Vacuum Flowers (15 page)

“You yourself?” Wyeth asked. “One of your people?”

“Well, no. It's all new technology. The breakthroughs are being made, but the skills aren't widespread yet.”

“And yet you're all biologists. Isn't it a coincidence then that a Comprise of engineers are up on the mind arts, while your own people know zilch? I'd say you've just proven that your friends here are indeed spies.” Wyeth casually touched a bracelet on his wrist and crooked an eyebrow at Rebel. She touched the bracelet he had given her.

The world was transformed. Electricity glowed white from wires hidden in the walls. Heat shimmered green. Cobalt particles sleeted through the room, cosmic radiation to which matter was as insubstantial as a dream. A red haze of radiocommunication surrounded the now-green figures of the Comprise, and laser-crisp directional beams reached from individual to individual, shifting as thoughts were divided and routed for processing. Rebel blinked, and it all disappeared for an instant. She looked down at the bracelet and saw the blazing circuits of a holographic projector. One of Wyeth's spy devices.

“Mr. Wyeth, you are being disgusting.” Constance turned away.

“Don't be like that,” Wyeth said in his whimsical voice. “Here, have an apple. Nice and crunchy.” He placed something in her hand.

“An apple?” Constance looked down at the shyapple and dropped it, horrified. “Where did that come from?”

“I was hoping you could tell me. This is an example of your mind art biotechnology, isn't it?”

“Yes, but …” She tightened her lips. “Hook me into your intercom system.” One of the Comprise stepped forward and, stooping, reached for the fallen shyapple. Wyeth stepped on the woman's hand, hard, and she jerked it back.

“We were curious,” the Comprise said mildly. Several new lines of interaction connected with her.

“So what?” Wyeth gestured to the samurai. “Keep the Comprise on their side of the stream. And open up a channel for Ms. Moorfields.”

A moment later, Freeboy's image appeared, and Constance shook the shyapple at him. “Freeboy, you're the only one who's been working with directed viruses. Is this your doing?”

“Aw, hell,” Freeboy said. “It's just pocket money.”

“You never mentioned this skill to me.”

“It's not a skill. It's only cookbook stuff. I got the recipe from a wizard in Green City, when I was in Tirnannog.” Constance's face was cold and white. The boy spread his hands, his shoulders hunching slightly. “Hey, it's only a Billy Bejesus—eight hours' looniness, and it deprograms itself. It's not like I was hurting anybody. I didn't do anything wrong.”

“Like hell you didn't, young man.”

While the young treehanger was being dressed down, Rebel saw an odd thing: The Comprise, who had been moving about seemingly randomly, had all simultaneously arrived at the water's edge. The samurai guarding them shifted uneasily. They stared across the water, orange faces blank, eyes unblinking. The electromagnetic interactions increased, lines blinking on and off like laser strobes. For a long moment, no one moved.

Then the Comprise jumped, individual components running furiously to one side or the other, forming clusters and gaps. Twenty charged across the wooden bridge. The samurai braced themselves to receive the charge.

In that instant's confusion, a small orange figure darted across the stream. The guards' eyes had been drawn one way and another, and he leaped through a blind spot. All in a flash, he was at Constance's side, reached up, and snatched the shyapple from her hands. Before anyone could react, he was back among the Comprise. “That was a
child!
” Rebel said.

“Catch him!” Wyeth commanded, and three samurai leaped the stream. As they converged on the child, he crammed the fruit in his mouth and swallowed. One snatched him up and carried him back, the others defending. But the Comprise offered no resistance. They turned away, again as aimless as so many cattle. Still, red interaction lines connected the boy directly to half the Comprise in the room.

“Too late,” Wyeth said when the samurai placed the boy before him. “He's already swallowed it.”

“But this is a child,” Rebel repeated.

“This is the body of a child. Comprise engineering teams always include a few children for tasks where a bigger body would just be in the way.'

“But that's awful.”

“I agree.” Wyeth smiled at Constance. “How about you? Still feel that there's no crime in five billion human minds with only one single identity among them?”

“We must be careful not to anthropomorphize,” Constance said weakly. She looked pale.

