Brain Plague

SEVEN

The blue Watchers floated near the Council of Thirty, missing nothing. For Fern, their presence was a relief, but a reproach. The death of Poppy and the rebel children seared her memory.

"You were warned," blinked Delphinium, her blue light dim with age. "People are not meant to outlive their god." As they had once—and nearly had again. Gods hurting gods was not a thing for people to see.

"The God of Mercy let us live," Fern insisted. "And soon we'll be a million strong."

"People are judged not by numbers."

"Not by numbers. By truth and beauty." Truth, beauty, and memory....

And now, they returned to the beauty and memory of their ancient monument to the gods—the Comb.

From the minions of the Deathlord, the Eleutherians received memory cells encoding all the development of the Comb, since the seed had first germinated. Within the cells, the plans were written on strands of DNA, crisscrossed with chains of atoms conducting electrons. The long chains carried their electrons to the membrane surface of the cell, where the current drove molecular pinwheels to rotate. Fern and Aster felt the arms of the rotating pinwheels, tasted the results, and compared their original plans.

"As I thought," blinked Aster. "A small deviation in the plan gets magnified as the building grows, straining the windows."

"Are you certain?" asked Fern. "The Comb was seeded before my time, but it is written that a million checks and tests were done."

"Our ancestors tested the model out to the billionth iteration. But the Deathlord's minions tell us the Comb grew faster than the gods planned. Larger than they had asked of us."

The gods themselves tasted hubris, Fern thought, but kept to herself. "Nonetheless, we will restore what we made."

"We'll model a correction," said Aster. "But to test the model, we must inspect the Comb and taste it directly." Aster's light flashed with the sureness of the young. Her filaments brushed the wheels of the cell, feeding them protons to run further calculations.

Some of the young designers were less patient. "Why must we return to this monument?" demanded a restless young elder, golden yellow. "Why build for the gods, if they can't even maintain our creation? Restoration is not our job. Let the ancient work fall into ruin."

"Memory," reminded Fern. "We build not for today, but for the memory of all time."

"When will we build our new monument for the God of the Map of the Universe?"

"When we find that legendary god again." The God of the Map of the Universe was nowhere to be found. None of his people had been seen, although the Cisterna Magna now filled with foreigners flashing new hues of green and orange, swimming past the columns of arachnoid. Visitors from other gods: the wizards of Wisdom and the minions of the Deathlord. Some came just to trade credits for good-tasting organic molecules, or for precious atoms of gold, iron, palladium, anything but arsenic, which belonged to the gods. Other visitors stayed on for a generation, to learn the ways of Eleutheria. And the very brightest of foreign children were recruited to merge with Eleutherians.

But Fern grew weary of the generations. Her own proteins were breaking down; she was nearly as old as Delphinium. Soon, she thought, they all will have to carry on without me. She knew what she must do, in the final years she had left.

Back at Opal's home, the virtual setting sun cast a warm glow on the bark of the trees, trilling with finches and warblers. Still dazed, Chrys sat on a redwood stump, which molded to her seat in a most unwooden fashion. In her lap curled Merope, the lucky survivor, nosed tucked under her paws, her tail waving gently.

Opal sat close to Chrys, while Selenite listened intently to Andra. Andra's namestones marched in precise rows across her nanotex. "It's a hate crime. We'll press charges."

Beside Andra, Daeren had not looked up since he arrived. What did he think of it all, Chrys wondered; her burnt-out apartment, her slain cat, the ravaged Underworld? Her eyes defocused, and for a moment she wished she could step back three weeks in time, just another artist getting by.

Opal clasped Chrys's hand. "Are you sure, Andra? Will the Palace take us seriously?"

Selenite said, "Burnt through the eyes is always an anti-carrier sign. Andra's right; we have to make them investigate."

Andra agreed. "It strengthens our case on Titan."

Titan, the Blind God, his eyes scorched by whoever would destroy what lived within. Just three weeks ago, the deed had haunted her window; now she had nearly ended the same.

Selenite crossed her arms. "The Palace needs to root out the Sapiens and end their war against us."

