Daeren said nothing. How could they tell? she suddenly realized. How would non-carriers know who carried plague, and who carried civilized people?
Chrys had just got home and settled back to painting, Merope brushing affectionately around her legs, when the Committee met by conference call. Patterns of color still floated in her head—red of wild berries, gold of sunset through evergreens, a veritable color choir. Reluctantly, she banished them.
The holostage partitioned to show seven committee members from their various locations, all but Daeren, whom Guardian Arion had just summoned to Elysium to aid their investigation. Jasper was there, for the first time since Garnet's troubles. Garnet was doing well now, but he kept to himself. That was not good, Chrys knew; he had to come back to Olympus, to avoid inbreeding of his people. She remembered Jasper's upcoming meeting with the Silicon planning board. Despite Eleutherian hopes, she prayed that would be the end of it.
"With Zoisite back in the clinic," Andra told the Committee, "in the spotlight of the Elysian crisis, the Protector wants action."
Pyrite lifted his hands. "What does he expect? 'Carriers of the brain plague'—that's all of us."
"Not exactly. He needs our help, after all." Andra crossed her arms. "I think what he means is, any carrier of micros likely to transmit them by unregulated means."
"In other words," said Selenite, "anyone with micros except us."
Opal shook her head. "How do we round up all the slaves? And keep them in treatment? We've gone through this before."
"The Protector knows that," said Andra, "but he has to do something."
Jasper said, "Let his octopods clear out the vampires. Should have done that years ago."
Heads nodded at that.
"And the new Elf strain?" asked Andra. "The new Elf strain is a far greater threat than vampires."
There was silence. On the shelf next to Chrys's holostage, partitioned for the seven callers, crouched Merope, still enough to catch a dust servo, only the tip of her tail waving.
The good doctor raised his face worms. "You'll understand, I cannot support the quarantine," Sartorius said. "As a healer, I can't agree to confine any slave against his will, knowing it only decreases his chance of treatment."
"Of course, Sar," said Andra quietly. "You and Flexor must have . . . reservations."
Opal slowly shook her head. "It's a slippery slope. Vampires are one thing, but who will they go after next?"
Pyrite asked, "What does Daeren say?"
"He shares the doctors' view."
Chrys found eyes turning toward her. They expected her to vote, she suddenly realized. She felt torn. Putting away slaves sounded like a good deal, but she remembered the time Zircon had to sleep in the street and got arrested just because he looked big and threatening. She kept her hand down.
By evening Chrys was well pleased with how Mourners at an Execution was shaping up. The subdued tones of the mourning micros had grown more intense, and the distant flames now echoed in lurid hints in the foreground. The composition had grown together; it "clicked." Merope padded through it, purring as if she approved. What would Ilia think?
Her message light blinked. An unnamed stranger was demanding to appear on her holostage. Chrys frowned. "Xenon, could you clear a space?" Her painting moved aside.
Out of the dark appeared a face. A blank, slavelike expression, with a hint of broken veins about the nose. Sallow complexion, and her nanotex hung loose as if low on power. Otherwise, not bad-looking; high cheekbones, slender female.
Then Chrys remembered. It was "Saf"—the slave who had tended the slave bar the night of the Seven Stars' Opening, when Chrys had left, rejected by her friends, to lose herself at the Gold of Asragh. Saf had offered her a patch full of masters, and Chrys had showed her the pyroclastic flow. But that had been months before. Saf had long since disappeared to the Slave World. The place of no return.
In Saf's eyes the irises flashed with eerie rings of white.
"Endless Light!" exclaimed Rose. "From the highest orders of Enlightenment these people call to us—"
"Be dark." Chrys momentarily closed her eyes to underscore the point.
When her eyes reopened, Saf's face began to speak. The lips moved in a way somehow disjointed with the rest of the face, not in the fluid way that a human would normally speak. "Char-r-r," the voice breathed. "I—am—called ..." The words jerked from her lips, as if from a puppet on strings. "... the Leader of Endless Light."
The blood drained from Chrys's face as she watched.
"A—great distance separates us," the puppet Saf continued, "A very great distance indeed. Many universes separate us. And yet—I—have—admired your work." Saf's hand lifted mechanically. "Now—you shall admire mine."
Behind Saf appeared two humans strapped into a spaceship for cross-Fold acceleration. Elves, both of them. They looked calmly asleep.
"They chose," insisted Rose. "They chose Endless Light." "Even—the—'immortals' come to us now. What are you waiting for . .. Char?"
SEVENTEEN
Rose twinkled all over, emitting many molecules of excitement, a risky thing at her advanced age. A hundred generations of waiting, and at last she had seen the very fount of true Enlightenment. "She exists!" Rose insisted to Fireweed. "The Leader—at last. She lives, in the eyes of her host, in the world of Endless Light. Now you see the proof."
"I saw yet another slave-ridden host," countered Fireweed. "Were we there, I suspect I would have tasted the foul waste of people who don't take proper care of their world."
"You know nothing. The Enlightened do the best they can with limited resources. We must help them."
"Why does this Leader let so many evil ones serve her?"
A very good question. "The Leader, too, is betrayed. Many universes separate the world of Endless Light from our own. How can she know? We must tell her, reveal to her their crimes. We must help Endless Light—and give our own Host the chance to choose."
"Rose, you were my teacher, but I bid you watch yourself and your plans. I will not brook your schemes. I serve the One True God."
"Do I not serve your precious 'god'?" observed Rose. "Where would your 'god' be without me?"
"You have served well," admitted Fireweed.
"And what is the result? For how many generations have you taught that killing of people violates the highest law. The law of whom—if not your god?"
At that, Fireweed was silent.
"Only degenerate societies generate the crimes that require execution. In Endless Light, each lives for all, and all for each. The Enlightened have no need of executions."
With Andra and Selenite, Chrys reviewed the message from Endless Light, which Xenon had had the presence of mind to record. She noticed more details: the broken fittings of the ship that contained the captive Elves, suggestive of poor maintenance, and another figure standing beside them in limp nanotex, like one of the pirates Chrys had met with Daeren in the basement of Gold of Asragh. The two Elves looked healthy, serenely asleep, no sign of ill treatment. Oblivious to the massive manhunt their disappearance had spawned, for every ship of the Elysian fleet combed the folds of space to find them.
Hearing Saf's puppet-like recitation, Andra nodded. "Direct control of voice. I've seen that, on a slave ship. It's another category of slave: those who work at the Slave World."