“Very well put.” Wyeth turned to the child Comprise. “Why did you do it?”

“We were curious,” the boy said. “We wished to know whether this new technology might prove useful to us. In that sense—in that we are always eager for new information, new ideas, new directions of thought—we are indeed the spies you accuse us of being. But only in that one sense of being true to our nature.'”

“You see?” Constance said.

“More importantly, it distresses us to be separated from the true Comprise.” Rebel couldn't see the child's face now for the blaze of red interaction lines touching the skin over his buried rectenna, but his voice was bland. “There are only five hundred Comprise in this structure—and we are used to the mental stimulation of billions. Restricted as we are, any new challenges are taken up eagerly.” A pause. “You might say that we were bored.”

Wyeth turned to Freeboy's image. “How long does your drug take to hit?”

Freeboy shrugged. “Not long. A minute or two. There are receptor enhancers in the shyapple matrix. Tell you, though, maybe this isn't really a good idea. Those apples are adult dosages. I don't know what they'll do to a kid. This one looks like he has low body mass.”

Constance reached for the boy, and a samurai batted her hand away. “But there's still time. If I stick a finger down his throat …”

“Now, now,” Wyeth chided. “Mustn't anthropomorphize. Let's just wait and see. This might be interesting.”

The boy stood still between his guard of samurai. Suddenly he stiffened. His eyes opened wide. “Oh,” he said. One hand rose before his face and writhed spasmodically. “I think—”

The child screamed.

The lawyers arrived while the Comprise were still thrashing on the ground. Four samurai held the boy's limbs, and Constance knelt beside him. The directional beams flicked on and off, lashing blindly through the air like the frenzied legs and antennae of a dying insect. Then, all radio contact with the drugged child finally severed, the other Comprise slowly got to their feet, a hundred individual expressions of collective horror on their faces.

“I wonder why it worked so well?” Wyeth murmured thoughtfully to himselves. “They've got defenses against intrusive wetprogramming. This must be something new. This must be an entirely different approach.”

“Hold still, dear. If I can get you to throw up, you'll feel better,” Constance said.

The boy twisted his head away from her. “I,” he said. “I saw the moon I saw a tree I saw the moon caught in a tree I saw a tree caught in the moon.” His eyes were wide as saucers; they quivered slightly in time to some inner pulse.

“I saw a peacock with a fiery tail,

I saw a blazing comet drop down hail,

I saw a cloud—”

“Take him to the surgery,” Wyeth ordered. “Do what you can to ease his discomfort, but get the radio implants inside him deactivated before he regains his senses. I don't want him reconnecting with the Comprise.”

“You can't do that,” Constance objected. “He's a part of the Comprise. That's where he belongs.”

“Well?” Wyeth asked the lawyers. “Can I do that or not?”

The lawyer in yellowface chewed his lower lip. “It's a difficult point.”

“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck,” the lawyer in purple said, “then it's a duck. This individual looks human and uses the first-person singular. Therefore he's human, not Comprise.”

“Thank you,” Wyeth said. He gestured at Freeboy's image. “This joker's been dealing dangerous hallucinogens out in the orchid. What can I get him for?”

“Nothing,” the purple lawyer said. “There's no law against giving people the opportunity to hurt themselves.”

“We-ell now, there is the question of presumed societal consent,” Yellow said. “Consensus-altering drugs would come under the foreseeable cultural change clauses of—”

“Good,” Wyeth said. “I sentence you to status of programmed informant for the duration of transit. Stay where you are. The programmers will come for you.” Freeboy looked stricken. “You'll be attached to Moorfields here. Observe her, and report to me at this hour of every day.” He turned to Rebel and offered his arm. “I think we've done enough, don't you? Shall we go?”

That night, Rebel fell asleep after making love, and dreamed that she was walking the empty corridors of some ancient manor. It was cold, and there was the scent of lilacs in the air. A breeze stirred her hair, passed chill hands over her thighs and abdomen. She came face to face with an ornate Victorian mirror. The gravity was half again Greenwich normal, pulling down her flesh, making her face look old and gaunt. She wonderingly reached out a hand to the mirror.

Her reflection's hand broke through the liquid surface of the mirror and seized her wrist.

