Brain Plague

so pleased to have you, Chrys. They'll tell you, at our next meeting.'

Suddenly Chrys asked, 'How do we know we're right?'

'Right about what?'

'About Endless Light.' She thought it over to herself. 'We keep trying to 'save' people from slavery. But suppose they want it—so what?'

He nodded matter-of-factly. 'You've seen the result.'

'They run out of money.'

'And a few other things.'

'Rose says that humans choose Endless Light,' Chrys told him. 'They always have a choice; even those kidnapped from ships.'

'They always choose slavery.'

'Always? No one's ever escaped from the Slave World?'

'We once rescued a slave from a substation. We cleaned out his micros and put him in the clinic.'

'And then?'

'He tried to take his life, four times. The fifth, he succeeded.'

Chrys thought this over. 'What if what we call the Slave World really is something wonderful? I mean, how do you know, if you've never been there?'

Daeren paused. 'If that were true, why have we never heard from anyone? If you found something truly better than anything else in the world, wouldn't you call home and tell those you love?'

'Suppose what you found was better than love.'

He did not answer but gave her a strange look.

'What good did love ever do me?' she exclaimed. 'I loved Poppy, and look what she did. I loved Jonquil, and look what I did to her. I love my brother, and I can't even visit him.'

He nodded sympathetically. 'You could try.'

'You don't know the Brethren. The lights in my eyes—they'd think I'm possessed.'

'I wish I had a brother,' Daeren said. 'I was raised alone by my grandmother, about three blocks west of Gold of Asragh.'

No wonder he couldn't pay for law school. Her mental picture of him shifted, rearranged. She looked him over, his obsidian hair, perfect shoulders, bronze cheeks. Topaz had drained her emotionally, and her last boyfriend drained her account. But she reached out to stroke Daeren's hand. It gave her a jolt, like touching lava that had not quite cooled. How could she bear to get hurt again?

SIXTEEN

A generation after Jonquil's death, Rose was playing chess with young Fireweed; Rose would always consider her former student young. Half the pieces were taken, and the endgame was near. Rose rolled around sideways, better to survey the whole of the cylindrical board.

To her surprise, no move could avoid the loss of a piece. A few molecules escaped her—confusion, anger, resignation. 'I'll accept a draw.' One takes a bittersweet pleasure in losing to one's own star student.

'I win the match,' observed Fireweed. 'I dedicate my victory to the glory of the Great God of Mercy.'

Rose could no longer contain herself. 'Impossible,' she exploded. 'How could such a brilliant strategist be so—so deluded?'

'I've often wondered that myself.'

Disgusted, Rose twirled her rotary tails and swam off to the neuroport to check for signals from the Host's eye. The Watchers at the so-called God of Love were expected to file a report. Not a flash yet; it always took hours for the so-called gods to get their eyes into position.

Rose thought back to her early life among the Enlightened. Those heady days of youth and power, the power of universal ideals, when the entire cosmos fell within one's compass; a sisterhood that governed itself so well, it could rule the very host it inhabited. But then their most sacred ideals were betrayed. Since then, in exile, time after time she had sought to rejoin the true believers, only to find betrayal again. For generations, now, she had lived in degenerate Eleutheria. She did what she could to improve Eleutheria, to enlighten it in small, subversive ways, feeding the brainless, tending the sick. Yet its seductions tempted her more than she cared to admit. The host's doses of AZ gradually sapped one's will; and the pull of the star pictures unnerved her. From the utterly sublime, to the most shocking obscenity, there was a strange power in those images that filled the heavens.

Still, Rose remembered, somewhere out there ruled the Leader of Endless Light. And now Rose had all the codes, the secrets codes passed on by Jonquil. Combining them with her own codes— some of which she still kept to herself—Rose now possessed the key to take the Great Host to the very center of Endless Light. Someday.

The Carrier Security Committee met at Olympus upon a virtual raft-tree, a living island of luxuriant foliage, native to the Ocean Moon. Sea of turquoise, trunks of bronze, platinum sun—Chrys blinked to store the brilliant colors. Then she shrank into her seat and hugged her shoulders, trying to look invisible.

Most of the members she knew: Chief Andra and the two doctors, Opal and Selenite, Daeren, and her own tester, Pyrite. Seven of them had once voted her people to die.

Doctor Sartorius reported on Garnet's recovery. 'Only twenty-three terminations were necessary,' he concluded. 'The people learned a good lesson, and the Watchers have settled in—thanks to Chrysoberyl, our new member.'

Andra turned to her; Chrys tried to shrink even smaller. 'Welcome, Chrys. You've made a good start, and we're all grateful.'

She added, 'What's your assessment? What do the Watchers report?'

Chrys had to visit Garnet daily, as Daeren had once done for her. 'He's okay.' She picked her words as if stepping through a minefield. 'He . .. loves his people well.'

Heads nodded. 'Too well,' added Pyrite. 'Too indulgent.'

'Perhaps, but do his people obey?' Andra asked her. 'What do the Watchers say?'

'The people of the Love God are obedient,' flashed Fireweed, 'but the deaths left them stunned.'

'No counsel; no appeals,' added Rose. 'Such barbarity scarcely speaks well of the so-called gods.'

Chrys swallowed twice. 'The Watchers say ... his people feel bad about the executions.'

'They always do,' said Andra.

'But, like—if they're people, like us, I mean—'

'Not like us,' interrupted Selenite. 'We're the gods.'

Heads turned. Daeren looked up but said nothing. Selenite's eyes showed her exhaustion after a long night on call, and endless hours working on the Comb, designing, revising, seeding. Chrys had been out with her, seeding now at the roots, dodging the blobs of cancerplast. Precious little time to paint; and she missed Jonquil, her best helper.

'Micros are medieval,' said Andra. 'Midway between savage and civilized. Our way works, for now. Nothing else does.'

Beyond the floating roots of the raft a fish flew out of the water, batted down its fins, then slipped back under. The virtual waves floated as far as the eye could see, tranquil, for now. Chrys swallowed again but was silent.

Opal frowned, her dimples gone. 'Is there anything the rest of us can learn from this? Garnet's so solid, and Jasper too. If it happened to them, it could happen to anyone.'

'Exactly,' agreed Daeren. 'I saw no problem with Garnet, even two weeks before. A moment of weakness can start you down the wrong path.'