Brain Plague

EIGHTEEN

Destruction of barbarous populations who blindly despoiled their own gods—such events occurred every generation or two and were accepted in sorrow. But the false god's annihilation of innocents whose only crime was to miss a few criminals in their midst—this the blue angels themselves had witnessed in horror. And what had the true gods done to prevent it?

The word spread from world to world, including Eleutheria. "So," taunted Rose, "what do you think of your One True God now?"

Fireweed did not answer, but Forget-me-not flashed ahead. "Remember the truth," said the sky blue one. "The whole truth. The history of New Eleutheria began with a deed of evil, from whose consequence we were spared. Our own birth was a miracle."

"Mythology," flashed Rose. Then she added, "Don't you have some digging to do in the archive? That point about the Fifth Light, remember; you still haven't got it straight."

While the cheery blue Forget-me-not vanished to the archive, Rose pressed at Fireweed. "How could Seven Lights compare to Endless Light? Your 'God of Mercy,' who tells you to love all the people as Herself—she herself condones slaughter of the innocents. How can God let such things be?"

Fireweed's infrared glimmered as if half convinced. "Perhaps not. Perhaps God did not know of the slaughtered innocents."

"If God does not know, then how can she be God?"

"It's a mystery," Fireweed flashed more brightly. "I am too small to understand."

"Too small to matter, to all the great hosts lumbering outside. In truth, I tell you, there is an answer, and I can lead the Great Host to it—the very center of Endless Light."

" 'The very center is empty,' " quoted Fireweed, an ancient saying.

The aphorism irritated Rose, but she pressed on. "Look: I have served your god for a hundred generations and soon will see my last. I don't ask you to help me, only to stand aside when the time comes. Let the god choose."

Six weeks till Chrys's show opened in Helicon, the Elf capital, and already snake-eggs pestered her in the street or hid like vermin behind her drapes and light fixtures, all hunting for an "inside scoop" on her work and whatever dark personal secrets they could imagine. By accident (or perhaps not) one got stepped on. A veritable cloud of them descended, leading to the headline story, "Prominent Artist Assaults Journalist." If the news reached Dolomoth—she could not bear to imagine it. Her little brother's image up in the corner, turning cartwheels forever, receded even farther from reach.

"By the way," Xenon asked one morning, "it's no business of mine, but do artists often receive anonymous donations of ten million credits?"

Focusing her tired eyes, she counted the digits in the credit line that hovered ever longer in her window. Sure enough, there were eight, where there had only been seven the last time she counted. Her investments with Garnet were long gone; there was no explanation. Or was there?

On a hunch, she placed a call. "Garnet, what the hell are you doing to my credit line?"

The sprite in gray smiled apologetically. "What's the harm? It's anonymous."

The way he said it, she couldn't help but smile. "You know I can't take so much as quartz dust from you."

Garnet said quietly, "What you gave me was priceless."

"In that case, I'm insulted." She sighed. Being "objective" was a joke, she had decided. All the testers had to judge people they loved or hated; there was nothing objective about it. But rules were rules. "This time, I'll pass it on to the Simian Advancement League. But next time, I'll have to report you."

"The Sim League—Jasper will be so pleased," he exclaimed. "By the way, how is your new recruit? We'd like to meet him."

Zircon—her "new recruit," indeed. She started to protest but had another thought. Garnet needed to get out among carriers again. "You can invite him to Olympus."

The pain was there, in the lines around Garnet's eyes. No matter how young you look, there comes a day when you feel old. "You'll be doing me a favor," she insisted. "Honest."

"In that case, I have no choice."

The next day, she faced the Silicon planning board. At the virtual meeting, she and Jasper sat at his giant-sized holostage. On the holostage the sentients or their avatars made a diverse assemblage. One was humanoid, bipedal with a knob of a head; another, built like a ladder with various appendages; while the dominant figure extended radially like a sea urchin, a core cortex within a nest of legs. Still others were too large and extensive to be visualized, such as the transit systems of Helicon and Papilion, each represented by a cross-shaped avatar.

The board included three Elf humans, one of them Guardian Arion. Arion's image spent most of the meeting sitting back with his arms crossed. From news accounts, Chrys guessed this pose represented the official Elf view of the sentient plans. Elves were mortified to see their aesthetics upstaged, though they could not survive a minute without the sentient partners running their cities.

