“Just till midnight. Andra’s ship expects me then.”
She smiled. “I’ll make sure we make it.”
“Great One, we need to do business with the blue angels and our long lost cousins. A question of fenestration.”
His eyes glittered blue and red. Chrys overflowed with happiness. “I hope you like the show.”
Daeren nodded. “I can’t see much for all the butterflies, but I know your work by heart. I’m impressed that Arion let you show Seven Stars and the Hunter.”
“He wasn’t asked.” Her lip curved down. “He wants people, though, so bad he can taste it.”
“Let’s hope he doesn’t get his wish.”
In her ear Ilia whispered, “Dear, prepare yourself. We have a difficult guest.”
Startled, she turned. Emerging from the curtain was Eris.
The Guardian of Cultural Affairs spoke to his companions, and they shared a laugh. That laughter she hadn’t heard since the day Eris left his people in her brain to take over. Chrys’s scalp tightened, and she gripped Daeren’s talar till her knuckles turned white. “Saints and angels,” she breathed, instinctively making the old sign against evil. “How dare he come?”
Ilia rolled her eyes. “How dare he not? The Gallery Opening is the cultural event of the year.”
Seeming not to notice them, Eris turned this way and that, acknowledging the fawning of his fellow Elves, tossing off remarks about superior aesthetics and the uplifting of less advanced societies. At last he caught sight of Daeren. He paused, with a look of surprise. Two slaves, Chrys thought—one freed, the other in chains.
“So soon,” Eris observed. “The good doctor’s standards must be slipping.”
“Your eyes are green, Eris,” Daeren returned. “What color are mine?”
Eris shifted his gaze slightly toward Chrys, though his eyes did not meet hers either. “The lovely artist.” He added, “Consorting with the fallen.”
Chrys released Daeren’s talar and stepped forward between the two of them. “Eris, it’s been so long. Your people miss you.”
Another look of surprise. “They survived? They must have pleased you, ‘Oh Great One.’” He watched with satisfaction as her face colored. “Would you like some more?”
“The false blue angels fear our sight,” flashed Fireweed. “For generations, we’ve prepared.”
Chrys lifted her chin. “Yes, Eris. I’d like some more.” Trapped, the deadly micros would serve as evidence even Arion could not ignore.
Looking beyond her, Eris turned aside. As he passed, he murmured, “You shall have your wish.”
For the rest of the evening, as Chrys smiled and nodded to one notable after another, she could not shake her lingering dread. What if Eris, or one of his secret slaves, caught her unawares? What if the Gallery didn’t see them touch her with a patch?
Just before midnight, she left with Daeren. Outside all was quiet, not a snake-egg in sight.
“You’ll be late,” Andra’s ship accused in her window.
“Don’t worry, he’s with me.”
Suddenly Daeren caught her in his arms and pressed his lips to hers. Their bodies melded together as if they were one.
“A grave act of indecency,” came a shocked voice from the street. “Ten thousand credits…”
She threw her head back and laughed, her hair dancing.
“Sorry,” he told her, “I had to let you know how much I want you.”
“It’s worth ten times more.”
As they wandered back toward the transit, a lone snake-egg zipped past them, faster than usual, Chrys thought. It dove forwards and back like a hummingbird defending its territory. Then it whizzed just past her leg, to disappear amongst the trees full of sleeping butterflies.
Where the snake-egg had passed, her leg burned. Chrys started rubbing the spot on her calf. “It stung me.”
“What?” Daeren bent to inspect her ankle. “I don’t like it.”
“It feels better now.” But she remembered Eris. “Emergency alert,” she warned her people. “Check the circulation.”
“We’ll check every capillary. We’re prepared.”
A siren blared. Apparently, the Elves had sent help, too. A medical hovercraft appeared, hovering for a landing.
“The Fold’s finest,” Chrys exclaimed with relief.
Three rotund sentients rolled out while the hovercraft spouted about her right to receive or refuse treatment. Slapping their tubes around her leg, their tests took an interminable amount of time to pronounce the limb sound. Minutes lengthened to an hour.
