VACUMN FLOWERS
         Michael Swanwick
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   By the same author
   In the Drift
   ARBOR HOUSE New York
   Copyright © 1987 by Michael Swanwick
   All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in
whole or in part in any form. Published in the United States
of America by Arbor House Publishing Company and in
Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Ltd.
   Manufactured in the United States of America
   Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
   Swanwick, Michael. Vacuum flowers.
   I. Title.
   PS3569.W28V3 1987 813'.54 86-20603
   ISBN 0-87795-870-X


                    For Gardner Dozois


  Thanks are due to Marianne for naming the Pequod,
undifferentiating cells, and seeding a stagnant drop of
water, to Jack Dann for the scripture from Pushkin, to Bob
Walters for supplying plesiosaurs and designing Wyeth’s
vacuum suit, to Greg Frost and Tim Sullivan for last-minute
advice, to Tom Purdom for breakfast beer, to Gardner
   Dozois for the usual reasons, and to Virginia Kidd for
   patience. Financial support was provided by the M. C.
   Porter Endowment for the Arts. And a special debt of
   gratitude is owed Mario Rups, Ed Bryant, and Don Keller for
   irritating remarks.




                                1
                              REBEL



She didn’t know she had died.
   She had, in fact, died twice—by accident the first time,
but suicide later. Now the corporation that owned her had
decided she should die yet again, in order to fuel a million
        throwaway lives over the next few months.
    But Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark knew none of this. She
  knew only that something was wrong and that nobody
                would talk to her about it.
                  “Why am I here?” she asked.
     The doctor’s face loomed over her. It was thin and
covered by a demon mask of red and green wetware paint
     that she could almost read. It had that horrible
 programmed smile that was supposed to be reassuring,
  the corners of the mouth pushing his cheeks into little
 round balls. He directed that death’s head rictus at her.
        “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” he said.
  A line of nuns floated by overhead, their breasts bobbing
innocently, wimples starched and white. They were riding
    the magnetic line at the axis of the city cannister, as
  graceful as small ships. It was a common enough sight,
   even a homey one. But then Rebel’s perception did a
  flipflop and the nuns were unspeakably alien, floating
upside-down against the vast window walls that were cold
with endless stretches of bright glittery stars embedded in
   night. She must have seen the like a thousand times
  before, but now, without warning, her mind shrieked
strange strange strange and she couldn’t make heads or
 tails of what she was seeing. “I can’t remember things,”
  Rebel said. “Sometimes I’m not even sure who I am.”
   “Well, that’s perfectly normal,” the doctor said, “under
  the circumstances.” He disappeared behind her head.
           “Nurse, would you take a look at this?”
   Someone she could not see joined him. They conferred
softly. Gritting her teeth, Rebel said, “I suppose it happens
                      to you all the time.”
  They ignored her. The scent of roses from the divider
hedges was heavy and cloying, thick enough to choke on.
       Traffic continued flowing along the axis.
      If she could have moved so much as an arm, Rebel
 would’ve waited for the doctor to lean too close, and then
       tried to choke the truth out of him. But she was
   immobilized, unable even to move her head. She could
    only stare up at the people floating by and the stars
 wheeling monotonously past. The habitat strips to either
  side of overhead were built up with platforms and false
 hills, rising like islands from a starry sea. By their shores
occasional groups of picnickers ventured onto the window
floor, black specks visible only when they occulted stars or
  other cannister cities. The strange planet went by again.
    “We’ll want to wait another day before surgery,” the
doctor said finally. “But her persona’s stabilized nicely. If
 there aren’t any major changes in her condition, we can
       cut tomorrow.” He moved toward the door.
     “Wait a minute!” Rebel cried. The doctor stopped,
  turned to look at her. Dead eyes surrounded by paint,
 under a brush of red hair. “Have I given permission for
                     this operation?”
  Again he turned that infuriatingly reassuring smile on
  her. “Oh, I don’t think that’s important,” he said, “do
                           you?”
           Before she could answer, he was gone.
      As the nurse adjusted the adhesion disks on Rebel’s
 brow and behind her ears, she briefly leaned into Rebel’s
view. It was a nun, a heavy woman with two chins and eyes
 that burned with visions of God. Earlier, when Rebel was
 still groggy and half-aware, she had introduced herself as
Sister Mary Radha. Now Rebel could see that the nun had
      been tinkering with her own wetware—her mystic
     functions were cranked up so high she could barely
                          function.
   Rebel looked away, to hide her thoughts. “Please turn
  on,” she murmured. The video flat by the foot of her cot
came up, open to the encyclopedia entry for medical codes.
   Hastily, she switched it over to something innocuous.
  Simple-structure atmospheric methane ecologies. She
            pretended to be absorbed in the text.
     Then, as the nurse was leaving, Rebel casually said,
  “Sister? The flat’s at a bad angle for me. Could you tilt it
forward a little?” The nun complied. “Yeah, like that. No, a
  bit … perfect.” Rebel smiled warmly, and for a moment
    Sister Mary Radha basked in this manifestation of
            universal love. Then she floated out.
   “Fucking god-head,” Rebel muttered. Then, to the flat,
                     “Thank you.”
                      It turned itself off.
   The flat’s surface was smooth and polished. Turned off,
 it darkly reflected the foot of Rebel’s cot and the medical
                  code chart hanging there.
  Rebel quickly decoded the reversed symbols. There were
two simplified persona wheels, one marked Original, and
  the other Current. They looked nothing at all like each
  other. Another symbol for wetsurgical prep, and three
more that, boiled down, meant she had no special medical
  needs. And a single line of print below that, where her
name should have been. Rebel read it through twice, letter
       by letter, to make sure there was no mistake:
           Property of Deutsche Nakasone GmbH
    Anger rose up in Rebel like a savage white animal. She
 clenched her teeth and drew back her lips and did not try
 to fight it. She wanted this anger. It was her ally, her only
friend. It raged through her paralyzed body, a hot storm of
                 fangs and claws and violence.
    Then the fury overran her sense of self and swept her
  under. Drowning, she was carried down into the dark
 chaos of helplessness below. Into the murky despair that
   had no name or purpose, where she lost her face, her
   body, her being. She was a demon, blindly watching
 people stream through the air and stars slide to the side,
 and hating them all. Wanting to smash them all together
in her hands, cities and stars and people alike, and smear
  them into a pulpy little ball, as she laughed, with black
           tears running down from her eyes…
                              ***
   She came out of her fugue feeling weak and depressed.
  “Please tell me the time,” she said, and the flat obeyed.
                  Four hours had passed.
     A woman stepped into the niche, a skinny type in
   greenface with a leather tool harness, some kind of
low-level biotech. Humming to herself, she began to trim
the walls. She worked methodically, obsessively, pausing
   every now and then to train a rose back into place.
   “Hey, sport,” Rebel said. “Do me a favor.” Her loginess
 evaporated as the adrenalin began to flow. She flashed a
                           smile.
    “Hmm? Ah! Er… what is it?” With a visible effort, the
       woman pulled herself away from her work.
     “I’m getting out in a couple of hours, and nobody’s
   arranged for any clothing for me. Could you drop by
   wherever-it-is on the way out, and get them to send
                     something over?”
    The woman blinked. “Oh. Uh… sure, I suppose. Isn’t
        your nurse supposed to take care of that?”
  Rebel rolled her eyes. “She sees universal purpose in the
stars, and the meaning of existence in the growth of a rose.
 The little stuff she’s not so good on. Know what I mean?”
 Anyone working in a hospital with a nursing order would
                   find that easy to believe.
      “Well. Yeah, why not?” The woman returned to her
  work, visibly relieved the conversation was over. Twigs
and leaves snowed down from her fingers. By the time she
left, Rebel was sure the woman had forgotten her promise.
   But an hour later an orderly stepped in and wordlessly
 deposited a cloak on the table by her bed. “Sonofabitch,”
  Rebel said softly. She was actually going to break out of
                         this place!
                             ***
       Rebel napped. When she awoke, she spent an
 excruciating hour staring at the people floating through
 the eternal twilight before Sister Mary Radha returned.
  The nun’s belly overhung her cincture, and she was as
               heavily mystic-wired as ever.
  “Sister,” Rebel said, “the leads in my adhesion disks are
out of adjustment. Would you take a look at them?” Then,
when the woman’s hands were deep in the wires, she said,
“You know, there’s a verse by one of your prophets that’s
been running through my head. But I’ve forgotten part. It
 starts: ‘Tormented by thirst of the spirit, I was dragging
myself through a gloomy forest when a six-winged seraph
 appeared to me at the crossroads.’ Are you familiar with
  that? Then it goes”—she closed her eyes, as if trying to
 bring up the words—“ ‘He touched my eyes with fingers
 light as a dream, and my eyes opened wide as those of a
 frightened she eagle. He touched my ears…’ and I forget
                          the rest.”
    Sister Mary Radha’s hands stopped moving. For one
  still, extended moment she said nothing. Then the nun
stared up into the infinite depths of night and murmured,
 “Saint Pushkin.” Her voice rose. “ ‘He touched my ears,
    and roaring and noise filled them, and I heard the
 trembling of the angels, and the movement of creatures
   beneath the seas, and the growing of the grass in the
valleys! And he laid hold of my lips, and tore out my sinful
tongue—’ ” She arched her back and shivered in religious
   ecstasy. Her hands jerked spasmodically. One of the
   adhesion disks was yanked askew, and Rebel’s head
     slammed to the side. But she was still paralyzed.
            “Sister,” Rebel said quietly. “Sister?”
            “Mmmm?” the nun replied dreamily.
 “The doctor wanted you to remove my paralysis now. Do
you remember that? He asked me to remind you.” Rebel
 held her breath. This was the moment when she either
won free or lost it all. Everything depended on how long it
    took Sister Mary Radha to reconnect with reality.
 “Oh,” the nun said. She fumbled with a switch, haltingly
changed two settings. With somnambulant slowness, she
  lifted off the disks. Then she shook her head, smiling
                 vaguely, and wandered out.
  Rebel let out her breath. She could move! But for a long
minute she did not, choosing instead to stare up, unseeing.
      The memory of her reflection in the video flat,
 foreshortened and distorted though it had been, pinned
her to the cot with dread. At last she gathered up courage
 and gingerly, haltingly, held up an arm before her eyes.
                   Slowly she rotated it.
    The arm was whole and its muscles shifted smoothly.
   The skin was a soft, Italian brown, unscarred, lightly
  fuzzed with fine dark hair. The fingers were short, the
 nails a pearly pink. Horrified, Rebel sat bolt upright and
                   stared down her body.
  Her breasts were round and full. Her thighs were a trifle
    heavy, but still muscular. The hospital had left her
cache-sexe on for modesty’s sake, but above it a thin line of
 black hairs marched up her belly like ants. Her legs were
  short, functional, strong. It was a good, healthy body.
  But it was not her body. Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark’s body
 was long and lean and knobby at the elbows and knees.
Her skin was white as porcelain and her hair was mousy
blond. Her hands and feet were long and slender, with an
 artist’s fingers, a concert pianist’s toes. Almost the exact
              opposite of the body she had now.
        I shall go mad, Rebel thought. I will scream.
   But she did neither. She stood and examined her paint
  in the obsidian surface of the flat. Ignoring the strange
   round face with button nose and dark eyes—eyes that
flashed animal fear at her. A line of red paint ran from ear
   to ear, like a mask, with spiky wing lines flying up the
 brows. “Please turn on,” she said, and looked it up under
    wetware codes. Logically enough, it identifed her as
              Hospital Patient, Wetsurgery Prep.
   The paint smeared. It took only a second to change the
  markings to Outpatient, Wetsurgery Postop. Two small
antennae now reached down from the eyes, a second pair
of wings sprouted on the forehead. She wrapped the cloak
 about her, hood up, and stepped out of her niche, onto a
                     flagstone walk.
     The walk ran between high rosehedges, angled into
another. She was swept up in a flow of medical personnel
  in gowns that matched their facepaint masks—surgical
greens, diagnostics blues, wetware reds—and a sprinkling
   of civilians in their cloaks. They strode along crisply,
blankly, as self-absorbed as robots. Rebel moved invisibly
     among them, gliding along on tiptoe since it was a
                      gravity-light area.
  She moved confidently at first, cloak streaming in her
wake. Then the walk branched, and branched again, and
  she was hopelessly lost in the rose maze, among the
hundreds of niches where patients were packed tight as
 larvae in a hive. Without warning, she felt naked and
 exposed, and she couldn’t remember how to walk. All
 those complex motions. In a panic, she pulled her cloak
               about her and stumbled.
    The zombies swirled by, stepping deftly aside as she
fought for balance. Cold faces glanced quickly at her, then
                           away.
     Just as she went sprawling, an arm reached out and
snagged her elbow, and she was hauled gracelessly to her
    feet. Turning, she found herself looking into a thin,
vulpine face slashed by a single orange wetware line. The
 stranger smiled, narrow jaw, sharp little teeth. He had a
painful grip on her arm, just above the elbow. “This way,”
                          he said.
   “That’s okay, sport,” Rebel said quickly. “I just lost my
 footing. Point me the right way out, and I’d be grateful.”
     “Oh bullshit,” the man said. “They’d’ve caught you
  already if anybody knew you were missing yet.” Rebel
yanked her arm free and found that her new, unfamiliar
  body was trembling with adrenalin reaction. The man
 smiled condescendingly. “Listen, I know somebody who
can help you out of this mess. Do you want to meet her or
                          not?”
                             ***
  They were on the spine of their habitat island, where the
   giant druid oaks grew. One spread its limbs over the
  commercial maze of shops and taverns bordering the
hospital. Its trunk reached halfway to the axis. Looking up
   as they strolled, Rebel saw stars blinking in its upper
reaches, appearing and disappearing in the gaps between
  leaves. “Hell of a stunt, escaping from full therapeutic
paralysis,” the man said. “I’d love to know how you did it.”
 Then, when she did not respond, “Hey. My name’s Jerzy
                          Heisen.”
   In among the branches, leaves descended slowly, barely
    moving through the suspended dust, as if the air had
 thickened to hold them up. In the soft light, the dust and
  leaves shared a stillness that was actually slow, tireless
motion, an endless eddying as ponderous and inevitable
   as the rotation of spiral galaxies. “Is that so?” Rebel
wished she could climb up the tree, in among the floating
twigs and detritus, so like the vast tidal fronts of home. “I
  take it from your knowing hints that I needn’t bother
                   introducing myself.”
      “Oh, I know all about you.” They passed between
displays of body jewelry: silverplated armbands gleaming
    softly under blue spots, some sparkling with Lunar
diamonds, impact emeralds, even Columbian tourmaline.
 “You’re a persona bum, currently suffering from a major
 personality erasure—self-induced, by the way—and held
together by a prototypical identity overlay that is, properly
     speaking, the property of the Deutsche Nakasone
       Gesellschaft. Your name is Eucrasia Walsh.”
     “No, it’s—” She stopped, bewildered. The name did
sound familiar, in a crazy kind of way, as if Heisen had put
      a name to all that was ugly within her, to all the
 self-pitying and wounded hatred she sank into when her
  mood turned dark. The stale, dusty smell of defeat and
 weary guilt rose up within her, and she ducked her head.
       Heisen took her elbow and urged her forward.
   “Confused, eh? Well, that’s perfectly normal,” he said,
               “under the circumstances.”
   She looked directly at him then, and something about
  his face, the small pinched lines of it, the long narrow
 nose, that brush of red hair… She knew that face. It took
  only a small act of imagination to see it covered with a
 demon mask of red and green lines. “You’re my doctor!”
  “Your wetsurgeon, yeah.” The walk bridged a pond thick
 with water lilies. Pierrots waited on tables by the water’s
edge. “Not to worry, though—I’m off-program. I wouldn’t
 turn my worst enemy over to those bastards at Deutsche
   Nakasone on my own time. Not that I have any choice
  when I’m programmed up…” The crowd thickened and
slowed and came to a halt. “Here. We go downtown now.”
   The elevator bank was set by the druid tree’s trunk, its
vacuum sleeve tunneling right through the root network.
  The cars were dirty and harshly lit and a whiff of urine
and stale body sweat emanated from them. As the crowd
  swept forward, Rebel stared up wistfully, flashing on a
 quick fantasy: She would fight her way free of the crush
   and scramble up the tree trunk, nimble as a squirrel,
 moving faster and faster as she swarmed higher and the
 gravity grew less, surging from limb to limb. Until, at the
very top, she would pull knees to chest, brace toes against
 bark, and leap… soaring high into the air, body taut and
outstretched, her flight slowing gradually, until at the last
  possible instant she’d touch axis and be snagged by the
magnetic line, to be hauled far and away from here in the
               time it took to draw a breath.
   (But she didn’t have the armbands or leg rings for the
 magnetic field to grab. She would plummet like a stone,
with excruciating slowness at first, then faster, a wingless
 Icarus, curving down to smash bloody dead against the
           city walks. It was a stupid fantasy.)
    “Deutsche Nakasone is going to come looking for you.
   You know that?” They stepped into a car along with a
   hundred others. The doors sighed shut and the floor
dropped. “They want a clean recording of that personality
  of yours. And then they want to revert you to Eucrasia
 Walsh. Out of the goodness of their corporate heart, you
ask? Shit. They’re just worried about retaining copyright.”
Heisen’s face was so close to hers that their hoods kissed.
  His breath was sour as he murmured in her ear. “They
 don’t care that to you—the present you, the one you think
          you are—it’ll be just the same as dying.”
  Some of the elevator stayed behind to let off passengers;
the rest continued downward. A black-and-white painted
 rude boy with a metal star hung about his neck cruised
  Rebel, hooking a fist on his hip and throwing back his
  cloak to reveal a body-length strip of flesh. She looked
    away, wrapping her cloak tightly about her, and he
   laughed. “But why? Why are they doing this to me?”
  Heisen sighed. “It’s a simple enough story,” he said, “if
an ugly one. Do you remember being Eucrasia? Working
                  as a persona bum?”
     The memory was there, but it was painful and Rebel
 flinched away from it. It keyed into the suicidal madness
  she had fallen into earlier, and she wanted to keep her
distance from that. Though like a tongue returning again
and again to worry at an aching tooth, her thoughts had a
    will of their own. “My memories are all in a jumble.”
   Another slice of elevator stayed behind and another.
 They stepped back. Heisen glanced around at the blank
  faces. “Well, tell you what, let’s not go into that here.
 Somebody might hear. I’ll give you the story at Snow’s.”
    The elevator opened. Hot, steamy air breathed into
  Rebel’s face. This low, the gravity was over Greenwich
normal, and she felt clumsy and heavy-footed. They were
 jostled forward into a vasty cavern of interlocking kelp
   bars and surgical parlors, gambling lofts and blade
 bazaars. A shifting holo banner struck her eye, and she
 winced. Three strains of music clashed; the subimbeds
made her feel anxious and restless. Sweat sheened up on
   her body. I’ve been here before, she thought. No, I
                           haven’t.
     “Down Bakuninstrasse,” Heisen said. Away from the
  uptown elevators the shops thinned and were broken by
     ebony stretches of building foundation and habitat
 supports. Light flared as they passed a wetware mall, and
      Heisen stopped and pointed within. Rebel stared:
Customers edged down narrow aisles, passing slow hands
over the endless racks. Now and then somebody would lift
a wafer and slide into one of the programming booths that
  lined the rear wall. Advertising holos flashed overhead:
    suzy vacuum, said one. She looked to be some kind of
    Amazon. The most beautiful boy Rebel had ever seen
floated over the single word angelus. And then she spotted
  the Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark banner. Against a starry
backdrop was a woman who was not her, doing something
     she would never do. Rebel stared at it, horrified.
     “Notice the little comets in the background? You
     treehangers are very fashionable this season.”
     Rebel turned her stunned face toward Heisen. He
                       shrugged.
  “Prepublicity. They’ve got a lot of money tied up in you. I
    wanted you to see what an expensive little piece of
       developmental wetware you are. Come on.”
   Down a slideway and into an access corridor with long
   stretches of black stressed slag. On the lower reaches
  slogans were crudely permasprayed in nightglo colors,
  one over the other, in a tangled and almost incoherent
        snarl, stay yourself god hates was overrun by
FREEMINDSFREEMINDSFREEMINDS which raged over
    BURN BRIGHT BRAIN before smashing up against
             SHAPESHIFTERSFACE DANCERS
WEREWOLFVAMPIRES GOTO HELL. Someone had made
    a serious effort to erase a wheel logo with the words
EARTH FRIEND about it. Beneath the graffiti a workman
 sat on a crate facing the wall. He had removed an access
hatch and was cyborged into a tangle of color-coded wires.
  Around a corner they passed a sling city. The burn cases
 stumbled down, looking for handouts. They babbled in
endless monotones, their minds rotted out with God, sex,
     information, their reflexes shattered, their faces
vacant-eyed and twitching. Heisen hissed and stepped up
 his pace. “Scum!” he gasped once they were safely past.
“They ought to be…” They turned down a yet smaller run
 where garbage was mulched thin against the street and
 starting to ferment. The stench of rotting squid and old
 grease hung in the air, and the soles of Rebel’s feet were
                       going black.
 Rebel glanced at Heisen and was shocked to see the man
 was trembling. Sweat poured down a face gone fishbelly
 white. “God damn, sport,” she said. “What’s wrong with
                         you?”
   “It’s just the wetware.” Heisen waved a hand at his face.
  “I keep the imaginative processes cranked way up, so I’ll
  be fast to pick up on the main chance, right? Makes me a
 touch… paranoid, though.” They stepped down a slanting
gallery where most of the overheads had been smashed or
stolen. Exhaust fans grumbled in shadow. Tangles of black
cable drooped from the ceiling; they had to duck under the
lower loops. “God damn her,” Heisen fretted. “She doesn’t
 have to have her office down here, she just wants all that
     space. I wish…” They rounded a final corner and he
      pointed to a door grey with urban grime. “Here.”
  Over the doorway hung a flickering neon switchblade, a
 piece of antique technology that must have cost a fortune
 to recreate. It buzzed and crackled, tinging the shadows
red. The knife’s blade blinked off and on, as if snapping in
and out of the handle. On the center of the door was taped
         a small white rectangle, a business card:
                            snow
                       the cutting edge
       ostend kropotkinkorridor bei berkmangallerie
                 neues-hoch-kamden, E.K.
             “Snow?” Heisen said uncertainly.
         The door opened, and they stepped within.
                             ***
   Whatever Rebel might have been expecting, it was not
 this: a room so large and empty she could not guess its
 size. Eggshell-textured walls, white and featureless. No
   furniture. The only item in all that space was a small
prayer rug in its center. A solitary figure knelt there, hood
 down, shaven head bowed. The room was chilled to an
ambient that was, after a moment’s relief, as oppressive as
                      the heat outside.
    They walked forward. This was the ultimate form of
ostentation among technology freaks—to have a system so
   complete and sophisticated that nothing showed; no
machines, no wires, no controls. The room would be laced
  with an invisible tracery of trigger-beams, directional
 mikes and subvocal pickups. There was power here, for
               one who knew its geography.
     The woman raised her head, fixed Rebel with cold
 snakelike eyes. Her skull was white as marble, and her
  face was painted in a hexangular pattern suggestive of
starbursts and ice crystals. “What have you stolen for me
                    this time, Jerzy?”
    The color was back in Heisen’s face. He showed teeth
  again, and flamboyantly threw back his cloak to allow
  himself a sweeping, mocking bow. “May I present,” he
said, “the only clean copy in existence of next month’s lead
             release from Deutsche Nakasone.”
     The woman did not move. “How did this happen?”
  “What a pleasure it is to see you, Jerzy, won’t you have a
chair?” The little man grinned cockily. “Isn’t that what you
   meant to say, Snow? Or are we expected to sit on the
                           floor?”
     Snow moved her head slightly, the sort of movement a
    lizard might make on a cold morning after prolonged
  stasis. “Behind you.” Rebel turned and almost stumbled
  into a Queen Anne chair. Its twin rested neatly beside it.
       Reflexively she stepped back. Heisen, too, looked
unnerved. However the chairs had been sleight-of-handed
 into existence, it was as pure and uncluttered an effect as
                     any medieval miracle.
    They sat, and there was an odd glint in Snow’s eyes as
they faced her again. Was it amusement, Rebel wondered?
  If so, it was buried deep, Heisen cleared his throat and
 said, “This is Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark. Two days ago she
  was a persona bum, name of Eucrasia Walsh. Eucrasia
was doing prelim on a string of optioned wetsets when she
    burned on the Mudlark wafer and popped her base.
         Wound up in Our Lady of Roses, and—”
  “Hold it right there, chucko!” Rebel said angrily. “Reel it
    back and give it to me without the gobbledegook.”
    Heisen glanced at Snow and she nodded slightly. He
   began again, this time directing his speech at Rebel.
“Deutsche Nakasone reviews a lot of wetware every day.
Most of it is never used, but it all has to be evaluated. They
hire persona bums to do the first screening. Not much to
           it. They wire you up, suppress your base
personality—that’s Eucrasia—program in a new persona,
test it, deprogram it, then program you back to your base
       self. And start all over again. Sound familiar?”
 “I… think I remember now,” Rebel said. Then, urgently,
 “But it doesn’t feel like anything I’ve done. It’s like it all
              happened to somebody else.”
     “I’m coming to that,” Heisen said. “The thing is that
   persona bums are all notoriously unstable. They’re all
suicidally unhappy types—that’s how they end up with that
  kind of job, you see? They’re looking to be Mister Right.
 But the joke is that they have such miserable experience
   structures they’re never happy as anyone. Experience
    always dominates, as we say.” He paused a beat and
  looked triumphantly at Snow. “Only this time it didn’t.”
     Snow said nothing. After an uncomfortable pause,
Heisen said, “Yeah. We’ve got the exception that disproves
the rule. Our Eucrasia powered on, tried the persona—and
she liked it. She liked it so much that she poured a glass of
    water into the programmer and shorted it out. Thus
 destroying not only the safe-copy of her own persona, but
 also the only copy in existence of the Mudlark program.”
  Again, that small lizard-movement. “Then…” Snow said.
“Yes. Yes I see. Interesting.” With the small, electric thrill
 of remembering something she couldn’t possibly know,
Rebel realized that Snow was accessing her system, that a
   tightly-aimed sonic mike or subcortical implant was
feeding her data. “How did you manage to lift her?” Snow
                           asked.
  Heisen shrugged. “Blind luck. She broke herself out, and
   I happened by.” He told what he knew of her escape.
 “Now that is interesting.” The woman stood. She was tall
  and impossibly, ethereally thin. A wraith in white, she
 kept her cloak clutched tight. Two long, fleshless fingers
  ghosted out to touch Rebel’s forehead. They were hard
and dry as parchment, and Rebel shivered at their touch.
“What kind of mind are we dealing with here?” Snow fell
                           silent.
    “Take a look at her specs.” Heisen yanked a briefcase
    from a cloak pocket and punched up a holographic
   branching-limb wetware diagram. It hung in the air, a
 convoluted green sphere, looking for all the world like a
  tumbleweed. Or like a faraway globular tree… It looked
 exactly like Rebel’s home dyson world, and the image hit
 her hard. “Okay, this is a crude representation,” Heisen
 said eagerly. “But look—see where the n-branch trines?
                 You’ve got a very strong—”
     The green sphere burned in the air like a vision of the
  grail, and Rebel flashed to that light-filled instant when
 her persona had flooded her skull, and she had picked up
  a glass and upended it over the programmer. The water
 writhed in the air, sparkling, and the supervising wettech
twisted around in horror, mouth falling open, panic in her
  eyes as Rebel threw back her head, feeling the rich, full
laughter form in her throat. It felt good to be alive, to sense
   the thoughts warming the brain like sunshine, and to
   know what she had to do. But then, even as the water
  splashed into the wafer’s cradle and the tech shrieked,
  “What are—” she realized that the programming wires
 were still jacked into her cortex. The wafer went up with a
    sizzle as she reached, catching the stench of burning
 plastic as she tried, random static leaping up the wires to
     smash her sideways, hand yanking out the leads an
 instant too late as the universe whited out into oblivion…
   The memory cut off, and Rebel trembled. Where was
 she? Hospitalized? Recaptured? Heisen and Snow were
     still talking, the tall, slim woman looking down
   impassively at the fierce little man, and then Rebel
  remembered who they were. Neither had noticed her
    snapping out; it must have been a brief episode.
  “I’m taking points on this one,” Heisen said. “You hear
               me, Snow? I want points.”
     “Maybe it’s too big for us?” Snow communed with
herself for a long moment. “Well, let’s try.” She addressed
  Rebel directly. “Let me put a hypothetical case to you.
 Imagine that you were approached by a small firm that
  does knock-offs of commercial personas. Suppose you
   were offered—” she cocked her head slightly—“three
  points for your help in making a clean recording. This
 would spoil your value to Deutsche Nakasone. No value,
no interest—they’d leave you alone. Now, keeping in mind
that without this deal they’ll hunt you down and wipe you
      out of your own brain… what would you say?”
 The episode had left a bad aftertaste in Rebel’s mind. Or
possibly it was just the day’s events catching up with her.
It was hard to concentrate. She shook her head. “I don’t
                understand… knock-offs?”
      “Well, let’s say the current best-seller is…”—Snow
  listened— “a young man with the improbable name of
  Angelus. He is… sensitive, romantic, shy. The publicity
wheels grind and suddenly every fourteen-year-old in the
Kluster wants to be sensitive, romantic, shy. There’s a big
   market for that persona. We lift an early copy, make
 enough changes to foil legal action, and dump a hundred
thousand wafers on the grey market. These personas are
not exactly Angelus, but they are sensitive, romantic, and
shy. And cheap. The big kids make their big profit, and we
                     tag along for a taste.”
    “Only this time,” Heisen said, “we’ll be on the market
 first, riding all that publicity free. They’ll have to pick up
on our wafer, and they’re just not geared for speed the way
  we are. We can skim off the top profit for a good week
                        before…”
      Rebel’s skin crawled at the thought of a hundred
 thousand strangers sharing her thoughts, her face, her
  soul. Experiencing her innermost feelings, her deepest
   emotions. She pictured them as pasty white insects,
swarming in blind heaps, biological machines without will
 or individuality. “No,” she said. “Forget it. I won’t whore
                         my mind.”
  “No, but damn it, you have no room to—” Heisen leaped
 up, reaching for Rebel, and she started to her feet. She
found her balance and drew back a fist. She’d never been
   trained in heavy gravity fighting techniques, but the
muscles of her new body integrated well with each other,
and she didn’t doubt that she could drop Heisen where he
         stood. Smash his nose first, and then—
   “Stop.” Snow’s arm shot out from her cloak (a flash of
 corpse-white skin stretched taut over bones, small black
    nipples on fleshless breasts) and formed a barrier
 between them. The arm was long, anorexic, and covered
    with silver filigree-exoskeletal muscle multipliers.
Powered on, she’d be able to punch her fist through a slag
  wall or break bones without thinking. “So far I’ve been
   speaking hypothetically; no offers have been made.”
  Those unblinking eyes fixed on Rebel, as if she were a
 mystery that they could penetrate by sheer force of will.
Without turning her head, she said, “She could be a trap,
             Jerzy. Didn’t you think of that?”
  Heisen’s face twisted. “No, I—but she could be, couldn’t
    she?” He darted forward and jabbed a finger at the
floating wetware diagram. “Look at that! That split in the
 r-limb!” Then he calmed slightly. “No, you couldn’t fake
 something like that. She has to be legit.” But new sweat
had appeared on his forehead, and there was a wary look
                       in his eyes.
   Snow folded her arm back into her cloak. She dismissed
the diagram with a shrug. “More to the point, I find it hard
to imagine a persona bum suddenly finding happiness and
 content in a new personality. It’s a fairy tale.” She glided
  back to her prayer rug, graceful as a geisha. “I’m afraid,
   child, that we are not ready to strike a deal at present.
 Much as I’d love to find out what’s in that intriguing mind
 of yours.” At her side, Heisen trembled like a hound on a
 leash. She shook her head. “We’ve found out as much as
        we can without getting our fingers burned.”
  In the silence that followed, one of Snow’s hidden spikes
whispered in Rebel’s ear, in a voice that was both like and
 unlike Snow’s own: “Deutsche Nakasone’s goons will be
 here in a minute.” A laser flashed holo images on one of
  her retinas: a convoluted local street-and-gallery map.
      Two blinking lights crept toward Snow’s office.
  “Jerzy will have to be sacrificed, but if you turn left when
you leave and run like hell, you ought to escape.” The map
  vanished. “Go wherever you wish. We will know if you
 escape. And when you’re ready to do business, one of us
                      will contact you.”
     Snow herself had not spoken. She stood slim and
   solitary as a madonna. Aloud, she said, “The door is
                      behind you.”
                   Rebel turned and fled.
     Outside, she ran blindly down the hot and heavy
   corridors of downtown. She fled randomly, through
  crowded galleries and empty alleyways, until she was
 gasping for breath and covered with sweat and her fear
               rose up and swallowed her.



