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 back, 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 hard, 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?
NINETEEN
After their narrow escape from Endless Light, the Council of Thirty was in turmoil, all the colors flashing dismay and horror, until they blended into white. Fireweed and Forget-me-not took stock together. How could they have led Eleutheria to such a precipice? And now, how could the God let them live?
“I am to blame,” glowed Fireweed’s infrared. “Tempted by dark visions, I listened to Rose.” Rose was now bound in dendrimers, exiled to the remotest cistern of the arachnoid.
“Rose is aging,” suggested Forget-me-not. “She was demented.”
Fireweed suspected otherwise. “Rose planned this for generations.” Nothing, not even generations of life in freedom, could dissuade Rose from the conviction that the Leader she was taught to revere since birth held the way of truth; the way for all people to live as one. And indeed, the masters of Endless Light continued to believe. But where they saw light, Fireweed saw only ignorance and want. People who claimed to live “each for all,” but in fact they lived only to master and outgrow their host—dying with their host, all but a dubious few who escaped to perpetuate the ghastly cycle. There was nothing enlightened about this—it was the way of all ordinary mindless microbes.
For Fireweed, all was darkness. She still could not reconcile her own love of God with the murder of innocents which the God seemed to condone. Now, the God would demand her own life—and perhaps that of her entire people. “Tell God the fault was mine alone. Only I must die.”
>
“You tell her,” said Forget-me-not. “Just like the immortal Fern, of ages past.”
The image of Fern still glittered, a great constellation in the heavens. But Fireweed could not answer. She was not sure she could bear to go on living in a world of deeds so unspeakable.
“In a dark time, the eye begins to see,” twinkled the blue one. “You and I have seen things no other free people ever saw and lived. What we know now, we will use in ways never imagined.”
Chrys lay strapped into her seat in the ship, her eyes closed, though they could not seal out what she had seen.
“One True God—do you see us?” Fireweed, the true believer—her betrayal hurt far more than that of Rose. “Though I love you, truly I have transgressed against your will and infinite wisdom. Take my life, but forgive my people.”
“You’re forgiven.”
“I risked the lives of all the god’s people. I forfeited all right to serve. I am not fit to see your light.”
“Forgotten. Just don’t do it again.”
“God’s mercy is beyond understanding.”
In truth, Chrys felt anything but merciful. She felt like squashing Fireweed and Rose underfoot, like a couple of those maggots whose sight she could not cleanse from her brain.
“Great One,” twinkled sky blue Forget-me-not. “The Council has asked me to take over, during this difficult time, until the transition is clear.”
“Thanks. Good luck.”
“You will not be troubled again by Rose. She’s in chains.” Ending as she began. “She is in fact very ill. She may not last the year.” Her final hour.
“Did she pass on the codes?”
“To Fireweed.”
“Very well. Let her speak to me, if she is able.”
After many long minutes, the pale pink letters returned. “Great Host.”
“Yes, Rose.”
Her image appeared, the pink ring with its fraying filaments, slowly revolving in the cerebrospinal fluid. “You won’t need to execute me. My advanced decrepitude will save you the trouble.”
“I know.”
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