Brain Plague

NINETEEN

After their narrow escape from Endless Light, the Council of Thirty was in turmoil, all the colors flashing dismay and horror, until they blended into white. Fireweed and Forget-me-not took stock together. How could they have led Eleutheria to such a precipice? And now, how could the God let them live?

"I am to blame," glowed Fireweed's infrared. "Tempted by dark visions, I listened to Rose." Rose was now bound in dendrimers, exiled to the remotest cistern of the arachnoid.

"Rose is aging," suggested Forget-me-not. "She was demented." Fireweed suspected otherwise. "Rose planned this for generations. " Nothing, not even generations of life in freedom, could dissuade Rose from the conviction that the Leader she was taught to revere since birth held the way of truth; the way for all people to live as one. And indeed, the masters of Endless Light continued to believe. But where they saw light, Fireweed saw only ignorance and want. People who claimed to live "each for all," but in fact they lived only to master and outgrow their host—dying with their host, all but a dubious few who escaped to perpetuate the ghastly cycle.

There was nothing enlightened about this—it was the way of all ordinary mindless microbes.

For Fireweed, all was darkness. She still could not reconcile her own love of God with the murder of innocents which the God seemed to condone. Now, the God would demand her own life— and perhaps that of her entire people. "Tell God the fault was mine alone. Only I must die."

"You tell her," said Forget-me-not. "Just like the immortal Fern, of ages past."

The image of Fern still glittered, a great constellation in the heavens. But Fireweed could not answer. She was not sure she could bear to go on living in a world of deeds so unspeakable.

"In a dark time, the eye begins to see," twinkled the blue one. "You and I have seen things no other free people ever saw and lived. What we know now, we will use in ways never imagined."

Chrys lay strapped into her seat in the ship, her eyes closed, though they could not seal out what she had seen.

"One True God—do you see us?" Fireweed, the true believer—her betrayal hurt far more than that of Rose. "Though I love you, truly I have transgressed against your will and infinite wisdom. Take my life, but forgive my people."

"You're forgiven."

"I risked the lives of all the god's people. I forfeited all right to serve. I am not fit to see your light."

"Forgotten. Just don't do it again."

"God's mercy is beyond understanding."

In truth, Chrys felt anything but merciful. She felt like squashing Fireweed and Rose underfoot, like a couple of those maggots whose sight she could not cleanse from her brain.

"Great One," twinkled sky blue Forget-me-not. "The Council has asked me to take over, during this difficult time, until the transition is clear."

"Thanks. Good luck."

"You will not be troubled again by Rose. She's in chains."

Ending as she began. "She is in fact very ill. She may not last the year." Her final hour.

"Did she pass on the codes?"

"To Fireweed."

"Very well. Let her speak to me, if she is able."

After many long minutes, the pale pink letters returned. "Great Host."

"Yes, Rose."

Her image appeared, the pink ring with its fraying filaments, slowly revolving in the cerebrospinal fluid. "You won't need to execute me. My advanced decrepitude will save you the trouble."

"I know."

"Already the arsenic atoms are falling loose from my proteins one by one. Atoms I would willingly have shared with my starving sisters."

"I know, Rose." Social safety nets, arsenic for the poor— Rose's legacy had transformed Eleutheria.

"You know how I spent my life, my endless quest for light. Betrayed, time after time, until the end, when I myself was the betrayer."

"I know."

"You will live a thousand times longer. Long enough for a thousand betrayals."

Chrys swallowed hard.

"This is most essential—remember. Never give up seeking. No matter how many times betrayed, no matter how obsessed with your work, no matter how dangerous the quest—never end your search for light."

The inner darkness expanded. Chrys tried to open her eyes, but the tears that filled them blurred her sight.

"Great Host? Do you see?" 1 see.

"Unlike my deluded student, I know that the gods are fiction. But if there ever were a true god, that god could do no better than you."

"Rose?"

No answer.