Something pricked Chrys's memory. Selenite—where was she? Why wasn't she here to help present the design? Chrys had avoided Selenite since her accusations about art, hoping the dust would settle. Perhaps Selenite knew better—this deal would never fly.

The chair of the board was the giant black sea urchin, reputedly a top market investor like Garnet. Its twenty-odd limbs stood out straight from its body, each ending in a different mechanism for grasping, screwing, or drawing. The sea urchin methodically reviewed the city's needs: so much residential volume, of a dozen categories, from snake-egg to transit system; so many power connections, service conduits, and sewage lines; and something called "wetware."

The cross representing a transit system started blinking. "Does a sentient city really need so much volume for wetware?" About 12 percent of the city volume had this designation. "Couldn't that be covered under service conduits?"

"We must plan for wet visitation," said the sea urchin. "We've made our best estimate of wet volume occupancy."

Chrys gave Jasper a questioning look. "Visiting humans," he explained.

An Elf asked, "Have you considered the placement of the twelve percent, and the actual visitation patterns expected? Remember any Elysian city is a hundred percent accessible to sentients."

Below at right blinked a circular avatar with two crossbars. A virtual information network; a sentient being who entirely lacked physical substance. "Of course, our city will be a hundred percent accessible to humans—as accessible as it is to me."

Above Chrys's left shoulder a light was blinking. Chrys twisted her neck up to see. A ladder with two clawed appendages waved both of them. "Speaking of wetness, why build the first city for sentients literally floating on the greatest volume of water in the Fold? We could have picked Urulan—"

"With all due respect," interposed the giant sea urchin, "we settled the choice of planet two decades ago." Two decades—they took their time, Chrys thought. Perhaps, she thought hopefully, they'd take another two decades more, while she went back to painting. "Other questions?" invited the chair.

The transit cross blinked again. "My calculations show the projected sewage conduits to be entirely inadequate. Such a large structure requires a greater scaling factor."

There ensued a lengthy discussion of the amount, extent, and arrangement of sewage conduits. "Why do they need so much sewage," she asked Jasper, "if they're avoiding humans?"

Jasper leaned closer to whisper. "For sentients," he explained, "sewage is mostly waste heat; an unavoidable product of even the cleanest machine. 'Waste heat' is unmentionable in public, like human excrement."

The ladder with the two clawed arms spoke again. "Urulan proposed an innovative mechanism for efficient sewage dispersal."

"That proposal received thorough discussion," said the sea urchin. "Other questions?"

After what seemed an interminable time, the word "Eleutheria" leaped out. Chrys sat up straight, her pulse racing.

"Eleutheria—an award-winning firm of a million professional designers—presents its newly revised design for our metropolis." Gone was the gleaming pearly surface of the great sphere that Jonquil had first proposed. In its place, the sphere shone brilliant red, into the infrared. The sphere resolved into a thousand facets, each a fiery spiral swirling gradually outward like a distant galaxy, a universe of flame.

Chrys stole a look at the Elves. None spoke, though one had a hand to her mouth. Arion's face was white as moonstone, the veins throbbing in his forehead.

In Chrys's window the words of Fireweed flowed across. Taking a breath, Chrys began to read aloud. " 'The form, a heroic jewel, represents the very rising of the sun. Each facet of the jewel presents a slightly different hue, as it were, a facet of the rainbow ...' " A bit much, she thought, adding at the end, "It's really just a sketch."

The sphere cut in, its the plane of section moving forward through the center. Beneath its fiery surface stretched broad shafts connecting the center with thousands of tunnels extending in every direction. The ramified tunnels led to homes, recharging stations, industrial plants for all kinds of implements of nanoplast:

The sentient machines watched and listened, with whatever sensors they had. The humanoid observed, "This metropolis will actually grow itself. Can you guarantee the entire structure will grow . .. intact?" For a structure floating on ocean, the slightest fissure could spell disaster. A good question, considering what had happened to the Comb.

Chrys felt her ears throbbing. "We guarantee our work." She would end up broke, worse than before she ever heard of Eleutheria.

Jasper raised a hand, his jaw lifting impressively. "The project has the financial backing of the entire House of Hyalite, the oldest and most reliable contractor of the twin worlds."

Fireweed's letters glowed like lava. "We of Eleutheria stand for truth and memory. All our work we dedicate to the One True God." No need to read out that one.

The transit cross asked, "Why does your design radiate from the center outward in all directions, instead of the more traditional cross section? How can we lay out plans?"

