Vacuum Flowers

by Michael Swanwick

  The chart scrolled up.

  Location

  PROBABILITY OF ASSASSINATION (+/- 1 PERCENT)

  EROS KLUSTER

  97%

  PALLAS KLUSTER

  95%

  OTHER KLUSTERS (WITHIN BELTS)

  91% (range 88–93%)

  TROJAN KLUSTERS

  90%

  LUNAR HOLDINGS

  90%

  MERCURY SCIENCE PRESERVES

  90%

  NEPTUNE/PLUTO SCIENCE PRESERVE

  90%

  JOVIAN SYSTEM:

  70%

  NONGALILEAN SATELLITES

  89%

  GANYMEDE (PORTED CITIES)

  65%

  (WILDERNESS)

  44%

  CALLISTO (PORTED CITIES)

  65%

  (WILDERNESS)

  41%

  IO, EUROPA, AMALTHEA, JUPITER ORBITAL

  65% (range 63–68%)

  MARS ORBITAL, DEIMOS

  63%

  MARS SURFACE

  59%

  SATURNIAN SYSTEM:

  58%

  LESSER SATELLITES

  75% (range 74–75%)

  RINGS, SATURN ORBITAL

  72%

  TITAN (PORTED CITIES)

  30%

  (WILDERNESS)

  23%

  EARTH ORBITAL

  17%

  EARTH SURFACE

  0%

  “Very cute,” Rebel said. The list brought back some of the spirit the last half hour had kicked out of her. “I especially like that last bit. I guess I should hop the first transit to Earth, huh? Or maybe I should just walk out an airlock without a suit. Then I could swim there.”

  Her sarcasm had no visible effect. “We won’t advise you what to do. We only reassure you that within the limits of game theory this chart is reliable.” The man knelt, raising his hood. The chart faded and the pierrette reappeared at Rebel’s side.

  “One more thing. You have a new friend. The tetrad.”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t trust him.”

  The leash was waiting for her. Wyeth and Ginneh still had their heads together in conference, apparently oblivious to her absence this past hour. The same views of weapons platforms and of the Comprise assembling machinery hung in the air beyond the desk. The crescent fraction of the transit ring was a shade longer than it had been. Rebel sighed and slipped the leash back on her wrists.

  There was no place she could go that was not dangerous, and no one she dared trust. She had to play hunches. And so far the only testimonial for any direction of action was that Snow’s whatever-he-was distrusted Wyeth.

  “Well,” Ginneh said. “Will you take the position?”

  Wyeth glanced over his shoulder at Rebel, and for a flicker she thought he looked surprised to see her. Then she was not sure. “Ginneh, you knew I’d take it when you first brought it up. Let’s not kid each other.”

  Ginneh’s laugh was light and gracious. “Well, that’s true, darling, but I’d rather hoped to spare your ego that realization.”

  “Mmmm.” Wyeth stood and took up file leash. “Consider me on the payroll, then.” He led Rebel away.

  Not far from the park, they climbed a winding set of wooden stairs high up a druid tree to a platform restaurant built out onto the branches, where they ordered puff pastries and green wine. The glasses had wide bowls and tiny lips. Wyeth frowned down on his and capped it with his thumb. He slowly swirled the green liquid around and around. Rebel waited.

  Wyeth looked up suddenly. “Where were you?”

  “What’s it worth to you?”

  Hands closed around the wine glass. They were big hands, with knobby joints and short, blunt fingers. A strangler’s hands. “What do you want?”

  “The truth.” And then when he raised an eyebrow, she amended it to, “Truthful answers to as many questions as I ask you.”

  A moment’s silence. Then he rapped his knuckles on the table and touched them to his brow and lips. “Done. You go first.”

  Slowly, carefully, she recounted the past hour. She felt good up here among the leaves, where the light was green and watery and the gravity was slight. She felt like she could lean back in her chair and just float away … out of the chair, out of the restaurant, beyond the branches, into the great dark oceans of air where whales and porpoises sported, and the clouds of dust algae blocked out the light from the distant trees. It felt like home, and she stretched out her story through three glasses of wine.

