Vacuum Flowers (10 page)

“Freeboy,” the grey-haired woman snapped, “are you going to get back to work or am I going to have to kick butt?” The boy rolled his eyes upward, but turned back to a stacked petri array. The woman said to Rebel, “We believe you, dear.”

“But I really
am
—”

“I could run a blood test,” Freeboy offered. “Even adapted for gravity, there's still five major differences …”

“What did I tell you?” the woman began ominously. But Rebel was already halfway to the door.

As she stepped outside, a man who hadn't spoken before called after her, “What do them lines on your face mean, girlie?” By his tone, she knew that he had been tasting what pleasures a wettechnic civilization had to offer and knew exactly what her paint indicated.

She bit her lip, but did not look back.

Out on the Prospekt, the crowds swallowed her whole. There were far more people here than either uptown or downtown, and the corridors were wide, like plazas infinitely extended. Rows of palms divided the surge of people into lanes, and cartoon stars and planets hung from a high ceiling. Underfoot, the Prospekt was paved with outdated currency, silver thalers, gold kronerrands, green ceramic rubles, all encased under diamond-hard tansparent flooring. Expensively dressed people, all painted financial—cargo insurance, gas futures, bankruptcy investment—coursed over it. Rebel let the crowd carry her away, transforming her anger and humiliation and confusion into blessed anonymity.

A clown came striding toward her.

In the sea of bobbing, somber cloaks, the puffy white costume seemed to glow, as if lit from within. The pierrette smiled slightly as her eyes met Rebel's. The crowds parted for her, like waters before a religious master, and she descended upon Rebel as calm and inevitable as an angel.

Rebel stopped, and the pierrette bowed and proffered a white envelope. She took it from the gloved hand and slid out a paper rectangle. It was a holographic advertising flat. Above it floated the same false ideal of Rebel Mudlark she had seen in downtown New High Kamden.

She looked questioningly at the pierrette, who dipped a short curtsey. She might as well try interrogating the floor. Rebel turned the paper over, and on its back was written, “Request that we talk.” She crumpled the paper in her hand. The image folded into itself and was gone.

She nodded to the clown.

The pierrette led her to a nearby bank. They went to the negotiating rooms, bypassing several that were discreetly equipped for sex, and found a walnut-paneled niche with a single bench and table. Rebel sat, and the pierrette flipped on privacy screen and sound baffles. She produced a holograph generator, placed it atop the table, and curtsied away.

After a moment to compose herself, Rebel reached out to switch on the generator.

She was looking into a small hollow—obviously part of an upscale business park. At first glance Rebel thought the hollow held a drift of snow. Then she saw that she was looking down on an oval of white tiles. The only spot of color in all that white was a red prayer rug at its center. A lone figure knelt there, hood down, shaven head bowed.

“Snow!” Rebel exclaimed. The image panned downslope.

The figure raised its head, studied her with cold, reptilian eyes. Skin white as marble, face paintd in the hexangular lines of ice crystals or starbursts. He cocked his head slightly, listening. “In a sense,” he said at last, “perhaps I am. Snow and I are both part of the same thing.” His face was every bit as gaunt and fleshless as hers had been. “I have a message for you.”

“What are you?” she asked. “Just exactly what are you that you and Snow are part of the same thing?”

He made a small sideways jerk of his head, a gesture perhaps of annoyance. Or maybe he was just accessing data through some new channel. “Irrelevant. I am not required to give you any information other than the message. If you choose not to receive it …” He shrugged.

“All right. I'm listening.”

The man looked directly at her. “Deutsche Nakasone has licensed a team of dedicated assassins to your case.”

“No,” Rebel said. Without thinking about it, she clenched her fists so tight the nails dug into her hands. The skin over her knuckles hurt. “That's ridiculous. Deutsche Nakasone wants my persona. They need me alive.”

“Not necessarily.” A bony hand slid from his cloak to stab the empty air, and an appliance with smooth, cherry-red finish appeared on insert. “The assassins are equipped with cryonic transport devices. They need only kill you, flash-freeze your brain, and let their technicians dig out the desired information using destructive techniques.” The hand disappeared into his cloak. “That's what they should have done originally. But they also wanted to salvage you as a petty officer of the corporation. Now, however, you've been written off.”

The machine was slick and featureless on the outside, with a pop-up handle on the top. It was just the right size for Rebel's head. She hunched her shoulders and brought up her hands. “Why are you telling me this?”

“You are not ready to deal yet.” The man stood suddenly, strode three paces to one side, stopped. “Very well. We wish to keep you alive until you are ready. You must take this threat seriously.” He paused to examine something Rebel could not see. “You've been careless. You should have realized there are few enough groups of dyson worlders in the Kluster that they all would be watched. If we hadn't reached you first, you'd be dead now.”

The scene shifted, and she was looking down on Fanchurch Prospekt. From above, the jostling zombies blended together like a sluggish flow of mud. Bright circles appeared around three faces, and she saw that they were moving through the crowd in formation, searching among the faces for something. One by one, the image zoomed up on them: A heavy woman with fanatically set face and a black slash across her left eye. An unblinking sylph of a girl with a black slash across her left eye. And then a third with that same paint, a red-haired man with a face like a fox.

Jerzy Heisen.

“You know him?” the man asked. The assassins passed by the doors of the bank Rebel was in. Each carried a cherry-red cryogenic storage device in one hand. “Why did you start like that if you didn't know him?”

“He used to work with Snow.”

“Ah.” The man made a small gesture, cocked his head. “Interesting.” The crowd scene faded. “Of course. He's clever, he's serving time, and he's actually met you. Of course he'd be one of your assassins.” Again he paused. “No matter. We have generated a chart of those places in the System you can flee to, and with them the probabilities of your being assassinated by Deutsche Nakasone within a Greenwich month of arrival. I suggest you study it carefully.”

The chart scrolled up.

“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?”