The tube plummeted to the Underworld. The Gold of Asragh was packed, the crowd more unruly than usual. A whiff of something burnt. Octopods crawled up, the usual pod of eight. Was there a raid? Lights circled crazily over the crowd, once momentarily blinding her. A fool’s errand, she told herself, plunging through this world of night, desperately seeking Day.
At the slave bar, two customers pounded the counter demanding ace. Chrys made herself wait until they’d left. Then she leaned across the counter to stare at the slave who’d replaced Jay, who’d replaced Saf. “Where is he?” Chrys demanded. “Where’s Day?”
The woman behind the bar looked and smelled as if she had not washed since the last time. She said nothing, but her eyes gleamed as wild as snakes.
“Arsenic,” said Fireweed. “They’re starving. We could help—”
“No.” Chrys held up a viewcoin, one of Jonquil’s most scandalous. She faced the slave. “Tell me.”
At first the woman seemed not to notice. Then her eyes widened. Her hand snatched involuntarily at the coin.
Chrys pulled the coin out of reach. “Where is Day? Where are the blue angels?”
The eyes watched the coin while the mouth spoke like a puppet. “Day chose Endless Light.”
“Chose,” indeed. “Take me there,” Chrys demanded. “Take me to the Leader.”
The eyes rolled, then came to rest looking just aside. “Len?” she called.
A worker slave came out, followed by another. Their maggot-ringed eyes flickered, and the woman’s flickered back.
Chrys held out another viewcoin to Len. This time she let him take it. “Pictures in the stars.” She brought her face closer, nearly choking on his foul breath. “Pictures for your Leader.”
Their eyes flickered at the viewcoin, then back to her. “You’re not ready.” Len handed her a transfer patch.
She stared at the patch as she would at a poisonous snake.
“We’re prepared,” said Fireweed. “The children and younger elders are sealed away. We’re ready for visitors.”
Viruses and parasites—Chrys recoiled. “Be prepared to clean up.” She put the patch of plague at her neck.
“Fireweed?”
“All is well,” the infrared assured her.
From outside came screams and more smell of burning. A bad night, Andra had said. Which was worse: the humans outside, or these foul invaders within?
“We’ve agreed on some joint ventures. Send them home.”
“Joint ventures”—Chrys did not like the sound of that, but she returned the patch to Len. Turning their heads, the two slaves seemed to reach a decision. Len nodded at Chrys to follow him down the back stairway, where she and Daeren had first brought the viewcoin when she was in training. Two more slaves joined them, on out through a maze of tunnels. What paid for all this—Lord Zoisite’s fortune, no doubt.
They came at last to the ship, a small lunar shuttle. Chrys was surprised; this vessel couldn’t go far. The shuttle traveled less than an hour, with no fold jumps. It must have stayed within the solar system; in fact, it could not have gone far off Valedon. It docked to something, and the apparent gravitational force lurched sickeningly.
Strapping the packed field stage onto her back once more, Chrys followed the slaves out the air lock. The lock opened into a satellite ring, the old-fashioned kind that rolled like a treadmill. The centrifugal acceleration was not quite standard. Chrys stumbled, catching herself on the floor.
A wavering bit of cancerplast, lava red, cast long shadows down the passage. As her eyes adjusted, the patterned design on the floor and crossed triangle logo on the doors looked at least half a century out of date. The air smelled stale, though not as bad as in the masters’ planetary hideout. Perhaps the surviving hosts had not yet had time to die and decay.
“Where are we?” Chrys asked her people. “Did they say?”
“A temporary shelter,” flashed Fireweed. “The masters know they’ll have to move on.”
The hallway glimmered with cancerplast from the ceiling; one blob dangled, trembling, as if about to crawl off in search of power. Chrys’s eyes adjusted to the dim light. Shadows stretched toward worker slaves, their eyes all flickering white as they passed. Some pushed cots or wheelchairs containing human bodies, inert, with unkempt beards or bare breasts, eyes horribly staring. What if one of them were Daeren? Her heart pounded enough to burst. She rehearsed what she planned to tell Saf, the human mouthpiece of the microbial Leader.
