green malachite. A college kid trying to look old, like a Palace aide, the kind you'd expect to see lobbying against simian immigration.
'Daeren of Malachite, agent of carrier security,' the doctor introduced him.
Chrys rose politely to shake his hand.
'I understand you're the top candidate for our program.' The quintessential Iridian bureaucrat.
Chrys narrowed her eyes. 'Are you a doctor?'
'I'm a carrier.'
A carrier. She stiffened involuntarily. She had actually touched the hand of someone who carried plague, no matter what the doctor called it. To be sure, he looked nothing like an Underworld vampire; he glowed with health, a runner's lean muscles and solid veins. His features were melting-pot Valan, a bit darkened like Moraeg, not surprising with his L'liite given name. But as Pearl said, plague carriers looked okay at first.
The doctor added, 'Micros are not contagious. They require artificial transfer.'
The agent nodded. 'To transfer them against a recipient's will or knowledge is a terminal crime. Section six- three-one, part A.' 'Terminal' meant, they lock you away for life. The ultimate sentence on all seven worlds of the Fold.
Chrys crossed her arms and lifted her chin. 'So how do you transfer them? Like vampires?'
The tendons stiffened in Daeren's neck. 'We use a microneedle patch.'
'Like psychoplast.'
The worm face squirmed. 'Medicine has always turned poisons into useful drugs. Curare, digitalis, even snake venom. And microbes have been used for gene surgery since ancient times. An immunodeficiency virus was the prototype for Plan Ten's nanoservos.'
'If it's so safe, why the security committee?'
Daeren said, 'Any growing thing can go bad. The committee protects you, just like Plan Ten keeps you healthy.'
Chrys shook her head. 'I still don't get it. Why do people take the risk?'
'Why did you apply?'
She would not mention the rent. 'The Comb,' she said at last. 'They say that brain enhancers designed her. I'm an artist; I want to enhance my work.'
Daeren took a seat and folded his hands. If only her brother could look so good, Chrys thought resentfully. 'The Comb was grown by micros,' he said. 'So are nine out of ten new medical treatments coming out today. So are most of the new devices Valedon exports. Your optic neuroports—micros invented them.'
Her scalp prickled as she thought of all those eye windows that came on the market just a few years before. 'What do you mean, 'micros invented them'?' Chrys wondered. 'I mean, how do they enhance your brain—how does it really work?'
'Micros are intelligent,' he said.
'Well, sure.' Intelligent buildings, intelligent medical machines—everything was 'intelligent' these days.
'Intelligent people.'
Chrys stared hard at the agent, then at the doctor. She counted the doctor's appendages, one by one, all five of them. Was this really the planet's top brain surgeon? Could there be some mistake?
' 'People'?' she repeated. 'Like, human beings?' Like the sentient doctor himself? Some intelligent machines had earned human rights in the Fold. There were all kinds of 'people' nowadays; most humans had got used to it, aside from groups like Sapiens. But. .. microscopic people?
The worm face flexed two appendages together. 'The law does not permit me, as a doctor, to answer your question. Only the Secretary of the Fold can determine what is human.'
The agent nodded. 'A special commission at the Secretariat has been at this for twenty years. They have yet to make a ruling. But you'll know.'
'Daeren is right,' the doctor said. 'Any human carrier would agree.'
'It's absurd,' Chrys exclaimed. 'Nothing that small can have enough ... connections to be self-aware.'
'Self-awareness occurs in sentients with about a trillion logic gates,' the doctor explained. 'A micro cell contains ten times that number of molecular gates.'
Chrys shook her head in disbelief. 'If the micros are people, why does the Protector condemn them all?'
Daeren leaned forward slightly, and the stone at his neck sparkled sea green. 'The Protector is in a tough position. Our economy will depend on micros—it's our only way to compete with Elysium. But plague micros built the Slave World, just as ours built the Comb.'
'Right,' said Chrys sarcastically. 'I suppose their 'Enlightened Leader' is a microbe.'
He hesitated. 'That's classified.'
Microbial spies and dictators. 'Saints and angels preserve us,' she whispered.
'Your micros will have nothing to do with the plague,' Daeren assured her. 'We've selected a very special strain for you:
Chrys caught her breath. What would you take—that was the question. Zircon lacked the nerve. Did she? 'I'm no dynatect,' she pointed out. 'I'm just a starving artist.'
'Carriers never starve,' the agent said. 'You create art—these are the most creative strains we've got.' He paused, hesitant. 'They're a bit tricky, though. They flash a wide range of colors, wider than most Valans can see. But you see infrared, like an Elysian. You'll handle them better.'
Better than whom, she wondered. 'Did Titan ... handle them all right?'
'He had his eyes enhanced to the Elysian range.'
'His death was just an accident, wasn't it? I mean, it wasn't caused by—'
'Titan's murder was a hate crime. He was killed because he was a carrier.' The agent looked her in the eye. 'As a carrier, you'll have more to fear from fellow humans than from micros.'
Chrys frowned. There was altogether too much hate in Iridis. Hate for sentients, hate for simian immigrants, hate for artists who mocked the Great Houses—the Protector instigated that, Chrys suspected. 'We pyroscape artists attract our share of nuts, too,' she admitted. 'When I make enough sales, I'll buy security.'
The doctor added, 'You can meet the micros yourself and ask them your questions.'
''Meet them?' Where?'
'Micros can't live outside a human host,' the doctor said. 'They live just beneath the skull, in the arachnoid, a web of tissue between the outer linings of the brain.'
On the stage appeared a giant brain, sliced through the frontal lobe. Between the cortex and the skull lay a thin sea of fluid, dipping deep into the folds of cortex. The sea of fluid was crisscrossed by a fine spiderweb, all around the cortex and into the folds. 'Cobwebs on the brain?' Chrys asked.
'The arachnoid is a normal part of your brain. It cushions the brain from impact, preventing injury.'
Her eyes narrowed. 'But the micros aren't in my brain. Where are they now?'
'Daeren prepared the culture. When you're ready to meet them, we will transfer two 'visitors' from his brain to yours.'
So it was like the vampires. Chrys took a breath. 'That's . . . unsanitary. What if they grow and make me sick?'
'Impossible,' the doctor assured her. 'The first two Daeren sends will be 'elders,' a non-reproductive form.'
Daeren agreed. 'Like Elysians, they can live for many generations but have no children of their own.'
'I see.' Even micro people had their long-lived superclass.
'The two elders we send are very special: the priests, who guide their people. They will explain—'
'Priests?' Chrys put up her hands. 'No way. I never could stand priests.'
He thought a moment. 'You can call them something else, if you like. You're the host; inside your head, you make the rules.'
Doctor Sartorius added, 'Once they talk with you, you'll understand.'
'Just how do we 'talk'?'
'The micros flash light, like fireflies,' said Daeren. 'That's how they 'talk' to each other, and to you.'
Talking with fireflies. How absurd.
'After they visit, you can send them back with no ill effect.'
Chrys suddenly tensed all over. She gripped the edge of her chair until the plast puckered in. 'All right, I'll talk