Chrys looked up. "Not just us. The whole Underworld."

"The Sapiens hate carriers even worse than sims."

Chrys scratched behind Merope's ears. "What do Sapiens have against carriers?"

Opal sighed. "They hate any intermingling of human and other. 'Pollution of the blood.' "

"But micros just live inside us. They don't mix with us genetically, like the simian ape ancestors."

"We all have ape ancestors. And we all have microbial ancestors—a billion years back, but still. It's not a question of reason." Opal shook her head. "You can't expect the virgins to understand."

"The what?"

"Well, what do you call a wilderness without people in it?"

The carriers were silent. Behind a tree something moved, a flash of tan lifting a dark eye. A deer, feeding in the woods, an illusory world of peace.

"Who knows if it was Sapiens after Chrys?" Opal added. "It could have been anyone. A copycat criminal."

Perhaps a "virgin" neighbor of Chrys who glimpsed the colored rings in her eyes. She stared bleakly past her seven-digit credit line. "Why does the Palace let Sapiens get away with it?" Chrys exclaimed. "They burn out the Underworld, and nothing comes of it. This time, the signs were all there—everyone knew what was coming."

Andra stared ahead coldly. "It's the cheap way to clean out the slave trade."

Selenite passed Opal a patch of micro visitors. "Not quite." Her voice dripped with sarcasm. "We wouldn't want to lose all the slaves, would we."

Chrys blinked, puzzled.

"The clinic," Opal explained. "The good doctor serves ... friends of the Palace. When they convert to second stage and fear the third. Or when their families turn them in."

"They go clean for six months, on average," said Selenite. "Then they get resupplied."

Chrys had seen enough fur-dressed customers sidling up to the plague bar. But to think that it reached the Palace ...

Andra rose from her seat and paced between two redwoods, stepping precisely one foot ahead of the other. "Sar conducts research to improve our defenses."

"Right," said Selenite. "We tell the Palace we're walking culture dishes."

Andra frowned. "What we learn from the slaves protects us as well. Right now, carriers are safer than virgins—but the microbial masters are always learning new tricks." She rose from her seat, and light from between the branches glinted on her hair. "Bad micros, bad humans. Some day, we'll bring them all to justice."

"Good luck." Opal's smile brightened. "For now, Chrys, we'll find you a safe place to live. I checked out that townhouse—it's lovely, just down the block from Lord Garnet of Hyalite—"

"No." Chrys tensed, and Merope jumped down from her lap. "I'm sorry—I'm just not ready to run out and look at houses. Let me be."

Opal squeezed her hand. "Of course, dear. You can stay with us as long as you wish."

Andra put a patch to her neck.

"The Thundergod is departing," Chrys told Fern. "Any visiting 'judges'?" The ritual was now routine.

"Just a minute while we pull them out of the nightclubs."

Andra's patch made the rounds of the gods, picking up any stray judges lest they be lost for a generation, while returning wizards and Eleutherians. After she left, Opal exchanged a glance with Selenite. "We have a few things to attend to. If you need anything, Chrys, just call." The two carriers disappeared through a virtual tree trunk as wide as Chrys's lost home.

Alone now, Daeren looked up. "What happened to your art? Did you lose everything?"

Chrys shrugged. "It's all online." Except for little things like the holo still of her parents and her ailing brother, vaporized into random molecules of the city. "I'd be crazy to store anything in that neighborhood."

"It's not a bad neighborhood. It's a neighborhood in need of attention."

She eyed him skeptically. "If it got the right kind of attention, I couldn't afford to live there."

"Now you can live anywhere."

"And all my friends?"

He hesitated. "I've been thinking, I made some mistakes. I should have known what it would mean to get you involved with us. Usually our candidates can pick up and integrate easily with the carrier community. But you have a special community in the art world. You need to stay in touch with that, and it won't be easy. I'm sorry."

Chrys's eyes filled and she swallowed hard. "If they're worth anything, they'll come back."

"Oh Great One, we ask a favor." Fern again. "One of the Watchers, Delphinium, is aging sooner than expected. She won't ask for herself, but I know it would please her to spend her final days back home."

