Brain Plague

TWO

"Green and Unseen." The blue angel flashed its message from the Lord of Light. "The gods have found your New World."

"Our New World!" flashed Green. "As the Blind God promised. " After seven lonely generations.

"A world of our own," added Unseen, "behind the brilliant eyes of a new deity."

"A new Eleutheria."

The Eleutherians, green, red, and yellow, dwelt with the blue angels beneath the skull, in the web of cells that stretched between the linings of the brain. Forty generations before, the Lord of Light had saved the Eleutherians from the death of the Blind God, and offered them a home. But the Lord of Light already had his own people, the blue angels. Eleutherians longed for their own god, their own homes and cities on the brain of their own New World: the Blind God's final promise. Now at last, their New World—so near they could taste it. The two luminescent rings tumbled over with joy.

"Hurry, Green," flashed Unseen. "Let's waken the children and go."

The blue ring flashed a warning. "Not so fast. Remember, first, the New World will need to test you both."

The test: It was up to the new god to choose the new people.

"If the god takes us," Green told Unseen, "then we'll have all the time we need to prepare the children, and the young breeders. And gather all the memories ..." Memories of what Eleutheria had been and would be, stored across seven generations. "We'll rebuild Eleutheria by the Seven Sacred Lights: the lights of Truth, of Beauty, of Sacrifice...."

"The lights of Life and Power," added Unseen. "Power for creation."

"... Obedience, for we live or die at the pleasure of the god. And Memory."

"But Memory, dear sister, can hold us back. Why bring evil old memories to our New World?"

"Memory, Unseen, is the most sacred light of Eleutheria. Memory marks us worthy of the Blind God's promise; worthy to dwell with a new god, for whom our generation lasts but a day. Tell the children: Always remember."

Since five in the morning, her most creative hour, Chrys had lain with her mind half awake, sketching her new composition. A dynamic design, the cone and the moon had to grab the viewers' attention and connect in a subtle way, to make them wonder what the artist was doing, and why.

But by eight she sat in the hospital, its peach-colored walls extending examination tubes to coil around her head, whining unpleasantly, plugged into by tendrils extending from the doctor's "face." Up close, the worm-faced brain surgeon looked more repulsive than ever. She half expected his head to be buzzing with flies. Her hand instinctively sketched the Dolomite sign against evil.

The doctor withdrew his tendrils from the hospital coils; at their tips, the finely articulated instruments dissolved and retracted. The coils released her scalp, letting her thick hair rebound in all directions. "You are in excellent health, Chrysoberyl," Doctor Sartorius summed up, "aside from a bit of strain in the pectorals— watch it in the weight room. In fact, you'll no longer need strenuous exercise to stay fit."

Chrys blinked in surprise. No exercise? Just let a bunch of nano-cells shape her muscles?

"We did correct some allergies, and a few pre-cancers. A latent mitochondrial defect is correctable."

Mitochondria—like her brother Hal, only less severe. Correctable. When would Hal's get corrected?

"You have a visual anomaly," added the worm-face. "You're a tetrachromat."

"A what?"

The doctor's arms extended snakelike fingers toward the holostage. "Was your father colorblind?"

Chrys frowned. Why rub it in, her genes were no god's gift. "My father sees red like I do but has trouble with green."

"He sees infrared," Doctor Sartorius corrected. "The spectrum of his red pigment is shifted to wavelengths just beyond red. Your father has only one X chromosome, but you have a second one from your mother. So you see infrared, from your father's chromosome, but also normal red and green from your mother's." The doctor waved an appendage at the stage to display the absorbance ranges of her four receptors: blue, green, red, and infrared.

Chrys nodded quickly. "Can I download that?" Knowing the exact light range of her own eye pigments would really help her work.

"The anomaly won't be a problem, Chrysoberyl. In fact, it will help."

"What's all this got to do with brain enhancers? Who designed them, anyway? Why are they so much cheaper than Elf technology?"

The doctor's face worms retracted. "Brain enhancers are neither Valan nor Elysian technology. They are microbial cells. The original strain arose on Prokaryon." The newest world of the Fold, Prokaryon was full of arsenic and ring-shaped aliens. Alien microbes helped humans live there, digesting the toxins. But something else came from Prokaryon, she remembered.

"You're not pregnant," Sartorius went on, "and you agree to avoid pregnancy during the trial."

"Certainly." Chrys had turned her cycle off when she reached Iridis, like any sensible urban professional. If she wanted babies, she might as well have stayed home.

