Michael Swanwick - Vacumn Flowers

Everything about this planet, it seemed, was monstrous.

“God is miraculous,” Li agreed happily, and gestured with both hands. “The water flows down from all sides andgathers at the bottom. But the rock is porous, and there are caverns that open into the lowest part of the turlough.

The lake will be gone by morning.”

Weeks passed.

There came a day when the wolverines returned. It was a joyously beautiful morning with a weird blue sky overhead, the rock just slightly overwarm to the touch.

Rebel rounded a corner of Retreat and found one of the pack pissing on a wall. He grinned a greeting. Not far beyond, another wolverine was caressing a devotee’s face with her knife. “What if I wanted to slit your eyelids?” she crooned. “Would you let me do that, too?” The point glided over a cheek, barely breaking skin, leaving behind a fine line of straightest red.

The devotee shuddered, but did not move away.

“Having fun?” Rebel asked.

The wolverine turned. She was a small woman, with red hair chopped close to the skull and thin white lines on one side of her jaw. Her expression changed. “Yeah.” The knife disappeared from her hand, reappeared, was in the other hand, was gone. She slid into a fighting crouch, took a deep breath.

“You kill her—you take her place,” Bors said coldly. The woman glared at him, lip curling up over one canine, then looked away. She sheathed the knife and stamped off.

“You do like to live dangerously, Ms. Mudlark.” He gestured upslope. “Come. Let’s go for a walk.”

They strolled beyond the goat pens, toward a lone tree, stunted by rock and weather, not much taller than Rebel was. There was no particular reason to walk to the tree; it was simply the only landmark in the direction they were headed. Once there, Rebel turned and looked back to where the ocean turned grey and melted into sky. She waited, and at last Bors said, “We haven’t heard fromhim.”

“I suspected as much.”

He pounded a fist into his palm, chewed at his lip.

“Getting down here has cost us. Drop artists don’t come cheap. We’re going to raid the Comprise whether Wyeth’s here to lead us or not.” Rebel nodded, not really listening.

There was an unreal haze over everything. She realized now that she would never see Wyeth again. He had been swallowed up by the cold immensities of Earth.

Standing under the deep Terran sky, with an infinite weight of rock underfoot and air aswirl all about her, she realized that it was nobody’s fault, not hers or Bors’ or even Wyeth’s, but just something that had happened. One man can only do so much. When he matches himself against something on the scale of an entire planet, he is going to lose so casually and completely as to simply cease to be.

“It’ll take us five days or so to prepare our alternatives, and then we’ll move. But we still need a librarian. If you go along with us, I’ll get you a place on the lift back to Geesinkfor and standard pay. You can’t ask fairer than that.”

Bors was waiting for an answer. “I understand,” Rebel said bleakly. “You’ve waited longer than I expected, even.

Okay, I’ll do my bit. And when you get back to Geesinkfor, have somebody drag the stretch of the equatorial sea just out front of a dive there called the Water’s Edge. That’s where I ditched your crate of prints. You’ve done your best, and I’ll keep my side of the bargain.”

Bors looked surprised. Then he patted her shoulder roughly, started to say something, gave up on it.

He ran back to Retreat.

The next day Rebel was feeding the goats when Li scampered up, all but squeaking with excitement. “Look,look!” Li cried, tugging at Rebel’s sleeve.

Rebel slapped her hands together, wiped them on the front of her earth suit. Goat-tending wasn’t exactly tidy work. The pens were going to need a good mucking out soon. “Li, whatever it is, I’m really not in the mood for it.”

“No, look!” Li insisted. Rebel turned to look where she pointed.

Staff in hand, Wyeth limped over the top of the hill.

ISLAND

Rebel?” he said in a small, stunned voice.

Then Wyeth shook his head wearily. “Eucrasia. Don’t be angry with me. Since I broke this leg, I’ve been seeing things off and on. I thought…”

She felt as if she were a phantom wandered from the realms of shadow and suddenly confronted by mortal flesh. This man before her, with a face more worn than she remembered and eyes infinitely sad, was too solid, too real. She was numb and bloodless before him. Rebel tried to speak and could not. Then something broke, and she leaped forward, hugging him as tightly as she could. Tears tickled her face. Wyeth’s arms went lightly about her, staff still held in one fist, and he said, “I don’t understand.”

“It’s Rebel Mudlark,” Bors said dryly. “Her persona didn’t collapse after all.”

Wyeth’s staff clattered to the ground. He was hugging her, making a noise somewhere between tears and laughter. Nearby, rooks scavenged the rock, strutting and pecking. A wolverine wandered by, stood watching for a while, then left. Finally Rebel gathered herself together and said, “You must be tired. Come on, my hut’s not far.”

Bors moved to block their way. He cocked his head and squinted up at Wyeth. “You haven’t made your report yet.”

“Later,” Wyeth said. “Everything’s set, it just took me a little longer than I expected.”

Inside, Wyeth stretched wearily out on the stone slab.

“God, Sunshine, it’s good to see you again! I don’t have the words for it.”

“Hush, now, let me take a look at that leg.” Rebel wired herself into the library, hunting up the medical skills as she eased off his earth suit.

Wyeth looked at her oddly. “That’s new.”

“I’ve come to terms with the stuff,” Rebel said. Then, seeing his expression, “Its me, honest and truly. Eucrasia is buried for good. I’ll explain it all later.” Slowly, lovingly, she began to wash the dust of travel from his body, using a folded cloth and a basin of water. She started at his brows, and Wyeth closed his eyes at the touch of the damp cloth.

“Ahh, now that’s heaven.” He was looking better and more familiar by the moment.

“So where have you been all this time?” she asked, not really caring.

“Spying. Getting the lay of the land. Stealing a ship. I take it from your being here that you know all about the plan?”

“No, Bors didn’t think I should have that information,”

she said, running a hand lightly along the injured leg. He still wore five splint rings. “Poor thing. It looks to be healing up well, though. You must’ve had a good medical kit with you.” She yanked the adhesion disks.

“He didn’t tell you?” Wyeth tried to sit up, was stopped by her hand on his chest. “This is going to be dangerous.

He had no right to involve you without—”

“It wasn’t his choice.” She was washing his torso now, those lean, hard muscles.

“Oh, Sunshine, I really wish you hadn’t… This isn’t going to be an ordinary raid. You remember the shyapples? The three crates I bought in the orchid? Well, I drew off almost a gallon of their liquor. We’re going to go in among the Comprise and dose them with it, to see what happens.”

She was humming silently to herself. “Why?”

“It’s a rehearsal for Armageddon,” he said in his clown’s voice. Then, serious again, “It’s a weapon that’s proved effective against small numbers of Comprise. We want to try it out against all of Earth. See what kind of defenses it can mount against us. If it works at all well, the Republique will sponsor a buying trip to Tirnannog, hunt up the wizard who cooked up the shyapples, and order something a little more… directed. Something that doesn’t deprogram itself after a few hours. Who knows? Maybe something infectious. I mean, think about it. It’s an outside chance, sure, but we’re looking at the possible death of the Comprise.”