Vacumn Flowers

Somewhere, Wyeth was fighting a wizard’s duel with the Comprise. Possibly it was already over. But here, sitting and chatting and laughing, all was peace. A girl who ducked her head, coloring, whenever spoken to, brought out a flute and began to play. Somebody produced two short metal pipes and provided percussion. Soon a band had coalesced and people were dancing.

Rebel didn’t join in. To her way of thinking, zero-gravity dancing was like zero-gravity sex, a lightweight version of the real thing. While Billy drew his circuits, she attached him to a programmer. “Don’t wriggle,” she said, and put him in a trance. Her hands slid down the wafers, and she lost herself in the delicate art of editing. This was the kind of work both her personas enjoyed, and for at least an hour she had no clear idea who she was. Then her hands hovered over the wafers in indecision and drew away.

With a sigh, she removed the adhesion disks. Billy stirred.

Fu-ya’s woman, Gretzin, said, “Is your little boy all right now?”

“I’m just the doctor,” Eucrasia said irritably. “The little boy doesn’t belong to me or anybody else for that matter.

He’s an orphan, I guess.” Then, with a gentle internal shift, she was Rebel again. “He’ll need lots more work before he’s all right. I only dared make minor changes, because he’s so fragile. There’s only a trace of personality to work on—just the memory of a hallucinogenic persona, really. It’s not the easiest thing to set right.”

Fu-ya swam up and lifted the child away. “Come on, Billy. I’ll show you how to fold a paper bird.”

Gretzin stared after the two. “I didn’t really think he was your little boy. I just kind of hoped.” She snorted. “Paper birds!”

The sheraton was a mess. Uprooted trees floated over drowned parasols in the ponds. Rebel skirted a pile of broken glass. She trailed a finger along a wall, and it came up stained with soot. “Where’s Billy?” Wyeth asked, coming up on her suddenly.

“I found a couple in the orchid and hired them to look after him. He’s staying in their village.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I thought they’d be good for him. A little quiet living should strengthen his sense of identity enough for me to try a bit more editing.” They matched strides. “Oh hell, Billy took a shine to Fu-ya, and when I tried to take him away, he started screaming hysterically. I was afraid if I separated them his emotions might run out of control and collapse what little mental structure he has.”

“Hmmm.” They stepped around a team of wallknobbers, gilders, and scrimshaw artisans. Workers were everywhere, making repairs. “Look here. I want to show you something.”

A morgue had been set up in the conference room, the corpses laid out on gurneys by the goldfish stream. There were seven cadavers, all Comprise. “I panicked them into moving early,” Wyeth said. “That’s one reason the casualties were so low. They knew they couldn’t take over the sheraton permanently and that they’d have to pay reparations for any humans killed.” He stopped at a Comprise corpse whose torso was cut open and the skin peeled back. Rebel looked down at the glistening organs, horrified and fascinated. Metal glinted here and there.

Wyeth picked up a hand and turned it over. “See here?

Retractable patch leads inside each fingertip. All she had to do was bite off a bit of callus on the tip and she could interface with anything. There are three separate recte

“My God,” Rebel said. “Are they all like this?”

“No, just five. We call them lockpicks because their sole purpose is to break into computer systems. The Comprise hide a few inside every group they send into human space.

They were easy to spot because they’re carrying all that metal within them. As soon as we took them out, the fight was over.”

“Killed.” Constance limped in, trailed closely by Freeboy. He had a dirty bandage on his head. “You did not

‘take them out,’ Mr. Wyeth. You killed them.” Several embroidered panels in her clothing were stained; she reeked of smoke and wrath.

“Aren’t you supposed to be tending to the shrubberies, Moorfields?”

“My people are taking care of that. I want to know why you provoked this senseless, brutal battle.”

A tech reached into an access hatch by the foot of the bridge. The sky flickered and went on. Blue, with big, fleecy clouds.

“Oh, hardly a battle.” Wyeth smiled. “And far from senseless. It certainly took the starch out of the Comprise.

Half of them are down with shyapple sickness. Also, I learned a great deal from this incident. Means of fighting the Comprise, which I’ve taken the liberty of taping and sending to every major public data bank in the System.

They’ll be there when they’re needed.” His voice switched from warrior to mystic. “Someday, humanity is going to have to fight the Comprise. Someday the conflict will be out in the open. And when that happens, we’ll be the tiniest bit better prepared because of today.”

“You sound like you’re looking forward to a nice, big war.”

“No, but unlike you, I see it as inevitable. Ah, here are the lawyers.” Two men in legalface, one People’s, the other Kluster, strode up. Wyeth bowed to Rebel. “Shall we?”

They crossed the bridge and walked in among the Comprise. First came Wyeth, arm in arm with Rebel, and then the lawyers. Constance hesitated, then followed, and Freeboy scuttled after her.

Four samurai brought up the rear. “Over the Rubicon,”

Wyeth said cheerily, but to Rebel it felt more like crossing the Styx, to the land where the bloodless dead dwell in perfect equality. The Comprise parted for them, closing back around the group as it passed. Hundreds of eyes stared at them.

Wyeth chose a man at random, grabbed him by the shoulders, and said, “You. Can you talk? We’ll talk through this individual.”

“That is not necessary,” the Comprise said.

“That’s how we’ll do it anyway. I’m going to ask you some questions. If I am not satisfied with the answers, I’ll charge you with violent aggression and see to it that the four hundred however many of you never rejoin Earth again. Do you want that? I can do that to you.”

The Comprise stirred uneasily. “You manipulated us into attacking you.”

“So what?” Wyeth turned to his lawyers. “Does that make any difference legally?”

“No.”

“No.”

Rebel touched her bracelet and saw the tangled lines of energy linking the Comprise in a shimmering haze.

Electromagnetic fields rose from them like wings.

Directional beams blinked on and off, converging upon the spokesman. He flashed bright as the eye of a coileddragon. “Ask, then.”

“What does the Comprise want?”

Almost scornfully, the Comprise said, “What does any organism want? To live, to grow, and to employ one’s abilities constructively.”

“I was thinking of something a little less sweeping. Why did you want the shyapples so badly? You almost killed young Freeboy here, trying to get information he didn’t even have. What information were you hoping to find?

What did you want that badly?”

“Earth is interested in all new developments in the mind arts.”

“Answers,” Wyeth said grimly.

Again the Comprise shifted in agitation. Individuals jostled against each other; heads turned at random.

Several cried out. “We…” the spokesman began. He paused as the interactive fields shifted configurations wildly, withdrew, and then closed in about him. “We seek integrity. We seek a means of maintaining our identity as Comprise when we are separated from Earth.”

“Integrity? I don’t understand.”

“Away from Earth, we are cut off, orphaned,” the Comprise said. “We lose identity. You could not understand. Our sense of being Earth fades and shifts. We become Other. You would say individual. We do not desire this. It is painful to us.”