Brain Plague

ONE

"Lord of Light."

"I see you, Green. Why have you come?"

"We pray you, give us our Promised World."

"Every day you come to my eyes to demand a new world. Is it not enough that I saved you from death and sheltered you for seven generations?"

Green remembered that a generation of children grew old in a god's day. Seven generations in exile; a mere seven days, for the Lord of Light. But in each generation, Green asked again. "The Blind God promised us a New World. Let my people go."

Darkness lengthened. Within the Lord of Light's great eye waited Green, along with the second priest, Unseen.

"Very well. You shall have your wish. But beware—your New World will be more than you imagine. You are a dangerous people, Green and Unseen. You will reach too far, and your children will die."

The peak spurted lava, an arch of blinding white across the sky. As it fell, the lava stretched into butterflies of red and infrared, the color only Chrys could see. The infrared butterflies collapsed into a river of fire. On a ledge above, a clump of poppies shared the lava's color, their petals outstretched as if to drink it in.

In the foreground floated a polished cat's eye, the namestone of artist Chrysoberyl of Dolomoth. Chrys knew real lava well enough, the heat rising like a blast of hell from Mount Dolomoth, where she was born. But Lava Butterflies was on display in Iridis, the planet Valedon's fabulous capital. Never mind the brain plague, and the cancers crawling up from the Underworld; an artist made it in Iridis, or died trying.

At the gallery with Chrys watched the rest of the Seven Stars, friends from her class at the Iridian Institute of Design, setting up their annual show. The virtual pyroscape projected above its own holostage. Chrys pulled back her thick red-black hair, which never would fall smooth and had caught in the cat's eye twirling between her breasts. "What do you think?"

Topaz, who always directed the show, walked all the way around the pyroscape, then put a hand to her chin. Her veins snaked pleasingly along her neck, and her honey-colored name-stone twirled upon her nanotex, an intelligent clothing material. "I like that bit at the end, dear, especially the dark flower. The moral tension of power and fragility."

Chrys nodded, though she had made the poppies bright infrared, just beyond red, like the cooling lava. No eyes but her own saw that, not even the eyes of Topaz, who did portraits prettier than their models.

"Your sky could lighten," said Pearl, a landscapist known for moonlit skies. Pearl put her arm through that of Topaz; the pair had been married senior year. A petite woman with delicate veins, her blue nails matched the waves of ultramarine pulsing down her skintight nanotex. "And those butterflies, their dark wings could show up—"

"They're not dark." The lava emitted wavelengths beyond red; Chrys saw the infrared, just as she saw it reflected by skin, offsetting the dark veins. Normal Valan humans could not see infrared. Those Elysians, now, with their genetically engineered senses—they could see it. If they ever deigned to take notice of Valan art.

Zircon stretched, his shoulders bulging like boulders beneath his nanoplast, its swirling patterns designed to accentuate every muscle. "Never mind, Chrys, it'll sell." A sandy-haired giant of a man, Zircon did installations that filled a city block. "Your scale is domestic. It'll fit right into someone's living room." He really meant, why didn't she make the volcano life size, like his own immense creations. But Zircon lived off his lover, a wealthy Elysian collector. Chrys could barely afford a cubic meter of painting stage. And if something didn't sell soon, her apartment would spit out her things and take a new tenant.

Topaz patted her hand. "That's okay, Cat's Eye. Your palette is fine by me."

Chrys shrugged. "Hey—I do things my own way." That was what she had said in her brief stint at portraits, the year she lived with Topaz. Chrys's portraits all showed people's veins like spiderwebs. She knew she would never sell portraits anyway.

"Yours is a good way," said Lady Moraeg. Lady Moraeg's dark pigmented features reflected only infrared, a "poppy" tint that pleased Chrys. Her diamonds flowed in intricate formations through nanotex nearly smart enough to demand a salary. An immigrant from the planet L'li, Moraeg had made her fortune mining moons, then married a Lord from one of the Great Houses, before she took up art at the Institute. "You find your own way, Chrys. What you need is a sentient studio—an intelligent partner to project your vision."

Chrys smiled at the diamonds; Lady Moraeg always meant well. But Chrys, in her twenty-ninth year, felt time closing in. She had yet to "make it" in the art world of Iridis. She had to earn enough to pay the rent, let alone hire a sentient studio.