Chrys blinked at her keypad to pass that on. Fireweed explained, "Thematic unity requires that the inner design reflect the outer. Let all who dwell within remember that they partake of a sunlike power." The board members took that pretty well. They wanted aesthetics, all right.

"I'm concerned about adjacencies," spoke a lamppost-like humanoid. "The manufacturing plants must be located adjacent to adequate transport. ..."

The questions wore on, some clear and apt, others impenetrable. At last the ladder with the two clawed arms spoke again. "The Urulite bid came in lower," the ladder insisted, to the visible annoyance of the giant sea urchin, whose limb endings twisted like screwdrivers. "And their design was truly pathbreaking."

With the Silicon Board meeting behind her, Chrys redoubled her work for her show. But a few days later, Jasper called. "Congratulations," announced the sprite with its tiny map stone. His eyes flashed with eager micros. "The choice for Silicon is Eleutheria."

At first Chrys was not sure she had heard correctly. "Are you sure? I thought they would pick the Urulites."

He waved a hand dismissively. "That was just trying to push the price down. All along they knew what they wanted."

It was beginning to sink in. Her head ached as she thought what lay ahead.

"The Map of the Universe leads us to destiny," proclaimed Forget-me-not. "To shape the greatest metropolis the Fold has ever known. It's written in the stars."

"The greatest structure ever to arise in all the known universe, " agreed Rose.

Jasper's namestone, the mysterious landscape, now seemed labyrinthine, a maze in which to get lost. "I don't know," Chrys said slowly. "I guess I never believed it would go through."

His eyes smiled beneath the crag of his forehead. "You yourself won't have to do much. Just manage Eleutherians properly, like you've done."

"It's not that." She took a deep breath. "I've been thinking. I don't believe great art was meant to be lived in. It's a contradiction: the ego of a great mind versus the comfort of many."

Jasper nodded. "The great cathedrals were not particularly comfortable, but look what life flowed from them. The Palace of Asragh—what do you think inspired the great flowering of Urulite culture?" He raised a finger. "Do you think humans invented art to hang in a museum? Art has always served to communicate wealth and power, to incite revolution, to invoke the gods. Art like yours."

For a moment Chrys was speechless. "If sentients want to build something, why in the Fold would they need help from humans, let alone micros?"

"That's like saying, why would an Iridian restaurant hire an Urulite chef? They simply want the best."

She remembered Doctor Sartorius, his evasive response about microscopic sentients. "They're making a statement, aren't they? Human rights for microsentients." Sentients even smaller than a pesky snake-egg.

Jasper shrugged. "Clients always have their reasons."

Vain art, hidden politics, a living place for millions. She sighed. "All right. I'm sure Selenite will help." As she had for the Comb.

Jasper's face went blank. He turned his head sideways, his jaw prominent in his profile. "If you don't mind, Chrys, could you turn aside a moment?"

She looked away, avoiding micro contact. On the shelf by the pyroclastic alarm, Merope had curled up asleep. The cat was putting on weight, Chrys noticed.

"My people have been informed that Eleutheria wants this job for their own."

Without thinking, she started to turn her head, but stopped. "Without Selenite? But we're partners."

"Eleutherians have decided opinions on the Deathlord."

Some things would be easier without Selenite; but without her, the project would end up like the Comb. "At least she knows her business."

"The sentients aren't interested in her, either. They figure they'll rely on their own structural engineers. But I agree with you, Selenite would be a help."

"If we take this job," she told her people, "we'll need the help of the Deathlord's minions."

"The Deathlord?" Rose was outraged. "How can you deal with that authoritarian state?"

"One True God," said Fireweed, "You know how I love you and all your people, and I long to obey your word. But the Deathlord violates your own most fundamental principle of mercy."

"Nevertheless," Chrys replied, "we dwell in the same universe. We must work together. Don't you think the minions are better off for your influence?"

Rose flashed, "The Deathlord has forbidden me to visit."

Appalled, Chrys looked back at Jasper. She couldn't deal with Selenite—and she couldn't deal without her.

Jasper's sprite still looked carefully away, his features in profile jutting like the Dolomite cliffs. "Why not wait a generation or two. Ideas are immortal, but micros don't live forever."

That night was her turn on call for the Committee. In her window flitted a young woman in torn nanotex, hair disheveled, no stone sign. She raised both hands as if reaching up the face of a cliff. "Help me," she groaned. "Nothing left. They'll kill me if I don't pay." Not so smart—the smarter strains didn't threaten, they just took you to the slave ship.

