Vacuum Flowers (22 page)

After a while, she did.

The clamor of voices echoed about the communal dining hall. The chamber was huge, as high as it was wide, and the hundreds of tables and benches and thousands of diners didn't come near to filling it. High over Rebel's place an enormous conduit gaped, water stains trailing from its lip. Involuntarily, she glanced toward the distant entryway, wondering how many here would make it to the nearest failsafe lock were that distant citizen-comptroller to suffer a single instant's inattention.

Scattered here and there among the grey citizens, conversing, were several hundred orange Comprise (and one silent one who studied Rebel with dead insectoid stare) and the rarer multicolored brightness of Constance's work crew. The chatter was light, and there was constant motion between tables. Wyeth slipped into the bench holes beside her. “How was your day?” Rebel asked.

“We managed to empty out the orchid, anyway.” A pierrot set a tray before Wyeth, and he picked up the food tongs. “It was awful. I spent all my time keeping Little Miss Bloodthirsty from killing people. She wanted to give the orchid villagers an hour's notice and then pump out the air.”

“No!”

“What is so remarkable?” Rosebuds latched her tray to the table and took the place beside Wyeth. Freeboy and a noncitizen Rebel didn't recognize—he wore a zebra-striped cloak and a red vest with twin rows of brass buttons—took places opposite her. “Share it with us all.”

“A private joke,” Wyeth said easily. “Hallo, Freeboy. Who's your friend?”

“Bors is my name, sir.” Flash of white teeth. Bors' hair was done up in long, thin braids, their ends contained in silver static balls. He wore a slim, noncommittal line of yellow paint across his brow. “I am a commercial traveler in vintage information from the Republique Provisionnelle d'Amalthea, of the unaligned Jovian satellites.”

Wyeth introduced himself and Rebel, and then said, “You've come a long way.”

“And a long way yet to go. My coldship is bound for Earth in another day. Deimos is only a side-trip for me, a bit of mining technology transfer that was too profitable to resist.”

Freeboy, who had been listening impatiently, abruptly leaned forward and said to Rebel, “Hey! You'll never guess who's taken on citizenship today. You want to try and guess?” Confused, Rebel shook her head. Freeboy leaned back, looking smug. “Your little friend Maxwell, that's who.”

“Maxwell?” Rebel said. Freeboy nodded. “Slim, dark, irresponsible, hedonistic kid? Are we talking about the same guy?”

“It does seem hard to credit,” Wyeth said. “This was voluntary, you say?”

“Oh yeah, he wanted it all right. He said—”

“This is all very interesting,” Rosebuds said. “Now I have something I'd like you all to see.” She slid her tray aside and started dealing out cards from a deck of holographic flats. She laid down an image of Mars as it appeared in prehuman times, red and lifeless, then covered it with a second card. The planet wavered, then blurred with storms. The icecaps were darkened by a light dustfall of Phobic matter, and shrank. A single glint of green showed within the crater of Olympus Mons. “You see the progress we're making. The Olympus eden is a showcase microecology, a sample of what all Mars will be like eventually, and is not yet available for colonization.” Swiftly she laid down further cards. “Fifty years from now, a hundred, one fifty. At this point most of the permafrost has melted, and the atmosphere is thick enough for humans equipped with rebreathers. But we will not be satisfied. Two hundred years.” Mottled green covered the floating sphere. There were thin clouds. “Three hundred.” The entire planet was transformed. Gentle green stretched from polar region to polar region. Here and there tiny lakes were pinpricks of glacial blue.

“You will note that there are no oceans. The Martian ecology will be more delicate and at the same time more supportive of human life than the Terran ecology. While the oceans of Earth make its ecosphere incredibly stable, they also waste most of Earth's resources on marine life. The total colonizable land area of Mars will be equal to that of Earth, and it will all be put to the service of the People.”

“I really don't see the benefit of terraforming a planet,” Rebel said dubiously. “For that kind of effort you could build thousands of city cans, or seed I don't know how many comets.”