Before her eyes blinked a message light. The light hovered before her, next to the keypad and credit balance in the "window" produced by the optic neuroport inside each eye. Each neuroport, a dot of nanoplast, sat on the blind spot, where it tapped the retinal axons feeding into the optic nerve. Chrys had shut her window to avoid downloading ads from the street, but this one blinked "urgent." Was it her father back in Dolomoth? Was her younger brother sick again? Her brother was on the waiting list for new mitochondria—the tiny cells within cells that powered all living tissue, including his ailing heart.

Topaz snapped her fingers. "Pyroscape always draws a crowd. Gallery," she called. "Let's put Lava Butterflies here."

"Excellent placement, Citizen." The Gallery, a sentient machine, obligingly sprouted another holostage between Lady Moraeg's florals and Zirc's installation, which took up an entire hall.

"For the Opening," Topaz reminded, "we still have setup, cleanup, and publicity." She squeezed a viewcoin. The viewcoin's signal reached the window in everyone's eyes.

As the task list came up in Chrys's eye, the message light vanished. If it were important, it would download at home. "I'll do cleanup." After opening night, Chrys would be too stressed to sleep anyhow.

Lady Moraeg stepped forward. "I'll do setup. Topaz, thanks for getting us organized." Going out, she patted Chrys on the arm. "If you're ever in the market for a studio, I'll help you choose a good one."

"Thanks," said Chrys. "When my credit line adds a couple digits." The credit line in her window hovered near zero, and her rent was due the next day. She already owed Moraeg, and she hated to ask Zircon.

Zircon grinned, flexing his biceps; he worked out at the same club with Chrys. "There are ways to raise credit."

Chrys eyed him coolly. "Like, I should join the slaves and rob a ship?" The "mind slaves," their brains controlled by the plague, terrorized deep space.

Topaz frowned. "That's no joke. The slaves took a friend of mine—nobody knows how they knew his flight plan." The brain-plagued hijackers shipped their captives to the hidden Slave World, where they were building an armed fortress for their mysterious Enlightened Leader. The Valan Protector always pledged to find that Slave World and nuke it. But he hadn't yet.

"Anybody could be a slave," warned Pearl. "Anyone you know. At first you can't tell, but they end up vampires." "Vampires," late-stage slaves with jaundiced eyes and broken veins, stalked the Underworld for a neck to bite before they died.

As the artists departed they passed Topaz's portraits, glowing giants trapped within ice cubes. At the front wall Gallery opened a doorway, like a mouth sideways. Topaz called, "Just two more weeks left to make this our best show ever." She patted Zircon's bicep. "Thanks for getting us the Director of Gallery Elysium."

Elysium—the genetically engineered "Elves," who saw twenty primary colors and transmitted radio from their brains—scarcely noticed Valan art. Yet this year, the Director of Gallery Elysium, Ilia Helishon, had condescended to come. Zircon stretched and smiled; if he were a bird, he would have preened his feathers. Chrys's heart beat faster. Condescension or not, this was her one chance to get her work seen by someone who could see.

Topaz approached the door, arm in arm with Pearl. The door obligingly reopened, its nanoplast gathering outward to each side. Chrys and Zircon followed them out to Center Way, the fifteenth and uppermost level of the ancient skystreet. Swallowing her pride, she made up her mind to borrow her rent from Zircon.

A breeze from the sea swept her face as it keened across the towers of plast—nanoplast, the intelligent material that grew vast sentient buildings, as easily as it grew the nanotex bodysuits the artists wore. Plast formed the bubble cars that glided over the intelligent pavement like oil droplets on a griddle. A million trillion microscopic processors connecting and propelling. Bubbles and pavement glowed infrared, a flow of urban lava. One bubble popped, and a lord and lady emerged in formal talars of fur, the long folds swishing as they strolled past vendors of viewcoins, importuned by beggars until an octopod shooed them down level. From above descended a lightcraft beneath a cone of glowing plasma, powered by a microwave generator in orbit around Valedon. The lightcraft settled in the street and let out two Elves.

The Elves trailed trains of virtual butterflies, their light streaking over anyone who happened to pass behind. Their height barely reached Chrys's shoulder; Elves were bred short, preferring mental size over physique. The couple suddenly laughed in unison, as if sharing a joke through their electronic "sixth sense." Then they joined the Valan lords and ladies in their furs. Just remember, Chrys imagined telling the parentless Elves: You were not born, you were hatched.