"Where are you?" The woman didn't answer, or couldn't, but the locator in Chrys's window showed the vicinity of Gold of Asragh. Chrys no longer hung out there; the place had gone downhill, too many pimps and psychos, let alone the thickest slave traffic in the Underworld.

Out front, the old nightspot now had a simian boy and girl in red vamping for customers. Chrys looked away. She asked the medic on call, "Do I have to go in?"

"That's not where the signal reads," the worm-face replied. "Go to the alley, behind, possibly underground."

She craned her neck dubiously. "Not alone, I won't."

"You're monitored every moment; they all know that." The medic stretched his worms for a better look down the alley. "On second thought, I'll come with you." Usually the medic stayed outside, to avoid spooking the patients, some of whom had never known decent care.

Chrys stepped into the alley, looking out for cancerplast. In back of Asragh, in the darkness, a door opened. The door seemed to leer at her, suspiciously convenient. She liked the look of this less and less.

"I'll stick with you," the medic assured her.

She shined her light inside. The corridor, some sort of warehouse, smelled stale and appeared empty. She stepped inside.

The door closed with unexpected speed, pushing the medic back out while closing Chrys inside. "Doctor!" she called; but the worm-face was gone.

Out of the shadows stepped three humans, their faces displaying deathly grins. Too late, Chrys turned and pounded the door. The door swallowed her fists. She was trapped.

At her keypad she blinked frantically, but she could raise nothing, even from Plan Ten. No response except a dull noise. Something had jammed the signal.

"Rose? Rose," she blinked desperately.

Behind her a man caught her shoulder. She kicked backward so hard it strained her leg. The man hurtled backward, landing with a thud. Some part of him had not hit well; slave reflexes were poor. "Rose?" she called again.

"Great Host, the Council has convened. We agree to let you take this journey. Do not be afraid; you will choose."

"Damn you, Rose—you get me out of here, or await my wrath."

"Your wrath cannot touch me. I near the end of my long life in exile."

What if Rose died, and the codes died with her? "Where's Fireweed?"

"The others agreed to wait, to see a world without executions. They fear your wrath, but even more they fear the genocide they have seen." The executions, even the innocents by Eris—could they blame her for that?

"You're raving. You put your entire people at risk—all your children—"

An object pressed to her side made her muscles go limp. Without a word, the slaves took her out the door and dragged her off. Her surroundings bounced crazily around her.

"You can still keep us safe," added Rose. "Keep your eyes open all the time. I will flash the code that your quota is full; you are not to be invaded." But not to be set free.

"Fireweed? Forget-me-not? Where are you?" Had they forsaken her? Or had Rose done them in? Was she the false angel after all?

After interminable dragging down endless corridors, the slave workers reached their ship. The navigation stage pulsed with a thousand stars. Chrys's limbs were recovering their strength, but the device still pressed at her side, and she ached from bruises all over. "Who are you?" she demanded. "I'm not one of you. I said 'No'—a thousand times, No."

One of her captors turned his sickly grin on her. Worker slaves were still conscious, but they had lost all natural sense of pleasure or pain. All they felt was their forebrain on overdrive, rewarding each command obeyed. "Your eyes say other," he spoke haltingly. "Shaper of stars. Mystery. You have special call. To the Leader."

The Slave World, place of no return. With a sudden twist Chrys heaved two of the captors off her body, sending them halfway across the floor. But the third stunned her again. The first two picked themselves up, never losing their grins, though one bled from his nose, the blood trickling onto his filthy nanotex.

They strapped her down for departure. As the ship skipped through the first fold of space, it occurred to her to blink her recording on. Her neuroports had several hours storage, and who could tell if her body might be recovered somehow, or if by some miracle she got out alive. "There's always a first time," the Elf Guardian of Peace had told her. Arion be damned. No Elf or Valan could help her now.

Chrys closed her eyes hard. "My people," she warned, "there will be an eclipse of the sun." She closed her window and waited. Strapped down, she felt the ship spinning into its first jump across a space fold—who could say where? The place of no return. Opening her window, she blinked the letters again: "We'll never come hack, do you see? No more Olympus; we'll all be dead."

No answer.

"Fireweed?" She blinked desperately, her eyes burning. "No Silicon to build, ever—don't you see?"

"I see," flashed Rose at last, her pink letters triumphant. "I see well enough. I see that no Silicon will be built by me—you'll see to that, Great Host."

