Vacuum Flowers (19 page)

“For God's sake, what is it with you and those dice?”

“Random number generator. By randomizing my tactics, I keep Wismon from anticipating me. Already the dice have decided on direct confrontation on his home turf. Now they're deciding how many samurai I take with me.” He rolled again, fell silent.

In the dark and quiet, Rebel's thoughts kept returning to Billy. His persona was fragile. Any crude attempt at reprogramming would destroy him, collapsing not only his personality structure, but much of his autonymous control systems as well. The best he could hope for was permanent catatonia. At worst, he might die. “They wouldn't reprogram the children, would they?”

“Depends,” Wyeth answered abstractedly. “Slavers wouldn't need to, once they've grabbed the parents. But who can say, with Wismon? We don't even know why he did it. My people tell me this is the only orchid village he's hit. That's not just coincidence.” He took a deep breath. “Well. Time to go meet the man.”

Impulsively, Rebel asked, “Can I come with you?”

Wyeth shook the dice, looked at them.

“Yes.”

As the elevator slowly rose toward the central docking ring, Rebel thought to ask: “How many samurai are you bringing?”

“None,” Wyeth sid somberly. His mischievous voice came up. “
That'll
sure take Wismon by surprise. I can't wait to see how we're going to handle him.”

They rode broomsticks around the orchid. As the tanks swelled, they saw that the metal exteriors were covered with glowing lines of paint—gang chops, territorial markings, threats and warnings, a small propaganda war in graffiti. There was no traffic. Everyone had either fled or been impressed into the gangs. “I'm afraid,” Rebel said.

Beside her, Wyeth grinned cockily. “Me too.”

The closer she got to the tanks, the less clear Rebel's motives for going were to her. She'd wanted to have a hand in rescuing Billy, but now that they were at the crunch point, that desire seemed sourceless and quixotic. She wasn't exactly close to the child. Certainly he didn't much care for her. So why was she doing this?

Maybe because Eucrasia wouldn't have.

They swooped down on Tank Fourteen. The airlock's outer doors had been blown away in some recent skirmish, and there were blast marks among the rust. But to judge by the way a few dimly-seen guards floated within, slow and unconcerned, the gang wars were obviously over.

At the locks, bright-eyed women kicked out of the shadows to take their broomsticks and search them for weapons. The women were painted with bioluminescent tiger-stripes, not just on their faces, but down their bodies as well, and they were all stark naked. “We've come to see Wismon,” Wyeth said when one brought out a programming unit. “Tell him that his mentor wishes to speak with him.”

The women glanced at one another quickly, uncomprehendingly. One smiled and licked her lips. She held up the programmer again, and Wyeth impatiently pushed it away. “Listen, your boss isn't going to—”

With a snarl, the woman seized his head in both hands and twisted. Wyeth grunted in pain as he spun about. The cat woman's legs were wrapped about his thighs, and her hands cupped his chin. She yanked him back, and he floated helplessly.

All this happened in an instant. “Hey!” Rebel said, and then she was floating in a similar hold, unable to talk and barely able to breathe. She tried to hit the woman on her back, but it was an awkward reach, and her hardest blows were soft taps when they landed.

In a wash of horror, Rebel saw the cat women attach the programmer to Wyeth and switch it on. He stiffened. The device buzzed softly to itself. I won't let them do that to me, Rebel promised herself. I'll die first. She struggled in her captor's iron hold.

Those guards not directly involved watched with alert interest. They prowled restlessly about the lock without ever once exchanging a word; their silence was superhuman. Two almost collided, but disdainfully, carelessly, slapped hands together and bounced off each other. Finally a red light flashed on the programmer, and Wyeth was released. He floated dead-eyed and unresponsive.

The women turned to Rebel.

“Heads up, Sunshine!” Lashing out with one foot, Wyeth kicked the cheap little programmer from one cat woman's hands, right into the face of the woman who held Rebel captive. For an instant she was free. Spinning around, she punched her captor in the nose, as hard as she could, and blood exploded outward from her fist. By then a dozen more guards had converged upon them, and they were both recaptured.