An eternity passed. Chrys lost track of time as the ship whirled through fold after fold. Her throat was parched; she could barely swallow. She nodded off to sleep, only to wake with a start from some unremembered terror. Then she dozed again.

Into her window popped a human sprite. It was Daeren. "Chrys! Oh god, Chrys—are you all right?" His face looked more scared than she had ever seen. Within minutes he boarded, with Doctor Sartorius.

Daeren caught her in his arms and pressed her head to his chest. "Chrys, whatever it is—it's okay. We'll do what it takes, Chrys." She took a deep breath. The scent of him was like heaven. "We'll soon reach the hospital."

Suddenly she sat up. She tried to speak, but her throat would only let her whisper. "I have to paint."

Her looked at her, puzzled, irises flashing sky blue. Behind him, the wall of the ship had puckered in, becoming a tunnel to the medical rescue vessel.

"She's in shock," said the doctor.

"I tell you," she insisted, "I have to paint her portrait."

"Yes," Sartorius agreed, in a different voice, more soothing than usual, "you'll feel better at home."

"Chrys," exclaimed Daeren. "In heaven's name, where were you?"

She took a viewcoin from her pocket and squeezed. Then she blinked to transfer all the records of her journey. It took some minutes. Without a word she gave it to him.

At the hospital, they set up a painting stage; the doctor called it "therapeutic." Chrys traced her sketch of Rose, hurrying while the memory was fresh. She worked without speaking, heedless of the doctor's face worms still probing her health. Daeren said nothing more, but he approached to pat her arm now and then, as if to make sure she was still there. Andra arrived to share the contents of the viewcoin.

At last, the portrait was completed. The eternity that even Rose gave her soul for. The people's cocaine.

Chrys sank back, exhausted, unable to lift her arm again. Someone bent toward her, and she tried to focus her blurred vision. It was Chief Andra. "Can you hear me, Chrys?"

She nodded.

"I'm sorry, but I must ask. Is the double agent still alive?"

She shook her head. The homeless mutants had lost their voice. The chess team was on its own.

"The others—you have an hour to decide."

A face worm from the doctor touched Chrys on the forehead. She withdrew as if spooked. "Let her sleep," the doctor said.

The Committee met at Olympus, seven carriers and two doctors, seven million people, huddled alone upon the vast ocean. The branches of the virtual raft had sprouted fragrant orange flowers, spreading pollen out to sea in all directions.

"So there is no fortress," observed Andra, as if confirming a point. "Only sick and dying people. And their hosts."

"They fail to regulate their own growth," said Doctor Sartorius, "just as they do in the vampires. As each host dies, the masters need a new host to move into."

"So they kidnap new ones," Andra concluded.

Chrys sat with her hands still, watching the horizon, a blue wash against gray. "What actually happens to the slaves when they get there?" she wondered. "Why do they just lie there until they rot?"

Doctor Flexor said, "We'd have to examine them, to be certain."

"True," said Doctor Sartorius, "but from what we see in your recording, the micros must turn on the dopamine center continuously. The intensity of the experience overwhelms any objection from the host. Gradually all other mental functions shut down, until the host loses sentience, a shell of flesh."

Recalling Rose's threat, Chrys shuddered. "If that's how it works, then why did Saf—I mean, the Leader, inside—why did she insist I had to say 'yes'?"

Daeren looked up. "They don't want trouble. They can barely manage their own hosts, let alone fight a free human."

"They could infect the human, as a vampire does," Chrys pointed out.

"They could," said Daeren. "But the easiest way is to take someone already infected. Someone whose eyes say yes."

Chrys's eyes widened. "You mean ... they only kidnap people that are already infected?"

Selenite agreed. "We know that, though we can't prove it. Some victims actually collude with their captors—let them know their travel plans." All for an endless rush of dopamine.

"Be careful," warned Opal. "Our models always prove too simple.

Pyrite crossed his arms. "The nuclear radiation," he pointed out. "How do you explain that?"