"Oh, hell." Pearl stopped and covered her eyes. "My port came loose; it's floating around my eyeball."

"What a nuisance," agreed Topaz. "Back to the clinic and wait two hours." Topaz and Pearl had Comprehensive Health Care Plan Three. They could afford Plan Three, thanks to the sale of Topaz's portraits. Lady Moraeg, on Plan Ten, looked twenty years for her two hundred. Chrys got by on Plan One, which provided neuroports but did not service them.

The night air was clear enough to make out the stars of the seven sisters and their unrequited lover, placed there by the ancient gods. And the moon of Elysium, an ocean-covered world nearly the size of Valedon. The Elf world, a turquoise bauble amid the stars. Chrys's heart pounded—an idea for a new pyroscape, one the Elf director would like. She blinked at her window, her eyes darting back and forth to trace her idea. The eye movements signaled her neuroports, which recorded the sketch and beamed it off to her public memory space.

Below, her message light flashed again. What was the damn thing about? A twitch of her eyelid, and the title sailed before her: Hospital Iridis—test results, urgent.

What test? Hospitals never chased after Ones.

Then she remembered: the tests for the brain enhancers.

Like neuroports, "brain enhancers" were an inexpensive alternative to the genetic engineering the Elves used to extend their minds. But brain enhancers were still experimental. To earn a few credits, Chrys had volunteered for the trial. But why would the hospital send test results at this hour? How could they be urgent?

A flash invaded her eyes. She winced. Before her hovered Valedon's High Protector. She had opened the remote window for her message, and a public service ad had slipped through. She blinked hard, trying to close, but was too late. The translucent sprite stood tall in his silver talar, bedecked with gems of every color and cut.

"Beware of the brain plague." The Protector's voice blared from receivers in her teeth. "The plague endangers not Valedon alone, but all the worlds of the Fold. And not only from deep space, where the slaves hijack our ships." Raising his bejeweled arm, he shook his fist. "The danger lurks in the very streets of Iridis. Beware the mind slaves, addicted to the micros in their brains. Beware their seductive promise, lest they hijack your own brain. If any friend or stranger ever asks you to carry their insidious micros—" The Protector pointed his finger. "Just say no."

"Like you hijack our eyeballs," muttered Chrys. Let the Protector preach to the Underworld and clean out the vampires. It was useless to read her message; she would save it for home.

Pearl stretched and breathed the sea air. "Zirc, I've got some new psychos." Pearl supplemented her income selling patches of psychotropic plast.

Zircon turned, his nanotex swirling gold and crimson along his pectorals. "What kind?"

"Chocolate, summer sun, pure lust. Take your pick." Pearl held out a microneedle patch.

"I'll try all three." He blinked to send her the credits.

Chrys rolled her eyes. "Zirc, when did you last sleep?"

"I won't sleep again till after the show." Each of them worked like mad to finish that last piece—Chrys had just got that idea for a new scene, the moon Elysium above the spattercone. As soon as she got home, she'd get to work.

Suddenly Zircon stopped and seized her arm. His eyes, bright with wine, stared to the end of Center Way. "The Comb. Has she ever looked more splendid?"

At the far end of Center Way, the flow of bubbles dipped under, before the Comb. The most breathtaking, the most talked about edifice ever seen, the Comb, a sentient, self-aware building, had begun with a nanoplastic seed. A seed from a mind full of brain enhancers.

"Such mastery of space," mused Zircon, "the plastic flow of form from ground to sky. Great as a world, yet plain as an eggshell."

The seed with its genetic program had grown a honeycomb of rooms and hallways, the facade of hexagons bordered with windows, long ribbons of windows that were the hallmark of its creator. The Comb housed the new Institute for Nano Design; from designer drugs to designer buildings, it embraced all the creative power of the very small. Her facade flickering red and infrared against the night sky, the Comb continued to grow as needed, developing new rooms and hallways at her base while pushing the older ones to dizzying heights.

Pearl warned, "Not everyone likes the Comb."

The brain-enhanced dynatect who built the Comb, Titan of Sardis, had been burnt down by a laser, right here on Center Way, just the week before. The laser had streaked Titan's eyes, searing through to the back of his skull. Gang crossfire, the news said, though gangs generally stayed below. All week, every newscast, the blackened specter of his body had haunted Chrys's eyes.