Chrys studied her window, then turned to Daeren. "Fern thinks Delphinium would like to go home."

Daeren frowned. "Are they trying to get rid of the Watchers?"

"I don't think so. We still have six others. Delphinium is dying; she won't last the hour."

"The Watchers pledged to end their lives with you." But his look softened. "Let me see." He rose from his seat, and Chrys rose to meet his eyes. The blue lights twinkled. "All right," he said at last.

Chrys handed him the patch, and he put it at his neck.

"Thanks, Chrys. We missed her." He smiled, revealing a different person underneath, someone who perhaps did not have to be quite so serious all the time. Micros were always "her," Chrys noticed. Unlike humans and sentients, they hadn't invented gender. They had other obsessions.

Chrys's head tilted quizzically. "Why did you first take micros, Daeren?"

His face closed again, his mouth small. "For the money." Unlike the other carriers, he had no lucrative line that she could see. "I'll see you for your next checkup," he told her.

The next morning, Chrys went with Opal to see the townhouse with the caryatids. The lightcraft set down at a row of towers that rose proud as lords in a reception line. Chrys stepped out of the lightcraft, clutching her stomach; she would never get used to it. Warily she eyed the towers, then their cousins across the street, lined up like a piece of rainbow cake sideways on a plate, each layer with its subtle pastel hue, all reaching up to an actual roof open to the stars. And each beautifully fenced with changing patterns of stunplast.

"Chrys, it's here. Remember?"

The tower was a plain shade of pink gray, its doorway flanked by two caryatids draped in classic style. Three floors, she guessed. Not a window in sight; the interior must be totally virtual. "Are you sure I can afford to buy it?" Over the day since her windfall, she had discovered she owed world, state, and city taxes, as well as a fine for failure to predict income. Then the Security Committee took a 10 percent "required donation"—bad as the Brethren. Her one point five megacred had shrunk by half.

"You don't buy a house," Opal whispered. "You hire him. 'Buying' is a dirty word."

Masculine, Chrys told herself, hoping she'd remember.

"Greetings, Ladies," boomed a voice from the house. "Xenon, at your service. Chrysoberyl of Dolomoth—a pleasure to meet you. I would not have considered a first-time home partner, but you came so well recommended by my gallery colleagues."

Her mouth fell open, then shut again. Her cheeks flushed slightly.

The wall indented into a stairway. "Do step up, please. First floor provides dining and guest reception; second floor, on my colleague's recommendation, is devoted entirely to your studio...." The painting stage alone took up greater volume than her entire previous apartment. "Of course, if you'd prefer to install a ballroom and gaming facilities, I'd be glad to oblige; I do love entertaining—"

"Thanks, this will do." Alcyone would have loved so much room to explore, she thought, aching for the poor lost creature. Merope would need a new companion. Chrys turned slowly on her heel, her mind spinning with the possibilities.

Opal nodded this way and that. "It's a good start. When you've made it big, you can expand for all your assistants."

"Furniture," Chrys exclaimed, her heart sinking. "How will I ever fill this place?"

"I provide an entire home package," assured Xenon. "What sort of bedding would you like? I'll put out samples."

Beneath her feet, the floor vibrated. Something was pushing out from the wall, and up from the floor. Floor and walls molded into a bed. Then a second bed appeared, circular, and a third, a vast half moon with a canopy. Which to choose? "Do you have, um, a default setting for everything?"

"Certainly, Chrysoberyl. I do love decorating myself. I can see we'll make great partners." The beds shrank away.

"I'll leave you to settle in," said Opal, taking out a patch to retrieve her visitors. "This evening—I know it's a lot to ask, after all you've been through, but could you manage a site visit to the Comb? Selenite wants to get started, before your people forget their promise."

Chrys couldn't wait to try out the new painting stage. Its scope overwhelmed her; she had never tried anything on this scale. Her hands dipped into the palette to pull out swathes of gray purple and amber green, then stretched through the air to block in the shapes of mountains. Painting felt like flying.

"Fern? Are you there?" For some reason, Fern was getting harder to reach.

