She nearly touched his hand, but remembered that Elves avoided contact in public. "Do they ever visit? I mean, if you don't mind."
"Certainly; how civilized of you. You needn't worry," he added, "I direct the testing of all the Elysian carriers."
"Of course, I understand." Like Andra—the Elves had their own chief tester.
"I'll receive visitors," said Jonquil, "and Rose will lead our delegation."
She winced, hoping Rose would leave a good impression. "Behave as you would for the Thundergod." She held out the transfer patch. Eris took it, then returned it, carefully avoiding her fingers.
"Won't you tell me something about your work?" he asked. "Especially the portraits."
She took him through the portraits, explaining the background of each, and their human hosts.
"Extraordinary," Eris exclaimed. "Simply unprecedented." Behind him the virtual butterflies played across the floor and back through the doorway. "I keep telling Arion, we need to educate our citizens about the micro people."
"These blue angels seem rather inquisitive," Jonquil told her. "They keep looking into everything."
"So, they're curious. Maybe they've never been outside an Elf before."
They passed the arachnoid cityscape, then abruptly came upon Endless Light. Chrys stopped and swallowed.
"Yes," observed Eris. "May I ask what experience inspired this one?"
She looked away. "Just a fantasy. Experimental."
"I see." Thoughtfully he regarded the towering vision of light and cloud. "This was the one I particularly fancied."
Startled, she looked at him. "To purchase?" She had priced it double its worth, intending to keep it in her hands.
"If it's still for sale."
"Sure. I keep a studio copy, if you don't mind."
"Of course." He turned to her, his pupils flashing brightly in his white face. "Tell me ... have you anything else 'experimental'? Too controversial to show, perhaps?" He smiled. "You know, we Elysians have sophisticated tastes."
"Well, I pretty much show what I've got." She thought it over. "There's one piece you'd like, but I'm still working on it." She found a blank stage and called down Children Merging. She thought she had got the merging part okay with Jonquil, but the division into three still appeared off center.
As Eris watched, his face intensified. His cheeks flushed, then whitened again. "Yes," he said as if to himself. "We must have that."
"I'll let you know when it's finished."
He stiffened, then seemed to recollect himself. "Excuse me. Thanks, do let me know. I believe I've taken enough of your time."
"Oh Great One," flashed Jonquil as he was about to leave. "Remember our guests. And Rose—she has yet to return."
Chrys raised her hand. "Your people—I'm so sorry. Let me return them."
Eris slowly turned. "Of course. Thanks for remembering."
She put the transfer at her neck, but for some reason Jonquil took longer than usual to signal it was ready. At last she held the patch out to him.
The Elf did not take it. Something told her he expected her to place it directly at his neck, the way Valan carriers did. She did so, used to it by now.
"I appreciate your local custom," he said. "I hope we'll be seeing much more of each other. I expect to add many of your works to my collection."
Eccentric, she thought, but then she'd never had an Elf patron. So many inquiries were coming in now, she barely had time to paint. "What did you think?" she quizzed Rose and Jonquil on the way back to her studio. "How were his blue angels?"
"Slimy," said Rose. "Slimy degenerates."
Chrys sighed. Poor exiled Rose never had much good to say of her bourgeois comrades.
"They wouldn't be my first choice of visitors," added Jonquil.
"They tried to keep us there," insisted Rose. "Tried to make us miss our return."
Why would they do that, Chrys wondered.
"God of Mercy," called Jonquil, "we have a problem. We discovered three blue angels who failed to get out in time."
"On purpose," said Rose. "I'm sure it was on purpose. They're up to no good."
"They say they just failed to understand our call. They flash a different dialect."
This was a nuisance. "Do they have to go back? Let them settle with you. Enhance your gene pool."
"They have to go back. They insist."
"Good riddance," added Rose. "I wouldn't want them here."
Chrys frowned, puzzled. "Let them speak to me."
"They refuse," said Jonquil. "They say we'll be in big trouble if they don't get back."