                       2
              KING JONAMON’S COURT
An indefinite time later, Rebel found a cluster of data ports
in the center of a tiled courtyard. She had no idea where
she was. Someplace midtown, to judge by the gravity.
Jungle birds flitted between crowded boutiques. A sheet
waterfall splashed into a shallow pool. By its edge, a
vender sold copper coins to throw into the water.
    Without her telling it to, Rebel’s body drifted to a data
   port. Her head felt buzzy and light, as if it belonged to
   somebody else. From a vast distance she watched her
    fingers touch the screen twice, programming it for
 realtime communication. They tapped in an access code,
             and she wondered who it was for.
   A male face appeared in the port. It floated in blackness,
 with no visual backdrop. Under a painted constellation of
five-pointed gold stars, the eyebrows rose in surprise. “It’s
                     been a long time.”
    Rebel listened with detached fascination as a shrill,
 rapid voice from her own mouth said, “I have to hide. I
have to crawl under my face and pull it in after me. I have
  to get away.” Her face began to cry. “I don’t have any
 money and I can’t trust anyone and I need your help.”
   The stranger’s face shifted, startled and alarmed. “My
     God, what have you done to yourself, Eucra—?”
                    “Don’t use my name!”
      Blank astonishment. Then, another instant shift of
    expression and the man grinned. “Gotcha, Sunshine.
   Listen, my shift has just started, but maybe you should
  join me anyway. I’m a vacuum bum these days, scraping
flowers, nobody’s going to look for you rockside. You think
 you can find your way to the Labor Exchange using public
                           transit?”
  Rebel wasn’t following the conversation at all. Her head
                        nodded.
      “Okay, once you get there, go to the Storage and
     Maintenance gate. Tell them you want work as a
scraper—we’re always short-handed; they’ll give it to you.
Mention my name so they put you on the right crew. It’s all
 piecework; they don’t care diddly-squat whether you put
in a full shift. I’ll have them issue you vacuum gear against
      my account. That clear? Think you can do that?”
    Her body took a deep breath. Her voice said, “Yeah.”
                             ***
    Rebel was scraping vacuum flowers off the surface of
           Eros when she came up from under.
    It was dull, nasty work. The shiny blue blossoms were
surprisingly elusive. Her visor polarized out glare, turning
  the bright flowers into a field of black stars. She had to
reach into darkness to find them. Their stems were as thin
as wires and tougher. Worst of all, the gravity was so slight
   that a careless move would send her bounding meters
    away. She hovered over the rock, keeping afloat with
touches of toe and finger as she angled her clippers under
 each bloom. Her muscles ached with tension and fatigue.
   The inside of her vacuum suit stank, and her collecting
   bag was only half full. It dragged behind her like the
abdomen of a queen bee. Her helmet buzzed with voices as
 the work gang traded chitchat on the intercom channel.
  “… and I swear no lie,” a male voice drawled, “I was the
 suavest thing on two legs. They throw in a hardpacket of
 etiquette with the persona, you with me? So I know what
fork you use to pick your nose with, and all. Not only was I
     suave out in public, I was even suave sexing it up
                       afterwards.”
  “Oh yeah? Maybe I oughta try you out,” said an amused
                     female voice.
    “Tamara, honey, the onliest thing less likely than me
 sexing you up is me admitting to sexing you up.” Hoots of
   laughter. “You get one of your menfriends to try this
              program, though. I mean that.”
    “Hell,” went a second female voice, “one of Tamara’s
           menfriends gets suave, and he’ll—”
   She snapped off the intercom. Something was shifting
within her, and she didn’t know who she was, Eucrasia or
    Rebel. Rebel or Eucrasia. “Let go,” she whispered
savagely, and she was herself again: Rebel. But a sense of
 her other self lingered, hovering over her. She hunched
her shoulders and ignored it as best she could and kept on
                     scraping flowers.
  The work was soothing. Her fingers moved with a will of
  their own, clipping flowers and stuffing them into the
mesh bag at a regular, efficient rate. Ahead of her, endless
  mats of vacuum flowers unfolded to the horizon, each
bloom the size of a human head, but so fragile it crumpled
         to nothing at the touch of a gloved finger.
   The sense of Other remained, though, until her entire
   back itched with the touch of imagined eyes and she
             glanced back over her shoulder.
   There was no one there. Just a stretch of bare rock and
    harsh shadow and, in the distance, a few low utility
  buildings and several freight lots. The lots were simply
  areas where the rock had been ground flat for storage
purposes. Some were vacant. On others, orange and green
 and yellow crates were piled skyscraper-high. Machines
   as delicately jointed as mosquitos climbed the stacks,
 adding and removing crates. Below them, vacuum bums
   wrestled more crates from magnetic cushions or into
  elevators, standing back as the cargo was flung up and
                            away.
     What are you hanging around for? Rebel thought
  angrily. She felt like crying, but sternly suppressed the
urge—tears were a bitch in vacuum gear. I won’t step aside
               for you. This is my mind now.
      A scrap of trash lightly hit the surface near Rebel,
bounced up, and floated slowly downward, orange and red
  and twinkling. A crushed bit of packaging for something
 that had been consumed somewhere in near orbit. Rebel
reached down, tried to gather too many blossoms at once,
and received a small shock through her work gloves as the
flowers shorted out. “Oh, shit!” She flung the things down
 in disgust and sat up. A cannister city was lifting up over
the flower-bright horizon. She could see a random scatter
of habitat lights through a window wall, small and bright,
like inner stars. And now it came to Rebel that she was on
 the strange planet she had seen from the hospital. Eros.
She was on the asteroid Eros in the center of Eros Kluster.
  Just like that, Eucrasia’s ghost was gone, vanished like a
                     bubble in vacuum.
  Rebel looped her bag’s tieline over a rock outcrop, pulled
it snug, and rolled over on her back, letting the light wash
                   over and through her.
         Staring into the Kluster, she again felt mingled
 familiarity and awe. Spread against the starscape was an
     artificial galaxy of spinning wheels, variable gravity
  factories, geodesic towns, warehousing grids, slagsided
 cylinders, farming spheres… an infinity of structures, all
  painted in miles-wide supergraphics and bright as small
 suns. Counterspinward, to the Kluster’s trailing edge, the
    arrays of refinery mirrors were awash in waste light.
  Starward, robot lightsails tacked and lofted, bringing in
        semiprocessed ores. Closeby, access craft and
   vacuum-suited spacejacks twisted through thin lines of
traffic holograms. For an instant she almost choked on the
 beauty, the complexity of it. She wanted to laugh or to cry.
                            And then—
                   “Heads up, Sunshine!”
    A gloved hand slapped her helmet, switching on the
 intercom. Rebel shot to her feet, went tumbling, and was
    pulled back by a man in a floral print vacuum suit.
 Five-pointed yellow stars, in the pattern of the Northern
Cross, dominated the print. In the helmet’s gold visor she
 saw her reflection, with a smaller, distorted image of the
man on her own visor. He jerked a thumb upward. “Shift’s
               over. Time to bounce home.”
                             ***
  The man loped off in slow, ludicrous low-gee hops, and
Rebel followed. He was built tall and gangly, with narrow
                hips and tight little buns.
  Bouncing in from all points, the work gang converged on
the shabby elevator. One by one they floated harvest bags
 into the field, watched them flung upward, and followed
suit themselves. Their work garb was all customized with
   iridescent planetscapes, clouds-and-rainbows, mock
 Mondrians, Pollocks, Van Goghs. Rebel glanced down at
            her own suit. Silvery and unmarked.
   “Here you go, Sunshine. Slip this on the tieline.” The
 man gave her a slug of iron with a hole in its center. She
   snugged the line and wrangled her bag forward. It
    vanished. “Listen,” she said, “we’ve got to talk.”
   “Yes, but not here.” He touched the small of her back
             and lofted her into the elevator.
  The field nabbed her. With heart-stopping suddenness,
   the asteroid shrank beneath her. She could see it as a
whole again, the way she had from New High Kamden, an
 awkwardly lopsided spindle of a planet with continents
  that burned a metallic blue-white, and seas of ink. The
  seas were areas scraped clean of the flowers. A traffic
 redirector snatched her, and the asteroid veered wildly
 away, and the Labor Exchange geodesic exploded in her
    face. She plowed into the magnetic cushion, slowed,
       stopped, and was nudged gently to an airlock.
                             ***
   The bourse was aswarm with workers. Rebel swam in,
     past new shifts that were suiting up and leaving.
   Completed shifts kicked by, laughing and chattering,
    folding back helmets and shucking their suits. She
 followed a rainbow-print suit that had been in her work
gang and rode a mag line to the Storage and Maintenance
 gate. A large-breasted paymaster sat in knee rings there,
   holding a salary machine in her lap. “Step it up,” she
                         snapped.
   Hastily, Rebel pulled off a glove and inserted her hand
   in the machine. It read her prints, calculated mass of
flowers scraped, and extruded a thin silver bracelet. It felt
odd on her wrist. She kicked off and the rainbow suit was
nowhere to be seen. She had no idea where she should go
                            now.
  Then someone bounced lightly against her, nudging her
into a mag line. “See you on the other side, Sunshine,” he
said, and she shot through a doorway. That same man. At
 line’s end, she almost missed the grab bar because she
was craning about, trying in vain for a glimpse of his face.
   She followed a burly woman into the locker room. Aping
the woman’s actions, she collapsed her suit, stuffing it and
her cache-sexe into the helmet along with the cheap set of
 arm and leg bands she’d been issued, and dumped the lot
  into a cleaning chute. Then she kicked into the showers.
   She washed with a soaped towel, rinsed with a wet one,
              and kicked back into the lockers.
   The locker room was a pentagonal tube, with lockers on
all the walls. Rebel floated among the laughing, chattering
 women, and couldn’t remember which locker was hers.
 But the memory was there, even if she couldn’t access it.
 Her body knew what to do. She let it go where it wished,
and came to a locker that opened at her touch. Inside were
        her clothes and work gear, freshly cleaned.
  Anchoring herself in a foot ring, she donned cache-sexe
and travel bands. Then she slipped into the knee rings and
      popped up a mirror. That same disconcerting,
   button-nosed face stared at her from her reflection.
          All about her, women were dressing and
reprogramming themselves, painting their faces to match
  their new personas. The room was full of marilyns and
 pollyannas, the occasional zelda, even a suzy vacuum. A
  xaviera, seeing her frozen in indecision, paused from
  painting her lips vulval pink and proffered her wafer.
    “Here you go, honey. Open wide and give it a try.”
 Rebel blushed and looked away, and the women hooted
 with laughter. She snatched up her things and fled, her
         face as naked as the day she was born.
                             ***
   Outside, a man grabbed her elbow, and without even
 thinking, she punched him in the stomach. He doubled
    over into his cloak and floated away backwards, a
            perfectly amazed look on his face.
   Then Rebel saw the stars painted across the man’s face
  and realized that this was the stranger she had called.
   Flustered, she reached out to steady him, but he had
 already snagged a grab bar and was watching her with a
               closed and wary expression.
  “Listen, I’m sorry,” Rebel said. “I didn’t mean to hit you.
I’m sorry I even called you in the first place. Why don’t we
       just shake hands and go our separate ways?”
 The stranger regarded her steadily. “You’re not Eucrasia
                  anymore, are you?”
        She met his gaze. His eyes were green. “No.”
  Briefly, the man’s face went blank, as if he were arguing
 with himself. Then it cleared and he said, “Look. I live in
King Jonamon’s court, Tank Fourteen. That’s probably the
     best place you could go, if you’re on the run from
 something. There’s a couple of shacks empty. Come with
      me, and I’ll stake you to the first week’s rent.”
   “Why would you do something like that for me?” Rebel
    asked suspiciously. “Just who are you, anyway?”
  “I’m… an old acquaintance. A fellow-worker.” He tapped
behind one ear, and Rebel saw a small red abrasion circle
 there. “We persona bums have to stick together, right?”
   “I…” Rebel retreated into the folds of her cloak. “Look.
  I’m sorry. It’s just that people have been taking a lot of
interest in my case lately. I didn’t ask for any of it. I don’t
                      want any of it.”
       “Okay, then.” He shrugged and turned away.
 Something desperate came tearing up from deep within
Rebel then, and she cried, “Wait!” The man turned back.
That cautious face. She colored, because she had no idea
why she had cried out. To cover, she said, “Maybe I was a
                      little hasty.”
  Another instantaneous shift of expression, and the man
    laughed heartily. “You crack me up, Sunshine.”
                     “Don’t call me that!”
                 “All right. Eucrasia, then.”
   Her face felt cold and hard. “The name is Rebel,” she
            said. “Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark.”
  “Wyeth.” A lopsided grin and a shrug said that that was
                  all the name he had.
                              ***
   They took a jitney to the tank towns, crammed hip and
  knee with twenty others, almost too tight to breathe. It
carried them to the shadow of the Londongrad cannister,
  where a cluster of fifty-year-old air tanks floated. They
   were enormous things, each large enough to hold an
 entire cannister city’s atmosphere under pressure, and
retro-fitted with crude airlock and docking facilities. Faint
 traces of rust edged the locks, where the long whisper of
            oxygen leakage ghosted over metal.
 “Jeez, it’s hot in here,” Rebel grumbled. “I should’ve just
                    gone solo in my suit.”
  “What’s that?” Wyeth asked. Then, when she repeated
herself, “Tank towns don’t have magnetic cushions. We’re
             talking heavy-duty slums here.”
  The jitney pilot slammed into a dock and bawled, “Tank
            Fourteen!” and they squeezed out.
  The light was dim at the locks and murky beyond. They
swam up a crowded corridor, through ramshackle hutches
 that were no more than pipework frames with corrugated
tin sheets for walls. The air was fetid with rotting garbage,
 stale wine, and human sweat, with a sweet undersmell of
  honeysuckle. Children shrieked at play, and there was a
  constant yabber-yabber-yabber of voices. Bees hummed
     as they moved mazily among the flowery vines that
   overgrew everything. A green rope led up the corridor,
 and they followed this handway, occasionally grabbing it
   to twist clear of an oncomer, until it was crossed by an
      orange rope. They took this deeper into the tank.
   A raver came down the rope, and people shrank away
from her. Wyeth grabbed Rebel and pulled her out of the
way. They slammed noisily against a tin wall, and then the
    woman was gone and they proceeded up the rope.
  Now and then light spilled from a doorway, or a string of
lanterns lined a cluster of informal shops and bars, places
  where people offered alcohol or other goods from their
  own homes. Everywhere the vines were thick and lush,
with frequent biofluorescent blooms. There were sections
where the flowers provided the only illumination. “This is
                    awful,” Rebel said.
  Wyeth peered about, as if trying to detect what flaw she
             saw in his world. “How so?”
   “It’s like a parody of my home. I mean, if you know the
 biological arts, there’s no excuse for this kind of squalor.
                 Back home, the cities are…”
                  “Are what?” Wyeth asked.
    But the hard, undeniable truth was that she could not
remember. Not a thing. She tried to recall the name of her
city, the faces of her friends, her childhood, the kind of life
   she’d led, and none of it would come. Her past was an
 impressionistic blur, all bright colors and emotions, with
         no fine detail. “I don’t know,” she admitted.
  “Sunshine, your answers are about as revealing as your
   silence.” Wyeth touched her arm. “Here we are!” He
grabbed the rope to stop himself, flipped over, and kicked
  through an opening between hutches. Rebel followed.
  A skeletally thin old man leaned out of a shanty window
    into the entraceway. “Hallo, Jonamon. How’s the
 kidneys?” Wyeth said. He was wearing his laughing face.
                “Got a new tenant for you.”
  “Hallo yourself.” The old man’s skin was fishbelly white,
    and red blotches ran over his bald pate. “Rent’s due
  tomorrow.” Then he noticed Rebel, and pursed his lips
       suspiciously. “You the religious type, girlie?”
                    Rebel shook her head.
   “Then where’s your paint?” He jabbed a bony finger at
the abrasion circle behind Rebel’s ear, and said to Wyeth,
“You put the mark on her! Don’t allow none of that shit in
my court. I run a clean place here—no drunks, no whores,
 no burn cases, and no reprogramming. I don’t care what
         kind of excuse you got, God don’t like—”
  “Hold on, hold on—nobody’s reprogramming anybody!”
 Wyeth said. “What are you ragging on me for? The lady’s
        right here, you can ask her for yourself.”
    “Be damned if I won’t.” The old man swam out the
   window, chasing them into the courtyard. Then he
 grabbed the side of his hutch, muttered, “Damn! Forgot
    the book,” and darted back through the window.
  The courtyard was just a large, open space fronted on by
 some dozen or so hutches. Three ropes crisscrossed the
 area, tied to outcroppings of pipe. Here and there people
  clung to them, chatting or working on private tasks. A
   young man sat wedged in a doorway, playing guitar.
    “I’m sorry about this,” Wyeth said. “Old Jonamon is a
 terrible snoop, even worse than most landlords. He was a
rock prospector seventy years back, one of the last, and he
 thinks that gives him the right to pester you half to death.
If you don’t feel like facing him, I think I can put him off for
a day or so. That’d give us time to find you a place nearby.”
     “Actually,” Rebel had been chewing thoughtfully on a
 thumbnail; now she spat out what she had gnawed off, “I
   think I would like to talk about it. All these weird things
 have been happening to me, and I haven’t had the chance
     to sort them out. And I guess I owe you some kind of
explanation too.” She frowned. “Only maybe I’d better not.
 I mean, there are people out there looking for me. If word
                            got out—”
      Wyeth flashed a wide, froggish grin. “There are no
 secrets in a tank town. But there are no facts either. You
 tell your story to Jonamon, and in ten minutes the whole
   court will know it. Inside an hour everyone within five
courts will know—but they’ll have it a little wrong. Half the
 people in the tanks are on the run from something. Your
  story will melt into theirs, a detail here, a name there, a
 plot twist from somewhere else. By tomorrow all the tank
       will know the story, but it will have mutated into
something you wouldn’t recognize yourself. Nobody’s ever
   going to trace those stories back to you. There are too
    many of them, and not a one that’s worth a damn.”
                          “Well, I—”
  Jonamon swooped into the court, a scrawny old bird in a
  tattered cloak, pushing a book before him. It was three
  hands wide and a fist thick, with one red cover and one
 black. Opening it from the black side, he said, “The Lord
 Jesus despised reprogramming. ‘And behold the herd of
  swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea and
      perished in the waters.’ That’s from Matthew.”
    Wyeth looked like he was having trouble holding his
  laughter in. “Jonamon, that’s the third time this week
       you’ve quoted the Gadarene swine at me.”
    “Krishna don’t love demons neither,” the old man
snapped. He flipped the book over, red side up, and thrust
      it at Rebel. “Swear on the Gita you ain’t been
    reprogrammed. That’ll be good enough for me.”
   “Maybe I’d better tell my story first,” Rebel said. “Then
 I’ll swear it’s true afterward. That way you’ll know what
                       I’m swearing to.”
  She shifted to a more central spot, sitting cross-legged in
  the air, the rope gripped in one foot. Then she wrapped
 her cloak in storytelling folds (inwardly marveling at her
 own dexterity) so that one arm and breast were covered
and the other arm and breast free. Seeing her thus, people
came out from their shanties or shifted places on the ropes
                     so they could hear.
                         She began:
   “I was dead—but they wouldn’t tell me that. I was lying
in a hospital bed, paralyzed, unable to remember a thing.
    And they wouldn’t tell me why. All I knew was that
 something was wrong, and nobody would answer any of
                     my questions…”
                             ***
 When she was done, Jonamon took her oath on his book
and shook his head. “Well, I’ll be fucked if that don’t beat
                anything I ever heard.”
    “Mmmm.” Wyeth’s face was grim and stony, lost in
 thought. It had a humorless, almost brutal set to it. He
 looked up suddenly and glared around at the listeners.
 “What are you staring at? Show’s over. Go away!” They
                       scattered.
    Rebel shivered. He looked an entirely different man
    now—a thug, all suspicion and potential violence.
  Jonamon laid a hand on her knee and said, “You watch
yourself, young lady. Deutsche Nakasone is a nasty bunch,
 they’ll do what they want with you. They just don’t give a
             fuck.” She drew away from him.
  “That’s every gesellschaft, old man,” Wyeth said. “That’s
           inherent in the corporate structure.”
      “You think so, eh? Let me show you something.”
  Jonamon hurried off to his shack and returned with a
cloth-wrapped package. “Maybe I’m just another old man
 with calcium depletion now.” He began slowly unfolding
the cloth. “I’m stuck here nowadays, my bones would snap
 like breaksticks if I set foot in full gravity anymore. But I
wasn’t always like this. I used to own my own corporation.
           Hell, I used to be my own corporation.”
  The ropehangers had come edging back to listen. One of
   them, a lean young man with rude boy paint, caught
   Rebel’s eye and flashed a smile. Cute little thing. He
          laughed, and Jonamon glared at him.
    “Laugh if you want. Individuals could incorporate back
   then. You can’t imagine how it felt, having all the legal
 protection of a corporation to yourself. It was like being a
 little tin god.” He sighed. “I was one of the last, wiped out
  by the Corporate Reform Act. I was a rock miner, maybe
  Wyeth here mentioned that to you. A prospector. When
the Act came along, I had claims on a few hundred rocks, a
  real valuable inventory, worth a fortune back then, and
 even more now. But with the reforms, I had to liquidate. I
    entered into negotiations with a number of concerns,
 finally signed a preliminary letter of intent with Deutsche
  Nakasone. Look.” He held up the unwrapped package. It
   was a formal holographic portrait of a line of corporate
  functionaries looking serious for the camera. The young
  Jonamon stood in the center, a sharp-chinned man with
                 an avaricious cast to his face.
   “This was taken the day before the Act went into effect.
  Right after this, the president and I retired to a private
office to settle the last few details and sign the agreement.
You never saw anyone so nice and polite in your life. Did I
  want a drink? Don’t mind if I do. Would I like to screw?
 Hell, she was kind of cute. Then she asked if I wanted to
try out a new program they had. Made it sound real nice. I
                            said sure.
    “They was just getting into wetware then. Just recent
    bought up a batch of patents when Blaupunkt went
belly-up. So anyway, the president puts the inductor band
around my head and turns the damn thing on. Whoooeee!
That was one hell of a ride, I’ll tell you. Even today, I blush
 to think on it. Imagine all the sex and pleasure you can
 take just slamming into you again and again, so intense
you can’t hardly take it, and you want it to stop, only… not
    quite yet. Just a little bit longer before it becomes
unbearable. Can you imagine that? Shit, you can’t imagine
                            it at all.”
             “So what happened?” Rebel asked.
  “What happened was somebody turned it off. Wow, did I
feel awful! Kind of hungry and achy and thirsty all at once.
  My head was pounding, and I must’ve lost half the free
                     water in my body.
    “The president had put her clothes back on and left, a
  long time back. There was a couple of corporate guards
 giving me the hairy eyeball. ‘What’s happening?’ I asked
                          them.
   “They told me that the Reform Act had just gone into
effect, and they didn’t need me anymore. Then they gave
me the bum’s rush, and I was never in that office again in
                  my life, let me tell you.
    “You see what happened, don’t you? They’d kept me
 programmed up until the Act went through and I didn’t
 legally own my claims anymore. And because I’d signed
    that letter of intent, they all belonged to Deutsche
Nakasone now. They never paid me a damn thing for them
either. I went to the lawyers and they said it’s all legal. Or
      rather, to prove it wasn’t legal, I’d have to be a
       corporation myself. And I wasn’t, anymore.”
   After a long silence, he said, “Well, it’s all to the best, I
imagine. A young man thinks with his gonads. An old man
sees things more spiritual. I made my peace with God, and
         I take my solace from the Bible Gita now.”
   Rebel yawned then, and Wyeth said, “I think it’s time
                   you turned in.”
   He showed her to a vacant hutch. It had room enough
for two people to sit and talk, or for one to stretch out and
  sleep. There was a bit of wire by the doorframe, so she
could tie up her helmet, and four looped hammock strings
                 to sleep in. Nothing more.
    “Best break out your rebreather,” Wyeth said. She
 looked at him blankly. “From your helmet. Ventilation’s
poor in this corner of the court, and your waste gases can
 build up while you sleep. Keep your mouthpiece in, and
     you can avoid waking up with a bad headache.”
    “Okay,” she said, and he kicked away. There was no
window, and hanging her cloak over the doorway filled the
hut with darkness. She stuffed her things into her helmet
     and slipped into the hammock strings. Hanging
 suspended, she bit down on the rebreather. Her breath
         sounded loud and slow within her skull.
       The outside noises were muffled within the hut, but
 constant. Music and faraway argument blended into each
  other. Buried deep within this human beehive, Rebel felt
painfully alone and isolated. From somewhere distant she
         heard a dull clank-clank, clank-clank, someone
    hammering on the pipes to signal a neighbor. She had
    heard (though she couldn’t remember when or where)
   that the constellations of courts within the tanks had all
  been put up helter-skelter, pipes mated to existing pipes,
      forming monkey-bar tangles with no plan or formal
        structure. Only the lack of gravity kept it all from
      collapsing. But occasionally the stresses of everyday
 living—people slamming against their hutches, kicking off
     from them, grabbing ropes tied to the frames—would
 cause whole groupings of court structures to shift. Torque
  forces would slowly swing the hutches together, crushing
  entire neighborhoods in a scream of buckling metal. And
then the survivors would scavenge the rubble to build back
                   into the space thus 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.
    “She’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.”
                        “So I gather.”
   “Look, 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 lives.
                         3
                    STORM FRONT

Someone kicked her wall in passing, and Rebel awoke.
Blearily, she dressed and floated out. Of the three
sometime restaurants in the court, only the one marked
“Myrtle’s Joint” had its window open.
  She rapped for service and an iguana scurried away and
 burrowed into the vines. Myrtle’s face flashed out of the
 gloom with a quick smile. Rebel yawned and woke up a
     little more, and said, “I’d like to buy some food.”
                        “What meal?”
                        “Breakfast.”
   Myrtle ducked down and rummaged about. “I got a
 mango. I could slice it up with a little chutney. There’s a
    dab of spiced rice that’s not too old. And beer.”
  They haggled up a price, and Rebel took a place on the
rope as Myrtle put breakfast together. “Hey. My man told
me about how you used to own a corporation and all. I just
                wanted to say I’m sorry.”
   “That’s okay.” A flock of naked children darted into the
 court, shrieking and laughing. For an instant the air was
full of them. Then one spotted a gap between hutches and
  darted through. The others followed and were gone, as
              quick and sudden as minnows.
  Rebel ate slowly. Finally she licked a last bit of chutney
from a knuckle and returned the empty Belhaven tube to
 Myrtle. “Um, this is kind of embarrassing, but how do I
                        find the—?”
   “Orange rope downgrain to blue, blue upgrain to red,
that’ll take you to the shell.” Myrtle laughed. “From there
               you can just follow your nose.”
                             ***
    The community toilets were overgrown with masses of
   nightbloom. The leaves rustled and waved in the wind
   from the airstacks. But under the flowery scent was a
darker smell of human waste and of body gases. She swam
  in the ladies entrance and took a seat on the communal
  bench. It was cool here. The air flowing down the holes
was enough to hold her on. Resting her elbows on the grab
  bars, she read the graffiti. There were the usual EARTH
 FRIEND and NEWMINDS/FREEMINDS scrawls, with an
 INDIVIDUALITY DOES NOT EXIST written in one hand
    and SPEAK FOR YOURSELF scratched beneath it in
   another. The only really interesting graffito was EVEN
            YOUR SHIT BELONGS TO THE RICH.
   Well, it made sense. Considering that almost none of the
food eaten here was grown within the tank. The toilets had
    to be emptied to keep the tank towners from literally
  strangling in their own wastes. The nightblooms helped
   keep the air fresh, but somebody had to replenish the
   oxygen that was lost in tiny gasps every time the locks
  swung open and shut. Even a drastically oversimplified
          ecology like this needed to be looked after.
      The entire Kluster, in fact, was an extremely loose
    system, leaking air and garbage from every pore. To
Rebel’s eyes, it was criminally wasteful how much oxygen
and water vapor, reaction mass and consumer trash must
be lost to the vacuum every day. Any attempt to tighten the
                 system had to be applauded.
  Still, it was humbling to think that the tank towns were
  being maintained by people who saw them simply as
                      fertilizer farms.
   She was leaving the toilets when a familiar voice hailed
 her from the cluster of commercial data ports next door.
 Wyeth, helmet on arm, waved and kicked up to join her.
“I’m just about to leave for work,” he said. “But I’ve cloned
   my briefcase for you.” He gave her what looked like a
hand-sized plate of smokey glass and felt like amber, only
   cool. Small colored lights danced in its depths. Rebel
 touched one, and they all shifted. The device felt right in
  her hand. She felt a lot better having it. “You operate it
                            by—”
 “I know how to work this.” She ran a fast recursive, and
 schemata appeared in the air over the plate. It was the
only skill she possessed worth having, and she… but that
 was Eucrasia’s though, and Rebel suppressed it. “What
               have you got in there for me?”
                        “Your history.”
                      She looked at him.
    “I made a quick raid on Deutsche Nakasone for their
    unclassified data on Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark.” He
  touched the plate and two tiers of yellow lights lined up
 against the right-hand edge. “As you can see, there’s not
   much. A fast-edited history put together for publicity
    purposes, I’d guess. I thought you’d be interested.”
  “Yes.” She closed her hands around the briefcase, held
  it to her stomach. “Won’t that lead them to this tank,
   though? Won’t they be looking for this kind of data
                        request?”
   “I don’t see how,” Wyeth said. “Sandoz Lasernet is very
   big on equipment optimization. They keep their trunk
     lines flickering on and off constantly. In the fifteen
 seconds my call took, it was probably routed through half
the cities in the Kluster. Following it would be like trying to
track a feather in a methane storm. You’d need a program
        with full sentience and a lot of power to do it.”
   Eucrasia’s memories were fading quickly, so that the
 beginning of Wyeth’s explanation had seemed childishly
oversimplified and the ending almost opaque. “Won’t they
       have a sentient program on the job then?”
  “After what happened to Earth?” Wyeth laughed. Then
 he said, “Listen, I’ve really got to be going. Enjoy. I’ll see
                    you when I get back.”
                              ***
  Rebel wandered back to Jonamon’s court, the briefcase
    in her cloak pocket as thick and massive as a bad
conscience. She wanted to view it, to see what it could tell
          her about herself, and yet she didn’t.
   While she was perched on a rope thinking, the young
    rude boy she had noticed eyeing her the other day
 emerged from the vines between two hutches. His torso
was mahogany dark and very long, and for an instant she
   thought he was naked. Then his orange cache-sexe
 appeared. He held something in one hand, and with the
other reached for a cloak that had been left tied to a hutch
                          frame.
                       He noticed her.
  For a moment neither moved. Then the boy fastened his
cloak about his shoulders and walked up the rope toward
  her, gripping the line between his toes. He smiled and
            showed her what was in his hand.
  “Honeycomb.” His dark eyes sparkled. He cocked a hip
 slightly, bringing his muscles into sharper delineation,
and bit into the wax. His mouth and chin glistened. “Want
                some? My name’s Maxwell.”
 “I can’t,” Rebel said helplessly. Brushing open her cloak,
      she dug out the briefcase. She held it forward,
       two-handed. “I’ve got to listen to some stuff.”
  Maxwell took the briefcase and, holding it upside-down,
 solemnly examined the lights. “Listen to it in my hut. I’ll
            feed you honey while you work.”
                         “All right.”
                            ***
    She wedged the briefcase between wall and pipe as
 Maxwell pinned up their cloaks. A touch converted it to
 spoken command. She waited until the hutch was dark,
     then said, “Please turn on.” Light blossomed.
 The holography opened on a shot of Eros Kluster Traffic
Control. The EKTC station was shaped like a barbell and
revolved slowly within a maelstrom of traffic holograms.
“How’s this?” Maxwell asked. The image rippled over his
                body as he swam to her.
        “Mmmm.” Rebel skipped the scene forward.
      They were in the interior now, a hemispherical
 transparent hull crisscrossed by thin catwalks between
  work stations. The traffic techs looked upset. One man
 bounded toward an empty terminal, not bothering with
 the catwalks. He left a smudge of bare footprints across
                     the starry floor.
  “That can’t be—” someone said. Rebel backtracked the
                      program.
 “Open up,” Maxwell said. He popped a bit of honeycomb
               into her mouth. Sweet.
     An operator gave a long, low whistle. “Look what just
came up on visual!” His supervisor was at his side at once,
  a big woman with a bulldog jaw. “Now that ought to be a
 lightsail,” the man said. “Spectroanalysis gives us a solar
      signature, ever so slightly blueshifted. But it’s not
    registered, and it’s headed right down our throats.”
                         “Velocity?”
  “Hard to say.” The tech’s fingers flickered, coaxing up
data. “If it’s a standard-size sail, though, and assuming a
median range load of five kilotons, then it’ll rip through
              the Kluster sometime tomorrow.”
   “Shit!” The supervisor pushed him from his station.
      “Grab something vacant and restructure the
programming to give me more capacity. Take it off of, um,
 the holos. Let them drift a bit. Set them to correct only
      once every point-zero-three seconds, okay?”
   The operator bounded toward an empty terminal, not
  bothering with the catwalks. He left a smudge of bare
           footprints across the starry floor.
 “That can’t be—” the supervisor said. “No, that doesn’t
make any sense at all. That’s not an industrial delivery.”
                        “More honey?”
  “Mmm.” Maxwell’s fingers lingered on her lips, and she
              kissed them absently.
    Another tech said, “We’re having trouble estimating
mass. There’s something screwy about the way it’s slowing
 down.” Rebel stopped motion, and asked the briefcase to
give her the terminal display. It appeared, a chart in seven
colors, showing every pinprick of light as it appeared from
  the EKTC station. It pulsed, and the lights shifted to an
earlier configuration. A speck of light, circled in red, raced
 sunward, from beyond Jupiter. A sidebar identified it as
  COMET: COMMERCIAL CARRIER (LUMBERED TREE
                          FARM).
   The EKTC system was crammed with economic warfare
  programs. Reflexively, it showed the positions of other
lumbered comets moving into the system. It also showed a
 pod of young comets climbing up from the Sun, their tails
  of ionized gases winking out as new vegetation covered
  their surfaces. An operator wiped them off the screen.
        “What a pig. You’ve got honey on your chin.”
                    “Hey, I’m busy, okay?”
                 “Hold still and I’ll lick it off.”
  Now a sidebar appeared with the comet’s registry. It was
  a small, uncolonized comet, carrying a lumbered first
     growth of some seventy gigatons of oak, teak, and
  mahogany hybrids. The trees had been grown over one
long swing down to the sun and back out to the edge of the
Oort Cloud. There, archipelago lumberjacks had coppiced
 the comet, leaving roots intact for a second growth, and
  then artificially accelerated it for its trek back into the
System. Eros Kluster speculated heavily in timber, but this
 was not a local deal. The freight was due to Ceres Kluster
as per a contract signed some two decades ago. Since Eros
  had no financial interest in it, the traffic computer had
    never before seen fit to bring it to human attention.
   Maxwell followed a trail of dribbles down the side of
Rebel’s neck, toward her breasts. She giggled and pushed
                him away. “That tickles.”
    The display shifted to fast replay. The comet rushed
 down on Jupiter. It dipped into the giant planet’s gravity
 well, was slewed around, and emerged on a new orbit. It
dumped velocity in the process, shifting to a shorter ellipse
 that would take it within the orbit of Mercury, and then
    out again to its client Kluster. The readout shifted
 momentarily to show the Inner System with old and new
          orbits displayed as dotted yellow lines.
           “How about this? Does this tickle too?”
                      “No. That’s nice.”
       Midway between Jupiter and Eros, the comet’s
 brightness quadrupled. There was an explosive flare of
   light, which quickly fell behind the comet—a lightsail
  unfurling. It bobbed slightly on the solar wind, tacked
 gracefully. The computer ran a projected course for it. It
     was headed straight into the heart of Eros Kluster.
       Rebel switched back to live action. “Go on,” the
                    supervisor said.
  “The sail is tacked away from the sun. So the drag ought
 to be easy to calculate. But it’s slowing down too fast for
 anything I’ve ever seen. Even a single kiloton shipment
                         ought to—”
  “Could the treehangers be dumping some kind of bomb
  on us?” the supervisor muttered to herself. “No, that’s
   stupid. Maybe they— wait. Try calculating the rate of
 deceleration for a shortsail with a payload of a third of a
                           ton.”
             Fingers danced. “Damn! It works.”
   “That’s it, then. One human in a vacuum suit, plus the
 mass of a frame, controlling mechanism and cables. I’d
say that what we’ve got here—” she tapped the screen—“is
   someone using a small lightsail as a drogue chute.”
                        “Beg pardon?”
   “A drogue chute. Like a parachute—um, it’s hard to
 explain. Just contact Perimeter Defense and tell them
 we’ve got a space cadet that needs rescuing. Dump the
                whole thing in their laps.”
  The scene shifted to the exterior of a Perimeter Defense
                  multipurpose cruiser.
 “Hey,” Rebel said. “I don’t think you’re going to find any
                  honey down there.”
  “Want to bet?” Maxwell was kissing and nuzzling her
belly. Now he slowly moved his hands up her thighs and
     even more slowly pulled down her cache-sexe.
 “Please stop,” Rebel murmured. The briefcase shut itself
off. In the dim light seeping through the ill-fitting edges of
 the tin walls, she saw that Maxwell was already naked.
                       And interested.
                    Definitely interested.
                              ***
   They made love twice, and then she sent Maxwell out
with her bracelet to bring back lunch. He returned with a
 huge meal and no change. They ate, and then somehow
they were making love again. It just seemed to happen. At
 last she had to say, “No, really. I’ve got to listen to this.”
              She flicked the briefcase back on.
   The multipurpose cruiser had matched speeds with the
lightsail. A dozen Perimeter Defense employees launched
themselves at the rigging. Clumsily, surely, they cut away
    the harness, drew in the sail, and disentangled an
              unmoving vacuum-suited figure.
    Back inside the cruiser, workers swarmed about the
vacuum suit. It was worn and frayed; crystalized patching
 ooze covered several small cuts. “Look,” a medtech said.
  He pointed to a fine crazing of lines in the visor. “Poor
  bugger miscalculated acceleration stress. The internal
 organs are probably mush.” He turned off the coldpack
      unit and somebody else yanked off the helmet.
  Acceleration jelly gone liquescent sloshed onto the deck,
   revealing a woman’s face. It was angular, with high
cheekbones. The hair, short and wet, was a mousy blond.
Her skin was a bloated and unhealthy white, almost blue
  in places. There were small globs of jelly caught in her
 nostrils. A tech wiped them away, and the woman took a
  sudden, gasping breath. She shivered and opened her
 eyes. It was Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark, in her own body.
   A trickle of blood came from the corner of her mouth.
  She grinned weakly. “Hey, sports,” she said. Then she
            looked puzzled. “I feel kind of sick.”
                       Then she died.
    Maxwell was not looking when it happened. He was
   rummaging in a small corner chest for body jewelry.
When he found a piece he liked, he’d try it on, preening for
  her. Now he turned, a string of pearls about his waist.
“You like it?” He swiveled his hips making the string spin.
           “It takes a good body to wear pearls.”
  The hologram drew slowly back, the scurrying Perimeter
   Defense people growing smaller as they vainly tried to
    revive the body. “Coldpack revival shock,” a medtech
     muttered. “Damage to brain tissue complicated by
  cumulative radiation damage. Compression, shear, and
 tidal effects to liver, pancreas, heart…” Her voice droned
    on monotonously as she read the diagnostics into the
   record. Someone else put a cryonics unit over the head
    and flash-froze the brain. Later, the personality and
 surface memories could be teased out with supercooling
induction techniques, if the traffic investigators needed an
                           interview.
      I died, Rebel thought flatly. She remembered it
happening very clearly now, the faces bent over her, their
concerned expressions and the way it had all drawn away
                    into whiteness as…
      The pearls orbited Maxwell’s waist like a ring of
       satellites. His navel danced at their center.
   Now, as the Perimeter Defense employees slowed and
the clamor of voices fell to a murmur, Rebel’s name rose in
  black Gothic letters. It dominated the scene for a beat,
  then burst into sudden, bright flame. When the flames
  died down, a new Rebel Mudlark rose from them like a
                           phoenix.
   The new Rebel was an idealized version of the original,
taller and thinner, with spectacular muscle structure. She
        stood wide-legged, fists on hips, and laughed
self-confidently. The holo drew back. Green dyson worlds
 floated behind her, and she was surrounded by a ring of
 cringing admirers. One reached a trembling hand out for
         her, and she kicked him right in the mouth.
           The words available soon scrolled up.
    “Turn it off,” Rebel whispered desperately. “Oh God,
   turn that damn thing off.” The memory of her death
   burned in her brain. She wouldn’t be able to forget it
                           again.
    Maxwell picked up the briefcase, looked at it blankly,
  touched a glowing red dot. The room went dark. “Hold
 me,” Rebel said. “I don’t want to do anything, just… hold
                   me, please hold me.”
    She floated in the dark, flooded with misery. She’d felt
 like this when her mother had died in the accident at the
  Kluster refineries. Her pain had caught her by surprise
then, because she’d hated the cold bitch. You’ll never hurt
 me again, she had thought angrily, and yet she’d still felt
abandoned and desolate. She hugged Maxwell to her, like
                  a big, sexless cuddly toy.
      Vague shapes swam in her vision, threatening to
  coalesce into a stretched and bloated skull. She’d seen
   death’s face before, as a child. Her first time solo in a
 vacuum suit, she had blundered across a laser cable and
  shorted out half her suit. Her visor went black and her
rebreather stopped. Floating alone and sightless, gasping
and choking, she had suddenly realized that she was going
 to die. And in that horrified instant, she saw a face before
   her, bone-white and distorted, with empty eye sockets,
  small dark nostrils, and black, gaping mouth. She threw
   her head back and the face lurched at her, and she was
    abruptly hauled in by a Traffic Control employee who
injected an air line through the skin of her suit. It had only
 been her reflection, lit by a lone failsafed helmet monitor
                             light.
  Maxwell gently slid a hand between her legs and moved
them apart. He started to enter her. Upset and distracted
 as she was, she almost let him do it. It would be the easy
   thing, the path of least resistance. But then the Rebel
  persona asserted itself, and she shoved him away. She
        would not let herself be taken advantage of.
    “Back off there, bud! Who gave you permission to do
                          that?”
             Maxwell looked bewildered. “But—”
  “You don’t listen too good, do you? I said I didn’t want to
do anything, and I by God meant it.” As she raged at him,
      Maxwell backed away, fell into a fighting crouch,
    straightened, crouched again. His hands fisted and
 unfisted. His face twisted with conflicting programmed
urges. “What are you, some kind of machine? Willing sex
  isn’t good enough for you?” Clumsily, Maxwell threw a
        slap at Rebel’s face. She batted his hand away
 contemptuously and tried to punch him in the stomach.
He flinched back, and his string broke, pearls exploding in
   all directions. They bounced off the tin walls like hail.
               “Just get the fuck out of here!”
   Maxwell was backed into a corner, quivering. In a tiny
          voice he said, “But this is my place.”
   For a long moment Rebel glared at him scornfully. Then
 she laughed, and with a kind of rough good will, reached
  out to tousle his hair. “You’re kind of useless, you know
                            that?”
    “It all depends on what you want,” Maxwell said, eyes
   averted sullenly. But his tension was gone. He began
gathering up the pearls that still bounced about the room,
nabbing them out of the air and holding them in one hand.
 “I mean, I can fight just as good as I sex, but I got to have
 clear signals. You can’t expect me to—hey, what’s that?”
                       “What’s what?”
     “Listen!” They fell silent. In the distance was a dull
  clank-clank-clank of people hammering on the pipes. It
   went on and on, growing in volume as more and more
 people to one end of the tank town hammered in unison.
     Rebel touched a frame pipe and felt it vibrating in
 sympathy. Outside, the constant murmur of voices died.
   “It’s the heat! God damn. We got to get away.” Maxwell
        let go of the pearls and grabbed for his cloak.
     “Get away? Where? What are you talking about?”
     Maxwell was frantically struggling into his clothes.
    “You’ve never been in a raid before? They start by
grabbing the airlock. That takes maybe a dozen jackboots.
 And they bring in a few crates of programming units and
       these enormous stacks of arrest programs.”
                     “Arrest programs?”
  “Yeah. Then they move out from the locks in a long line.
   They arrest maybe one out of five people they nab for
 failure to cooperate and sentence them to like six hours
enforcement duty. Program ’em up on the spot, give them
  their orders, and send them out to bring in more to be
 programmed. They spread out like a storm. Before long,
              you got jackboots everywhere.”
      In her mind’s eye, Rebel saw the police expanding
   through the tank in an ever-widening cordon, swelling
 their numbers as they went, doubling every few minutes,
like an explosion of yeast culture through a warm medium.
              “But what are they looking for?”
    “What the fuck does it matter? You want them to get
hold of you?” Maxwell untwisted a corner wire holding on
 the back wall and shoved the tin to show a thin, dark line
  of weeds. “Look, worse comes to worst, we can slip out
  back. Nothing there but vines. Only don’t move around
 much, ’cause I got a beehive back there. I don’t want you
disturbing them.” He took Rebel’s hand and pulled her out
into the court. “What we’ve got to do is slip past the storm
     front. See, they’ll be spread out thin. Questioning
    everyone, right? Once we get by them, we’re clear.”
  The court was empty. They swam to the gateway. “Does
   this sort of thing happen here often?” Rebel asked.
                “Naw. Once a month, tops.”
                             ***
      They paused at the gateway and looked down the
    corridor. Doors opening onto it had been shut and
windows tied down. It was crowded with people fleeing the
 jackboots. Suddenly there came a babble of voices from
upgrain, and people hesitated, colliding in midair as those
          ahead of them turned back abruptly.
                     “What the hell—?”
                 “Keep moving, you idiots!”
                    “No, no! Turnback!”
   A raver came down the rope, eyes full-mad and staring,
    globules of drool spewing from his mouth. He was a
scrawny old man with long grey beard, his cloak in tatters.
   He raged as he came, tearing with insane strength at
   whoever got close. One of his legs was broken, and it
  waved fluidly behind him. It was clear he did not notice
                         the pain.
    “Sweet Krishna!” somebody wailed, and floated back
  from the raver, trailing large red spheres of blood. The
     corridor was filling with trashing, panicky people.
Somebody pushed past Rebel into the courtyard, and then
 two more. “Come on,” Rebel said worriedly, “we’ve got to
                    get away from here.”
    But then there was a rush on the gate, and Rebel was
     borne back from the corridor while Maxwell went
 tumbling forward. A fat man jammed his pink face right
  up against her, shouting hysterically. Rebel grabbed a
  rope and pulled herself free of the crush of people, and
   then the rope broke and she slammed into a tin wall.
   Shrieking voices rose in demon chorus. Rebel clawed
across the fronts of the hutches to Maxwell’s and climbed
 inside. It took her only a second to slip out the back. She
 shoved the wall into place, and was hidden in the vines.
        It was dark between courts. Here and there a
    nightflower glowed, a dull fuzz of light that revealed
nothing. The vines were wet and slimy. Floating alone and
sightless, like a traveler among the final stars at the end of
  the universe, Eucrasia’s claustrophobia rose up within
                             her.
    It started as a tingling up the base of her spine, then
spread until her entire body itched. She became aware of
 her own breath. The outside noises were muffled here, a
  dull wash of voices like the white noise of surf, and her
breath sounded rough and raspy. She couldn’t get enough
 air in her lungs. Her head swam dizzily, and she started
               breathing through her mouth.
    Rebel’s nose almost touched the back of the wall. The
   smell of metal was strong. Her skin crawled from the
  wall’s closeness, and she drew back her head. That felt
  better. Slowly, almost by compulsion, she began pulling
  herself forward, through the vines. A honeybee burned
past her ear, and she froze, afraid of bumping into its hive.
  But stopping brought back the claustrophobia, and she
moved forward again, occasionally reaching out a hand to
  touch the backs of the huts to keep from losing her way.
 Finally she came to a place where the tin was not. It was a
  gap between hutches, maybe even the one Maxwell had
           emerged from earlier. She crept into it.
    Light slowly grew. Rebel paused only when she could
 just barely see into the court, buried an arm’s length into
the vines. She could bear being enclosed, so long as there
    was light. She drew her hood about her face, peering
through the merest slit. Then she held herself motionless,
   like an old pike lying craftily in wait among the weeds.
  The court was full of people looking for an exit that was
 not there. For every one who realized that and left, two
more came in. They pushed and shoved at each other, and
       even exchanged blows in their blind flight.
     Then the gateway filled with jackboots. They were a
  motley bunch, in all color of cloak and even work garb.
One woman wore a welder’s apron, though she seemed to
have lost her mask. All had red stripes down the center of
  their faces, and fierce, merciless expressions. Three of
 them grabbed a young boy and fit a programmer across
his forehead. He thrashed and then went passive. A fourth
held a piece of paper to his face, and he shook his head. He
   was shoved out the gateway, and another civilian was
                            seized.
    One of the processers was called away, and the next
 civilian questioned was programmed police. Somebody
 repainted her face, and someone else shoved a fistful of
papers at her. One went flying, and Rebel saw that it was a
cheap repro hologram. Her face—her new face, Eucrasia’s
 face—floated above the paper, twisting and folding into
      itself when the paper doubled up against a hut.
  Rebel shivered and tried to keep from thinking about it.
                         Later.
    A heavy, bullish man snapped a length of pipe from a
 doorframe and tried to smash his way through the gate.
   One jackboot fell back, clutching his head, but others
seized the man’s arms and legs and forced a programmer
to his brow. “You’re a strong one,” the welder laughed as
 the samurai look came on his face. She drew a red stripe
      from his chin to his hairline. He joined the line.
  Rebel’s leg itched furiously. She did not move a muscle.
   As the people were processed out and the courtyard
 emptied, those who remained grew calmer. Some even
formed a sullen line, to get through the questioning more
                          quickly.
      There was a flurry of conferences, and four new
jackboots entered. Three of them were permanent police,
felons who’d pulled long enough terms to merit extensive
training. They wore riot helmets with transparent visors,
and low-mass body armor. Their insignia identified them
 as corporate mercenaries, rather than civil police. Two
carried long staffs with complicated blades at their ends,
      like a cross between a pike and a brush hook.
                  The fourth was Maxwell.
    There was no doubting it. The four passed right by
Rebel’s hiding place, and she got a good look at the young
man. He had a stripe of killer red up the center of his face
and a glittery, unforgiving look to his eye. “Of course I’m
not mistaken,” he snapped. “I heard her story myself. It’s
 Deutsche Nakasone that’s sponsoring this raid, right?
    Well, that’s who she escaped from. How could I be
                        mistaken?”
   He led the others to his hut and watched complacently
 as they ripped the front wall off, sending his jewelry and
 clothes scattering through the court. Moving efficiently,
  they jammed their hooks into the rear wall and began
                cutting it free of the frame.
     Rebel had a horrible urge to sneeze. She wanted to
    scream, to break and run. But that was Eucrasia’s
impulse, and Rebel would not give in to it. The jackboots at
   the gateway were processing out the last three tank
      towners. Their motions were quick and alert.
              The thing to do was not to move.
      I am old sister pike, she thought to herself. I am
                         patience.
   The rear wall went flying, and the police jabbed their
poles into the vines behind it. Maxwell shouted a warning,
    and they ignored it. He waved his arms frantically.
    And then there were cries of dismay. With an angry
shrill, a swarm of honeybees rose from their broken hive.
      The police fell back, swatting and cursing. At the
  gateway, somebody grabbed a jerrycan of water from
 Jonamon’s hut and flung its contents at the swarm. The
water broke into spheres and smashed into both bees and
  jackboots, doing nothing for the temper of either. The
permanent jackboots retreated to the corridor, dragging
     Maxwell after them. One cursed him furiously.
   Maxwell answered back and was struck in the mouth.
  The courtyard emptied. The jackboots pulled away from
 the gateway, and soon only one lingered. Go away, Rebel
     thought at him. But he did not. He gazed long and
thoughtfully at the floating debris in the courtyard and the
occasional bee zipping angrily by. He kicked into the court
          and poked his head into a hut or two.
  The man examined a vine-filled gap halfway across the
 court from her. Then he swam over to her patch. Rebel
  closed her eyes so the reflection from them would not
               betray her. Her skin itched.
     The vines rustled slightly. “Heads up, Sunshine!”
                    She opened her eyes.
   It was Wyeth, painted as if programmed police. Those
   fierce eyes laughed at her from either side of the red
stripe, and he grinned comically. Then his face went grim
 again, and he said, “We’ll have to get a move on. They’re
                     going to be back.”
   She climbed out of the vines. Following Wyeth’s lead,
she recovered her helmet and vacuum suit. Wyeth was at
    the gate, calling to her to hurry, when she noticed
  something floating half-hidden by a sheet of tin in an
  obscure corner of the court. “Wait,” she said. It was a
                            body.
  Rebel kicked away the tin. Old Jonamon floated there,
pale and motionless, like a piece of detritus. At her touch,
     he opened one eye. “Careful now,” he muttered.
           “Jonamon, what did they do to you?”
  “I’ve survived worse. You think maybe you could get me
some water?” Wyeth silently fetched a bulb and held it to
the old man’s mouth. Jonamon sucked in a mouthful and
coughed it out, choking. When he’d recovered, he gasped,
 “It’s hell being old. Don’t let nobody tell you different.”
   The old man was all tangled up in his cloak. Gently,
Rebel unwrapped it. When she saw his body, she gasped.
                   “They beat you!”
  “Ain’t the first time.” Jonamon tried to laugh. “But they
 couldn’t put their programmer on me without they beat
   me unconscious first.” His arms moved feebly, like a
                    baby’s. “So I escaped.”
  Rebel wanted to cry. “Oh, Jonamon. What good did that
         do you? You might have been killed!”
  Jonamon grinned, and for a second Rebel could see the
young, avaricious man of the old hologram. “At least I’d’ve
                 died in a state of grace.”
    Wyeth drew Rebel away. “Sunshine, we don’t have
                    much time.”
            “I’m not leaving without Jonamon.”
   “Hmm.” He cracked his knuckles thoughtfully, and his
lips moved in silent argument with himself. “Okay, then,”
  he said finally. “You take the one arm and I’ll take the
                           other.”
                             ***
  They moved slowly downcorridor, the old man between
  them. His mouth was open and his eyes half shut with
    pain. He didn’t try to talk. The tank towners, seeing
 Wyeth’s jackboot paint, gave them a wide berth. “Queen
Roslyn has her court down this way,” Wyeth said. “She’s a
   predatory old hag, and she stocks a lot of wetware. If
        anybody has a hospital going, it’ll be her.”
  They followed a purple rope into a dark neighborhood
with one brightly lit gateway. People hurried in and out of
    it. Rebel didn’t need to be told that this was their
                        destination.
 At the gateway, an angular woman with bony shoulders
and small, black nipples blocked their way. “Full up! Full
 up!” she cried. “No room here, go someplace else.” She
   didn’t even glance at Jonamon, who was now fully
                      unconscious.
   Wordlessly, Wyeth stripped the salaries from one wrist
   and held them forward. The woman cocked an eye at
  them, then let her gaze travel to his other wrist. Wyeth
          frowned. “Don’t get greedy, Roslyn.”
       “Well,” Roslyn said. “I guess we could make an
exception.” She made the salaries disappear, and led them
                          inside.
    It was chaos in the court, with stretcher lines hung up
 every which way. The lines were crowded with wounded
rude boys and rude girls, temporary jackboots, unpainted
  religious fanatics, and even one tightly bound raver. A
  miasma of blood droplets, trash, and bits of bandages
   hung in the air. But people with medical paint moved
  among the wounded, and their programming seemed
efficient enough. Roslyn stopped one and said, “Give this
 guy top priority, okay? His friends are paying for it.” The
   tech gave a tight little nod and eased Jonamon away.
 Roslyn smiled. “You see? Ask anyone, Roslyn gives good
        value. But you got to go now. I got no room for
            bystanders.” She shooed them back.
  On the way out, Rebel suddenly spotted a familiar face.
She seized Wyeth’s arm and pointed. “Look! Isn’t that…?”
Maxwell was stretched out on a line, unconscious. The red
  police strip was smudged on his finely chiseled face.
  Roslyn saw the gesture and laughed. “Another friend of
yours? You oughta maybe get some new ones who can stay
out of trouble. But he’s okay. Might lose a tooth. But mostly
he’s just got a histamine reaction from being bee-stung too
  often.” They were at the gateway now. “Young woman
 brought him in. Pretty little thing.” She cackled. “I think
                     she’s sweet on him.”
     “Oh?” Rebel said coolly. “Well, it takes all kinds, I
                        guess.”
                             ***
  They moved through near-empty corridors, away from
the center of the tank, and away from the receding storm
     front. “Wyeth,” Rebel said after a long silence,
  “Jonamon’s problems are all the result of his calcium
                  depletion, aren’t they?”
   “Jonamon’s problems are all the result of his being a
stubborn old man. He’ll survive this time, but it’s going to
               kill him sooner or later.”
    “No, really,” Rebel insisted. “I mean, like the kidney
troubles, he gets them from the calcium depletion, right?
You watch him for any length of time, and you see that he
gets muscle cramps, his breathing gets irregular… So why
              hasn’t he had that corrected?”
    They were nearing the shell. The temperature was
  cooler here, up against the outside of the tank. Wyeth
paused, took a narrow side-way, and Rebel followed. “It’s
 not correctable. You live a year or so in weightlessness,
and you reach the point of no return. It can’t be reversed.
           Slow down, we make a turn soon.”
    “But it would be so simple. You could tailor a strain of
 coraliferous algae to live in the bloodstream. In the first
   phase they’re free-swimming, and in the second they
colonize the bone tissue. When they die, they leave behind
                   a tiny bit of calcium.”
   “Coral reefs in the bones?” Wyeth sounded bemused.
              “That’s how we do it back home.”
     “You come from an interesting culture, Sunshine,”
 Wyeth said. “You’ll have to tell me all about it someday.
   But right now… here we are.” The corridor they had
     entered was completely shuttered and lit only by
   nightblooms. Scattered trash gathered in long drifts
  unbroken by the passage of traffic. They were the only
people in sight. Silently, Wyeth moved down the corridor,
    looking for a particular door. When he found it, he
stopped and rattled a wall. “This is King Wismon’s court.
              He’s got something we need.”
                       “What’s that?”
                     “A bootleg airlock.”



