Vacumn Flowers

Sweat beaded up under her arms.

“Gone a bit native then, ain’t you?” the lanky one said.

“Haven’t you work to do?” the woman said in a warning voice. “All of you! What are we getting paid for, hey?

Squatting in the bushlines?” Then, in a gentler tone,

“Where do you hail from then?”

“Tirna

The other engineers were working quietly, not talking, so they could overhear what was said. Now a stocky, blond-haired kid with walnut skin looked up, interested.

“Oh yeah, I been there,” he said. “We’re all from Hibrasil, practically spitting distance, hey? Couple weeks transit in coldpack is all. Got family in Stanhix, ever heard of that?

Just outside of Blisterville.”

She shook her head helplessly. “Blisterville?”

“You never heard of Blisterville? Threetrunk past the Sargasso? Five hundred thousand people?”

A woman looked up from a tank of water voles and said,

“Bet you we got one of those ravers on our hands. You know—too much electricity shot up the medulla oblongata.” The treehanger beside her laughed and punched her shoulder.

“Hey, listen, I’m not lying to you, sport! I really am from Tirna

“Where does an airwhale fit into an ecosystem? What do they sell in Green City? Why can’t an anogenic construct eat? What are the seven basic adaptations to weightlessness?” the stocky kid asked. He looked Rebel in the eye and sneered. “How many bones are in your hand?”

She didn’t have the answers. It was all information that had been destroyed with her original body. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. One of her hands was trembling.

“Freeboy,” the grey-haired woman snapped, “are you going to get back to work or am I going to have to kick butt?” The boy rolled his eyes upward, but turned back to a stacked petri array. The woman said to Rebel, “We believe you, dear.”

“But I really am—”

“I could run a blood test,” Freeboy offered. “Even adapted for gravity, there’s still five major differences…”

“What did I tell you?” the woman began ominously. But Rebel was already halfway to the door.

As she stepped outside, a man who hadn’t spoken before called after her, “What do them lines on your face mean, girlie?” By his tone, she knew that he had been tasting what pleasures a wettechnic civilization had to offer and knew exactly what her paint indicated.

She bit her lip, but did not look back.

Out on the Prospekt, the crowds swallowed her whole.

There were far more people here than either uptown or downtown, and the corridors were wide, like plazas infinitely extended. Rows of palms divided the surge of people into lanes, and cartoon stars and planets hung from a high ceiling. Underfoot, the Prospekt was paved with outdated currency, silver thalers, gold kronerrands,green ceramic rubles, all encased under diamond-hard transparent flooring. Expensively dressed people, all painted financial—cargo insurance, gas futures, bankruptcy investment—coursed over it. Rebel let the crowd carry her away, transforming her anger and humiliation and confusion into blessed anonymity.

A clown came striding toward her.

In the sea of bobbing, somber cloaks, the puffy white costume seemed to glow, as if lit from within. The pierrette smiled slightly as her eyes met Rebel’s. The crowds parted for her, like waters before a religious master, and she descended upon Rebel as calm and inevitable as an angel.

Rebel stopped, and the pierrette bowed and proffered a white envelope. She took it from the gloved hand and slid out a paper rectangle. It was a holographic advertising flat. Above it floated the same false ideal of Rebel Mudlark she had seen in downtown New High Kamden.

She looked questioningly at the pierrette, who dipped a short curtsey. She might as well try interrogating the floor.

Rebel turned the paper over, and on its back was written,

“Request that we talk.” She crumpled the paper in her hand. The image folded into itself and was gone.

She nodded to the clown.

The pierrette led her to a nearby bank. They went to the negotiating rooms, bypassing several that were discreetly equipped for sex, and found a walnut-paneled niche with a single bench and table. Rebel sat, and the pierrette flipped on privacy screen and sound baffles. She produced a holograph generator, placed it atop the table, and curtsied away.

After a moment to compose herself, Rebel reached out to switch on the generator.

She was looking into a small hollow—obviously part of an upscale business park. At first glance Rebel thought thehollow held a drift of snow. Then she saw that she was looking down on an oval of white tiles. The only spot of color in all that white was a red prayer rug at its center. A

lone figure knelt there, hood down, shaven head bowed.

“Snow!” Rebel exclaimed. The image pa

The figure raised its head, studied her with cold, reptilian eyes. Skin white as marble, face painted in the hexangular lines of ice crystals or starbursts. He cocked his head slightly, listening. “In a sense,” he said at last,

“perhaps I am. Snow and I are both part of the same thing.” His face was every bit as gaunt and fleshless as hers had been. “I have a message for you.”

“What are you?” she asked. “Just exactly what are you that you and Snow are part of the same thing?”

He made a small sideways jerk of his head, a gesture perhaps of a

“All right. I’m listening.”

The man looked directly at her. “Deutsche Nakasone has licensed a team of dedicated assassins to your case.”

“No,” Rebel said. Without thinking about it, she clenched her fists so tight the nails dug into her hands.

The skin over her knuckles hurt. “That’s ridiculous.

Deutsche Nakasone wants my persona. They need me alive.”

“Not necessarily.” A bony hand slid from his cloak to stab the empty air, and an appliance with smooth, cherry-red finish appeared on insert. “The assassins are equipped with cryonic transport devices. They need only kill you, flash-freeze your brain, and let their technicians dig out the desired information using destructive techniques.” The hand disappeared into his cloak. “That’swhat they should have done originally. But they also wanted to salvage you as a petty officer of the corporation.

Now, however, you’ve been written off.”

The machine was slick and featureless on the outside, with a popup handle on the top. It was just the right size to hold Rebel’s head. She hunched her shoulders and brought up her hands. “Why are you telling me this?”

“You are not ready to deal yet.” The man stood suddenly, strode three paces to one side, stopped. “Very well. We wish to keep you alive until you are ready. You must take this threat seriously.” He paused to examine something Rebel could not see. “You’ve been careless. You should have realized there are few enough groups of dyson worlders in the Kluster that they all would be watched. If we hadn’t reached you first, you’d be dead now.”

The scene shifted, and she was looking down on Fanchurch Prospekt. From above, the jostling zombies blended together like a sluggish flow of mud. Bright circles appeared around three faces, and she saw that they were moving through the crowd in formation, searching among the faces for something. One by one, the image zoomed up on them: A heavy woman with fanatically set face and a black slash across her left eye. An unblinking sylph of a girl with a black slash across her left eye. And then a third with that same paint, a red-haired man with a face like a fox.