Brain Plague

FOUR

Fern tumbled through the city of the great Cisterna Magna, tasting its intricate molecules. Throughout the Cisterna, libraries of triplex DNA stored all the learning of Eleutheria. Nightclubs flashed with light-producing enzymes, singing colored music. Through the singing halls tumbled children ripe for breeding, their filaments tasting each other, hungering for just the right mate to merge.

"Fern?" Poppy's light flashed through the optic fibers. "We need help. A merged pair is having trouble giving birth."

Fern's spiral tails whirled and sent her spinning down the hall. Between two columns of fibroblast, a nest of dendrimers formed the breeding chamber. Inside, two breeders had come together. Their filaments had dissolved, allowing their surface membranes to merge. As the pair merged, their DNA triplexes came together to exchange genes. Once the two triplex chromosomes recombined, the membranes would pucker and pinch in, and the new children would come apart—as three. The three newborn children would each have duplex DNA, until they each grew a third strand in order to breed again.

But this time, something had gone wrong. "The offspring can't come apart," flashed Poppy. The edges of the three rings puckered in all around, as the membranes sought to pinch through, but still they remained attached.

"Get the enzymes," Fern told her. "Enzymes to cut the membrane, slowly." Carefully her filaments applied the enzymes to the grooves between the three half-separated children. Poppy did the same around the other side; it was vital to cut evenly, lest a child tear open. The grooves deepened. At last the three rings fell apart, three different lights flashing their cries: yellow, yellow-green, and green-blue. Three children, where there had been two.

"There are so many children now," Fern told Poppy, her filaments tasting the children to calm them. "Ten times more than I've ever known."

"They'll turn into elders soon enough," flashed Poppy.

"The young elders are as careless as the children. And few of the children are becoming elders. Most just keep merging and dividing."

"How else can our people grow?"

One lovely child, a ring of pink violet, seemed quieter than the rest. She had just grown her third strand of DNA, but she seemed in no hurry to join a mate. Instead, she spent all her time tasting the records of Eleutheria, studying the plans of the Comb. "I've figured out something," she flashed to Fern. "The windows of the dwelling the gods call the Comb. The legendary windows that gather starlight. I can show how they were grown."

Fern was pleased, but kept herself from revealing how much. "You're a good student, Pink-violet. But you have less than a year to find a mate to merge." After a year, a god's hour, the breeder's mating structures would dissolve, and she would inevitably become an elder.

The pink-violet one pulled in her filaments. "Merging is for gods and children. Not elders."

"Are you sure of your choice?"

"When I become an elder, Fern, will I earn a name from the god?"

At home, Merope kept brushing around Chrys's legs till she tripped, and even Alcyone deigned to sniff her hand. Rarely had she been away from her studio so long.

Above the painting stage hovered the virtual palette. Chrys dipped her fingers in cerulean blue and a touch of brown, then brushed her hands through the air, leaving a trail of indigo. She blocked in the spattercone of congealed rock, then the Elf moon, then added local colors: cool violet grays for the volcanic peaks, amber and gold for the opening spurt of lava; sky of deep cobalt, bearing the seven stars and their hunter.

"Oh Great One, may we taste a sign of your favor?"

She thought of something. "Poppy, I'll give you a sign if you can help me out."

"Of course—anything, to serve our God of Mercy."

The room darkened, and the new painting vanished. In its place appeared the lava fountain falling into butterflies.

"A river of stars," said Poppy.

"Poppy . . . how can I help other people to see it as I do?"

"All the people can see it through your eyes. They're just busy right now."

"I mean, the other... gods."

A tiny replica of the volcano appeared in her eyes, hovering just before her. The replica looked washed out in black, crucial details missing, like an old oil color darkened with age. Chrys nodded. "That is how other gods see." That was why Pearl called her butterflies too dark.

"Try this."

The replica changed. Its details returned, in a subtly different spectrum. No more infrared lava, but the reds and golds had their own distinctive range. Not the palette she would have chosen, yet compelling in its own way. Her pulse raced—she could hardly wait to show Topaz.

"Do we please you, Oh Great One?"

She reached for an AZ and placed the wafer on her tongue.