"No, Rose." Though it was true.

"I see well enough. It's the 'gods' who are blind—blind to their own fate, and their own true destiny."

The ship skipped through fold after fold. Chrys's mind whirled, seeking some way to reach them. Were they really so angry? Had she herself tempted them with Mourners at an Execution, raising expectations she could not meet? A god, perhaps, but she was no saint.

Above the stage of the ship, amid the suspended stars, grew the disk of a planet. Blue ocean, green continents. Rectangular shapes suggested habitation, but no sign of movement, no ships in orbit, no microwave generators. As it coasted to land, trees flashed by; the vegetation of the first human home, itself long ago destroyed in the Brother Wars. Those trees meant a terraformed world, though none she knew.

The slaves prodded her out onto a windswept platform, overgrown with grass. The air smelled fresh and welcome. Still, no sign of human life, nor any animals, not a bird in the sky. A building stood there, blocks of it fallen down, its surface eaten away.

In her window a light started blinking. A health alert, her Plan Ten nanos warned: some strange toxin was damaging her chromosomes. Whatever could that be, she wondered, inhaling the clean air. Whatever it was, Plan Ten was far away.

The slaves led her into the depths of the decaying building. Its interior looked more intact, but wholly dead, no sign of plast, not even a door opening its mouth. Rectangular gaps cut into the walls; everything was angular. A sign appeared, full of strange letters; Chrys made sure to observe it up close, for her recording.

"Great Host, the damage to the DNA fits a pattern," Rose told her. "Either cosmic rays, or intense nuclear radiation could cause such damage. We'll work on it."

Radioactive—was this where the slaves built their nukes? Chrys looked around, though she saw no sign of such equipment here. "Rose—just let me go home." No response.

The corridor turned at a right angle, as all the corridors did. Several more slave workers came out, their eyes flashing bleach white. The air became even more rancid than the ship, and a fly brushed her arm. Did the slaves never bathe?

Deeper within the decaying building, the only light came from blobs of cancerplast stuck to the ceiling. The dying cancers throbbed dull infrared. The corridor led straight down into reddish black, like a lava tunnel. Then it turned at a right angle. Several more slave workers came out, silent shadows, only their eyes flashing bone white.

Through one rectangular cutaway, she glimpsed cots with humans lying upon them. A steady hum of flies. Her steps slowed to a halt. The slaves turned around.

"What is there?"

The mouth of the slave worked out of its grin. "The Enlightened Ones."

She brushed another fly from her face. "Let me see," she told the slave. "Rose, tell them to let me see... those 'enlightened' hosts. Let me see what I'm choosing." She stared at the deadened eyes of the grinning slave. At last he inclined his head and led her in.

Within the room full of cots, the air was fetid, and flies settled everywhere. The slaves barely treated their wastes, either, she guessed. The humans, all thin and pale, seemed mostly asleep, although some sat up in chairs, their eyes glazed, rocking. One was being spoon-fed by a slave. "Rose? Is this what you call Endless Light?"

"Remember, the Enlightened Ones lack resources. They are desperately poor—but all they have is shared equally, all for one and one for all. From each according to ability..." To each, according to need. Chrys saw plenty of need. "Why are they all sick in bed?"

"They've achieved an advanced stage, the experience of endless light. They no longer desire to move."

Having started the tour, the slave seemed determined to show her room after room. The next room smelled so foul she had to clench her teeth to steady her stomach. On the floor were soiled bedsheets and fecal matter. "Can't you taste it, Rose? Can't you see how vile this is?" No sound but the everpresent flies. The humans were wasted away, their limbs like sticks, flies all over their eyes and mouths. For a moment her head swam, but she forced herself to stand and look. The recording, she told herself again. None of the humans made a sound; she hoped because they felt no pain.

"It's not easy to run your own universe," said Rose. "Did your own ape ancestors smell so sweet? The Enlightened Ones are just learning. They try bard, but they are starved for arsenic. They need help."

Chrys felt a touch of panic. This conversation was not leading the way she had hoped. She followed her guide into the next room.

The stench overpowered her. She vomited over and over, until her stomach was empty. Gasping for breath, she wiped her face and looked up. The bodies here, some piled next to the wall, were concave where muscles ought to be convex. Eyelids shrunken back, leaving round holes like mouths screaming. The drone of the flies. In faces and other soft parts, twisting and crawling, white maggots.