                          4
                      Londongrad

You’re too late, I’m afraid. You’ll simply have to go away.”
Eyes closed, King Wismon floated in the center of his
court. In stark contrast to the skinny young rude boys who
had ushered Rebel and Wyeth through twisty passages to
the court and who now stood guard over them, Wismon
was enormously fat. His was the kind of fat that is only
possible in a zero-gee environment. Even in half gravity
the weight of his bloated flesh would have strained his
heart, pulled his internal organs out of place, stressed
muscle and bone, and threatened to collapse his lungs. His
arms were unable to touch around the vast curve of his
stomach, and his skin was mottled with patches of blotchy
red. His crotch was buried under doughlike billows of leg
and belly, rendering him an enormous, sexless sphere of
flesh.
   “We have to be gone before the police front comes by
  again!” Rebel held forward her wrists. “We can pay!”
   Without opening his eyes, Wismon said, “I have been
paid for use of my airlock five times today. That is enough.
The lock is the basis of whatever small affluence I have—I
 don’t want to draw attention to it. The secret of a good
                 scam is not to get greedy.”
      “Hallo, Wismon,” Wyeth said. “No time for an old
   friend?” The fat man’s eyes popped open. They were
bright and glittery and dark. “Ah! Mentor! Forgive me for
     not recognizing you—I was asleep.” He waved an
ineffectual little arm at the rude boys. “Leave. This man is
       a brother under the skull. He won’t harm me.”
    The rude boys backed away, suspicious but obedient.
                   They disappeared.
   For an instant Eucrasia’s technical skills came back to
Rebel, and in a flash of insight she read the eyes, the facial
muscles, that weird, smirking grin… This was not a human
   being. This was a mind that had been reshaped and
 restructured. The play of intelligence behind those dark
eyes was too fast, too intuitive, too perceptive to be human.
     Its mental life would be a perpetual avalanche of
   perception and deduction that would crush a normal
                      human persona.
    Rebel realized all this in an instant, and in that same
 instant saw that Wismon had been studying her. Slowly,
solemnly, he winked one eye. To Wyeth, he said, “For you,
mentor, I’ll gladly violate my own protocol. Go ahead, use
 the lock, I won’t even charge you for it. Just leave me the
                          woman.”
                       Rebel stiffened.
 “I doubt she’d be of any use to you,” Wyeth said. His eyes
    were flat and intent, a killer’s eyes—there was no
impatience in them at all. “But even it she were, Deutsche
  Nakasone is after her. Do you really feel like going up
                   against them? Eh?”
  There was a dark explosion of hatred in those little eyes.
         “Perhaps I do.” Wismon smiled gently.
  “Now wait a minute, don’t I have any say—” Rebel and
  Wismon said in unison. Rebel stopped. She stared at
     Wismon in mingled outrage and amazement.
 “Don’t interrupt, little sweets,” Wismon said in a kindly
voice. “I can read you like a book.” He peered owlishly at
                           Wyeth.
  With a slight edge in his voice, Wyeth said, “Let’s put it
    this way. Do you feel like going up against me?”
    A long silence. Then, “No, damn it.” One of Wismon’s
little hands reached up to scratch convulsively at the side
 of his neck. It left red nail tracks. Then Wismon grinned
 companionably and said, “You’re bluffing, mentor, but I
 don’t know about what. I never was able to read you. Go
 through the hutch to your left—the one with a green rag
  for a door. You’d oblige me by both leaving at the same
   time. It’s a tight squeeze, but I’m sure you’ll manage.”
                             ***
 They kicked out of the airlock arm in arm. Rebel touched
    helmets with Wyeth. “What was that all about?”
                      “An old friend.”
      They drifted slowly toward the butt end of the
Londongrad cannister. It was a great dark circle that did
not seem to grow any closer. A tangle of bright machines
flashed by. Behind them, the tank towns slowly shrank.
                “He was afraid of you.”
  “Well… I did most of his reprogramming. When you put
   together a new mind, it’s kind of traditional for the
programmer to put a Frankenstein kink in the program,
 just in case. Sort of a dead man’s switch. So that with a
      prearranged signal—a word, a gesture, almost
anything—the programmer can destroy the personality.”
  “I see.” It all had a familiar ring; this was something
Eucrasia had understood well. “Was that what you did?”
   “Of course not. That would be immoral.” They floated
through unchanging vacuum for a time. Then Wyeth said,
“He’d only have found it and canceled it out, anyway. This
              way I can keep him guessing.”
 Helmets touching, his face was intimately close. It filled
her vision, craggy and enigmatic. Those green eyes of his
   sparkled. “How can you be sure he’d’ve found it?”
 “Why not? He’s smarter than I am. And I found the kink
 you put in me.” He pulled his helmet away, and silence
              wrapped itself around her.
  The cannister approached with extreme slowness. Rebel
  felt a queasiness that was like a snake uncoiling in her
stomach and slithering up her spine. It curled around her
       head twice and constricted slightly. Eucrasia’s
 claustrophobia. She swallowed hard. I won’t give in to it,
    she thought. It can’t break me. It can only make me
                          stronger.
                   It was not an easy trip.
                             ***
   Not many hours later they were following a pierrot into
   one of Londongrad’s most exclusive business parks.
   Under the canopy of druid trees, languid paths lit by
 wrought-iron lampposts meandered through dark fields
  and small stands of trees. Fireflies drifted hypnotically
 through the grass. A snowy owl swooped down on them,
 snapped out magnificent white wings at the last possible
  instant, banked, and was gone. “Wyeth,” Rebel asked,
“why did we spend all your money on these clothes? There
 were cloaks that looked just as good for nowhere near as
                          much.”
  “Yes, but they weren’t made of real Terran wool. When
  you go to the rich to ask for money, you must never let
            them suspect you actually need it.”
                            “Oh.”
     “Now don’t talk. Remember you’re painted up as a
 recreational slave. So don’t smile, don’t talk, don’t show
              any initiative. Just tag along.”
  Rebel moved her crossed wrists back and forth, setting
  the leash connecting them to Wyeth’s hand swinging.
 “Yeah, well, I’m not exactly thrilled about this part of the
                        deal either.”
   “It gives you an excuse for following me around. More
 importantly, it’ll confirm all of Ginneh’s worst suspicions
       about me. She’ll love it.” He hesitated, looked
  embarrassed. “Look, if it’d be any easier on you, I could
take a minute and program you up for real. It’s only for an
                     hour or so, anyway—”
  “No goddamn way!” she said, and Wyeth nodded quickly
 and glanced away. Rebel’s revulsion went right down to
the bone, so complete she was certain it came from both of
her personas. Well, that was one thing she had in common
                      with Eucrasia.
     The pierrot halted and, bowing, gestured to one side
 with a white-gloved hand. A brick walk led around a lilac
  bush to a simple office—a floating slab of polished wood
for a desk, and two plain chairs—backed by a rock outcrop
 and sheltered by a Japanese maple. At their approach a
  small, quick woman rose. “Wyeth, dear! It’s been years
  since I’ve seen you.” Her skin was somewhere between
 amber and mahogany, her eyes midway between shrewd
   and cunning. She dressed corporate grey, down to the
 beads on her braids, and her nails were scarlet daggers.
  Her business paint brought up her cheekbones, played
 down her wide mouth. She gave Wyeth a swift hug and a
                     peck on the cheek.
                       “Hallo, Ginneh.”
  The executive studied him. “Same old Wyeth. Taciturn
as ever.” Then she noticed Rebel. “Well!” Ginneh smiled,
 but made no further comment. She gestured Wyeth to a
     chair, and he dropped the leash, leaving Rebel
                    ground-hitched.
        Rebel stood by, as good as invisible, as the two
exchanged pleasantries and moved on to business. Wyeth
said, “I wondered if you were still providing professionals
   for the Outer System. Maybe the Jovian satellites?”
     “You were hoping for something on Ganymede? Oh,
   Wyeth, I’m so sorry.” She placed a small hand on his
   forearm. “This comes at such a bad time in our orbit.
  Please.” A schematic phased in over her desk, showing
     Eros Kluster leaving the inner edge main sequence
     asteroid belts, heading sunward. “We’re losing our
competitive edge, industrially. Half the refineries are shut
down. And we’re not close enough to the Inner System for
  the mercantile economy to come up full. You know how
difficult it is to find a position in a service economy. Maybe
 if you came back in a month. Thank you.” The schematic
                            faded away.
   “Well, perhaps I will.” Wyeth stood and retrieved his
     leash. “Been nice chatting you up, Ginneh.”
    “Oh, don’t rush off! Stay and talk. You haven’t even
 asked what I’m working on. I’ve been transferred to the
   People’s Mars project. You must let me show you it.”
        “Mars?” Wyeth frowned. “I’m not sure I’d be
                     interested—”
    “It’s a lovely package! Overview, please.” Holographic
  projections appeared behind her, like a line of windows
     winking open in the air. Spacejacks working on an
  enormous geodesic. A cluster of tank towns. Cold fusion
    reactors being towed slowly through the Kluster. An
elaborate floating sheraton nearing completion. “The total
     cost is upwards of half a million man-years. It was
 wonderful how the whole thing just snowballed. It began
  with the orbital sheraton—the Stavka wanted to create a
 tourist industry. See the transformation storms, that sort
 of thing.” They swiveled to look at the holos. Wyeth took a
                             chair.
     Now that their backs were turned, Rebel felt free to
slouch. She scratched an itch that had been bothering her
 for some time. Already she felt bored and ridiculous and
annoyed at Wyeth for getting her into this. People did this
                    kind of thing for fun?
  Ginneh and Wyeth were discussing the tank towns. “I
  don’t understand why the Stavka would want them,”
 Wyeth said. “Even as scrap, they can’t be worth much.”
   “Don’t be naive, dear. People’s Mars is having labor
      trouble. We dump a few dozen slums in their
 neighborhood, and the price of labor takes a nosedive.”
      “Hmmm.” Wyeth glanced over his shoulder and
      frowned at Rebel’s posture. She straightened
  involuntarily, then stuck out her tongue. He’d already
  turned back, though. “That puts you in something of a
  morally ambiguous position, doesn’t it? I mean, if you
 squint at it just right, it looks a lot like dealing in slaves.”
  The executive laughed. “We’re selling People’s Mars the
   tanks. Whether the people living in them choose to go
    along or not is up to them. Oh, we’re distributing the
Stavka’s propaganda for them, and we’ll sweeten the deal
     by suspending rent for the duration of transit, but
   nobody’s being forced to do anything. Next sequence,
 please.” All the scenes changed. “This is simply a terrific
     deal. It’s big and hot and fast. We’ve even had to go
 out-Kluster for some of the skills. Most of the muscle and
    skulls come from Londongrad, of course, and we’re
  providing the slums, the sheraton, the geodesic and the
raw oxygen. But—you see that holding sphere? Closeup, if
you would.” A translucent sphere packed with something
 green and leafy and wet zoomed closer. “That contains a
young air plant. We hired a team of macro-biologists from
 that pod of comets passing through the other side of the
                     system, to look after it.”
   The view switched to wraparound, and they were in the
center of a small biolab. Some twenty people were at work
there, dressed treehanger style, their bodies covered neck
  to foot in heavy clothing with embroidered inserts and
oversized pockets. They talked as they worked, oblivious of
 their viewers, and touched each other casually, a tap on
 the shoulder here, a nudge in the ribs there. Somebody
said something and the others laughed. Rebel wished she
 could join them, sign on to work among them. (But what
would she do? Her skills were gone, along with most of her
 memories. No matter. In the largest possible sense they
     were all family, and she longed to be with them.)
   “This is all tourist stuff, Ginneh,” Wyeth said in a flat
                             voice.
  “Ah? Well, perhaps this next one will interest you. You
  haven’t asked how we expect to transport the slums to
  Mars orbit without crushing everything within them.”
                    “Is that a problem?”
   “Oh my goodness, yes. Even the slightest acceleration
would be enough to collapse the interiors, shanties, people
       and all. Didn’t they teach you any physics in
         kindergarten? Please show us the ring.”
      “Well, I—” Wyeth stopped. The wraparound had
switched to the interior of a floating weapons platform. It
 had been built cheap, all boilerplate and seam weld, but
the laser sniper systems that crouched on the metal desk,
     gently shifting to track their targets, were bright,
  state-of-the-art killing machines. The human triggers
 floating beside them had the unblinking, fanatic look of
                    the rigidly wetwired.
     The systems were aimed through laser-neutral glass
   walls at individual specks moving through a cluttered
   floating construction site. The holo zoomed up on one
 speck, and it became a worker in distress-orange vacuum
suit. She was bolting together complex-looking machinery,
  hooking cables to ports, wiring terminals to terminals.
  Other orange-suited workers labored nearby, climbing
      blindly over one another as needed, yet perfectly
  synchronized. Tanks were mated to valves installed an
       instant before, complex wiring sequences were
 abandoned by one to be picked up by another, with never
   a glance to see how the others were doing. Hundreds
     worked in scattered clusters along the length of a
half-kilometer arch of machinery, looking more like hive
 insects than humans. Beyond them hung more weapons
platforms, enough to track each worker individually. “We
   brought in a team of Earth to build the transit ring,”
                       Ginneh said.
   “My God,” Wyeth said, horrified. “You can’t deal with
                   the Comprise.”
   “Don’t be silly, dear. Only Earth knows how to build an
accelerator ring. This deal isn’t possible without help from
the Comprise. Please expand from the third quadrant. You
 see the green tanks? Liquid helium. We’ve rented half the
         liquid helium in the Kluster for this caper.”
   “Let me make myself a little clearer, Ginneh. Earth and
 humanity are natural enemies. We’re talking survival of
 the species here. You don’t cut deals with something that
threatens every human being in existence. I’m not talking
abstractions here, Ginneh. I’m talking about you, me, and
 everyone we know—our selves, our minds, our souls, our
                   identities. Our future.”
   Ginneh shrugged. “Oh, I’m sure you exaggerate. Our
 security is excellent. You saw the weapons platforms. If
           anything, we’re being overcautious.”
   “Machines!” Wyeth snorted. “Machines are the easiest
      things in the universe to outwit because they’re
predictable—that’s their function, to be predictable, to do
  exactly what they’re designed for, time after time. And
  you’ve put them under the control of guards so tightly
 programmed they’re almost machines themselves. Real
 bright, Ginneh. I ought to strangle you and every one of
    your fellow corporate whores myself. It would only
                    improve the breed.”
              “I suppose you could do better?”
                   “Damn right I could!”
        “I’m glad to hear you say that,” Ginneh said
 complacently. “Because I believe I do have a position for
                     you, after all.”
    Rebel’s nose itched. She scratched it, and the leash
tapped her belly lightly. Grimacing, she pulled her hands
 free of the thing and dropped it on the ground. The hell
  with it. She rubbed her wrists slowly and luxuriously,
     staring at the back of Wyeth’s head with shrewd
speculation. How much did she actually know about him?
Very little. Enough, though, to know that he was involved
 hip-deep in some kind of weirdness. It certainly wasn’t
altruism that powered his actions. He had his own plans,
whatever they were, and somehow she had been fitted into
them. Logic told her it was time to cut and run. Leave him
            and his bitch to their little schemes.
  Ginneh and Wyeth had their heads together, conferring
            quietly. Neither noticed her go.
                             ***
         The biolab had been retrofitted between two
 underwriting firms on Fanchurch Prospekt in midtown
  Londongrad. Rebel got the address from a public data
port. She might not have her skills, but any working group
 needed someone to do the scutwork, and she could fetch
  and carry with the best of them. Her plan was to hide
   among her own kind, where she would be effectively
invisible, because she wouldn’t stand out. And when they
 left to return to their comet worlds, she’d go with them.
                All it’d take was a little grit.
   At the doorway she hesitated, remembering the public
  surveillance cameras inside. Well, there were millions
  such throughout the Kluster. What were the odds that
   somebody looking for her would be watching? Slim.
            Taking a deep breath, she went in.
  “Hey-lo!” A lanky treehanger stuck a genecounter in his
 hip pocket and leered at her. Another man whistled. All
          activity within the lab came to a halt.
    Rebel stopped in confusion. Everyone was looking at
her. They were staring at her breasts and stomach, some
 involuntarily and with embarrassment, and others not.
She fought down the urge to snap her cloak shut, and her
 face flushed. A short, grey-haired woman turned from a
  potting bench, brushing her hands together, and said
             mildly, “Can I help you, dearie?”
  “Uh, yes, well… Actually, I just wanted to stop by for a
 chat. You see, I come from a dyson world myself.” The
 words sounded false, and Rebel felt irrationally guilty.
           Sweat beaded up under her arms.
  “Gone a bit native then, ain’t you?” the lanky one said.
  “Haven’t you work to do?” the woman said in a warning
   voice. “All of you! What are we getting paid for, hey?
   Squatting in the bushlines?” Then, in a gentler tone,
              “Where do you hail from then?”
  “Tirnannog. It’s part of the original archipelago, just
moving out into the Oort.” The names came to her without
   urging, but none of them sounded familiar to her.
   The other engineers were working quietly, not talking,
   so they could overhear what was said. Now a stocky,
 blond-haired kid with walnut skin looked up, interested.
“Oh yeah, I been there,” he said. “We’re all from Hibrasil,
practically spitting distance, hey? Couple weeks transit in
 coldpack is all. Got family in Stanhix, ever heard of that?
                 Just outside of Blisterville.”
       She shook her head helplessly. “Blisterville?”
   “You never heard of Blisterville? Threetrunk past the
      Sargasso? Five hundred thousand people?”
  A woman looked up from a tank of water voles and said,
  “Bet you we got one of those ravers on our hands. You
     know—too much electricity shot up the medulla
   oblongata.” The treehanger beside her laughed and
                 punched her shoulder.
  “Hey, listen, I’m not lying to you, sport! I really am from
               Tirnannog. I can explain—”
 “Where does an airwhale fit into an ecosystem? What do
they sell in Green City? Why can’t an anogenic construct
      eat? What are the seven basic adaptations to
weightlessness?” the stocky kid asked. He looked Rebel in
   the eye and sneered. “How many bones are in your
                         hand?”
 She didn’t have the answers. It was all information that
had been destroyed with her original body. She opened
her mouth, but nothing came out. One of her hands was
                      trembling.
   “Freeboy,” the grey-haired woman snapped, “are you
  going to get back to work or am I going to have to kick
butt?” The boy rolled his eyes upward, but turned back to
  a stacked petri array. The woman said to Rebel, “We
                    believe you, dear.”
                    “But I really am—”
    “I could run a blood test,” Freeboy offered. “Even
adapted for gravity, there’s still five major differences…”
  “What did I tell you?” the woman began ominously. But
        Rebel was already halfway to the door.
 As she stepped outside, a man who hadn’t spoken before
called after her, “What do them lines on your face mean,
 girlie?” By his tone, she knew that he had been tasting
what pleasures a wettechnic civilization had to offer and
          knew exactly what her paint indicated.
           She bit her lip, but did not look back.
                            ***
   Out on the Prospekt, the crowds swallowed her whole.
 There were far more people here than either uptown or
   downtown, and the corridors were wide, like plazas
 infinitely extended. Rows of palms divided the surge of
  people into lanes, and cartoon stars and planets hung
 from a high ceiling. Underfoot, the Prospekt was paved
with outdated currency, silver thalers, gold kronerrands,
 green ceramic rubles, all encased under diamond-hard
  transparent flooring. Expensively dressed people, all
     painted financial—cargo insurance, gas futures,
  bankruptcy investment—coursed over it. Rebel let the
   crowd carry her away, transforming her anger and
   humiliation and confusion into blessed anonymity.
             A clown came striding toward her.
    In the sea of bobbing, somber cloaks, the puffy white
costume seemed to glow, as if lit from within. The pierrette
smiled slightly as her eyes met Rebel’s. The crowds parted
  for her, like waters before a religious master, and she
descended upon Rebel as calm and inevitable as an angel.
   Rebel stopped, and the pierrette bowed and proffered a
 white envelope. She took it from the gloved hand and slid
  out a paper rectangle. It was a holographic advertising
flat. Above it floated the same false ideal of Rebel Mudlark
       she had seen in downtown New High Kamden.
  She looked questioningly at the pierrette, who dipped a
short curtsey. She might as well try interrogating the floor.
 Rebel turned the paper over, and on its back was written,
  “Request that we talk.” She crumpled the paper in her
     hand. The image folded into itself and was gone.
                  She nodded to the clown.
   The pierrette led her to a nearby bank. They went to the
 negotiating rooms, bypassing several that were discreetly
equipped for sex, and found a walnut-paneled niche with a
single bench and table. Rebel sat, and the pierrette flipped
   on privacy screen and sound baffles. She produced a
holograph generator, placed it atop the table, and curtsied
                            away.
  After a moment to compose herself, Rebel reached out to
               switch on the generator.
                             ***
   She was looking into a small hollow—obviously part of
an upscale business park. At first glance Rebel thought the
  hollow held a drift of snow. Then she saw that she was
  looking down on an oval of white tiles. The only spot of
color in all that white was a red prayer rug at its center. A
 lone figure knelt there, hood down, shaven head bowed.
       “Snow!” Rebel exclaimed. The image panned
                      downslope.
      The figure raised its head, studied her with cold,
 reptilian eyes. Skin white as marble, face painted in the
 hexangular lines of ice crystals or starbursts. He cocked
 his head slightly, listening. “In a sense,” he said at last,
   “perhaps I am. Snow and I are both part of the same
  thing.” His face was every bit as gaunt and fleshless as
        hers had been. “I have a message for you.”
  “What are you?” she asked. “Just exactly what are you
    that you and Snow are part of the same thing?”
   He made a small sideways jerk of his head, a gesture
 perhaps of annoyance. Or maybe he was just accessing
 data through some new channel. “Irrelevant. I am not
  required to give you any information other than the
 message. If you choose not to receive it…”He shrugged.
                  “All right. I’m listening.”
 The man looked directly at her. “Deutsche Nakasone has
  licensed a team of dedicated assassins to your case.”
     “No,” Rebel said. Without thinking about it, she
 clenched her fists so tight the nails dug into her hands.
   The skin over her knuckles hurt. “That’s ridiculous.
  Deutsche Nakasone wants my persona. They need me
                           alive.”
     “Not necessarily.” A bony hand slid from his cloak to
     stab the empty air, and an appliance with smooth,
 cherry-red finish appeared on insert. “The assassins are
 equipped with cryonic transport devices. They need only
 kill you, flash-freeze your brain, and let their technicians
      dig out the desired information using destructive
techniques.” The hand disappeared into his cloak. “That’s
  what they should have done originally. But they also
wanted to salvage you as a petty officer of the corporation.
        Now, however, you’ve been written off.”
   The machine was slick and featureless on the outside,
with a popup handle on the top. It was just the right size to
   hold Rebel’s head. She hunched her shoulders and
  brought up her hands. “Why are you telling me this?”
 “You are not ready to deal yet.” The man stood suddenly,
 strode three paces to one side, stopped. “Very well. We
wish to keep you alive until you are ready. You must take
this threat seriously.” He paused to examine something
 Rebel could not see. “You’ve been careless. You should
   have realized there are few enough groups of dyson
worlders in the Kluster that they all would be watched. If
    we hadn’t reached you first, you’d be dead now.”
       The scene shifted, and she was looking down on
  Fanchurch Prospekt. From above, the jostling zombies
blended together like a sluggish flow of mud. Bright circles
appeared around three faces, and she saw that they were
moving through the crowd in formation, searching among
the faces for something. One by one, the image zoomed up
 on them: A heavy woman with fanatically set face and a
 black slash across her left eye. An unblinking sylph of a
girl with a black slash across her left eye. And then a third
 with that same paint, a red-haired man with a face like a
                            fox.
                        Jerzy Heisen.
  “You know him?” the man asked. The assassins passed
  by the doors of the bank Rebel was in. Each carried a
 cherry-red cryogenic storage device in one hand. “Why
      did you start like that if you didn’t know him?”
               “He used to work with Snow.”
   “Ah.” The man made a small gesture, cocked his head.
  “Interesting.” The crowd scene faded. “Of course. He’s
  clever, he’s serving time, and he’s actually met you. Of
 course he’d be one of your assassins.” Again he paused.
 “No matter. We have generated a chart of those places in
the System you can flee to, and with them the probabilities
of your being assassinated by Deutsche Nakasone within a
     Greenwich month of arrival. I suggest you study if
                        carefully.”
                   The chart scrolled up.
         Location Probability of Assassination ( 1 percent)
                                            Eros Kluster 97%
                                        Pallas Kluster 95%
         OTHER KLUSTERS (WITHIN BELTS) 91% (range
                                         88-93%)
                                      Trojan Klusters 90%
                                      Lunar Holdings 90%
                           Mercury Science Preserve 90%
                    Neptune/Pluto Science Preserves 90%
                                       Jovian System: 70%
                                nongalilean satellites 89%
                            Ganymede (Ported Cities) 65%
                                            (wilderness) 44%
                               Callisto (Ported Cities) 65%
                                            (wilderness) 41%
         Io, Europa, Amalthea, Jupiter Orbital 65% (range
                                                 63-68%)
                                Mars Orbital, Deimos 63%
                                        Mars Surface 59%
                                   Saturnian system: 58%
                      Lesser Satellites 75% (range 74-75%)
                                 Rings, Saturn Orbital 72%
                                 Titan (Ported Cities) 30%
                                            (wilderness) 23%
                                           Earth Orbital 17%
                                           Earth Surface 0%
   “Very cute,” Rebel said. The list brought back some of
   the spirit the last half hour had kicked out of her. “I
 especially like that last bit. I guess I should hop the first
transit to Earth, huh? Or maybe I should just walk out an
     airlock without a suit. Then I could swim there.”
  Her sarcasm had no visible effect. “We won’t advise you
what to do. We only reassure you that within the limits of
game theory this chart is reliable.” The man knelt, raising
his hood. The chart faded and the pierrette reappeared at
                       Rebel’s side.
   “One more thing. You have a new friend. The tetrad.”
                            “Yes?”
                      “Don’t trust him.”
                              ***
   The leash was waiting for her. Wyeth and Ginneh still
   had their heads together in conference, apparently
oblivious to her absence this past hour. The same views of
   weapons platforms and of the Comprise assembling
machinery hung in the air beyond the desk. The crescent
fraction of the transit ring was a shade longer than it had
  been. Rebel sighed and slipped the leash back on her
                           wrists.
 There was no place she could go that was not dangerous,
and no one she dared trust. She had to play hunches. And
so far the only testimonial for any direction of action was
     that Snow’s whatever-he-was distrusted Wyeth.
     “Well,” Ginneh said. “Will you take the position?”
     Wyeth glanced over his shoulder at Rebel, and for a
 flicker she thought he looked surprised to see her. Then
she was not sure. “Ginneh, you knew I’d take it when you
       first brought it up. Let’s not kid each other.”
    Ginneh’s laugh was light and gracious. “Well, that’s
 true, darling, but I’d rather hoped to spare your ego that
                         realization.”
 “Mmmm.” Wyeth stood and took up the leash. “Consider
    me on the payroll, then.” He led Rebel away.
    Not far from the park, they climbed a winding set of
     wooden stairs high up a druid tree to a platform
   restaurant built out onto the branches, where they
 ordered puff pastries and green wine. The glasses had
wide bowls and tiny lips. Wyeth frowned down on his and
  capped it with his thumb. He slowly swirled the green
        liquid around and around. Rebel waited.
      Wyeth looked up suddenly. “Where were you?”
                  “What’s it worth to you?”
    Hands closed around the wine glass. They were big
  hands, with knobby joints and short, blunt fingers. A
       strangler’s hands. “What do you want?”
  “The truth.” And then when he raised an eyebrow, she
amended it to, “Truthful answers to as many questions as I
                         ask you.”
  A moment’s silence. Then he rapped his knuckles on the
 table and touched them to his brow and lips. “Done. You
                        go first.”
    Slowly, carefully, she recounted the past hour. She felt
good up here among the leaves, where the light was green
   and watery and the gravity was slight. She felt like she
  could lean back in her chair and just float away… out of
the chair, out of the restaurant, beyond the branches, into
 the great dark oceans of air where whales and porpoises
 sported, and the clouds of dust algae blocked out the light
from the distant trees. It felt like home, and she stretched
        out her story through three glasses of wine.
   As she talked, Wyeth’s face remained stiff. He hardly
even blinked. And when she was done, he said, “I cannot
 for the life of me understand how any one human being
                     can be so stupid!”
 “Hey,” Rebel said defensively. “It’s your own fault I don’t
 have the faintest idea what you’re up to. If anyone here
                 was stupid, it was you.”
  “Who do you think I was talking about?” he said angrily.
    “I was just too clever for my own good. While I was
building an elaborate trap for Snow and her ilk, they walk
 up and have a long chat with you! One perfectly beautiful
opportunity blown all to hell because I—well, never mind.”
He took a deep breath and then—like a conjurer’s trick—he
  was instantly smiling and impish. “Go ahead, ask your
  questions. You want me to start by explaining Snow?”
     “No. Well, yeah, but later on. I want to start with
 something very basic. You’re not really human, are you?
                  You’re a new mind.”
          He grinned. “Who should know better?”
  “Please. You already hinted that I did the programming
on you. But I don’t remember a damned thing, so don’t get
all coy on me, okay? Give me a straight answer. Just what
                    the fuck is a tetrad?”
    “A tetrad is a single human mind with four distinct
 personalities.” His face changed expression, to serious,
  then distracted, then open, and finally mischievous.
 “That’s what we am. Or should I say, that’s what I are?”