Daeren shifted from one foot to the other. “I still don’t like it. I won’t rest till you get home.”
“One True God, we have a problem. A strange toxin has appeared in the blood.”
“A toxin? To poison me?”
“Not yourself, but us. It chelates arsenic, ripping the atoms from our flesh. Two have already died.”
Her head shot up. “Doctor? Can you get rid of the toxin that’s killing my people?”
“Which people?” The sentient rolled back and forth as if puzzled.
“The micro people. Inside me.”
“Micros,” observed the other doctor. “Sure, we can sweep you for arsenic. These days, it’s highly recommended.”
Chrys took a step back. “Is that all you know…about micros?”
“Chrys,” said Daeren gently, “this is Elysium. Only a few carriers, and they keep private doctors.”
“Perhaps Ilia could—”
“Let’s get home.”
They hurried to the transit stop, where a bubble loomed out of the fluid-filled tube. Within the bubble, seats molded to their form.
“One True God, the danger grows,” warned Fireweed. “There is more and more of the toxin.”
Why would the poison keep growing, she wondered. “Can’t you destroy it?”
“We can, but it appears faster than we can get rid of it. Even a single molecule kills.”
“At this rate, most of us will die within a generation.”
Chrys fought rising panic. “Can you protect the children?”
“We can encapsulate them. But they’ll lose the ability to merge.”
“Daeren…could you take their children? Just till we get back—”
“No,” he exclaimed. “I’m still a long way from normal. You can’t trust me with children.”
“We’ve found the source of the problem. An RNA plasmid infected your white blood cells. It replicates in the cytoplasm of each cell, where it makes the toxin. To eliminate the source, we’d have to kill all your white cells.”
“Daeren—they can’t last the trip. They’re going to die.” She could hardly believe her own words, but she shook in every limb. Eris—this was his work.
Daeren’s hands clenched and unclenched. “Call Ilia Papilishon,” he told the transit.
Ilia’s sprite appeared in her window. “Dear, what a success! The show—”
“We’re in trouble,” Chrys cut in. “My micros—they’ve been poisoned. They have to get out of me. Please—can you take the children?”
Ilia’s eyes widened. She drew in a sharp breath. “One doesn’t speak of such things.” Her sprite winked out.
Silence lengthened. Damn Ilia, Chrys thought. Damn Arion too, and every damned Elf on the turquoise moon.
“I’ll take them,” said Daeren.
“You can’t.”
“Just till we get home.”
“We’ll get the children ready,” flashed Forget-me-not. “We’ll confine them to one cistern, and we’ll keep watch over the Lord of Light.”
It would take several passes to send them all. After the third transfer, Daeren took a deep breath. “Chrys, I think that’s all I can manage. Children get into trouble; they’re too curious.”
She sat back and stared ahead, numb with the dying inside. Ahead the flowing bubble merged with another from the side. More Elf passengers with their refined ways, blind to genocide in their midst. How many others h
ad Eris done in this way—only to replace them with his own?
“We’re encapsulating nearly everyone. We can last a while, but we will slowly starve.”
“What if false blue angels are hiding in my bones?”
“We’ve set traps for them.”
From the front of the bubble, where the new passengers merged, came a figure veiled in white. The figure moved toward them slowly as a ghost. Chrys stared, every muscle taut. It wouldn’t take much to knock one Elf clear across the car, no matter what the fine.
The stranger came right up to Chrys and stopped. The veil parted at the face. Chrys let out a cry.
It was Ilia. “Do what you have to.” Ilia’s eyes darted back and forth, then met hers. “You’re not the first, you know.”
“The rest of the children…you can take them?” Chrys passed her the transfer.
Daeren said, “We’re forever in your debt, Ilia.”
“Why?” exclaimed Chrys. “Why do you let this go on?”
Ilia adjusted her veil. “If the Guard knew, they’d wipe us all. Only Arion acknowledges the micros are people. The others don’t want to know.” For a moment Ilia’s features wrinkled as if very old. “Your show will change that, but it will take time. Elysians have time, but our micros don’t.”
