Vacumn Flowers

“I’ve been cured of the urge to create new minds, too. I mean, just seeing the monstrosities that Wismon created.”

“Yeah, well, it’s been rough on both of us. But I still feel that new minds are necessary if the human race is going to face the challenge of Earth. We can’t just walk into the future with wetware evolved sometime in the neolithic and expect…” His voice trailed off, and he slumped back in his chair. “Hell, I’m too tired to talk about it.”

Gretzin returned from the goldfish stream, where Billy had been playing. The child slumped in her arms, his head hooked over her shoulder. Seeing them both seated, she said, “You done with Billy now?”

“Oh,” Wyeth said groggily. “Okay, sure. Why don’t you find someplace to put him, and then you can hunt up the paymaster and get your money. I’ll have them give you double pay. You deserve it after all you’ve been through.”

“Yeah, right,” Gretzin said. “Tell you what, I’ll take Billy back to the village first and get his things. Fu-ya is there now, getting them together. Pictures and crap. Won’t take but an hour. I can pick up my pay when I get back.”

“Fine.” Wyeth waved a hand of dismissal, and Gretzin left.

“Be right back,” Rebel said, and followed after. She caught up to Gretzin in the lobby. Billy was asleep on her shoulder, looking like a shavepate angel. “Listen,” Rebel said. “You can borrow my broomstick, it’s as fast as any.

I’ve got it tethered at the hub.”

Gretzin’s harsh face twisted almost into a smile, and she leaned forward to brush lips dry as old leaves across Rebel’s cheek. “Goodbye,” she said, and stepped into the elevator.

A few minutes later, back in the conference room, Wyeth straightened abruptly. “Hey! Why does she need to take Billy with her to pick up his things? She could leave him sleep here while she did that.” He pitched his voice for an intercom line. “Has the village woman come through there?”

“Yes, sir,” a samurai replied. “She took a broomstick toward the orchid some five minutes ago.”

“Damn!” Wyeth lurched to his feet.

“Wyeth,” Rebel said. “Let her go.”

“What are you talking about? That kid’s got a brilliant future ahead of him. It’d be a crime to waste a talent like his. We can’t let him grow up in the slums without any kind of training.”

When they got to the orchid they found Rebel’s broomstick abandoned by its fringe. The path markings were gone. They were just in time to see a dim, distant figure snatch one last rag from its place and disappear into the gloom.

The village was lost for good.

9

DEIMOS

The geodesic hurtled toward Mars. In its last hour of travel, the stormy red planet grew from the size of a fist to larger than a platter. Deimos crept humbly toward the center of the planet, then suddenly blossomed, dwarfing and eclipsing Mars. To the party watching over the lobby intercom, it seemed they were about to crash into the ungainly-looking moon. Then the geodesic tripped amagnetic trigger and shot into the waiting transit ring. The ring accelerated the space through which it traveled to a velocity equal but opposite in vector to what the geodesic had.

And there it stood.

The Comprise began disassembling the ring. Within the sheraton the assembled employees, everyone from Constance Frog Moorfields down to the lowliest pierrot, cheered. A steelpipe percussion group struck up, and the paymasters broke open their salary machines. Lids were yanked from troughs of wine. “Well,” Wyeth said sadly,

“it’s over.”

Rebel gave him a quick hug.

A few minutes later a party of five citizens entered the geodesic to take possession. They wore cache-sexes the color of mildew, with matching utilitarian cloaks that were recomplicated with straps, loops and cinches, and knee-high gravity boots.

After the delicate paintlines of Eros Kluster, the People’s paint seemed blunt and graceless—a simple green triangle covering nose and eyes. Under the triangles, humorless mouths. The party toured the sheraton in disapproving silence. At last their leader, a man named Stilicho, said, “I suppose it’s what we contracted for.”

“Good. Then you’ll summon a member of the Stavka for me to surrender authority to?” Wyeth asked.

A stern young woman curled her lip in scorn. “You outsiders and your cult of leadership! The Stavka is merely a jurisdictional body chosen by random lot. The People will honor any legal commitment made by any citizen.”

She had a long jaw, grey crewcut hair, and a muscular body with bright, perky nipples, pink as rosebuds.

“That may well be,” Wyeth said. “However, my superiors still require a member of the Stavka. So I’m afraid that your word will not be sufficient.”

“Enough,” Stilicho said impatiently. “I myself am of the Stavka. I will accept all responsibility.”

“May I see your credentials?”

“No.”

Stilicho and Wyeth glared at one another. Wyeth was wearing his warrior face. Jaws set and eyes ablaze, the two reminded Rebel of nothing so much as a pair of tropical apes caught in a silent territorial dispute.

At last Wyeth’s head canted over at a wry angle, and he showed his teeth in a grin. “What the hell, Stilch, your word is good enough for me,” he said. “I’m not proud.”

Before Stilicho could respond, Rosebuds said, “I will take over here.” She slid an arm through Wyeth’s and steered him away from her leader. “It will take several days to decommission this project. In the meantime, the People will provide you with quarters on Deimos.” She glanced at Rebel and added, “And also for your staff.”

“What’s wrong with us staying in the sheraton?” Rebel asked.

“You will be given the same quarters that citizens receive,” Rosebuds said coldly.

“Well, that sounds reasonable.” Wyeth had switched personas again, and he bent over his data controls, eyes already vague with schedules and task rankings. “Rebel, why don’t you get our things ferried over and squared away? I’ll join you as soon as I can.”

Rebel nodded, said nothing. But she lingered for a moment, studying Rosebuds. The woman released Wyeth’s arm and surveyed the lobby. It was hard to tell, under that aloof citizen’s programming, what she might be thinking.

“First thing, this celebration,” Rosebuds said. “This unprogrammed rabble must be cleared away.”

The geodesic was parked at the outskirts of a vast orbital slum anchored by Deimos. Farms, factories, tank towns and wheel hamlets swarmed about the lopsided rock that was patently no true moon but an asteroid captured by Mars eons ago. It was all junk, not a ca

As the hopper flew toward Deimos, pillars rose from the moon’s surface, thread-thin and bright as mirrors. They soared outward hundreds of kilometers, then bent on long stems, like tornadoes, spreading slightly as they were acted on by Mars’ gravitational field. “What the fuck are those?” Rebel asked, and then had to snatch for the grab bars as Stilicho slewed the hopper wildly away from a rising pillar.

“Dust,” Stilicho grunted. He slammed the controls to the side, pulled them back as quickly.

“Pulverized rock,” Vergillia added. “Tailings from our mining and tu

The dust is given an electrostatic charge, polarized, and then shot outward in phased pulses, on the order of seven hundred twenty per Greenwich second, a rate so fast that the flow appears continuous.” The woman was warming to her subject. Rebel looked away, cutting her off. Something about that fanatic drone made her itch.