“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; one 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, Oh 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.
“Oh 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 spiral
ing 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? “Is 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 Titan 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 wrecked 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 su
cking 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.
“I 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 I 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…”
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