                         5
                PEOPLE’S SHERATON

You’re in for something that’s pretty rare this far from a
planetary surface,” Wyeth said.
                      “What’s that?”
                      “A windstorm.”
  Beneath its elaborations—balconies, outcroppings, light
   and heavy gravity wings, bubbles and skywalks—the
   sheraton was a simple orbital wheel, with three floors
moving at slightly different speeds to maintain Greenwich
normal gravity. Wyeth had set up security headquarters in
    the lobby at the foot of the elevator from the central
  docking ring. He sat behind the front desk, eyes moving
  restlessly as he scanned a dozen holographic inputs. A
tone-controlled mike rested before him, and he murmured
instructions into it from time to time, pitching his voice for
                     the channel desired.
     Rebel sat in a sling chair, staring out through the
   window wall. The stars trembled with the flicker of
 subliminal memories. She could see Wyeth reflected on
             the inner surface of the glass.
   There was a cascade of movement across the window.
  “We’ve secured the locks, sir. The people aren’t very
happy about it. Minor violence at tanks twelve and three.”
Despite her samurai paint, the woman hardly looked like
security. She’d been recruited from the tanks and wore a
      daisy-yellow cloak and far too much jewelry.
 “They were notified,” Wyeth said. When the woman was
   gone, he sighed. “I wonder at people. If they don’t
 understand why they can’t use the locks for an hour or
two, then what do they think is waiting for them when we
    reach Mars orbit? I’m afraid they’re in for a rude
                      awakening.”
    Spacejacks were bolting the preassembled segments of
the geodesic around the sheraton and tanks, working with
 programmed efficiency. The structure was covered with
 transparent monomolecular skin. From Rebel’s chair, it
  looked like a faint haze gathering across the stars. The
       workers began spraying powdered steel over the
   completed exterior, vacuum-welding layer upon layer.
 Now it was like watching the heat death of the universe,
  the stars slowly clouding up and fading to black. Gloom
   swelled and overwhelmed everything. Finally the only
     light within the geodesic was what spilled from the
                   windows of the sheraton.
    “This is spooky,” Rebel said. Suddenly she had an
overwhelming sense of someone standing at her shoulder.
           She whirled, and no one was there.
     “You like it, huh?” Wyeth threw an exterior camera
  projection onto one quadrant of window. From outside,
 the geodesic looked like a gigantic ball bearing, dazzlingly
bright in the raw sunlight. Stars rippled over its flank. Just
off center was the distorted reflection of Londongrad, with
   the Kluster corporate logo (two classical figures, one
 bending) superpainted on its side. In an unfamiliar voice
   Wyeth said, “Think of it as an enormous cell. The tank
 towns at the center are the nucleus. The sheraton is… oh,
the centrosome, I guess. The air plant would have to be the
  mitochondria.” He laughed and spread his arms. “And
 behold! A new form of life floats upon the winds of space.
  What vast, unimaginably complex creatures will evolve
     from this first simple cell, a million years hence?”
    Rebel looked up sharply. “Which one of you is that?”
   Again that strange laugh. “The pattern-maker, I guess
   you’d call me. I’m the intuitive one, the persona that
  guesses at the big picture, that decides what we think
 about God and infinity. Of course, it’s only a name. In an
      Aboriginal hunting party, I’d be the shaman.”
                            “Hah?”
   “Don’t you know where the tetrad comes from? Eucrasia
  patterned us after the ancient Aboriginal hunting party.
     They went out in groups of four, and no matter what
 individuals they picked, during the hunt they took on four
    distinct roles—the leader, the warrior, the mystic, the
clown. It made for a remarkably stable and efficient group.
 And it makes for a remarkably stable and efficient mind.”
   This was all very familiar. Staring out into the darkness,
    Rebel saw half-formed memories of Eucrasia’s past
striving to take shape. “I thought she was a persona bum?”
   “Well, a little bit of a persona bum, yeah. But a hell of a
           good wetsurgeon in your own right.”
                     “In her own right.”
   “Whatever.” As they talked, Wyeth occasionally turned
  away to touch an unseen control or murmur an order.
 People continually passed through the lobby. A squad of
 security samurai took the elevator up to the docking ring,
  armed with truncheons and barbed pikes, and looking
dangerous. In their wake, a young kid with mahogany skin
  strode in. He stood at the window, hands behind back,
            peering out with elaborate interest.
      “What are you doing here?” Rebel asked coldly.
  “Hey, I got experience in security work.” Maxwell put a
 hand on her shoulder, and she stood, knocking it away.
  Without looking up, Wyeth said, “He’s a messenger. I
 need any number of runners who can take messages in
                and out of the tanks.”
            “He’s not painted as a messenger.”
   “Yes, well, we’re dealing with the Comprise here. The
              less programming the better.”
   On the window flashed images of cold fusion alembics
 being hooked into the geodesic and powered on. Newly
created oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, and trace gases
 gushed into the sphere. The sheraton shuddered as the
   winds hit, and Wyeth lost two limpet cameras, their
   perches torn out from under their grips. They went
hurtling helplessly away, one to shatter against the tanks,
       the other against the geodesic’s inside wall.
   A short, grey-haired woman dressed treehanger style
  walked up to the front desk. “Got all my people at their
  stations. What do you need us to do when?” It was the
   supervisor from the biolab on Fanchurch Prospekt.
    “Oh Christ,” Rebel muttered. “It’s Old Home Week.”
   The woman peered at her. “Don’t I know you, dear?”
  Rebel turned away, and Wyeth said, “Rebel Elizabeth
Mudlark, I’d like you to meet Constance Frog Moorfields,
 our macrobioengineering project director. Connie, I’m
going to need you to cue your people in just a few minutes.
                Grab a channel, will you?”
   “Oh yes, certainly.” Constance peered owlishly at the
         controls. “How do I work this thing?”
 Maxwell slid an arm around Rebel’s waist and said, “Tell
you what, why don’t you sit on my lap, and we’ll talk about
  the first thing to come up?” She threw a punch at his
         stomach, and he danced back, grinning.
     Outside, the storm howled. “Now,” Wyeth said, and
Constance nodded and murmured into her mike. In some
  distant room the macrobioengineers hit their remotes.
   Explosive bolts broke open the small holding sphere,
sending the pieces flying. The air plant within twisted and
 expanded, lashing through the air. The winds took it in
 their teeth, and strands slammed against the tanks and
  the geodesic walls, rebounding furiously. Through the
windows, Rebel saw hugh loops of the plant loom into the
    dim light from the sheraton and recede again. “It’s
                 enormous,” she marveled.
   “Twenty-seven miles,” Constance said with satisfaction.
  “Stretched out full, that is. And it’s still young. Ought to
  grow like green hell in the next few days.” She reached
    over to the controls and threw several biostructural
 schematics on the windows. “See, we’ve designed it to—”
               Rebel turned and walked away.
       The hallway was long and straight, with a barely
 perceptible upward curve. Rebel wondered why it was so
dark, shadows lapping up against her ankles and hovering
 over either shoulder. Must be some reason. She touched
    one paisley wall, and remembered another, similar
  hallway she had walked down a thousand times before,
     the one connecting her office with the wetsurgery.
     A breeze stirred her cloak, and she drew it together
slightly. A scrap of paper fluttered by, and behind her she
heard a silver bowl crash to the floor and go tumbling end
      over end before hitting a wall. Somewhere, the
off-program samurai were opening the airlocks, glorying
 in the rush of new air. Outside, the wind sang in demon
        chorus. Within, all was cool gush and flow.
    She was striding along, lost in her memories, when
Jerzy Heisen stepped from a conversation niche and took
 her arm. “Hello, Heisen,” she said absently. “Anything
            new on the Mudlark program?”
    He gave her a peculiar look. “Not yet. Soon, I hope.”
     “I’ve decided to try the program on myself. It looks
    interesting, but the kind of interesting that’s only
comprehensible from the inside, if you get me. I don’t want
 that information filtered through some subliterate, only
 marginally coherent persona bum.” She couldn’t keep a
touch of bitterness from her voice. The support staff she’d
 been given was poor material, incompetent to begin with
and hastily programmed on top of that. She had to do half
                     their work herself.
   Heisen frowned, then said carefully, as if reciting lines
 from a play or remembering the exact wording of an old
 conversation, “Is that wise? We haven’t had the master
                  wafer duplicated yet.”
  She brushed his objection aside scornfully. “It’s only for
    ten minutes. God’s sake, what can happen in ten
                       minutes?”
  A pause. When she looked directly at him, Heisen’s eyes
  were oddly intent, but the instant she looked away he
    faded to a vague presence again. “You think it’s a
               commercial persona, then?”
    “You’re so damned mercenary, Heisen! I’m talking
 about a new trait, a new characteristic, a new property…
  Something that might make programming richer and
                     more interesting.”
          “But it does have commercial potential?”
                     “Oh, I suppose so.”
 Footsteps came running up from behind, and suddenly a
 dark-skinned kid was standing before her, proffering a
 cheap amalgam ring. Eucrasia had to squint to see him.
          “Wyeth told me to give this to you.”
     “Wyeth?” She recognized the name. How could she
    forget? He was the best work she’d done yet—pirate
surgery, of course, but she’d put everything she had into it,
 because some of the most interesting programming was,
  strictly speaking, illegal. “Wyeth asked you to give me a
                             ring?”
   “Yeah, it’s a locator ring. So he can keep track of you,
 where you are and so on.” He waved a hand at the ceiling
cameras. “Listen, you come over to the tanks later on, visit
 my hut. No surveillance there. We can get private, know
                       what I mean?”
          Eucrasia shrugged in baffled annoyance.
   Heisen had withdrawn to a discreet distance. The kid
 glanced curiously at him, decided he wasn’t important,
and blew her a kiss. “See you in my hutch!” he called over
 his shoulder. Eucrasia vaguely wondered who he was.
    Heisen took her arm again. He steered her through a
meadowlike meeting room. The grass was cool underfoot,
  and bees hovered drowsily over the raspberry bushes.
“Let’s go over this way, and stroll through the skywalk. It’s
 a very pleasant walk. Free of cameras and prying eyes.”
   He swung the cherry-red case lightly back and forth as
                   he led her away.
                             ***
    The skywalk looped out from the sheraton in a long,
graceful curve. Fish swam through strands of kelp within
the transparent tube walls. The teak boardwalk sounded
almost musically underfoot. “I designed Wyeth’s warrior
aspect after my father,” Eucrasia said. She had totally lost
 track of who she was talking to, but the memories were
  compulsively strong, and they drove the words before
them. “He was a willful man, my father was. Determined.
     Nobody could talk him into anything, not unless he
  wanted them to. But he wasn’t… flexible, you know? He
 couldn’t adapt to change. He couldn’t show emotion. But
   underneath he was a wonderful man, very kind, and I
 loved him. When I was a girl I was always wishing I could
  change him. Not in any big way, but in little ways, so he
could get past all that defensive armor and breathe a little.
    So he could enjoy his life. That was a big factor in my
                  choice of career, I think.”
   She fell silent. Remembering when she was a little girl
and the Kluster was passing out of the belts. The refineries
were closing, which had put both her parents out of work.
  Those had been bad times. Her mother’d taken a job as
pierrette, and the wetware was primitive then. She’d come
      home after shift with a goony look to her and a
subservience that took hours to wear off. Daddy had hated
                           that.
      Once Eucrasia came home from nurture to find her
      father sitting at the center room table, turning a
   wetcartridge over and over in his hands. It was a big,
 bulky thing in a black case, almost obsolete already, and
   she didn’t know yet that it was loaded with electronic
 godhood. But she knew that she was tired of having her
father around all the time, moping about gloomily, and of
  almost never seeing her mother the way she used to be.
 And she didn’t like the guilty, weak look that melted her
   father’s face when he saw her. He had always been a
 strong man. So it was involuntary how, as he fumblingly
   tried to hide the cartridge, she stared up at him, mind
 superchilled and pulsing with inarticulate pain, and felt
 the anger sear through her eyes like an invisible psychic
             laser, and said, “I hate you, Daddy.”
             What happened then shocked her.
    Her father’s hand clenched into a fist. It trembled.
  Then—so fast she almost didn’t see it happen—he hit
himself right in the middle of his face. That big fist struck
hard. It must have hurt like hell. It broke the cartilage in
   his nose, and blood flowed down. Then he hit himself
 again. And again, with less hesitation this time, as if he’d
savored the experience and decided he liked it. At first the
only sound was of fist striking flesh, but then gradually he
  began gasping, a wet noise like sobbing. Still he kept on
                      hitting himself.
   Eucrasia had rushed forward, grabbing at that huge,
   muscular arm, trying to stop him. “Daddy, no!” she
    shrieked, and somehow—it was like a small, dark
                miracle—he’d stopped.
  For a long moment he just stood there, chest working,
shoulders heaving. His face was all dark with blood. One
red drop fell on Eucrasia’s foot, tickling her little toe. Her
 father stared around and around him, as if wondering
where he was. Then his eyes fixed on Eucrasia, and they
 both stood there, mouths open and silent, unblinking,
                  looking at one another.
                    Then he turned away.
   “This is far enough,” Heisen said. He stopped and put
  down his case with a heavy thump. “Why don’t you sit
                    down, Eucrasia?”
  They had come to a transparent bar built out from the
 wall of the skywalk. An octopus was searching for food
 down by the floor, pulling himself along the glass with
graceful swirls of his tentacles. Eucrasia sat on one of the
 stools. “He was a good man,” she said. “He was a good
       man. He didn’t deserve for that to happen.”
              “This will only take an instant.”
  Eucrasia stared out into the darkness. There were a few
 vague patches of luminosity in the distance, but nothing
     more. Where were the stars? she wondered. Tiny
   wheatseed lights edged the boards underfoot and ran
along the rim of the bar, but outside all was Stygian gloom.
  She felt like she’d been caught in an afterworld where
   things struggled to take form from nothingness, and
                           failed.
    Heisen lifted the headfreezer above her. One of his
          elbows touched her shoulderblade.
  Startled by some movement below, the octopus exploded
  in Eucrasia’s face. One instant she was staring out into
   featureless black, and the next she confronted a pale,
  distorted shape that had leaped before her. A reflexive
   startlement keyed subliminal memories of empty eye
         sockets, a mouth that was a gaping scream.
 Simultaneously, her claustrophobia gripped her and she
   realized that somebody was standing at her shoulder,
              about to put a box over her head.
 Eucrasia screamed and lurched to the side. Rebel fell off
 the stool, one edge of Heisen’s cryonic device smashing
against her shoulder, and then she slammed to the floor.
 In a white burst of pain she rolled away and tumbled to
  her feet. Heisen lifted the thing again. “Get away from
                      me!” Rebel cried.
      “Now, Eucrasia,” Heisen said. He made soothing,
 hushing noises. But his eyes were calm and cold and they
 did not look away from her for an instant. He advanced a
step, and she backed away. There was nothing but skywalk
 behind her—at least an eighth of a mile of tubing without
                     branching or exit.
    “Listen, Jerzy, I don’t know how you got in here, but
  Wyeth’s going to notice I’m missing soon. This place is
  crawling with samurai— there’s no way you can get out
                  without being caught.”
    Heisen stepped back a few paces so he could set the
 cryonics device on the bartop. He reached into his cloak
 and removed a case from a liner pocket. Without looking
                down, he flipped it open.
      “Jerzy? Listen to me, will you? I’m sure you can be
reprogrammed. You can have a normal life again. Answer
to nobody but yourself.” He slipped his hand through the
hilt of a fat-bladed dueling knife. It was the kind rude boys
     favored, a cross between stabbing blade and brass
 knuckles, because it was almost impossible to lose one’s
                   grip on it in a fight.
     Now Heisen smiled calmly and took a swipe at her.
  “Oh shit!” Rebel danced back. Grabbing the loose end of
her cloak, she whipped it about one forearm. Now she had
 a shield of sorts. In a giddy, crazily gleeful corner of her
  mind, she felt like a Renaissance dandy. This was how
  they had fought in Spain, in Rome, in Greece, all those
      centuries ago, in desperate back-alley scuffles.
        Of course, they’d had weapons of their own.
    Heisen advanced slowly; even with the advantage, he
was programmed to be a cautious fighter. He feinted twice,
stabbing at her face and then her belly, and watched how
 her arm jerked forward to protect them. Where Heisen’s
 movements were all smooth, controlled menace, Rebel’s
reflexes were made rough and nervous by the jagged edge
 of fear. It coursed through her veins, danced behind her
  eyes, and tasted sour in her mouth. She was defeated
                          already.
 Heisen’s smile faded, and for an instant he was perfectly
 still. Then he lunged forward, feinting left to draw away
 her arm, then slashing downward at the exposed side of
                         her throat.
  Rebel leaped away, crashing sideways into the wall. The
  hot acid edge of the knife drifted across her side, barely
breaking the skin, searing the finest possible line over her
  ribs. Rebel pushed away from the wall, her entire side
 ablaze with pain, and stumbled backward. Heisen glided
              forward, his eyes deathly calm.
 Something hard slammed Rebel in the back. The edge of
  the bar. Perfect, she thought. One corner in the entire
  damned skywalk and I back myself into it. Something
 smooth and metallic and chill touched her back ever so
                           gently.
                      The headfreezer.
  In one swift motion she snagged the thing from behind
 her and thrust it at Heisen, gripping the handle in both
               hands. He fell back a pace.
  The problem was that it was not easy to hold the freezing
unit up before her. It was heavy, and her arms trembled. It
 was too short, too blunt, too clumsy. If Heisen weren’t so
damned quick, she’d be tempted to just drop it on his foot.
  Under one finger she could feel a trigger built into the
  handle. Which meant that if she could convince him to
   stick his hand inside the device, she could take him.
            Otherwise, it made a lousy weapon.
   I’ll have to throw it at him, Rebel thought. Swing it up,
catch him under the jaw, break a few teeth. Then grab the
  knife and hold him for the security people. That was a
good plan. It ranked right up there with suddenly learning
                       how to teleport.
   She could see Heisen’s muscles tensing. His face went
                       very calm.
   All in a flurry, he drove the knife up in a killer stab, she
  swung the case toward it, and there was a shout from
 behind Rebel. Reflexively, Heisen’s eyes flicked up, past
   her shoulder, to assess the intruder. In that second’s
    inattention, Rebel thrust the headfreezer forward,
 shoving it over the extended knife and hand. She hit the
  trigger. The unit grunted, an almost silent mechanical
                            cough.
    For a long instant neither Rebel nor Heisen moved.
Then Rebel jerked back the case. Its exterior was hot with
   transferred energy and painful to the touch. Heisen
 looked down. Gingerly, wonderingly, he reached out to
                   touch his knife hand.
                         It shattered.
     Both knife and hand fell to the deck and broke into
  fragments, leaving behind an arm that simply stopped
   halfway between elbow and wrist. Rebel’s fingers felt
  weak. She dropped the headfreezer. She couldn’t stop
staring at the amputated arm; it seemed to glow and swell,
 filling her vision. Behind her came the staccato sound of
                        running feet.
   Heisen came to himself then. Showing no sign of pain,
  he reached with his surviving hand into his cloak and
   removed a small black ball. “Stand clear,” he gravely
  advised, and threw the ball at a distant stretch of wall.
  The samurai were drawing near when the wall exploded,
bursting outward in a shaped gush of water and glass. One
 seized Rebel and pulled her back, while the other leaned
 forward, trying to snag Heisen with her pike. But Heisen
 was already leaping through the new opening. He fell out
and away. Wind screamed, and some of the gushing water
was thrown back in their faces. The air reeked of salt, and
wet strands of kelp were everywhere. To either side of the
         walk, heavy safety doors slammed shut.
     Rebel got one glimpse of Heisen tumbling, his cloak
   flapping wildly, before the darkness swallowed him.
  “What a mess!” a samurai said. He kicked at a flopping
             fish. Wind lashed his hair.
     It was all Rebel could do to keep from crying as the
                   samurai led her away.
                             ***
     On the graphics window, a glittery wedding band of
  machinery was afloat in the vacuum. Hundreds of the
    Comprise crawled about its surface, anchoring and
 adjusting small compressed gas jets. Painstakingly they
guided the ring with a thousand tiny puffs of gas, until the
 geodesic hung motionless at its precise center. Only now
did Rebel get any feel for the ring’s size—miles across, so
  large that the most distant parts seemed to dwindle to
                         nothing.
  “That’s not good enough,” Wyeth said. “I want all those
   rooms secured, and I want it now. Understand?” He
looked up as Rebel entered the lobby and gave her a wink.
  Then, pitching his voice differently, “Do you have the
 broomsticks out yet? The winds are dying down, let’s see
                      some action.”
  The lobby was aswirl with samurai, patrols scurrying
purposefully in all directions. “I was almost killed,” Rebel
                said. “Just a minute ago.”
   “Yes, I know. When you got lost I sent some limpets
 around the outside of the sheraton. Caught the last few
 minutes of your confrontation. That should never have
 happened. As soon as I get things squared away, heads
   will roll. There’s no excuse for that kind of security
                          foul-up.”
  Red warning lights blinked on across the length of the
   transit ring. As one, the Comprise kicked free of the
  machinery, leaping inward in acrobatic unison, like a
     swirl of orange flower blossoms seen through a
 kaleidoscope. By tens and scores they linked hands and
 were snagged by swooping jitneys. Wandering up out of
nowhere, hands deep in pockets, Constance said, “That’s
            really quite lovely. It’s like a dance.”
    Wyeth didn’t look up. “Not quite so lovely when you
    consider why they’re so perfectly coordinated.”
  She blinked. “Oh, quite the contrary. When you think of
    the complex shapes their thoughts take, the mental
structures too wide and large to be held by any one mind…
   Well, that’s cause for humility, isn’t it?” Then, when
 Wyeth said nothing, “The Comprise is a full evolutionary
   step up on us, biologically speaking. It’s like… a hive
   organism, you see? Like the Portuguese man-of-war,
 where hundreds of minute organisms go into making up
   one large creature several orders of magnitude more
      highly structured than any of its components.”
   “I’d say they were an evolutionary step down. Where
human thought creates at least one personality per body,
the Comprise has subsumed all its personalities into one
 self. On Earth, some four billion individuals have been
  sacrificed to make way for one large, nebulous mind.
That’s not enrichment, it’s impoverishment. It’s the single
      greatest act of destruction in human history.”
    “But can’t you see the beauty of that mind? Gigantic,
          immensely complex, almost godlike?”
  “I see the entire population of mankind’s home planet
  reduced to the status of a swarm of bees. A very large
 swarm of bees, I’ll grant you, but insects nevertheless.”
                       “I don’t agree.”
  “So I see,” Wyeth said coldly. “I will keep that in mind,
  madam.” The running lights on the transit ring were
  blinking in rapid unison. To Rebel he said, “See that?
             They’ve armed their explosives.”
   Constance looked confused. “What’s that? Explosives?
                   What in life for?”
   The jitneys slowly converged on the geodesic. Ahead of
  them a gang of spacejacks was fitting an airlock. They
    welded it through the metal skin, yanking open the
  exterior iris just as the first transport drifted up. Then
   they popped the jitney’s drive and replaced it with a
  compressed air jet system. “They’re about to enter the
               geodesic, sir,” a samurai said.
      “God help you if a single one of the Comprise isn’t
accounted for when they reach the sheraton,” Wyeth said
 darkly. Then, to Constance, “The Comprise doesn’t want
us snooping through their technology, Ms. Moorfields. So
of course they’ll have programmed the ring to self-destruct
   if we try anything. And since they have, and since the
        helium in the ring is only rented, we won’t.”
   The jitney eased into the interior atmosphere. It was
   crammed full and covered over with orange-suited
Comprise; they clung three deep to its outside. The pilot hit
       the jets and it moved toward the sheraton.
  “I don’t understand this mutual suspicion,” Constance
said. “So mankind has split into two species. Give us time
 and there’ll be a dozen, a hundred, a thousand! Space is
  big enough for everyone, I should think, Mr. Wyeth.”
   “Is it?” The jitney glided toward the hotel’s docking ring.
 The winds had almost died now, save for those generated
    by the spinning of the sheraton itself and by its own
     rotation-preservation jets. Still, the compressed air
  guidance retrofit had been a clumsy one, and the jitney
  lurched as its pilot overcorrected for yaw. The huddled
 Comprise grabbed for one another and hung on—all but
  one, who lost grip and went sailing away. For an instant
the unit peacefully glided, and then it jerked violently. Bits
 of helmet exploded away from its head. Again the corpse
       jerked, and again. Some half-dozen samurai on
            pressurized broomsticks closed in on it.
 “See those weapons they’re holding?” Wyeth asked. “Air
 rifles. I had them machined in the tanks; the things are
 illegal in the Kluster. But I needed them. The geodesic’s
  too thin for lased weapons, and blades just aren’t fast
                          enough.”
          “You killed that man!” Constance cried.
   “We’re not playing games here.” The corpse was being
    towed away. “I assure you, my reasons were good.”
   “That’s what Heisen would have said,” Rebel muttered.
   Wyeth looked up sharply, and then the elevator doors
   opened and the first cluster of twenty Comprise were
 ushered in. Their skins were dyed to match their orange
  suits; it would be hard to lose one in a crowd. But what
 struck Rebel was not their garish color or the single long
  braid that all—men and women—wore, but the fact that
 each face was different. She hadn’t expected that. For all
that they thought, lived, and moved alike and were all part
of a larger mind, each had the face of an individual human
                            being.
  Somehow that made the horror of it all that much more.
   The group passed through single-file, some with eyes
    closed, others peering about with interest. Their
radiocommunication implants were invisible, placed deep
 within their bodies for safety. The leader broke rank and
strode toward Wyeth. Two samurai fell into step to either
                        side of her.
   Wyeth looked up, waited. “We will need exercise areas,
to keep these bodies in shape,” the woman said. “Also, the
  metal in this structure acts as a weak Faraday cage. We
 require that triaxial cable with local rectenna lead-ins be
  laid through all living areas.” Wyeth nodded. “Also, we
have lost one of our bodies. Your security forces killed it.”
                            “So?”
  “Earth assumes that the charge for consumables will be
reduced by an appropriate fraction of a percent,” she said,
       “since it will not be able to consume them.”
                        “I'll see to it.”
  The woman joined the rear of her line. As the first group
   disappeared, the elevator doors opened and the next
   twenty were ushered through. Wyeth smiled sourly.
“Wonderful stuff, eh? The Kluster is so hot to be rid of this
 crew that they stuff ’em right within striking distance of
twenty-some tank towns. Let fifty of these characters into
 the tanks, and an army couldn’t dig them out. Within a
 month they’d have everyone in the tanks subsumed into
                    their group mind.”
  “That is sheer prejudice,” Constance said. “Earth is just
  another form that human intelligence can take. You’re
              acting as if it were an enemy.”
  “It is an enemy, Ms. Moorfields. It’s the worst enemy the
human race has, with the possible exception of the kind of
stupidity that lets us think we can deal with Earth without
 getting burned. And the only thing we’ve got going for us
 here is me. I’ll see them all dead and in Hell before I let a
                       single one loose.”
  Outraged, Constance spun about and left. Wyeth put his
  hands on the edge of his desk and, stiff-armed, leaned
forward. He stared at the Comprise filing by, his eyes two
                        hot coals.
                       Rebel shivered.
                             ***
  For a long hour the Comprise passed through the lobby
 under deferential guard. Technically they were guests,
since they were paying for transit to Mars orbit. So for all
their blades, pikes, and singlesticks, the samurai guided
  their five hundred charges with smiles and bows. The
   Comprise, of course, displayed neither approval nor
                       displeasure.
  More running lights had come on across the transit ring,
first yellow and then orange. “How does that thing work?”
                       Rebel asked.
   Wyeth shrugged. “I know diddly-squat about physics to
   begin with. And of course no one understands Earth’s
brand of physics; they’re centuries ahead of us. You could
    program me up to be another Miiko Ben-Yusuf, and I
   couldn’t explain how that thing works.” Then his face
warped into a mischievous smile as his aspect changed. “I
 can give you the lecture for idiots, though. The way it was
   told to me, what the ring does is to take the space lying
within it and accelerate that space. It actually moves space
  through space, and those things lying within that space
remain embedded in that space and go along for the ride.
  So we’re here, and here we stay; only ‘here’ moves. The
  effect is instant speed. Velocity without acceleration. So
     you don’t have all the problems of inertia. Get it?”
                   “Uh… no, not actually.”
    “Well, neither do I.” He laughed, and then the ring’s
   running lights turned green. “Whoops. Here we go.”
    Involuntarily, Rebel gripped the edge of the desk.
Onscreen, the transit ring, along with Londongrad, New
High Kamden, the asteroid, and all other artifacts of the
Kluster… vanished. It was as if they had been wiped from
the wall, leaving behind only the unchanging stars. “Was
                   that it?” Rebel asked.
                  “Not much to look at, eh?”
      “What happens to the transit ring now? Does the
                Kluster get to keep it?”
   “They wish! No, what happens now is that it’ll dismantle
itself. Then Kluster security will analyze the pieces and try
to figure out how they all fit together, and of course they’ll
    fail. The Comprise is very good at cybersystems.” He
 glanced down at the inputs, and his expression changed.
“Look. I’ve got a lot of work to do right now. Why don’t you
  check out your room, get some food, maybe catch a little
  sleep. Tomorrow morning, we can plan strategy, okay?”
  “Okay.” She started toward the elevator, then paused.
“Wyeth? Were you worried when you saw Heisen trying to
                        kill me?”
       “Not really. I had samurai in the area. Why?”
                        “Oh, nothing.”
                              ***
    The upper ring, where Rebel’s room was, was filled with
  off-program samurai, pierrots and pierrettes, and other
 service types. They were in a holiday mood, plucking fruit
 from the ornamental trees, laughing and splashing in the
       fountains. Paint was beginning to smear already.
Somebody had broken open a crate of paper birds, and the
   air was filled with white flapping devices, flying in slow
     circles as their elastic bands unwound. Rebel strode
  through the revelers, full of melancholy energy, and this
     time she didn’t object when Maxwell slipped an arm
   around her waist and matched strides with her. “I hear
they’re forming up an orgy in the water lily pond,” he said.
                       “What do you say?”
  “Too many people for me. I’m going to my room.” Then,
knowing already that it was a bad idea, but running a little
   short on good ones, she said, “Care to come along?”
  The room was a standard luxury oval, with an off-center
 bed and programmable walls and ceiling. They stripped
  and tumbled onto the orange-and-red bear paw quilt,
throwing their cloaks over the room monitor. Then, while
 Rebel instructed the walls to display a realtime exterior
starscape, Maxwell wound all the birds tight and released
                    them one by one.
    The quilted bed floated among the stars, paper birds
   whirring quietly overhead, as they made love. At first
 Rebel sat atop Maxwell and did all the work, slapping his
hands away whenever he reached for her. Then, when he
 was good and hot, she lowered herself onto him, and he
seized her roughly and rolled over on top of her. He thrust
 away like some kind of machine, an untiring organic sex
robot. She turned her head to the side, staring off into the
   infinity of tiny colored stars that was the Milky Way.
   Gravity sex was nice. You didn’t have to keep track of
 where you were, constantly shifting handholds; half the
  work was done for you. Then too, there was that good,
      solid weight atop her. It had a satisfying feel.
  She was moving through passion now to a far, detached
 calm, a lofty mental landscape where her thoughts were
  wordless and as crystalline clear as cold mountain air.
    Here, where her body’s sensations were a pleasant
 background murmur, she felt at peace with herself. She
 felt simple and uncomplicated. It was easy to look within
 herself and search out the nameless discontent that had
been gnawing at her for some time, the hidden poison that
   she could not isolate in the crowded babble of normal
                           thought.
  Everybody wanted something from her. That was a part
 of it. Deutsche Nakasone wanted her persona, and Jerzy
    Heisen wanted her death. Snow and the rest of her
network wanted to record her persona as well. And Wyeth
  wanted to use her as bait to snare and destroy Snow’s
network. According to him, they were all traitors, humans
who had sold out to the Comprise and served the interests
of Earth. It made sense when you considered how deeply
      they were sunk into the experience of machine
   communion, that they should wish to be part of the
  ultimate merger of mind into machine. But in all this
welter of desires, it was Wyeth who bothered her most. He
 was using her. For some reason that troubled her even
         more than the assassination attempt did.
   Maxwell was moving faster now, losing rhythm as he
   approached orgasm. But the answer was already in
 Rebel’s grip. She might not want to look at it, but there it
                           was.
   The fact was that it was not Maxwell she wanted inside
   her. It was Wyeth she wanted, and not just for a few
  sweaty hours on the quilt. She was falling for the man,
alien four-faceted mind and all, and while it was a stupid
 thing to do—what kind of future could there possibly be
with him?—her emotions were unreasoning and absolute.
            And who was there to complain to?
   Maxwell arched his back, squeezing shut his eyes, and
screamed soundlessly. Almost absently, Rebel reached out
  and squeezed his cheeks, digging her nails in good and
       hard. The paper birds were all on the floor.
  Then Maxwell was lying beside her, sweaty and gasping.
   For the longest time they said nothing. Then she sent
Maxwell out for food, and he returned with biscuits, slices
of fried yam, and oranges from the trees in the hall. By the
    time they were done eating, he was interested again.
          “Wanna do it a second time?” he asked.
                        “I suppose so.”
    Then she was alone with her thoughts again. In love
     with Wyeth. What a mess. What a fucking mess.