"I am here, Oh Great One." The magenta letters meant Aster. "What do you need?"

"I am here, too," said Fern at last. "My apologies, Oh Great One; I was indisposed."

Chrys took an AZ wafer. "You can help me start my new painting." "Wilderness without people"—that would describe most of her past work. But now she would start something a bit different.

She called up stock footage of ancient volcanoes, ancient enough for forests to have clothed their flanks. Then even older footage, from her village in Dolomoth. The village square, the families walking to market, all seen from afar; the Brethren forbade imaging. But one scene, of herders climbing a hill, would fit right into the forested volcano. The starting point of her new piece: a wilderness with people.

"Gods in the stars," blinked Fern. "What an honor, to shape the very gods."

"Gods in the wilderness. We will see, Fern."

Her message light blinked. It was Zircon, his outsized physique charmingly reduced to a sprite. Chrys steeled herself for this first encounter with one of the Seven who knew. "Chrys, are you okay? I mean, can I help you move anything? What a shame about your flat."

She looked around her, making sure he got an eyeful of her palatial studio. "I've already moved."

"And you've been working out full-time," he added, looking her up and down.

"That's Plan Ten." Her biceps and deltoids bulged like pools of magma.

Zircon hesitated. "I heard you had a bad trip."

She gritted her teeth. Was that how the Seven would write her off—"She had a bad trip." "Why don't you visit? I'm not contagious."

"That's not what I heard. You of all people."

A chill came over her. If even Zircon wouldn't touch her, who would? "You big chicken."

"See my feathers." The sprite leaned closer. "Actually, Chrys ... was it worth it? The high, I mean."

Chrys rolled her eyes. "You're the 'urban shaman.' You don't need help to be a genius."

"Well, tell me about it sometime. I'll try anything once. See you at the gym."

She smiled and felt better. But how could she go back? What if one of the tougher customers disliked the look of her eyes? "I have to work on the Comb. They already paid me a megacred."

Zircon whistled. "In that case, you can treat me at the Gold of Asragh."

"The Underworld? Didn't they get trashed?"

"The octopods looked after the night spots. How could Lord Zoisite get by without caterpillar dancing?"

That evening Chrys tore herself away from her painting to meet Opal and Selenite at the Comb. As she departed, she found her entrance hall transformed into a broad spiral staircase flanked with gargoyles and caryatids, the draped figures holding up scalloped capitals while stepping out of the wall, their eyes following her down the stairs. She would have to talk with Xenon, tactfully, about his decor.

She strolled past the towers of rainbow cake fenced with stunplast. In the street glided bubble cars, a tributary of the lava river of Center Way. Coming toward her was a lady in stylish swirling nanotex with mirrored heels.

"Keep dark," Chrys warned her micros. "No need to scare people."

"People won't be scared," assured Aster. "We need to contact new people."

"Not all gods have people. Stay dark." The lady passed without incident. Chrys felt her pulse subside.

One block, then another, on her way to the tube stop. As she reached the next block, the elegance faded. A crack appeared in a wall; once slice of building actually slumped, its sentience gone. Then the sentient homes gave way to more modest shelters of brick and cellulose, some with windows nailed shut. People on the go liked a short walk to the tube, but not right next door. And there, between two boarded-up shops, was a brightly lit window with a painted sign—The Spirit Table.

A soup kitchen. Right here, on Rainbow Row, just a ten-minute walk from the mansion of Lord Garnet of Hyalite. Chrys laughed, though her chest tightened. She had eaten at a soup kitchen once, when the rent took her last credit.

"Oh Great One, what is that source of light?" Micros were suckers for anything that sparkled.

"A place for gods too poor to feed themselves."

"Gods who don't feed themselves? How distasteful. How can this be?"

Her jaw tensed. Maybe these "people" could use an education. She paused at the cellulose door. It had a handle and creaked on its hinge.

It was early for customers, but a Sister appeared in a hooded robe of alpaca wool; it could have been carded and spun on Mount Dolomoth. "Sister Kaol, at your service, my dear. You're most welcome." The Sister gestured toward a table. "The soup's nearly done."