For the next hour, Poppy helped redo two other pieces. It was more than just a shifted wavelength; an aesthetic choice was made, a choice Chrys could not have made herself. The results were exciting; but were they hers alone?

Slowly she smiled. From the public archive she downloaded an image of AZ, azetidine acid, the four-atom square with the forked tail. She set the molecule in the corner of each piece, next to her own cat's eye.

If she worked fast, she could revise all her pieces in the gallery, and still get the moon piece done for the Elf gallery director and Zircon's Elf patron. But then, Elves could see the infrared. Which version should she show?

With a blink at her window, she called Topaz. Topaz's sprite floated beside a towering portrait of a fur-cloaked client from one of the Great Houses. Her finger was shaping the last stroke of eyelash and a blush on the cheek. She turned to Chrys. "How's it going, Cat's Eye?"

"Topaz, any chance I could have a dozen more spots at the show?"

"Are you kidding? You're doing a dozen more pieces this week?"

Chrys looked away. She should have known better.

"The show's important, but don't kill yourself. I'm sure the Elves will love Lava Butterflies.'" Her voice had a trace of condescension.

Chrys looked up. "I found out some things. Brain enhancers are actually self-aware. Like sentients."

Topaz frowned. "Cat's Eye, everyone knows a nanoservo can't be self-aware. How could it pack a trillion neurons?"

She wondered that herself. As the sprite dissolved, Chrys realized that Topaz still thought of her as the Dolomite sophomore who knew nothing. But this time, Topaz was wrong.

Another sprite flashed into her window. Zircon looked out at her from the club; the late afternoon hour, it was full of mountainous biceps flexing. "Chrys, where have you been? The second workout you've missed."

"Hey, I'm sorry." Actually, she felt as if she had ten workouts that morning. "Don't worry. Things are getting back to ... normal."

On his chest, the large crystal gems swam out in spirals.

"Stars, Oh Great One," flashed Poppy's letters beneath. "When will you show us the stars?"

Startled, Chrys tried to keep her face straight. But Zircon gave her a puzzled look. "Chrys, if you're in trouble, let me know, okay?"

She made herself smile. "I had to crack cancerplast the other night." Just the night before last—it felt like forever.

Zircon shook his head. "You couldn't pay me to live on your level."

"Nobody pays me to live elsewhere."

He grinned infectiously, and lines appeared in his forehead. Not as young as he used to be, but always up for something new. "Hey, I could fix you up. I know Elves, men or women, who'd just die to have you."

Chrys liked Zirc, and she could have fallen for him, once upon a time. "I've had enough of people. I'd sooner date a worm-face."

"Mind-suckers!" Zircon shuddered. "Don't even say that. It's . .. perverted."

That evening Chrys took a break and strolled up Center Way. The lightcraft flitting up and down, the glowing signs, the virtual decor of the Great Houses—through her eyes, the micros exclaimed at all the lights, which they called stars. For the micros, she realized, ten meters might as well be ten light-years. How could they distinguish city lights from those across the universe?

"Wait," flashed Poppy. "Wait—/ see something most important. Something from our records; the oldest records of our people."

Chrys blinked. Her eyes came to rest upon the Comb.

"That's it! Fern, come quickly—call the others to see. ..."

The Comb's hexagonal facets shone as always, in shifting tones of gold, red, even lava. Curious, Chrys asked, "What do your records say?"

"They say that we made the Comb."

Chrys was taken aback. "You made the Comb? How can that be?" The same strain as Titan's, Eleutheria. But had they come from Titan himself?

"It is true," added Fern. "Our ancestors designed the seed that grew the Comb. We have all the plans. We made it for The Blind God."

"The Blind God?" Chrys asked. "Not the Lord of Light?" She remembered what had puzzled her before: How could her own "people" be so different from Daeren's, if they came from his own head?

"The Blind God was our world, before the great exodus, when the Lord of Light took us in."

She stared, unseeing, her pulse racing. How could these micros have "made" the Comb, and still have the plans? Who was the Blind God? What had those doctors not told her?

At the hospital again the next morning, Doctor Sartorius listened to the nanos reporting from Chrys's bloodstream. His worm-like arms extended to plug into the hospital wall. Chrys still couldn't help expecting flies. "No sign of inflammation," he said. "The nanos are doing their job."