                           6
                         ORCHID
When the sheraton’s lights greenshifted from blue-tinged
evening to yellowish dawn, Rebel kicked Maxwell out and
went to meet Wyeth.
       Trailed by a bodyguard of five samurai, they rode
   broomsticks into the geodesic. With her hair and cloak
 streaming behind, she felt like an Elizabethan lady riding
  to the hawks with her retinue, an illusion heightened by
    the scout cameras that soared at a distance, feeding
information back to the guard. Except that the compressed
air tanks chilled down as they were used, and after a while
             the saddle grew unpleasantly cold.
      They rode by the outlying strands of orchid, where
  tangles of air roots held obsidian globes of water larger
 than her head, and, slowing, headed into the plant. The
stalks grew closer together as they flew into the epiphyte’s
     labyrinthine folds. It had blossomed and the huge
bioluminescent flowers shed gentle fairy light through the
darkness. This was a vague light, not like the full bloom of
   luciferous algae back home, but more like the periodic
night seasons when the algae died back. At last they came
to a large clearing deep within the plant and brought their
  broomsticks to a halt. “You won’t consider martial arts
    programming?” Wyeth asked. “Very simple. It’d take
 maybe five minutes, with minimal personality change.”
     “No. I don’t want anyone screwing with my mind.”
       He sighed. “Well, you’ve got to be able to defend
yourself. So we’ll have to reprogram you the old-fashioned
way, with an instructor and lots of practice. Same results,
just takes a lot more time and sweat. Treece.” A thick little
troll of a samurai slipped from his broomstick and floated
  beside it, one hand touching the saddle. He had a dark
           face and a froggish mouth. “Teach her.”
   Treece unlashed two singlesticks from his back and
 offered one to Rebel. She dismounted and accepted it.
They both tied cloaks to saddles and kicked their vehicles
         away. “Good. Now take a whack at me.”
    Rebel eyed the swart little man, shrugged, and lashed
   out fast and hard, flinging back her opposing arm to
control her drift. She was not at all surprised to see Treece
    slip out from under her blow—he was, after all, the
  instructor—but she was amazed when he slammed the
 back of her stick with his own, and the added energy set
  her tumbling end over end. “First lesson,” Treece said.
 “You’re going around and around one little point in your
body, something like an axis. That’s your center of mass.”
     “I know that!” Rebel said angrily, wishing Wyeth
  weren’t watching her. She concentrated on not getting
              dizzy. “I grew up weightless.”
        “I grew up in gravity. Does me no good against
 somebody programmed judo.” He let her spin. “Now the
     center of mass is very important. First off, you set
    somebody spinning around it, their effectiveness is
      lessened. Got all they can do to keep themselves
  oriented—their thrusts and parries won’t be as crisp as
  they might be.” He reached out with his stick and Rebel
  seized it, putting herself stable in relation to him again.
“Second, you’re going to want to remember to strike at the
 center of mass.” He poked at her with the tip of his staff.
 “Try it yourself. Move around all you like. What’s the one
point of your body you can’t move when you’re afloat? It’s
 your center of mass. It just stays there.” He jabbed at her
             again. “Now. Move away from this.”
   All in a flash, Rebel slammed her singlestick forward,
two-handing it against his weapon with a crack that made
 her palms smart. Reaction threw her over his head, and
on the way by she took a swipe at his skull. Treece brought
 his stick up for a parry and hook that brought them back
  to stable positions. “Absolutely right,” he said. “When
you’re afloat, all serious movement is borrowed from your
                          opponent.”
 The samurai all floated in a plane, honoring a consensus
horizon. Treece wheeled upside down, leering at her. “So
touching your opponent is both the source of opportunity
and your greatest danger. Take my hand.” Rebel reached
  out, and instantly he had seized her wrist, climbed her
 arm, and taken her throat between stick and forearm. “I
could snap your neck like this. Once you’ve been touched,
  you’re vulnerable. But you can’t accomplish a damned
thing without touching your opponent.” He moved away,
   grinned sourly at her. “That’s what makes it a skill.”
 Wyeth had been leaning back in his saddle, eyes closed,
 directing his pocket empire via a transceiver equipped
with an adhesion disk. Now he opened his eyes and said,
“That’s as nice a paradigm for political maneuvering as
                    I’ve ever heard.”
    Rebel started to respond and almost didn’t hear her
  instructor’s stick whistling toward her in time to parry.
 “No small talk!” Treece snapped. “We’re done with talk
   now anyway. No more theory, no more gab, just dull,
 repetitive exercise. Rest of today and every day until you
             get it right, is nothing but sweat.”
  A long time later, he looked disgusted and spat into the
        orchid. “Enough. Same time tomorrow.”
    Samurai brought up their broomsticks. Rebel felt
exhausted, but pleasantly so. Aware of her every muscle.
  Luckily, Eucrasia had kept her body in good shape.
  They rode to the edge of the orchid and stopped. Wyeth
hitched his broom to an air root, and Rebel followed suit,
  while the guard moved away, expanding their patrol.
Wyeth clambered along a thick trunk, inexpertly grabbing
     for handholds. Rebel followed more gracefully.
     They came to the end of the plant, a break here as
 sudden and startling as when a climax forest gives way to
grassland. Out in the darkness, distant stretches of the air
 plant were like streamers of luminous clouds. Alone and
bright, the sheraton spun like a wheel. Its light was redder
  now, almost noontime orange. The silvery glimmerings
   about it were people flitting to and fro like mayflies.
   Finally Wyeth said, “This is the first time I’ve ever had
people working under me. I’ve always been something of a
                        lone wolf.”
    Rebel looked at him, not sure what to say. At last she
      feebly joked, “More of a lone wolfpack, hey?”
                          “I guess.”
     More silence. Then, “What’s it like?” Rebel asked.
                “Having four personas?”
     “Well… when I’m not actually in use, I don’t really do
    anything. I have a passive awareness of myself. I see
    what’s going on. It’s like there are four of us standing
 around a small stage, with a bright light on its center. We
 watch everything that happens, hear it all, feel it all, but
we don’t do a thing until we step into the light. When we’re
in the dark, we don’t really much care. Sometimes all of us
          are in the light, and—” His voice changed
   slightly—“sometimes two of us are in the light, but one
keeps his mouth shut. Another half hour monitoring and I
expect to be spelled.” His voice changed back again. “That
 was my warrior aspect. Right now he’s directing security
  back in the sheraton. That frees me up to use the body.”
 “That’s weird,” Rebel said. “The way your voice changes.
 You don’t really have to speak out loud to communicate
 with yourself, do you? I mean, you can think something
            and the others will pick up on it?”
  “No, I have to talk or at least subvocalize, because… well,
 thoughts are most of what a persona is, you see. They’re
the architecture, they define the shape and existence of a
  persona, where it starts and where it lets off. We can’t
               share our thoughts directly—”
  “—without breaking down the persona,” Rebel finished
for him. “Yeah, that’s right, they’d all merge together, like
     breaking the membrane between twinned eggs.”
     “Eucrasia’s training is really coming back to you.”
   Rebel looked away. “You don’t have to sound so cheerful
 about it. It’s like—I feel these memories closing in on me,
crushing me. They’re all hers, and none of them mine, and
I can feel myself being affected by them, you know? I think
    they’re changing me, making me more like her.” She
   fought down a dark, helpless urge to cry. “Sometimes I
  think all those memories are going to rise up and drown
                               me.”
   Wyeth touched her arm. “Your persona is only a mask,”
  he said in his pattern-maker voice. “Ultimately it’s not
important. You — your being, your self — are right here, in
the compass of your skull and body.” Rebel shivered again
 under his touch, and she turned to him. Then, it was like
    the singlestick exercise of climbing your opponent’s
   arm—it happened all in a furious instant, too fast for
 thought. Wyeth’s arms crushed her to his body, and they
were kissing each other. She wanted him so desperately it
   was hard to believe that he had reached for her first.
   “Come on.” Wyeth drew her back into the orchid, into a
space that was dark and sheltered. He slid her cloak from
her and set it to the side. His hands moved down her body,
 rolled away her cache-sexe. He buried his face in the side
                          of her neck.
          “Wait,” Rebel said. “I want the big guy.”
               He looked at her questioningly.
   “Your warrior aspect. I want to make love to you while
               you’re being the warrior.”
                             ***
 Later, Rebel went out riding with the fool. They laughed
  and joked as they went no place in particular. “You’re
going to have to give up your irrational prejudice against
wetprogramming,” Wyeth said, smiling. “It’s useful stuff.
If I didn’t have another persona running the sheraton, I
 couldn’t be out here now, gallivanting about with you.”
            They rode on and came to a carnival.
 It was located where the orchid grew closest to the tanks.
One long vine, in fact, had been disentangled and tied to
an airlock; people traveled along it, following the holiday
 music to where a clearing had been chopped inside the
                          plant.
      From outside, the carnival looked like a ramshackle
collection of huts and frames caught in the tangled growth.
   Within, it was bright with flowers and strings of paper
lanterns. Tank towners in cloaks as garish as jungle moths
   flitted to and fro. Lengths of flash-dried vine had been
      lashed together to make dueling cages, booths for
  astrologers and luck-changers, lovers’ mazes, gambling
wheels and huckster tables. Artisans were painting panels
 for a centrifuge ride, conjuring up kings, bulls, starships,
                         and reapers.
  A singlestick duel was in progress by the main gate. The
   samurai glanced at it with interest as they entered.
   “Look!” Wyeth drew Rebel into a booth where fairgoers
  threw waterballs at a distant bozo. “Give me three!” He
 flung the first with too much force, and it broke into tiny
  drops that splattered past the clown like rain. The bozo
     jeered, and Wyeth threw again. This time the ball
  exploded into a thousand spherelets in the bozo’s face.
                     “Ah, that felt good!”
  When the barker floated him the last waterball, Wyeth
  winked at the bozo and smashed it into his own face.
Nearby fairgoers laughed in astonishment. Away from the
 paper lanterns, their eyes were shadowy and their faces
                        pale masks.
  Wyeth and Rebel wandered past simple games of rigged
  chance to hucksters selling jams and candies, carved
  wooden astronauts, bright straw dolls and dark barrel
 men. “Right here!” a barker cried. “Yes, yes, yes!” Rebel
 bought a sugar skull and bit into it. Red jelly oozed from
 one eye socket. She stared at it in dismay, then laughed.
 She was considering some silver bells with toe-ribbons
when she was struck with sudden unease. Looking up, she
 saw Wyeth holding a luminous apple the size of a cherry
                        tomato.
  “Seven hours?” Wyeth said. “Seven hours Kluster for an
                       apple?”
    The huckster was a little man with spidery arms and
legs, a lopsided grin, and a crazy look to his dark eyes. He
                             sang:
          “Awake, arise, pull out your eyes,
          And hear what time of day.
          And when you have done, pull out your tongue
          And see what you can say!”
   Then, speaking to Wyeth, “Ah, but the shyapple is no
       ordinary fruit; no, it has a worm at its heart.”
                  “What does the worm do?”
    “Why it eats, sir. It eats and excretes, until it drowns in
     its own liquor.” He plucked the apple from Wyeth’s
 fingers. “You must swallow it whole: core, pips, and aye.
                            Like thus.
           “What did I dream? I do not know;
           The fragments fly like chaff.
           Yet strange my mind was tickled so
           I cannot help but laugh.”
    Then, speaking again, “My name is Billy Bejesus and I
  live in a tree. If I’m not there yet, why then that must be
 me.” He tumblesaulted over in the air, kicking his heels.
    Appalled and intrigued, Wyeth turned to Rebel. “Can
     you make any sense of this madman’s ranting?”
    “Don’t touch those things! Don’t you know a shyapple
   when you see one?” Big-eyed, Wyeth shook his head.
  “They’re mind alterers. By the sound of it, this lot is just
directed hallucinogens, but a shyapple can be prepared to
 do almost anything—to give you a skill, to make you mad,
  to bring you sanity. Some are prepared so they’ll negate
themselves after a few hours, and others are… permanent.
   You wouldn’t want to put one in your mouth without
             knowing what it does, first.”
  “Really? Chemical wetprogramming?” Wyeth rubbed a
  fingertip over the bright skin, held it to his nose, and
          sniffed gingerly. “How does it work?”
    “Well, the shyapple is just a matrix. It’s the worm that’s
      altered according to what effects are desired. It’s…
   injected with a virus that… When the shyapple’s center
liquifies, the virus undergoes explosive growth and…” She
  faltered to a stop. “No. It’s gone now. I used to know, but
it’s all gone.” And yet it was—she sensed—vitally important
                          in some way.
  “I never heard of them before.” Wyeth held a shyapple
to his eyes, admiring the translucent skin, the candy-red
 shimmer, its full-to-bursting juiciness. “Where did they
come from, I wonder? Why did they show up here all of a
                        sudden?”
              Rebel shook her head helplessly.
   “You’ve got what? Three crates there?” Billy Bejesus’s
grin was luminescent. “I’ll take them all. Treece. Arrange
the details and see that these things are taken back to the
                        sheraton.”
    They floated on. Rebel lingered at a jewelry display,
    examining a tray of religious pins: stars, crosses,
 swastikas, and the like. She bought a white scallop shell
and pinned it to the collar of her cloak. “Now I can wipe off
 this face paint,” she said. “People will assume I’m some
  sort of religious fanatic.” Oddly enough, her sense of
              unease was stronger than ever.
   “Good thinking. Though if I were you, I’d find out what
   your pin stands for. Might save you an embarrassing
         conversation somewhere down the line.”
   They were floating hand in hand before an enormous
mesh sphere, watching the cockfights, when Wyeth said in
his leader voice, “Crap. Come on. We’ve got to get back to
  the sheraton.” He tugged Rebel toward the gate. Their
          bodyguard materialized around them.
            “What’s the trouble?” Rebel asked.
         “Constance is talking with the Comprise.”
                            ***
  All the way back to the sheraton, Rebel’d had the uneasy
    feeling that someone was following her, a shadowy
  presence flitting through the leaves and vines that was
never there when she looked back over her shoulder, but
    returned the instant she looked away. Here, in the
 bright-lit rooms of the complex, that sense faded but did
not go entirely away. There was somebody outside coming
                          for her.
  “Heisen’s body was never found,” Wyeth said when she
mentioned this to him. “He very well could be coming for
you. That’s half the reason I’ve assigned you a permanent
                          guard.”
                 “What’s the other half?”
   “We’re going in to deal with them now.” He slipped a
bracelet from his wrist, one of a pair of thick ivory bands
  lined with silver. “Here. Put this on. It monitors the
              electromagnetic spectrum.”
   Samurai stepped aside as Wyeth slammed through the
 doors to the center ring’s main conference room. There,
 under a holographic sky, Constance sat on the edge of a
  red lacquered bridge. She was dabbing her feet in the
 goldfish stream. Several Comprise stood by, listening to
  her talk. Scattered among the topiary bushes were her
 team with the tools of their trade—fermenters, chimeric
     sequence splicers, microbial bioreactors and the
  like—demonstrating lab techniques while Comprise in
 identical coveralls clustered about them, like patches of
  orange mist. Wyeth’s face hardened into granite slabs.
                  “All right, Moorfields!”
   Constance leaped to her feet. “Oh!” She blinked. “You
                 startled me, Mr. Wyeth.”
   “I’ll do worse than that to you.” Wyeth glowered at her
from the bank. “Just what do you think you’re doing? Why
have you moved your lab and people from the third ring?”
 “Well, I had to. I wanted to chat with the Comprise, and I
was told there was some silly rule against their leaving the
                       central ring.”
     Some hundred Comprise dotted the room. Several
   drifted over, into a loose semicircle about Wyeth and
 Rebel, studying them gravely but saying nothing. “Clear
the treehangers out,” Wyeth ordered. Samurai moved in
 and started escorting the bioengineers away. “Have two
   people programmed legal, one Londongrad and one
   People’s Mars, and send them here.” To Constance,
 “You’ll find that Kluster law is extremely legalistic, and
  People’s law is informal and rational. Between them, I
expect that if you step out of line again, I can hang you for
                           treason.”
              “Treason! Surely you’re joking.”
                     “I am very serious.”
  Constance shook her head, clasped her hands, let them
fall. “But we were just exchanging scientific information.”
        “Oh? What information did they give you?”
   “We were on the preliminaries, just swapping basics.
              Talking shop. You know.”
   “I know very well.” Wyeth’s hands were clenched and
 white. “Use your head! Your gang was swapping detailed
   bioscientific chitchat with a team of Comprise that is
ostensibly here as engineers and physicists. How did they
know the jargon? How did they happen to know enough of
  the biosciences to understand what you were talking
                           about?”
  “Well, Earth is, after all, a planet. They have the largest
 set of interlocking ecologies in the Inner System, so they
                        must use…”
   Embarrassed, Rebel shifted her gaze out the window
   wall. She saw tiny motes of light shifting through the
 orchid; people were astir out there. Doubtless the tanks
  were emptying out as people moved into the plant. But
  looking away couldn’t keep her from overhearing the
                        argument.
     “That’s nonsense! They know because they’re spies,
that’s why. Before they left Earth they were systematically
crammed with the basics of every corner of science, in the
     hope they’d stumble across something useful. Ms.
Moorfields, look at them! They are not human, they’re not
 friendly, and they’re not altruistic. They’ll take whatever
  technology you’ve got and then use it against your own
  race. You’re selling humanity down the tubes—and for
                           what?”
      Unexpectedly, a Comprise said, “She wants the
          technology to build a transit ring.”
         Constance started. “I didn’t tell them that!”
  “The Comprise is very quick on the uptake,” Wyeth said
sardonically. He asked the Comprise, “Why did she want
                   that information?”
     “The desire for private gain is a common failing of
                 individual intelligence.”
   “That’s not it at all!” Constance cried. “It would open up
 the stars. Can’t you see?” She appealed directly to Wyeth.
   “It could be used to accelerate comets beyond the Oort
    Cloud, toward the nearer stars. The closest could be
reached within the span of one long lifetime—they gave me
  the figures! Imagine thousands of dyson worlds drifting
from star to star. Expanding into the universe. Imagine an
 age of exploration and discovery.” Her voice was fervent,
almost devout, and Rebel found herself responding to it as
   she might to a farbranch revivalist prophet. “Imagine
    mankind finally freed from the cradle of the sun and
 wandering the starry galaxies in search of… I don’t know.
        Truth, maybe? Destiny! All the final answers!”
   Before Wyeth could reply, the Comprise said, “Do not
trouble yourself, Boss Wyeth. She has nothing we desire.”
   “That’s not true. You told me…” But the Comprise had
 wandered off. Almost pleading, she said, “They told me
 they were interested in the mind arts. We know a great
                     deal about them.”
    “You yourself?” Wyeth asked. “One of your people?”
   “Well, no. It’s all new technology. The breakthroughs
  are being made, but the skills aren’t widespread yet.”
  “And yet you’re all biologists. Isn’t it a coincidence then
  that a Comprise of engineers are up on the mind arts,
   while your own people know zilch? I’d say you’ve just
 proven that your friends here are indeed spies.” Wyeth
 casually touched a bracelet on his wrist and crooked an
 eyebrow at Rebel. She touched the bracelet he had given
                            her.
     The world was transformed. Electricity glowed white
  from wires hidden in the walls. Heat shimmered green.
      Cobalt particles sleeted through the room, cosmic
radiation to which matter was as insubstantial as a dream.
     A red haze of radiocommunication surrounded the
     now-green figures of the Comprise, and laser-crisp
 directional beams reached from individual to individual,
       shifting as thoughts were divided and routed for
  processing. Rebel blinked, and it all disappeared for an
    instant. She looked down at the bracelet and saw the
blazing circuits of a holographic projector. One of Wyeth’s
                          spy devices.
     “Mr. Wyeth, you are being disgusting.” Constance
                     turned away.
   “Don’t be like that,” Wyeth said in his whimsical voice.
   “Here, have an apple. Nice and crunchy.” He placed
                   something in her hand.
  “An apple?” Constance looked down at the shyapple and
   dropped it, horrified. “Where did that come from?”
   “I was hoping you could tell me. This is an example of
          your mind art biotechnology, isn’t it?”
   “Yes, but…” She tightened her lips. “Hook me into your
 intercom system.” One of the Comprise stepped forward
  and, stooping, reached for the fallen shyapple. Wyeth
  stepped on the woman’s hand, hard, and she jerked it
                          back.
   “We were curious,” the Comprise said mildly. Several
     new lines of interaction connected with her.
   “So what?” Wyeth gestured to the samurai. “Keep the
   Comprise on their side of the stream. And open up a
             channel for Ms. Moorfields.”
      A moment later, Freeboy’s image appeared, and
Constance shook the shyapple at him. “Freeboy, you’re the
only one who’s been working with directed viruses. Is this
                      your doing?”
     “Aw, hell,” Freeboy said. “It’s just pocket money.”
           “You never mentioned this skill to me.”
   “It’s not a skill. It’s only cookbook stuff. I got the recipe
 from a wizard in Green City, when I was in Tirnannog.”
 Constance’s face was cold and white. The boy spread his
 hands, his shoulders hunching slightly. “Hey, it’s only a
 Billy Bejesus—eight hours’ looniness, and it deprograms
    itself. It’s not like I was hurting anybody. I didn’t do
                         anything wrong.”
              “Like hell you didn’t, young man.”
   While the young treehanger was being dressed down,
  Rebel saw an odd thing: The Comprise, who had been
moving about seemingly randomly, had all simultaneously
 arrived at the water’s edge. The samurai guarding them
  shifted uneasily. They stared across the water, orange
    faces blank, eyes unblinking. The electromagnetic
interactions increased, lines blinking on and off like laser
        strobes. For a long moment, no one moved.
    Then the Comprise jumped, individual components
    running furiously to one side or the other, forming
  clusters and gaps. Twenty charged across the wooden
  bridge. The samurai braced themselves to receive the
                          charge.
 In that instant’s confusion, a small orange figure darted
across the stream. The guards’ eyes had been drawn one
way and another, and he leaped through a blind spot. All
 in a flash, he was at Constance’s side, reached up, and
 snatched the shyapple from her hands. Before anyone
could react, he was back among the Comprise. “That was
                    a child!” Rebel said.
    “Catch him!” Wyeth commanded, and three samurai
  leaped the stream. As they converged on the child, he
   crammed the fruit in his mouth and swallowed. One
    snatched him up and carried him back, the others
 defending. But the Comprise offered no resistance. They
turned away, again as aimless as so many cattle. Still, red
  interaction lines connected the boy directly to half the
                  Comprise in the room.
 “Too late,” Wyeth said when the samurai placed the boy
        before him. “He’s already swallowed it.”
            “But this is a child,” Rebel repeated.
 “This is the body of a child. Comprise engineering teams
 always include a few children for tasks where a bigger
              body would just be in the way.”
                     “But that’s awful.”
  “I agree.” Wyeth smiled at Constance. “How about you?
Still feel that there’s no crime in five billion human minds
         with only one single identity among them?”
      “We must be careful not to anthropomorphize,”
        Constance said weakly. She looked pale.
   “Very well put.” Wyeth turned to the child Comprise.
                  “Why did you do it?”
  “We were curious,” the boy said. “We wished to know
whether this new technology might prove useful to us. In
      that sense—in that we are always eager for new
information, new ideas, new directions of thought—we are
  indeed the spies you accuse us of being. But only in that
           one sense of being true to our nature.”
                 “You see?” Constance said.
   “More importantly, it distresses us to be separated from
the true Comprise.” Rebel couldn’t see the child’s face now
for the blaze of red interaction lines touching the skin over
  his buried rectenna, but his voice was bland. “There are
 only five hundred Comprise in this structure—and we are
used to the mental stimulation of billions. Restricted as we
  are, any new challenges are taken up eagerly.” A pause.
            “You might say that we were bored.”
  Wyeth turned to Freeboy’s image. “How long does your
                   drug take to hit?”
  Freeboy shrugged. “Not long. A minute or two. There are
   receptor enhancers in the shyapple matrix. Tell you,
 though, maybe this isn’t really a good idea. Those apples
  are adult dosages. I don’t know what they’ll do to a kid.
        This one looks like he has low body mass.”
   Constance reached for the boy, and a samurai batted
  her hand away. “But there’s still time. If I stick a finger
                   down his throat…”
         “Now, now,” Wyeth chided. “Mustn’t
anthropomorphize. Let’s just wait and see. This might be
                   interesting.”
     The boy stood still between his guard of samurai.
  Suddenly he stiffened. His eyes opened wide. “Oh,” he
    said. One hand rose before his face and writhed
               spasmodically. “I think—”
                     The child screamed.
                              ***
     The lawyers arrived while the Comprise were still
  thrashing on the ground. Four samurai held the boy’s
 limbs, and Constance knelt beside him. The directional
  beams flicked on and off, lashing blindly through the air
like the frenzied legs and antennae of a dying insect. Then,
all radio contact with the drugged child finally severed, the
     other Comprise slowly got to their feet, a hundred
 individual expressions of collective horror on their faces.
    “I wonder why it worked so well?” Wyeth murmured
 thoughtfully to himselves. “They’ve got defenses against
intrusive wetprogramming. This must be something new.
       This must be an entirely different approach.”
   “Hold still, dear. If I can get you to throw up, you’ll feel
                  better,” Constance said.
   The boy twisted his head away from her. “I,” he said. “I
saw the moon I saw a tree I saw the moon caught in a tree I
   saw a tree caught in the moon.” His eyes were wide as
saucers; they quivered slightly in time to some inner pulse.
         “I saw a peacock with a fiery tail,
         I saw a blazing comet drop down hail,
         I saw a cloud—”
  “Take him to the surgery,” Wyeth ordered. “Do what you
   can to ease his discomfort, but get the radio implants
   inside him deactivated before he regains his senses. I
     don’t want him reconnecting with the Comprise.”
   “You can’t do that,” Constance objected. “He’s a part of
         the Comprise. That’s where he belongs.”
     “Well?” Wyeth asked the lawyers. “Can I do that or
                         not?”
    The lawyer in yellowface chewed his lower lip. “It’s a
                      difficult point.”
  “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like
 a duck,” the lawyer in purple said, “then it’s a duck. This
individual looks human and uses the first-person singular.
            Therefore he’s human, not Comprise.”
    “Thank you,” Wyeth said. He gestured at Freeboy’s
      image. “This joker’s been dealing dangerous
hallucinogens out in the orchid. What can I get him for?”
    “Nothing,” the purple lawyer said. “There’s no law
against giving people the opportunity to hurt themselves.”
  “We-ell now, there is the question of presumed societal
consent,” Yellow said. “Consensus-altering drugs would
come under the foreseeable cultural change clauses of—”
      “Good,” Wyeth said. “I sentence you to status of
 programmed informant for the duration of transit. Stay
  where you are. The programmers will come for you.”
Freeboy looked stricken. “You’ll be attached to Moorfields
 here. Observe her, and report to me at this hour of every
  day.” He turned to Rebel and offered his arm. “I think
       we’ve done enough, don’t you? Shall we go?”
                              ***
      That night, Rebel fell asleep after making love, and
   dreamed that she was walking the empty corridors of
 some ancient manor. It was cold, and there was the scent
 of lilacs in the air. A breeze stirred her hair, passed chill
hands over her thighs and abdomen. She came face to face
   with an ornate Victorian mirror. The gravity was half
 again Greenwich normal, pulling down her flesh, making
her face look old and gaunt. She wonderingly reached out
                     a hand to the mirror.
  Her reflection’s hand broke through the liquid surface of
              the mirror and seized her wrist.
   Rebel tried to pull away, but the grip was unbreakable.
 Long red nails dug painfully into her flesh. In the mirror
      Eucrasia showed her teeth in a smile. She was a
fat-breasted little woman, but there was muscle under that
 smooth brown skin. “Don’t go away, dearest. We have so
                     much to talk about.”
     “We have nothing to talk about!” Rebel’s panicked
    words bounced from the walls and echoed down to
                        nothing.
  Eucrasia pushed her face against the mirror’s surface,
the glass bulged out by nose and lips but held together by
  surface tension. Silver highlights played over her skin.
“Ah, but we do. My memories are going to overwhelm you
 if you don’t do something about them.” Behind her was a
white room, a surgery, with trays of chromed instruments.
                 “Come closer, sweet love.”
  She yanked Rebel forward, right up against the mirror.
  Their nipples touched, kissed at the surface. “I want to
help you,” Eucrasia whispered. “Look at me.” For the first
   time, Rebel looked into the woman’s eyes. There was
nothing in the sockets but an empty space where the eyes
should have been. She could see through them to the back
 of Eucrasia’s skull. “You see? I have no self. No desires.
              How can I intend you harm?”
      “I don’t know.” Rebel began to cry. “Let me go.”
   “There are only two ways you can survive. The first is to
 have me recreated as a secondary persona. You’d be like
    Wyeth, then. You’d have to share your life, but the
    memories would all be shunted over to the Eucrasia
 persona. You could remain intact.” The reflection shifted
  to one side, and Rebel was forced to move with it. “The
second alternative is to make a complete recording of your
  persona. Then you could reprogram yourself every few
   weeks. This is less desirable, because it precludes any
chance of personal growth.” Their stomachs touched now.
  Eucrasia placed her lips on Rebel’s. “Well?” she asked.
                     “Which will it be?”
                         “Neither!”
  The reflection reached out and yanked Rebel’s head into
the mirror. Quicksilver closed about her. It was like being
   underwater, and Rebel couldn’t breathe. “Then your
 personality will dissolve,” Eucrasia said. “Slowly at first,
 and then more quickly. You’ll be gone within a month.”
                 Rebel choked, and awoke.
   “Wake up,” Wyeth said. He was holding her. “You’re
having a nightmare.” Then, seeing her eyes open, “It was
                    only a dream.”
  “Jesus,” Rebel said. She buried her face in his chest and
                          cried.
   When she finally stopped, Wyeth released her and she
 sat up. She looked about dazedly. Wyeth had apparently
been up for some time, thinking his own thoughts, for the
   walls had been turned on. A starscape, piped in from
    outside, glowed in the night. “Look,” Wyeth said. He
  pointed to a fuzzy patch almost overhead. “That’s Eros
   Kluster. The asteroid is invisible from here, and what
we’re seeing is the attenusphere—the waste gases from the
   factories and refineries, the oxygen lost whenever an
airlock opens, fine matter from reaction jets. It surrounds
 the Kluster, and the solar wind ionizes it, like the gas in a
comet’s tail. Assuming the comet is unplanted, of course.”
    He pointed out more smudges, all in the plane of the
    ecliptic. “There’s Pallas Kluster, Ceres Kluster, Juno
Kluster, Vesta…” He sang off the names in a gentle litany.
    “Civilization is spreading. Someday there’ll be major
   developments everywhere in the asteroid belts. Those
hazy patches will link then, into one enormous smoke ring
  around the sun. That would be something to see, hey?”
              “Yes,” Rebel said in a little voice.
               “Feel up to talking about it yet?”
   So she told him her dream. When she was done, Wyeth
    said, “Well, there’s your mysterious pursuer.” She
 frowned. “Back in the orchid, you thought someone was
following you? Eucrasia. The memories are rising up, and
      you’re projecting them into the exterior world.”
  “That may be so,” Rebel said. “But knowing it doesn’t do
                     me any good.”
   “You really have only two choices,” Wyeth said softly.
    “Your dream spelled them out for you. You were a
 topnotch wetprogrammer, and your diagnosis is sound.
 Listen, you want my advice? Take Eucrasia in with you. I
  knew her, she’s not such a bad sort. You can live with
                          her.”
  “I won’t do it,” Rebel said. “I won’t let anyone touch my
               mind, I… I just won’t, is all.”
  Wyeth turned away. There was tension in the muscles of
    his back. After a very long time, Rebel touched his
 shoulder, and he turned back abruptly, almost violently.
   “Why are you being so stubborn?” he cried. “Why?”
  “I don’t know why,” Rebel admitted. “It’s just the way I
                     am, I guess.”



