Strapping the packed field stage onto her back once more, Chrys followed the slaves out the air lock. The lock opened into a satellite ring, the old-fashioned kind that rolled like a treadmill. The centrifugal acceleration was not quite standard. Chrys stumbled, catching herself on the floor.
A wavering bit of cancerplast, lava red, cast long shadows down the passage. As her eyes adjusted, the patterned design on the floor and crossed triangle logo on the doors looked at least half a century out of date. The air smelled stale, though not as bad as in the masters' planetary hideout. Perhaps the surviving hosts had not yet had time to die and decay.
"Where are we?" Chrys asked her people. "Did they say?"
"A temporary shelter;" flashed Fireweed. "The masters know they'll have to move on."
The hallway glimmered with cancerplast from the ceiling; one blob dangled, trembling, as if about to crawl off in search of power. Chrys's eyes adjusted to the dim light. Shadows stretched toward worker slaves, their eyes all flickering white as they passed. Some pushed cots or wheelchairs containing human bodies, inert, with unkempt beards or bare breasts, eyes horribly staring. What if one of them were Daeren? Her heart pounded enough to burst. She rehearsed what she planned to tell Saf, the human mouthpiece of the microbial Leader.
Ahead of her, Len turned toward the wall. A doorway opened, parting with a tired screech, like her old broken-down apartment. Len stepped through, and Chrys followed, taking the pack off her back. She rubbed her shoulders where it stung, unaccustomed to the strap.
An oval room, the ceiling dotted with plugs of cancerplast, like stars pasted to the sky. In the center stood a figure she could just make out, facing away from her. It must be Saf. The figure slowly turned.
It was Daeren. Daeren alive, and well enough to stand.
"Daeren!" She took a quick step forward, then another.
Daeren's face held no expression. His eyes flashed white maggot rings.
Chrys screamed, then clapped a hand over her mouth.
His lips moved. "I—am—the—Leader." His voice had the same stilted rhythm as Saf had. "Why do you come? Are you ready for Endless Light?"
Terror had driven any words from her head. She could only stare, transfixed, shaking.
"Say, 'No,' " prompted Forget-me-not. "Just say no."
"No," Chrys gasped, letting out her breath. "That's not... what I came for."
"Interesting," said Daeren's lips. "Your degenerate people say they can help us. You may visit."
Forget-me-not could visit; that was part of their plan. Chrys took the patch and handed it to Daeren, choking on the memory of doing this many times.
"One True God, all is well," Fireweed assured her. "Our joint ventures are maturing."
Chrys swallowed hard, recovering some of her nerve. Daeren— was he still there, inside, behind the deadly eyes? "I want you—I want him back," she said. "The ... world that you took."
"The—new—world chose Endless Light," said Daeren's lips. "This new world came to us in better shape than most. New home for the Leader."
She swallowed again, her throat hoarse. "I want it back."
"Why? No use to you."
That was probably true, she realized, her heart sinking. The Leader had moved in, and by now all trace of Daeren's mind would be gone. But she had come too far to leave what was left of him. Better to take his empty shell then to have to see him in her dreams, as he would eventually be, his body exposed to unspeakable decay.
"Arsenic," flashed Fireweed. "They ask us for arsenic. They starve for it."
She thought of the other slaves down the hall, and the other shells, others decaying behind other walls, and all the hapless slaves of Valedon. "I can't. I can't betray my kind."
"We know, Great One. It's just hard for us to see them starve."
She opened the backpack, her hands so covered with sweat that the stage slipped from her grasp. Clumsily, she put up the projection posts and the light sources. "Display," she whispered.
The stage hummed, then shimmered into stars. It was the portrait of Rose. Rose, her pink filaments shimmering with the words of her final quest. Rose ... The tireless worker deserved her rest.
Daeren's eyes fixed on the star picture. Nearby, the two slaves approached. Six maggot-rimmed eyes stared into the stars, their patterns calling like the lights of heaven that had entranced thinking minds ever since the first ape developed a cerebral cortex.
Suddenly, the two slaves fell back. Daeren's lips demanded, "Who is—this—pretender?"
The Leader was jealous of a rival. Chrys stood up, straightening her back. She put on her difficult-client smile. "I will make a portrait of the true Leader, in the stars. A portrait to outshine this one, and all others. To spread word throughout the universe, in praise of Endless Light."
The dead eyes flickered, eyes that had once shown blue as the palest sky. Could this Leader resist what had captivated Rose, the chance to project her will through eternity, calling all the people and all the gods to Endless Light?
"She agrees," said Fireweed. "She'll have to visit, Oh Great One; and who knows who else will come besides. But we are ready."
Daeren's hand held the patch to his neck, then to her; a gesture hauntingly familiar, ever since the first morning he gave her Fern and Poppy. Now there was no doctor or hospital to help, only a faltering satellite run by microbial minds that craved her blood. But inside her grew Fern's descendants, a million strong.
"Fireweed? Is it all right?"
"So far. We'll keep them talking." "Them"—she did not like the sound of that.
A ring of filaments, white as bone, probing and tasting. Chrys shut her eyes to see better. She crouched before the stage on the floor. With a word she dismissed the display. The first fresh strokes of light slanted wrong; her hands shook so badly, and she was out of practice on this tiny stage. It was hard to believe, now, that she had ever managed to get anything out of a meter cube. She reset it to track her finger, one tip at a time. The ring of light took shape, filling the small volume. Then shadows and highlights, and subtle hints of color, just enough to deepen the mystery.
The maggot eyes watched. From the ceiling beyond, a cancer dropped to the floor, extending long strings of plast, the kind that could get into a circuit and short it out—and there must be hundreds of them. Bad news for the old satellite. Chrys stood and stretched her back. "Is the client pleased? "
"Yes, so far. Keep on," urged Fireweed. "Time is on our side."
The micros could not know what shape the satellite was in. What if its air system failed? Setting the animation, Chrys did a shortcut, just dimming and brightening the image to generate the Leader's "words." "Is that enough?"
"Keep going. You can't expect a leader to make a speech short."
She kept on, her fingers dimming and brightening, long and short, abrupt and slow-fading, according to what her eyes saw. "Fireweed, the field stage can only store so much."
"It is done."
Chrys pressed the transfer port, letting the painting load into her eyes. Then she stood again. What next, she wondered suddenly. What would happen to Daeren, or his "shell," and where would the Leader go?
"Give him back," she said aloud. "You agreed."
"We will go." The letters in her window were white as ice. "We will go. But you will keep some of my people, to see my enlightened form raised before all."