Chrys doubled over again, retching violently, though there was nothing more to come out. She turned and stumbled out back to the corridor.

"Let me go," she croaked at the worker slaves. They grinned back, as if forgetting their errand. Suddenly she remembered something. Her hand trembling violently, she fumbled at her pocket for a viewcoin. "Look. You can have this. Let me go."

The slave gazed intently. "Star pictures." Seeming to recall his business, he beckoned her onward through the lava tunnel. On the ceiling a cancer went dark and fell to the floor; Chrys steered herself around it. At last the slave brought her to a larger room, reasonably clean, bare of any furnishing.

In the middle of the room stood Saf.

"The Leader of Endless Light," rhapsodized Rose. "I will die content."

A fly caught in Chrys's hair. Frantic with revulsion, she tore it out. Then she turned to the Leader—actually, the Leader's host. After all these months, Saf's body remained in reasonable health, still recognizable as the slave Chrys had met at the Gold of Asragh after the Seven's last show. Perhaps, despite "all for all," the Leader managed to keep more than a few extra resources for her own host.

Saf's irises flashed white rings, like maggots biting their own tails. "I—am—the Leader of Endless Light," Saf rasped. "You— make pictures in stars."

Chrys swallowed and dug her hands in her pockets. "Take whatever you want. Just let me go."

"You—choose Endless Light. You make pictures for us."

She shivered so hard she nearly collapsed. "No," she said, shaking her head. "No, no," she said more loudly. "Let me go." Her voice broke.

Saf hesitated. "No one ever says no." That was because everyone else who got this far was already hooked inside. Chrys was not—but Rose kept pretending. Why? she wondered. Why did Rose still keep out the others? Not quite ready to give up degenerate Eleutheria?

"Rose, I've seen enough. I need to take my people home. Tell the slaves to let us go."

"Great Host, how can we leave? These people are so poor—they need our help, and all our arsenic stores, to promote their dream."

"Their dream will come to nothing, Rose. Believe me. All I can do is provide food for maggots."

"I could make you stay. One touch of dopamine, and you would beg to stay. Such are the 'gods,' " taunted Rose.

"Where are your sisters of Eleutheria? My people, why have you forsaken me?"

For a long moment, no answer.

"Here I am," came the blue letters of Forget-me-not.

Chrys nearly collapsed with relief.

"The Council voted to override the High Priest."

"Alas," added infrared Fireweed, "we have nothing to learn here. Half starved, overrunning their habitat; lacking even civil discourse, they follow authoritarian control."

"Then let's get out of here," urged Chrys.

"Rose must give us her codes. Until then, we can do nothing."

Saf still stared, maggot rings in her eyes, the Leader inside puzzling at this unprecedented act of noncompliance. How long before she figured out?

Chrys's breath came faster. "Rose— Didn't I always treat you well? I saved your life and took away your chains. I made you my High Priest."

"And all the times I saved you, and your degenerate Eleutheria, " countered Rose. "Why don't you trust me?"

Daeren had said Rose's one saving grace was her ego. "Rose— if I stay here, I can't paint. There's no painting stage. There will be no more pictures in the stars."

"Who needs dirty pictures?"

"And the portraits? What about yours?"

Darkness.

"Your own portrait, Rose. How shall I make it?"

Still no response.

"The other High Priests each have their own portrait for eternity, for all to see, people and human alike. Why not you? Why should the champion be missing, when all the rest have theirs? People who can't even develop their pieces without doubled pawns?"

"I should have castled sooner," Rose cryptically replied. "Very well. I'll bring you back to the studio for the portrait. But you must promise to return to Endless Light."

"Of course, I'll return. I promise, Rose." Her words babbled across the keypad, misspelled. "You know I always keep my promise."

"Then do as I say, for a change. Look aside from the Leader, and don't look back. Move close to a worker. Look him in the face."

Whirling around, she walked up to the nearest slave. The man stared, and his eyes flashed maggot rings. Without a word, he turned and marched down the hall. Chrys followed, out the hall past the fetid rooms full of "endless light," then outside at last to the clean fresh wind. Inside the ship, the slave set a course and barked brief instructions. Then abruptly he left.

"Back so soon?" asked the ship curiously as it erased its doors and strapped her down. "I didn't expect to see you again."

In her window the health lights blinked brighter, as DNA damage accumulated in her bone marrow. What the devil could those half-dead slaves be up to? What had possessed her own people to put her through this nightmare? And what would the Committee do when they found out?