Brain Plague

Selenite said, 'Just say no.'

No response. Chrys guessed they'd all heard this exchange before.

'Garnet has made good progress,' Andra pronounced. 'Now, we must face the Elysian strain.' The false blue angels; the insidious masters that Eris, the Guardian of Culture, had tried to pass on to Daeren, and to Chrys. 'The Elysian strain that can take over carriers. And now, it's showing up in the Underworld.'

The waves lapped at the edge of the floating raft.

Pyrite asked, 'How could it take over a carrier?'

'First, the diseased host invites 'visitors' from a carrier,' Andra explained. 'Their own masters 'visit' in turn, pretending to be civilized micros. But a few fail to return. Afterward, when the carrier goes to sleep, the hidden invaders come out, disable the nano sensors, and secrete a toxin that wipes out the entire native population. By morning, the invaders have the brain in complete control.'

'Control?' asked Pyrite. 'Like a robot?'

Daeren shook his head. 'More like a lost soul. A devil's bargain.'

'Why would anyone go along with that?'

Andra said, 'We don't know for sure. We never get them to the clinic. The host doesn't act like a slave; only an expert can tell.'

Opal asked, 'What should we do if we ever suspect this strain?'

'If you ever suspect the carrier, don't take their visitors. If you do by mistake, call us immediately.'

'But—we're all at risk,' insisted Pyrite. 'Can't we do more? Better sensors?'

Opal told him, 'We're redesigning the sensors. We'll have something soon. But the strain is unusually smart. They keep one step ahead of us.'

Selenite threw up her hands. 'It's an outrage. Half those Elves could be infected—Why don't they do something?'

'Good question,' agreed Andra.

The waves lapped a little higher, bathing the blooming twigs of raftwood. Eris, the most virulent carrier of the deadly strain, was the brother of Guardian Arion.

'Until we get this strain under control,' said Andra, 'we'll take no more new carriers.'

Pyrite looked up. 'Are you sure? We need new blood—every new carrier makes us stronger. Look at Chrys.'

The doctor's worms waved. 'I'm sorry,' said Sartorius, 'I can't ethically do it. We've always been able to tell the candidate they'll be safer than before. Now, we're no longer sure.'

Too bad for Moraeg, and for Pteris's true believers. Chrys sighed.

Andra folded her hands. 'We've news on Titan,' she said, adopting her legal tone. 'A suspect has been identified and will soon be charged. We all need to ... prepare ourselves for the publicity.' She paused, as if reluctant to continue. 'The mystery was, how could any Sapiens agent get close enough to burn straight through his brain? Center Way is full of Plan Ten's hidden eyes and defenses.' She paused again. 'The suspect was a sentient who took the shape of a woman Titan knew.'

'A sentient in Sapiens?' exclaimed Pyrite. 'What a disgrace.'

'Indeed,' observed Andra with cold irony. The Sapiens had started out anti-sentient as well as anti-simian; but nowadays they called sentients 'virtual humans.' 'Unfortunately, the woman impersonated was the wife of Titan's client.' Andra's small mouth shrank smaller. 'A disgrace more ... obvious to the public.'

Titan had courted one highborn Lady after another; always women, his obsession medieval. Selenite shook her head. 'Carriers have to keep their act clean. We can't give any excuse for criticism. Anyone's lapse reflects on us all.'

'I disagree,' said Daeren suddenly. 'We're citizens too. We have as much right to individual failings as anyone else. Let alone a genius like Titan.'

At the Comb, Opal clasped Chrys's hand, eager to admire the progress on the restoration. 'Watch the windows—coming up perfectly.' Each flawless hexagonal pane, slightly convex, reflected a city panorama. In the window of her eye, the red stress lines were distributed evenly along the load-bearing supports. The recollection of that tower spitting out its deadly shards—erased.

Chrys had never quite believed her micros could reshape the flawed monument, but seeing was believing. 'I guess Selenite knows what she's doing.'

'Her people—and yours.' Opal put a transfer patch at her neck, her hair blowing in waves from the breeze off the sea.

'But the tower growing and splitting—I don't see how that can be reversed.'

'I don't know, but the gaps in the ceiling have narrowed.' As Opal placed the patch at Chrys's neck, a buzz of snake-eggs descended around their heads. Chrys blinked to call up a prepared statement on the Comb's restoration.

'Chrysoberyl of Dolomoth,' one of the snake-eggs blandly intoned, 'successor to Titan, legendary dynatect of the Comb. Titan's alleged killer was indicted—your comment, please?'

Chrys opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

Opal squeezed her hand. 'The carrier community will be pleased to see truth prevail against hatred.'

'Is it true,' another hummed at Chrys, 'that all the genius of Titan's brain enhancers is spent addressing his disastrous design flaws? The days of breathtaking new creation are over?'

'Of course we cannot comment,' Opal put in, 'but we refer you to the House of Hyalite.'

Chrys winced. Nothing was definite about Silicon—and she hoped nothing would be.

The snake-eggs buzzed more closely around herself and Opal. 'Is it true that Titan's successor shares his peculiar predilections—'

Opal clapped her hands to her head. 'My design prototype calls—a malfunction has just released toxic elements. Hurry, Chrys.' They raced to the shimmering door of the Comb.

'They're awful,' breathed Chrys.

'Not really. They're awful when they follow you inside and hide behind the drapes.'

'I'm nothing like Titan,' Chrys insisted. 'I'm—respectable.'

Opal glanced at her sideways. 'You might watch what you put on display.'

'That's a damned stereotype. Art is not real life. If it were, who'd want it?'

Opal nodded soothingly. 'Believe me, Chrys, we all know you're 'respectable.' That's why you're on the Committee. Have you seen our latest nanodetectors for the brain plague?'

The stairs flowed smoothly upward at a shallow angle, then doubled backward up the side of the next hexagonal hall. Imagine Silicon, a whole city built to such indefensible designs. Preposterous.

Opal stopped at a doorway. 'Our laboratory.'

At first glance, the laboratory was full of cancerplast. Bulbs of plast, some crawling within crystalline cages, others flowering into intricate forms. Chrys took a step back.

'It's all right,' Opal assured her, 'everything's under control.' Her cheeks dimpled. 'As controlled as any living thing ever is.' At her command, partitions slid down on four sides, hiding away the experimental plast and generating a full-scale viewing stage. Total darkness descended.

'Ten,' came a voice out of the dark, marking the magnification. 'One hundred . . . one thousand.. ..' At a billion-fold, a bright speck appeared, growing. It became a mechanical spider, then kept growing until it towered overhead like a giant squid.

'What is that?'

'A dendrimer.' Opal's voice hovered at her shoulder. 'A molecular machine, the size of a micro filament. Note its extensible arms. It's a sensor for dopamine.'

'You mean .. . that swims around in my head?' A giant squid, plumbing the depths of her brain.

'The dendrimers float about your neurons, binding and releasing dopamine. When dopamine occupies more than half the dendrimer's arms, it sends a signal. Once a critical number of signals coincide, it sets off the alarm.'

'So you design the dopamine sensors.'

'My wizards do,' Opal said. 'Now, we're trying to build more sophisticated sensors, which detect scarcer molecules that come from damaged neurons. And scarcer yet, the molecules put out by misbehaving micros.' Her