"To think that all Titan's genius ends with the Comb." Still staring, Zircon shook his head. "What I'd give to create like that."

Chrys smiled slyly. "What would you take?"

"Brain enhancers? I don't know."

"Brain enhancers," said Topaz thoughtfully. "To compete with Elves."

Pearl shook her head. "Brain enhancers come from the mind slaves."

"No," said Chrys. "Brain enhancers are cultured cells. They boost brainpower—like mental mitochondria."

Zircon repeated, "I don't know." His eyes widened. "What if they turned out smarter than me?"

"Smarter than you? Microscopic cells?" Chrys rolled her eyes. "Saints and angels preserve us." She turned for her transit stop.

Zircon patted her head. "See you at the gym." She'd get the rent from him then, Chrys thought, if nothing had sold by tomorrow.

Chrys stepped into the pulsing street, and a bubble slowed to pop open. As she stepped inside, the bubble swallowed her up, gliding forward until it plunged down the tube, to descend twenty levels below. As the bubble descended, Chrys reviewed the sketch in her eyes: a spattercone by night, with a full Elysian moon. The Elf gallery director would love it.

At last the tube opened, just one level above the Underworld. Chrys inhaled the scent of sewage and shorted-out plast. It was not the worst neighborhood, mainly decent immigrant "simians," with Homo gorilla ancestry; they did tube repair and other jobs sentient machines wouldn't touch. Graffiti scrawled across the nano-root of what was a city bank ten levels above—SIMS GO BACK TO jungle— HOMO IS FOR SAPIENS. "Sapiens" was an anti-immigrant faction. Sapiens hated sentients, too, although it was less obvious where to "send back" the self-aware machines.

From many levels above, the bank's nanoplastic roots reached down like a tooth. The roots slanted slightly into the street, then on down to the Underworld, where they sheltered squatters and mind slaves. On this level, between the roots nestled cruder housing units and storefronts, barely sentient, next to shacks of dead cellulose like dirt caught between unbrushed molars.

Then she froze. Just ahead shuffled a stranger. The stranger's breath rasped and the legs plodded heavily, swinging from side to side. That peculiar gait and labored breathing Chrys recognized from the Underworld. A vampire had wandered up to level one.

Her fists clenched. Where were all those blustering Palace octopods? Had they given up on this level, too? How could they let the mind slaves double every year? She whispered an old Brethren prayer, though the creature was beyond help. Its human mind was lost, it could barely see. But it could smell a potential victim to transmit the plague.

Quietly she turned down a side street. But here the lighting was worse, and she could not judge the pavement. Her foot caught, and she stumbled.

As Chrys fell, she recovered herself expertly, thanks to long hours of practice. But her foot still stuck. She breathed heavily, her mind racing.

A mass of something was oozing heavily up along her foot. Cancerplast; a piece of a building root that had gone wrong, like a cancer that metastasized, its cells creeping blindly in search of a power supply. Usually plast metastasized only down in the Underworld, where inspectors never came. But here was a blob of cancer right up in her neighborhood, within two blocks of her own apartment. And nearby lurked a vampire.

In the dim light, Chrys could not tell how far the plast extended, except thank the saints she had not fallen into the rest of it. She pulled out her shock wand and reached toward her feet. Avoiding her foot, she tapped the plast.

The wand crackled, and a blue flash leapt to the surface. The cancerous mass congealed and stiffened, its cells dead. But the plast had solidified around her foot. Taking a deep breath, Chris raised her hand and aimed the edge of her palm. Her arm tensed, while the rest of her body relaxed as much as possible. Her palm shot down and struck.

Pain filled her foot, and she cried out. But the plast had shattered. Her foot was numb, but she got herself up and hobbled home as fast as she could. In daylight she would have stayed to zap any blob that might have escaped; even the smallest ones could infect other buildings.

Reaching her apartment, she placed both her hands flat against the entry pad and raised her eyes to the scanner.

"Your rent is due." The apartment's flat voice came from a speaker in its plast.

"I know," she snapped, "I'll get it tomorrow. Let me in— there's a vampire out here."

"Your rent is due today."

The time in her window read 12:09. Just past midnight. Her palms started to sweat. "How can I get rent if the vampire gets me?"

"You have twenty-three hours and fifty minutes before expulsion is confirmed."

"The sculpture on the mantle." Her portrait done in crystal, the one thing of value Topaz had given her the year they lived together. "Take that."