                         7
                  BILLY DEFECTOR

Rebel woke to an empty bed. She breakfasted and went in
search of Wyeth. A pierrot directed her through a rock
garden and around a kitchen, and a samurai sent her past
the orgy pits and down a ramp. She came to a bottom ring
room where three holographic wetware diagrams spun
slowly in the air. Rebel saw that they were morphs of the
same personality. Judging by the sickliness of the main
branches and twisted distribution of the lesser limbs, it
was a very badly damaged persona indeed.
     The Comprise child sat beneath the rotating green
   spheres. He hadn’t slept. His face was puffy, his eyes
  glazed. His orange skin was blotchy with grey patches.
    “What’s your name?” Wyeth asked. “Do you have a
                         name?”
 The boy shook his head. “I… uh, what?” Wyeth repeated
the question, and without raising his eyes, the child said,
   “B-Billy. Billy B-Be…” His voice stuttered to a halt.
   Wyeth grinned and tugged the child’s braid. “We’ll call
you Billy Defector, okay? Because you’ve come over to our
side, you’re going to be human now. Would you like that?”
    “He’s not going to thank you for doing this to him.”
  “Shut up, Constance. Now, Billy, do you remember being
   a part of the Comprise? Do you remember what it was
                           like?”
  Billy’s head jerked up, eyes fearful. His hands twisted in
  his lap. Then he looked down again and mumbled, “I…
                            yes.”
   “Good. Do you remember the briefing you got before
coming here?” Billy said nothing. “Do you remember your
                      instructions?”
    Samurai parted for Rebel, and she slipped into the
 room. Her guard stayed outside. Freeboy glanced at her
 quickly from one corner, then away. His lips were thin,
  and he stared rigidly unblinking at Constance. Rebel
 walked over to him and whispered, “What happened to
                     the kid’s face?”
   “What? The blotches? We injected a phage under the
skin to neutralize his dye; it takes a few days to flush it out
    of the system. Itches some, too. But since he’s not
Comprise anymore, your boss doesn’t want him marked as
                            one.”
     “I thought your apple was supposed to deprogram
                         itself.”
    Freeboy curled his lip. Without looking at her he said
  pedantically, “For a normal psyche, a Billy Bejesus is a
   harmless, ego-intensive shyapple that leaves nothing
    behind but memories. But the Comprise have only
  embryonic egos—even the memory of having a strong
    personal identity is damaging to them. Changes the
                  creatures drastically.”
    “Shock imprint syndrome,” Rebel said, Eucrasia’s
  memories coming to her effortlessly. “Yes, of course.”
    At the sound of her voice, Wyeth turned. “Sunshine!
 Just the person I wanted to see. It seems you and I are the
closest things to competent wetprogrammers we have.” He
snapped open a thin white case and ran a finger down one
 line of wetwafers. Hundreds of codified character traits,
   skills, compulsions and professions rippled under his
touch. “I’d expected to just program up some experts. But
    it seems the regulations have changed in the last few
  years. Wetprogramming ware is very tightly controlled
  now. Beautiful, hey? None of the other professions are
                    protected like that.”
   Without any sense of transition, Rebel was at the case.
Her hands floated down over lines of joys, fears, sorrows,
and ecstasies with unhesitating sureness, and teased out a
     manual skills program. It was for vacuum-casting
 ceramics as thin and delicate as soap bubbles. She slid it
 into an analyzer, tilting back her head to see its effect on
  the diagram overhead. The r-branch was straightened,
    but a self-destructive paradigm opened up near the
                 midsection of the n-branch.
      The rift was easily filled by altering the sensorium
    distribution and heightening religious susceptibility.
 Rebel eased two more wafers into the analyzer, adjusted
   tone readings, and edited out a few irrelevancies. This
strengthened the n-branch, but kinked the 1-branch at its
first major split, so she replaced the ceramics wafer with a
 woodworking package. Little by little, the template began
                         to shape up.
   This was the great challenge, to find the health hidden
 within a damaged psyche and to assemble the programs
 that would restore it. She lost herself in the work. Some
  time later—minutes? hours?—she looked up again and
   found the interrogation was still going on. Not much
                progress had been made.
  “Billy, do you remember being Earth? Do you remember
                    what it was like?”
     “It was like—” The child stopped and swallowed.
  “Nothing happened. It was warm. No thoughts. Many
               thoughts. Nothing was real.”
                  “What kind of thoughts?”
   Billy closed his eyes for a long moment. Then, in a rapid
monotone, he said, “Rotate grating six raise two and rotate
  again reroute quote the Comprise agree in principle but
  with reservations unquote raise the vial of eagle’s blood
reroute using Allen wrench adjust the potentiometer to the
   red mark reroute ship to Sanfrisco marked green code
     green reroute injecting kerosene between vascular
  stations seventeen and twelve reroute railroad bedding
                         excavation—”
                            “Stop!”
                         Billy obeyed.
            “What’s the problem?” Rebel asked.
 Wyeth looked disgusted. “It’s all garbage. Bits and pieces
   jumbled together at random. I’m not going to learn
anything from this child because he never knew anything.
 He never thought a complete thought through in his life.
      He just processed a constant flow of babble.”
  Now Constance folded her arms, glaring at Wyeth. “He’s
used to being a part of oceanic thought. You’ve ripped him
out of his natural environment. Of course you can’t get any
sense out of him… Look at him! He’s been damaged. Being
   remade in the mold of a human individual is a major
                devolutionary step for him.”
                            “Is it?”
  “Yes, it is. God damn that superior smile, it is! This is the
way that life evolves, from simple to complex. We’re all on
an evolutionary voyage from the small and uncomplicated
to the macrocosmic. From one-celled plants to comet oaks.
     From amoebae through fish to apes. From simple
    sensation through sentience, intelligence, and then
  macrointelligence. Can’t you see the progression? All of
                life evolves toward Godhead.”
  “A very pretty theory, but with all due respect, it’s full of
                           shit.”
   The boy was sweating. Constance wiped his brow. He
  began breathing heavily, and she dabbed a fluid on his
 throat. As it sank through the skin, his breathing eased.
                          “You—”
  Movement at the door. “Sir?” Two samurai escorted in a
   tall Comprise. “This one said he had to talk with you
                       personally.”
     “You have one of our number,” the Comprise said.
                     “Return him.”
    Wyeth shifted slightly, put his hand on the child’s
 shoulder. Looking at Constance, he said, “Billy? Do you
                   want to return?”
   Billy trembled. His eyes darted here, there, everywhere
      but toward the Comprise. His body twisted away
  spasmodically. “In his condition, he can’t possibly give
              informed—” Constance began.
  “Why?” Rebel asked the Comprise. “I mean, he can’t be
 much use to you in his condition. What do you want him
                          for?”
               “Experimentation. Dissection.”
      Constance opened her mouth, shut it again. The
Comprise spoke into the sudden silence. “We also require
a good analytical laboratory, a surgery, and a supply of the
   drug administered to us. We will need to take a large
   number of tissue samples. The analytical equipment
    should be suitable for a comprehensive mapping of
chemical trace effects in the brain. Earth will of course pay
                     for your trouble.”
         “The hell you say.” Wyeth’s face was hard.
   Before the Comprise could respond, Billy bent forward,
  covering his head with frantic hands, and began to cry.
  Gingerly, Rebel sat beside him, put an arm around his
shoulders. He turned, throwing himself at her, and buried
        his head between her shoulder and neck.
  Small hands clutched at her painfully. “We are not sure
      what you mean by that,” the Comprise said.
   “Let me spell it out for you,” Wyeth said. “First, we like
    the boy, and we’re going to keep him. Second, our
 resources are limited, and we do not have the laboratory
equipment to spare, no matter what price you’re willing to
 pay. And third…” He turned to a nearby samurai. “Those
crates of shyapples I had brought here? Destroy them all.”
                 The floor exploded upward.
  “Holy shit!” Freeboy cried, and then fell backwards as
something fast glanced off the side of his head. The room
 was suddenly full of black, acrid smoke. A cable ripped
    free from the floor, stiffened with voltage, and fell
  forward, like a huge snake striking. Sparks skittered
across the floor. Wyeth flung out an arm to point at Rebel
 and Billy. “Treece!” he shouted. “Get them out of here!”
           Orange figures boiled up from the hole.
                             ***
    The Comprise child was heavy. Treece hustled them
through long corridors while electrical equipment hissed
and erupted about them. All the lights went out. “What’s
   happening?” Rebel cried. The boy’s small hands still
 clutched at her. He kept his face buried in her shoulder.
  “Power outage. Wyeth’s crashed the computers. It’ll be
                  on in a minute.”
   Something exploded up ahead. There was a chemical
           stink in the air. “No, I mean—”
   Treece grinned thuggishly. “Oh, you mean in general.
  The Comprise have taken over our computer systems.
 Nothing to worry about. We were waiting for this.” The
   lights went back on. In the hall behind them, a wall
collapsed, and the lights blacked out again. In the dark, a
               squad of samurai trotted by.
                          “What?”
     “Turn right here.” A sudden wind boomed down the
hall, and Rebel almost lost her footing. “The Comprise will
 always suborn a computer system. It’s second nature to
 them. But our systems are built to be crashed. We’ve got
 manual cut-offs through the sheraton. We can crash the
  system and rebuild it as many times as they can take it
                          over.”
        They stepped into an orangery with a stormy
   holographic sky. While Treece rummaged through an
    adjacent storeroom, Rebel stood dully looking at the
   orrery in the center of the room. Marigolds had been
     planted at its base. The samurai emerged with two
  broomsticks and thrust one at Rebel. He also carried a
rifle and two singlesticks, one of which he also gave Rebel.
            “Feel like you can handle the kid?”
 “I feel like a marsupial.” The way Billy was clutching her,
   he wasn’t likely to come loose. She climbed into her
                     saddle. “Let’s go.”
      Treece raised his rifle and blew out the window.
                             ***
    They exploded out into darkness. Almost immediately
      limpet cameras swooped down on them from all
directions. “Son of a bitch!” Treece screamed, bringing up
  the rifle. He burst all but two of the cameras before the
 remotes could reach them. One dove for his face, and he
     swung the rifle around like a club to smash into its
  complexly-lensed front. Fragments of camera and gun
                          went flying.
   The last camera came at Rebel. She slashed with her
singlestick and almost lost her seat. The camera bobbed
    under her swing, and then there was an instant’s
darkness as the sheraton’s computers were crashed yet
 again. The wheel’s lights came back on, and, before the
   Comprise systems could reprogram the camera, its
momentum carried it through a window. It crashed to the
floor, buzzing and crippled. Then window, room, and all
                       swung away.
  “Go!” Treece shouted, and Rebel got her hands back on
  the broomstick and kicked the jet nozzles wide open.
  They screamed away. “Where are we going?” she yelled
                 over her shoulder.
    Treece brought his broomstick up alongside hers. Now
   that they were out of danger, he was impassive again.
“Anywhere you like, so long as it’s not the sheraton. Or the
  tank towns. Security is a problem there. This is a rigged
fight, even if the Comprise doesn’t know it yet. All we have
 to do is lay low for a few hours, and it’ll be safe to go back
                            home.”
                              ***
    They cruised the orchid’s edge, Rebel slowly killing
speed with short bursts of retro, until they were moving at
 a crawl. Up ahead, Rebel saw a white rag tied to a stalk.
      “Look there. What’s that for, do you think?”
                       Treece shrugged.
      Coming to a stop, Rebel peered into the tangles of
orchid. She saw another white rag tied further in. Between
rags, several stalks looked frayed, as if they had served as
common kickstops. The ghost of a memory from her life in
  Tirnannog tugged at her. “It’s a path. Somebody lives in
  there.” She angled her broomstick inward. The boy had
not spoken since their flight had begun. She put a hand on
    the top of his head. It was warm, almost fevered; she
 imagined she could feel the interplay of emotions within.
  His braid stuck straight out. She held it against his skull
  and wondered how old he was. Seven? Nine? Not that it
            mattered. “How are you doing, Billy?”
                   The boy shook his head.
  They drifted deeper into the orchid, the light dimming as
blossoms grew rarer. Roots and stalks grew thicker here,
 and more tangled. Rebel had to dismount. She put Billy
into the saddle and towed the broomstick behind her. He
 peered about silently. She tugged the broomstick deeper
   into the vines, finding handholds and grabspots, and
always following the rags. It was almost like a tunnel now,
  an irregular passage created by training back selected
               vines. Treece followed after.
  “This would be the perfect spot for an ambush,” he said.
  A woman laughed. Not a friendly laugh. “Too true,” she
said from the gloom. “So state your business. What do you
    want with the village? You mean us harm or not?”
   Treece gestured Rebel back, then put his hands on his
   hips. “You see this woman, this child? You try to hurt
 them—you die. Anybody else tries to hurt them dies too.”
Silence. “But so long as you don’t hurt them, we intend no
evil. We’re only looking for someplace to spend a few quiet
hours. If you let us pass, we’ll go on. Otherwise, we’ll turn
                         back now.”
 A woman floated forward, materializing from gloom and
  tangled root. She held a rifle. “Fair enough,” she said.
“Pass. Just remember, there’s only the one path, and you
    have to come by me again on your way out. Behave
                yourselves.” She was gone.
                             ***
   The village was a handful of stick huts around a central
 clearing, something like a larger version of the courts in
   Tank Fourteen. But the huts here were loosely woven
   frames with wide stretches of orchid between, like a
  scatter of wicker boxes discarded in the weeds. As they
 paused at the edge of the clearing, several people peered
            from their huts with frank curiosity.
   Rebel’s broomstick bobbed, and she turned to see Billy
 slip from the saddle. He darted to a hut where a man sat
 cross-legged in the doorway, a small pot of luminous ink
before him. He had a scholar’s facepaint and was carefully
     drawing a long line on a rectangle of parchment.
      The child approached the drawing slowly, as if
 hypnotized, the long, glowing line doubly reflected in his
                     unblinking eyes.
  The scholar raised his head. Shadows pooled under his
 brows. “You like it?” He lifted the brush from the end of
 the line and dipped it into the inkpot. “It’s a pun.” With
 quick dabs he drew an ideogram on a leaf, held it up for
inspection. “You see that? That’s my name—Ma. It means
       horse. My name is Ma Fu-ya. What’s yours?”
       “Billy,” the child answered without hesitation.
   “Well, Billy, you see this line I just drew? I want you to
  imagine that it’s the same as this line here”—the brush
  touched one line of the leaf ideogram—“only stretched
long and warped out of shape. You see? Then this next line
runs along one foreleg.” Quickly, surely, he drew the other
    lines, and together they made a horse. “You see?”
         The child laughed and clapped his hands.
             “He seems to like you,” Rebel said.
  The scholar laid his brush in the air before him. “He’s a
   nice kid. Welcome to our village. We haven’t gotten
 around to naming it. If you’re staying, I advise you not to
build too far from the clearing; one man did that already
and lost his hut before he thought to mark the trail. Other
             than that, there’s plenty of room.”
   The air was fragrant here. The village had been built
 within a local cluster of blossoms, and the light was soft
 and pervasive. Rebel liked it. It could have used a little
 more life. Butterflies at least. A few lizards, a squirrel,
perhaps a tree squid. But other than that, it was pleasant
 here, sheltered within the orchid. “Maybe I will build a
  hut,” she said. “I could spend my free time here. Who
   should I talk to about rent? Who’s your king here?”
  “There are no kings here,” Fu-ya said. Billy tugged at his
cloak, and the scholar handed him brush and paint. From
the hut behind him, he drew a piece of paper. “Here, have
                          fun.”
   “No kings?” Treece said, puzzled. “Then who owns all
                         this?”
   “I’m not sure. Perhaps no one. Perhaps the man in the
   wheel.” He spread his hands. “You see, when people
 realized they could build here, they didn’t stop to worry
   about legalities. They just packed up and moved in.”
     One of Fu-ya’s neighbors came up with a sphere of
  fresh-brewed tea and a handful of drinking syringes.
 Scowling, Treece took one and said, “Why? Why burrow
  so deep in the orchid? Why post a guard by the trail?”
  “Defense is simple here,” the neighbor said. “One guard
can hold off a dozen attackers. If more came, we could just
 untie the rags from the path—they’d never find their way
in. Or if that didn’t work… we’d all scatter, I guess. That’d
be the end of the village, but there’s others out there. Lots
         of room to build another, for that matter.”
 “No, no,” Fu-ya said to Billy. “You want to hold the brush
 upright, between thumb and forefinger. There, you see?
              That way you won’t smudge.”
     “Who are you expecting to attack you?” Treece said
                         testily.
     Another neighbor had come up, a large bony woman
  who seemed all knees and elbows whenever she moved.
  She said, “You’re not from the tanks, then? No, I can see
 you’re not. Well, the gang wars are heating up. It’s funny.
You live in the tanks, you think: what did the police ever do
   for me? Beat you up, smash your teeth, catch you up in
their raids. But now, with no police, there’s nothing to stop
the gangs but each other. So they try to spread out. People
 were getting snatched up and reprogrammed all over the
  place. You don’t watch out, you find yourself being rude
   girl for some hoodlum you never even heard of before.
      Only now, you’re willing to die for him. Very bad.
  Especially now that everybody has these rifles; have you
     seen them? Do you know what I’m talking about?”
   “Everybody?” Treece said. “I noticed your guard had
one. She shouldn’t. Those are supposed to be restricted to
                programmed samurai.”
    The villagers laughed. There were some eight people
 sitting about by now. “There must be a hundred rifles in
 the tanks,” Fu-ya explained. “Maybe even two hundred.
  It’s a very bad problem.” He had seated Billy in his lap.
 Now he looked down and said, “Hey, look at that. That is
                        very good.”
   Billy Defector did not look up. He was drawing circuits
on the paper, long glowing lines and intersections like cool
     rivers of light, straight and pure and enigmatic.
                              ***
 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
 rectenna systems buried under the skin, and a second
  spine with God knows how many gigabytes of storage
                          capacity.”
       “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 coiled
                  dragon. “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.”
        “Ah,” said Wyeth. “Now that is interesting.”
   “Are you satisfied now?” Constance demanded. Wyeth
  looked at her. “You’ve been torturing this creature for
 your own… your own paranoid fantasies, that’s all. You
are a dangerous man, Mr. Wyeth, a machine running out
    of control and causing pain for no purpose at all.”
 Rebel reached out, touched the spokesman’s wrist. “Tell
me something,” she said hesitantly. “Is Wyeth right? Are
        humans and Comprise really enemies?”
            “Of course not,” Constance snapped.
  “Yes,” the Comprise said. “We are by definition natural
   enemies since we compete for the same resources.”
    “Resources? You mean like… what? Energy sources?
                     Metal ores?”
     “People. People are our most important resource.”
  Constance stood motionless, looking pale and betrayed.
 “I…” she said. “I thought—” Her voice was close to tears.
  Abruptly she turned away and limped back across the
bridge, to the land of the living. Freeboy scurried after her.
  Not actually grinning, Wyeth favored Rebel with a nod
    and a wink. He turned to the Comprise. “Another
   question. Why haven’t you taken over human space
   already? You have all the resources of Earth at your
 disposal, and the kind of physics we can only dream of.
Why have you stayed put? Why aren’t you out here among
                      us in force?”
       The crowds of Comprise expanded slightly, then
 contracted, like an enormous beast taking a deep breath.
“We are held back by the speed of communication. It is not
true that thought is instantaneous. Thought is only as fast
as our electronic linkages allow. Even on Earth this causes
   problems. It is possible for the Comprise to be divided
     against ourself. Thought moves in vast waves, like
   pressure fronts, across the continents. Sometimes two
 conflicting thoughts arise on opposite sides of the planet.
 The thought fronts race outward, and where they collide,
  there is conflict. It is like a mental storm. You would not
    understand it. But these are momentary unbalances,
   easily settled. The problem becomes crucial only when
                     Comprise leave Earth.
     “Earth has tried creating colonies of ourself in near
orbit, on the moon, elsewhere. But small Comprise such as
 we are sicken away from the communion of thought. We
become indecisive, we make errors. The large Comprise do
  not sicken, but they lose integrity and drift away from
Earth, becoming individuals in their own right. Then they
 must be destroyed. Three times it has been necessary to
 apply the nuclear solution. It is not permissible that the
    Comprise of Earth become Other. You would not
                      understand.”
  “I see,” Wyeth said. “I think I see. That’s the reason for
your interest in the mind arts, then? You want a means of
   keeping Comprise colonies integrated with Earth.”
    “Yes. For a long time Earth has sought the answer in
physics. A means of instantaneous communication would
bind the Comprise across vast distances. But the speed of
 light remains an absolute barrier. It cannot be cheated.
    There is no simultaneity in the universe. So we look
 elsewhere. Perhaps a solution can be found in the mind
         arts. Perhaps a new mental architecture.”
           “That brings me to my next question—”
   “No,” the Comprise said. “You are satisfied. Sickened
though we are, we can read you that well, Boss Wyeth. You
 got as much from us as you had hoped for. We need give
  you no more.” The spokesman took a step backwards,
merging into his fellows. Hundreds of eyes all turned away
                          at once.
    For a moment Wyeth stood open-mouthed. Then he
                     laughed.
                             ***
   When they made love that night, Wyeth was awkward
and he came too soon. He rolled away from Rebel, staring
out the window wall. Faint strands of orchid floated slowly
 by as the sheraton revolved. “Wyeth?” Rebel said gently.
  He looked at her, eyes bleak and hollow. “What is it?”
  Wyeth shook his head, looked downward. “I have a sick
   conscience. I am not at all at peace with myselves.”
   “Hey,” Rebel said. “Hey, babes, it’s all right.” She took
his hand, held it in both of hers. “Which one of you is this?
                    It’s the leader, right?”
  “Yes, but we all feel this way. Constance was right. About
the kid. Billy was perfectly content as part of the Comprise.
  Not happy, not aware—but content, anyway. And then I
  appear in a blaze of light and a rush of noise, and yank
 him into consciousness. Here, kid, have an apple. Bright
and shiny. Let me make you one of us. I dragged him out of
 the Comprise and halfway to human, and made him into
 what? A crippled, crazy, unhappy animal of some kind.”
  “Hey, now, it wasn’t your fault he ate the shyapple. The
    Comprise did that. It caught us all by surprise.”
  Wyeth sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
  He sat there, not moving. “You think not? I waved that
apple under their noses. I wanted them to bite. I wanted to
see what would happen. But when I pried Billy loose from
  the Comprise, it turned out he didn’t know one fucking
 thing. So what good did I do? None. I acted blindly, and
   now there’s one more miserable creature walking the
                           sky.”
 “I’ll heal him for you, Wyeth, I promise I will. I’m coming
 to terms with Eucrasia’s skills.” Rebel hugged him from
 behind, crushing her breasts against his back, and laid
her cheek against his shoulder. “Listen, I can really do it.”
     Wyeth shook his head back and forth ponderously.
    “That’s not it. That’s not it at all.” She released him,
  rocking back on her heels. “Undoing the damage won’t
  help. The thing is, I don’t want to be the kind of person
                  who’d do that to a child.”
                     Rebel said nothing.
    “Do you remember when we first met? I was just a
  persona bum. Very bright, very good, but with no idea
 what I wanted to do with my life. The one thing I wanted
 most was to have a sense of purpose. We collaborated on
  the tetrad’s design together, do you remember that?”
                             “No.”
  “That’s too bad. It was an exciting piece of work. We put
  lots of late hours into it. It was pirate programming, we
had to do it in secret. Eucrasia came up with the notion of
a four-faceted persona for the stability, the self-sufficiency
      of it. She was hell for self-sufficiency. I was more
interested in it because it would generate its own sense of
                            purpose.”
   Rebel felt irrationally jealous of Eucrasia, working so
closely with Wyeth. She wondered if they’d slept together,
   and felt an oddly unclean excitement at the thought.
                     “How?” she asked.
   “The pattern-maker. I figured he’d take care of that. He
 did, too. First time he came up, he asked what is the most
   important thing happening in our times? How can we
     contribute to it? The answers— well, you know the
  answers. Eucrasia was disappointed. She thought I was
being grandiose and impractical, and she wanted to strip
   the program down and start over again. So we parted
    ways. I mean… the survival of the human race! What
   better cause could you have?” He fell silent, then said,
 “Only now I don’t know. Maybe what I really wanted was
to have a good opinion of myself. I mean, I made me into a
     kind of secular saint, a self-contained guardian of
humanity. A man with no doubts. But now I’m not so sure.
  I’m not sure of anything. I guess I don’t know myself as
                    well as I thought I did.”
   “Hush now,” Rebel said. She put her arms around him,
  rocking him gently. But they might as well have been in
  different universes. Eucrasia’s memories were growing
stronger. Soon they would swallow her up completely, and
   then she would be no more. She wanted to care about
 Wyeth’s problems, but they just didn’t seem important to
                            her.
         “Hush,” she said again. “You’re not alone.”