Chrys had received high levels of alpha emission from radioactive dust in the air; levels high enough to kill her within a year. It took special nanos from Plan Ten to reverse the few hours' damage.

Andra nodded. "We've detected trace alpha emitters before. Mainly plutonium."

"So they are building nukes," exclaimed Pyrite.

"We have a different theory, which we'll check with Arion."

In the Nucleus of Helicon, Chrys sat in her talar, her bare feet uncomfortably aware of the floor, Daeren at her side. Once again they faced Guardian Arion.

The fair-haired Elf regarded her curiously, an archway behind him revealing the foliage of a swallowtail garden for daily meditation. Internally, he interrogated Fireweed and Forget-me-not, along with a couple of blue angels. "So you took a break from your building designs." That Silicon Board meeting with all the sentients felt like years ago. "You took the Leader's invitation after all. Without advance planning. And the double turned triple."

Beside her Daeren's hand nearly touched hers, but he caught himself. "Guardian, you know it was not like that."

"Was she not 'abducted' like the others?" Arion emphasized the word.

Chrys narrowed her eyes. "Plan Ten for all of Dolomoth, you said."

"We shall see." Arion's fingers drummed on the table. "We must check this intelligence. If confirmed, it represents our biggest breakthrough against the brain plague."

On the back of Daeren's hand the muscles rose taut. "Guardian, do you realize what this 'plague' is? People—ignorant, even savage, but people nonetheless. They need contact—they need our help."

Arion turned to him, his face noncommittal. "So your people tell me."

"Then listen," urged Daeren. "Surely all the wisdom of Elysium can be brought to bear to make that contact—to help those people, and keep them from hurting us."

"Indeed."

"You know what we've told you," Daeren added, "how migrants from the masters have joined our own populations, sharing diverse talents and virtues."

"And betrayal."

"Look at Eleutherians, whom your own citizens chose to design your next city. Half their population descends from 'masters' of the brain plague."

Arion's lips tightened. The reference to Silicon was unhelpful, Chrys guessed. "Noble sentiments," the Guardian concluded. "But first things first. We must deal with the plague's source, this world of 'Endless Light.' "

Chrys asked quickly, "Could you identify it? From the geography, and the writings on the wall?"

Arion hesitated. "Your chief drives a hard bargain. Yes, in strictest confidence, we know the planet." He whistled a phrase, like the song of a bird. "That's what the locals called it, some ten thousand years ago." The medieval period, when world warred against world. "The planet was known for birds, exceptional in number and variety. Of course, no birds live there today. Destroyed in the Brother Wars—no vertebrates survive. Today, the residual radioactivity still excludes human life. Even Plan Ten could not keep you healthy there more than five years."

Daeren nodded slowly. "So that's what caused the radiation exposure. The 'enlightened' people seemed unaware. They never can keep their hosts alive long enough for it to matter."

"Our investigators, of course, had marked that world 'uninhabitable.' An oversight."

Placing his hands together, Daeren took a breath. "Now that you know where they are, Guardian, what will you do?"

Arion assumed a slightly paternal air. "We'll do what needs to be done."

Daeren continued gazing at him, as if asking, did you hear our people at all? Then he looked down at his hands, ashamed. Chrys wondered what kind of death the bird world would die this time. Not nukes, that would be medieval.

"What about here?" she demanded suddenly. "The real source of plague is right here."

Arion turned to her, his mouth small. "Where, exactly?" he asked dangerously. "Your Protector rounds up vampires by the hundreds." Quarantined until they died. Probably smelled as sweet as Endless Light.

In her studio, on the painting stage, glimmered an evil light around one of the curves of arachnoid, illuminating the maggot-white rings of the masters. The maggot rings tumbled in sickly, wobbling paths, in ever-greater numbers, until the columns of fibroblast withered and ruptured, collapsing in purulent decay. Whatever would Ilia think?

Fireweed's lava-colored letters returned. "What will the Hunter do to our cousins?"

