Brain Plague

kills.'

'At this rate, most of us will die within a generation.'

Chrys fought rising panic. 'Can you protect the children?'

'We can encapsulate them. But they'll lose the ability to merge.'

'Daeren ... could you take their children? Just till we get back—'

'No,' he exclaimed. 'I'm still a long way from normal. You can't trust me with children.'

'We've found the source of the problem. An RNA plasmid infected your white blood cells. It replicates in the cytoplasm of each cell, where it makes the toxin. To eliminate the source, we'd have to kill all your white cells.'

'Daeren—they can't last the trip. They're going to die.' She could hardly believe her own words, but she shook in every limb. Eris—this was his work.

Daeren's hands clenched and unclenched. 'Call Ilia Papilishon,' he told the transit.

Ilia's sprite appeared in her window. 'Dear, what a success! The show—'

'We're in trouble,' Chrys cut in. 'My micros—they've been poisoned. They have to get out of me. Please—can you take the children?'

Ilia's eyes widened. She drew in a sharp breath. 'One doesn't speak of such things.' Her sprite winked out.

Silence lengthened. Damn Ilia, Chrys thought. Damn Arion too, and every damned Elf on the turquoise moon.

'I'll take them,' said Daeren.

'You can't.'

'Just till we get home.'

'We'll get the children ready,' flashed Forget-me-not. 'We'll confine them to one cistern, and we'll keep watch over the Lord of Light.'

It would take several passes to send them all. After the third transfer, Daeren took a deep breath. 'Chrys, I think that's all I can manage. Children get into trouble; they're too curious.'

She sat back and stared ahead, numb with the dying inside. Ahead the flowing bubble merged with another from the side. More Elf passengers with their refined ways, blind to genocide in their midst. How many others had Eris done in this way—only to replace them with his own?

'We're encapsulating nearly everyone. We can last a while, but we will slowly starve.'

'What if false blue angels are hiding in my bones?'

'We've set traps for them.'

From the front of the bubble, where the new passengers merged, came a figure veiled in white. The figure moved toward them slowly as a ghost. Chrys stared, every muscle taut. It wouldn't take much to knock one Elf clear across the car, no matter what the fine.

The stranger came right up to Chrys and stopped. The veil parted at the face. Chrys let out a cry.

It was Ilia. 'Do what you have to.' Ilia's eyes darted back and forth, then met hers. 'You're not the first, you know.'

'The rest of the children . . . you can take them?' Chrys passed her the transfer.

Daeren said, 'We're forever in your debt, Ilia.'

'Why?' exclaimed Chrys. 'Why do you let this go on?'

Ilia adjusted her veil. 'If the Guard knew, they'd wipe us all. Only Arion acknowledges the micros are people. The others don't want to know.' For a moment Ilia's features wrinkled as if very old. 'Your show will change that, but it will take time. Elysians have time, but our micros don't.'

Daeren shook his head. 'Elysians don't have time either.' The precious Elf students in their jumpsuits, cared for till age fifty. 'Experimenting' with micros.

The veil closed. Ilia moved off, carrying the last of Eleutheria's children.

Back at Andra's home, the doctor's worms encircled her scalp. 'All your micros have to go,' he told Chrys. 'It will take a day to clear out your white cells and accelerate new ones from the bone marrow. All the while you'll be cleared of arsenic, in case false blue angels emerge. We've found we can't always find them in the bone.'

'You can't?' Chrys asked. Arion had himself wiped daily and thought he was safe from Eris.

Andra gave a grim smile. 'Medicine's never perfect. That's why they need lawyers. Daeren,' she began warningly.

'I know,' said Daeren, 'I violated the protocol. But her people would have died out.'

'They wouldn't be the first.'

'But I couldn't just—'

'If Sar and I don't report you, we're all in violation. All our people too.'

The four of them were silent. Only the holostage flickered, Chrys's vital signs scanning down.

Andra held out a patch to Chrys. 'You can give me another hundred thousand,' she said. 'That's all I can take. Other Olympians will take the rest.'

Opal arrived, and Selenite. Chrys sat there, feeling drained, Daeren's arm tight around her as the patch went back and forth, dispersing the Eleutherian refugees. Still more to go—Jasper and Garnet each took their share, then Pyrite and Zircon.

At last, for the final few, Moraeg. Diamonds swirling like a starry night; that night, Chrys remembered, when the Seven had planned their last show. Find your own way, Moraeg had told Chrys. Now it had come to this. Back where she started.

Moraeg bent over her. 'It's only for a day, isn't it?'

The doctor warned, 'It won't be easy, but you'll make it.'

What did he mean, she wondered. Carriers who lost their people 'didn't last,' out of longing. But this was just for a day. The patch transferred one last time.

'One True God,' flashed Fireweed. 'All the rest have gone. I alone remain. My time is short, but I vowed to be yours until the end.'

The doctor's worms flexed. 'Are they all clear?'

'Except one,' Chrys whispered. Fireweed had stayed, like a hermit upon Mount Dolomoth, alone with her God. Perhaps every believer in One True God secretly yearned to be the one true worshiper.

Daeren squeezed her hand. 'Some of mine did the same. Sar had to—'

'Never mind.' The doctor made a rare interruption. 'The micro can't last long, without taking food or risking the toxin. The arsenic wipe can wait.'

Before she could rest, Chrys had to sketch her portrait of the doomed Fireweed, the infrared letters flashing faithfully. At last she went to bed with Daeren, falling into a troubled sleep. Early in the morning, thrashing with troubled dreams, she woke. 'They're gone!' she cried. 'Daeren—'

He held her tight. 'They're not gone. See?' His own eyes flickered, all the colors of the stars, a million light- years away.

'They're gone from me. I can't help it; I feel as if—' She was tumbling over and over, like the time she fell weightless in the dead spacecraft.

'That happened to me,' Daeren said. 'The inner ear goes off because they're not there, and you're disoriented without them.'

Tumbling forever, falling through space; it was so unbearable, she thought she would die. But the tumbling only went on.

'Give them back,' she found herself shouting. 'Just one—'

'It will pass,' he quietly insisted.

'Let the false ones out of the bone. At least they can stop it—' She hardly knew what she shouted, until the doctor returned to adjust something. Then she slept, half rousing now and then, back to troubled sleep.

In the morning she did not care if she slept or woke. Her surroundings receded, all seemed far away. 'Can you tell me?' Daeren was pleading to get her to talk. 'Tell me what's going on.'

Chrys could not even shake her head. Empty and dark, her mind was an abyss.

'They still remember you,' he promised. 'Even the children. Look, you have to eat; they'll be hungry.'