Chrys shook her head. "I'm new on the block, and I was just wondering, could you use a hand now and then?"

Sister Kaol raised her hands. "Saints and angels preserve you, dear. Of course, we have regular volunteers; and we always need donations...."

She left feeling better, yet half a fool. All she needed was another distraction from her work.

"Would you ever not feed yourself, Ob Great One?" asked Aster. "Remember, your food feeds us, too."

"So long as you keep all those digits in my credit line, you needn't worry."

"How could the gods lack food? How could a god be powerless?"

Suddenly Chrys felt reluctant to be quite so candid as she had with Poppy. How far should their education go? "It's a mystery. Mysterious are the ways of the gods."

As she entered the tube, she realized she'd heard no news for a week. Now that she no longer was force-fed hourly newsbreaks, the world could go up in smoke without her knowing. She blinked at her keypad.

There stood Lord Zoisite, the minister for justice, proclaiming his shock and outrage over the carnage he let happen in the Underworld. No talk of reconstruction. From Elysium, the marble-faced Guardian Arion expressed his concern. "The democracies of the Fold cannot excuse unchecked criminality." Arion's fine Elf phrasing barely masked his contempt.

Nothing new on Titan's murder, let alone Chrys's cat. The news quickly moved on to the coming solar eclipse. The eclipse would make exciting effects of light and shadow; Chrys would not miss it. Yet it saddened her to hear the Underworld dismissed in the same tones as an eclipse: an event wholly predictable, yet nothing to be done.

As the sun neared the horizon, its last rays ignited the Comb with gold, scarlet, and poppy, matching the cheerful crimson of Chrys's nanotex. She blinked to store a few snapshots. Beside the hexagonal entrance stood Opal and Selenite.

"Ob Great One," flashed Fern, distracting her. "A new elder asks for a name. Please—"

"What? Not now." Chrys signaled the letters quickly with her eyes, hoping Selenite would not notice. The Deathlord would expect her to have her people under control; they needed to make a good impression.

"Please, God of Mercy; it's most important. I will explain

later"

"All right, hurry up." She would have to give them a talking-to; they could not interrupt just any time.

Opal caught her hand. "Your people must be excited to see the Comb; I'm sure they've got lots to talk about."

"I am here, Oh Great One." Brilliant yellow. "I will design and create for you. I believe in Beauty and Power, the power of great new ideas—"

"Jonquil," Chrys named her. "Now be dark."

Selenite nodded, her own eyes rings of flame. "They have a plan to fix the windows."

"The micros? Already?"

Selenite touched Chrys's hand and passed her a patch. "Remember, my people met with them yesterday and gave them memory cells of how the Comb grew. From her conception and germination, down to the latest millimeter of growth. Titan lost interest after the first month. But now, your Eleutherians have had a generation to work—as long as it took ancient humans to build the Pyramids."

Chrys drank in the sight of the hexagonal windows spiraling upward and around, like a snake slithering up around a trunk, disappearing into solar gold.

Opal sighed. "Seeing her the first time, you could just faint."

"What an ancient monument," Jonquil said of the year-old building. "I'm amazed it's not yet in ruins."

"Fern?" Chrys was anxious to reach someone with a better attitude.

"Fern feels unwell," replied Aster. "She asks leave to rest."

Chrys stopped. Fern was sick? "7s there no 'Plan Ten' for micros?"

A moment's hesitation. "I will visit the Deathlord to share our model with the minions."

Chrys passed the patch to Selenite. Still uneasy, she followed Opal toward the main entrance. The entrance was a hexagonal plate of light, shimmering in every color known, Chrys suspected, even colors beyond what she could see.

Selenite's black curls fluttered in the breeze. "What do you think?"

"The flow of space, soaring ever upward; it's extraordinary." Chrys could scarcely imagine living and working here every day. "The windows are magnificent."

"Everyone says that. But just two levels below, where the roots house a nano fabrication plant, the panes are all cracked, due to a complex set of vertical and lateral stresses. The stresses extend upward, though not yet visible." Selenite blinked to send Chrys a stress map.

