Michael Swanwick - Vacumn Flowers

Finally she could take it no longer. Throwing on her clothes, she darted across the court to Wyeth’s hut. He’d talk to her, she was sure. A deft grab on one of the ropes flipped her around and brought her to a dead stop just before his door. It was covered with his cloak. She was about to rattle his wall when she heard his voice within.

Was he with someone? A little self-consciously, she floated closer to eavesdrop.

“She’s trouble,” Wyeth mumbled. “Deutsche Nakasone wants her bad, and anyone who gets in the way is going to be hurt… So there’s risk! She could be an enormous help to us… Which ‘she’ are you talking about anyway, Eucrasia or Rebel?… Go with the current occupant, that’s always the easiest course. Whoever comes out on top… I wouldn’t mind getting on top of her… Oh, get serious! The point is that if we cut a deal with her, we’re risking everything we’ve built so far. It’s an all or nothing gamble.” There was a pause, and then Wyeth said, “Risking everything! That’s just great. We’re risking a half-hour shanty in the slums, some cockeyed plans, and our perfect obscurity. That’s it.

What’s the use of saying we’re going up against Earth, if the first good opportunity that comes along, we just sit here on our thumbs? I say either we stand up and be counted, or dissolve the whole thing right now as a bad job. Any argument?”

The voice stopped, and Rebel drew back from the door.

He’s talking about me, she thought. And he’s crazy. Either he’s crazy or he’s something I don’t know about that’s probably worse. A word floated up from Eucrasia’s past.

Tetrad. It was a kind of new mind. But that was all she could remember about it. Her body trembled. She wanted very much to turn around and retreat into her hutch.

No, she thought, I won’t be a coward.

She rattled the side of Wyeth’s hutch, and a second later he poked out his head. “I heard you talking about me,” she said.

Wyeth took down his cloak and wrapped it about himself. Rebel got a glimpse of his naked body and reddened. “How much of what I said did you understand?”

he asked.

She shook her head helplessly. “You’re making that face again.”

Wyeth looked surprised. Then he grinned, and his harsh expression was instantly and totally gone. “I was trying to make up my minds. You’re something of a dilemma for me, Sunshine.”

“So I gather.”

“Look, I’m only in partial agreement what to do at this point. Let’s both sleep on it. We can discuss this thing better when we’re rested, okay?”

Rebel considered it. “Okay.”

Back in her hutch, she lay half awake for the longest time, thinking wide, empty thoughts. There was a knife fight in the next court, two young bloods with rude boy programs, cursing and swearing at each other as they jockeyed for position. A young couple were going at it hot and heavy not far away, separated from her hut by only an arm’s length of nightflowers. A baby began to cry and was shushed by its mother.

Closeby, a peeper frog cried out for a mate.

If you floated right up against them, the iron pipes and tin walls had a distinct odor. It disappeared as you moved away, but was strong up close. There was nothing else quite like that smell. It must stay with slum dwellers, Rebel thought. No matter how far they might get from their tanks, a smell like that would stay with them for the rest of their lives.

STORM FRONT

Someone kicked her wall in passing, and Rebel awoke.

Blearily, she dressed and floated out. Of the three sometime restaurants in the court, only the one marked

“Myrtle’s Joint” had its window open.

She rapped for service and an iguana scurried away and burrowed into the vines. Myrtle’s face flashed out of the gloom with a quick smile. Rebel yawned and woke up a little more, and said, “I’d like to buy some food.”

“What meal?”

“Breakfast.”

Myrtle ducked down and rummaged about. “I got a mango. I could slice it up with a little chutney. There’s a dab of spiced rice that’s not too old. And beer.”

They haggled up a price, and Rebel took a place on the rope as Myrtle put breakfast together. “Hey. My man told me about how you used to own a corporation and all. I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay.” A flock of naked children darted into the court, shrieking and laughing. For an instant the air was full of them. Then one spotted a gap between hutches and darted through. The others followed and were gone, as quick and sudden as minnows.

Rebel ate slowly. Finally she licked a last bit of chutney from a knuckle and returned the empty Belhaven tube to Myrtle. “Um, this is kind of embarrassing, but how do I find the—?”

“Orange rope downgrain to blue, blue upgrain to red, that’ll take you to the shell.” Myrtle laughed. “From there you can just follow your nose.”

The community toilets were overgrown with masses of nightbloom. The leaves rustled and waved in the wind from the airstacks. But under the flowery scent was a darker smell of human waste and of body gases. She swam in the ladies entrance and took a seat on the communal bench. It was cool here. The air flowing down the holes was enough to hold her on. Resting her elbows on the grab bars, she read the graffiti. There were the usual EARTH

FRIEND and NEWMINDS/FREEMINDS scrawls, with an INDIVIDUALITY DOES NOT EXIST written in one hand and SPEAK FOR YOURSELF scratched beneath it in another. The only really interesting graffito was EVEN

YOUR SHIT BELONGS TO THE RICH.

Well, it made sense. Considering that almost none of the food eaten here was grown within the tank. The toilets had to be emptied to keep the tank towners from literally strangling in their own wastes. The nightblooms helped keep the air fresh, but somebody had to replenish the oxygen that was lost in tiny gasps every time the locks swung open and shut. Even a drastically oversimplified ecology like this needed to be looked after.

The entire Kluster, in fact, was an extremely loose system, leaking air and garbage from every pore. To Rebel’s eyes, it was criminally wasteful how much oxygen and water vapor, reaction mass and consumer trash must be lost to the vacuum every day. Any attempt to tighten the system had to be applauded.

Still, it was humbling to think that the tank towns were being maintained by people who saw them simply as fertilizer farms.

She was leaving the toilets when a familiar voice hailed her from the cluster of commercial data ports next door.

Wyeth, helmet on arm, waved and kicked up to join her.

“I’m just about to leave for work,” he said. “But I’ve cloned my briefcase for you.” He gave her what looked like a hand-sized plate of smokey glass and felt like amber, only cool. Small colored lights danced in its depths. Rebeltouched one, and they all shifted. The device felt right in her hand. She felt a lot better having it. “You operate it by—”

“I know how to work this.” She ran a fast recursive, and schemata appeared in the air over the plate. It was the only skill she possessed worth having, and she… but that was Eucrasia’s though, and Rebel suppressed it. “What have you got in there for me?”

“Your history.”

She looked at him.

“I made a quick raid on Deutsche Nakasone for their unclassified data on Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark.” He touched the plate and two tiers of yellow lights lined up against the right-hand edge. “As you can see, there’s not much. A fast-edited history put together for publicity purposes, I’d guess. I thought you’d be interested.”

“Yes.” She closed her hands around the briefcase, held it to her stomach. “Won’t that lead them to this tank, though? Won’t they be looking for this kind of data request?”