Chrys eyed him skeptically. "Nano-cells are 'intelligent,' but never as smart as people. How can micros be so smart? They're too small to have neurons."

One of the worms flicked toward the holostage, extending like an antenna. "Micros are about the size of a white blood cell. Each cell packs an array of polymers, with ten trillion units." Above the stage glowed a cage of atoms, with links joining in all dimensions. "Units connect by a 'spiro gate' that can twist in two directions. One twist allows current to flow across the link, the other not." The model came alive with twisting connections, as if thoughts were flitting across them. "These polymers transmit information, as surely as human neurons, or sentient circuits."

She regarded the sentient doctor curiously. "If micros that small can be 'people,' then why can't nano-cells be 'sentient,' like you?"

The doctor's worms retracted and were still. The spiro-gated molecules gave way to legal documents, the kind Daeren liked to quote, scrolling down the holostage. "When machines first... claimed sentience, the Fold Council set a lower limit for size at ten cubic centimeters. Nothing smaller could be a 'person,' with 'personal rights.' "

"What?" Chrys spread her hands. "How can you just decree what's a person and what's not?"

Doctor Sartorius returned to the holostage. "If you have no further questions, the Plan Ten representative is here today, to inform you of your benefits."

The Plan Ten rep was a human female, of model proportions, the kind all art students drew their first year. Her nanotex was modest gray, but it shifted subtly to highlight her perfect legs and ankles. Her curves were more than enough to remind Chrys how long it had been since she shared a bed, and to make her, just for a moment, rethink her resolution.

"Chrysoberyl, I'm here to answer any questions you may have about the Comprehensive Deluxe Health Package Plan Ten." The woman's tone was professional, yet softly persuasive. "You may call us anytime, of course; from anywhere, on any world."

"Even the Underworld?"

The Plan rep smiled confidingly. "Our competitors, up through Plan Eight, provide instant coverage only for the more convenient parts of the city. But with Plan Ten, our emergency response time everywhere is under five minutes. You needn't give up any of your favorite night spots."

"I see." Chrys patted her hair self-consciously, though it never would stay down.

The Plan rep nodded to the holostage. "Now, according to our records," she observed, "you have yet to choose your age and appearance."

"Excuse me?"

Upon the stage appeared Chrys herself, life size. Like a mirror, only without the usual mirror reversal; at first her own face looked askew.

"Plan Ten allows you to specify exact age, color, and so on. For most of our clients, age is the main concern. Have you thought about it?"

Chrys blinked. "I've had other things on my mind."

"Of course," the woman nodded understandingly. "Carriers always do. But think now." She turned to the holostage. "Our most discerning clients choose age eighteen to twenty."

The virtual Chrys seemed to smooth out a bit, like one of Topaz's portraits. Chrys tensed and swallowed. She had not thought of herself as already having aged. But the Chrys in the holostage looked to her like a pre-teen. "I'm too small to look young," she observed, half to herself. "People still pat me on the head."

"Stature can be increased." The Chrys on stage grew a couple of centimeters. "As for age, how old would you like to look? Distinguished? Venerable? Mother of Ages?"

The virtual Chrys grew fine lines in her forehead, but still stood erect and authoritative. As the skin shrunk around her face and hands, she looked fierce, indomitable, an iron lady. At last she shriveled into a million wrinkles, her eyes still bright and clear. Like a saint who'd spent her life tending dying people in the street.

"You can always change your selection," the Plan rep quietly observed.

Chrys clenched and unclenched her hands, and swallowed again, hard. "To be real honest, I think I'd like to keep on looking exactly the age I am now."

"Excellent—a very wise choice. Our wisest clients generally choose as you did," the Plan rep assured her. "Now, as to internal organs, of course, these can be optimized separately. Most clients simply take the age of optimal function—for the female, visual acuity peaks at age ten, muscle strength at age twenty, sexual response at age forty, and so forth. Is that fine with you?"

Chrys blinked. "I guess so." For her, health had always meant simply not being sick.

"And muscle mass." The woman's dimples deepened apologetically. "I'm sorry, this one is so complex. Some examples—" The virtual Chrys expanded and shrank, while the rep rattled on about upper body strength, a gymnast's flexibility, the balanced curves of a swimmer. "For sheer strength, there's this." The body grew hills all over, like a volcanic slope bulging with magma.