In her window, virtual red lines crisscrossed the surface of the Comb, clustering like broken veins. Along the tier nearest street level, the lines clustered so thick they obscured the panes. Chrys felt her scalp crawl. "Why? What caused this?"

"Your Eleutherians blame the client. They say the Institute took on new tenants too fast; it wasn't meant to double in size in six months." Her tone chilled, as if the claim displeased her.

"There was no design error," insisted Aster. "The occupancy of this edifice increased at a rate far greater than our ancestors projected."

"Titan knew damn well," muttered Selenite. "He knew how fast the Institute needed to grow. Why else would they want a dynamic building?"

Chrys spread her hands. "So what am I to do?"

"First, your people need to collect raw data, direct from the Comb."

Opal waved them over to the entrance. "Let Chrys tour the interior, dear. Remember, the interior has to grow, too."

The entrance was a shimmering curtain. Chrys paused and took a breath.

"Welcome, Eleutherians." The voice reverberated out of the halls of the sentient building. "I am pleased indeed that you return to tend my growth and fine-tune my perfection."

This sentient was a real queen bee, even worse than Eleutheria. Chrys followed Opal through the virtual curtain. In the hallway passed a human and a sentient, engrossed in conversation. The hexagonal corridor extended in the distance with a slight curve. All along the lower walls projected model designs: nanos to regenerate liver and lungs, and live drug factories; seeds to sprout bubble cars, interstellar ships, even entire planetary satellites. The sight of it all made her blood race.

Something tripped her toe. Chrys stumbled and caught herself, cursing her lack of exercise; she had to retune the coordination of her new muscles. In the brilliance of the floor, she saw a gap. The gap widened and made an angle toward the wall, where it closed, dissolving into the uprising part of the hexagon where a model spaceship hovered above a distant world.

"Just a crack in the floor," said Opal.

"Excessive lateral expansion," explained Selenite, "due to torsional stress."

In the wall shimmered a curtain of light. Opal nodded. "This way to my office." As she passed through, a stairway step molded to her feet, taking her up a half level to another hexagonal corridor. Avoiding more cracks in the floor, Chrys tried to puzzle out how the corridors and levels related. How the devil did people find their own offices?

The fixtures and trim fit seamlessly with the aesthetic theme. Recessed lighting grew out of hexagonal cells, and even the water fountains looked as if you might sip at honey. On the floor near the wall stood a hemispherical bowl of reflective material, half-filled with an unknown liquid. Farther down the hexagonal corridor stood a similar silver bowl, containing a smaller amount of liquid with what looked like bits of debris floating in it. "What are those?"

Opal pointed overhead, where the ceiling appeared discolored. "The coolant fluid leaks."

Selenite explained, "More excessive lateral expansion." No doubt due to torsional stress.

Chrys shook her head. "Like, I hate to say it, but this place could use some work."

"Of course," boomed the Comb's ubiquitous voice, "my thirty-six maintenance engineers work full-time to keep me in shape."

Opal whispered, "They keep the place barely functioning."

"One must have patience with a totally innovative design," insisted the Comb.

Selenite raised her hands. "Okay, we know all the problems. Chrys is here to address one of them. My people have analyzed Eleutheria's latest fenestration plan, and we're ready to pass it on to you."

A light blinked in the slanting wall. "Right here."

"Come closer and stare at the spot," Selenite told Chrys. "The micros will beam their data from your cornea. Try not to blink."

Chrys stared until the spot of wall swam before her eyes.

"It's a good start," observed the Comb at last, "but I don't like being inoculated at the end of my roots." Like a kid, thought Chrys—don't stick me with a needle.

Selenite said, "It's the only way to assure complete correction of future fenestration. We promise we'll be careful." The conversation went on for some time, its technicalities beyond Chrys, until the Comb beamed a revised model back to Chrys for review.

Opal led the way out. "At least it sends business your way," she told Selenite as they walked down toward the waiting lightcraft.

Selenite nodded. "Every client wants the biggest damned ego they can find to build the fanciest tower. Afterward, they call on me to make it habitable."