Refusing to talk to a god—she did not care for that. But then, if Eris were the Elysian equivalent of Andra, his blue angels might mean business. She had better try to reach him.
To her surprise, she reached him immediately, in his ship on the two-hour trip back to the Elf moon. "I'm so glad you called," he told her. "We were terribly concerned; it was my fault entirely they got left behind. Look, I keep another ship docked at Iridis; a first-class rig, you'll find. Why don't you take it and meet me in Helicon?"
A new version of the oldest line ever. Chrys crossed her arms. "I'm rather behind today. Couldn't you turn around and stop back?"
"I'm afraid I have a cabinet meeting. But afterward, I'll show you my collection and take you to the best restaurant in Helicon."
"Great Host," called Rose. "We've found another couple of stowaways—hiding among the neurons."
She hoped her smile remained steady. "Very well, Citizen," she said smoothly, "I'll meet you in Helicon."
As soon as he was out, she blinked at the purple button.
But Selenite was on another call, and Andra and Daeren were both out of town. That was odd. There had to be someone on call, always. She started to call the hospital, but she remembered how the worm-faced medics had treated her before Daeren arrived.
"Jonquil, search the cortex as best you can. Whoever you find, put them all in dendrimers."
In her window a sprite appeared, wearing a talar and train of butterflies. Chrys jumped, thinking it was Eris. But it was Daeren, at the spaceport terminal on his way to Elysium, dressed like an Elf. "I just checked my calls," he said. "Did you reach someone?"
She hesitated. He looked so official, off to lobby Elysians for micro rights. "I'll manage."
"It's okay," he said, "my flight was delayed. What's up?"
"An Elf visitor left his people with me, and they want to go back. But—"
Daeren moved toward her, his face looming large. "Who?"
"Eris Helishon."
"Stay where you are. Sartorius will get there."
"I don't get it," she exclaimed. "Eris is an Elf, not a vampire."
"He's worse."
Within minutes Doctor Sartorius was there, and Daeren himself. Still in his talar, like Eris turned dark; Chrys felt disconcerted. "It's all right," Daeren assured her. "Your people probably found most of them. But we'll need to do a thorough search."
Sartorius extended a tendril. "The invaders could be hiding anywhere, even the marrow of your bones. To find them, we have to scan your whole system for arsenic. But the scanners can't tell one micro from another. So tell yours to tag themselves with this molecule." A molecule of about ten atoms appeared, rotating before her eyes. "Those who wear this tag will be passed over."
"And the others?"
"Don't think about it," said Daeren quietly. "Give your people something to help them feel better."
They must be horrified, she realized. She took an AZ. "Don't be afraid," she told Jonquil. "You did well; you will all live." She turned to Daeren. "I want to know," she insisted. "I want to know what's going on, and how that damned Elf could get me in trouble."
"Andra told him to stay out of Iridis."
"Why didn't you report him?"
Daeren exchanged a look with Sartorius. "He's the brother of Arion."
"Brother? Elves don't have brothers."
"Not genetically." Elysians
were conceived by computer, according to calculated genetic makeup, and brought to term invitro. "He and Arion were born the same year, in the same shon. They were raised together; he has Arion's complete trust."
"But what's wrong with him?"
Sartorius's tendril extended and tightened around her scalp. "He's a slave of a kind we've not seen before. None of the outward signs; his masters avoid that. He began as a carrier, but the masters took him over, exterminating his own people, perhaps without him even realizing."
"Nonsense—he must have known."
"They could have altered his memory," said Daeren. "Or perhaps he colluded with them."
"Why?"
"Whenever he passes on the strain, they grant him power over their next host. He can use people as he pleases."
She could have gone to his ship and been trapped. Her hair stood on end. "Why take over a carrier? Why not a defenseless host?"
Sartorius said, "Elysium is free of disease and crime. All Elysians are scanned daily for any pathogens or signs of criminality. So, masters could never take hold in a micro-free host. Their only option would be to mimic a safe population, within a known carrier."
"The strains we usually see in Valedon aren't smart enough to do that," added Daeren. "This is a new, virulent strain."