"Redeemable at thirty percent."

In the wall appeared a crack of light. The old plast creaked and stalled, then reluctantly contracted itself halfway to one side, enough for her to squeeze inside. Down a flight of stairs to the basement, her own door pealed open, shutting promptly behind her.

Her cat Merope, an orange tabby with a white bib, sidled over to brush her legs, while the all-white Alcyone explored her shelves, oblivious to the volcano exploding there. Her favorite dynamic sketches jutted out from the shelves, here a smoking shield cone, there a pyroclastic flow. On the mantle, the wall was still puckered in where it had engulfed the pawned sculpture. Chrys swallowed hard, but she had long ago given up tears over Topaz.

Now she could view her message and get to work on her new pyroscape. She sat back in the old oaken chair her father had carved for her, letting Merope jump on her lap. Merope's eyes soon closed, her white neck stretched in ecstasy beneath Chrys's stroking palm. Chrys focused her eyes on the message light in her window. The contact light blinked.

To her surprise, a doctor appeared. Chrys nudged the cat down, for if she could see the doctor, the doctor could see her, from one of the microcameras ubiquitous throughout the city, every nook of nanoplast. Like most doctors, this one was not human. It was a sentient, its plast grown to five pairs of limbs and a face full of wormlike surgical tendrils. It reminded her of the dead goat she had found once on Mount Dolomoth, its entrails crawling with maggots.

The worms of the doctor's face lifted and waved about. "I'm Doctor Sartorius, Chrysoberyl." Sartorius was the hospital's leading brain surgeon, as Chrys had found from her snooping online. Was it male or female, she tried to recall; sentients could be sensitive. A month before, the surgeon's staff had grilled Chrys and run a battery of tests. "Thanks for getting back to us, Chrysoberyl. You're the top candidate for our program, and we have a culture ready."

Her jaw fell. "You mean, the brain enhancers?"

"The culture has matured and is ready for transfer, at eight in the morning. Remember, don't eat or drink anything after midnight."

"But—" Confused, she shook her head. "They told me it would take six months." To process her tests, to grow the culture.

One of the limbs waved, and all the worms danced. Chrys understood how a surgeon could use extra fingers, but surely they could pull them in and look more human for their patients. Sentient arrogance—they could look however they pleased. But there were scandals, brain doctors who sucked the mind out of humans to feed their deviant desires. "Six months was our best estimate, Chrysoberyl," Sartorius reminded her. "The cultured cells are hard to predict. Like people, they do things their own way."

Like people—an odd way to put it. Chrys frowned. "Can't they wait just another week?"

Doctor Sartorius hesitated. It was male, she was pretty sure. "The culture stays fresh only so long," he explained. "If you can't make it this time, we'll have to pick the next candidate on our list. You could wait another year."

Doctors had all the answers. "I can't afford to feel sick right now."

"Just one night in the hospital. After that you'll feel fine, with regular testing."

Her pulse pounded in her ears. It was one thing to imagine, but to actually do it... What if it went wrong? "You did say all this is covered?"

"You'll receive full health coverage from now on. Plan Ten."

Plan Ten, just like Lady Moraeg. Nearly as good as Elves, who lived practically forever. "But tomorrow I'm busy. I have to come up with my rent."

"Your stipend for the trial starts tonight."

In her credit line two more digits appeared. Who the devil was paying for all this, and why? "I'll be there in the morning." She could still say no.

Chrys had planned to stay up several more hours at her painting stage, blocking in the masses for the spattercone and the moon. But now she had to get up early. By her bedside stood three tiny figures in a holo still. Her mother and father wore their hooded robes of the Dolomite Brethren, beside Hal, her youngest of five brothers, looking deathly pale despite his brave smile. All these years on the waiting list for treatment; until then, let the saints and angels provide.

If she got Plan Ten, she would never have to worry about her heart, let alone things like losing a port inside her eyeball. And the brain enhancers could make her rich. Brain-enhanced minds filled the headlines—financiers who built Elf-sized fortunes on their calculations, cell designers who seeded miracle cures, and dynatects. The murdered dynatect Titan of Sardis, who designed monumental sentient buildings like the Comb.

If brain enhancers could do all that, what might they do for her studio? Chrys had waited long enough for saints and angels. She blinked to close her window for the night, then set the volcano above her bed to explode at seven in the morning.