"You have no history of addiction," Sartorius added. "No alcohol, no stimulants, no psychos—no trace of any, nor their effects." Out of his worm face, two beadlike eyes on their spindly stalks swiveled toward Chrys. "Chrysoberyl, is there anything we missed? Are you absolutely sure that you've never been addicted to anything?"

Chrys swallowed. "No." Not to any thing. Then she stared down the eyes. "Just what are you getting at?"

The doctor hesitated. "Enhancers affect your brain in subtle ways."

"Do they make you more ... susceptible?"

"Actually, brain enhancers protect you from the plague, the fastest growing cause of addiction. Here's what the micros look like, magnified a million times."

The room darkened. Above the holostage appeared two glowing rings, like pieces of candy, one green, the other red. They moved and twisted, somehow self-propelled, and their color flashed like fireflies. They looked nothing like human cells. Without thinking, Chrys reached out her hand as if to touch. "Did you engineer them genetically?"

"They evolved within human carriers."

"But you said they came from Prokaryon."

"The original micros left their Prokaryon hosts to grow within human settlers. But the microbial symbionts evolved into many different strains."

She remembered. "Prokaryon—that's where the brain plague came from."

"Micros are the most addictive thing known to medical science. We're required by law to tell you that."

As if she'd never heard. Chrys eyed the worm face thoughtfully.

"So these brain enhancers—they're a different species?" Like different species of bacteria: Some made yogurt, others made people sick.

"They require human hosts; they can no longer live anywhere else. They are extremely intelligent, and extremely dangerous."

"The brain plague, you mean."

"Brain plague or brain enhancers. They're genetically the same."

"The same?" She stared in disbelief at the face full of worms. "What in hell do you think you're doing?" The doctor was a mind-sucker, she told herself, her throat gone cold. She'd snooped his background as best she could, but how could she be sure?

"These are a completely different culture. Entirely different history and lifestyle. You can't condemn a population for the deeds of others."

"They're the plague. Like the Protector says, 'Just say no.' "

"But the good micros protect you from the bad ones. That is why the Protector supports our work."

Chrys opened her mouth, then shut it again. She stared at the worm face with its bobbing eyestalks. Then she looked again at the two ring-shaped cells slowly twisting above the stage, their colors flashing. No wonder the hospital had been so evasive. The brain plague was a plague of brains.

"Micros are strictly regulated by the hospital's Carrier Security Committee," the doctor assured her. "If you're still interested, a security agent will meet with us to discuss the transfer and safety precautions."

"I've signed nothing," she warned.

The door parted, smooth as a pair of drapes, nothing like Chrys's creaking doors. The security agent was human, at least, and surprisingly young. Clean-cut, formal gray nanotex, with a smart expensive namestone of green malachite. A college kid trying to look old, like a Palace aide, the kind you'd expect to see lobbying against simian immigration.

"Daeren of Malachite, agent of carrier security," the doctor introduced him.

Chrys rose politely to shake his hand.

"I understand you're the top candidate for our program." The quintessential Iridian bureaucrat.

Chrys narrowed her eyes. "Are you a doctor?"

"I'm a carrier."

A carrier. She stiffened involuntarily. She had actually touched the hand of someone who carried plague, no matter what the doctor called it. To be sure, he looked nothing like an Underworld vampire; he glowed with health, a runner's lean muscles and solid veins. His features were melting-pot Valan, a bit darkened like Moraeg, not surprising with his L'liite given name. But as Pearl said, plague carriers looked okay at first.

The doctor added, "Micros are not contagious. They require artificial transfer."

The agent nodded. "To transfer them against a recipient's will or knowledge is a terminal crime. Section six-three-one, part A." "Terminal" meant, they lock you away for life. The ultimate sentence on all seven worlds of the Fold.

Chrys crossed her arms and lifted her chin. "So how do you transfer them? Like vampires?"

The tendons stiffened in Daeren's neck. "We use a microneedle patch."

"Like psychoplast."

The worm face squirmed. "Medicine has always turned poisons into useful drugs. Curare, digitalis, even snake venom. And microbes have been used for gene surgery since ancient times. An immunodeficiency virus was the prototype for Plan Ten's nanoservos."

"If it's so safe, why the security committee?"

Daeren said, "Any growing thing can go bad. The committee protects you, just like Plan Ten keeps you healthy."

Chrys shook her head. "I still don't get it. Why do people take the risk?"

