"Hello, dear," crooned Zircon in a deep contralto. "I hope you like the change. I've been working on it for some time."
"Excuse me while I faint."
"Oh," she raised a hand, "don't do that. It might be catching."
"Check the building code first."
Zircon frowned at a serving caryatid, which had come out full of worms in the face. "Can't we fix those servers?"
All the caryatids were worm-faces today. "You must be in love with Doctor Flexor."
Selenite caught her arm. "Chrys, you have to talk with us. It's . . . important."
Jasper was there, looking very serious. Her heart sank. What had her people done now?
"Chrys." Selenite seemed somehow embarrassed. "I know your people mean well, but—it just isn't done."
"What isn't done?"
"Solicitation," said Jasper. "Fund-raising." Warily, he stroked his jaw.
"Why isn't it done?"
Selenite crossed her arms. "It's absurd. You can't just rebuild the Underworld. Public housing is always a failure."
"That's right. " Jasper's jaw jutted forward. "I should know, I grew up in it. We sims don't want fancy designers messing around down there. Property values rise, we get shoved out."
"Quite true."
"We know you have a good heart," Selenite added, "but you have to understand, the Underworld has always been there. Every society has an Underworld."
"Absolutely."
Selenite spread her hands. "Then why do you let them do this?"
Chrys shrugged. "My people have done well for me. I like to humor them. I can spare a few million credits."
"But we don't have to."
"Certainly not. Just say no."
Selenite looked at Jasper, then back to Chrys. "They'd better do it right. Or else."
Jasper put a hand to the crag of his brow. "Look, they can have half a billion to play with. Just don't let them talk to Garnet."
When the journalist Quinx's story came out, Chrys was amazed to see her parents on camera, her mother churning butter, her father leading the goats up the mountain. Immediately she called home.
"I hope you weren't too bothered." Chrys's hands twisted nervously. "It wasn't my idea."
Her father kept his mouth small but did not seem displeased. "They got it wrong," he noted. "My flock last year won the prize at the village fair, not the county."
Chrys smiled brightly. "You see, they always exaggerate. All the other stuff, too," she added hopefully.
"Not the health plan." Her mother sounded puzzled. "The new health plan for all of Dolomoth. They didn't mention that."
So Arion had remembered. Chrys sighed. "You know, I was thinking of visiting home. With a friend." Friends, about a million of them.
Her mother nodded with satisfaction. "True angels always come home."
Chrys returned to Helicon to train Ilia to test the Elf carriers. "I hope you're pleased with your sales," the gallery director told her. "Both originals and copies are doing well—with a surprising range of buyers. Names we've never seen before."
"And some anonymous," Chrys pointed out. "I wonder who bought Seven Stars and the Hunter?"
Ilia gave her a look. "He couldn't very well let anyone else have it, could he?"
The morning light spread the turquoise waves with flecks of titanium. Upon the sea floated the seed of Silicon, a dark pod of plast, not unlike Garnet's ball of "flowers." Just a demo, of course, the ceremonial breaking of ground on a world that had none. Around the pod stretched an immense ring-shaped observation platform, full of sensors, controllers, and protective devices. The brains in the back had been busy.
On the platform, Chrys shaded her eyes with her hand, squinting against the wind that tugged at her hair, which she had pulled back and bound as tight as she could. Her gray talar braced itself intelligently in the wind. Wind and water, azure and alabaster—an inspiration for her next piece, her eyes quickly sketched.
Recollecting herself, Chrys flashed a nervous smile at the members of the Board. The sentients seemed pleased, as far as one could tell, while the Elves looked on, their smiles frozen, as the seed sprouted and grew into an outrageous lava-colored dome of the model, each window a swirling spiral galaxy. Next to the board members stood the Prime Guardian of Elysium and the Protector of Valedon, his talar weighted down with gems, and all the other honored guests, humans, worm-faces, and other sentients of every size and description, that had come out to honor the first new city of Elysium to be built in two thousand years. And by the time it's done, she silently told them, some of you will hate me. For good reason.
"Azetidine." Calling her nom d'art, the snake-eggs descended, swirling around her, obscuring her view. "Some say, Azetidine, that you yourself are not the real builder of Silicon. Is it true?"
"Of course I'm not the builder. The seed of Silicon was actually built by—" She winked to download the long list of "brains in the back," sentient engineers, most of whom did not even bother to take sonic names, who had physically created the seed and would nurture its growth for the next few decades.
"Nor are you the real dynatect," the snake-eggs pursued. "You did not really design Silicon; you were just a culture dish for those who did. Is that true?"
Chrys stood taller, the wind from the sea already pulling filaments of lava from her hair. "Silicon was designed by the lights of Eleutheria. The light of Truth, ever true to its nature; of Beauty, the kind of beauty to draw the awe of generations; of Sacrifice ..."
"Silicon is nothing," flashed Lupin. "Nothing compared to what we're building next."
"For once, be modest."
"... and above all, the Eighth Light of Mercy. Eleutheria is a way of being, a path of endless life. All those who seek to build in truth and memory shall find our way."