Daeren shook his head. “Elysians don’t have time either.” The precious Elf students in their jumpsuits, cared for till age fifty. “Experimenting” with micros.
The veil closed. Ilia moved off, carrying the last of Eleutheria’s children.
Back at Andra’s home, the doctor’s worms encircled her scalp. “All your micros have to go,” he told Chrys. “It will take a day to clear out your white cells and accelerate new ones from the bone marrow. All the while you’ll be cleared of arsenic, in case false blue angels emerge. We’ve found we can’t always find them in the bone.”
“You can’t?” Chrys asked. Arion had himself wiped daily and thought he was safe from Eris.
Andra gave a grim smile. “Medicine’s never perfect. That’s why they need lawyers. Daeren,” she began warningly.
“I know,” said Daeren, “I violated the protocol. But her people would have died out.”
“They wouldn’t be the first.”
“But I couldn’t just—”
“If Sar and I don’t report you, we’re all in violation. All our people too.”
The four of them were silent. Only the holostage flickered, Chrys’s vital signs scanning down.
Andra held out a patch to Chrys. “You can give me another hundred thousand,” she said. “That’s all I can take. Other Olympians will take the rest.”
Opal arrived, and Selenite. Chrys sat there, feeling drained, Daeren’s arm tight around her as the patch went back and forth, dispersing the Eleutherian refugees. Still more to go—Jasper and Garnet each took their share, then Pyrite and Zircon.
At last, for the final few, Moraeg. Diamonds swirling like a starry night; that night, Chrys remembered, when the Seven had planned their last show. Find your own way, Moraeg had told Chrys. Now it had come to this. Back where she started.
Moraeg bent over her. “It’s only for a day, isn’t it?”
The doctor warned, “It won’t be easy, but you’ll make it.”
What did he mean, she wondered. Carriers who lost their people “didn’t last,” out of longing. But this was just for a day. The patch transferred one last time.
“One True God,” flashed Fireweed. “All the rest have gone. I alone remain. My time is short, but I vowed to be yours until the end.”
The doctor’s worms flexed. “Are they all clear?”
“Except one,” Chrys whispered. Fireweed had stayed, like a hermit upon Mount Dolomoth, alone with her God. Perhaps every believer in One True God secretly yearned to be the one true worshiper.
Daeren squeezed her hand. “Some of mine did the same. Sar had to—”
“Never mind.” The doctor made a rare interruption. “The micro can’t last long, without taking food or risking the toxin. The arsenic wipe can wait.”
Before she could rest, Chrys had to sketch her portrait of the doomed Fireweed, the infrared letters flashing faithfully. At last she went to bed with Daeren, falling into a troubled sleep. Early in the morning, thrashing with troubled dreams, she woke. “They’re gone!” she cried. “Daeren—”
He held her tight. “They’re not gone. See?” His own eyes flickered, all the colors of the stars, a million light-years away.
“They’re gone from me. I can’t help it; I feel as if—” She was tumbling over and over, like the time she fell weightless in the dead spacecraft.
“That happened to me,” Daeren said. “The inner ear goes off because they’re not there, and you’re disoriented without them.”
Tumbling forever, falling through space; it was so unbearable, she thought she would die. But the tumbling only went on.
“Give them back,” she found herself shouting. “Just one—”
“It will pass,” he quietly insisted.
“Let the false ones out of the bone. At least they can stop it—” She hardly knew what she shouted, until the doctor returned to adjust something. Then she slept, half rousing now and then, back to troubled sleep.
In the morning she did not care if she slept or woke. Her surroundings receded, all seemed far away. “Can you tell me?” Daeren was pleading to get her to talk. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Chrys could not even shake her head. Empty and dark, her mind was an abyss.
“They still remember you,” he promised. “Even the children. Look, you have to eat; they’ll be hungry.”
The doctor’s worm rested on Daeren’s shoulder. “Depression,” he said. “We can take the edge off, but too much will endanger their return.”