One woman retrieved the programmer, broke it open, reassembled it. She ran a finger over Wyeth's forehead, then brought her face close to his and sniffed his lips. She looked puzzled. Meanwhile, others had bound his wrists and ankles together behind his back and done the same to Rebel. “Wyeth?” Rebel asked. “Are you okay?”

“Oh yeah,” Wyeth said. Two of the guards looped ropes around their wrists and kicked off. They were yanked after. “That's my best trick. When we built me, I was given access to my own metaprogrammer. All the time they were programming one persona up, another persona was programming it down.”

“Oh.”

They were hauled through the deserted corridors of the tank town. Without the traffic continually sweeping them clean, the narrow corridors were dense with trash. The flowers seemed barely able to lighten the gloom, and there was a thrumming quality to the silence, like vastly extenuated echoes of distant bass rumblings. The stench of rot and decay was almost unbearable.

They were taken to Wismon.

“Ah, mentor! As always, a surprise to see you. What a delight!”

The fat man floated behind a guard of sullen rude boys, his mad little eyes dark with inner furies. A thin string of saliva clung to one corner of his mouth, waving slightly as he talked. “How do you like my angelheaded little girls? Lovely, aren't they?”

“They're certainly something,” Wyeth said. “What have you done to them?” Behind him, the women snapped his bonds and then Rebel's. There were two pairs of rings by Wismon's ankles, and the guards knelt within them, crouching at his feet. He reached out to clumsily pat one on the head, and she arched her back in pleasure.

“I've increased their intelligence—they're quite as smart as am I. Ah, don't turn pale. I've also deprived them of language. They have no symbolic structure at all. They cannot make plans, cannot reason complexly, cannot lie. All they know is what instructions I've programmed into them. Isn't that marvelous? They're perfectly innocent. They act by instinct alone.”

“They're grotesque,” Rebel said.

“They are very beautiful animals,” Wismon said reprovingly. “One of their instincts is to bring me anything out of the ordinary. Anything interesting. Are you still interesting, mentor?”

“I've always wondered what sort of society you would create,” Wyeth said.

“Oh, piffle. I'm just having a little fun. I only have three days before we reach Mars, isn't that right? And then I'll have to put my toys back in the box and return to a gentlemanly life of quiet comtemplation. The pity is that so much time was wasted dealing with factions of petty criminals that might more profitably have been used for my researches.”

“You're going to restore everyone you've forcibly programmed?” Wyeth sounded skeptical.

“Oh, absolutely. Except for my rude boys, of course. I had them before all this began. And I think I'll keep my beautiful little girls, how could I ever bring myself to give them up? And there are a few more that might prove useful in the future—but enough of that! I mentioned my researches? Well, I flatter myself that I've made some small progress. I have created a garden—no, a menagerie of new minds. Perhaps you'd care for a brief tour of the highlights?”

“No.”

“A pity. I remember a time when you were not so scornful of scientific endeavor.”

“I was young then.”

“Wait,” Rebel said impulsively. “I'd like to see what you've done.” Wyeth turned to her, astonished.

“Well! An original thought—you charm me, Ms. Mudlark, I will deny you nothing.” Wismon extended his arms and the cat women stood under them, each stretching a supporting arm across the immensity of his back. “Where's my zookeeper? Call him to me.”

A sullen rude boy ducked into an archway. A moment later he returned, followed by a young man painted for wetware research.

“Maxwell!” Rebel cried.

“I knew you'd have a spy in my organization,” Wyeth said with a touch of sadness. “Did you buy him or just reprogram him?”

“Oh, I assure you he acted not for any ignoble reasons, but purely out of love. You do love me, don't you, Maxie?”

Maxwell nodded eagerly, face rapt. His expression was at once so ardent and so familiar that Rebel had to look away. “Lead us to your charges,” Wismon said. “I grow bored.”

The party floated out of the court. Maxwell led, followed by Wismon and his cat women. They eased him along with feather-light kicks and grabs against the walls and ropes. Rebel and Wyeth came next, escorted by a guard of rude boys. They came to a confluence of passages and halted.

“What shall I show you? I've arranged my creations by type. Would you care to go down the tunnel of fear? The straight and narrow way of discipline? Or perhaps you two lovebirds would enjoy a kick and stroll down lovers' lane.” They said nothing, and Wismon flapped a bloated pink hand at one passage. “We'll go the way of delusion, then. I have something I'm especially eager for my dear mentor to see.”