"Why did you apply?"

She would not mention the rent. "The Comb," she said at last. "They say that brain enhancers designed her. I'm an artist; I want to enhance my work."

Daeren took a seat and folded his hands. If only her brother could look so good, Chrys thought resentfully. "The Comb was grown by micros," he said. "So are nine out of ten new medical treatments coming out today. So are most of the new devices Valedon exports. Your optic neuroports—micros invented them."

Her scalp prickled as she thought of all those eye windows that came on the market just a few years before. "What do you mean, 'micros invented them'?" Chrys wondered. "I mean, how do they enhance your brain—how does it really work?"

"Micros are intelligent," he said.

"Well, sure." Intelligent buildings, intelligent medical machines—everything was "intelligent" these days.

"Intelligent people."

Chrys stared hard at the agent, then at the doctor. She counted the doctor's appendages, one by one, all five of them. Was this really the planet's top brain surgeon? Could there be some mistake?

" 'People'?" she repeated. "Like, human beings?" Like the sentient doctor himself? Some intelligent machines had earned human rights in the Fold. There were all kinds of "people" nowadays; most humans had got used to it, aside from groups like Sapiens. But. .. microscopic people?

The worm face flexed two appendages together. "The law does not permit me, as a doctor, to answer your question. Only the Secretary of the Fold can determine what is human."

The agent nodded. "A special commission at the Secretariat has been at this for twenty years. They have yet to make a ruling. But you'll know."

"Daeren is right," the doctor said. "Any human carrier would agree."

"It's absurd," Chrys exclaimed. "Nothing that small can have enough ... connections to be self-aware."

"Self-awareness occurs in sentients with about a trillion logic gates," the doctor explained. "A micro cell contains ten times that number of molecular gates."

Chrys shook her head in disbelief. "If the micros are people, why does the Protector condemn them all?"

Daeren leaned forward slightly, and the stone at his neck sparkled sea green. "The Protector is in a tough position. Our economy will depend on micros—it's our only way to compete with Elysium. But plague micros built the Slave World, just as ours built the Comb."

"Right," said Chrys sarcastically. "I suppose their 'Enlightened Leader' is a microbe."

He hesitated. "That's classified."

Microbial spies and dictators. "Saints and angels preserve us," she whispered.

"Your micros will have nothing to do with the plague," Daeren assured her. "We've selected a very special strain for you: Eleutheria, the same strain as Titan of Sardis."

Chrys caught her breath. What would you take—that was the question. Zircon lacked the nerve. Did she? "I'm no dynatect," she pointed out. "I'm just a starving artist."

"Carriers never starve," the agent said. "You create art—these are the most creative strains we've got." He paused, hesitant. "They're a bit tricky, though. They flash a wide range of colors, wider than most Valans can see. But you see infrared, like an Elysian. You'll handle them better."

Better than whom, she wondered. "Did Titan ... handle them all right?"

"He had his eyes enhanced to the Elysian range."

"His death was just an accident, wasn't it? I mean, it wasn't caused by—"

"Titan's murder was a hate crime. He was killed because he was a carrier." The agent looked her in the eye. "As a carrier, you'll have more to fear from fellow humans than from micros."

Chrys frowned. There was altogether too much hate in Iridis. Hate for sentients, hate for simian immigrants, hate for artists who mocked the Great Houses—the Protector instigated that, Chrys suspected. "We pyroscape artists attract our share of nuts, too," she admitted. "When I make enough sales, I'll buy security."

The doctor added, "You can meet the micros yourself and ask them your questions."

"'Meet them?' Where?"

"Micros can't live outside a human host," the doctor said. "They live just beneath the skull, in the arachnoid, a web of tissue between the outer linings of the brain."

On the stage appeared a giant brain, sliced through the frontal lobe. Between the cortex and the skull lay a thin sea of fluid, dipping deep into the folds of cortex. The sea of fluid was crisscrossed by a fine spiderweb, all around the cortex and into the folds. "Cobwebs on the brain?" Chrys asked.

"The arachnoid is a normal part of your brain. It cushions the brain from impact, preventing injury."

Her eyes narrowed. "But the micros aren't in my brain. Where are they now?"

"Daeren prepared the culture. When you're ready to meet them, we will transfer two 'visitors' from his brain to yours."

So it was like the vampires. Chrys took a breath. "That's . . . unsanitary. What if they grow and make me sick?"