Rebel tried to pull away, but the grip was unbreakable. Long red nails dug painfully into her flesh. In the mirror Eucrasia showed her teeth in a smile. She was a fat-breasted little woman, but there was muscle under that smooth brown skin. “Don't go away, dearest. We have so much to talk about.”

“We have nothing to talk about!” Rebel's panicked words bounced from the walls and echoed down to nothing.

Eucrasia pushed her face against the mirror's surface, the glass bulged out by nose and lips but held together by surface tension. Silver highlights played over her skin. “Ah, but we do. My memories are going to overwhelm you if you don't do something about them.” Behind her was a white room, a surgery, with trays of chromed instruments. “Come closer, sweet love.”

She yanked Rebel forward, right up against the mirror. Their nipples touched, kissed at the surface. “I want to help you,” Eucrasia whispered. “Look at me.” For the first time, Rebel looked into the woman's eyes. There was nothing in the sockets but an empty space where the eyes should have been. She could see through them to the back of Eucrasia's skull. “You see? I have no self. No desires. How can I intend you harm?”

“I don't know.” Rebel began to cry. “Let me go.”

“There are only two ways you can survive. The first is to have me recreated as a secondary persona. You'd be like Wyeth, then. You'd have to share your life, but the memories would all be shunted over to the Eucrasia persona. You could remain intact.” The reflection shifted to one side, and Rebel was forced to move with it. “The second alternative is to make a complete recording of your persona. Then you could reprogram yourself every few weeks. This is less desirable, because it precludes any chance of personal growth.” Their stomachs touched now. Eucrasia placed her lips on Rebel's. “Well?” she asked. “Which will it be?”

“Neither!”

The reflection reached out and yanked Rebel's head into the mirror. Quicksilver closed about her. It was like being underwater, and Rebel couldn't breathe. “Then your personality will dissolve,” Eucrasia said. “Slowly at first, and then more quickly. You'll be gone within a month.”

Rebel choked, and awoke.

“Wake up,” Wyeth said. He was holding her. “You're having a nightmare.” Then, seeing her eyes open, “It was only a dream.”

“Jesus,” Rebel said. She buried her face in his chest and cried.

When she finally stopped, Wyeth released her and she sat up. She looked about dazedly. Wyeth had apparently been up for some time, thinking his own thoughts, for the walls had been turned on. A starscape, piped in from outside, glowed in the night. “Look,” Wyeth said. He pointed to a fuzzy patch almost overhead. “That's Eros Kluster. The asteroid is invisible from here, and what we're seeing is the attenusphere—the waste gases from the factories and refineries, the oxygen lost whenever an airlock opens, fine matter from reaction jets. It surrounds the Kluster, and the solar wind ionizes it, like the gas in a comet's tail. Assuming the comet is unplanted, of course.” He pointed out more smudges, all in the plane of the ecliptic. “There's Pallas Kluster, Ceres Kluster, Juno Kluster, Vesta …” He sang off the names in a gentle litany. “Civilization is spreading. Someday there'll be major developments everywhere in the asteroid belts. Those hazy patches will link then, into one enormous smoke ring around the sun. That would be somethng to see, hey?”

“Yes,” Rebel said in a little voice.

“Feel up to talking about it yet?”

So she told him her dream. When she was done, Wyeth said, “Well, there's your mysterious pursuer.” She frowned. “Back in the orchid, you thought someone was following you? Eucrasia. The memories are rising up, and you're projecting them into the exterior world.”

“That may be so,” Rebel said. “But knowing it doesn't do me any good.”

“You really have only two choices,” Wyeth said softly. “Your dream spelled them out for you. You were a topnotch wetprogrammer, and your diagnosis is sound. Listen, you want my advice? Take Eucrasia in with you. I knew her, she's not such a bad sort. You can live with her.”

“I won't do it,” Rebel said. “I won't let anyone touch my mind, I … I just won't, is all.”

Wyeth turned away. There was tension in the muscles of his back. After a very long time, Rebel touched his shoulder, and he turned back abruptly, almost violently. “Why are you being so stubborn?” he cried. “
Why?
”