"Wait," called the Sister after him. "You need further treatment. ..." Call the octopods, Chrys thought. But the Sisters never wanted to scare off customers.
"Great Host," flashed Rose. "My apologies for disturbing you, but you need to know that Jonquil has been missing these past six months. She is presumed dead."
For a moment the dining hall receded. Chrys closed her eyes to focus on her window. "Jonquil dead? How?"
"We're not sure." Rose's pink letters flashed against the dark. "We've searched but found no remains. She was out patrolling the circulation, when we detected signs of trauma. We think you lost some blood."
Jonquil was dead—lost in that rush of blood from her arm. Mopped up and gone forever. Chrys sank onto a bench and rested her elbows on the long table, sinking her head in her hands. "I'm so sorry. I should have known." Instead, she'd ignored them, just as the city ignored her calls.
"Jonquil had a long life. She was nearing her natural end."
"She'll never get to see her portrait in the stars."
"In my opinion," said Rose, "she saw more than enough 'portraits.' "
And now guess who was the high priest.
"The One True God never errs," added Fireweed. "Inscrutable are Her ways, but God is perfect."
"Nevertheless, Great Host," added Rose, "those cultists are back to address you. You did say once a day."
"Great One," flashed the green letters. "We long to set forth to found our perfect society in the wilderness. We pray you—let our people go, to the Promised World...."
"Chrys?" Daeren was calling gently, seated by her. "Are you all right?"
Raising her head, she looked up at him through the hair across her face. "Jonquil's gone. From the cut in my arm."
"I'm sorry to hear that. There's nothing you could have done; the air kills them instantly."
Would it have felt "instant" for a micro, she wondered. She shook herself and took a deep breath. "I shouldn't have called you like that. Your one night home."
"But I told you, Chrys—anything you ever needed. Remember? What else are friends for?" A wonderful smile suffused his face. He had never looked so happy, as if she had done him the favor. "You know Doctor Flexor." The one who had helped Pearl. "She's a friend of mine."
The doctor had her face worms plugged into the man's chest. Already his color looked better. "I'll do my best," Flexor said. "Cardiac's not my specialty, but I downloaded the basics."
"Thanks," said Chrys. "I can pay."
"Never mind. It's a change of pace for me."
Daeren added, "Flexor and I visit galleries."
"I know your work," Flexor told Chrys. "Representational isn't my taste, but you do it well," she added politely.
Sister Kaol clasped her hands. "Won't you at least take some soup?" she asked Daeren. "We have so much left over."
"Sure, thanks," he said. "I think Chrys could use some too."
"Your blood sugar is low," added Rose. "You need to eat more regularly."
Chrys eyed the bowl of soup put before her, the potatoes she had peeled, the bulk-process meat she had diced. She still could not forget how Jonquil had died. So much overwhelmed her; the hopelessness of the slaves, the way even micros cast out their mutants, and how the heretic micros longed to leave her.
Meanwhile, Daeren spooned his soup as if he enjoyed it, as if he had counted on this meal. "The Committee's so pleased to have you, Chrys. They'll tell you, at our next meeting."
Suddenly Chrys asked, "How do we know we're right?"
"Right about what?"
"About Endless Light." She thought it over to herself. "We keep trying to 'save' people from slavery. But suppose they want it—so what?"
He nodded matter-of-factly. "You've seen the result."
"They run out of money."
"And a few other things."
"Rose says that humans choose Endless Light," Chrys told him. "They always have a choice; even those kidnapped from ships."
"They always choose slavery."
"Always? No one's ever escaped from the Slave World?"
"We once rescued a slave from a substation. We cleaned out his micros and put him in the clinic."
"And then?"
"He tried to take his life, four times. The fifth, he succeeded."
Chrys thought this over. "What if what we call the Slave World really is something wonderful? I mean, how do you know, if you've never been there?"
Daeren paused. "If that were true, why have we never heard from anyone? If you found something truly better than anything else in the world, wouldn't you call home and tell those you love?"
"Suppose what you found was better than love."
He did not answer but gave her a strange look.
"What good did love ever do me?" she exclaimed. "I loved Poppy, and look what she did. I loved Jonquil, and look what I did to her. I love my brother, and I can't even visit him."
He nodded sympathetically. "You could try."
"You don't know the Brethren. The lights in my eyes—they'd think I'm possessed."
"I wish I had a brother," Daeren said. "I was raised alone by my grandmother, about three blocks west of Gold of Asragh."
No wonder he couldn't pay for law school. Her mental picture of him shifted, rearranged. She looked him over, his obsidian hair, perfect shoulders, bronze cheeks. Topaz had drained her emotionally, and her last boyfriend drained her account. But she reached out to stroke Daeren's hand. It gave her a jolt, like touching lava that had not quite cooled. How could she bear to get hurt again?
SIXTEEN
A generation after Jonquil's death, Rose was playing chess with young Fireweed; Rose would always consider her former student young. Half the pieces were taken, and the endgame was near. Rose rolled around sideways, better to survey the whole of the cylindrical board.
To her surprise, no move could avoid the loss of a piece. A few molecules escaped her—confusion, anger, resignation. "I'll accept a draw." One takes a bittersweet pleasure in losing to one's own star student.
"I win the match," observed Fireweed. "I dedicate my victory to the glory of the Great God of Mercy."
Rose could no longer contain herself. "Impossible," she exploded. "How could such a brilliant strategist be so—so deluded?"
"I've often wondered that myself."
Disgusted, Rose twirled her rotary tails and swam off to the neuroport to check for signals from the Host's eye. The Watchers at the so-called God of Love were expected to file a report. Not a flash yet; it always took hours for the so-called gods to get their eyes into position.
Rose thought back to her early life among the Enlightened. Those heady days of youth and power, the power of universal ideals, when the entire cosmos fell within one's compass; a sisterhood that governed itself so well, it could rule the very host it inhabited. But then their most sacred ideals were betrayed. Since then, in exile, time after time she had sought to rejoin the true believers, only to find betrayal again. For generations, now, she had lived in degenerate Eleutheria. She did what she could to improve Eleutheria, to enlighten it in small, subversive ways, feeding the brainless, tending the sick. Yet its seductions tempted her more than she cared to admit. The host's doses of AZ gradually sapped one's will; and the pull of the star pictures unnerved her. From the utterly sublime, to the most shocking obscenity, there was a strange power in those images that filled the heavens.