Even in low gee, it was awkward to maneuver the comatose Egil Manrhi. It was a tight fit, and the rockpile's gravity was just strong enough to drag Egil's head onto the lower side of the hole.
Trud moved back from his handiwork, and smiled. "All set. Now you're going to see what it's all about, Pham, my boy." He spoke commands and some kind of medical image floated in the air between them, presumably a view inside Egil's head. Pham could recognize gross anatomical features, but this was far from anything he had studied. "You're right about the imaging, Pham. This is standard MRI, as old as time. But it's good enough. See, the basal-five harmony is generated here." A pointer moved along a complex curve near the surface of the brain.
"Now here's the cute thing, what makes mindrot more than a neuropathic curiosity." A galaxy of tiny glowing dots appeared in the three-dimensional image. They glowed in every color, though most were pink. There were clusters and strands of tiny dots, many of them flickering in time with one another. "You're seeing infected glial cells, at least the relevant groups."
"The colors?"
"Those show current drug secretion by type....Now, what I want to do..." More commands, and Pham had his first look at the toroid's user manual. "...is change the output and firing frequency along this path." His little marker arrow swept along one of the threads of light. He grinned at Pham. "Thisis how our gear is more than an imager. See, the mindrot virus expresses certain para- and dia-magnetic proteins, andthese respond variously to magnetic fields to trigger the production of specific neuroactives. So while you Qeng Ho and all the rest of humanity use MRI solely as anobserving tool, we Emergents can use it actively, to make changes." He tapped his keyboard; Pham heard a creaking sound as the superconducting cables spread apart from each other. Egil twitched a couple of times. Trud reached out to steady him. "Damn. Can't get millimeter resolution with him thrashing."
"I don't see any change in the brain map."
"You won't till I turn off active mode. You can't image and modify at the same time." He paused, watching the step-by-step in the manual. "Almost done....There! Okay, let's see the changes." There was a new picture. And now the glowing thread of lights was mostly blue, and frantically blinking. "It'll take a few seconds to settle in." He continued to watch the model as he talked. "See, Pham. This is what I'm really good at. I don't know what you could compare me to in your culture. I'm a little like a programmer, but I don't code. I'm a little like a neurologist, exceptI get results. I guess I'm most like a hardware technician. I keep the gear going for all the higher-ups who take the credit."
Trud frowned. "...Hunh? Pus." He looked across the room at where the other Emergent was working. "Bil, this guy's leptin-dop ratio is still low."
"You turned off the field?"
"Of course. Basal-five should have retrained by now."
Bil didn't come over, but apparently he was looking at the patient's brain model.
The line of blue glitter was still a jumble of random change. Trud continued, "It's just a loose end, but I don't know what's causing it. Can you take care of it?" He hooked a thumb in Pham's direction, indicating he had other, more important business.
Bil said, dubiously, "You did sign for it?"
"Yes, yes. Just take care of it, huh?"
"Yeah, okay."
"Thanks." Silipan gestured Pham away from the MRI gear; the brain image vanished. "That Reynolt. Her jobs are the trickiest, not by the book. Then, when you do it the right way, you're likely to end up in a heap of trouble."
Pham followed him out the door and down a side tunnel that cut through the crystal of Diamond One. The walls were a chiseled mosaic, the same style of precise artwork that had mystified Pham long ago, at the "welcoming banquet." Not all the zipheads were high-tech specialists: they passed a dozen slave artists clustered around the circumference of the tunnel, hunched close over magnifying glasses and needle-like tools. Pham had been along here before, several Watches earlier. Then, the frieze had been only roughly outlined, a mountain landscape with some sort of military force moving toward a nebulous goal. Even that had been a guess, based on the title: "The Defeat of the Frenkisch Orc." Now the figures were mostly complete, sturdy heroic fighters that glittered rainbows. Their goal was some kind of monster. The creature wasn't that novel, a typical Cthulhonic horror, tearing humans with its long claws and eating the pieces. Emergents made a big thing of their conquest of Frenk. Somehow, Pham doubted that the mutations they had warred against had been so spectacular. He slowed, and Silipan took his stare for admiration.
"The carvers make only fifty centimeters' progress every Msec. But the art brings some of the warmth of our past."
Warmth?"Reynolt wants things pretty?" It was a random question.
