Vacumn Flowers

He waited, and none of his other voices spoke up. “Good.

At least we’re agreed about that.” He rolled the dice again.

“For God’s sake, what is it with you and those dice?”

“Random number generator. By randomizing my tactics, I keep Wismon from anticipating me. Already the dice have decided on direct confrontation on his home turf. Now they’re deciding how many samurai I take with me.” He rolled again, fell silent.

In the dark and quiet, Rebel’s thoughts kept returning to Billy. His persona was fragile. Any crude attempt at reprogramming would destroy him, collapsing not only his personality structure, but much of his autonymous control systems as well. The best he could hope for was permanent catatonia. At worst, he might die. “They wouldn’t reprogram the children, would they?”

“Depends,” Wyeth answered abstractedly. “Slavers wouldn’t need to, once they’ve grabbed the parents. But who can say, with Wismon? We don’t even know why he did it. My people tell me this is the only orchid village he’s hit. That’s not just coincidence.” He took a deep breath.

“Well. Time to go meet the man.”

Impulsively, Rebel asked, “Can I come with you?”

Wyeth shook the dice, looked at them.

“Yes.”

As the elevator slowly rose toward the central docking ring, Rebel thought to ask: “How many samurai are you bringing?”

“None,” Wyeth said somberly. His mischievous voice came up. “That’ll sure take Wismon by surprise. I can’t wait to see how we’re going to handle him.”

They rode broomsticks around the orchid. As the tanks swelled, they saw that the metal exteriors were covered with glowing lines of paint—gang chops, territorial markings, threats and warnings, a small propaganda war in graffiti. There was no traffic. Everyone had either fled or been impressed into the gangs. “I’m afraid,” Rebel said.

Beside her, Wyeth gri

The closer she got to the tanks, the less clear Rebel’s motives for going were to her. She’d wanted to have a hand in rescuing Billy, but now that they were at the crunch point, that desire seemed sourceless and quixotic.

She wasn’t exactly close to the child. Certainly he didn’t much care for her. So why was she doing this?

Maybe because Eucrasia wouldn’t have.

They swooped down on Tank Fourteen. The airlock’s outer doors had been blown away in some recent skirmish, and there were blast marks among the rust. But to judge by the way a few dimly-seen guards floated within, slow and unconcerned, the gang wars were obviously over.

At the locks, bright-eyed women kicked out of the shadows to take their broomsticks and search them for weapons. The women were painted with bioluminescent tiger-stripes, not just on their faces, but down their bodies as well, and they were all stark naked. “We’ve come to see Wismon,” Wyeth said when one brought out a programming unit. “Tell him that his mentor wishes to speak with him.”

The women glanced at one another quickly, uncomprehendingly. One smiled and licked her lips. She held up the programmer again, and Wyeth impatiently pushed it away. “Listen, your boss isn’t going to—”

With a snarl, the woman seized his head in both hands and twisted. Wyeth grunted in pain as he spun about. The cat woman’s legs wrapped about his thighs, and her hands cupped his chin. She yanked back, and he floated helplessly.

All this happened in an instant. “Hey!” Rebel said, and then she was floating in a similar hold, unable to talk and barely able to breathe. She tried to hit the woman on her back, but it was an awkward reach, and her hardest blows were soft taps when they landed.

In a wash of horror, Rebel saw the cat women attach the programmer to Wyeth and switch it on. He stiffened. The device buzzed softly to itself. I won’t let them do that to me, Rebel promised herself. I’ll die first. She struggled in her captor’s iron hold.

Those guards not directly involved watched with alert interest. They prowled restlessly about the lock without ever once exchanging a word; their silence was superhuman. Two almost collided, but disdainfully, carelessly, slapped hands together and bounced off each other. Finally a red light flashed on the programmer, and Wyeth was released. He floated dead-eyed and unresponsive.

The women turned to Rebel.

“Heads up, Sunshine!” Lashing out with one foot, Wyeth kicked the cheap little programmer from one cat woman’s hands, right into the face of the woman who held Rebel captive. For an instant she was free. Spi

One woman retrieved the programmer, broke it open, reassembled it. She ran a finger over Wyeth’s forehead, then brought her face close to his and sniffed his lips. She looked puzzled. Meanwhile, others had bound his wrists and ankles together behind his back and done the same to Rebel. “Wyeth?” Rebel asked. “Are you okay?”

“Oh yeah,” Wyeth said. Two of the guards looped ropes around their wrists and kicked off. They were yanked after. “That’s my best trick. When we built me, I was given access to my own metaprogrammer. All the time they were programming one persona up, another persona was programming it down.”

“Oh.”

They were hauled through the deserted corridors of the tank town. Without the traffic continually sweeping them clean, the narrow corridors were dense with trash. The flowers seemed barely able to lighten the gloom, and there was a thrumming quality to the silence, like vastly extenuated echoes of distant bass rumblings. The stench of rot and decay was almost unbearable.

They were taken to Wismon.

“Ah, mentor! As always, a surprise to see you. What a delight!”

The fat man floated behind a guard of sullen rude boys, his mad little eyes dark with i

Lovely, aren’t they?”

“They’re certainly something,” Wyeth said. “What have you done to them?” Behind him, the women snapped his bonds and then Rebel’s. There were two pairs of rings by Wismon’s ankles, and the guards knelt within them,crouching at his feet. He reached out to clumsily pat one on the head, and she arched her back in pleasure.

“I’ve increased their intelligence—they’re quite as smart as am I. Ah, don’t turn pale. I’ve also deprived them of language. They have no symbolic structure at all. They ca

All they know is what instructions I’ve programmed into them. Isn’t that marvelous? They’re perfectly i

They act by instinct alone.”

“They’re grotesque,” Rebel said.

“They are very beautiful animals,” Wismon said reprovingly. “One of their instincts is to bring me anything out of the ordinary. Anything interesting. Are you still interesting, mentor?”

“I’ve always wondered what sort of society you would create,” Wyeth said.

“Oh, piffle. I’m just having a little fun. I only have three days before we reach Mars, isn’t that right? And then I’ll have to put my toys back in the box and return to a gentlemanly life of quiet contemplation. The pity is that so much time was wasted dealing with factions of petty criminals that might more profitably have been used for my researches.”

“You’re going to restore everyone you’ve forcibly programmed?” Wyeth sounded skeptical.

“Oh, absolutely. Except for my rude boys, of course. I had them before all this began. And I think I’ll keep my beautiful little girls, how could I ever bring myself to give them up? And there are a few more that might prove useful in the future—but enough of that! I mentioned my researches? Well, I flatter myself that I’ve made some small progress. I have created a garden—no, a menagerie of new minds. Perhaps you’d care for a brief tour of the highlights?”