“A planetary surface is the best place for an expanding postindustrial culture. The air is free, to begin with. There is so much land area that it wouldn't be worth the effort to charge rent. You'd just live wherever you wanted. Croplands in a functioning ecosphere are self-irrigating and self-fertilizing. In fact, everything takes vastly less effort on a planetary surface.” She laid down more cards. “Here is a vision of the croplands. Here is a vision of the treelands. Here is a vision of one of the larger lakes. The opposite shore is barely visible, it is so large. Within the lake will be fish, eels, mussels. On its verges, rice, wetwheat, cranberries. Here is a vision of the parklands.…”

“That's a really primitive structure you got there,” Freeboy said. “You've got a one-to-one transferrence of Terran ecologies, you see? But with a little thought you could adapt ocean fish, squids, maybe revert a few land plants to lakeweeds, set up a lichen bridge across the surface, and before you know it you've got a much more interesting and complex system going. Why haven't your people whomped up something like that?”

“Look about you,” Rosebuds said. “How many plants do you see? We cannot afford to devote resources to the support industries a bioengineering economy requires. And yet, as you say, the need is great. You will find that there is much for you to do when you take on citizenship.”

“No, no, not me!” Freeboy held up his hands, laughing. “I'm going back to Hibrasil with all the money I earned on this swing through the System, and then some. Matter of fact, I just made a bundle on the currency exchange today.”

“You didn't exchange outside currency for People's credit?” Bors looked concerned.

“Is there a problem?” Freeboy asked, the smile dying on his face.

“Our social systems are built to support the ideal of the selfless, communal citizen,” Rosebuds said. “Since the amassing of private wealth is destructive to the personality, we have ways of discouraging it. That is why, for example, we are assigned new living quarters daily. When you have to move all that you own once a day, you learn to retain only that which has true value. Similarly, our economy has an engineered inflation rate of ten thousand percent daily.”

Freeboy turned to Bors. “What does that mean?”

“It means that People's credit has to be spent immediately. Otherwise it disappears. If you've held on to it for an hour, it's practically worthless.”

Freeboy stood, pale with outrage. “I …” He shook a finger at Wyeth. “All I went through working for you! And … I …” He choked and, turning away, fled.

Turning over another card, Rosebuds said, “This is a vision of the living quarters we will share in the new civilization.”

Wyeth reached out, put a hand over the cards. “What I'd really like to talk about is your attitude toward the Comprise. I've been watching, and it's obvious to me that you're not taking proper precautions against them. I've even seen some using your data ports. You obviously have no appreciation of how dangerous they are.”

“The People cannot be in danger,” Rosebuds said, “since we cannot be corrupted.” She swept up her holographic flats and stood. “I can see, however, that none of you has a true interest in citizenship as yet. We shall discuss the matter further at a later time.” She left, and two more citizens came along to take her place and the one beside it.

“Have you used the facilities here yet?” Bors asked Rebel, smiling.

“Oh, God! The first time I sat down on a crapper and a man came up and sat down beside me, I almost died. And then he saw me turning red, and wanted to know what the problem was.” Rebel laughed, and Bors and Wyeth joined her.

The citizens looked puzzled. “I don't understand,” one said, and when Rebel tried to explain, “But where is the humor in that?”

Rebel simply shook her head.

A few minutes later the new citizens took their trays and left. “People come and go so quickly around here,” Rebel marveled.

“That's because mealtime is the only chance they get to socialize,” Bors said. “Every hour of their day is spent constructively. If they're not working, they're studying. If they're not working or studying, they're asleep. This is the only chance they get to simply talk.”

“You seem to know a lot about the subject.”

“Yes, I do, don't I?” Bors said, pleased.

When Rebel led Wyeth back to diamond blue seventeen, he glanced quickly at his crates and said, “Snug, isn't it?” Then, in his warrior voice: “Listen, I want to do a little poking around in the public data base, see how thoroughly the Comprise have infiltrated it. Why don't you wait here for me? I won't be long.”

Rebel knew better than to argue with Wyeth's warrior persona. She sat down in the sleepspace. There was nothing to do here save listen to the constant light-gravity scuffle of citizens in the hall. After ten minutes of that she began to appreciate the motivating power of boredom. Given the chance, she would gladly have volunteered to scrape vacuum flowers, just to have something to do.

