Vacumn Flowers

Now that their backs were turned, Rebel felt free to slouch. She scratched an itch that had been bothering her for some time. Already she felt bored and ridiculous and a

Gi

Wyeth said. “Even as scrap, they can’t be worth much.”

“Don’t be naive, dear. People’s Mars is having labor trouble. We dump a few dozen slums in their neighborhood, and the price of labor takes a nosedive.”

“Hmmm.” Wyeth glanced over his shoulder and frowned at Rebel’s posture. She straightened involuntarily, then stuck out her tongue. He’d already turned back, though. “That puts you in something of a morally ambiguous position, doesn’t it? I mean, if you squint at it just right, it looks a lot like dealing in slaves.”

The executive laughed. “We’re selling People’s Mars the tanks. Whether the people living in them choose to go along or not is up to them. Oh, we’re distributing the Stavka’s propaganda for them, and we’ll sweeten the deal by suspending rent for the duration of transit, but nobody’s being forced to do anything. Next sequence, please.” All the scenes changed. “This is simply a terrific deal. It’s big and hot and fast. We’ve even had to go out-Kluster for some of the skills. Most of the muscle and skulls come from Londongrad, of course, and we’re providing the slums, the sheraton, the geodesic and the raw oxygen. But—you see that holding sphere? Closeup, if you would.” A translucent sphere packed with something green and leafy and wet zoomed closer. “That contains a young air plant. We hired a team of macro-biologists from that pod of comets passing through the other side of the system, to look after it.”

The view switched to wraparound, and they were in the center of a small biolab. Some twenty people were at work there, dressed treehanger style, their bodies covered neck to foot in heavy clothing with embroidered inserts and oversized pockets. They talked as they worked, oblivious of their viewers, and touched each other casually, a tap onthe shoulder here, a nudge in the ribs there. Somebody said something and the others laughed. Rebel wished she could join them, sign on to work among them. (But what would she do? Her skills were gone, along with most of her memories. No matter. In the largest possible sense they were all family, and she longed to be with them.)

“This is all tourist stuff, Gi

“Ah? Well, perhaps this next one will interest you. You haven’t asked how we expect to transport the slums to Mars orbit without crushing everything within them.”

“Is that a problem?”

“Oh my goodness, yes. Even the slightest acceleration would be enough to collapse the interiors, shanties, people and all. Didn’t they teach you any physics in kindergarten? Please show us the ring.”

“Well, I—” Wyeth stopped. The wraparound had switched to the interior of a floating weapons platform. It had been built cheap, all boilerplate and seam weld, but the laser sniper systems that crouched on the metal desk, gently shifting to track their targets, were bright, state-of-the-art killing machines. The human triggers floating beside them had the unblinking, fanatic look of the rigidly wetwired.

The systems were aimed through laser-neutral glass walls at individual specks moving through a cluttered floating construction site. The holo zoomed up on one speck, and it became a worker in distress-orange vacuum suit. She was bolting together complex-looking machinery, hooking cables to ports, wiring terminals to terminals.

Other orange-suited workers labored nearby, climbing blindly over one another as needed, yet perfectly synchronized. Tanks were mated to valves installed an instant before, complex wiring sequences were abandoned by one to be picked up by another, with never a glance to see how the others were doing. Hundredsworked in scattered clusters along the length of a half-kilometer arch of machinery, looking more like hive insects than humans. Beyond them hung more weapons platforms, enough to track each worker individually. “We brought in a team of Earth to build the transit ring,”

Gi

“My God,” Wyeth said, horrified. “You can’t deal with the Comprise.”

“Don’t be silly, dear. Only Earth knows how to build an accelerator ring. This deal isn’t possible without help from the Comprise. Please expand from the third quadrant. You see the green tanks? Liquid helium. We’ve rented half the liquid helium in the Kluster for this caper.”

“Let me make myself a little clearer, Gi

Gi

“Machines!” Wyeth snorted. “Machines are the easiest things in the universe to outwit because they’re predictable—that’s their function, to be predictable, to do exactly what they’re designed for, time after time. And you’ve put them under the control of guards so tightly programmed they’re almost machines themselves. Real bright, Gi

“I suppose you could do better?”

“Damn right I could!”

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” Gi

Rebel’s nose itched. She scratched it, and the leash tapped her belly lightly. Grimacing, she pulled her hands free of the thing and dropped it on the ground. The hell with it. She rubbed her wrists slowly and luxuriously, staring at the back of Wyeth’s head with shrewd speculation. How much did she actually know about him?

Very little. Enough, though, to know that he was involved hip-deep in some kind of weirdness. It certainly wasn’t altruism that powered his actions. He had his own plans, whatever they were, and somehow she had been fitted into them. Logic told her it was time to cut and run. Leave him and his bitch to their little schemes.

Gi

The biolab had been retrofitted between two underwriting firms on Fanchurch Prospekt in midtown Londongrad. Rebel got the address from a public data port. She might not have her skills, but any working group needed someone to do the scutwork, and she could fetch and carry with the best of them. Her plan was to hide among her own kind, where she would be effectively invisible, because she wouldn’t stand out. And when they left to return to their comet worlds, she’d go with them.

All it’d take was a little grit.

At the doorway she hesitated, remembering the public surveillance cameras inside. Well, there were millions such throughout the Kluster. What were the odds that somebody looking for her would be watching? Slim.

Taking a deep breath, she went in.

“Hey-lo!” A lanky treehanger stuck a genecounter in his hip pocket and leered at her. Another man whistled. All activity within the lab came to a halt.

Rebel stopped in confusion. Everyone was looking at her. They were staring at her breasts and stomach, some involuntarily and with embarrassment, and others not.

She fought down the urge to snap her cloak shut, and her face flushed. A short, grey-haired woman turned from a potting bench, brushing her hands together, and said mildly, “Can I help you, dearie?”

“Uh, yes, well… Actually, I just wanted to stop by for a chat. You see, I come from a dyson world myself.” The words sounded false, and Rebel felt irrationally guilty.