Brain Plague

Her mouth fell open, then she closed it. No wonder the agent looked so young; he could be a hundred for all she knew. He could be a college athlete all his life, while her own brother grew paler every year, waiting for mitochondria. She swallowed hard. 'Is there a family plan?'

'If you have dependents—'

'Never mind.' As soon as she earned some money, she would get her brother covered, long enough to get new mitochondria. 'I've decided,' she told the two anxious micros. 'You are my people. Just remember one rule: If you have to preach, do it outside my eyes.'

THREE

The Eleutherians tumbled out of the microneedles into capillaries of an untouched world. Their rotary filaments propelled them swiftly to the brain, where they tunneled through the arterial walls into the arachnoid. For shelter, they strung dendrimers, long chainlike molecules, back and forth across the branches of fibroblast cells.

'Only the cross-branches,' warned Fern. 'Never touch the lining on either side.' The arachnoid, with its cross-branches of fibroblast cells, stretched forever between the two outer linings of the brain. A breach of either lining would attract hungry white cells, or deadly microglia, the brain's special defenders. Microglia normally stayed within the central nervous tissue, their long arms tangled amongst the neurons; but the taste of suspicious molecules from the immigrants would activate them.

'We'll be careful,' flashed Poppy, secreting the dendrimers and weaving them in expert patterns across the branches. Already she and other elders were laying out plans for homes and schools, and chambers for breeding. They tapped the capillaries to harvest vitamins and minerals. 'We need to help the children feel at home, as soon as possible. If it doesn't taste right, they won't breed.'

With the fifth wave of immigrants came the children and the young breeders; just three hundred precious vessels of the genes to seed their race and repopulate their world. Three hundred children for ten thousand adults, the most the gods allowed Eleutherians in their new world.

The Lord of Light's blue angels were a conventional lot; they mainly showed blue or violet. But the children of Eleutheria flashed anything from violet to red, and beyond. Poppy watched the precious little rings tumbling out of the silicon vessels that had carried them safely through the bloodstream, eager to taste the New World. 'Our children come in colors that even the gods can't see,' she flashed proudly.

'Watch yourself,' warned Fern. 'Our new god could see you well enough.' The children worried her; their journey took too long. 'They're getting depressed and philosophical. They'll all turn into elders before they breed.'

'They'll soon feel better,' flashed Poppy, 'now that they're away from the blue angels.' The blue angels secreted a developmental hormone that made a third of all children turn into elders without breeding; this had kept the Eleutherian numbers small. 'We'll cheer them up with new things to taste. We'll build nightclubs.'

The rest of the micros were transferred in the patch of microneedles, just like the first two. It took several passes to transfer them, ten thousand in all. Ten thousand microscopic rings that claimed to be people.

'Oh Great One,' the letters flashed green. 'Our growing children need arsenic.'

'Arsenic?' Chrys looked up. 'Isn't that what the slaves kill for?' On the street they called it 'ace.'

Doctor Sartorius extended an appendage. A claw snapped open, revealing a white pill. 'Micros evolved on a planet full of arsenic. They need it as an essential mineral.'

'But ace is poison.'

'It's a controlled substance,' the doctor admitted. 'But our dietary supplement traps the arsenic in special cagelike molecules that keep it out of your own cells. Only the micros can extract it.'

Chrys eyed the pill distastefully. 'People will think I'm a slave.'

Daeren shook his head. 'Chrys, if people think that, they'll think it no matter what.' His voice was low. 'I told you, you'll face prejudice. We all do.'

The worm face warned, 'There's a black market in arsenic. Never, ever let your micros give up their arsenic, for any reason.'

'The Plan supplies you once a month,' said Daeren. 'If ever you fall short, you could be accused of selling it. You'd end up in jail, and your people wiped out.'

'Please, Great One—have mercy. Our children will starve without arsenic.'

Reluctantly Chrys swallowed the pill.

The doctor's appendage retracted unnervingly into his cylindrical body. 'Your nanoservos report no problems—no meningeal inflammation, no invasion of central nervous tissue. Daeren, can you stay? I'm on call.' All his arms retracted and disappeared. Rearing backward, he twisted his body around and left.

Chrys sat back, and her hands sketched a moon in the air, itching to get back to her painting stage. 'Where are the micros?' she asked. 'They don't answer anymore.'

'They're busy building their city,' said Daeren.

'God of Mercy, is all well?' The green letters returned. 'Such a beautiful, untouched wilderness for our children to settle.'

'Fern's back.' Untouched wilderness indeed.

'All right.' Daeren came over and sat in front of her, his eyes level with hers. 'May I check your eyes, just a minute?' Blue rings flashed again.

'Of course, we stayed out of the gray cortex,' Fern insisted.

'Not a taste,' added Poppy. 'The blue angels are so strict. They never trust us.'

'They sure talk fast,' Chrys observed.

'A thousand times faster than humans. They're very social; when you meet another carrier, you'll always know.'

'Well, I have no time to socialize. I have to put up my show. Can I go home now?'

'You signed an agreement to stay overnight, at least. Another day would be better, especially if you lack help at home.'

'Saints and angels,' she whispered. 'When will I get to my work?' The turquoise moon was barely begun.

Daeren leaned closer. 'You'd better pay attention to what's going on beneath your skull. Besides building a whole new city overnight, the ten thousand of them want to expand their population as soon as possible. At first, they have only three hundred juveniles to breed; the rest, all elders, cannot produce offspring.'

'All elders? What is this, a retirement community?'

'A common population structure, for microbes,' he said. 'Only a few reproduce, while the others stay active enough to maintain the environment—'viable but non-culturable.' '

'These sound like they have plenty of culture.'

'Like medieval monks, they store all the history of their people. They 'write' it in their chromosomes.'

Monks—even worse than priests.

'Most of the time,' Daeren said, 'they keep just a few breeders to gradually replace those who die. But to found a new colony, they need to increase their number a thousand-fold, as quickly as possible.' Above the stage appeared an S-shaped curve.

'The population will rise steeply for the next two weeks, then taper off by the end of the month at about a million. But at two weeks, you reach a critical point where nearly half the population are children.'

Chrys looked up. 'What's wrong with that?'

Daeren leaned back, chin in his hand. 'It's like a feudal society before the plagues set in. Too many youngsters, lacking in judgment; they can get into trouble.'

Microbial juvenile delinquents. 'Like, they start gang wars?'

'They could invade the central brain tissue. That's how plague micros take over the dopamine center.'