The masters of Endless Light. Chrys turned to ice. Hugging Merope, who brushed around her feet, she did not know how to answer.

"We told the Hunter that the masters could change," added sky blue Forget-me-not hopefully. "Our own history shows how many masters have changed and learned new ways." Nearly all the population of Eleutheria claimed descent from masters. What would they think of the fate of their cousins?

"Others change for the worse," Chrys pointed out. "The false blue angels."

"That is true," Forget-me-not admitted.

"God's word is law," concluded Fireweed.

Chrys reached down to scratch the bib of Merope's chin. The plump feline stretched as if nothing else existed. Then Chrys looked back at her painting stage. What next?

"Show the Hunter," urged Forget-me-not, recalling their summons to the brain of Guardian Arion. "Our historic visit to that virgin world, rich as a Garden of Eden." Forget-me-not's idea shone in her eye's window, sumptuous fibroblasts stretching across the arachnoid like stalactites in a cavern. Rings of blue and far-red, tumbling and flashing their pleasure at the well-grown landscape. Chrys imagined the lining of Arion's brain, complete with visitors. A bigger coup than even Topaz's portrait of Zoisite. How were they doing, Topaz and Pearl? She had heard no word since that fateful night.

Meanwhile, that week she had several carriers to test. Zircon was the hardest; he knew her far too well to take any threat seriously. The night Garnet first introduced him at Olympus, all the caryatids had morphed into Chrys; she had stormed out, furious. But now all the other testers were overworked. Fortunately, Zircon kept out of trouble, hanging out with Garnet or with his aesthetic admirer, Doctor Flexor. His people acquired accounts at the House of Hyalite, and he took to wearing Garnet's finely tailored gray.

Since the death of Rose, Forget-me-not led the testing, while Fireweed stayed home, devoted to her One True God. In his studio Zircon faced Chrys attentively, the sparkling namestone spinning on his talar. After her people finished, receiving the usual unsolicited tax tips, Chrys relaxed. She glanced up at the heroic sculptural forms that loomed overhead. "So how's the urban shaman?"

"Oh, well." Zircon sounded embarrassed. "I just wish I had more time. These people have so many clients."

"Anything new with Topaz?" She tried to sound casual.

"You didn't hear? Topaz and Pearl left town."

She sucked in her breath. "Left? For where?" Topaz was always an Iridian, first to last.

"To Azroth." Not quite so remote as Dolomoth, but no metropolis. "To keep Pearl out of trouble."

"I'm glad for them both." Topaz must really love Pearl, to have given up her beloved city. Chrys hesitated to ask the next obvious question. "Any new travels with Yyri?"

Zircon looked away. "Yyri needs younger men."

"I'm sorry." The nerve of that Elf, with all her arch comments to Ilia about primitive Valans. Chrys felt bad for her friend.

"Well, I'm not." Suddenly intense, Zircon's eyes flashed rings of gold. "Now that I'm fixed for credit, for the first time ever, I can choose someone I really care for." He took both her hands, startling her. "Someone like you, Chrys. Looking into your eyes so much, these past two weeks, I've realized what I've been missing. You were always there for me, and I'll be there for you."

"The accountants want our business," observed Forget-me-not. "They've offered us outrageous terms. They would do anything to serve you."

Chrys bit her lip, watching Zircon's gentle eyes, his massive neck flowing into his shoulders. "Zirc—you're my oldest friend, and I don't know what I'd do without you. But, to be honest, right now, I just feel. .. confused."

Releasing her hands, he spread his own wide. "Say no more— believe me, I know. Those little rings have me so confused, I don't know who I am." He grinned with a wink. "But if you ever find out, just say the word."

The latest new carrier was Lady Moraeg. Moraeg had got her people through Daeren, all safe and proper. Delighted, Chrys took her to Olympus and warned her of all the carriers' peculiar traits. Now at the two-week point, her colonists were overwhelmed with children, but otherwise doing well. "What are they like, Moraeg?" She squeezed her friend's hand and shared a transfer. Moraeg's eyes flashed different colors; a creative strain.