"And he tests other carriers," Chrys added. "He's like Andra, their chief tester. He could infect them all." Chrys looked up in horror. "What about Ilia? Is she—"
"Ilia gets tested by Andra."
Chrys recalled Ilia's first greeting, "Give my best to Andra." The Elf gallery director actually came out to primitive Iridis for testing. "So Ilia knows."
"She must suspect something. The smart ones do. But we can't accuse him without proof."
"What about the micros he gave me—aren't they proof?"
Sartorius said, "I've typed their DNA; I'm sure they would match his. But would he provide accurate data? By now, surely he has confederates."
False carriers, secretly serving Enlightenment.
"Besides," Daeren added, "how could we prove where we got your strain? It's starting to show up here in Iridis. Among the elite; people who think they're too smart for addiction."
The doctor's tendrils withdrew, whipping back with a snap. "I need to go, I have cases waiting. You're clear, Chrysoberyl. We only found two that your people missed."
"That's pretty good," said Daeren. "Better than ..." He did not finish. Reflectively, he watched the post-shaped doctor descend past the watching caryatids.
"Let us visit the true blue angels," her people insisted. "They need to hear about this."
Chrys sighed and handed Daeren a patch. Then she leaned back, gazing despondently at the gargoyles Xenon had placed along the ceiling. "Don't say anything—I feel stupid enough already."
"Don't feel too bad," Daeren told her. "Eris tried the same with me."
She stared at him. "You?"
In his talar, Daeren looked different, somehow, more worldly. "He came to see me last year. His people offered me everything— any human to control, they said. He would soon control all Elysium, so why should I not have Valedon?"
She blinked. "For what price?"
"To be their slave, of course, and send others regularly to Endless Light." He added levelly, "And of course, their host wanted the same thing of me as of you."
Chrys shuddered. "How could anyone—"
"Eris was like me, once. You never know how low you can go." He turned to her. "You painted Endless Light—what would you give for it?"
Her scalp crawled, remembering. "What did you tell him?"
The veins stood out in his neck. "I should have played along. Instead, I offered him this." He held up a green wafer, the hundredfold dose of AZ they gave slaves to stun their masters and help turn themselves in.
"And then?"
"He left. With a dozen of my visitors." Daeren shook his head slowly. "There was no way to get them back. They have no rights." He added, "I hope they died quickly, but I doubt it. We had to change all our codes and procedures."
Still dazed, she thought it over. "What's wrong with the Elves? Why don't they do something?"
"The one Elf leader who took micros seriously retired on Solaria twenty years ago. After a thousand years in government, she found micros more interesting than human people."
Chrys looked at the ceiling, where Xenon kept trying out new gargoyles. "Maybe too interesting for their own good. Maybe Elves wouldn't know disease and crime if they saw it. Why didn't you warn me?"
"We'll have to warn our carriers not to trust Elves," he sighed. "But when Arion hears, he'll be incensed. We can't afford to lose him; he's still our most open-minded supporter."
"What if Eris infects him?"
"Arion's not a carrier; he gets scanned for arsenic twice a day. He knows the danger, but he'll never believe it's Eris. Not till Elves start disappearing to the Slave World." Daeren looked at her curiously. "I'm still amazed that Eris took the risk to come after you. Andra has a warrant for him; if she were in town, she would have hauled him in the minute his ship touched down. He planned well." Daeren leaned closer. "What did Eris want from you? I mean, aside from the obvious."
She rolled her eyes. "Maybe we both should have picked 'Distinguished.' "
He gave a quick smile. "I've tried a more mature look, but it intimidates the Palace lords. When you sell outrageous ideas, they listen longer to a face that pleases the eye."
That figured. She herself didn't mind gazing at him, but wasn't about to admit it. "Eris came for my art. He bought Endless Light."
"I see."
"He really wanted this." She held up a viewcoin of the children merging.
Daeren's face changed, almost like the face of Endless Light. His lips parted and his eyes seemed to gaze far away. "Of course, his masters would want that. Even my angels beg me to keep looking."