  As she talked, Wyeth’s face remained stiff. He hardly even blinked. And when she was done, he said, “I cannot for the life of me understand how any one human being can be so stupid!”

  “Hey,” Rebel said defensively. “It’s your own fault I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re up to. If anyone here was stupid, it was you.”

  “Who do you think I was talking about?” he said angrily. “I was just too clever for my own good. While I was building an elaborate trap for Snow and her ilk, they walk up and have a long chat with you! One perfectly beautiful opportunity blown all to hell because I—well, never mind.” He took a deep breath and then—like a conjurer’s trick—he was instantly smiling and impish. “Go ahead, ask your questions. You want me to start by explaining Snow?”

  “No. Well, yeah, but later on. I want to start with something very basic. You’re not really human, are you? You’re a new mind.”

  He grinned. “Who should know better?”

  “Please. You already hinted that I did the programming on you. But I don’t remember a damned thing, so don’t get all coy on me, okay? Give me a straight answer. Just what the fuck is a tetrad?”

  “A tetrad is a single human mind with four distinct personalities.” His face changed expression, to serious, then distracted, then open, and finally mischievous. “That’s what we am. Or should I say, that’s what I are?”

  5

  PEOPLE’S SHERATON

  “You’re in for something that’s pretty rare this far from a planetary surface,” Wyeth said.

  “What’s that?”

  “A windstorm.”

  Beneath its elaborations—balconies, outcroppings, light and heavy gravity wings, bubbles and skywalks—the sheraton was a simple orbital wheel, with three floors moving at slightly different speeds to maintain Greenwich normal gravity. Wyeth had set up security headquarters in the lobby at the foot of the elevator from the central docking ring. He sat behind the front desk, eyes moving restlessly as he scanned a dozen holographic inputs. A tone-controlled mike rested before him, and he murmured instructions into it from time to time, pitching his voice for the channel desired.

  Rebel sat in a sling chair, staring out through the window wall. The stars trembled with the flicker of subliminal memories. She could see Wyeth reflected on the inner surface of the glass.

  There was a cascade of movement across the window. “We’ve secured the locks, sir. The people aren’t very happy about it. Minor violence at tanks twelve and three.” Despite her samurai paint, the woman hardly looked like security. She’d been recruited from the tanks and wore a daisy-yellow cloak and far too much jewelry.

  “They were notified,” Wyeth said. When the woman was gone, he sighed. “I wonder at people. If they don’t understand why they can’t use the locks for an hour or two, then what do they think is waiting for them when we reach Mars orbit? I’m afraid they’re in for a rude awakening.”

  Spacejacks were bolting the preassembled segments of the geodesic around the sheraton and tanks, working with programmed efficiency. The structure was covered with transparent monomolecular skin. From Rebel’s chair, it looked like a faint haze gathering across the stars. The workers began spraying powdered steel over the completed exterior, vacuum-welding layer upon layer. Now it was like watching the heat death of the universe, the stars slowly clouding up and fading to black. Gloom swelled and overwhelmed everything. Finally the only light within the geodesic was what spilled from the windows of th
e sheraton.

  “This is spooky,” Rebel said. Suddenly she had an overwhelming sense of someone standing at her shoulder. She whirled, and no one was there.

  “You like it, huh?” Wyeth threw an exterior camera projection onto one quadrant of window. From outside, the geodesic looked like a gigantic ball bearing, dazzlingly bright in the raw sunlight. Stars rippled over its flank. Just off center was the distorted reflection of Londongrad, with the Kluster corporate logo (two classical figures, one bending) superpainted on its side. In an unfamiliar voice Wyeth said, “Think of it as an enormous cell. The tank towns at the center are the nucleus. The sheraton is … oh, the centrosome, I guess. The air plant would have to be the mitochondria.” He laughed and spread his arms. “And behold! A new form of life floats upon the winds of space. What vast, unimaginably complex creatures will evolve from this first simple cell, a million years hence?”