Chrys smiled suddenly. "I'll take that." Zircon would be in for a surprise.

"A bold choice," the rep exclaimed, a bit too quickly. "A client of your sophistication might be interested in our more advanced options. Would you consider a change of gender?" She leaned forward confidentially. "Our competitor, Plan Nine, offers only one change of gender per lifetime. Can you imagine? What if you changed your mind, and couldn't switch back?" She shook her head. "Our plan guarantees to switch you back, as often as you choose."

Chrys's jaw fell. For a minute, she could not imagine what to say. "To be really honest..." She thought of something. "Gender change would be great, but there's something else I'd like even more."

"Yes?"

"I'd like to sign away all my rights to, uh, change of gender, and use the funds saved to fix my brother's mitochondria. Could I do that?"

The woman looked shocked. "Sign away your own body rights? Like selling an eye or a kidney—you couldn't do that."

Chrys had considered it.

The encounter with Plan Ten left her vexed and sad. At last Daeren came to complete her visit. "Anything I need to know?" Shoulders straight, limbs fit and lean; Daeren had the health her brother never would. He looked her in the eye, and his own twinkled blue. "You need to get more sleep."

Something inside her snapped. "Excuse me, can you tell me how old you really are? I was raised to respect elders."

Daeren stiffened, and a tendon stood out in his neck. "I was raised to respect everyone. Assume I'm a hundred." Young enough to be defensive. "Is anything wrong?" he asked. "I know Fern feels overwhelmed, but it will pass." He handed her a transfer patch.

Chrys accepted the patch and handed it back to him, getting used to the routine of visiting micros. "Why do they say they built the Comb?"

Daeren frowned. "It would be more correct to say they share ancestry with those who seeded the Comb."

"But my micros came from your head, didn't they? Why aren't they blue angels?

"I'm like a way station," he told her. "My people are strain Coelecolor; they're social workers, immigration specialists. They take in refugees and train colonists to develop new worlds."

So a carrier could hold more than one strain. Different ethnic neighborhoods. "These refugees and colonists . .. they come from other people's brains?"

"That's right. Micros like to travel."

"So where did mine 'travel' from, originally? From Titan?"

"They grew inside me for seven generations. That's like a couple of centuries. Their duty is to leave the past behind, and serve their new world."

Committee talk again. "Was Titan their 'Blind God'?" Chrys asked. "How could a blind carrier 'talk' with them?"

Now he looked really upset. "The Eleutherians have exceptional memory, but they sometimes get things twisted." He leaned closer, and the blue rings sparkled.

"Oh Great One, the blue angels bid us forget," flashed Poppy. "But you told us to recover all our memories."

"Sure, but keep it dark for now."

Daeren put the patch back on his neck, just beneath his dark hair, then he held it out. "You can have your people back. They already miss their nightclubs."

"Nightclubs? You mean, strobe lights hung beneath my skull?"

"The molecular equivalent. I told you, your strain lives fast."

She remembered the wild-eyed slave, and the stern Chief Andradite. "Is that why the chief said she expected worse? Why did you give me such a bad strain?"

"They can get into trouble, but they're exceptionally creative. You could have had a strain of accountants."

She gave him a look. "Accountants cause more trouble than any artist." Something was missing, but she could not put a finger on it. She leaned back with a sigh. "I had no idea what I was getting into."

He asked quietly, "Are you sorry?"

She thought of the transformed pyroscapes. "No. I just feel like I'm back on Mount Dolomoth, walking on lava." It was his turn to stare. "You've walked on lava?" "Two hours old." The heat rising, simmering, suffocating. The surface dark and slick, with holes to the interior glowing like poppies. She was twelve when the long dormant Mount Dolomoth had erupted, and it fascinated her ever since.

"I hope you won't try that again. A million lives depend on you." She crossed her arms. "Listen, Lord of Light—if I have to risk a million of them raising hell in their nightclubs, they can just as well risk me."