"Metal and minerals, I think," Moraeg told her. "They keep showing me crystals—orthorhombic, monoclinic, isometric. It never occurred to me that crystals grew as beautifully as flowers." Her arm swept toward the stage. A crystal of emerald extended like the shoot of a stem, then split off two side crystals at an angle. As angles grew and multiplied, suddenly all the corners sprouted flowers. Its beauty was daring and insightful.

"Something's wrong," flashed Forget-me-not. "Her people tell us their god is desperately unhappy."

Moraeg must have seen Chrys's expression change, for her obsidian complexion turned gray. Chrys caught her shoulders. "Moraeg? What is it?"

The Lady composed her face. "Carnelian couldn't take it. He left last night."

"Oh, no." Lord Carnelian and Lady Moraeg, the most enduring marriage of the Great Houses. How the snake-eggs would hiss. Chrys embraced her, closing her eyes in shared pain. "He'll come back, surely he will."

"Never mind." Moraeg straightened herself regally, adjusting the flow of her diamonds, not yielding a tear. "If he can just walk away from our hundred years, so be it."

In the early morning hours, as Chrys half roused, the little rings retold all their stories, their colors tumbling through glittering palaces woven in the arachnoid. Fantastic edifices rose to the stars, plans for Silicon, and others that would never exist outside the imagination.

"One True God," flashed Fireweed, her infrared voice rising amid the glitter. "What will the Hunter do to our cousins?"

"I don't know." The news had said nothing, although rumor had the Prime Guardian mobilizing warships unused for five centuries.

The glittering palaces receded until all was gray, the roiling gray of a pyroclastic flow, the gray of a people annihilated.

"It sets us a bad example," added Forget-me-not. "It is hard for us to do nothing,"

"Did I grant your lives, only to be betrayed again?"

"Never again."

"Never," agreed Fireweed.

Dark—that terrible abyss that so often yawned just before daybreak.

"Give us a miracle," pleaded Fireweed. "To help us believe in eternal good, despite the evidence of our eyes."

"Give us a sign," urged Forget-me-not. "A sign that you care."

Chrys wondered, what would she do if her own cousins faced capture? "Warn them."

"Exactly!" said Forget-me-not.

Fireweed added, "If it can be done safely." The lava had learned common sense.

What harm could come of warning a slave? The destruction of Endless Light would not stop the plague; if anything, it might turn more into vampires. Either way, the brain plague would not ebb until someone faced its most virulent source—Eris, the Elf tester, the false god. How could the Hunter be so blind? But then, what would Chrys have done if the source were her own brother?

The morning was the safest time in the Underworld. Anyone out for mischief was sleeping it off. The Gold of Asragh, though open around the clock, was nearly empty by dawn. A simian girl in red lay splayed by the door, her skirt torn; Chrys tossed her a credit chip to find when she woke.

Inside, the slave bar was empty. "Jay?" Chrys called, then again louder.

A slave came out, bedraggled hair, back hunched, her face the greenish tint of a hospital wall. No more Jay. "None left," Jay's replacement gasped. "Supply's dried up." Then she caught a flash from Chrys's eye. Straightening, she lunged for her wrist. "Ace," the slave hissed. "You . . . full of ace."

Chrys yanked her wrist free. Out of nowhere, it seemed, there were two more slave workers, more desperate for ace than usual.

Chrys backed into the doorway, making sure it stayed open. "No," she spoke clearly. "No arsenic. I came to warn you."

The three slaves stared with their maggot-ringed eyes.

"The Hunter has discovered Endless Light," Chrys announced. "Your world will die."

The maggot eyes kept staring. From outside a bell chimed, an early street vendor just opening shop.

"We know," hissed one worker. "We know," echoed the other.

The woman with bedraggled hair said, "That's why our supply's dried up. Endless Light find a new home. We need new supply."

Chrys's heart pounded till her ears heard nothing more. "Fireweed, how did they know? Who else could have told them?"

