Brain Plague

Chrys held back. Daeren squeezed her hand, then let go. 'Leave us,' he told the doctor.

After the doctor had gone, Daeren stepped toward the bed. 'Eris. You remember me.'

Chrys had to restrain herself from pulling him back. She'd have her people scour his bones afterward; she doubted those Elves who cleared Eris knew what they were doing.

The white folds of Daeren's talar swished as he took another step. 'Eris, I have some friends for you.'

Eris roused himself, twisting around. His face was a tortured mask. The shock of recognition nearly made Chrys black out; she caught herself, stepping back. 'You have them, don't you?' Eris tried to rise from the bed, but he fell to his knees on the floor and grasped Daeren's talar. 'Give them back. Please, give them to me.'

Daeren's face tightened with pity and distaste. He held out the transfer. Seizing it from his hand, Eris pressed it to his neck. His eyes widened, a rapt expression suffused his face. Then he fell to kiss the talar's hem.

Suddenly Daeren grasped his arm and tried to pull him up. 'Listen, friend. Pull yourself together. You're a human being.'

The Elf could only stare, uncomprehending.

In the news, an old unused satellite station outside Valedon had exploded, the cause unknown. Andra confirmed it was the end of the Slave World, and the Leader. 'But not the end of 'endless light,'' she warned the carriers at Olympus. 'We're advancing for now, but who knows what the brain plague will do next.'

Opal agreed. 'There will always be light and leaders, and only wisdom to tell good from bad.'

Catching sight of Sartorius, Chrys gave the post-shaped sentient a quick hug. 'I hope it wasn't too bad at the Palace.'

'Tolerable, thanks,' said the worm-face. A vast understatement, Chrys guessed. 'For now, Flexor is taking over our treatment program. I have to go to Helicon to start theirs.'

'With microbial partners.' The blue angels had a new calling.

'They really help,' said the doctor. 'They help those who need to say yes.'

Chrys searched the virtual singing-trees for Jasper, who was planning the official seeding of Silicon. The seed would be sown in a protective enclosure floating just outside Helicon. Beneath the arch of a tree Moraeg waved to her. Beside her, Carnelian, who had officially joined the Committee to represent 'independent' interests, was there listening earnestly to Garnet's latest investment advice.

A newcomer caught her eye, an exceptionally tall woman with the most impressive build Chrys had ever seen. Chrys stared, puzzled. There was something familiar about her. Then the face smiled back. Chrys's jaw just about dropped to the floor.

'Hello, dear,' crooned Zircon in a deep contralto. 'I hope you like the change. I've been working on it for some time.'

'Excuse me while I faint.'

'Oh,' she raised a hand, 'don't do that. It might be catching.'

'Check the building code first.'

Zircon frowned at a serving caryatid, which had come out full of worms in the face. 'Can't we fix those servers?'

All the caryatids were worm-faces today. 'You must be in love with Doctor Flexor.'

Selenite caught her arm. 'Chrys, you have to talk with us. It's . . . important.'

Jasper was there, looking very serious. Her heart sank. What had her people done now?

'Chrys.' Selenite seemed somehow embarrassed. 'I know your people mean well, but—it just isn't done.'

'What isn't done?'

'Solicitation,' said Jasper. 'Fund-raising.' Warily, he stroked his jaw.

'Why isn't it done?'

Selenite crossed her arms. 'It's absurd. You can't just rebuild the Underworld. Public housing is always a failure.'

'That's right. ' Jasper's jaw jutted forward. 'I should know, I grew up in it. We sims don't want fancy designers messing around down there. Property values rise, we get shoved out.'

'Quite true.'

'We know you have a good heart,' Selenite added, 'but you have to understand, the Underworld has always been there. Every society has an Underworld.'

'Absolutely.'

Selenite spread her hands. 'Then why do you let them do this?'

Chrys shrugged. 'My people have done well for me. I like to humor them. I can spare a few million credits.'

'But we don't have to.'

'Certainly not. Just say no.'

Selenite looked at Jasper, then back to Chrys. 'They'd better do it right. Or else.'

Jasper put a hand to the crag of his brow. 'Look, they can have half a billion to play with. Just don't let them talk to Garnet.'

When the journalist Quinx's story came out, Chrys was amazed to see her parents on camera, her mother churning butter, her father leading the goats up the mountain. Immediately she called home.

'I hope you weren't too bothered.' Chrys's hands twisted nervously. 'It wasn't my idea.'

Her father kept his mouth small but did not seem displeased. 'They got it wrong,' he noted. 'My flock last year won the prize at the village fair, not the county.'

Chrys smiled brightly. 'You see, they always exaggerate. All the other stuff, too,' she added hopefully.

'Not the health plan.' Her mother sounded puzzled. 'The new health plan for all of Dolomoth. They didn't mention that.'

So Arion had remembered. Chrys sighed. 'You know, I was thinking of visiting home. With a friend.' Friends, about a million of them.

Her mother nodded with satisfaction. 'True angels always come home.'

Chrys returned to Helicon to train Ilia to test the Elf carriers. 'I hope you're pleased with your sales,' the gallery director told her. 'Both originals and copies are doing well—with a surprising range of buyers. Names we've never seen before.'

'And some anonymous,' Chrys pointed out. 'I wonder who bought Seven Stars and the Hunter?'

Ilia gave her a look. 'He couldn't very well let anyone else have it, could he?'

The morning light spread the turquoise waves with flecks of titanium. Upon the sea floated the seed of Silicon, a dark pod of plast, not unlike Garnet's ball of 'flowers.' Just a demo, of course, the ceremonial breaking of ground on a world that had none. Around the pod stretched an immense ring-shaped observation platform, full of sensors, controllers, and protective devices. The brains in the back had been busy.

On the platform, Chrys shaded her eyes with her hand, squinting against the wind that tugged at her hair, which she had pulled back and bound as tight as she could. Her gray talar braced itself intelligently in the wind. Wind and water, azure and alabaster—an inspiration for her next piece, her eyes quickly sketched.

Recollecting herself, Chrys flashed a nervous smile at the members of the Board. The sentients seemed pleased, as far as one could tell, while the Elves looked on, their smiles frozen, as the seed sprouted and grew into an outrageous lava-colored dome of the model, each window a swirling spiral galaxy. Next to the board members stood the Prime Guardian of Elysium and the Protector of Valedon, his talar weighted down with gems, and all the other honored guests, humans, worm-faces, and other sentients of every size and description, that had come out to honor the first new city of Elysium to be built in two thousand years. And by the time it's done, she silently told them, some of you will hate me. For good reason.

'Azetidine.' Calling her nom d'art, the snake-eggs descended, swirling around her, obscuring her view. 'Some say, Azetidine, that you yourself are not the real builder of Silicon. Is it true?'

'Of course I'm not the builder. The seed of Silicon was actually built by—' She winked to download the long list of 'brains in the back,' sentient engineers, most of whom did not even bother to take sonic names, who had physically created the seed and would nurture its growth for the next few decades.

'Nor are you the real dynatect,' the snake-eggs pursued. 'You did not really design Silicon; you were just a culture dish for those who did. Is that true?'

Chrys stood taller, the wind from the sea already pulling filaments of lava from her hair. 'Silicon was designed