tendrils from the hospital coils; at their tips, the finely articulated instruments dissolved and retracted. The coils released her scalp, letting her thick hair rebound in all directions. 'You are in excellent health, Chrysoberyl,' Doctor Sartorius summed up, 'aside from a bit of strain in the pectorals— watch it in the weight room. In fact, you'll no longer need strenuous exercise to stay fit.'
Chrys blinked in surprise. No exercise? Just let a bunch of nano-cells shape her muscles?
'We did correct some allergies, and a few pre-cancers. A latent mitochondrial defect is correctable.'
Mitochondria—like her brother Hal, only less severe. Correctable. When would Hal's get corrected?
'You have a visual anomaly,' added the worm-face. 'You're a tetrachromat.'
'A what?'
The doctor's arms extended snakelike fingers toward the holostage. 'Was your father colorblind?'
Chrys frowned. Why rub it in, her genes were no god's gift. 'My father sees red like I do but has trouble with green.'
'He sees infrared,' Doctor Sartorius corrected. 'The spectrum of his red pigment is shifted to wavelengths just beyond red. Your father has only one X chromosome, but you have a second one from your mother. So you see infrared, from your father's chromosome, but also normal red and green from your mother's.' The doctor waved an appendage at the stage to display the absorbance ranges of her four receptors: blue, green, red, and infrared.
Chrys nodded quickly. 'Can I download that?' Knowing the exact light range of her own eye pigments would really help her work.
'The anomaly won't be a problem, Chrysoberyl. In fact, it will help.'
'What's all this got to do with brain enhancers? Who designed them, anyway? Why are they so much cheaper than Elf technology?'
The doctor's face worms retracted. 'Brain enhancers are neither Valan nor Elysian technology. They are microbial cells. The original strain arose on Prokaryon.' The newest world of the Fold, Prokaryon was full of arsenic and ring-shaped aliens. Alien microbes helped humans live there, digesting the toxins. But something else came from Prokaryon, she remembered.
'You're not pregnant,' Sartorius went on, 'and you agree to avoid pregnancy during the trial.'
'Certainly.' Chrys had turned her cycle off when she reached Iridis, like any sensible urban professional. If she wanted babies, she might as well have stayed home.
'You have no history of addiction,' Sartorius added. 'No alcohol, no stimulants, no psychos—no trace of any, nor their effects.' Out of his worm face, two beadlike eyes on their spindly stalks swiveled toward Chrys. 'Chrysoberyl, is there anything we missed? Are you absolutely sure that you've never been addicted to anything?'
Chrys swallowed. 'No.' Not to any thing. Then she stared down the eyes. 'Just what are you getting at?'
The doctor hesitated. 'Enhancers affect your brain in subtle ways.'
'Do they make you more ... susceptible?'
'Actually, brain enhancers protect you from the plague, the fastest growing cause of addiction. Here's what the micros look like, magnified a million times.'
The room darkened. Above the holostage appeared two glowing rings, like pieces of candy, one green, the other red. They moved and twisted, somehow self-propelled, and their color flashed like fireflies. They looked nothing like human cells. Without thinking, Chrys reached out her hand as if to touch. 'Did you engineer them genetically?'
'They evolved within human carriers.'
'But you said they came from Prokaryon.'
'The original micros left their Prokaryon hosts to grow within human settlers. But the microbial symbionts evolved into many different strains.'
She remembered. 'Prokaryon—that's where the brain plague came from.'
'Micros are the most addictive thing known to medical science. We're required by law to tell you that.'
As if she'd never heard. Chrys eyed the worm face thoughtfully.
'So these brain enhancers—they're a different species?' Like different species of bacteria: Some made yogurt, others made people sick.
'They require human hosts; they can no longer live anywhere else. They are extremely intelligent, and extremely dangerous.'
'The brain plague, you mean.'
'Brain plague or brain enhancers. They're genetically the same.'
'The same?' She stared in disbelief at the face full of worms. 'What in hell do you think you're doing?' The doctor was a mind-sucker, she told herself, her throat gone cold. She'd snooped his background as best she could, but how could she be sure?
'These are a completely different culture. Entirely different history and lifestyle. You can't condemn a population for the deeds of others.'
'They're the plague. Like the Protector says, 'Just say no.' '
'But the good micros protect you from the bad ones. That is why the Protector supports our work.'
Chrys opened her mouth, then shut it again. She stared at the worm face with its bobbing eyestalks. Then she looked again at the two ring-shaped cells slowly twisting above the stage, their colors flashing. No wonder the hospital had been so evasive. The brain plague was a plague of brains.
'Micros are strictly regulated by the hospital's Carrier Security Committee,' the doctor assured her. 'If you're still interested, a security agent will meet with us to discuss the transfer and safety precautions.'
'I've signed nothing,' she warned.
The door parted, smooth as a pair of drapes, nothing like Chrys's creaking doors. The security agent was human, at least, and surprisingly young. Clean-cut, formal gray nanotex, with a smart expensive namestone of