They went up the red rope to a nondescript court. At a word from Wismon, Maxwell led them within. It was quiet there. A man sat in the doorway of his hutch, eyes downcast as if lost in thought. He was hooked into a small transcorder unit. “Cousin!” Wismon cried. “Sam Pepys!”

The man scrambled to his feet, bracing himself within the frame. “My Lord!” he said. “You do me honor, coming to Seething Lane.” He swept a hand at an imaginary table. “I was just now working on your accounts.”

To Wyeth, the fat man said, “Samuel Pepys was a clerk of the British navy on Earth in the seventeenth century. A ludicrous little man, but able enough in his way. A bit of a diarist. The transcorder feeds him a wafer of background sensation. His only connection with the real world is through myself. He takes me to be his relative, Edward Montagu, Earl of Sandwich. Isn't that right, Samuel?”

The man smiled gravely and bowed, obviously pleased. “Your lordship gives me too great a credit. Will you stay to dine? Mr. Spong has sent over a barrel of pickled oysters, I'll have the girl fetch it. Jane! Where is that lazy slut?” He looked fretfully over one shoulder, setting the transcorder leads swinging.

“It's a simple enough delusional system,” Rebel said. “Rich people have been known to spend good money for two weeks of that kind of delusion. I've arranged for a few such vacations myself.” That had been during Eucrasia's internship, she recalled. It had been dull work, cookie-cutter programming, but (because legally dubious) lucrative.

“Ah, but always under sensory deprivation, eh? Otherwise small incongruities creep in from the real world.” A cat woman was exploring the court. She sniffed curiously at Pepys' crotch. He didn't notice. “Right in the middle of the battle of Thermopylae, a city cannister eclipses the sun. On virgin Arctic snow, a lone papaya glows with otherworldly light. Little by little your dream world crumbles into paranoia and nightmare. But the beauty of
this
system is its flexibility. It can justify any amount of incongruity. Samuel, I have noticed a great number of brontosauri in the streets of London this past week.”

Pepys frowned. “Brontosauri, my Lord? The … ah, large, ancient lizards, you mean?”

“Aye, Samuel, three in Whitechapel alone, and two more by the 'Change. Down by Saint Paul's the streets are filthy with their spoor. What make you of that, Cousin?”

“Why, that it will be a mightily cold winter,” Pepys said. “The brutes never venture out in such numbers be the coming weather fair and clement.”

“I fail to see the point of this,” Wyeth said stiffly.

“Patience. Samuel, poke up the fire, would you?” Pepys obliged, seizing an imaginary poker and stirring up the logs and embers of a fireplace that was not there. The mime was so perfect that Rebel could almost see his stuffy little room and feel its monotonously heavy gravity.

Suddenly Wismon shouted, “Samuel! A coal has landed on the back of your hand. It's burning the flesh!”

With a shriek of pain, Pepys tumbled over backwards, waving his hand. Spinning slowly in the air, he put hand to mouth and sucked on it. At a gesture from Wismon, two rude boys steadied him.

“Here, Cuz. Show me your hand.”

Pepys extended a hand trembling with pain. An angry red circle swelled on its back. Even as they watched, puss-white blisters bubbled up on the inflamed spot. Wismon laughed. “Belief! Belief alone burned that hand. Think on it. It rather puts some starch into an ancient notion that all we experience is illusion to begin with, doesn't it?” He stroked the hand lovingly, breaking the blisters. “But Samuel doesn't perceive our illusions, only those that are pumped into him. All that stands between him and reality is one thin wafer of electronic London. Let's see what happens when we remove that final veil.”

Maxwell held up the transcorder for Wismon, who daintily took the wafer's pull-ring between thumb and forefinger. “Samuel?”

“My Lord?”

“Tell me what you see.” He yanked the wafer.

Pepys stiffened, and his eyes jerked open wide. Unblinking, they focused on infinity. “The walls! The walls fade like smoke! I can see through ceiling, rooms, and roof to the clouds beyond.… Nay, the sky too is become pellucid and the stars stand bright and stark.… But now e'en they too fade. I see …”