Ahead of her, Len turned toward the wall. A doorway opened, parting with a tired screech, like her old broken-down apartment. Len stepped through, and Chrys followed, taking the pack off her back. She rubbed her shoulders where it stung, unaccustomed to the strap.
An oval room, the ceiling dotted with plugs of cancerplast, like stars pasted to the sky. In the center stood a figure she could just make out, facing away from her. It must be Saf. The figure slowly turned.
It was Daeren. Daeren alive, and well enough to stand.
“Daeren!” She took a quick step forward, then another.
Daeren’s face held no expression. His eyes flashed white maggot rings.
Chrys screamed, then clapped a hand over her mouth.
His lips moved. “I—am—the—Leader.” His voice had the same stilted rhythm as Saf had. “Why do you come? Are you ready for Endless Light?”
Terror had driven any words from her head. She could only stare, transfixed, shaking.
“Say, ‘No,’” prompted Forget-me-not. “Just say no.”
“No,” Chrys gasped, letting out her breath. “That’s not…what I came for.”
“Interesting,” said Daeren’s lips. “Your degenerate people say they can help us. You may visit.”
Forget-me-not could visit; that was part of their plan. Chrys took the patch and handed it to Daeren, choking on the memory of doing this many times.
“One True God, all is well,” Fireweed assured her. “Our joint ventures are maturing.”
Chrys swallowed hard, recovering some of her nerve. Daeren—was he still there, inside, behind the deadly eyes? “I want you—I want him back,” she said. “The…world that you took.”
“The—new—world chose Endless Light,” said Daeren’s lips. “This new world came to us in better shape than most. New home for the Leader.”
She swallowed again, her throat hoarse. “I want it back.”
“Why? No use to you.”
That was probably true, she realized, her heart sinking. The Leader had moved in, and by now all trace of Daeren’s mind would be gone. But she had come too far to leave what was left of him. Better to take his empty shell then to have to see him in her dreams, as he would eventually be, his body exposed to unspeakable decay.
“Arsenic,” flashed Fireweed. “They ask us for arsenic. They starve for it.”
She thought of the other slaves down the hall, and the other shells, others decaying behind other walls, and all the hapless slaves of Valedon. “I can’t. I can’t betray my kind.”
“We know, Great One. It’s just hard for us to see them starve.”
She opened the backpack, her hands so covered with sweat that the stage slipped from her grasp. Clumsily, she put up the projection posts and the light sources. “Display,” she whispered.
The stage hummed, then shimmered into stars. It was the portrait of Rose. Rose, her pink filaments shimmering with the words of her final quest. Rose…The tireless worker deserved her rest.
Daeren’s eyes fixed on the star picture. Nearby, the two slaves approached. Six maggot-rimmed eyes stared into the stars, their patterns calling like the lights of heaven that had entranced thinking minds ever since the first ape developed a cerebral cortex.
Suddenly, the two slaves fell back. Daeren’s lips demanded, “Who is—this—pretender?”
The Leader was jealous of a rival. Chrys stood up, straightening her back. She put on her difficult-client smile. “I will make a portrait of the true Leader, in the stars. A
portrait to outshine this one, and all others. To spread word throughout the universe, in praise of Endless Light.”
The dead eyes flickered, eyes that had once shown blue as the palest sky. Could this Leader resist what had captivated Rose, the chance to project her will through eternity, calling all the people and all the gods to Endless Light?
“She agrees,” said Fireweed. “She’ll have to visit, Oh Great One; and who knows who else will come besides. But we are ready.”
Daeren’s hand held the patch to his neck, then to her; a gesture hauntingly familiar, ever since the first morning he gave her Fern and Poppy. Now there was no doctor or hospital to help, only a faltering satellite run by microbial minds that craved her blood. But inside her grew Fern’s descendants, a million strong.
“Fireweed? Is it all right?”
“So far. We’ll keep them talking.” “Them”—she did not like the sound of that.