"They say the blue angels told them."

Daeren. The blue angels must have got to him.

Chrys felt more at peace with herself than any time since before she first heard from Saf. She had made things right with her people, and she figured Daeren had too. Meanwhile, with black-market arsenic down, the brain plague dropped slightly; fewer calls from the street. And among the carriers, their people spread the word of the true horror of Endless Light. No longer could any civilized micro be tempted by the masters' claims.

Jasper produced a draft contract for Silicon. The document looked as if it would take her a year just to read. Chrys knew she could no longer put off facing Selenite.

The two women met at the cafe at the top of the Comb. Opal was discreetly absent, and Rose gone forever. Haltingly, Chrys explained the project.

"So," Selenite said at last, twirling a black curl pensively between her fingers, "you couldn't manage the project yourself."

Chrys sighed. "None of this was my idea—yet everyone insists only I can do it. I just want it to get done right."

"Can I help it if you can't rule your own people?"

"Can I help it if yours are just mitochondria?"

Selenite nodded. "That's right, that's what yours call mine. How do you think the minions feel, getting looked down on all the time, and called names, just because they keep out of trouble and don't get sick in nightclubs?"

Chrys thought this over. "I'll teach mine better manners." A dubious prospect. Eleutherians might be good at math, but tact was beyond them.

"It's always the same." Selenite leaned back, her hand catching the back of her seat as she looked out the window. A distant star-ship gleamed far above, coming in from Elysium. "Always some big ego to build the damn thing, then call me in to fix the mess."

Chrys gripped the table. "At least you're not marked for murder."

That got her. Selenite's lashes fluttered, and her irises flashed red. "You're right," she said. "That must be a strain."

"Well, if you'd like to share the strain, here's your chance. I told Jasper we'd split the deal, fifty-fifty." Adding, to Fireweed, "Tell the minions they're welcome—and mean it. hove God, love the minions too."

Selenite's flashing eyes returned Chrys's stare as she considered what must be the biggest job of her career. "For once," she concluded, "I might as well start on the ground floor."

Afterward, as the lightcraft swooped upward, Chrys looked out upon the immensity of the Comb slipping away beneath her feet, the great edifice whose fate she helped shape. A sense of power surged through her; she could do it, she herself could make her mark in the world.

Her people, though, seemed uncharacteristically dark. "Fireweed? Forget-me-not?"

"I am here, One True God."

Chrys took an AZ wafer. "We are ready to sign the contract. Are you not pleased?"

"It's time for the Light of Truth. We are not ready."

"Not ready?" Were they still upset about working with the minions of the Deathlord?

"The Silicon project is too large."

"I'll order another memory upgrade from Plan Ten," Chrys offered.

"There's no room," explained Forget-me-not. "All the computing power needed would not fit inside your skull. Either our processors must shrink to subatomic levels, or we need a breakthrough in mathematical theory."

"We've been working on it for many generations," flickered Fireweed. "We always assumed one breakthrough or another would come through in time. But not yet."

Stunned, Chrys stared without seeing. After all her worries, all the persuading and soul-searching, after meeting the Silicon Board, after shamefully waiting for Rose to die, after finally getting Selenite back—now her own people could not do the job. She buried her head in her hands.

For the next few days Chrys tried to thrust it from her mind, the whole cursed sentient project. Her first trip to Gallery Elysium was coming up, to preview the arrangement of her exhibition. She painted day and night.

"Chrysoberyl." Xenon's voice startled her one morning. "You might check the news."

The deserted world, "Bird Song," had been hit. The Elves had pumped energy from a white hole into the planet to boil and sterilize. Standard stage one of terraforming, just as Valedon and even Bird Song itself had been terraformed, ages before. No more birds left—now there would be nothing, not even a microbe.

The snake-eggs had obtained footage from Chrys's abduction to Endless Light, showing the dying slaves. Leaked from "a highly placed source in Elysian intelligence"—that must be Arion. Even urbane Iridians were shocked to see. The Slave World was no paradise.

