Brain Plague

with your 'priests.' Just tell them, no preaching.'

'You tell them,' he said. 'Inside your own head, you make the rules.' As he spoke, a hospital form lit up and hovered above the holostage.

Chrys read the form warily. 'You're sure you can get them out again?'

'Of course, Chrysoberyl,' promised the doctor.

From a pocket in his seamless nanotex Daeren withdrew a patch of plast the size of a thumb. The kind used for immunizations, it contained microscopic transfer needles that penetrated the skin without injury. He placed it at the side of his neck, just below the base of the skull. 'The two micros will migrate into the patch. When I hand it to you, you need to place it immediately, just as I did.'

He took the transfer patch and held it out to her. Chrys picked it up. She turned it over in her palm. It felt like an ordinary bit of plast, smooth and warm, like the time she got booster shots. At last she placed it on her neck. It molded itself and adhered to the skin.

'That's fine,' he observed. 'Except that you just made them wait two days. Would you like to sit in a lightcraft that long?'

'What do you mean?'

'Micros live ten thousand times faster than we do. For them, one minute feels like a week. An hour is a year; a day is a generation.'

'Well,' said Chrys, 'they can put up with it. You said I make the rules.'

'Inside your own head. Outside—we'll get to that. Don't move the patch yet.'

The patch was starting to tickle her skin. 'How long does it take?'

'Not long, but you need to make sure they got through. They'll let you know, when they reach your retina.'

'My retina? You mean they crawl inside my eyes?'

'Just inside the blind spot, where they can reach your neuroport. Try closing your eyes.' A light flashed, pale green. She clapped her hands to her head. Moments ticked by, the sweat from her palms dampening her hair. Flashes of green, out of the dark, at random. The flashes swirled in fernlike fronds, then suddenly came into focus.

A luminous disk of green, with a small depression in the middle. It did not look like the candy rings of the doctor's image; more like a star, full of twinkling projections. The projections extended in all directions, several times farther than the width of the ring-shaped body.

'Is that... it?'

Daeren's voice intensified. 'What does she look like?'

'Furry,' said Chrys. 'Not like on the holostage.'

The doctor explained, 'The holostage showed a space-filling model, based on electron density. The micros can't really 'see' details visually, because their size is just above the resolution limit for light. However, they can detect light blinking very fast, like a sound wave.'

Daeren nodded. 'They 'hear' blinking light, rather like we hear sound. We can hear speech clearly, but can't 'picture' the source.'

'Then how do they 'see' all those fine projections?'

He glanced at the doctor.

'Each of those fine projections is a long chain molecule,' the doctor explained. 'A receptor molecule that can 'taste' different kinds of molecules in its path.'

Like a cat's whiskers, she thought.

The green color fluttered in and out like a strobe. Then letters appeared, as if on a keypad: 'I am here.'

Chrys's eyes flew open. 'She can talk!' The words hovered in her window, like a message from the city, but only in one eye.

'What did she say?' Daeren demanded suddenly. 'Is she okay? Where's the other one?'

Another bewhiskered ring, tinted infrared, like a poppy at sunrise. 'Here I am! Can you see me?'

Chrys's window projected full spectrum, but nobody ever sent her text in infrared. She gripped the edge of her chair. 'They said 'I am here,' both of them.'

'You saw Unseen, that's good.' He sat back, his hands relaxed. 'You can put down the patch now.'

The transfer patch peeled off her neck, leaving a tingling sensation.

'Greetings from Eleutheria.' Again in her right eye the letters pulsed green. 'Please, Oh Great One, give us a sign. We have waited so long. We bring gifts and songs of praise.'

'They're praying.' Chrys laughed. 'God never listens to humans—why should he care about micros?'

'You should answer them, before they get discouraged.'

'What?'

'Please, Oh Great One. We have waited so long for the Promised World.'

Her jaw fell, and she stared at the agent. 'You mean. . . they're praying to me?'

'They'd better. You're their entire world; you offer life or death.'

She continued to stare, without reading the rest of the letters that desperately appeared. To be prayed to, herself, was definitely a concept outside her experience, in Dolomoth let alone Iridis. 'Saints and angels,' she muttered to herself. 'So how do I talk back?'

'Use your keypad.'

'You mean they can tap my neuroports?'

'They designed them.'

Micros designed the neuroports, for sale all over Valedon—to help the micros spread. Suddenly it dawned on her. She looked at the doctor, then back to the agent. 'They're taking over—and you help them.'

The agent sighed. 'Indians always say that, about the latest new immigrants: 'They'll take over.' We said it of L'liites before they married into the Great Houses. We said it about sentients, and simians. And now micros.'

Microbial 'immigrants'?

'Oh Great One—without a sign, we will die.'

She blinked twice, then focused on the text box, where the neuroports would detect movement of her eye muscles. Her eyes flickered simply, 'Hello.'

'A sign! The god in her mercy has given a sign.'

'Let us sing in praise.'

The two bewhiskered rings tumbled over. Then a swirl of color opened at the center, expanding, with all the colors of the rainbow, violet through infrared. The swirl grew, until it filled her entire visual field. Chrys watched, transfixed. After a few seconds, the swirl faded. A burst of stars, expanding, shifting through lava, red and orange, only to fall at her feet. Another starburst, then another, all in different ranges of color.

'Did you like them, Oh Great One?' The infrared letters returned. 'Which did you like best?'

Her eyes wrote, 'I liked the starburst.'

'At last, I am seen! And the God of Mercy likes my offering best.'

Just like human priests, playing holier than thou. 'I like all offerings equally,' Chrys wrote back. 'My world is a democracy.'

The letters came back green. 'As the God wishes. Are we granted names?'

'What is your name?'

'We went nameless in the eyes of the Lord of Light. Our own God will grant us names.'

The mention of another god, whoever that was, made her vaguely jealous. 'I'll call you Fern,' she told the green letters. 'And you will listen to no other god but me.'

'Of course, God of Mercy. We live or die at your pleasure.'

'What do you call me?' came the infrared.

'I call you Poppy.'

'Thanks, Oh Great One. May we bring our children to the arachnoid?'