A ring of filaments, white as bone, probing and tasting. Chrys shut her eyes to see better. She crouched before the stage on the floor. With a word she dismissed the display. The first fresh strokes of light slanted wrong; her hands shook so badly, and she was out of practice on this tiny stage. It was hard to believe, now, that she had ever managed to get anything out of a meter cube. She reset it to track her finger, one tip at a time. The ring of light took shape, filling the small volume. Then shadows and highlights, and subtle hints of color, just enough to deepen the mystery.
The maggot eyes watched. From the ceiling beyond, a cancer dropped to the floor, extending long strings of plast, the kind that could get into a circuit and short it out—and there must be hundreds of them. Bad news for the old satellite. Chrys stood and stretched her back. “Is the client pleased?”
“Yes, so far. Keep on,” urged Fireweed. “Time is on our side.”
The micros could not know what shape the satellite was in. What if its air system failed? Setting the animation, Chrys did a shortcut, just dimming and brightening the image to generate the Leader’s “words.” “Is that enough?”
“Keep going. You can’t expect a leader to make a speech short.”
She kept on, her fingers dimming and brightening, long and short, abrupt and slow-fading, according to what her eyes saw. “Fireweed, the field stage can only store so much.”
“It is done.”
Chrys pressed the transfer port, letting the painting load into her eyes. Then she stood again. What next, she wondered suddenly. What would happen to Daeren, or his “shell,” and where would the Leader go?
“Give him back,” she said aloud. “You agreed.”
“We will go.” The letters in her window were white as ice. “We will go. But you will keep some of my people, to see my enlightened form raised before all.”
Keeping some masters—this was not the deal. She fought against panic. “Fireweed? Forget-me-not? Are you there?”
“I’m here,” came the infrared.
“I’m here too,” came the blue one. “We’ve corrupted some of them, and put down two coup attempts from the rest. ‘Annus horribilis,’ history will say. But once the Leader’s gone, they’ll settle down.”
“Are you sure?” Chrys insisted. “Are any of them false blue angels?”
“Probably. Who knows how many true blue angels once were false?”
Out of the shadows stepped Saf. Saf’s face, now, was covered with broken veins, her nose bulbous, her eyelids swollen, half shut. This was the overrun host the Leader had relinquished.
“I go,” said the white words. “You will show my stars for all to see.”
“I promise.” If Ilia’s Gallery could handle it. Once again, Chrys took the patch from her neck and gave it to Saf. The touch of the vampirous finger made her wish she could wash her hands.
Saf’s blanched eyes exchanged flickering with Daeren’s. Then without warning, she bit him in the neck.
Chrys stifled a cry with her hand. The Leader was getting back her own people, she realized, all the little maggot rings that had infected Daeren—millions, perhaps billions; they overran a host, far too many to transfer by patch. For an eternity Saf stood there, her teeth in his neck. Then she let go. Daeren slumped to the floor.
“Take it and go,” Saf’s voice rasped, barely audible. “Before I change my mind.”
Chrys knelt beside him and shook his arm. “Daeren? Can you hear?” She pressed her ear to his chest. A pounding, slow but solid.
“Let us visit,” urged Forget-me-not. “Let’s see who’s left alive.” If not his own mind, at least some blue angels might survive, any those maggot rings had let live.
“First let’s get out of here.” She pulled Daeren’s arm behind her neck and hoisted him up on her back, making sure the head fell forward. “Help me,” she called to the slaves.
The slaves did not answer, but Len started toward the doorway. Chrys got herself up and half carried, half dragged Daeren’s body behind her, leaving the painting stage aglow behind her, to keep the Leader entranced. She had to get out, away from here, before that slave forgot his errand, or the satellite lost power, or the Leader changed her mind.
Len took her out to a different ship, even smaller and more decrepit than the one that had brought them here. Chrys hesitated but saw no choice. She stepped through the locks, each sealing behind her. A six-seater, half the straps gone.
“Daeren,” she sighed, straightening his head on the floor. “Are you still there?” She held open his eyelid to reveal any sign. At last a flicker of blue.