  Rebel looked up sharply. “Which one of you is that?”

  Again that strange laugh. “The pattern-maker, I guess you’d call me. I’m the intuitive one, the persona that guesses at the big picture, that decides what we think about God and infinity. Of course, it’s only a name. In an Aboriginal hunting party. I’d be the shaman.”

  “Hah?”

  “Don’t you know where the tetrad comes from? Eucrasia patterned us after the ancient Aboriginal hunting party. They went out in groups of four, and no matter what individuals they picked, during the hunt they took on four distinct roles—the leader, the warrior, the mystic, the clown. It made for a remarkably stable and efficient group. And it makes for a remarkably stable and efficient mind.”

  This was all very familiar. Staring out into the darkness, Rebel saw half-formed memories of Eucrasia’s past striving to take shape. “I thought she was a persona bum?”

  “Well, a little bit of a persona bum, yeah. But a hell of a good wetsurgeon in your own right.”

  “In her own right.”

  ‘Whatever.” As they talked, Wyeth occasionally turned away to touch an unseen control or murmur an order. People continually passed through the lobby. A squad of security samurai took the elevator up to the docking ring, armed with truncheons and barbed pikes, and looking dangerous. In their wake, a young kid with mahogany skin strode in. He stood at the window, hands behind back, peering out with elaborate interest.

  “What are you doing here?” Rebel asked coldly.

  “Hey, I got experience in security work.” Maxwell put a hand on her shoulder, and she stood, knocking it away.

  Without looking up, Wyeth said, “He’s a messenger. I need any number of runners who can take messages in and out of the tanks.”

  “He’s not painted as a messenger.”

  “Yes, well, we’re dealing with the Comprise here. The less programming the better.”

  On the window flashed images of cold fusion alembics being hooked into the geodesic and powered on. Newly created oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and trace gases gushed into the sphere. The sheraton shuddered as the winds hit, and Wyeth lost two limpet cameras, their perches torn out from under their grips. They went hurtling helplessly away, one to shatter against the tanks, the other against the geodesic’s inside wall.

  A short, grey-haired woman dressed treehanger style walked up to the front desk. “Got all my people at their stations. What do you need us to do when?” It was the supervisor from the biolab on Fanchurch Prospekt.

  “Oh Christ,” Rebel muttered. “It’s Old Home Week.”

  The woman peered at her. “Don’t I know you, dear?”

  Rebel turned away, and Wyeth said, “Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark, I’d like you to meet Constance Frog Moorfields, our macrobioengineering project director. Connie, I’m going to need you to cue your people in just a few minutes. Grab a channel, will you?”

  “Oh yes, certainly.” Constance peered owlishly at the controls. “How do I work this thing?”

  Maxwell slid an arm around Rebel’s waist and said, “Tell you what, why don’t you sit on my lap, and we’ll talk about the first thing to come up?” She threw a punch at his stomach, and he danced back, grinning.

  Outside, the storm howled. “Now,” Wyeth said, and Constance nodded and murmured into her mike. In some distant room the macrobioengineers hit their remotes. Explosive bolts broke open the small holding sphere, sending the pieces flying. The air plant within twisted and expanded, lashing through the air. The winds took it in their teeth, and strands slammed against the tanks and the geodesic walls, rebounding furiously. Through the windows, Rebel saw huge loops of the plant loom into the dim light from the sheraton and recede again. “It’s enormous,” she marveled.

  “Twenty-seven miles,” Constance said with satisfaction. “Stretched out full, that is. And it’s still young. Ought to grow like green hell in the next few days.” She reached over to the controls and threw several biostructural schematics on the windows. “See, we’ve designed it to—”

  Rebel turned and walked away.

  The hallway was long and straight, with a barely perceptible upward curve. Rebel wondered why it was so dark, shadows lapping up against her ankles and hovering over either shoulder. Must be some reason. She touched one paisley wall, and remembered another, similar hallway she had walked down a thousand times before, the one connecting her office with the wetsurgery.

