"The sentients aren't interested in her, either. They figure they'll rely on their own structural engineers. But I agree with you, Selenite would be a help."
"If we take this job," she told her people, "we'll need the help of the Deathlord's minions."
"The Deathlord?" Rose was outraged. "How can you deal with that authoritarian state?"
"One True God," said Fireweed, "You know how I love you and all your people, and I long to obey your word. But the Deathlord violates your own most fundamental principle of mercy."
"Nevertheless," Chrys replied, "we dwell in the same universe. We must work together. Don't you think the minions are better off for your influence?"
Rose flashed, "The Deathlord has forbidden me to visit."
Appalled, Chrys looked back at Jasper. She couldn't deal with Selenite—and she couldn't deal without her.
Jasper's sprite still looked carefully away, his features in profile jutting like the Dolomite cliffs. "Why not wait a generation or two. Ideas are immortal, but micros don't live forever."
That night was her turn on call for the Committee. In her window flitted a young woman in torn nanotex, hair disheveled, no stone sign. She raised both hands as if reaching up the face of a cliff. "Help me," she groaned. "Nothing left. They'll kill me if I don't pay." Not so smart—the smarter strains didn't threaten, they just took you to the slave ship.
"Where are you?" The woman didn't answer, or couldn't, but the locator in Chrys's window showed the vicinity of Gold of Asragh. Chrys no longer hung out there; the place had gone downhill, too many pimps and psychos, let alone the thickest slave traffic in the Underworld.
Out front, the old nightspot now had a simian boy and girl in red vamping for customers. Chrys looked away. She asked the medic on call, "Do I have to go in?"
"That's not where the signal reads," the worm-face replied. "Go to the alley, behind, possibly underground."
She craned her neck dubiously. "Not alone, I won't."
"You're monitored every moment; they all know that." The medic stretched his worms for a better look down the alley. "On second thought, I'll come with you." Usually the medic stayed outside, to avoid spooking the patients, some of whom had never known decent care.
Chrys stepped into the alley, looking out for cancerplast. In back of Asragh, in the darkness, a door opened. The door seemed to leer at her, suspiciously convenient. She liked the look of this less and less.
"I'll stick with you," the medic assured her.
She shined her light inside. The corridor, some sort of warehouse, smelled stale and appeared empty. She stepped inside.
The door closed with unexpected speed, pushing the medic back out while closing Chrys inside. "Doctor!" she called; but the worm-face was gone.
Out of the shadows stepped three humans, their faces displaying deathly grins. Too late, Chrys turned and pounded the door. The door swallowed her fists. She was trapped.
At her keypad she blinked frantically, but she could raise nothing, even from Plan Ten. No response except a dull noise. Something had jammed the signal.
"Rose? Rose," she blinked desperately.
Behind her a man caught her shoulder. She kicked backward so hard it strained her leg. The man hurtled backward, landing with a thud. Some part of him had not hit well; slave reflexes were poor. "Rose?" she called again.
"Great Host, the Council has convened. We agree to let you take this journey. Do not be afraid; you will choose."
"Damn you, Rose—you get me out of here, or await my wrath."
"Your wrath cannot touch me. I near the end of my long life in exile."
What if Rose died, and the codes died with her? "Where's Fireweed?"
"The others agreed to wait, to see a world without executions. They fear your wrath, but even more they fear the genocide they have seen." The executions, even the innocents by Eris—could they blame her for that?
"You're raving. You put your entire people at risk—all your children—"
An object pressed to her side made her muscles go limp. Without a word, the slaves took her out the door and dragged her off. Her surroundings bounced crazily around her.
"You can still keep us safe," added Rose. "Keep your eyes open all the time. I will flash the code that your quota is full; you are not to be invaded." But not to be set free.
"Fireweed? Forget-me-not? Where are you?" Had they forsaken her? Or had Rose done them in? Was she the false angel after all?
After interminable dragging down endless corridors, the slave workers reached their ship. The navigation stage pulsed with a thousand stars. Chrys's limbs were recovering their strength, but the device still pressed at her side, and she ached from bruises all over. "Who are you?" she demanded. "I'm not one of you. I said 'No'—a thousand times, No."
One of her captors turned his sickly grin on her. Worker slaves were still conscious, but they had lost all natural sense of pleasure or pain. All they felt was their forebrain on overdrive, rewarding each command obeyed. "Your eyes say other," he spoke haltingly. "Shaper of stars. Mystery. You have special call. To the Leader."
The Slave World, place of no return. With a sudden twist Chrys heaved two of the captors off her body, sending them halfway across the floor. But the third stunned her again. The first two picked themselves up, never losing their grins, though one bled from his nose, the blood trickling onto his filthy nanotex.
They strapped her down for departure. As the ship skipped through the first fold of space, it occurred to her to blink her recording on. Her neuroports had several hours storage, and who could tell if her body might be recovered somehow, or if by some miracle she got out alive. "There's always a first time," the Elf Guardian of Peace had told her. Arion be damned. No Elf or Valan could help her now.
Chrys closed her eyes hard. "My people," she warned, "there will be an eclipse of the sun." She closed her window and waited. Strapped down, she felt the ship spinning into its first jump across a space fold—who could say where? The place of no return. Opening her window, she blinked the letters again: "We'll never come hack, do you see? No more Olympus; we'll all be dead."
No answer.
"Fireweed?" She blinked desperately, her eyes burning. "No Silicon to build, ever—don't you see?"
"I see," flashed Rose at last, her pink letters triumphant. "I see well enough. I see that no Silicon will be built by me—you'll see to that, Great Host."
"No, Rose." Though it was true.
"I see well enough. It's the 'gods' who are blind—blind to their own fate, and their own true destiny."
The ship skipped through fold after fold. Chrys's mind whirled, seeking some way to reach them. Were they really so angry? Had she herself tempted them with Mourners at an Execution, raising expectations she could not meet? A god, perhaps, but she was no saint.
Above the stage of the ship, amid the suspended stars, grew the disk of a planet. Blue ocean, green continents. Rectangular shapes suggested habitation, but no sign of movement, no ships in orbit, no microwave generators. As it coasted to land, trees flashed by; the vegetation of the first human home, itself long ago destroyed in the Brother Wars. Those trees meant a terraformed world, though none she knew.