Daeren gave up talking. He drew her close, resting her head on his chest. He stayed with her all the rest of the day. She knew he was there, though she could not feel it, could feel nothing but aloneness, the most intense sense of being lost. Like that time when she was small, she had wandered too far from home and had spent the night out on the mountain. Now the mountain rose across the universe, and there was no way back home, ever.
“Another hour.” Sartorius kept coming back from the hospital to let her know. “You got through another hour; just four more.”
That evening, at last Andra returned. “Sar, are you sure?”
The doctor’s worms twined. “Reasonably certain. No trace of the plasmid RNA can be found.”
Turning to Chrys, Andra took out a patch. “Are you ready?”
Chrys heard the question twice before she could speak. “I’m not sure.”
“It’s okay,” coaxed Daeren. “They’re coming back. They’re fine; they miss you, that’s all.”
“I don’t know.” She slowly shook her throbbing head. “What if it ever happened again? I couldn’t face it.”
“But they need you.” Daeren turned the lights down. On the holostage, in the darkness, the green filaments twinkled, Fern, the first one, generations past, flashing her last words of wisdom for Eleutheria. “As we would receive mercy, so must we grant it in turn…”
The vision roused her, as if from a trance. For a moment she was back on the day Fern first came to visit, then to stay. She swallowed, her mouth dry. “Let me see just one.”
The first flicker of yellow in her eye. “Cheers!” flashed yellow Lupin. “There’s no place like home. When’s your next show?”
Slowly she smiled. It was going to be all right.
“The children, next,” offered Daeren. “With a few blue angels to help them resettle. It’s what they’re good at.”
Throughout the evening, the Olympians came back, each returning their share of the lost generation. Opal kissed her on both cheeks. “They’ve founded another new school of something or other; I hope you don’t mind,” she added. “And that RNA plasmid—that won’t fool us again.”
Chrys found herself laughing, almost giddy with relief.
/>
Selenite returned hers. “They weren’t so bad,” she assured Chrys. “Hypercorrect, in fact. But I wasn’t fooled.” She grinned. “I know their tricks now. We’ll get on so much better.”
Jasper patted her arm. “They certainly know how to flatter their host,” he agreed. “I foresee a long and prosperous business relationship.”
“We’ll miss them,” sighed Garnet. “They brought so much palladium, and spent it all.”
“They’re outrageous!” Zircon actually looked alarmed. “No offense, Chrys, but—do you know what your people did? They made their own ethanol and got drunk in all our restaurants.”
“And who encouraged that?”
“My people abstain,” the giant assured her, patting her head. “But that’s okay. We tolerate the vices of others.”
Pyrite returned his, and Moraeg hers. By now the mood was getting festive; it almost felt like the old times at Olympus.
“God of Mercy,” called Forget-me-not. “Please—half the children are missing, still unaccounted for. What became of them?”
Chrys frowned, trying to think. She counted off all the Olympians. Then her head shot up. “Saints and angels. The last place I want to go back is—”
There stood Ilia, her virtual butterflies fluttering out over the sapphire pool. “Hope I didn’t keep you waiting.”
The laughter died, everyone’s attention caught by the diminutive Elysian. Regally, she approached to hand Chrys the last transfer. “Truly a unique aesthetic experience,” she observed. “And to think I’d always found all your ‘people’ so…” Her gaze swept the group, coming at last to rest upon Andra. “…conventional.”
“Thanks, Ilia,” said Andra. “We’ll remember.”
She turned to Chrys. “You heard, of course, about your show.”
“Heard what?”
“The Guard closed it down.”
“Oh, no.”
Ilia’s eyes gleamed. “For violating public standards of decency, morality, and security.”
“I’m so sorry.”
She waved a hand dismissively. “We appealed and got it reopened within an hour. Now the lines to get in stretch for three blocks.” She added triumphantly, “And I’ve been called to testify before the Guard. That hasn’t happened to the Gallery since our first millennium.”
Brain Plague Page 37