"Impossible," the doctor assured her. "The first two Daeren sends will be 'elders,' a non-reproductive form."

Daeren agreed. "Like Elysians, they can live for many generations but have no children of their own."

"I see." Even micro people had their long-lived superclass.

"The two elders we send are very special: the priests, who guide their people. They will explain—"

"Priests?" Chrys put up her hands. "No way. I never could stand priests."

He thought a moment. "You can call them something else, if you like. You're the host; inside your head, you make the rules."

Doctor Sartorius added, "Once they talk with you, you'll understand."

"Just how do we 'talk'?"

"The micros flash light, like fireflies," said Daeren. "That's how they 'talk' to each other, and to you."

Talking with fireflies. How absurd.

"After they visit, you can send them back with no ill effect."

Chrys suddenly tensed all over. She gripped the edge of her chair until the plast puckered in. "All right, I'll talk with your 'priests.' Just tell them, no preaching."

"You tell them," he said. "Inside your own head, you make the rules." As he spoke, a hospital form lit up and hovered above the holostage.

Chrys read the form warily. "You're sure you can get them out again?"

"Of course, Chrysoberyl," promised the doctor.

From a pocket in his seamless nanotex Daeren withdrew a patch of plast the size of a thumb. The kind used for immunizations, it contained microscopic transfer needles that penetrated the skin without injury. He placed it at the side of his neck, just below the base of the skull. "The two micros will migrate into the patch. When I hand it to you, you need to place it immediately, just as I did."

He took the transfer patch and held it out to her. Chrys picked it up. She turned it over in her palm. It felt like an ordinary bit of plast, smooth and warm, like the time she got booster shots. At last she placed it on her neck. It molded itself and adhered to the skin.

"That's fine," he observed. "Except that you just made them wait two days. Would you like to sit in a lightcraft that long?"

"What do you mean?"

"Micros live ten thousand times faster than we do. For them, one minute feels like a week. An hour is a year; a day is a generation."

"Well," said Chrys, "they can put up with it. You said I make the rules."

"Inside your own head. Outside—we'll get to that. Don't move the patch yet."

The patch was starting to tickle her skin. "How long does it take?"

"Not long, but you need to make sure they got through. They'll let you know, when they reach your retina."

"My retina? You mean they crawl inside my eyes?"

"Just inside the blind spot, where they can reach your neuroport. Try closing your eyes." A light flashed, pale green. She clapped her hands to her head. Moments ticked by, the sweat from her palms dampening her hair. Flashes of green, out of the dark, at random. The flashes swirled in fernlike fronds, then suddenly came into focus.

A luminous disk of green, with a small depression in the middle. It did not look like the candy rings of the doctor's image; more like a star, full of twinkling projections. The projections extended in all directions, several times farther than the width of the ring-shaped body.

"Is that... it?"

Daeren's voice intensified. "What does she look like?"

"Furry," said Chrys. "Not like on the holostage."

The doctor explained, "The holostage showed a space-filling model, based on electron density. The micros can't really 'see' details visually, because their size is just above the resolution limit for light. However, they can detect light blinking very fast, like a sound wave."

Daeren nodded. "They 'hear' blinking light, rather like we hear sound. We can hear speech clearly, but can't 'picture' the source."

"Then how do they 'see' all those fine projections?"

He glanced at the doctor.

"Each of those fine projections is a long chain molecule," the doctor explained. "A receptor molecule that can 'taste' different kinds of molecules in its path."

Like a cat's whiskers, she thought.

The green color fluttered in and out like a strobe. Then letters appeared, as if on a keypad: "I am here."

Chrys's eyes flew open. "She can talk!" The words hovered in her window, like a message from the city, but only in one eye.

"What did she say?" Daeren demanded suddenly. "Is she okay? Where's the other one?"

Another bewhiskered ring, tinted infrared, like a poppy at sunrise. "Here I am! Can you see me?"

Chrys's window projected full spectrum, but nobody ever sent her text in infrared. She gripped the edge of her chair. "They said 'I am here,' both of them."

"You saw Unseen, that's good." He sat back, his hands relaxed. "You can put down the patch now."

The transfer patch peeled off her neck, leaving a tingling sensation.

"Greetings from Eleutheria." Again in her right eye the letters pulsed green. "Please, Oh Great One, give us a sign. We have waited so long. We bring gifts and songs of praise."

"They're praying." Chrys laughed. "God never listens to humans—why should he care about micros?"

"You should answer them, before they get discouraged."

