Vacumn Flowers

Jerzy Heisen.

“You know him?” the man asked. The assassins passed by the doors of the bank Rebel was in. Each carried a cherry-red cryogenic storage device in one hand. “Why did you start like that if you didn’t know him?”

“He used to work with Snow.”

“Ah.” The man made a small gesture, cocked his head.

“Interesting.” The crowd scene faded. “Of course. He’s clever, he’s serving time, and he’s actually met you. Of course he’d be one of your assassins.” Again he paused.

“No matter. We have generated a chart of those places in the System you can flee to, and with them the probabilities of your being assassinated by Deutsche Nakasone within a Greenwich month of arrival. I suggest you study if carefully.”

The chart scrolled up.

Location Probability of Assassination ( 1 percent)

Eros Kluster 97%

Pallas Kluster 95%

OTHER KLUSTERS (WITHIN BELTS) 91% (range

88-93%)

Trojan Klusters 90%

Lunar Holdings 90%

Mercury Science Preserve 90%

Neptune/Pluto Science Preserves 90%

Jovian System: 70%

nongalilean satellites 89%

Ganymede (Ported Cities) 65%

(wilderness) 44%

Callisto (Ported Cities) 65%

(wilderness) 41%

Io, Europa, Amalthea, Jupiter Orbital 65% (range

63-68%)

Mars Orbital, Deimos 63%

Mars Surface 59%

Saturnian system: 58%

Lesser Satellites 75% (range 74-75%)

Rings, Saturn Orbital 72%

Titan (Ported Cities) 30%

(wilderness) 23%

Earth Orbital 17%

Earth Surface 0%

“Very cute,” Rebel said. The list brought back some of the spirit the last half hour had kicked out of her. “I especially like that last bit. I guess I should hop the first transit to Earth, huh? Or maybe I should just walk out an airlock without a suit. Then I could swim there.”

Her sarcasm had no visible effect. “We won’t advise you what to do. We only reassure you that within the limits of game theory this chart is reliable.” The man knelt, raising his hood. The chart faded and the pierrette reappeared at Rebel’s side.

“One more thing. You have a new friend. The tetrad.”

“Yes?”

“Don’t trust him.”

The leash was waiting for her. Wyeth and Gi

There was no place she could go that was not dangerous, and no one she dared trust. She had to play hunches. And so far the only testimonial for any direction of action was that Snow’s whatever-he-was distrusted Wyeth.

“Well,” Gi

Wyeth glanced over his shoulder at Rebel, and for a flicker she thought he looked surprised to see her. Then she was not sure. “Gi

Gi

“Mmmm.” Wyeth stood and took up the leash. “Consider me on the payroll, then.” He led Rebel away.

Not far from the park, they climbed a winding set of wooden stairs high up a druid tree to a platform restaurant built out onto the branches, where they ordered puff pastries and green wine. The glasses had wide bowls and tiny lips. Wyeth frowned down on his and capped it with his thumb. He slowly swirled the green liquid around and around. Rebel waited.

Wyeth looked up suddenly. “Where were you?”

“What’s it worth to you?”

Hands closed around the wine glass. They were big hands, with knobby joints and short, blunt fingers. A

strangler’s hands. “What do you want?”

“The truth.” And then when he raised an eyebrow, she amended it to, “Truthful answers to as many questions as I ask you.”

A moment’s silence. Then he rapped his knuckles on the table and touched them to his brow and lips. “Done. You go first.”

Slowly, carefully, she recounted the past hour. She felt good up here among the leaves, where the light was green and watery and the gravity was slight. She felt like she could lean back in her chair and just float away… out of the chair, out of the restaurant, beyond the branches, into the great dark oceans of air where whales and porpoises sported, and the clouds of dust algae blocked out the light from the distant trees. It felt like home, and she stretched out her story through three glasses of wine.

As she talked, Wyeth’s face remained stiff. He hardly even blinked. And when she was done, he said, “I ca

“Hey,” Rebel said defensively. “It’s your own fault I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re up to. If anyone here was stupid, it was you.”

“Who do you think I was talking about?” he said angrily.

“I was just too clever for my own good. While I was building an elaborate trap for Snow and her ilk, they walk up and have a long chat with you! One perfectly beautiful opportunity blown all to hell because I—well, never mind.”

He took a deep breath and then—like a conjurer’s trick—he was instantly smiling and impish. “Go ahead, ask your questions. You want me to start by explaining Snow?”

“No. Well, yeah, but later on. I want to start with something very basic. You’re not really human, are you?

You’re a new mind.”

He gri

“Please. You already hinted that I did the programming on you. But I don’t remember a damned thing, so don’t get all coy on me, okay? Give me a straight answer. Just what the fuck is a tetrad?”

“A tetrad is a single human mind with four distinct personalities.” His face changed expression, to serious, then distracted, then open, and finally mischievous.

“That’s what we am. Or should I say, that’s what I are?”

5

PEOPLE’S SHERATON

You’re in for something that’s pretty rare this far from a planetary surface,” Wyeth said.

“What’s that?”

“A windstorm.”

Beneath its elaborations—balconies, outcroppings, light and heavy gravity wings, bubbles and skywalks—thesheraton was a simple orbital wheel, with three floors moving at slightly different speeds to maintain Greenwich normal gravity. Wyeth had set up security headquarters in the lobby at the foot of the elevator from the central docking ring. He sat behind the front desk, eyes moving restlessly as he sca

tone-controlled mike rested before him, and he murmured instructions into it from time to time, pitching his voice for the cha

Rebel sat in a sling chair, staring out through the window wall. The stars trembled with the flicker of subliminal memories. She could see Wyeth reflected on the i

There was a cascade of movement across the window.

“We’ve secured the locks, sir. The people aren’t very happy about it. Minor violence at tanks twelve and three.”

Despite her samurai paint, the woman hardly looked like security. She’d been recruited from the tanks and wore a daisy-yellow cloak and far too much jewelry.

“They were notified,” Wyeth said. When the woman was gone, he sighed. “I wonder at people. If they don’t understand why they can’t use the locks for an hour or two, then what do they think is waiting for them when we reach Mars orbit? I’m afraid they’re in for a rude awakening.”

Spacejacks were bolting the preassembled segments of the geodesic around the sheraton and tanks, working with programmed efficiency. The structure was covered with transparent monomolecular skin. From Rebel’s chair, it looked like a faint haze gathering across the stars. The workers began spraying powdered steel over the completed exterior, vacuum-welding layer upon layer.