"Not habitable," Opal corrected. "Respectable, from the outside. You weren't hired to fix the interior." Before her the door of the lightcraft popped open.

"But this one had even me beat," said Selenite. "Titan was exceptionally secretive about his plans. He provided a set, of course, but they lacked key elements of source code. The spiral fenestration—god forbid anyone might copy that, ever." Selenite looked at Chrys. "If it weren't for you, I don't know what I would have done. I nearly returned my fee."

Selenite must have been paid ten times what she passed on to Chrys, and Talion yet another ten-fold more. How many millions were wasted on supposed habitations that belonged in an art museum, while half the Underworld slept on the street?

A thunderous crash, as if Merope had knocked a thousand crystal bowls off the table. Instinctively Chrys covered her ears and crouched low, but a sharp pain stabbed her back. She cried out. In her window, the Plan Ten light came on.

From behind came more crashing and shattering. Chrys felt blood seeping beneath her nanotex. "Don't move," Opal warned. "Something caught in your side. Help will come soon."

Slowly Chrys turned to look. From the face of the Comb, a pair of adjacent windows had fallen, leaving two gaping black eyes. Below on the walkway, where the three carriers had just passed, all thirty-six maintenance engineers were swarming to clean up the jagged shards. The shards had spread across the lawn, each glinting with a spark of the setting sun.

"The damn stuff's not supposed to shatter," exclaimed Selenite. "The stress must have wreaked its program and stiffened the panes. Every one of those panes could be ready to shatter."

A worm-faced medic hurried up the path. Not quite a doctor, it had only three grasping limbs. "Plan Ten here," the sentient called. "We'll have you clean in no time." His arm, or hers, Chrys could never tell, made disgusting sucking noises as it cleaned the blood and shrapnel out of Chrys's flesh. Then the other two arms sucked all over Opal and Selenite, just in case.

Chrys cleared her throat. "Do dynatects ever offer, like, a service contract?"

Opal laughed and caught Chrys's arm. "Service contract! There's a new one."

"I don't know," said Selenite. "Would you offer a service contract for your paintings?"

"My paintings are all virtual. I keep the code and give a lifetime replacement guarantee."

Selenite eyed Chrys speculatively. "There's an idea. I'll talk to the Board of Directors."

Opal eyed Chrys watchfully. "Would the Eleutherians do it?" The carriers all seemed to doubt her control of Eleutheria.

"Where is Fern?" demanded Chrys.

"1 am here," flashed Aster.

"And I am here," flashed Jonquil.

Chrys's eyes flew across the letters. "Let's offer a service contract for the Comb."

Jonquil flashed quickly, "Service is for maintenance engineers. We build new."

"Service is a new idea," returned Chrys. "Never before tried in all the universe."

"We pursue aesthetic design," said Aster. "We're not trained for maintenance."

"Is it too hard to learn?"

No response. How could she manage a million people she couldn't see?

"Where is Fern? I need her."

"I am here, Oh Great One." At last the green letters, more slowly than usual. "I have been with you always. But I will not be here much longer."

Not much longer—what did that mean?

"I offered you Jonquil, lest my time end before you left the Comb. Now 1 remain, but soon I will pass on to the world beyond time."

Chrys felt a chill. "I will call Plan Ten." The medic was just leaving.

"Plan Ten is not for people. Only the gods are immortal. But I leave a gift for you, and for the people of Eleutheria. The Laws of Righteousness, for all to follow, numbering six hundred and thirteen."

"Don't tire yourself reciting them," Chrys quickly rejoined.

"As my last act in this world of flesh, I call on Eleutheria to

heed the words of the God of Mercy, to hold and cherish our past

creations. To the Seven Lights, let us add an Eighth: the Light of

Mercy. As we would receive mercy, so must we grant it in

turn"

Someone was touching her arm. "Chrys?" It was Opal. "Are you all right?"

Opal would fuss and take care of her. But Chrys was determined to handle this herself. "I'll be all right," she said firmly. "I just need to get home." How would she survive without Fern?