"What?"

"Please, Oh Great One. We have waited so long for the Promised World."

Her jaw fell, and she stared at the agent. "You mean. . . they're praying to me?"

"They'd better. You're their entire world; you offer life or death."

She continued to stare, without reading the rest of the letters that desperately appeared. To be prayed to, herself, was definitely a concept outside her experience, in Dolomoth let alone Iridis. "Saints and angels," she muttered to herself. "So how do I talk back?"

"Use your keypad."

"You mean they can tap my neuroports?"

"They designed them."

Micros designed the neuroports, for sale all over Valedon—to help the micros spread. Suddenly it dawned on her. She looked at the doctor, then back to the agent. "They're taking over—and you help them."

The agent sighed. "Indians always say that, about the latest new immigrants: 'They'll take over.' We said it of L'liites before they married into the Great Houses. We said it about sentients, and simians. And now micros."

Microbial "immigrants"?

"Oh Great One—without a sign, we will die."

She blinked twice, then focused on the text box, where the neuroports would detect movement of her eye muscles. Her eyes flickered simply, "Hello."

"A sign! The god in her mercy has given a sign."

"Let us sing in praise."

The two bewhiskered rings tumbled over. Then a swirl of color opened at the center, expanding, with all the colors of the rainbow, violet through infrared. The swirl grew, until it filled her entire visual field. Chrys watched, transfixed. After a few seconds, the swirl faded. A burst of stars, expanding, shifting through lava, red and orange, only to fall at her feet. Another starburst, then another, all in different ranges of color.

"Did you like them, Oh Great One?" The infrared letters returned. "Which did you like best?"

Her eyes wrote, "I liked the starburst."

"At last, I am seen! And the God of Mercy likes my offering best."

Just like human priests, playing holier than thou. "I like all offerings equally," Chrys wrote back. "My world is a democracy."

The letters came back green. "As the God wishes. Are we granted names?"

"What is your name?"

"We went nameless in the eyes of the Lord of Light. Our own God will grant us names."

The mention of another god, whoever that was, made her vaguely jealous. "I'll call you Fern," she told the green letters. "And you will listen to no other god but me."

"Of course, God of Mercy. We live or die at your pleasure."

"What do you call me?" came the infrared.

"I call you Poppy."

"Thanks, Oh Great One. May we bring our children to the arachnoid?"

This question brought her back to reality. The doctor was still there, and Daeren watched her like a cat. She asked him, "Do you go through this all day?"

For the first time Daeren smiled. "I can't see your window, but, yes, I expect so. I'm used to it."

"Do you ever tell them to shut up?"

"It's rarely necessary. They know me too well." He leaned forward. "Watch my eyes."

"What?" Puzzled, she watched his irises, cat's-eye-brown with intense radial lines. Suddenly their rims flashed, a ring of blue light around each. Astonished, Chrys stared, her lips parted.

"The blue angels call us," wrote her green letters. "Tell the Lord of Light we've done well."

So Daeren was the one they called the Lord of Light. Her mouth closed, and she drew back. "Will my eyes strobe like that?"

"Only to contact another carrier. Otherwise, they'll stay dark."

Other carriers? There must be a whole pantheon of human carriers, each with micros swimming in the cobweb lining of the brain, and flashing rings around their eyes, like a nightclub act. "What keeps them from infecting your brain and making you sick?"

"They stay within the arachnoid layer, just outside the cortex. They never touch your neurons. They're only allowed a population of a million."

That sounded like plenty. "How can you be sure? You can't control a disease."

"Your Plan Ten nanoservos monitor your brain. Besides, the micros control themselves. Even ordinary microbes, without intelligence, usually limit their occupation of animal hosts.

"If they don't make you sick, what do they do in the ... arachnoid?"

"Build homes and schools, raise their children. And help your work."

Little candy-colored rings building schools upon her brain.

"Do I please you, Oh Great One?" flashed the infrared. "What do you look like?"

"No, Poppy," said Fern. "To look on the face of God forbodes death."

Microbial superstition. "Here I am," blinked Chrys. Her eyes downloaded her old self-portrait, from her sophomore year with Topaz. Her hair was lava flowing down her shoulders, and every vein snaked with anatomic precision along her face and breasts, out her arms and down to her feet.

"Our own God of Mercy, amid the stars," said Fern.

The stars? What did that mean?

"A great road map," said Poppy. "We will get to know those veins well."

Micro people swimming through her veins—enough to chill the blood.

