Vacumn Flowers

“Look about you,” Rosebuds said. “How many plants do you see? We ca

And yet, as you say, the need is great. You will find thatthere is much for you to do when you take on citizenship.”

“No, no, not me!” Freeboy held up his hands, laughing.

“I’m going back to Hibrasil with all the money I earned on this swing through the System, and then some. Matter of fact, I just made a bundle on the currency exchange today.”

“You didn’t exchange outside currency for People’s credit?” Bors looked concerned.

“Is there a problem?” Freeboy asked, the smile dying on his face.

“Our social systems are built to support the ideal of the selfless, communal citizen,” Rosebuds said. “Since the amassing of private wealth is destructive to the personality, we have ways of discouraging it. That is why, for example, we are assigned new living quarters daily.

When you have to move all that you own once a day, you learn to retain only that which has true value. Similarly, our economy has an engineered inflation rate of ten thousand percent daily.”

Freeboy turned to Bors. “What does that mean?”

“It means that People’s credit has to be spent immediately. Otherwise it disappears. If you’ve held on to it for an hour, it’s practically worthless.”

Freeboy stood, pale with outrage. “I…” He shook a finger at Wyeth. “All I went through working for you! And… I…”

He choked and, turning away, fled.

Turning over another card, Rosebuds said, “This is a vision of the living quarters we will share in the new civilization.”

Wyeth reached out, put a hand over the cards. “What I’d really like to talk about is your attitude toward the Comprise. I’ve been watching, and it’s obvious to me that you’re not taking proper precautions against them. I’ve even seen some using your data ports. You obviously have no appreciation of how dangerous they are.”

“The People ca

“Have you used the facilities here yet?” Bors asked Rebel, smiling.

“Oh, God! The first time I sat down on a crapper and a man came up and sat down beside me, I almost died. And then he saw me turning red, and wanted to know what the problem was.” Rebel laughed, and Bors and Wyeth joined her.

The citizens looked puzzled. “I don’t understand,” one said, and when Rebel tried to explain, “But where is the humor in that?”

Rebel simply shook her head.

A few minutes later the new citizens took their trays and left. “People come and go so quickly around here,” Rebel marveled.

“That’s because mealtime is the only chance they get to socialize,” Bors said. “Every hour of their day is spent constructively. If they’re not working, they’re studying. If they’re not working or studying, they’re asleep. This is the only chance they get to simply talk.”

“You seem to know a lot about the subject.”

“Yes, I do, don’t I?” Bors said, pleased.

When Rebel led Wyeth back to diamond blue seventeen, he glanced quickly at his crates and said, “Snug, isn’t it?”

Then, in his warrior voice: “Listen, I want to do a little poking around in the public data base, see how thoroughly the Comprise have infiltrated it. Why don’t you wait here for me? I won’t be long.”

Rebel knew better than to argue with Wyeth’s warriorpersona. She sat down in the sleepspace. There was nothing to do here save listen to the constant light-gravity scuffle of citizens in the hall. After ten minutes of that she began to appreciate the motivating power of boredom.

Given the chance, she would gladly have volunteered to scrape vacuum flowers, just to have something to do.

Rosebuds appeared in the doorway. She stood there silently, her cloak open.

“He’s not here,” Rebel said grimly. “And you can’t have him, anyway.”

Doffing her cloak, Rosebuds stepped within. She left her boots by the door and sat beside Rebel. “I didn’t come here for him.” She put a hand on Rebel’s knee. “The Stavka is very concerned about you. I informed them that you were brought up by a renegade, and they were worried that this may have made you anti-sex, possessive, and private.” Her hand slid up Rebel’s thigh.

The woman’s tone was so matter-of-fact that it was not until she started to peel away Rebel’s cache-sexe that Rebel realized what she was talking about. With a startled cry she cringed back in the sleepspace, tugging her clothing up and raising knees to chin so that her legs formed a barrier between them. “Hey! Wait a minute, I’m not into that kind of—”

“We could tell,” Rosebuds said. “That is one reason we sent you a woman. To help in your healing. You are depriving yourself of many modes of pleasure needlessly.”

“Yeah, well, Wyeth will be back in a minute, so maybe you’d better go.”

“There’s room for him as well. Perhaps that would be the quickest way of freeing you from your possessiveness.”

She raised a leg and gently ran her foot up the side of Rebel’s body, tweaking her earlobe between first and second toes. “Pleasure is communal. Relax. Enjoy yourself.”

“But I don’t want to enjoy myself!” Rebel cried. “Not that way! All I want is Wyeth and… and…”

“This isn’t working,” Rosebuds said scornfully. “Look at you. You are so fearful. Do you think I am going to take you by force? Let me tell you something, I see how you sneer at the great dream of terraforming and at the People. You think our lives are constricted, but they are not half so narrow as your own. The citizenship program makes us full human beings. A citizen understands duty, sex, work, pleasure, friendship, and sacrifice, and welcomes them all. I have been down to the surface five times, and that is a very dangerous place. I have been as close to death as I am to you now, and I never once showed fear. You laugh at the People because we are all the same. But we are heroes, every one of us. I am one, and I know!”

She pulled on her boots and left.

When Wyeth returned, they made love. It was a sweaty, desperate lovemaking, and Rebel put all she had into it. I am not afraid, she told herself, and I am not missing any pleasure. At the moment of climax, as she squeezed Wyeth tight inside her and dug her nails so deeply into the flesh of his back that they drew blood, he groaned into her ear,

“I love you.”

“Hah? What?” she said blankly.

“I love you.” Lying weak and exhausted beside her, Wyeth brushed her cheek with his own. “I really do.”

“What are you talking about?” This was all too ludicrous to be real. “Which one of you? Or should I say, how many?”

“Listen to me.” Wyeth rolled atop her, gazed straight into her eyes. “I… don’t think that love is a matter of persona, of personality. I think it goes deeper than that.”

His fist thumped his chest. “I love you, Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark. I think I would love you no matter who I was.”

Silent and unblinking, Rebel looked at him until she felt her eyes sliding out of focus, and blinked and had to say something. “Why are you telling me this now?”

She didn’t accent that last word, but it hovered between them, cold and harsh as truth itself. There couldn’t be much time left to her.

Eucrasia’s memories had returned, and the persona could not be far behind. And then Rebel would be melted down, back into the ocean of soul, and exist no more.

“Why now?” she repeated. Maybe it didn’t matter to him who she was—Rebel or Eucrasia. Bitter thought.

He read her eyes. “It’s not Eucrasia. It’s not this body.