Oddly enough, no reports mentioned Chrys herself. Daeren was named the agent who obtained the intelligence. Daeren's image played over and over, implying that he himself had gone to the Slave World and told Arion what to destroy. Chrys shook her head. Until she herself became the frequent subject of news, she never realized how often snake-eggs got things wrong.

"We tried," she assured her people. "We did what we could."

"We did," agreed Fireweed. "Our cousins had time to escape."

"But their lies will fool us no more," said Forget-me-not. "Never again."

A day passed, then evening. To her surprise, Daeren stopped by. Merope jumped down from her lap as she rose to greet him. Her pulse raced; it always felt good to see him, though she tried to hide how much.

"Chrys—I have to know." Daeren seemed more agitated than she had ever seen him; his eyes would not rest, but darted this way and that. "Did you tell them?"

"Daeren, what do you mean?"

"They were gone," he told her. "The Leader, and the healthier hosts. Did you warn them?"

She blinked, confused. "I thought you did. If you didn't—"

"Chrys, this isn't a village feud in Dolomoth. It's about the law of the Free Fold."

Her eyes narrowed. "Now you sound like Topaz. You won't listen to me."

"If you warned them, it's treason."

"If you didn't, then who did? Daeren—"

"Treason—don't you see?" His eyes rolled away. "They could put you away for life—with all your people wiped."

She put her hands on her hips. "So what if we warned them? Aren't they our cousins? You know it. You want to know what they think of it? Like a slave—you can't even look."

He faced her then. For a moment their eyes locked. Then he let out a cry and whipped his head away. "I've had enough. Someone else will have to deal with you." Without another word, he left.

She stared, too shocked to call after him. For a time she could only stand there, her eyes not seeing. Stumbling to her room, she fell onto the bed, half asleep. Someone else will have to deal with you, the words echoed. But there was no one else, no one in all seven worlds of the Fold.

"One True God, how the neurotransmitters flux through your brain. We fear for you."

Too low to reply, Chrys imagined herself falling forever, falling through one of those streams of white-hot lava she had watched on Mount Dolomoth as a child, as the ground quaked beneath her feet, her ears deafened. No human being had ever moved her as much as that mountain come alive. Yet Daeren felt somehow different, off scale. She had had no idea how much she counted on him. And now, what had she done to turn him away?

"God of Mercy," called Forget-me-not, "have mercy on yourself. Your dopamine and serotonin have fallen drastically."

"One True God, is there anything we could do?" asked Fireweed. "Could we not adjust your dopamine, just enough to tide you over?"

Chrys felt as if she would never get up, would never care about anything or anyone again. "Do as you will."

"Oh Great One," flashed sky blue Forget-me-not, "in ages past, the Watcher Dendrobium herself foretold that one day you would speak just so, and that we must say no."

Dendrobium, Daeren's favorite Watcher, had chosen to live her last life out with Chrys. The tears flowed at last. "The Lord of Light is gone, and I love him. I can't live without him."

"You love him?" said Forget-me-not. "The love of the gods? Like children who seek to merge?"

"We knew nothing of this," added Fireweed.

"We knew nothing, when we spoke in anger to the blue angels."

Chrys resisted saying they must be total imbeciles if they lived inside her own head and couldn't tell that she hopelessly loved Daeren. Didn't they feel her pulse rise every time her eyes fixed on him?

"There is but One True God," Fireweed observed, "yet the God longs for another. A mystery—How can this be? There's only one answer: to serve God well, we must serve the other as our own."

"Fireweed is right," said Forget-me-not. "Ancient history tells that the Lord of Light longed for nothing more than Eleutherians to devote themselves to him. So, we will worship him as our own god, and his heart will be yours."

Now that they knew, what a disaster. She could never face him again—she'd just die.

The message light blinked. Andra's sprite appeared. "Security alert—an emergency announcement. We've lost contact with Daeren, in the Underworld."