"Only our own god can see her own veins," Poppy added. "Our god sees color beyond red, beyond other gods. Ours is indeed the best and greatest of all the gods."

Typical priests. "If I am so great a god, why should I take you in?"

The green one said, "We are the People of Eleutheria. When our First World came to an end, and most of us died, the Blind God promised our children a New World, in a new arachnoid where no people ever lived before. We live by the lights of Truth, Beauty, Memory,..." The letters went on at length, about the various lights of virtue; Chrys lost patience after the third or fourth.

"Stop," said Chrys.

The letters ceased. That was encouraging.

"What can you do for me?" Chrys asked. "Can you help me create great art?"

"Our ancestors created dwellings for the gods themselves. We will create the greatest works ever seen."

Modesty was not their strong point. "What sort of dwellings?"

"The Lord of Light forbade us to speak of it, but to live only for one true God."

She frowned. "If I am your one true God, you must tell me everything."

"Yes, Oh Great One," said Fern, "but the blue angels warned—"

"It shall be as you say!" Poppy's letters danced. "I knew this was the New World for us."

"What can you do with this?" Chrys downloaded her gallery piece, the lava fountain that turned into butterflies.

At first the volcano spurted and poured, just as it had for her fellow artists at the meeting. Then the visual began to change. The colors deepened, becoming more fantastic, until the hungry rivers swallowed themselves into abstraction. Then the abstract forms picked up the volcanic rhythms, returning in a cooler form; a volcano of ice. Chrys watched, her lips parted. All kinds of possibilities—she ached to get back to work.

The images faded. "Today is the anniversary of our arrival," came the green one out of the dark. "Has the God of Mercy decided our fate?"

Chrys looked up. The doctor and the security agent were still there, waiting. The agent asked, "What do you think?"

She drew back. "I'll sleep on it."

Daeren shook his head. "They've already given you a whole year. They await your decision now."

She glared at him suspiciously.

The worm face wiggled. "A carrier needs to make life or death decisions quickly. But it is a lifelong commitment. So, if you don't feel comfortable, you should decline, and think it over. In the next year, we may have another culture ready."

That was reasonable, but what if the next culture were less creative than this one? On the other hand, what if these caused too much trouble? She thought of something. "Do these 'people' have ... legal rights?"

Daeren hesitated. "They ought to. I've spent enough hours at the Palace on their behalf." A lobbyist after all.

The doctor's worms stretched thoughtfully. "Legally, Daeren, they're the plague."

"They are not," insisted Daeren. "That's like calling all humans murderers."

"She asked their legal status."

He turned to her. "Our micros will actually protect you from the real plague. As a carrier, you'll be safer than before."

"If she maintains them properly," agreed Sartorius. "But if she ever gets in trouble with the law, the octopods can wipe her micros without a thought."

Chrys watched this exchange with interest. "So I could get rid of them at any clinic."

A fleeting darkness crossed the agent's face, like an eclipse of the sun, a look of anger and disgust. But he quickly resumed his professional air. "As the doctor said, you can wait till you're ready."

The three of them froze, waiting, as if an eternity passed. Even the doctor's worms were still. At last Chrys let out a breath. "I'll take them."

She saw the agent relax. He had a lot at stake, she realized. Being the "Lord of Light" must be a tough act for a college kid.

The doctor came alive, each appendage finding a task. "First we need to transfer the Plan Ten nanoservos. They keep watch throughout your body." His worms stretched into unbelievably narrow snakes that twined unnervingly. "Just turn around and watch the holostage."

Chrys turned. A white beach stretched to the horizon, a gentle surf rolling in, palms bobbing in the wind. She tried not to think of what the worms were doing behind her neck.

"Ob Great One, have you forgotten us?"

"We anxiously await your reply."

She sighed. That's what you got for feeding stray cats. "You're sure all this is covered? Who pays for it?"

Daeren said, "The Committee pays for Plan Ten, until you're established. Most of us don't notice the cost."

Her mouth fell open, then she closed it. No wonder the agent looked so young; he could be a hundred for all she knew. He could be a college athlete all his life, while her own brother grew paler every year, waiting for mitochondria. She swallowed hard. "Is there a family plan?"

"If you have dependents—"

"Never mind." As soon as she earned some money, she would get her brother covered, long enough to get new mitochondria. "I've decided," she told the two anxious micros. "You are my people. Just remember one rule: If you have to preach, do it outside my eyes."