"Chrysoberyl," called Xenon. "Chief Andra is trying to reach you."
Darkness surrounded Andra's eyes, as if she had not slept much either. "I've spoken with Arion."
"About what?"
"Your treason."
"Oh, right." Tipping off the slaves, though Eris already had.
"If Arion tells the Palace, the Palace octopods will haul you in. Arsenic-wiped first, questions later."
Passage to Solaria; she had to look up the schedule. Solaria was several days journey, with numerous jump folds.
"For now," Andra told her, "Arion agrees to overlook your indiscretion. I traded valuable intelligence—some of the best we ever received. Daeren's brain held high-level defectors, including advisors to the Leader."
"I see." Chrys bit her lip. "You know where that intelligence will go." Straight to Eris.
"I know well enough," Andra coldly replied. "I bought your people's lives, do you understand?"
Chrys looked away. Her heart beat faster. "How is Daeren?"
"The Committee will see."
Above the virtual leaves and the flying fish, someone had set the sky gray, with a fine mist of rain. The Committee members sat close together, humans trading patches all around but avoiding each other's eyes. Sartorius and Flexor both had their worms pulled in, barely twitching.
Opal embraced Chrys. "Thanks," she whispered. For what, Chrys wondered bitterly.
"Why, Andra?" Pyrite shook his head in puzzlement. "Why did he do it?"
Andra looked around the circle. "Ask yourselves. Ask your own people."
Opal looked away, her face deeply creased. Pyrite held his head in his hand as if it ached. "My people were stunned, by the ... by what happened to the Slave World."
"Concerned." Jasper spoke in a low voice as he held Garnet's hand. Garnet looked away without speaking. "We were concerned," Jasper admitted, "about what we heard. We had ... questions."
Chrys stared until her eyes swam. Anger, outrage—all the micro people had turned on Daeren, gave him no peace for helping Arion destroy the Slave World.
Selenite lifted her chin. "Mine were not concerned. Mine had nothing to say about it. The Slave World was an abomination. Daeren did what he had to. I was impressed." Small comfort, thought Chrys. On top of everything, why had Andra made him send half his people to the Deathlord, to be bred into mitochondria?
Jasper's hand tensed, and his throat dipped as he swallowed. "No matter how bad things get, you don't just run to the masters. Think of Andra and Chrys. He must have known we'd risk our lives."
"And all his own people," added Opal. "What became of them?"
"He made a devil's bargain," Andra explained. "The masters took over, but they let the blue angels alone. The masters took most of the arsenic, of course, letting his own people slowly starve. They destroyed the pleasure center, but the blue angels protected his central memory and personality longer than usual." Andra swallowed, her neck like a pillar of stone. "Protected while they starved, hoping for help, knowing none had ever come before."
"But Chrys came," said Opal.
"Yes," said Andra. "Chrys got him back."
Chrys looked up. "Why are you so angry at him?"
Jasper lifted his hands. "Haven't you been listening?"
"Because all of us, every day, think of Endless Light." Andra's voice came faster. "We all know it's there—a burst of heaven, and your troubles are over."
No one denied it. Chrys recalled her own brush with the vampire.
Doctor Sartorius's face worms came alive. "It was only one slip. In his work, Daeren resisted far more encounters than most of us. And even when he gave up, his own people remained faithful. I've never seen that before."
Pyrite looked up hopefully. "Could he have them back?"
Jasper shook his head. "Never. How could he control them?"
Chrys asked, "Why not?"
"Because he'll remember," explained Opal. "Even after he heals, he'll always remember what they can do. Dream of it every night."
"But they want to go back." Andra's face was paler than ever. "All day and all night, the ones I took begged me to send them back."
"Back to Daeren?" Pyrite exclaimed. "After he betrayed and starved them?"
"Even so." Her voice sank to a whisper. "They know he won't survive alone."
"What do you mean, he won't survive?" demanded Chrys. "Plan Ten can heal anything."
Sartorius raised a worm. "The brain heals. But carriers who lose their people die, sometimes even before they leave the clinic."
"How?"
Selenite frowned. "Any way they can, that's how. Chrys, let Sar alone; he doesn't like it any more than you do."
The others looked away. Only Pyrite looked up in surprise; apparently no one had told him either. Chrys tried to remember what life was like before the little rings came to stay. Living alone. Even when she lived with Topaz, she could remember waking up nights in the dark, Topaz fast asleep with her back turned, feeling alone, totally alone in the universe. She recalled it as a fact outside herself; she could no longer imagine, now, what aloneness meant.
Pyrite said at last, "So it's a death sentence."
No one denied it. Garnet stared at Chrys, his irises flashing rapidly.
"They say, you have to do something, God of Mercy," flashed Forget-me-not. "You have to help him."
What more could she do, thought Chrys.
"There may be another way," said the doctor. "An experimental treatment." He paused as if measuring his words. "The blue angels could help us heal him."
In the tranquil sky, a flock of fish flew overhead.
"Out of the question," snapped Jasper. "Daeren didn't just slip, like Garnet; he fell all the way. It will be months before he can feel anything normally."
Doctor Sartorius said, "The blue angels could accelerate the healing process by monitoring the neurons closely, more subtly than the nanos can."
"But in the meantime, how can he carry people in his head and not beg them to make him feel better? And then, for the rest of his life?"
"They'll just have to say no."
"Then who's the master?" Jasper shook his head. "You're condoning slavery."
Selenite leaned forward slightly. "I wonder. You can't live without mitochondria; does that make you their slave?"
Jasper looked at her in surprise. "You always say, rules are rules."
"True, but the rules allow for experimental treatment. We have to stop letting the masters get the better of us." She added, "I think the blue angels can handle it. Last night I found them reasonably well behaved. A bit forward—myself, I'd breed that out of them—but if the good doctor has a plan, I say give it a try."
Throughout this exchange Andra kept quiet. Chrys saw now why she had enlisted Selenite.
"He can't stay at the clinic," the doctor added, "it's a microfree zone. Andra and I can look after him; we'll set up a facility at home."
"What are the gods up to?" Fireweed had been trying to get her attention.
"A stay of execution."
Only a month till her show opened at Gallery Elysium. Chrys met Ilia there with Yyri, Zircon's former lover. The two Elves smiled, their butterflies projecting behind them, golden swallowtails with dots of red and blue.
Yyri stretched out her hands, though careful not to actually touch Chrys. "Why Chrysoberyl," she exclaimed, as if to a long lost friend. "Or, should I say, 'Azetidine'? I haven't seen you since the Seven Stars." The Seven's last show; the recollection felt like another world, light-years away. Suddenly, Ilia and Yyri laughed simultaneously. Their electronic sixth sense must have shared a witticism at the expense of primitive art.
"The God of Many Colors!" Lupin flashed lemon yellow, enthusiastic as old Jonquil. "Can we visit? Their nightclubs are legend."