Vacuum Flowers by Michael Swanwick Read Free Book Online Page A

opened.
    Rebel was so tired she couldn’t sleep. Lying afloat in her hut, restless and jumpy, she felt so lonely and awful she wanted to die. She twisted and turned in the hammock strings, but no position seemed comfortable. She was as lost as a child away from home for the first time, cut loose from security and surrounded by hostile forces against which she had no defense.
    Finally she could take it no longer. Throwing on her clothes, she darted across the court to Wyeth’s hut. He’d talk to her, she was sure. A deft grab on one of the ropes flipped her around and brought her to a dead stop just before his door. It was covered with his cloak. She was about to rattle his wall when she heard his voice within. Was he with someone? A little self-consciously, she floated closer to eavesdrop.
    â€œShe’s trouble,” Wyeth mumbled. “Deutsche Nakasone wants her bad, and anyone who gets in the way is going to be hurt.… So there’s risk! She could be an enormous help to us.… Which ‘she’ are you talking about anyway, Eucrasia or Rebel? … Go with the current occupant, that’s always the easiest course. Whoever comes out on top … I wouldn’t mind getting on top of her.… Oh, get serious! The point is that if we cut a deal with her, we’re risking everything we’ve built so far. It’s an all or nothing gamble.” There was a pause, and then Wyeth said, “Risking everything! That’s just great. We’re risking a half-hour shanty in the slums, some cockeyed plans, and our perfect obscurity. That’s it. What’s the use of saying we’re going up against Earth, if the first good opportunity that comes along, we just sit here on our thumbs? I say either we stand up and be counted, or dissolve the whole thing right now as a bad job. Any argument?”
    The voice stopped, and Rebel drew back from the door. He’s talking about me, she thought. And he’s crazy. Either he’s crazy or he’s something I don’t know about that’s probably worse. A word floated up from Eucrasia’s past. Tetrad. It was a kind of new mind. But that was all she could remember about it. Her body trembled. She wanted very much to turn around and retreat into her hutch.
    No, she thought, I won’t be a coward.
    She rattled the side of Wyeth’s hutch, and a second later he poked out his head. “I heard you talking about me,” she said.
    Wyeth took down his cloak and wrapped it about himself. Rebel got a glimpse of his naked body and reddened. “How much of what I said did you understand?” he asked.
    She shook her head helplessly. “You’re making that face again.”
    Wyeth looked surprised. Then he grinned, and his harsh expression was instantly and totally gone. “I was trying to make up my minds. You’re something of a dilemma for me, Sunshine.”
    â€œSo I gather.”
    â€œLook, I’m only in partial agreement what to do at this point. Let’s both sleep on it. We can discuss this thing better when we’re rested, okay?”
    Rebel considered it. “Okay.”
    Back in her hutch, she lay half awake for the longest time, thinking wide, empty thoughts. There was a knife fight in the next court, two young bloods with rude boy programs, cursing and swearing at each other as they jockeyed for position. A young couple were going at it hot and heavy not far away, separated from her hut by only an arm’s length of nightflowers. A baby began to cry and was shushed by its mother.
    Closeby, a peeper frog cried out for a mate.
    If you floated right up against them, the iron pipes and tin walls had a distinct odor. It disappeared as you moved away, but was strong up close. There was nothing else quite like that smell. It must stay with slum dwellers, Rebel thought. No matter how far they might get from their tanks, a smell like that would stay with them for the rest of their