  A breeze stirred her cloak, and she drew it together slightly. A scrap of paper fluttered by, and behind her she heard a silver bowl crash to the floor and go tumbling end over end before hitting a wall. Somewhere, the off-program samurai were opening the airlocks, glorying in the rush of new air. Outside, the wind sang in demon chorus. Within, all was cool gush and flow.

  She was striding along, lost in her memories, when Jerzy Heisen stepped from a conversation niche and took her arm. “Hello, Heisen,” she said absently. “Anything new on the Mudlark program?”

  He gave her a peculiar look. “Not yet. Soon, I hope.”

  “I’ve decided to try the program on myself. It looks interesting, but the kind of interesting that’s only comprehensible from the inside, if you get me. I don’t want that information filtered through some subliterate, only marginally coherent persona bum.” She couldn’t keep a touch of bitterness from her voice. The support staff she’d been given was poor material, incompetent to begin with and hastily programmed on top of that. She had to do half their work herself.

  Heisen frowned, then said carefully, as if reciting lines from a play or remembering the exact wording of an old conversation, “Is that wise? We haven’t had the master wafer duplicated yet.”

  She brushed his objection aside scornfully. “It’s only for ten minutes. God’s sake, what can happen in ten minutes?”

  A pause. When she looked directly at him, Heisen’s eyes were oddly intent, but the instant she looked away he faded to a vague presence again. “You think it’s a commercial persona, then?”

  “You’re so damned mercenary, Heisen! I’m talking about a new trait, a new characteristic, a new property.… Something that might make programming richer and more interesting.”

  “But it does have commercial potential?”

  “Oh, I suppose so.”

  Footsteps came running up from behind, and suddenly a dark-skinned kid was standing before her, proffering a cheap amalgam ring. Eucrasia had to squint to see him. “Wyeth told me to give this to you.”

  “Wyeth?” She recognized the name. How could she forget? He was the best work she’d done yet—pirate surgery, of course, but she’d put everything she had into it, because some of the most interesting programming was, strictly speaking, illegal. “Wyeth asked you to give me a ring?”

  “Yeah, it’s a locator ring. So he can keep track of you, where you are and so on.” He waved a hand at the ceiling cameras. “Listen, you come over to the tanks later on, visit my hut. No surveillance there. We can get private, know what I mean?”

  Eucrasia shrugged in baffled annoyance.

  Heisen had withdrawn to a discreet distance.
The kid glanced curiously at him, decided he wasn’t important, and blew her a kiss. “See you in my hutch!” he called over his shoulder. Eucrasia vaguely wondered who he was.

  Heisen took her arm again. He steered her through a meadow-like meeting room. The grass was cool underfoot, and bees hovered drowsily over the raspberry bushes. “Let’s go over this way, and stroll through the skywalk. It’s a very pleasant walk. Free of cameras and prying eyes.”

  He swung the cherry-red case lightly back and forth as he led her away.

  The skywalk looped out from the sheraton in a long, graceful curve. Fish swam through strands of kelp within the transparent tube walls. The teak boardwalk sounded almost musically underfoot. “I designed Wyeth’s warrior aspect after my father,” Eucrasia said. She had totally lost track of who she was talking to, but the memories were compulsively strong, and they drove the words before them. “He was a willful man, my father was. Determined. Nobody could talk him into anything, not unless he wanted them to. But he wasn’t … flexible, you know? He couldn’t adapt to change. He couldn’t show emotion. But underneath he was a wonderful man, very kind, and I loved him. When I was a girl I was always wishing I could change him. Not in any big way, but in little ways, so he could get past all that defensive armor and breathe a little. So he could enjoy his life. That was a big factor in my choice of career, I think.”

  She fell silent. Remembering when she was a little girl and the Kluster was passing out of the belts. The refineries were closing, which had put both her parents out of work. Those had been bad times. Her mother’d taken a job as pierrette, and the wetware was primitive then. She’d come home after shift with a goony look to her and a subservience that took hours to wear off. Daddy had hated that.