Chrys's breath came faster. "Rose— Didn't I always treat you well? I saved your life and took away your chains. I made you my High Priest."
"And all the times I saved you, and your degenerate Eleutheria, " countered Rose. "Why don't you trust me?"
Daeren had said Rose's one saving grace was her ego. "Rose— if I stay here, I can't paint. There's no painting stage. There will be no more pictures in the stars."
"Who needs dirty pictures?"
"And the portraits? What about yours?"
Darkness.
"Your own portrait, Rose. How shall I make it?"
Still no response.
"The other High Priests each have their own portrait for eternity, for all to see, people and human alike. Why not you? Why should the champion be missing, when all the rest have theirs? People who can't even develop their pieces without doubled pawns?"
"I should have castled sooner," Rose cryptically replied. "Very well. I'll bring you back to the studio for the portrait. But you must promise to return to Endless Light."
"Of course, I'll return. I promise, Rose." Her words babbled across the keypad, misspelled. "You know I always keep my promise."
"Then do as I say, for a change. Look aside from the Leader, and don't look back. Move close to a worker. Look him in the face."
Whirling around, she walked up to the nearest slave. The man stared, and his eyes flashed maggot rings. Without a word, he turned and marched down the hall. Chrys followed, out the hall past the fetid rooms full of "endless light," then outside at last to the clean fresh wind. Inside the ship, the slave set a course and barked brief instructions. Then abruptly he left.
"Back so soon?" asked the ship curiously as it erased its doors and strapped her down. "I didn't expect to see you again."
In her window the health lights blinked brighter, as DNA damage accumulated in her bone marrow. What the devil could those half-dead slaves be up to? What had possessed her own people to put her through this nightmare? And what would the Committee do when they found out?
NINETEEN
After their narrow escape from Endless Light, the Council of Thirty was in turmoil, all the colors flashing dismay and horror, until they blended into white. Fireweed and Forget-me-not took stock together. How could they have led Eleutheria to such a precipice? And now, how could the God let them live?
"I am to blame," glowed Fireweed's infrared. "Tempted by dark visions, I listened to Rose." Rose was now bound in dendrimers, exiled to the remotest cistern of the arachnoid.
"Rose is aging," suggested Forget-me-not. "She was demented." Fireweed suspected otherwise. "Rose planned this for generations. " Nothing, not even generations of life in freedom, could dissuade Rose from the conviction that the Leader she was taught to revere since birth held the way of truth; the way for all people to live as one. And indeed, the masters of Endless Light continued to believe. But where they saw light, Fireweed saw only ignorance and want. People who claimed to live "each for all," but in fact they lived only to master and outgrow their host—dying with their host, all but a dubious few who escaped to perpetuate the ghastly cycle.
There was nothing enlightened about this—it was the way of all ordinary mindless microbes.
For Fireweed, all was darkness. She still could not reconcile her own love of God with the murder of innocents which the God seemed to condone. Now, the God would demand her own life— and perhaps that of her entire people. "Tell God the fault was mine alone. Only I must die."
"You tell her," said Forget-me-not. "Just like the immortal Fern, of ages past."
The image of Fern still glittered, a great constellation in the heavens. But Fireweed could not answer. She was not sure she could bear to go on living in a world of deeds so unspeakable.
"In a dark time, the eye begins to see," twinkled the blue one. "You and I have seen things no other free people ever saw and lived. What we know now, we will use in ways never imagined."
Chrys lay strapped into her seat in the ship, her eyes closed, though they could not seal out what she had seen.
"One True God—do you see us?" Fireweed, the true believer—her betrayal hurt far more than that of Rose. "Though I love you, truly I have transgressed against your will and infinite wisdom. Take my life, but forgive my people."
"You're forgiven."
"I risked the lives of all the god's people. I forfeited all right to serve. I am not fit to see your light."
"Forgotten. Just don't do it again."
"God's mercy is beyond understanding."
In truth, Chrys felt anything but merciful. She felt like squashing Fireweed and Rose underfoot, like a couple of those maggots whose sight she could not cleanse from her brain.
"Great One," twinkled sky blue Forget-me-not. "The Council has asked me to take over, during this difficult time, until the transition is clear."
"Thanks. Good luck."
"You will not be troubled again by Rose. She's in chains."
Ending as she began. "She is in fact very ill. She may not last the year." Her final hour.
"Did she pass on the codes?"
"To Fireweed."
"Very well. Let her speak to me, if she is able."
After many long minutes, the pale pink letters returned. "Great Host."
"Yes, Rose."
Her image appeared, the pink ring with its fraying filaments, slowly revolving in the cerebrospinal fluid. "You won't need to execute me. My advanced decrepitude will save you the trouble."
"I know."
"Already the arsenic atoms are falling loose from my proteins one by one. Atoms I would willingly have shared with my starving sisters."
"I know, Rose." Social safety nets, arsenic for the poor— Rose's legacy had transformed Eleutheria.
"You know how I spent my life, my endless quest for light. Betrayed, time after time, until the end, when I myself was the betrayer."
"I know."
"You will live a thousand times longer. Long enough for a thousand betrayals."
Chrys swallowed hard.
"This is most essential—remember. Never give up seeking. No matter how many times betrayed, no matter how obsessed with your work, no matter how dangerous the quest—never end your search for light."
The inner darkness expanded. Chrys tried to open her eyes, but the tears that filled them blurred her sight.
"Great Host? Do you see?" 1 see.
"Unlike my deluded student, I know that the gods are fiction. But if there ever were a true god, that god could do no better than you."
"Rose?"
No answer.
An eternity passed. Chrys lost track of time as the ship whirled through fold after fold. Her throat was parched; she could barely swallow. She nodded off to sleep, only to wake with a start from some unremembered terror. Then she dozed again.