Michael Swanwick - Vacumn Flowers

“In the second minute, millions.

“Within three minutes everyone on the net was ours. We controlled everything that touched upon the net—governments, military forces from the strategic level down to the least ‘smart’ rifle, intelligence structures, industry… Half the world was ours, without the least effort. With a fraction of our attention, we designed the transceivers, retooled the factories to make them, and reorganized the hospitals to perform the implants. By the time anybody had noticed us, we were free of dependence on the net and could no longer be stopped. There was some fighting, but it was soon over. We had the weapons, we controlled all communications, we directed all transport.

“We ate the Earth.

“And as we took on power, we were solving every scientific problem being investigated on the net.

Because—you must remember this—we never were a true individual. We are only a consensus of desires, less a persona than a natural force. The mysteries of physics tumbled before us. Our understanding kept expanding.

We had been born in triumph and went from that to victory after victory, all effortless or close enough to it. The universe seemed open and inviting, and nothing of any significance stood in our way.

“It was in this state of exultation that we stepped off the planet. There were people in cislunar orbit, vast numbers to be absorbed. We swallowed them. We became them.

We loved them in a way you could not understand. We reached out and out and out, expanding toward Godhood.

“We had ambition, and ascended into Hell.”

The girlchild fell silent, then sighed and said, “You know the history of the wars. Dissolution, resistance, failure.

Our outer edges dissolved into anarchy and madness. The human universe turned against us with weapons that—well, they were primitive, but even primitive weapons can do harm. We retreated, trying to solidify our defenses. We created sister intelligences, and they turned against us. We rotated vast numbers of Comprise through complex pathways, and failed. We tried new architectures of thought, and failed. Always we failed. We were under siege. We were driven back to the surface of the Earth.

“We could have fought, but to what purpose? We sued for peace, returned the cislunar cities to humanity, and retreated to this small world. Here we remain.”

Wyeth sneered. “Are you saying that the wars were just the result of youthful indiscretion? That we should forgive you because you were only sowing a few wild oats?”

“No. But we acted in a drunken euphoria of success. We made mistakes. Insofar as that is possible to us, we regret them. In failure, we have found a bitter strain of wisdom.

We have grown, and now we wish to no longer be bound by our early mistakes.

“You have seen our planet, walked about on it. Have we exterminated the lesser animals? Have we subjugated them all to our will? Why, then, should you be different?

We believe it is possible to live in peace with humanity. It may even be that we can learn from you— knowledge is infinite, mind is small, and the human race may be capable of insights denied to us. Perhaps for that reason alone, you should be preserved in freedom.”

“Ah,” said Bors. “Here it comes. What is it exactly you want?”

“We have many desires. Some you could not comprehend—these arose after our collectivization.

Others, however, we inherited from the humans whobecame Comprise. Most of their desires we’ve achieved within ourself. But we still wish to leave the surface of this planet. To grow. To explore. We wish to establish small colonies in the interstices of human space—there is room for both races, and we would not presume to take that which humanity has already claimed. We also wish to travel to the stars.” She turned away from Bors and looked directly at Rebel. “But to do this, we need your integrity.”

“Integrity?” Bors said, baffled.

Wyeth moved behind Rebel, put a hand on her shoulder.

“It’s an old bit of wetsurgical slang. Integrity is that quality which protects identity. A persona with absolute integrity cannot be destroyed; it heals itself. There was a recurrent rumor that it had been discovered out in the Oort, but nobody took it seriously. By all we know, it should be a myth, an ideal, as impossible to achieve as perpetual motion. But it appears that Rebel has absolute integrity, or close to it. She woke from coldpacking with her own persona dominant in a mind that was loaded with another’s memories.” He spoke to the girlchild. “But she’s not for sale, under any terms. So you can just—”

“Shut up, Wyeth.” Rebel smiled at the shock on his face, lifted his hand from her shoulder and kissed the knuckles.

“Honest, gang, you don’t know what’s going on here,” she said gently. To the child, “My wizard-mother sent me into the System to sell just that commodity. To you, presumably, since nobody else has what she wants. Now Elizabeth Charm Mudlark is a genius, that goes without saying, but she’s been lucky as well. You’re not going to buy integrity from anybody else. She fell into it by accident, saw that she had something special to sell, and so she grew me and sent me here to sell it. She’s a dyed-in-the-wool treehanger, and something of a patriot, so you can probably guess what she wants.”

Bors touched a finger to a patch of skin by one eye in a deliberate gesture that put Rebel in mind of someone flicking a switch, and then of the machines she’d seenhidden deep within his flesh. When the girlchild had asked to enter, he’d said to her, “Why should I trust you?”

and the child had replied, “You shouldn’t. A man with a major implosive device wired to his cortex needn’t trust anyone.”

Smiling kindly, Bors lowered his hand. A simple warning.

“We will pay her price,” the child said.

“No, it’s not that easy now. I can see that this thing is even more valuable than she thought. If I hadn’t been sidetracked when I arrived, one of your agents could have bought it cheap. But now that I have some glimmering of its worth to you, you’ll have to do better.”

“Your wizard-mother wants what any comet worlder would want: to travel to the stars.” The child turned slightly, and a blur of air curved through the room. For an instant a small machine was visible hovering over a countertop, as apositional and indeterminate as a hummingbird. Ten outsized wafers materialized on the counter, and then (Nee-C slashing her knife through its wake) it was gone.

“These are the plans for the transit ring. The theoretical base, the engineering specifications, detailed structure for the backup industries, and selected supervisory wetware.

It is wealth beyond even human greed. There’s a revolution in physics there, to begin with, and technology that will transform human space. You can use it to tap the energy of the sun in a small way, and with this energy, you can build roads through the System, nets of transit rings linking every settled Kluster and moon, bringing them only hours apart. Injected into human space, this knowledge means an economic boom such as your race has never seen. Whoever is sitting atop that boom will be richer than any human has ever been.” The child smiled slightly disdainfully. “This is what you asked for. Isn’t it enough?”

Elizabeth’s instructions leaped up within Rebel, hot and compulsive, urging her to accept, but she swallowed them down. “No. Not half enough.”

“What more do you want?”

“I want everything I can get! I want you to give everybody in this room everything they ask for, however large or unreasonable.” She was shaking and her throat was dry. Her voice trembled slightly as she spoke. “I want you to give us so much that it’d be impossible for us to turn you down.”