Vacumn Flowers

They rode to the edge of the orchid and stopped. Wyeth hitched his broom to an air root, and Rebel followed suit, while the guard moved away, expanding their patrol.

Wyeth clambered along a thick trunk, inexpertly grabbing for handholds. Rebel followed more gracefully.

They came to the end of the plant, a break here as sudden and startling as when a climax forest gives way to grassland. Out in the darkness, distant stretches of the air plant were like streamers of luminous clouds. Alone and bright, the sheraton spun like a wheel. Its light was redder now, almost noontime orange. The silvery glimmeringsabout it were people flitting to and fro like mayflies.

Finally Wyeth said, “This is the first time I’ve ever had people working under me. I’ve always been something of a lone wolf.”

Rebel looked at him, not sure what to say. At last she feebly joked, “More of a lone wolfpack, hey?”

“I guess.”

More silence. Then, “What’s it like?” Rebel asked.

“Having four personas?”

“Well… when I’m not actually in use, I don’t really do anything. I have a passive awareness of myself. I see what’s going on. It’s like there are four of us standing around a small stage, with a bright light on its center. We watch everything that happens, hear it all, feel it all, but we don’t do a thing until we step into the light. When we’re in the dark, we don’t really much care. Sometimes all of us are in the light, and—” His voice changed slightly—“sometimes two of us are in the light, but one keeps his mouth shut. Another half hour monitoring and I expect to be spelled.” His voice changed back again. “That was my warrior aspect. Right now he’s directing security back in the sheraton. That frees me up to use the body.”

“That’s weird,” Rebel said. “The way your voice changes.

You don’t really have to speak out loud to communicate with yourself, do you? I mean, you can think something and the others will pick up on it?”

“No, I have to talk or at least subvocalize, because… well, thoughts are most of what a persona is, you see. They’re the architecture, they define the shape and existence of a persona, where it starts and where it lets off. We can’t share our thoughts directly—”

“—without breaking down the persona,” Rebel finished for him. “Yeah, that’s right, they’d all merge together, like breaking the membrane between twi

“Eucrasia’s training is really coming back to you.”

Rebel looked away. “You don’t have to sound so cheerful about it. It’s like—I feel these memories closing in on me, crushing me. They’re all hers, and none of them mine, and I can feel myself being affected by them, you know? I think they’re changing me, making me more like her.” She fought down a dark, helpless urge to cry. “Sometimes I think all those memories are going to rise up and drown me.”

Wyeth touched her arm. “Your persona is only a mask,”

he said in his pattern-maker voice. “Ultimately it’s not important. You — your being, your self — are right here, in the compass of your skull and body.” Rebel shivered again under his touch, and she turned to him. Then, it was like the singlestick exercise of climbing your opponent’s arm—it happened all in a furious instant, too fast for thought. Wyeth’s arms crushed her to his body, and they were kissing each other. She wanted him so desperately it was hard to believe that he had reached for her first.

“Come on.” Wyeth drew her back into the orchid, into a space that was dark and sheltered. He slid her cloak from her and set it to the side. His hands moved down her body, rolled away her cache-sexe. He buried his face in the side of her neck.

“Wait,” Rebel said. “I want the big guy.”

He looked at her questioningly.

“Your warrior aspect. I want to make love to you while you’re being the warrior.”

Later, Rebel went out riding with the fool. They laughed and joked as they went no place in particular. “You’re going to have to give up your irrational prejudice against wetprogramming,” Wyeth said, smiling. “It’s useful stuff.

If I didn’t have another persona ru

They rode on and came to a carnival.

It was located where the orchid grew closest to the tanks.

One long vine, in fact, had been disentangled and tied to an airlock; people traveled along it, following the holiday music to where a clearing had been chopped inside the plant.

From outside, the carnival looked like a ramshackle collection of huts and frames caught in the tangled growth.

Within, it was bright with flowers and strings of paper lanterns. Tank towners in cloaks as garish as jungle moths flitted to and fro. Lengths of flash-dried vine had been lashed together to make dueling cages, booths for astrologers and luck-changers, lovers’ mazes, gambling wheels and huckster tables. Artisans were painting panels for a centrifuge ride, conjuring up kings, bulls, starships, and reapers.

A singlestick duel was in progress by the main gate. The samurai glanced at it with interest as they entered.

“Look!” Wyeth drew Rebel into a booth where fairgoers threw waterballs at a distant bozo. “Give me three!” He flung the first with too much force, and it broke into tiny drops that splattered past the clown like rain. The bozo jeered, and Wyeth threw again. This time the ball exploded into a thousand spherelets in the bozo’s face.

“Ah, that felt good!”

When the barker floated him the last waterball, Wyeth winked at the bozo and smashed it into his own face.

Nearby fairgoers laughed in astonishment. Away from the paper lanterns, their eyes were shadowy and their faces pale masks.

Wyeth and Rebel wandered past simple games of rigged chance to hucksters selling jams and candies, carved wooden astronauts, bright straw dolls and dark barrel men. “Right here!” a barker cried. “Yes, yes, yes!” Rebel bought a sugar skull and bit into it. Red jelly oozed from one eye socket. She stared at it in dismay, then laughed.

She was considering some silver bells with toe-ribbonswhen she was struck with sudden unease. Looking up, she saw Wyeth holding a luminous apple the size of a cherry tomato.

“Seven hours?” Wyeth said. “Seven hours Kluster for an apple?”

The huckster was a little man with spidery arms and legs, a lopsided grin, and a crazy look to his dark eyes. He sang:

“Awake, arise, pull out your eyes, And hear what time of day.

And when you have done, pull out your tongue And see what you can say!”

Then, speaking to Wyeth, “Ah, but the shyapple is no ordinary fruit; no, it has a worm at its heart.”

“What does the worm do?”

“Why it eats, sir. It eats and excretes, until it drowns in its own liquor.” He plucked the apple from Wyeth’s fingers. “You must swallow it whole: core, pips, and aye.

Like thus.

“What did I dream? I do not know; The fragments fly like chaff.

Yet strange my mind was tickled so I ca

Then, speaking again, “My name is Billy Bejesus and I live in a tree. If I’m not there yet, why then that must be me.” He tumblesaulted over in the air, kicking his heels.

Appalled and intrigued, Wyeth turned to Rebel. “Can you make any sense of this madman’s ranting?”

“Don’t touch those things! Don’t you know a shyapple when you see one?” Big-eyed, Wyeth shook his head.

“They’re mind alterers. By the sound of it, this lot is just directed hallucinogens, but a shyapple can be prepared to do almost anything—to give you a skill, to make you mad, to bring you sanity. Some are prepared so they’ll negate themselves after a few hours, and others are… permanent.

You wouldn’t want to put one in your mouth without knowing what it does, first.”

“Really? Chemical wetprogramming?” Wyeth rubbed a fingertip over the bright skin, held it to his nose, and sniffed gingerly. “How does it work?”