On her way home an acrid haze obscured her street. But the buildings looked intact, aside from the usual old windows stuck open, gasping sideways. The haze must have seeped up from below. After a slave hijacking, Sapiens always blamed the sims, so they torched the Underworld. They usually stayed below; but right here on her block a gang of Sapiens marched toward her, lasers on their belts, pads of stunplast girding their knees and palms. Chrys unobtrusively crossed the street. If the carnage reached her level, she might have to go stay with Topaz and Pearl.

Safe at home, she called down a Titan retrospective. Titan's early career as a half-baked formalist, like Zircon. Titan's first brain-enhanced commissions, dwellings that soared like living, breathing things offering flowers to the world. Titan's more advanced works, each now a landmark. And his social ascent, on the arm of one Lady after another, each better connected than the last. Always women, oddly enough, a medieval obsession.

A stranger flickered into her window. "Chrys, I'm Opal of Orthoclase. Andra asked me to call." Opal called from the Institute for Nano Design—the Comb. Her namestones were a cluster of rainbow drops that formed a flower, only to flow apart again. She gave a friendly smile, almost in a motherly way, her face as round and smooth as her gems. Behind her, her holostage was twice as large as Chrys's entire studio. The walls jutted at wide angles, creating the honeycomb of rooms for which the Comb was famous. "Chrys—I'm so glad we caught up at last. A colorist, aren't you? Daeren says you're doing so well."

"Thanks," said Chrys warily.

"My people can't wait to see Eleutherians again. I hear they're just the same. . .." Stepping backward, Opal spread her arm toward her stage. "We design medical servos."

"The kind used for Plan Ten?"

Opal nodded. "And more experimental applications. But you 'design,' too, don't you. It's all art, don't you think?"

Chrys cleared her throat. "What can I do for you?"

"Oh Great One, we recall the legends of this starry-eyed god," flashed Fern, "the God of Wisdom, and her clever people, the 'wizards. ' The wizards are our long-lost cousins; let us renew ties with them."

"Not today," returned Chrys. "Go tend your children."

"The cafe here serves carriers," Opal was saying. "We can meet here tomorrow."

It had not occurred to Chrys that restaurants would shun carriers, even worse than sims, if they knew. A knot of pain formed in her stomach. "I'd love to," she told Opal, "after my show opens next week."

Opal's mouth went straight and her eyes widened. "I promised I'd see you this week. It's important."

"Thanks; you've kept your promise. The day after the Opening, okay?"

Hours of work turned into days, as the spattercone grew. The cone's straight sides pointed to the sky, drawing the viewer up from echoing lines below. Above the holostage, Chrys's finger traced the streams of lava that rose from the cone, reaching toward the turquoise moon. Then she traced the moon's details, subtly following the curve of lava. The moon was the center of a pool where ripples led outward, down to the ground.

But as the piece played forward it developed in a new way, distinctly different from any pyroscape Chrys had done before. Instead of arching to fall back to ground, the streams of lava kept going till they reached the sky. The sky collected a long lava river, smooth and thin, with lava strands connecting down to the ground below; unmistakably reminiscent of arachnoid. And the turquoise moon, amid the strands, sprouted luminous filaments of light.

"Oh Great One," called Fern. "A young elder begs a favor from you. A true scholar; I recommend her highly. She asks you to give her a name."

Why not, thought Chrys; the other priests were so busy. "What does she look like?"

A diffuse light, magenta, with long starry filaments. Star with a dark center. Chrys's lips softened. "Aster," she decided. "I call you Aster."

"Oh Great One, I am not worthy to meet your eyes. But only ask, and I will follow."

For some reason she felt afraid. It was too much for her; all these people and their children would find out she was a fraud. She shook herself. What did she care, they were only microbes. "Aster, can you help me perfect the turquoise moon?"

"I will help the god, in whatever small ways I can. May the god also bless our own work, our creation of dwellings for the gods."

"I am no dynatect, Aster," she warned.

"You shall become a great dynatect. Greater even than the Blind God."

"A prophet!" Chrys laughed aloud.

Then she froze. The Blind God—that was Titan. It had to be. But the murdered dynatect had not been blind ... until he was attacked. The limp body, sprawled in the street like a piece of trash, the eyes burnt into the skull. Had the micros lived through that? Had Plan Ten arrived in five minutes, only to save the micros from his dying brain? What else was that agent hiding?