She offered him the coin. "It's yours."
"Sorry, I can't take gifts."
"It's not a gift—just a viewcoin. It's, like, advertising."
He smiled. "Okay, I'll help you advertise." Taking the coin, he faced her again, blue sparks in his eyes. "Chrys, I hope you know that you can always call on me—not just professionally, as a friend. Whatever you or your people ever need, just ask. Okay?"
"Well, thanks," she said, rather surprised. "I wish I could help you—you'll need it."
He hesitated, as if struggling with something. "Andra wants you to help, too. She wants you on the committee."
"What?" She gripped her chair till the nanoplast melted in. "You can't be serious."
"You have the nerve, and your people are smart as hell. They saw through Eris in a minute."
"Rose did. You said she'd do me in," Chrys reminded him.
He shrugged. "We have to live with double agents."
She looked away. "So that's what you wanted—"
"No," he snapped. "7 don't want you to do it." He sounded as if he were arguing with someone else. "I want you to keep making art, and beautiful buildings. I don't want you to spend your time pulling slaves out of hell, only to see them run back the first chance they get."
"Oh Great One," flashed Jonquil, "we will join the cause. We will fight to preserve our way of life."
"And checkmate the false purveyors of Enlightenment."
Chrys took a deep breath and let it out slowly. If even Elves succumbed to the brain plague, what chance did she have? What gods would help humans?
THIRTEEN
The Thundergod sent judges to train Eleutherians to judge the gods themselves. But their transfer took several microbial "hours," while the one god reached out to the other.
To pass the time, Jonquil and Rose played chess. Jonquil was not a bad player, but her mind tended to wander to the Comb, the latest iteration of the torsional stress problem, or to art—how to inspire the god to ever more daring creations. Jonquil's own body had aged and stiffened too much for the athletics of passion, but she poured her dreams into the divine arts.
"Your move," flashed Rose. The micro chessboard curled over in a ring, so the pieces lined up in circular rows.
Jonquil's filament stuck to one protein piece, then set it down, replacing another.
Rose emitted a molecule of disgust.
" What's wrong? " asked Jonquil. "I trade a knight for a bishop."
"And doubled pawns. My rook swings around to take one. Hopeless," Rose added to herself. "I'm moving to the wizards, see if I don't."
Rose had made this threat so often that Jonquil no longer worried. "Now Rose," she said, emitting placating pheromones. "You know I couldn't manage without you." Flattery, she had learned, was the best way to get around Rose—and to gain information. "Those judges—you really stand up to them, with all you know of the masters."
"No host ever found Endless Light, save by choice."
"Now, Rose, let's not be naive—"
"Come, who's naive? Humans choose the path of Enlightenment. Alas, too many are betrayed; nonetheless, they choose."
"But the slaves who steal ships—"
"I tell you it isn't so." Rose refused to believe that the master-controlled slaves stole humans out of spaceships. "The host always makes a choice. Though we make the choice easy. I'll show you how—"
Rose stopped as the optic fibers flashed. The judges had arrived. They came, rolling sedately through the arachnoid, their filaments brushing the columns of fibroblast. They exuded authority and shrewdness, though they tasted a bit pompous. Jonquil emitted molecules of respect, with a hint of Eleutherian pleasures after their work was done.
"Your people have been chosen for an extraordinary mission," Judge-390 told Jonquil. "Your mission is to save the gods themselves from destruction."
"Eleutheria is honored to be of service." How well Jonquil remembered the false blue angels, and the great "passing over." They had just commemorated the event's twenty-fifth anniversary.
Rose added, "Salvation of the gods has always been my mission. " Jonquil brushed her filaments, flickering, "Be dark!"
"All participants in this service must apply for security clearance." Judge-390 produced a long chain of hydrocarbon, with many complex side branches, each with data tags to be filled in. A similar chain, about twice as long, Jonquil noticed, was presented to Rose. Much annoyed, Rose caught the molecular paperwork in her filaments and hauled it off.
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