                              8
                DELUSION’S PASSAGE

Rebel visited Billy daily, after singlestick practice. But she
quickly found that while she lived by the sheraton’s strict
Greenwich time, the village ran on different, internal
rhythms. People ate when they were hungry, slept when
they were tired, kept to no external schedule. Sometimes
she would find that by village time only a few languid
hours had passed. Other times, days would have sped by
in a frenzy of work and play, of long naps and small meals.
   One day she discovered that thousands of small spider
    webs, no bigger than tufts of cotton, had covered the
   orchid about the village like mist. In the filtered white
wintery light, the children played a game with a rusting air
tank. A child would leap into the court and bounce off the
tank, kicking it toward the far side. Then a child from that
side would jump out, trying to bounce it back. One girl got
 stuck in the court’s center, and was loudly and derisively
       called out. Then the game started over again.
     Gretzin sat before her hut, weaving a grass mat to
replace a worn wall. Rebel greeted her, then said, “Where
            did all these spiders come from?”
    “Where do you think they come from? The tanks,”
Gretzin said impatiently. “Lots of vermin been spreading
   out. You should’ve been here yesterday, there were
blackflies everywhere. Clouds of them.” She put the mat
 aside. “Fu-ya’s sleeping. Hold on, and I’ll get your little
                           boy.”
 A minute later she returned, hauling Billy by one arm. “I
don’t want to!” he cried. “I want to play!” Seeing Rebel, he
                       started to cry.
  Rebel felt an odd sadness that the boy didn’t like her. A
cold touch of failure. “Well, that’s a sign of progress,” she
  said to Gretzin. “His temper.” She ran a hand over his
 head, and the delicate fuzz of new hair tickled her palm
like static electricity. Gretzin had cut off his braid; possibly
  the children had been teasing him. “This won’t take long
                          at all, Billy.”
            She put him under and went to work.
  An hour later she released Billy and called Gretzin over.
 “There’s not a lot more for me to do. His identity is a little
fragile yet, but it’ll strengthen in time. Basically, he should
               be able to pass for human now.”
            “Pass for human, huh?” Gretzin said.
  “Yes, it’s good timing, too, since we reach Mars soon. I
   don’t know what Wyeth will do with him then.” She
  covered her uneasiness about the boy’s future with a
smile. “I’ll bet you’ll be glad not having to worry about him
                            anymore.”
                  “Yeah. That’ll be terrific.”
                               ***
      Being outside the geodesic after all this time was a
shock. Some free-floating spores must have adhered to the
 hull before it was accelerated away from Eros Kluster, for
  it was now covered with great mottled mats of vacuum
flowers. They were everywhere, growing in tangled heaps
 and piles. The blossoms twisted slowly, tracking the sun.
 The flowers had been scraped away from the airlock and
  for dozens of meters around, revealing a hull that was
dull, pitted, and uneven. Scatterings of foot rings had been
  snap-welded across the cleared surface. Standing in a
pair, Rebel felt a perfectly irrational urge to start scraping
              flowers. Her hands itched with it.
  Wyeth stood beside her, overseeing the departure of the
  Comprise. Almost half a thousand coldpack units were
  being lashed to a single jitney frame, layer upon layer
   building into a crude sphere. Inside those soot-black
 coffins were suspended the Comprise, throats and lungs
 filled with crash jelly. Spacejacks swarmed about them.
      “Hey, look.” Rebel touched Wyeth, pointed. Two
unmarked silver suits crawled across the geodesic toward
them. Among the carnival riot of personalized suits worn
    by the workers recruited from the tanks and orchid
villages, they stood out as startlingly as a croquet ball in a
                case of Fabergé Easter eggs.
  The intercom crackled. “I can’t believe they trust you to
   coldpack them after what you put them through.”
 “Aren’t you supposed to be checking how far through the
      hull the flowers have eaten?” Wyeth asked.
  The silver figures pulled themselves almost to his feet,
   slipped into rings, and stood. “That’s what I came to
 report. You’ve got four inches skin at the very thinnest.
                 Nothing to worry about.”
   The spacejacks brought up a disposable fusion drive at
the end of a kilometer-long connector rod and coupled it to
 the jitney, hot end away from the Comprise. They leaped
 away and (using long ropes) yanked the shielding. “Well,
    stay and watch the show if you want, Connie. Hallo,
                Freeboy. Still with us, I see.”
   “He’s as loyal as a wizard’s daughter,” Constance said
 dryly. An almost invisible plasma flame puffed from the
         engine, and the assembly started away.
     Three days, Rebel thought. Two to reach Mars, be
  intercepted and fitted with retros by People’s Defense,
decelerate, and be unpacked. One day for the Comprise to
   build the transit ring that would bring the geodesic’s
 velocity to relative zero, leaving it at rest in Mars orbit. It
wouldn’t take much of a mistake for them to miss the ring
 entirely, crashing the project and all its people right into
                    the side of the planet.
    “They were as helpless as a vat of kitten embryos,”
 Constance said. “I can’t imagine why they trusted you. I
               certainly wouldn’t have.”
  “The Comprise is not human.” Wyeth’s mirrored visor
turned toward her. “They don’t carry personal grudges.”
  Constance looked away, toward the dwindling coldpack
 assembly, then turned back and with sudden heat said,
 “I’m glad we’re parting ways at Mars!” She bent over to
 grab the foot rings, then pulled herself hand over hand
          toward the airlock. Freeboy followed.
    When she was gone, Wyeth said softly, “I’m going to
                  miss that woman.”
                              ***
 The next day, when Rebel reached the village she found
 it deserted. Spiders had shrouded the huts in white. A
woven wall, ripped from its frame, floated in a silent curl
      at the center of the court. “Hello?” she called.
              No sound but the buzzing of flies.
       All the huts were vacant, their contents largely
  undisturbed. A brush frozen in a bowl of hardened ink
floated by Fu-ya’s door. Trailed by her two samurai, Rebel
looked down all the twisty paths that had been marked out
 from the village to private plantations, clearings, and the
like. They went a distance down the red rag trail, and then
     the blue, but found nothing but more empty huts.
  Rebel took a long, shuddering breath. She felt her fear
prowling through the orchid depths, silent and shadowy.
            “Treece, what happened here?”
 The second samurai offered Treece a bit of blood-stained
 cloth that the flies had drawn him to. Treece brushed it
 aside, examined a fractured wetwafer. “Press gang,” he
said. “Very slick, whoever they were. Took out the guard,
    surrounded the village, didn’t miss anyone. Put a
      compulsion on them and took them all away.”
        “Away?” Rebel asked. “Where away? Why?”
   Treece bent the wetwafer back and forth in his blunt
fingers. At last he shrugged. “Well. Let’s go tell the boss.”
                              ***
   “I don’t like it,” Wyeth said. “Look, none of us likes it,
 but it’s the only logical way to proceed.” Dice clicked and
   rattled obsessively in his hand. He threw them down,
    scooped them up. “We don’t know for sure that it’s
 Wismon. Let’s not kid ourselves—I haven’t had any news
 from the tanks in two days. Only Wismon could’ve found
                  and silenced my spies.”
   They stood in the empty lobby of the sheraton. Wyeth
 had dismissed all his samurai and darkened the room so
   he could think. The only light came from the orchids
  outside. “What are you arguing with yourself about?”
               Rebel asked in exasperation.
   “Strategy.” Wyeth rolled the dice again. “I can’t go up
 against Wismon in my warrior persona. He’d be able to
 predict my every move. The only way I can take him by
             surprise is to go mystic. Right?”
 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 grinned cockily. “Me too.”
   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. Spinning around, she
punched her captor in the nose, as hard as she could, and
 blood exploded outward from her fist. By then a dozen
 more guards had converged upon them, and they were
                  both recaptured.
    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 inner furies. A thin string of
saliva clung to one corner of his mouth, waving slightly as
 he talked. “How do you like my angelheaded little girls?
                    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
cannot make plans, cannot reason complexly, cannot lie.
All they know is what instructions I’ve programmed into
 them. Isn’t that marvelous? They’re perfectly innocent.
                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?”
                             “No.”
      “A pity. I remember a time when you were not so
              scornful of scientific endeavor.”
                    “I was young then.”
    “Wait,” Rebel said impulsively. “I’d like to see what
     you’ve done.” Wyeth turned to her, astonished.
       “Well! An original thought—you charm me, Ms.
 Mudlark. I will deny you nothing.” Wismon extended his
     arms and the cat women stood under them, each
 stretching a supporting arm across the immensity of his
      back. “Where’s my zookeeper? Call him to me.”
   A sullen rude boy ducked into an archway. A moment
 later he returned, followed by a young man painted for
                    wetware research.
                  “Maxwell!” Rebel cried.
   “I knew you’d have a spy in my organization,” Wyeth
  said with a touch of sadness. “Did you buy him or just
                    reprogram him?”
  “Oh, I assure you he acted not for any ignoble reasons,
but purely out of love. You do love me, don’t you, Maxie?”
  Maxwell nodded eagerly, face rapt. His expression was
 at once so ardent and so familiar that Rebel had to look
 away. “Lead us to your charges,” Wismon said. “I grow
                         bored.”
                            ***
  The party floated out of the court. Maxwell led, followed
by Wismon and his cat women. They eased him along with
feather-light kicks and grabs against the walls and ropes.
 Rebel and Wyeth came next, escorted by a guard of rude
 boys. They came to a confluence of passages and halted.
    “What shall I show you? I’ve arranged my creations by
  type. Would you care to go down the tunnel of fear? The
straight and narrow way of discipline? Or perhaps you two
lovebirds would enjoy a kick and stroll down lovers’ lane.”
  They said nothing, and Wismon flapped a bloated pink
hand at one passage. “We’ll go the way of delusion, then. I
have something I’m especially eager for my dear mentor to
                         see.”
   They went up the red rope to a nondescript court. At a
word from Wismon, Maxwell led them within. It was quiet
    there. A man sat in the doorway of his hutch, eyes
downcast as if lost in thought. He was hooked into a small
transcorder unit. “Cousin!” Wismon cried. “Sam Pepys!”
   The man scrambled to his feet, bracing himself within
the frame. “My Lord!” he said. “You do me honor, coming
to Seething Lane.” He swept a hand at an imaginary table.
       “I was just now working on your accounts.”
   To Wyeth, the fat man said, “Samuel Pepys was a clerk
of the British navy on Earth in the seventeenth century. A
ludicrous little man, but able enough in his way. A bit of a
diarist. The transcorder feeds him a wafer of background
   sensation. His only connection with the real world is
 through myself. He takes me to be his relative, Edward
  Montagu, Earl of Sandwich. Isn’t that right, Samuel?”
    The man smiled gravely and bowed, obviously pleased.
“Your Lordship gives me too great a credit. Will you stay to
 dine? Mr. Spong has sent over a barrel of pickled oysters,
I’ll have the girl fetch it. Jane! Where is that lazy slut?” He
looked fretfully over one shoulder, setting the transcorder
                        leads swinging.
    “It’s a simple enough delusional system,” Rebel said.
 “Rich people have been known to spend good money for
two weeks of that kind of delusion. I’ve arranged for a few
 such vacations myself.” That had been during Eucrasia’s
      internship, she recalled. It had been dull work,
cookie-cutter programming, but (because legally dubious)
                         lucrative.
     “Ah, but always under sensory deprivation, eh?
  Otherwise small incongruities creep in from the real
world.” A cat woman was exploring the court. She sniffed
curiously at Pepys’ crotch. He didn’t notice. “Right in the
  middle of the battle of Thermopylae, a city cannister
 eclipses the sun. On virgin Arctic snow, a lone papaya
glows with otherworldly light. Little by little your dream
 world crumbles into paranoia and nightmare. But the
 beauty of this system is its flexibility. It can justify any
 amount of incongruity. Samuel, I have noticed a great
number of brontosauri in the streets of London this past
                          week.”
 Pepys frowned. “Brontosauri, my Lord? The… ah, large,
             ancient lizards, you mean?”
 “Aye, Samuel, three in Whitechapel alone, and two more
by the ’Change. Down by Saint Paul’s the streets are filthy
    with their spoor. What make you of that, Cousin?”
 “Why, that it will be a mightily cold winter,” Pepys said.
 “The brutes never venture out in such numbers be the
          coming weather fair and clement.”
     “I fail to see the point of this,” Wyeth said stiffly.
  “Patience. Samuel, poke up the fire, would you?” Pepys
 obliged, seizing an imaginary poker and stirring up the
  logs and embers of a fireplace that was not there. The
mime was so perfect that Rebel could almost see his stuffy
   little room and feel its monotonously heavy gravity.
  Suddenly Wismon shouted, “Samuel! A coal has landed
    on the back of your hand. It’s burning the flesh!”
   With a shriek of pain, Pepys tumbled over backwards,
 waving his hand. Spinning slowly in the air, he put hand
to mouth and sucked on it. At a gesture from Wismon, two
                 rude boys steadied him.
             “Here, Cuz. Show me your hand.”
  Pepys extended a hand trembling with pain. An angry
  red circle swelled on its back. Even as they watched,
  puss-white blisters bubbled up on the inflamed spot.
Wismon laughed. “Belief! Belief alone burned that hand.
 Think on it. It rather puts some starch into the ancient
  notion that all we experience is illusion to begin with,
 doesn’t it?” He stroked the hand lovingly, breaking the
 blisters. “But Samuel doesn’t perceive our illusions, only
 those that are pumped into him. All that stands between
  him and reality is one thin wafer of electronic London.
 Let’s see what happens when we remove that final veil.”
    Maxwell held up the transcorder for Wismon, who
  daintily took the wafer’s pull-ring between thumb and
                   forefinger. “Samuel?”
                         “My Lord?”
       “Tell me what you see.” He yanked the wafer.
       Pepys stiffened, and his eyes jerked open wide.
Unblinking, they focused on infinity. “The walls! The walls
fade like smoke! I can see through ceiling, rooms, and roof
to the clouds beyond… Nay, the sky too is become pellucid
 and the stars stand bright and stark… But now e’en they
                     too fade. I see…”
                “What do you see, Sammy?”
                             ***
    For the longest moment Pepys was silent. Then,
 “Music,” he said. “I see the music of the crystal spheres
           celestial.” He began to cry gently.
   Wismon giggled. “Perfect madness. I could as easily
 have had him die. Come. This is only prologue to what I
       really wish to show you, dearest mentor.”
    They exited, leaving Pepys afloat in the center of the
                      court, weeping.
   For half the length of the passage, Maxwell hesitated at
 each doorway and was waved on. Then Wismon nodded
and Maxwell peeled back a sheet of tin, and they entered a
courtyard. Again it had but a single inhabitant, a man. He
    had a bland face with an enormous beak of a nose.
Perched on a rope, he seemed some kind of ungainly bird.
As they entered, he looked up and smiled. “Hallo,” he said.
                      “Quite a crowd.”
      “Yes, I’ve brought some friends to examine you,”
              Wismon said. “You don’t mind?”
                          “Oh, no.”
           “Question him,” Wismon commanded.
     “All right,” Rebel said after a pause. “Do you know
                      where you are?”
  “This used to be Queen Lurline’s court. She’s gone now.
 I’m the only one here. King Wismon is holding me as an
   experiment in recursive personality.” The man’s eyes
                   sparkled with mirth.
                “Do you know who you are?”
 “King Wismon calls me Nose. For self-evident reasons.”
He rubbed his fleshy nose and chuckled. Rebel looked to
Wyeth and shrugged. There was something askew in the
man’s sourceless, irrational humor, but nothing in her or
         Eucrasia’s experience could explain it.
  Wyeth looked thoughtful. “Let’s see. You showed me that
      last guy—Pepys?—to demonstrate how perfect a
  delusionary system you could create. So this must be a
 refinement on that. What is a step beyond delusion?” He
   snapped his fingers, glanced at Rebel. “Reality!” She
 caught his reference: It came from something she’d said
when he was new-programmed, and she’d wanted to strip
his persona down and start over again. Delusion was hard
  enough to deal with, she’d said, but a frivolous grasp of
   reality was worse. “You don’t believe that what you’re
                  seeing is real, do you?”
  Nose kicked his feet with joy. He had to grab at the rope
to keep from floating away. “Oh, this is most entertaining.
                         Really!”
  “Nose is a prototype of the perfect citizen,” Wismon said.
   “His true persona is entirely hidden from the outside
world. His surface persona is a perfectly consistent game
 the submerged persona plays. He thinks he is dreaming.
To him, his entire past is an irrational construct that’s just
come into existence. Thus, he denies continuity but is able
to act within it. He will accept anything, endure anything,
 for none of it is real. Which leaves me free to control his
  dreams. No matter what happens, he is happy to obey
whatever instructions he receives. Isn’t that right, Nose?”
                    Nose nodded happily.
 “All right,” Wyeth said sourly. “I’ll ask the question you
want me to ask. Why are you showing me this creature?”
   “Oh, that’s the best joke of all. Nose, why don’t you tell
      us who you are when you’re not dreaming?”
  “Should I?” Nose laughed. “Well, what does it matter?
 My name is Wyeth. I was Wismon’s mentor some years
 ago, and now I am his enemy. That’s why I’m dreaming
   about him. He’s getting out of hand, I’ll have to do
 something about him soon. Possibly even destroy him.
 Maybe this dream will show me the pattern I have to act
                        within.”
    “That was your mystic voice,” Wismon said. “Do you
care to hear your other voices? I can call them up from the
                    depths, if you like.”
 “No,” Wyeth said. “No, I… no.” He was ashen pale. “This
       is what you have planned for me, isn’t it?”
 “What are you two talking about?” Rebel asked. Wismon
mockingly mouthed the words in perfect unison with her,
        but she finished the sentence anyway.
      “Please try not to be so obvious, Ms. Mudlark. My
     mentor has just realized that what I can do to his
simulation I can do to him, access to metaprogrammer or
 not. He can be made into whatever I choose. But the joke
goes deeper than that: Perhaps this man is not my mentor
  at all, but merely some poor fool I’ve programmed into
   thinking he is. Perhaps Nose here is the true Wyeth.
                Perhaps neither of them is.”
 “Wyeth is Wyeth,” Rebel said coldly. “If he can’t trust his
    own sense of self, he can take my word for it.”
   “Ah, but how does he know that you exist? After all, I
                  control the dream.”
                 Nose laughed delightedly.
  “What I don’t understand,” Wyeth said, “is how you’ve
 accomplished all this in so little time. You’re a brilliant
  planner, but you don’t have the programming skills to
      write up the personas. Where did you get the
programmers? There’s months of detail work in these two
                   characters alone.”
    “Thus we come full circle,” Wismon said. He flicked a
finger at Maxwell, who disappeared out the doorway. “You
have not yet mentioned why you entered my domain in the
first place, but of course you didn’t need to. You wanted to
      recover the child-savant you snatched from the
                         Comprise.”
                  “Yes, we came for Billy.”
   “You never tested him for his aptitudes. Most careless.
To me the possibilities were obvious. Are you familiar with
the cant term ‘plumber’? It means someone with a natural
 bent for the mechanics of wetcircuitry. In this child, the
 instinct is squared, or even cubed. He is preternaturally
talented, a superplumber, if you will. I need only describe
            what I want, and he can draw it up.”
  Maxwell returned, leading Billy Defector by the hand.
   Behind him came Fu-ya and Gretzin, and from the
 apprehensive looks on their faces, Rebel could tell they
  had been left untouched, so they could care for him.
    “A thought has been germinating, mentor, for some
 time, and I think it has finally come to fruition,” Wismon
 said. Maxwell handed the child a briefcase. “Billy. Bring
          up that map we made of my persona.”
  Billy looked to Gretzin, and she nodded. He touched the
 briefcase’s surface, and an enormous wetware diagram
 filled all of the court with lacy green. There were tens of
 thousands of branchings visible to the naked eye alone.
       “Test it one more time for a kink, would you?”
      Billy’s fingers danced. A small red cursor zipped
through the court, following the major persona branches,
 then moved to secondary and tertiary circuits. It moved
 too fast for the eye to fix on it for over a full minute, and
  then stopped. The solemn-faced child said, “No kink.”
                       Wismon smiled.
    “Well, it was inevitable that sooner or later you’d come
to the conclusion that I’ve been bluffing,” Wyeth said. “But
  the fact is that I’m not. You wish to believe I am because
you’re unwilling to accept me as your superior. But I could
       destroy you here and now with a single word.”
                 “Then do it,” Wismon said.
    “Right in the middle of your traveling freak show?”
  There was an acid edge to Wyeth’s voice. “Come off it.
                 They’d rip my head off.”
    Heavy lids crept down over Wismon’s eyes, until he
appeared to be trembling on the brink of sleep. His every
 muscle froze to perfect stillness. Then, through lips that
   barely moved, he said, “Everyone here is to obey my
mentor completely, no matter what he tells you to do. Only
 my direct orders override his. Do you understand? The
two of us will talk now. Everyone else must wait outside.”
   Two rude boys took Rebel by the arms and swept her
 through the doorway. “Are you satisfied now?” Wismon
 asked. But Rebel was already outside and couldn’t hear
                      Wyeth’s answer.
                         Time passed.
  In the quiet of the corridor, the cat women prowled up
and down the rope, endlessly fascinated by their eternally
new world. Their movements seemed unbearably slow to
  Rebel, as if they moved through a crystalizing flow of
   honey. One of the rude boys broke into a hutch and
emerged wearing a woman’s lace collar. He primped and
 postured while the others laughed. Every now and then
 one would glance at Rebel, wistful dreams of violence in
           his eyes. Nose chuckled to himself.
   At last the sheet metal door shivered and groaned and
swung open. Wyeth swam out of the court and gestured to
   Fu-ya, Gretzin, and Billy. “Escort these people to the
 sheraton,” he told the dumbfounded rude boys. “The cat
  women can wait here.” He took Rebel’s arm and kicked
  downpassage. Maxwell stared unbelievingly after him,
                  then dove into the court.
  “You weren’t bluffing, then. You really did put a kink in
                 him,” Rebel marveled.
  Wyeth shook his head. “You don’t need a kink to destroy
    a persona, if you know its weaknesses well enough.
Wismon’s blind spot was his conceit. He had to prove that
he could best me on my own turf. It made him overlook the
                         obvious.”
                  “But what did you do?”
    “I snapped his neck,” Wyeth said. “Come on, I don’t
                  want to talk about it.”
   Behind them, Maxwell found the body, and screamed.
                            ***
  It took a full day for Wyeth’s samurai to scour the tanks
 clean of Wismon’s creatures. In dribs and drabs, pairs
   and dozens, they were brought to the sheraton to be
 restored. The task would have been impossible without
Billy Defector. Under his fingers, the elaborate programs
needed to repair the damaged personas flowed magically
into existence. Fu-ya or Gretzin could coax the child into
working for two or three hours before he turned cranky.
Then he would be allowed to play for a time before being
   returned to the task. Twice, he put in a night’s sleep.
  Rebel fine-tuned a programmer, slid in the therapeutic
 wafer, turned to the next gurney, and realized that they
 were done. She stretched, looking about the conference
 room. Where the topiary garden had been, Constance’s
team had resodded the floor and installed a croquet lawn.
   An antique pink Martian sky played monotonously
  overhead. It had been forty hours since she’d slept last.
 “You know what? I don’t think I’ll ever be able to think of
                this room without loathing.”
    “I know what you mean,” Wyeth said. With a sigh, he
  slowly sat down. An attentive pierrot slid a chair under
                     him just in time.
  “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 a
magnetic 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 cannister city or other
     major structure in the lot. Rebel caught a stand-up
 hopper, along with Stilicho and the one other citizen not
directly involved in the decommission. The flight was long,
   made awkward by Stilicho’s rough pilotage. Time and
     again he swerved abruptly to avoid some sudden
     manmade object. Apparently the People’s Militia
        maintained only rudimentary traffic control.
  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 tunneling operations, sent up by mass drivers.
  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.
    “When are you going to be programmed a citizen?”
                 Stilicho demanded.
    “You’ve already asked me that question three times.
            Why don’t you just give it a rest?”
      “You haven’t given me a satisfactory answer yet.”
  Stilicho waved a hand irritably. “Evasions, fluff, words
that don’t say anything! If you take programming as soon
 as we reach Deimos, you can be put to work tomorrow. A
 flight of ice asteroids is coming in, and the seeding crews
   could always use another hand.” He put a holographic
   projection of an ice asteroid—a dirty thing, with more
   carbon than water to it—in the center of the hopper. A
    mining camp clung to the surface, and interior lines
 glowed, showing shafts, drifts, and galleries. “The small
  triangles represent spore packets. No bigger than your
thumb, but there are hundreds of them scattered through
  the ice. The stars represent bacterial charges packed in
                  fragmentation chambers.”
  Rebel stared out the hopper’s visor strip at the twisting
 columns of dust. People’s Mars’ mining crafts were too
 sophisticated for her to follow, and their biotechniques
  were antiquated, dating back to the beginning of the
 century, when the first comets had been seeded. There
was no middle ground in this lecture, nothing she might be
                    interested to hear.
      Vergillia, seeing her staring at the dust columns,
  mistook evasiveness for interest. “You are witnessing a
very elegant use of resources,” she said. “The waste dust is
  shot out into one of two areosynchrous orbits, where it
   forms mirror clouds which reflect additional sunlight
 down to the surface. Total insolation is thus increased by
                    nearly ten percent.”
   All this while, Stilicho kept talking. “The ice asteroids
   approach from the leading edge of Mars and hit the
         surface with the force of fusion bombs—”
    “Since the orbit is not permanent, there is slow but
inevitable loss of dust, which must then be replenished—”
  “Not only does the impact fragment the upper regolith,
but the buried bacteria and spores are distributed through
         the shattered permafrost by explosive—”
   They were like two machines that could not be turned
  off. Their overlapping babblings ebbed and crested to
    form surges of pure abrasive noise that were all but
 unbearable. And through it all, that irritating quality of
Vergillia’s voice ran, like fingernails dragged across slate.
“Shut up!” Rebel shouted. “God damn it, I don’t want your
programming! I’m not going to become a citizen! I despise
all of you! Is that straightforward enough, or do you want
                   me to be more explicit?”
  There was an uncomfortable silence. “Well,” Vergillia
 said at last. “Perhaps you need more time to consider.”
      Right then, something swam into focus in Rebel’s
memory, and she was finally able to place Vergillia’s voice.
 She understood why that tone of bland assurance, with
just that accent delivered in just that flat cadence, set her
                       teeth on edge.
      The woman sounded just like Eucrasia’s mother.
                             ***
    The tunnels bored deep into the dead rock of Deimos
   were long, straight, and perfectly round, drilled with
    simpleminded undeviancy. Even weighted down by
Wyeth’s dozen crates of possessions and her own two, the
slight gravity made it hard to walk. They drifted deep into
   the moon, past lighting towers spaced so there were
 stretches of gloom between harsh brilliancies. Rebel felt
as if she were moving through the faraway childhood her
  mother had so proudly hated. These were the grey and
black rockscapes she had heard of so often. These rapidly
moving citizens in grey were the same people her mother
                  had despised so guiltily.
    “You will note the perfect roundness of the tunnels,”
Stilicho said. “All our spaces are multipurpose. What is a
   dormitory today may be grain storage tomorrow. A
 corridor may become a conduit for water or industrial
  chemicals or even bacterial seed stock, depending on
  need. Nothing is dedicated solely to human comfort.”
 Eucrasia’s mother had told stories of people drowning in
  a sudden flood of creosote or of molasses, when the
  citizen-comptroller operating the gates had pulled the
 wrong switch. Rebel glanced over her shoulder. It was a
 long way to the nearest exit. “It doesn’t sound like a very
                  appealing way to live.”
      “You must understand that when Mars has been
terraformed, we will all move to the surface, and Deimos
will be abandoned. It would make no sense to waste effort
                on temporary quarters.”
          Ahead a group of noncitizens—all heavily
  wetpainted—were installing a failsafe gate. As Vergillia
and Stilicho strode forward, the work gang scattered to get
out of their way. Eucrasia’s mother had also told stories of
       what happened to those who got in the way of
 programmed citizens. “When will Mars be ready, then?”
              “Two hundred and eighty years.”
   They came to a train station. Without her guides, Rebel
  would not have known. To her it was just the unmarked
junction of two tunnels, by which a drab crowd of citizens
   and a few programmed outsiders stood. Then, from a
 crosstube, a metal worm floated into view. Its blind front
   eased to a halt, and doors sighed open. Vergillia and
 Stilicho helped Rebel load her bundle of cartons into the
  freight section, and then they all entered a transit car.
  Rebel hooked feet and hands through the appropriate
              rings. The car filled to capacity.
    A bell chimed, and the doors closed. The train leaped
 forward in a horrid burst of acceleration, and the lights
 went off. In the pitch darkness, with bodies pressing on
 her from all sides, Rebel felt Eucrasia’s claustrophobia
 rise up. “What’s wrong?” she cried. “What happened to
                         the lights?”
    “Lights are not necessary here,” Stilicho said. “The
     People never waste resources unnecessarily.”
      The train flew into the black and lightless rock.
                             ***
   Rebel was still feeling weak and a little helpless when
 they arrived at the day’s designated dormitory niches.
Some quarter of them were in use. People came and went
  constantly. “Diamond blue seventeen,” Stilicho said.
                     “Remember that.”
      “Your leader’s niche is beside it. Diamond blue
               eighteen,” Vergillia added.
  “Oh, good,” Rebel said. The niches were small, with a
 sleeping space scooped from one rock wall. The crates
 nearly filled one niche completely, much to her guides’
         amusement. “How do I close the door?”
                 “Door?” asked Vergillia.
    Stilicho said, “Do not worry about your possessions.
  With a few exceptions such as yourself, all noncitizens
allowed into Deimos are rigidly programmed. There is no
                        theft here.”
                   “I meant for privacy.”
                        “Privacy?”
   Shaking her head wearily, Rebel said, “Listen, it’s been
  fun. Thanks for your help. Now why don’t you two just
leave me alone for a while?” She sat down in the sleeping
 space. The rock smelled faintly of olive oil and machine
                  lubricant. “Go away.”
 “Perhaps,” Stilicho said in a concerned voice, “you don’t
 understand how badly new citizens are needed for the
                      great task—”
  “My mother was a citizen,” Rebel said angrily. “Did you
                     know that?”
                    They looked at her.
     “Yeah, she was born right here on Deimos. She was
     brought up in one of your creche collectives. Took
citizenship at age ten. Did everything she was supposed to
 do, and got reprogrammed once a year. She was just like
                    you, you know that?”
                          “I don’t—”
        But Rebel talked through the reply, driven by a
near-hysteria born of exhaustion. “Here’s the interesting
part. She was on an ice asteroid seeding crew, just like you
want me for, okay? She was on the green team, so she was
  in on it from the beginning. Went to Saturn orbital and
    was on the team that negotiated the deal with the ice
      butchers.” The citizens were staring at her in flat
   amazement. “So she was your quintessential constant
  citizen, right? Only it’s—what?— maybe a two-year trek
 from Saturn to Mars, even with early acceleration and a
 solar sail rig. So there was time for personality drift. The
       green team stavka thought there wasn’t enough
opportunity for unshared experience for individualization
          to occur. So they weren’t vigilant enough.
  “Okay, so the asteroid is passing through the belts, and
 there’s an unscheduled breakdown. Kills half the green
team. The big tunneler needs parts and a major overhaul
from the nearest industrial Kluster. My mother is on the
       buying collective, makes the score, returns.
  “One of the fitters the Kluster sent out was my father. He
  was a big guy, very competent, sure of himself, quiet. A
hell of a guy. The kind that people admire. And my mother
 fell in love with him. You see that? She didn’t know what
  was happening at first, ’cause citizens don’t fall in love,
right? How could they? By the time she realized what had
  happened, she was so far gone she didn’t want to come
back. He smiled at her, and she went with him. Back at the
 Kluster, she took industrial asylum, and the green team
   had to go on without her.” Rebel’s throat was dry. She
   coughed into her hand. “So you see what I’m saying? I
  know all about you. I heard all about your tricks when I
 was a kid. I know what you’re selling, and I’m not buying
                         any. Okay?”
     Stilicho turned stiffly and bounded away. Vergillia
hesitated long enough to say, “I am sorry that your mother
 was a sex-criminal and deprived you of your birthright.
       But that does not excuse you for rudeness.”
                   Then she too was gone.
 The stone was cool under Rebel’s back and vibrated with
 the subsonic rumble of faraway digging machines. Her
  stomach was queasy, and her head ached. Eucrasia’s
memories had come back to her totally. There was much in
  Eucrasia’s past that she hadn’t had occasion to think
     about, but it was all there, and accessible to her.
   But along with the dread weight of Eucrasia’s memories
    came unexpected insight. She realized now why her
  mother had filled her childhood with pointless droning
 stories about the corridors of Deimos, about quiet misery
and bleak sameness and unending work. She understood
       her mother’s sudden flares of dark anger, her
      randomly-applied prohibitions, her sourceless
punishments. They had all been her faltering, uninformed
 attempts to immunize Eucrasia against People’s Mars. To
 foster a hard independence that would ensure she never
     returned to the moon of her mother’s birth, never
          surrendered to its citizenship program.
   And yet here she was, in these same tired old tunnels.
  This is not my past, Rebel thought. This guilt is not mine.
 And yet lying in this doorless niche, with citizens moving
     briskly by and occasionally glancing in with cool
  impersonal curiosity, the coughs and growls of distant
   machines bouncing down stone walls, Rebel felt like
                           crying.
                    After a while, she did.
                             ***
  The clamor of voices echoed about the communal dining
 hall. The chamber was huge, as high as it was wide, and
  the hundreds of tables and benches and thousands of
  diners didn’t come near to filling it. High over Rebel’s
 place an enormous conduit gaped, water stains trailing
from its lip. Involuntarily, she glanced toward the distant
entryway, wondering how many here would make it to the
nearest failsafe lock were that distant citizen-comptroller
          to suffer a single instant’s inattention.
     Scattered here and there among the grey citizens,
conversing, were several hundred orange Comprise (and
  one silent one who studied Rebel with dead insectoid
     stare) and the rarer multicolored brightness of
 Constance’s work crew. The chatter was light, and there
was constant motion between tables. Wyeth slipped into
 the bench holes beside her. “How was your day?” Rebel
                          asked.
     “We managed to empty out the orchid, anyway.” A
pierrot set a tray before Wyeth, and he picked up the food
tongs. “It was awful. I spent all my time keeping Little Miss
  Bloodthirsty from killing people. She wanted to give the
  orchid villagers an hour’s notice and then pump out the
                            air.”
                            “No!”
  “What is so remarkable?” Rosebuds latched her tray to
the table and took the place beside Wyeth. Freeboy and a
      noncitizen Rebel didn’t recognize—he wore a
zebra-striped cloak and a red vest with twin rows of brass
 buttons—took places opposite her. “Share it with us all.”
    “A private joke,” Wyeth said easily. “Hallo, Freeboy.
                   Who’s your friend?”
  “Bors is my name, sir.” Flash of white teeth. Bors’ hair
was done up in long, thin braids, their ends contained in
 silver static balls. He wore a slim, noncommittal line of
yellow paint across his brow. “I am a commercial traveler
       in vintage information from the Republique
   Provisionnelle d’Amalthea, of the unaligned Jovian
                          satellites.”
    Wyeth introduced himself and Rebel, and then said,
               “You’ve come a long way.”
    “And a long way yet to go. My coldship is bound for
 Earth in another day. Deimos is only a side-trip for me, a
bit of mining technology transfer that was too profitable to
                          resist.”
    Freeboy, who had been listening impatiently, abruptly
leaned forward and said to Rebel, “Hey! You’ll never guess
   who’s taken on citizenship today. You want to try and
 guess?” Confused, Rebel shook her head. Freeboy leaned
   back, looking smug. “Your little friend Maxwell, that’s
                          who.”
    “Maxwell?” Rebel said. Freeboy nodded. “Slim, dark,
  irresponsible, hedonistic kid? Are we talking about the
                       same guy?”
    “It does seem hard to credit,” Wyeth said. “This was
                   voluntary, you say?”
         “Oh yeah, he wanted it all right. He said—”
  “This is all very interesting,” Rosebuds said. “Now I have
  something I’d like you all to see.” She slid her tray aside
 and started dealing out cards from a deck of holographic
  flats. She laid down an image of Mars as it appeared in
  prehuman times, red and lifeless, then covered it with a
    second card. The planet wavered, then blurred with
  storms. The icecaps were darkened by a light dustfall of
Phobic matter, and shrank. A single glint of green showed
within the crater of Olympus Mons. “You see the progress
       we’re making. The Olympus eden is a showcase
     microecology, a sample of what all Mars will be like
    eventually, and is not yet available for colonization.”
Swiftly she laid down further cards. “Fifty years from now,
 a hundred, one fifty. At this point most of the permafrost
    has melted, and the atmosphere is thick enough for
   humans equipped with rebreathers. But we will not be
 satisfied. Two hundred years.” Mottled green covered the
floating sphere. There were thin clouds. “Three hundred.”
The entire planet was transformed. Gentle green stretched
   from polar region to polar region. Here and there tiny
             lakes were pinpricks of glacial blue.
   “You will note that there are no oceans. The Martian
 ecology will be more delicate and at the same time more
supportive of human life than the Terran ecology. While
the oceans of Earth make its ecosphere incredibly stable,
they also waste most of Earth’s resources on marine life.
  The total colonizable land area of Mars will be equal to
  that of Earth, and it will all be put to the service of the
                          People.”
 “I really don’t see the benefit of terraforming a planet,”
 Rebel said dubiously. “For that kind of effort you could
 build thousands of city cans, or seed I don’t know how
                      many comets.”
    “A planetary surface is the best place for an expanding
postindustrial culture. The air is free, to begin with. There
is so much land area that it wouldn’t be worth the effort to
     charge rent. You’d just live wherever you wanted.
  Croplands in a functioning ecosphere are self-irrigating
   and self-fertilizing. In fact, everything takes vastly less
 effort on a planetary surface.” She laid down more cards.
  “Here is a vision of the croplands. Here is a vision of the
 treelands. Here is a vision of one of the larger lakes. The
  opposite shore is barely visible, it is so large. Within the
     lake will be fish, eels, mussels. On its verges, rice,
        wetwheat, cranberries. Here is a vision of the
                          parklands…”
     “That’s a really primitive structure you got there,”
  Freeboy said. “You’ve got a one-to-one transference of
 Terran ecologies, you see? But with a little thought you
 could adapt ocean fish, squids, maybe revert a few land
  plants to lakeweeds, set up a lichen bridge across the
 surface, and before you know it you’ve got a much more
interesting and complex system going. Why haven’t your
       people whomped up something like that?”
  “Look about you,” Rosebuds said. “How many plants do
   you see? We cannot afford to devote resources to the
 support industries a bioengineering economy requires.
 And yet, as you say, the need is great. You will find that
there 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 cannot be in danger,” Rosebuds said, “since
  we cannot be corrupted.” She swept up her holographic
flats and stood. “I can see, however, that none of you has a
   true interest in citizenship as yet. We shall discuss the
   matter further at a later time.” She left, and two more
citizens came along to take her place and the one beside it.
     “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 warrior
   persona. 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.
 There will never be anyone for me but you. Listen. I know
    that you’re… going away soon, and I don’t want you
  to—God, I don’t know how to say it—I don’t want you to
dissolve without ever knowing that I love you. I don’t think
      I could bear it. Is that too greedy of me? Do you
            understand what I’m trying to say?”
  In a storm of happiness and misery, she hugged him to
her and held him tight so that he couldn’t see her face, her
tears. When he started to talk again, she silenced him the
 only way she could think of, and they were making love
                           again.
  All through it, she loved him so much she had to bite her
tongue to keep from telling him. She was afraid that if she
spoke the words they would split her wide open. She loved
 Wyeth more now than she ever had, and she loved him
 most of all for lying to her. Because of course she didn’t
             believe a word of what he’d said.
               But it was nice that he’d said it.
                              ***
     That night Eucrasia appeared to her in the form of a
 rotting corpse. Her fingers ended in chrome scalpels, and
  when she opened her mouth, hypodermic syringes slid
from the flesh like rows of lamprey teeth. “Go back,” Rebel
said. Eucrasia raised a grey hand in graceful gesture, and
          razor racks stung across Rebel’s face.
  For a shocked instant, Rebel stood her ground, staring
through a haze of blood globules, and then Eucrasia lifted
   her other hand, and Rebel turned and kicked away.
  She fled down an endless tangle of stone tunnels, falling
 up some and struggling down others. Time and again the
necromantic horror behind her reached out lazily to slash
the soles of her feet. She was trailing blood, and throbbed
with pain from the knees downward. It seemed to her that
she was fleeing through the arteries of a vast body, a dead
  body, a body of dead stone, and that the body was her
                            own.
     With this insight, she found herself paralyzed and
strapped to a gurney within a niche of New High Kamden’s
                         rose maze.
   Eucrasia’s face loomed over her. The wetsurgical paint
   was cracked and dry, the cheeks taut, and the mouth
  slightly agape with the tightening of the flesh. Eyes dry
  and sightless. She leaned close and, breath sweet with
                    putrefaction, spoke.
  But when Rebel finally awoke, all she could remember
 was that Eucrasia had told her truths that she dared not
                         accept.



                       10
                 SHADOW OF SNOW

The next day somebody shot a citizen.
     Rebel didn’t hear of it until dinnertime. She’d been
 straw-bossing a work crew fitting a new airlock on Tank
    Fourteen. It was one of a dozen crews, all but hers
overseen by citizens, that Wyeth was coordinating, but the
  others were all off on the hull or in the orchid. Half the
 hustlers in the tanks came out to sell her workers spiced
 fruit, wine, ganja, or bootie, and it was a constant hassle
     keeping them out of the way. The day before, the
   macrobioengineers had killed the orchid, and it was
starting to liquesce. Even through the rebreathers needed
now that half the air had been pumped from the geodesic,
 the stench was appalling. It was late when she finally got
  the lock working, and she was barely in time to catch a
 hopper to Deimos. She stepped into the bench as Wyeth
                   was finishing his meal.
  “Citizen got shot today,” Wyeth said. He gave her a hug,
  handed her a tray. A passing pierrot filled it with food.
                      “What happened?”
  “The crew that was chopping the orchid for the protein
 refineries? They stumbled across a nest of bootleggers
 brewing up absinthe gin. Pretty marginal operation, I’d
say, or they would’ve written that last batch off. Anyway,
  one of them had an air rifle. It went off.” He shrugged.
                “These things happen.”
                     “Was he hurt bad?”
  “Here he comes now.” Two citizens took places at their
  table. One wore a chest sling, and Rebel could see the
 prosthetic lung moving within its amber depths. “Hallo,
           Cincinnatus. How’s the prognosis?”
     “No permanent damage done,” Cincinnatus said.
   “I am curious,” the woman beside him said. “This air
    rifle, is it a common weapon in the belt Klusters?”
   “No, no,” Wyeth said. “In fact, it’s extremely impractical
in most Kluster environments—more a toy than a weapon.
 Its range is greater than a blade’s, but its accuracy is less.
    It’s cheaper than energy weapons, but less versatile.
However, there does seem to be something of a fad for the
                     things in the tanks.”
  Three more citizens came by, with Bors tagging after. He
 sat beside Rebel, braids swimming lazily about his head
then slowly settling down. The static balls kept them away
  from his face. “This is my last supper.” He spread his
hands to either side of him. “My coldship is being prepped
                   even as we sit here.”
  “And yet, as you say, this weapon seems peculiarly well
   suited to the needs of petty criminals. Why did you
              introduce it in the first place?”
    “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Wyeth said
            lightly. His questioner frowned.
   Stilicho also joined the group. “I’ve been out examining
  the damage done by the weeds that came along with the
sheraton. These vacuum flowers. I found them growing on
tanks, on farm exteriors, on vacuum docks—there is even a
      patch on the surface of Deimos. They seem to be
                        everywhere.”
  “Oh they’re tenacious all right,” Wyeth said. “Once they
get a toehold, there’s no getting rid of them.” Bors chewed
    slowly, watching the exchange with bright interest.
     “Speaking of unwanted presences, Stilicho, I was
 browsing through your public data base yesterday and
  found it riddled with Comprise incursions. I hope you
               don’t keep any secrets there.”
  “The People have no secrets,” Stilicho said. “Freedom of
  information is a basic right of our society. About these
vacuum flowers of yours. How are they controlled on Eros
                         Kluster?”
      “Mostly they’re not. They’re kept down by dint of
constant labor, but I couldn’t say that they’re controlled.
  The problem is that they’re bioconstructs designed for
 trash transformation. The idea was that it’d be easier to
harvest and process the flowers than pick up and process
 the trash. Somebody explained to me once how they got
      out of hand. Something about single-organism
              ecosystems. I forget the details.”
   “Do you know any People’s law?” Bors asked abruptly.
           “I’ve seen something of it,” Rebel said.
      “The geodesic should have been examined before
  acceleration. These verminous little plants will cost us
  enormous effort to exterminate—if they can indeed be
  exterminated. Seeding our space with their spores was
            criminal negligence,” Stilicho said.
    “Somebody goofed, that’s for sure,” Wyeth agreed.
“Similarly, I think you’ll be making a mistake if you don’t
     sterilize your data system as soon as you can.”
     “Fascinating stuff. Very informal, very final. Once
 judgment has been made, there’s no appeal,” Bors said.
 “Their trials are held at mealtime. A few members of the
  Stavka gather at the suspect’s table and ask questions.
 Witnesses drop by to chat, then wander off. By the time
  the meal is over—” he impaled seven peas on an eating
 needle and popped them in his mouth—“the guilty party
 has been condemned. And if he wasn’t paying attention,
    he might well have mistaken it all for casual dinner
                       conversation.”
   Rebel glanced quickly at Wyeth. The expression on his
face was suddenly careful. “Of course I myself had nothing
  to do with the exterior of the hull,” he said, “since I was
         responsible solely for internal security.”
                 “A legalism,” Stilicho said.
   Cincinnatus shook his head. “No, that’s a valid point.
 What I’m concerned with are all these rifles loose in the
 tanks. I believe they could well grow into a major social
              problem given time. It would—”
 “Have you ever eaten meat?” Bors asked Rebel loudly. “I
don’t mean fish or termite compress, but real meat. Dead
          flesh, carved from animal corpses.”
  Rebel stared at him blankly, and he jabbed her with his
thumb. “People used to eat rabbits, I know,” she faltered.
                     “And chickens.”
   “They still do in the Outer System. Had it myself. Dead
               chicken is mighty fine eating.”
    Several citizens glanced at Bors with distaste. Wyeth
  leaned forward and said, “I understand that on Earth
  people used to eat the major mammals—horses, cows,
                        bears, apes.”
             “Apes?” Cincinnatus said, horrified.
      “Cows were more common, I believe. The cooks
prepared them by hand, first killing the cow with a blow to
  the head with a large hammer. The animal grunts, the
          knees buckle, and there’s your food.”
   “I do not think this conversation is necessary,” Stilicho
       said. “Certainly not while people are eating.”
    “Oh, but there’s more!” Bors said. “Did you know that
 the internal organs were considered delicacies—the liver,
 the heart, the brains? You’d be surprised how little there
is of a dead animal that you can’t eat. The pizzle was boiled
  and served on a bun. The stomach was crammed with a
    stuffing made of the minor organs, roasted and then
sliced—there’s irony for you, eh?” Two citizens, faces pale,
     put down their utensils and fled. “Now the way they
    prepared lobster—this is especially interesting—they
placed the creatures, still alive, in a large pot of cold water,
then put a flame beneath the pot. Very slowly they brought
 the water to a boil. At first the lobster would skitter about,
    trying to escape, but then, as the water heated up, its
motions slowed, and it died. When it was bright red, it was
  ready. To eat it, you had to crack the shell open and suck
                      the dead meat out.”
  Now Stilicho was the only citizen left, and he too looked
 nauseated. “We will continue our discussion tomorrow,”
    he said to Wyeth. Then, looking at Bors, he added,
                      “Without you.”
   “Did you notice how many members of the Stavka were
 here at our table?” Bors asked when they were alone. He
  tonged up a square of grub loaf. “I felt quite honored.”
   Rising, Wyeth bowed formally and said, “I am in your
debt, sir—I don’t know when I’ve found conversation more
 valuable. But right now I have business to see to. Rebel,
  where are we sleeping today? I’ll meet you there in an
                       hour or so.”
  “It’s still diamond blue seventeen. Apparently guests get
                     special privileges.”
   Wyeth gone, Rebel turned to her meal again and found
  she had no appetite. She pushed the food about on her
 tray, but could not bring herself to place it in her mouth.
   She was about to excuse herself when Bors, leaning
forward for a slice of papaya, murmured in her ear, “The
  Pequod leaves in an hour. If you caught me before I left
Mars’ sunspace, I could cut you a deal for transit to Earth
   orbit.” He settled back and winked. “Think about it.”
                             ***
    Halfway to diamond blue seventeen, a god-head, eyes
  luminous, stumbled up to Rebel and handed her a card.
His paint was smeared across his face, but it had obviously
   begun as a green triangle. To Rebel, his mere existence
 was a revelation. It implied an entire underworld of vices
in Deimos, hidden away from public view. With an ecstatic
wail, the god-head broke away from her and trotted up the
           corridor, turned aside, and was gone.
        Rebel looked down at the card. It was blank.
 Wonderingly, she ran a thumb across its surface. There
 must have been an empathic contact circuit layered onto
the paper, for a voice whispered within her head, “Go to a
public data port and place your hand against the screen.”
  A quick, almost subliminal flash of a large black wheel
         hung in the air. She recognized the logo.
                           Earth.
   Rebel ran her thumb over the card again, but nothing
 happened. The bit of more-than-human technology had
                    destroyed itself.
  This was exactly Wyeth’s kind of opportunity. Doubtless
he’d have two-edged bargains ready to offer and poisoned
 concessions to make. In some neat little mental drawer,
  he’d have his baits fresh, his hooks sharpened, and his
  lines coiled. His arguments would be finer than a hair,
 almost invisible and yet stronger than diamond-whisker
                           cable.
            No matter. It was all irrelevant now.
    Rebel was not about to follow up on the card. She had
  troubles enough of her own. But when she came to the
intersection of tunnels down which the god-head had run,
she glanced down it casually and saw him being beaten by
                    a knot of citizens.
   Two citizens were holding the man against the curve of
  the wall, while two others systematically pounded his
stomach, his face, his chest, with their fists. They worked
in grim silence, and the god-head did not cry out. Despite
 the damage done him, he grinned weakly. “Hey!” Rebel
cried. “Stop that!” The citizens looked up. She felt vaguely
 foolish, as if they had caught her at wrongdoing, rather
   than the other way around, but she ran toward them
                          anyway.
  The citizens’ faces were stolid. Their victim’s head lolled
  down against his chest, and he chuckled weakly. One
 citizen stepped forward, hand upraised to block Rebel’s
  way. “Go back,” he said. “This is no concern of yours.”
    “Maxwell,” she said wonderingly. “Maxwell, is that
                         you?”
 The citizen glanced over his shoulder at his fellows, then
took her arm and started walking her away. She resisted
 at first, but then Maxwell said, “Think. There’s nothing
                       you can do.”
   They turned a corner and walked on in silence. After a
time, Rebel said, “This isn’t like you, Maxwell.” He smiled
  ironically. “I don’t see how you could have done this to
        yourself! You were always light. Carefree.”
  “Irresponsible,” Maxwell said. “Yes, I know. I enjoyed it
 at the time. But I grew. Everybody grows.” They strolled
along somberly, and then he said, “What did it for me was
   when I was snatched by King Wismon. He didn’t just
     throw me in with his rude boys—he made me their
 zookeeper. Practically his second in command. Think of
  that. It was the first time I’d ever been put in charge of
 anything. And you know what? I enjoyed it. Not the work
   itself, but the sense of being responsible. Of being an
 adult. That’s what citizenship gives me. They’re sending
             me down to the surface tomorrow.”
   “Maxwell, you were beating that man! That’s not being
        responsible. That’s just plain vicious.”
   Maxwell thought for a long time before speaking. “Duty
   doesn’t always make you feel good. That citizen will be
  reprogrammed, but the memory still remains. He must
 remember that there was pain as well as pleasure.” They
were now a good distance from the site of the beating. “But
as I said, it’s none of your concern. Your dormitory area is
  just ahead. Third corridor right, straight on to the end.
                       You can’t miss it.”
     Rebel stood there as this new stranger turned and
 started to walk away. It was such a pathetic moment she
wished she could slice it out of her memory entirely. All his
         ravings about responsibility. “Maxwell?”
         He stopped, glanced back casually. “Yes?”
          “Where’s the nearest public data port?”
                             ***
   Smooth white niche. She touched fingers to the plate,
   and the holoscreen flickered on. Against a formless
background, a woman knelt on a red prayer rug, gaunt in
   white cloak. She raised her head and studied Rebel
              through cold, colorless eyes.
                    “Snow?” Rebel asked.
    The image considered this. “No. Not Snow. I am her
                        shadow.”
                   “You are… Shadow?”
  A quick snakelike motion of the head, a fractional smile.
    “Shadow, yes. That is a good name for me. Call me
Shadow. I am a message for you. Snow believes it may take
 some discussion to convince you that your interests and
  hers lie in the same direction. Yet no members of her
  network were within easy interactive distance of you.
                   Thus, she created me.”
            “I don’t understand. What are you?”
      “I am an interactive ALI, that’s Artificial Limited
   Intelligence. A temporary avatar based on the Snow
 persona. I have full human awareness and can discuss a
  limited number of topics with you. However, I am not
provided with irrelevant information and cannot respond
to irrelevant remarks. Please keep that fact in mind as we
                           talk.”
     “So you don’t know from eating dead animals, you
                        mean?”
  “You exceed this program’s capabilities.” Shadow made
 an impatient gesture. “We haven’t much time. ALI’s are
   created with an inherent disintegration factor. What
  programmers call a virus. I will die soon, whether my
 message is delivered or not.” A flicker of emotion within
 those reptilian eyes. Rebel thought she could guess at its
                          nature.
         “How long do you have?” she asked gently.
       “We have already wasted one third of my life.”
      “Okay, all right, I got you! What’s the message?”
 “You must take extreme care when you enter your niche.
Diamond blue seventeen. There is a body there. It may not
                   be entirely dead.”
 “What?” Rebel touched the wall with one hand. Cool and
     rough. Its solidity reassured her. “I don’t—”
  “This is Snow’s warning: You are being manipulated by
   the Comprise. You and your friend tetrad. They have
   convinced the Stavka that you are corporate agents,
  industrial saboteurs. They have created plausible and
  incriminating theories for all your actions. They have
  planted evidence. The body is such evidence. It will be
  discovered in six hours, and it will dovetail neatly into
  other planted evidence. Data system records will show
 that the murder could only have been done by you. The
 Stavka will order your personas erased and your bodies
               condemned to simple labor.”
         “Wait, wait! This doesn’t make any sense.”
 “The important thing is to remember that the body may
not be entirely dead. The murder was difficult to arrange,
  even for the Comprise, and there’s a good chance the
   victim will still be alive when you enter. If so, he will
           probably be extremely dangerous.”
    “This is incredible. Dangerous in what way? Why?”
     “You have exceeded this program’s capabilities.”
Shadow waited a full two seconds, then said, “Do you have
                any further questions?”
                   “No. No, I… think not.”
     “Please consider carefully. I do not have long. If you
have illusions of destroying the evidence or of successfully
defending yourself before the Stavka, please let me know,
so I can convince you it cannot be done. I have been given
 that information.” The image wavered as a front of white
      static washed through it. “I have been given that
  information.” A pale, attenuated yearning touched her
 face. “You must interact with me. It is very hard knowing
       one must die, but worse to die for no purpose.”
      “All right, then. Speaking of purpose. Why is the
    Comprise doing this to me? What’s in it for them?”
   “You are being forced to run. You will find that there is
no place for you to hide anywhere in Mars orbit. A check of
the port control manifests will reveal that the only vessels
leaving in the next six hours are all bound for Earth orbit.
 The Comprise wants to force you to Earth. I do not know
                           why.”
  “I do,” Rebel said grimly. “I understand it all now. I just
     don’t have the slightest idea what to do about it.”
   Transients pulsed through Shadow, making her waver
as if seen from deep underwater. When she stabilized, she
 said, “I am almost over. Tell me. Have I served you well?
         Have I helped you to escape the Comprise’s
                     manipulations?”
 “You stupid program! Snow works for the Comprise. She
doesn’t want to help me escape them. She just wants to be
          sure that I fall into their trap intact.”
   “Ah,” Shadow said. “That’s interesting. Very—” Static
          rose up and overwhelmed the image.
            When it cleared, Shadow was gone.
                             ***
   One corner of the sleepspace was visible from the hall,
   and in it a pair of legs, unnaturally still. Rebel forced
  herself to peer within. The man’s cloak was thrown up
over his head, and his torso was bright with blood. An ugly
 smear covered the stone behind him. Feeling cold, Rebel
                         said, “Hello?”
    The cloak stirred as an arm caught in its folds moved
 feebly. The end of the arm jutted from the cloth, a stump
   black with crusted blood. Just above the stump was a
   tourniquet, and above that a crudely made infection
barrier. Even from the doorway, Rebel caught the whiff of
                      decaying flesh.
  The arm moved twice, trying to flip the cloak away, and
then on a third attempt succeeded, uncovering a face that
was grey and gape-mouthed. Pink eyelids slowly rose, and
       the man drew in a long, shuddering breath.
                Haunted eyes stared at her.
          It was Jerzy Heisen, and he was dying.
 “Hey, kid,” he said weakly. “We’ve come a long way, you
                        and I.”
     The halls were perfectly silent. Not even a digging
machine to be heard. Apparently she and Wyeth were the
only ones using these dormitories today. Rebel wanted to
 untangle Heisen’s cloak, to straighten his limbs and put
 him at ease. She didn’t move from the doorway. “What
                   happened, Jerzy?”
    Eyes closed wearily. “Stupid. Stupid freak accident,
     couldn’t happen again if you tried.” He coughed
 spasmodically; it was some time before he could speak
  again. “I was clipped by a runaway cybermop. Pretty
     dumb, huh? Supervisor must not’ve been at the
 monitors—they execute people for that kind of mistake
   here. Should never’ve happened. I fell on top of the
  sucker, and one of the cleaning arms broke loose and
 slammed me in here. Bet it made a bloody mess, huh?”
 Rebel nodded. “So now my back’s fucked; you wouldn’t
      want to look at it. I think my spine is crushed.”
     “I’ll get a doctor,” Rebel said. She couldn’t move.
    “No good.” Eyes opened, infinitely sad. “Got myself
 wired together with seven caps of jolt. That’s enough to
make a corpse walk. Dose like that eats your body alive.”
 He laughed weakly. “Seven caps. Must be some kind of
 record. Listen to me. I’m drugged and I’m dying, and I
think maybe it’s shorted out the compulsion they laid on
 me. There’s something I got to tell you. Something they
                don’t want you to know.”
           “Oh yeah?” Rebel said. “What is it?”
  “It’s important. Deutsche Nakaso…” His voice slid down
into inaudibility, but Rebel didn’t lean any closer to hear.
   After a moment’s silence, Heisen stirred slightly and
   rasped, “Come closer. Can’t… can’t speak too good.”
                           “No.”
     “S’important.” Heisen coughed again, and tears of
           agony came to his eyes. “Mus’ tell.”
       “Oh, come off it. I’m not going to fall for that.”
                   “Closer,” he whispered.
    Slowly Rebel slid down the doorframe, until she was
sitting on the floor. She leaned her head back against the
stone, crossed her arms under her breasts, said nothing.
                   Heisen glared at her.
   There was something savage and desperate to that fixed
    stare, as if the mind behind those eyes were a small
  animal caught in a leghold snare and about to gnaw its
way free. “So,” he said at last. “So. You think… you’re such
   a smart bitch.” He lurched feebly, and the arm caught
under his body yanked free of the cloak. He was holding a
 finger-blade between second and third knuckles. With a
spasmodic motion, he threw the thing right at her. Rebel
            leaned back, and the blade sailed by.
   A second later it made a gentle metal ping against the
                        rock wall.
    The outstretched arm pointed straight at her. Heisen
 didn’t have the strength to pull it back. “Smart,” he said.
   “But that doesn’t give you the right to do this to me.”
    Rebel drew her feet under her, stood. She felt anger fill
  her body. “The right to—! I never wanted to know you in
the first place. What do you want from me? Are you hoping
   I’m feeling suicidal? Do you want me to bring you your
 knife and stand real close so you can cut my throat, is that
                   it?” She was trembling.
             Heisen nodded piteously. “Please.”
                      “Fuck that noise!”
 Finally Heisen closed his eyes. Still his hand reached out
 desperately, grasping at nothing. His head lolled back.
“You and Deutsche Nakasone,” he said. “Between the two
of you, I’ve been ground into dust. You’ve killed me, and I
never gave a shit for either of you.” His voice was growing
                          weak.
                    “Hey, now listen—”
    “God damn you,” he whispered. “God damn you all.”
                             ***
     They caught up with Bors just an hour inside Mars’s
   sunspace. Rebel kept expecting pursuit, but there was
  none. Apparently nobody had noticed the hopper was
gone. Even so, the hours at 2.5 Greenwich made it a rough
trip. You could steal anything on Deimos, except for heavy
 gravity couches. There were none to be had. Apparently
     citizens were expected to simply stand and take it.
    When they matched speeds with the Pequod, Rebel
       shook her head at the visual. “Is that it?”
           “It certainly is a sight,” Wyeth agreed.
   Perched on the end of the pushrod of a Workhorse-class
 disposable fusion tug was the oddest structure Rebel had
   ever seen. It looked something like a storybook Queen
Anne house, all gingerbread and elaboration, but a Queen
      Anne house such as might be built in freefall by a
    madman. The turrets and projecting pavilions, bays,
  verandas, and octagonal roofs were all jumbled together
 and sticking out every which way. Rebel searched among
 the fishscale shingles, eyelid dormers, and widow’s walks
 for a way in. Somewhere under that facade there must be
a coldship. “Where do you think the airlock is?” she asked.
   “See that Tudor arch portico?” Wyeth asked. “The one
     with the stained glass fanlight? That must be it.”
                       “Hah? Why?”
    “It has a brass nameplate by the door.” He instructed
the hopper to mate with the Pequod, wait ten minutes, and
  then kick away to fall back into a recovery orbit. “Let’s
                      grab our things.”
           The airlock opened on a room rich with
furnishings—tapestries on walls, framed woodcuts set into
  a paneled ceiling, and all-gravity furniture everywhere.
Bors looked up from a chair by the fireplace and put down
 a book. “I thought that might be you. Come in, sit down.
Let me help you with those crates.” He sniffed. “Do I smell
                        organics?”
   Wyeth separated out two crates. “These will need to be
     soft-frozen. The rest can be stored anywhere.”
 “Storage, please.” Cupboard doors twinkled open, and a
 minute later everything was secure. Rebel and Wyeth
hung their cloaks in a closet by the door. “Welcome to my
                     humble abode.”
  Rebel sat in a chair, slid her legs through the holes, and
   leaned back. “It’s lovely,” she said. The fireplace was
  covered with climbing ivy. Water trickled down it, over
 bricks and leaves, to be collected at the bottom. There it
 was broken into hydrogen and oxygen, and the gases fed
into the fire, where they burned merrily. The water vapor
was drawn up the flue, chilled, and left to trickle down the
bricks again. Rebel had never seen such a thing before; it
                  was hypnotic to watch.
   In the privacy of his ship, Bors wore not only his vest,
but also a pair of green culottes and purple knee-socks. He
 was almost as aggressively covered as a dyson worlder.
   “Should I take my clothes off?” he asked solicitously.
         “Would that make you feel more at ease?”
     “Oh, we’re cosmopolitan enough,” Wyeth said. He
     settled into a chair, idly examined a set of plastic
   Napoleonic foot soldiers embedded in a display table
beside him. “You could wrap yourself head to foot in linen,
               and we wouldn’t blink an eye.”
 “So long as you mean that,” Bors said. “Oh, and you both
do realize that we have less than an hour’s gravity left? If
         either of you wants to take a shower…”
                Rebel looked up. “Shower?”
                             ***
    Rebel felt a lot better after showering. Relaxed and
   comfortable. She dried and dressed, and walked back
 through the dark paneled hallway to the parlor. A pair of
side passages into distant parts of the coldship beckoned,
and she was sorry there wasn’t the time to explore. Ahead,
    she could hear the two men, already talking like old
                         friends.
    Bors and Wyeth were discussing war and literature.
  “What you have to understand is the extreme speed with
which the technology blossomed,” Bors said. “When Earth
 first became conscious, it used all its resources to spread
     the technology as efficiently as possible. The first
   transceiver was implanted in March, let’s say, and all
Earth was integrated by Christmas. The first clear notion
  anybody off-planet had of what had actually happened
  was when the warcraft were launched. Like a swarm of
hornets bursting out of a well right into their faces, as the
                     humorist put it.”
   Moving her chair a smidge closer to the fire, Rebel sat
  down and drew her knees to her chin. She hugged her
    legs, feeling warm and comfortable and quiet, and
        watched the firelight play on Wyeth’s face.
      “Yes, but that’s irrelevant. There were hundreds of
 millions of people living off-planet at that time. You can’t
 tell me that they didn’t take their literature with them. If
anything was lost in the wars, it was probably too minor to
  be worth recovering. The idea of major literary works
       waiting to be found—well, that’s pure fantasy.”
   “No, no, we’re talking about an extremely uncultured
 period of history. The first century of emigrants weren’t
exactly Earth’s finest, after all. And romantic fiction didn’t
 come back into vogue until the colonization of the Outer
 System. Believe me, when you’re stuck in a tiny ship for
 months at a time without coldpacking—that’s when you
appreciate Anthony Trollope. The pity is that by then half
                    his works were lost.”
  “But the best were preserved. Those that people actually
               cared enough about to read.”
     “Not necessarily. Keep in mind that a hundred fifty
years ago most data were kept electronically, and that the
  data systems were the first things hit by Earth. In that
  initial month of war, before Earth retreated back to its
own surface, it injected AI’s into every significant data net
in the Inner System. They all had to be crashed. There are
 even some who say that without Wang and Malenkov—”
      “I believe that Malenkov himself was an artificial
                       intelligence.”
                        “But a patriot.”
                       “Oh, certainly.”
                      “Well, anyway…”
   Rebel hooked her chin over her knees, let her head fall a
 little to one side, and listened contentedly. She felt happy
  and cozy and wistfully sad all at the same time. Savoring
the fireplace’s warmth, she let the words wash over her in
   a homey, meaningless babble that rose and fell in soft
familiar cadence. This was nice. Stop, she thought. Let this
                     moment linger forever.
   “Here’s a sample of what I mean,” Bors said. “Listen:
       And we are here as on a darkling plain
       Swept with confused alarms of struggle and
       flight,
       Where ignorant armies clash by night.
                     Nice stuff, eh?”
               “It’s terrific. But your point is?”
    “That’s from Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach. But the
   only surviving version of that poem is exactly fourteen
lines long, a descriptive fragment containing none of what
 I quoted. The critical work that scholars dug the darkling
 plain fragment from said that it was a major poem. You’d
   never know that from what we have.” Bors sighed. “It
   would make my career if I could recover the original.”
    Wyeth laughed and held up his hands. “I surrender!
You’re absolutely right. There are doubtless thousands of
 manuscripts squirreled away in the dusty nooks of Earth
that contain lost treasures. New Shakespearian tragedies,
     volumes of Bashu’s haiku, the complete Iliad, the
      interactive for Kpomassie’s essays on cultural
                      responsibility.”
    “Now I didn’t actually claim…”A soft chime sounded,
 and the fire went out. The water stopped, and the entire
 fireplace slid into the wall and was covered by enameled
panels. “Look at the time! We’re entering public sunspace
                   now. Brace yourselves.”
   And then, right on cue, the fusion tug burned out and
 gravity cut off. In a swift, giddy instant of disorientation,
   Rebel lost all concept of up and down. A gentle noise
  puffed through the coldship as the lightsail deployed.
Rebel’s stomach lurched, and she had to swallow back the
vomit to keep from throwing up. Her fingers clutched the
chair tightly, and that helped her to steady her. And then,
of course, she was okay again. She released the chair and
                        floated over it.
  “Well,” Bors said. “Since we haven’t the food, oxygen, or
inclination to do otherwise, it’s time. I must say I’m sorry
   to interrupt this conversation, but perhaps it can be
 resumed a few months from now in Earth orbit. Coffins,
please.” Gently, three black coldpack boxes rose from one
floor. Rebel looked at them with something akin to panic.
  She wasn’t ready to go under yet, was the thing. To sleep
           away the months between planets.
                            To die.
     As a persona bum—and Eucrasia had been a good
     one—she knew that her identity wouldn’t survive
   coldpacking. There was that moment on revival, the
merest instant, when the mind didn’t know itself. Perfectly
 free of yearning and ego, it tottered on nothingness and
 then grabbed for identity and was itself again. Tests had
  been run, and the results were always the same. When
  there were two or more identities to choose from, the
   strongest one always won. By wetdesign standards
   strength was measured by connections to memory.
       And Eucrasia’s memories were complete now.
    Wyeth turned to Rebel, started to say something. She
  shook her head, and he fell silent. She could see by the
 stiffness of his expression that he too had been ignoring
  the realities. Pretending that this moment would never
            arrive. He did not rise from his chair.
   “Am I missing something?” Bors asked, looking from
                     face to face.
   Neither answered him. Rebel turned away and kicked
 over to the furthest coffin. She examined its fittings, slid
open the lid. “Sunshine…” Wyeth began in a choked voice.
                           “Don’t.”
   She slipped into the coldpack unit and lay down. The
padding was stiff and grey, and the workings crowded in
  about her. She wriggled slightly, shoved back a coil of
 cabling that was digging into one hip. She didn’t look at
                       Wyeth at all.
  She wanted to say to him that it had been fun. That she
loved him. That she didn’t regret… Well, she wasn’t sure
about that one at all. She regretted a lot of things. But she
knew that if she once started talking, she’d never be able
                           to stop.
      Most of all she wished she could at least kiss him
                         goodbye.
      It was probably best this way. To go cleanly and
 suddenly, rather than to waste away with a slow rot that
 didn’t show until its work was done and everything that
 was Rebel had been eaten away, leaving nothing behind
              but a woman who wasn’t her.
  All she had to do was to close the lid. The needles would
  enter her then, in five places, the sudden sting of pain
 chilling down almost instantly into numbness, and then
 spreading. The crash jelly would flood in, and she would
hold her breath for as long as possible, and then open her
 mouth and breathe in the jelly and choke, and then… no
                           more.
 She looked up then, against all her will, and saw Wyeth’s
 face. It was rigidly contained, but underneath she could
see the pain and horror. She thought he was going to cry.
  One hand rose ever so slightly toward her. He started to
 lean forward. She knew that if Wyeth were to touch her,
however lightly, she would break into a million fragments.
        Rebel reached up and slammed the lid shut.