Rosebuds appeared in the doorway. She stood there silently, her cloak open.

“He's not here,” Rebel said grimly. “And you can't have him, anyway.”

Doffing her cloak, Rosebuds stepped within. She left her boots by the door and sat beside Rebel. “I didn't come here for him.” She put a hand on Rebel's knee. “The Stavka is very concerned about you. I informed them that you were brought up by a renegade, and they were worried that this may have made you anti-sex, possessive, and private.” Her hand slid up Rebel's thigh.

The woman's tone was so matter-of-fact that it was not until she started to peel away Rebel's
cache-sexe
that Rebel realized what she was talking about. With a startled cry she cringed back in the sleepspace, tugging her clothing up and raising knees to chin so that her legs formed a barrier between them. “Hey! Wait a minute, I'm not into that kind of—”

“We could tell,” Rosebuds said. “That is one reason we sent you a woman. To help in your healing. You are depriving yourself of many modes of pleasure needlessly.”

“Yeah, well, Wyeth will be back in a minute, so maybe you'd better go.”

“There's room for him as well. Perhaps that would be the quickest way of freeing you from your possessiveness.” She raised a leg and gently ran her foot up the side of Rebel's body, tweaking her earlobe between first and second toes. “Pleasure is communal. Relax. Enjoy yourself.”

“But I don't want to enjoy myself!” Rebel cried. “Not that way! All I want is Wyeth and … and …”

“This isn't working,” Rosebuds said scornfully. “Look at you. You are so fearful. Do you think I am going to take you by force? Let me tell you something. I see how you sneer at the great dream of terraforming and at the People. You think our lives are constricted, but they are not half so narrow as your own. The citizenship program makes us full human beings. A citizen understands duty, sex, work, pleasure, friendship, and sacrifice, and welcomes them all. I have been down to the surface five times, and that is a very dangerous place. I have been as close to death as I am to you now, and I never once showed fear. You laugh at the People because we are all the same. But we are heroes, every one of us. I am one, and I know!”

She pulled on her boots and left.

When Wyeth returned, they made love. It was a sweaty, desperate lovemaking, and Rebel put all she had into it. I am
not
afraid, she told herself, and I am not missing any pleasure. At the moment of climax, as she squeezed Wyeth tight inside her and dug her nails so deeply into the flesh of his back that they drew blood, he groaned into her ear, “I love you.”

“Hah? What?” she said blankly.

“I love you.” Lying weak and exhausted beside her, Wyeth brushed her cheek with his own. “I really do.”

“What are you talking about?” This was all too ludicrous to be real. “Which one of you? Or should I say, how many?”

“Listen to me.” Wyeth rolled atop her, gazed straight into her eyes. “I … don't think that love is a matter of persona, of personality. I think it goes deeper than that.” His fist thumped his chest. “
I
love you, Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark. I think I would love you no matter who I was.”

Silent and unblinking, Rebel looked at him until she felt her eyes sliding out of focus, and blinked and had to say something. “Why are you telling me this now?”

She didn't accent that last word, but it hovered between them, cold and harsh as truth itself. There couldn't be much time left to her. Eucrasia's memories had returned, and the persona could not be far behind. And then Rebel would be melted down, back into the ocean of soul, and exist no more. “Why now?” she repeated. Maybe it didn't matter to him who she was—Rebel or Eucrasia. Bitter thought.

He read her eyes. “It's not Eucrasia. It's not this body. There will never be anyone for me but you. Listen. I know that you're … going away soon, and I don't want you to
dissolve
without ever knowing that I love you. I don't think I could bear it. Is that too greedy of me? Do you understand what I'm trying to say?”

In a storm of happiness and misery, she hugged him to her and held him tight so that he couldn't see her face, her tears. When he started to talk again, she silenced him the only way she could think of, and they were making love again.

All through it, she loved him so much she had to bite her tongue to keep from telling him. She was afraid that if she spoke the words they would split her wide open. She loved Wyeth more now than she ever had, and she loved him most of all for lying to her. Because of course she didn't believe a word of what he'd said.