“Blue angels, or false,” said Fireweed, “someone’s alive. Sick and starving—they need help.”
Chrys put the patch back and forth, to send helpers and bring back the sickest of the blue angels. “The Lord of Light—where is he? Is he still there?”
“The mind of God is there, but somehow shut away,” explained Fireweed. “We don’t know how to rouse it without risking further injury.”
Daeren’s mind was still alive.
A sudden wrench sent Chrys spinning, floating in zero gravity. “Ship?” she called, not knowing its name. “What’s going on?” The ship had not even greeted them, not even to strap down. “What’s wrong?”
No response. Her stomach lurched as she tumbled, her hair swinging around her face. Finally she grabbed a handhold and steadied herself.
In her window blinked a ship contact button. Shutting her eyes, she winced at her window. Three contact points appeared for the ship’s brain, two of them marked “inactive.”
“Oh my god.” The slave had put her on a dead ship. Whether on purpose or not, the result was the same. To get so far, only to die out in space…Her head and arms went numb. But she took a deep breath and made herself think.
The one active contact was for distress call. She blinked hard once, then again. Her eye muscles must have registered, for the spot started flashing red. Reserve power, enough for SOS. But it could be hours before anyone found her. Or days.
“Fireweed? I’m not sure how long we’ll last.”
“Years, at least. Have faith.”
“You must sleep,” added Forget-me-not. “Conserve oxygen.”
Daeren’s body still floated, unaware. His shoulders, his chest, his face that Plan Ten had shaped—still perfect. Yet who was left inside? “You could have stayed last night,” she whispered. “Instead of getting caught in the Underworld.” The tears floated away from her. Closing her eyes, she brought up the image of her brother turning cartwheels.
Health for all the children of her village—the one truly good thing she had ever done in her life. Now she herself was going to die, without ever having children of her own. Why did she never think of that? The micros, with all their crazy projects, never forgot their children. Now it was too late.
She closed her eyes, trying to sleep while keeping her arm locked to the handhold. For an endless time she dozed, half waking for a few minutes at a time, her people flickering. If she ever did get out alive, she vowed, she would go home and see Hal. And she
would have her own children, if she had to get them off the streets of the Underworld.
The ship slammed her against the wall. Something had docked, hard. Sparks flew from the door as it ground open. Two octopods came in, their black limbs slithering over the floor.
“What the—” Chrys knew better than to argue with octopods. They hustled her out into the docked ship. Long worms of plast extended from the ship, emergency medical. In their midst, in white hospital nanotex, stood Andra.
Andra ignored Chrys, her attention fixed on Daeren, now strapped to a stretcher. Doctor Sartorius instructed the octopods, and the extensions from the ship, silently of course, but one could tell. The worms from his face stretched into long threads that wrapped all around Daeren’s head. Then Andra leaned over him, pulling back his eyelids to check.
Chrys strained forward, but the octopod held her back. “Andra?”
Daeren’s head moved ever so slightly. Then his eyes flew open, and every muscle strained as if to burst. He let out a deafening cry. His left arm came loose from the strap and jerked violently, hitting the wall.
“Too soon,” murmured the doctor. Daeren’s eyes closed, and he went limp.
Andra nodded. “He feels pain. That much of him’s left.”
The ship extension felt around his arm, the one that had hit the wall. “A clean fracture,” the ship announced. Its limb slapped nanoplast around the arm. Then an octopod wheeled Daeren out.
Chrys strained forward. “Andra—let me stay with him.”
The octopod extruded a thin black needle, a finger of death. The needle pressed to Chrys’s neck.
The chief turned and brought her face within an inch of Chrys. “What are you?” Her eyes flashed deadly purple. “What are you, that you can come and go from the masters?”
She swallowed, feeling the needle at her neck, but her eyes did not flinch. “I gave them no arsenic.”
“Then what?”
“Nothing you would want.”
For an eternity Andra stared. Then she nodded at the octopod to remove the needle. She put a patch at Chrys’s neck. “You’ll give them up, every one,” she ordered. “Any masters, and any of his blue angels.”
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