Brain Plague

'It's always the same.' Selenite leaned back, her hand catching the back of her seat as she looked out the window. A distant star-ship gleamed far above, coming in from Elysium. 'Always some big ego to build the damn thing, then call me in to fix the mess.'

Chrys gripped the table. 'At least you're not marked for murder.'

That got her. Selenite's lashes fluttered, and her irises flashed red. 'You're right,' she said. 'That must be a strain.'

'Well, if you'd like to share the strain, here's your chance. I told Jasper we'd split the deal, fifty-fifty.' Adding, to Fireweed, 'Tell the minions they're welcome—and mean it. hove God, love the minions too.'

Selenite's flashing eyes returned Chrys's stare as she considered what must be the biggest job of her career. 'For once,' she concluded, 'I might as well start on the ground floor.'

Afterward, as the lightcraft swooped upward, Chrys looked out upon the immensity of the Comb slipping away beneath her feet, the great edifice whose fate she helped shape. A sense of power surged through her; she could do it, she herself could make her mark in the world.

Her people, though, seemed uncharacteristically dark. 'Fireweed? Forget-me- not?'

'I am here, One True God.'

Chrys took an AZ wafer. 'We are ready to sign the contract. Are you not pleased?'

'It's time for the Light of Truth. We are not ready.'

'Not ready?' Were they still upset about working with the minions of the Deathlord?

'The Silicon project is too large.'

'I'll order another memory upgrade from Plan Ten,' Chrys offered.

'There's no room,' explained Forget-me-not. 'All the computing power needed would not fit inside your skull. Either our processors must shrink to subatomic levels, or we need a breakthrough in mathematical theory.'

'We've been working on it for many generations,' flickered Fireweed. 'We always assumed one breakthrough or another would come through in time. But not yet.'

Stunned, Chrys stared without seeing. After all her worries, all the persuading and soul-searching, after meeting the Silicon Board, after shamefully waiting for Rose to die, after finally getting Selenite back—now her own people could not do the job. She buried her head in her hands.

For the next few days Chrys tried to thrust it from her mind, the whole cursed sentient project. Her first trip to Gallery Elysium was coming up, to preview the arrangement of her exhibition. She painted day and night.

'Chrysoberyl.' Xenon's voice startled her one morning. 'You might check the news.'

The deserted world, 'Bird Song,' had been hit. The Elves had pumped energy from a white hole into the planet to boil and sterilize. Standard stage one of terraforming, just as Valedon and even Bird Song itself had been terraformed, ages before. No more birds left—now there would be nothing, not even a microbe.

The snake-eggs had obtained footage from Chrys's abduction to Endless Light, showing the dying slaves. Leaked from 'a highly placed source in Elysian intelligence'—that must be Arion. Even urbane Iridians were shocked to see. The Slave World was no paradise.

Oddly enough, no reports mentioned Chrys herself. Daeren was named the agent who obtained the intelligence. Daeren's image played over and over, implying that he himself had gone to the Slave World and told Arion what to destroy. Chrys shook her head. Until she herself became the frequent subject of news, she never realized how often snake-eggs got things wrong.

'We tried,' she assured her people. 'We did what we could.'

'We did,' agreed Fireweed. 'Our cousins had time to escape.'

'But their lies will fool us no more,' said Forget-me-not. 'Never again.'

A day passed, then evening. To her surprise, Daeren stopped by. Merope jumped down from her lap as she rose to greet him. Her pulse raced; it always felt good to see him, though she tried to hide how much.

'Chrys—I have to know.' Daeren seemed more agitated than she had ever seen him; his eyes would not rest, but darted this way and that. 'Did you tell them?'

'Daeren, what do you mean?'

'They were gone,' he told her. 'The Leader, and the healthier hosts. Did you warn them?'

She blinked, confused. 'I thought you did. If you didn't—'

'Chrys, this isn't a village feud in Dolomoth. It's about the law of the Free Fold.'

Her eyes narrowed. 'Now you sound like Topaz. You won't listen to me.'

'If you warned them, it's treason.'

'If you didn't, then who did? Daeren—'

'Treason—don't you see?' His eyes rolled away. 'They could put you away for life—with all your people wiped.'

She put her hands on her hips. 'So what if we warned them? Aren't they our cousins? You know it. You want to know what they think of it? Like a slave—you can't even look.'

He faced her then. For a moment their eyes locked. Then he let out a cry and whipped his head away. 'I've had enough. Someone else will have to deal with you.' Without another word, he left.

She stared, too shocked to call after him. For a time she could only stand there, her eyes not seeing. Stumbling to her room, she fell onto the bed, half asleep. Someone else will have to deal with you, the words echoed. But there was no one else, no one in all seven worlds of the Fold.

'One True God, how the neurotransmitters flux through your brain. We fear for you.'

Too low to reply, Chrys imagined herself falling forever, falling through one of those streams of white-hot lava she had watched on Mount Dolomoth as a child, as the ground quaked beneath her feet, her ears deafened. No human being had ever moved her as much as that mountain come alive. Yet Daeren felt somehow different, off scale. She had had no idea how much she counted on him. And now, what had she done to turn him away?

'God of Mercy,' called Forget-me-not, 'have mercy on yourself. Your dopamine and serotonin have fallen drastically.'

'One True God, is there anything we could do?' asked Fireweed. 'Could we not adjust your dopamine, just enough to tide you over?'

Chrys felt as if she would never get up, would never care about anything or anyone again. 'Do as you will.'

'Oh Great One,' flashed sky blue Forget-me-not, 'in ages past, the Watcher Dendrobium herself foretold that one day you would speak just so, and that we must say no.'

Dendrobium, Daeren's favorite Watcher, had chosen to live her last life out with Chrys. The tears flowed at last. 'The Lord of Light is gone, and I love him. I can't live without him.'

'You love him?' said Forget-me-not. 'The love of the gods? Like children who seek to merge?'

'We knew nothing of this,' added Fireweed.

'We knew nothing, when we spoke in anger to the blue angels.'

Chrys resisted saying they must be total imbeciles if they lived inside her own head and couldn't tell that she hopelessly loved Daeren. Didn't they feel her pulse rise every time her eyes fixed on him?

'There is but One True God,' Fireweed observed, 'yet the God longs for another. A mystery—How can this be? There's only one answer: to serve God well, we must serve the other as our own.'

'Fireweed is right,' said Forget-me-not. 'Ancient history tells that the