                            11
                        CISLUNAR

She was cased in ice.
      The universe was perfect, chill and silent. Circuits
shifted energies about her, unnoticed. She was at peace. A
   machine daintily slid a thin tube down her throat and
   drew the liquified crash jelly away. With a rumble like
silent thunder, the distant ice was touched by warmth and
 began to break up. Needles touched her in seven places,
and they stung. But she did not recognize the sensation as
pain. She was soaring upward now, through arctic waters.
 She touched the membrane of consciousness, and it gave
 under her hand and, in a burst of white foam, shattered.
     Choking, she broke through the surface and was
 deafened by the bewildering crash of noise. The air was
  cold flame. It seared her lungs as she gulped it down.
          Bors opened the coffin, and she awoke.
   “Hello.” he said, smiling. “Welcome to the realm of the
                           living.”
       “I—” she said, and shook her head. “It was…”
   “Wyeth said you might be a little confused at first.” Bors
offered his hand, and she floated free of the coffin. “Please
     open the hall. The Pequod has a small chapel—a
   meditation room, if you prefer. You might want to rest
  there for a while and collect your thoughts in solitude.”
   But she was not confused. She was simply too lucid to
      make sense. Everything crashed in on her with
superhuman clarity, the angels of thought coming too fast
  and close together to be put into words. She was like a
  child born blind and come of an age to receive her first
pair of eyes. Revelation dazzled her. “That would be nice,”
                she said. “No. I think I will.”
  Bors left her afloat in a small spherical room. The chapel
     had a projective wall, and within it a loosely woven
all-gravity greenhouse lattice. Plants sprouted wildly from
the interstices, leafy explosions of green, trying to grow in
all directions at once. Two small brown leaves floated free,
  and she shifted slightly to share the space equally with
    them. They all three were peers. The wall was set for
    realtime exterior, showing to one side Earth in all its
    bluewhite glory, and to the other a weary old orbital
    hongkong. Plainsuited spacejacks swarmed about its
  exurban tanks, towns, farms, and manufactories. They
              were deep in the cislunar sprawl.
   Slowly she gathered herself. Something was wrong, but
she was so happy about it she didn’t care. The promise of
     freedom bubbled like laughter in her veins. All of
Eucrasia’s memories, and the hardpacketed few of Rebel’s
   that had been used to brace the persona, were locked
 firmly into place, along with one that belonged to both of
     them: that ecstatic moment when Rebel had filled
Eucrasia’s brain and in joyous excess of purpose upended
a glass over the programmer. She knew now that she had
 done that because she was a wizard’s daughter, and she
    understood what that meant. The light of that bright
 instant when the water writhed in the air like a diamond
   dragon still blinded her to her purpose, but that didn’t
     matter. She knew something far more important.
                     She was still Rebel.
                              ***
    “Where’s Wyeth?” She kicked into the common room.
“I’ve got to talk to him. It’s important.” It was hard to keep
                         from singing.
       Bors was floating alongside a cabinet, checking
inventory. He glanced up, startled, in the act of returning a
 watercolor to its folder. Carefully, he put the folder into a
 thin drawer and slid the drawer shut. He switched off his
  notepad and stuck it in a vest pocket. “Well…” he began.
  “This is… this is better than being born!” She touched a
wall and, laughing, spun herself drunkenly in the air. She
knew with all the certainty of years of training that waking
 up as Rebel was impossible, a blatant absurdity. There
 was no way the treehangers could create a persona that
could survive coldpacking. But when a miracle is dumped
 in your lap, you don’t complain. “Where’s Wyeth? Is he
              sleeping? Wake the bugger up!”
     “Um.” Bors coughed into his fist. “You, uh, you do
 realize that he didn’t want to be present when you woke
                           up?”
        “Of course he didn’t. I know that,” Rebel said
                       impatiently.
  “Please lock up the cabinet. You see, he arranged with
 me to awaken you a day later than him. He’s gone now.”
     “Gone?” It was as if the colors had suddenly been
   drained from everything, leaving the air faintly chill.
                     “Gone where?”
  Looking politely embarrassed, Bors murmured, “I really
                     have no idea.”
                              ***
    Geesinkfor was an antiquated Bernal sphere, with
  window rings running about the rotational poles. The
 hongkong’s windows and mirrors hadn’t been cleaned in
years, and the interior was sunk in twilight gloom. But half
the chillers were down, due to decreased maintenance, so
     it all evened out. Clean windows would only have
   overheated the interior. Or so Bors explained to her,
   anyway. Some of the air scrubbers must have broken
 down as well, for the air was stale and foul-smelling. The
buildings were all midrises, ten to twenty stories high, and
 had sprawled up the slopes from the equatorial Old City
 area, almost to the edges of the windows. “Who would be
stupid enough to build a totally artificial environment and
     then fill it with buildings designed for a planetary
                   surface?” Rebel grumbled.
   “Where’s your sense of history?” Bors asked. “This was
one of the first forty cannister cities ever built. They hadn’t
  thought things through back then. Hey, look over here!”
    He trotted across the plaza to where a huge basaltic
moonrock had been carved into the shape of a crude stone
axe. Hundreds of faces peered from the rock’s depths with
 fear and despair, just beginning to melt one into another.
   He slowly read the archaic Spanish inscription on the
    base. “It’s a war memorial to the millions who were
captured and absorbed. The Comprise set up a processing
 center right here, packed their victims into lifting bodies,
and dumped ’em into the atmosphere. Very crude method.
   Less than half survived to be swallowed up by Earth.”
     Rebel looked uneasily about the dirty plaza. It was
  almost deserted. An ancient spacer in torn vacuum suit
 stumbled toward them, her hand out. A bored woman in
  police leathers watched. Rebel slipped an arm through
 Bors’. “Yeah, well. That was all a long time ago. Let’s get
                       out of here.”
      Bors led her deeper into the Old City, toward the
 equatorial sea. The sea was a stagnant stretch of water,
 wide as a Terran river, left over from Geesinkfor’s early
days, when the water was pumped uphull and flowed back
   in scenic riverlets. Half the buildings facing it were
  derelict, their windows slagged over, but among them
      were the grimy shops, bars, and blade bazaars,
noisy-bright with music and holographic flares, that made
 up the local Little Ginza. It was here that the grey market
 wetsurgical joints would be found. A few furtive-looking
pedestrians dotted the boardwalk. A motortrike zipped by.
Rebel yanked Bors back from the roostertail as it slammed
 through a puddle, and said, “Okay, I’ve seen it. Now let’s
                       find me a room.”
  They turned their backs on the black water and trudged
 upslope. A cybercab dogged their heels, hoping for a fare,
 but they ignored it, and it sped off. Here and there, blank
     walls and scuffed streets flickered with corporate
  propaganda. In those areas where the speakers hadn’t
  been smashed, the voiceovers murmured seductively.
“You really needn’t be in a rush to move out of the Pequod.
        I could easily put you up for a week or so.”
  Rebel wore the ivory bracelet Wyeth had given her back
in the sheraton. She touched it now, and the drab sphere
 transformed into a fairy city of red and blue lights, shot
through with yellow lines of power. In a street overhead,
  she saw a centipede line of Comprise stitched together
with interactive lines of electromagnetic force. And buried
 deep within Bors’ flesh, she could see the glow of subtle
 machines, waiting silently. Whatever they were, a mere
   dealer in vintage data didn’t need them. “That’s very
  generous of you, but I won’t find Wyeth sitting in your
 ship. Listen, if you see him again, would you give him a
 message for me? Tell him that I’m a wizard’s daughter.”
             “Will he know what that means?”
        “No, but he’ll be curious enough to find out.”
   They walked on in silence. Now and again Bors glanced
  at her, as if trying to read the thoughts behind her new
  wetpaint. She really did like Bors and wished she could
 trust him, but Eucrasia had been betrayed by friends too
 many times, and all those memories were hers now. She
          didn’t dare repeat Eucrasia’s mistakes.
       Turning a corner, Rebel glanced up into a nostril a
  hundred feet high, and staggered back a pace under the
   lightest touch of vertigo. The propaganda screens were
   capable of creating true grotesqueries of scale. Oceans
      washed over the building, and six implausibly long
  fingernails slashed across the screen to pierce a tomato.
    Eucrasia had been visually literate, but the corporate
iconography of the cislunar states differed from that of the
   Klusters, and she couldn’t decipher an image of it. The
    tomato pulsed blood. “Who runs this place, anyway?”
     Rebel asked. “What kind of government has it got?”
             Bors shrugged. “Nobody knows.”
   They came to an obsidian building and stepped into its
lobby. Security devices rose up on their haunches, tracked
 them with articulated heads, then sank down again. A fat
man with brand new arms (they were pink and ludicrously
thin) emerged from the shadows. His eyes were sleepy and
  his chest hair had been dyed blue to match his bow tie.
                          “Yeah?”
   “I’d like a room,” Rebel said. Then, because she dared
 not give her real name but still needed something Wyeth
 would recognize if he came looking for her, “My name is
  Sunshine.” She shrugged to indicate she had no family
                          name.
   The fat man grunted, produced a greasy plate of glass.
  “Put your hand here. Yeah, okay. Up to the third floor,
    take the door that turns blue for you. Sets you back
                forty-five minutes a day.”
   “That sounds fair.” Rebel took the crate Bors had been
carrying for her. “Promise me you’ll drop by now and then
  to see how things are going, Bors? That would be nice.”
        He nodded, winked, grinned, and was gone.
     The fat man turned back. “Hey, was that a bors?”
                         “Uh… yes.”
  He smiled. “One of them did me a favor once. Next time
you see him, tell him if he ever needs a room, I’ll cut him a
                         good price.”
                             ***
   Rebel took a job at a place called Cerebrum City. Its front
 room held stacks of outdated wetware and a few racks of
the current knock-offs, but all the profit came from a chop
    shop in the back. It was there that the cheap hustlers
     came, sick with paranoia and despair, for a slice of
     wetsurgical hope. They came in weary, sometimes
      trembling, to buy the courage, bravado, or even
   desperation needed to get on with business. Fugitives
  looking to change their flight patterns. Hard-luck street
  types searching for that winner persona that had so far
   eluded them. They also got the occasional adventurer,
 about to go down the drop tube to Earth, hoping to score
 big in some obscure scam, and these had to pay heavily,
 for what they wanted was by no means legal. By the time
  Rebel had dug out the last traces of fear or compassion,
turned their eyes mad with cunning, and set their reflexes
on hair trigger, they were as little human as the Comprise
                             itself.
 After a few days it got so Rebel could type her customers
  at a glance. After a week, she stopped bothering. They
were all the same to her. She worked in a small room with
 wood paneling and a wall of boilerplate wetwafers, and
 concentrated on her job. It was a cheapjack version of
building new minds, and Eucrasia had been very good at
that. She could chop and customize a persona in an hour
    and a half Greenwich, and there was professional
satisfaction in that. The work appealed to her. She might
 not dare think about what would become of her clients,
            but she never cut corners on them.
 There were two other chop artists in Cerebrum City. One
 was a pale, nervous man with long fingers, who always
   came in late. The other was a hefty woman named
 Khadijah. She had dark eyes and a cynical mouth, and
     was having an affair with the pale, nervous man.
   One day, when Rebel had been working for two weeks,
  the nervous man didn’t come in at all. She had her last
  client of the day on a gurney, wired up and opened out
 when the curtain shot open and Khadijah stamped into
  the room. She had never come by before. The client—a
   whore come in to have his interest in sex revitalized—
   tracked her with his eyes as she prowled about, and
grinned witlessly at her. “Close your eyes,” Rebel told him.
             “Now, can you imagine a unicorn?”
                            “No.”
  “Hmmm.” Rebel yanked one of the wafers and stuck it in
     a sonic bath. While the device pounded it clean of
   microdust, she reflected that if she were to lop off this
creature’s interest in sex entirely, he would walk out of the
   room free. He’d give up his trade and never once look
    back. But Eucrasia wouldn’t have meddled without
permission, and Rebel was coming to respect the woman’s
   professional judgment. She replaced the wafer. “How
                        about now?”
                            “Yes.”
    Khadijah ran a finger along a rack of wafers, making
  them rattle in their slots. She retreated to the doorway,
stood there holding up the curtain. “Well,” she said at last.
 “How about you and me going out and getting drunk after
                            work?”
 After work Rebel always checked her room for messages
 and then prowled the streets of Geesinkfor, learning its
ways and looking for Wyeth. So far she had turned up no
  solid leads, but there was still work to do. She had no
 desire at all to go drinking. But she remembered a time
when Eucrasia had needed someone to get drunk with and
nobody had been there. “Sure,” she said. “Soon as I wrap
                         this one up.”
       Khadijah nodded and ducked out of the room.
    “Now.” Rebel held up a hand. “How many fingers?”
                           “Four.”
      She threw a color on one wall. “Green or blue?”
                           “Blue.”
 “All right. One more.” She threw an image on the wall. It
            was Wyeth. “Ever seen this man?”
                            “No.”
  “All right, you pass.” She sighed, ran a final integration
  check, and then slapped on the programmer. The boy
shuddered and closed his eyes as the programs took hold.
                             ***
     They started out in the Water’s Edge, a dark little bar
favored by the trade, and took seats by the window so they
  could look down on the passersby. Khadijah drank her
  first two mugs of wine in grim silence, rapping the table
   for more when they were empty. Midway through her
                 third, she grunted, “Men!”
                 “I know what you mean.”
               “I don’t want to talk about it.”
     Staring idly out the window, Rebel saw something
 furtively nab a bit of trash from the boardwalk and then
   scurry off into shadow. It was long and scrawny and
covered with grey fur. “Ugh,” she said. “Did you see that?
                    This place has cats!”
      “Oh yeah, swarms of ’em. They live in abandoned
 buildings. The government used to have these machines
that hunted them down, big suckers the size of… of dogs, I
  guess, but the kids kept kicking them into the water to
  watch them short out. That was years ago, when I was
 little.” She laughed. “Man, you should see them spark!”
    “Tell me something. What’s all this about nobody
  knowing what kind of government Geesinkfor’s got?”
  “Oh yeah. Nobody knows.” Then, at a look from Rebel,
  “It’s true! Some people think that Earth runs all the
       hongkongs, through proxies. Others think the
governments stay secret out of fear of the Comprise taking
them over. And there are those who think the police don’t
  answer to anyone, that they’re just another gang. They
collect the weekly protection money, after all. And nobody
  knows what triggers the heat. Some things you can get
away with, but not always. Other things, you’re never seen
   again. Me, I think it’s just very handy for the people
      running things if nobody knows who they are.”
  “This is crazy. Who do you complain to when something
                      goes wrong?”
  “Exactly.” Khadijah stuck a finger in her wine, swirled it
  about. “Best thing to do is just be careful to stay out of
                         trouble.”
                   “How do you do that?”
      Khadijah laughed and shook her head. “Let’s go
                   someplace else.”
       They climbed out the window, along the narrow
  ledgeway, up a rusty set of stairs, through a brightly lit
  roof garden where butterflies flitted (Rebel asked, “Are
 you sure this is the right way?” and “Trust me,” Khadijah
said), then across a pedestrian bridge and down to a cellar
    tavern called The Cave. They sat by a table set on a
   truncated stalagmite, and Khadijah rapped for wine.
 Rebel peered about the dark, crowded room. “I feel like I
                    hadn’t moved at all.”
   “Too true.” Khadijah paid for the wine, lifted her mug.
 “Hey, Sunshine. How come you got such an aristocratic
first-family name? I mean, you’re not cislunar. No way in
    hell you are. I’ve lived here all my life, and I know.”
   The wine was laced with endorphins. Rebel felt lifted
  and removed, wrapped in the finest cushioning fog.
 Nothing could hurt her now. “My name is aristocratic?”
   (Back home, they could’ve worked intricate wonders
with a glassful of endorphins, woven fantasias of emotion
 and illusion. But the biological arts were primitive, this
                     side of the Oort.)
  “Oh yeah, like… Kosmos Starchild Biddle, you know, or,
  uh, Wondersparkle Spaceling Toyokuni. One of those
bullshit names they gave the kiddies when living off-planet
     was new and everyone was all rah-rah about it.”
  “Well, I had to call myself something. There are all kinds
    of people looking for me I don’t want to find me.”
  Khadijah nodded sagely. “So where you from, anyway?”
  “Dyson world name of Tirnannog. Ever hear of it? No?
 Well, actually my body was born out in the belts, but me
    —I’m from the comets. I’m a wizard’s daughter.”
  “Sunshine? That guy you were talking to the other week,
the one who came by to see you when we were closing up?”
                           “Bors?”
       “Yeah. There he is. Talking to that drop artist.”
   Rebel looked up and saw Bors deep in conversation with
  a sour-looking old woman. She waited for him to glance
their way, then waved broadly. He waved back, said a final
 word to the old woman, and wove his way to her through
 the maze of fake stalactites and small tables. He still wore
   the red vest under his cloak, and it gave him a kind of
 rakish quasimilitary look. “Hello, hello,” he said cheerily,
     seating himself on the bench beside her. “What a
          coincidence. Have I met your friend yet?”
  After introductions, Rebel said, “So what have you been
                       up to lately?”
   “Ah, well, that’s interesting! I’ve been scrounging about
 in the city archives, and I found a five-thousand-line epic
poem about the Absorption Wars, all in rhymed couplets,
   by a woman who’d survived the whole thing. She was
programmed clerical for the processing center, and by the
time they got around to her, the treaties had been signed.”
          “Is it any good?” Rebel asked dubiously.
   Bors leaned forward confidentially and said, “It sucks.
    But there’s still a small market for it as a historical
          curiosity, so it’s not a total loss for me.”
          “I slept with a bors once,” Khadijah said.
            “Really?” Bors said in a pleased voice.
   The room suddenly warped so that everything in it got
 very small, except for Rebel herself. She was enormous,
   and her head bobbled like a balloon. She could have
crushed the lot with her thumb. “I wouldn’t have thought
               he was your type,” she said.
  “Wasn’t.” Khadijah was silent for a moment. “What the
hell—look at him, you have to admit he’s charming. He was
  okay. Haven’t you ever slept with someone who wasn’t
                       your type?”
  “Oh yeah.” She thought of Wyeth—tall, lanky, pale. And
serious, mostly. Not her type at all. She would never have
 chosen him for a sex partner if she hadn’t fallen in love
 with him. She took a deep breath, and without warning
she deflated, whooshing down so that the rest of the room
               was normal-sized, or near so.
  Khadijah eyed Bors. “Based on some kind of spy, aren’t
                        you?”
                 “Am I?” Bors’ eyes twinkled.
   “Sure you are. One of those little Outer System moons,
some kind of comic-opera republic, all their agents used to
 be programmed bors. Then somebody pirated a copy for
            one of the big wetware concerns.”
            “What happened then?” Rebel asked.
    “Nothing happened then. But you can bet somebody
made a bundle off that deal. That’s still a popular persona,
bors is, in this part of the System. I saw one the other day.”
           “I think that was me,” Bors said mildly.
  For an instant Khadijah stared at him blankly. Then she
 started to laugh, beginning with what sounded like slow
 hiccups and building in long, noisy wheezes. She gasped
                 and pounded the table.
   “Listen,” Bors said. “I was going to come by tomorrow.
My work is done here, and I’ve got to see a few more of the
cislunar states before I take the drop tube down to Earth.
 But I didn’t want to run off without saying goodbye and
                     wishing you luck.”
          “More wine.” Khadijah rapped the table.
                             ***
   Somehow Rebel and Khadijah were reeling down an
empty street, holding each other up. They must’ve passed
 some threshold point because Rebel had completely lost
    track of the last however-long-it-was. “A wizard’s
daughter” she explained. “Well, first of all, you know what
                    a wizard is, right?”
  “No,” Khadijah said. There were dried tear tracks on her
     face. “Hell, I knew he was never going to stay.”
  “A wizard is like a real crackerjack bioengineer. I mean,
these guys are as rare as let’s say Rembrandt. They’re the
ones with the creative juice to make the biological arts sit
up and beg. Out in the comets they have a lot of status. But
  they tend to be jealous about their skills. Talented, but
                        suspicious.”
   “Never trust a man whose fingers are longer than his
                        cock.”
   “So when they need a messenger they can trust, they’ll
 decant a cloned self and program her up into their own
persona. Now, ordinarily identity… drifts, you know? So a
wizard’s daughter persona isn’t a straight copy; it’s altered
  so that she’ll retain identity with the wizard practically
   forever. They call that integrity. I don’t know how it’s
done—only my mother self knows that. But anyway, I’m a
     wizard’s daughter. Her message is safe with me.”
         “So what’s the message?” Khadijah asked.
                     “I don’t remember.”
    They looked at each other. Then they both bent over
    laughing, grabbing at each other’s shoulders and
forearms to keep from falling, leaning forward until their
                   foreheads touched.
  They had just pulled themselves together when a line of
 Comprise, no more than twenty units long, walked by in
    locked step, headed for the waterfront. They wore
  identical grey coveralls with that same familiar pigtail
bobbing from each head. A dozen spheres of ball lightning
 floated about them. The balls hissed and crackled, and
 filled the street with shifting blue light. The hair on the
                back of Rebel’s neck rose up.
  “Hey, Earth!” Rebel shouted. The creature second in line
 turned its head sharply. Blank, alert eyes looked at her.
 Rebel turned, bent over, flipped up her cloak, and made
loud farting noises with her mouth. The Comprise did not
          react. They continued calmly onward.
   Khadijah was laughing so hard she was having trouble
  standing. “Oh, God, Sunshine! You’re impossible, you
                       know that?”
   The Comprise stepped onto the boardwalk and strode
   straight for the water’s edge. A length of railing was
  missing there, and the first stepped off, onto the water.
  The glowing spheres of ball lightning dipped suddenly,
almost to the sea’s surface, and the water sang. It rose in a
   bow to the Comprise’s foot, quivering like the vastly
            slowed vibration of a violin string.
  Moving with processional dignity, the Comprise passed
 over the sea, the water rippling with tension under their
  feet. On the far side, they continued up a dark street,
  dwindling, growing dimmer, and finally gone to dusk.
                             ***
    The next day, Rebel woke up with a killer hangover.
    “Ohhhh, shit.” She sat up on the edge of her cot and
   then bent over to clutch her head in her hands. Her
stomach felt uneasy and her bowels were loose. Then she
 remembered farting at the Comprise, and she felt even
                        worse.
  As soon as she could, she went out to buy a liter of water.
Then she stopped at a rootworker’s shop to buy a bracelet
leech, and snapped it on her upper arm. A trickle of blood
   began flowing through the charcoal scrubbers, to be
 returned to her body cleansed of fatigue poisons. By the
time she got to work, she’d drunk down the water and felt
                     almost normal.
       Fortunately, things were slow at Cerebrum City.
 Khadijah was already closeted with a complicated stress
 tune-up, and nobody else came by for the first few hours.
  Rebel was grateful for that, but even when the bracelet
 turned blue and dropped from her arm, she felt dull and
listless. It was a classic emotional hangover, the residue of
                     having acted the fool.
          Well, there was an easy solution for that.
    Feeling the thrill of doing something both nasty and
     forbidden for the first time, Rebel broke out the
 programmer and ran a cleaning pad over the adhesion
 disks. They attached to her skin behind each ear and on
     her brow, like small mouths. She slapped on the
 reader-analyzer and riffled through the minor function
             wafers in the wall of boilerplate.
  A clean sense of elation filled her. This was fun. She now
       understood that her earlier prejudice against
     wetprogramming had been the wizard’s daughter
   functions acting to protect her integrity. But this was
 different. So long as she didn’t try anything major, what
                  could be the harm of it?
    It would be best to be careful, though. Eucrasia had
 overdone it her first time—most persona bums did—and
   let the euphoria of success lead her into adding one
    alteration on top of another, building them into a
    nonsensical architecture of traits, until the entire
   structure had collapsed under the weight of its own
contradictions, and she had needed six hours wetsurgical
       reconstruction to bring her back to herself.
  Still, the psychosomatic functions were simple enough.
Any idiot could make the brain readjust the glandular and
    hormonal balances of the endocrinal system and,
 orchestrated correctly, it would give her a terrific body
 high. Humming slightly to herself, she glanced up at the
     floating tumbleweed diagram and gave it a spin.
   And stopped. Hell, that was interesting. She rotated the
   sphere again, more slowly this time. Yes. There was a
circular structure running through the entire persona in a
  kind of psychic mobius strip, touching all the branches,
but dependent on none. How did a chimera like that come
    into existence? It was obviously artificial, and yet no
wetware techniques she’d ever heard of (and Eucrasia had
 been up on what was happening in the field) could create
                     something like that.
    Fascinated, she slid a blank wafer into the recorder.
     By the time her first client came in, she had entirely
  forgotten about giving herself a therapeutic body rush.
 She stood, turning the professional-quality recording of
   her persona over and over in her hand, and thinking
 wonderingly that Deutsche Nakasone had been willing to
 kill her for this small ceramic flake. The kid entered and
coughed to get her attention. He looked to be no more than
 fifteen. Rebel slipped the wafer into her pocket and said,
               “Well, what do you want done?”
    The wonderful, the magical thing about the wafer, of
    course, was the beautiful vistas it opened up of new
   psychologies, new modes of perception, entirely new
  structures of thought. With the skills this implied, she
          could create anything. Anything at all.
   It was the kind of discovery that shatters old universes
           and opens up new ones in their place.
                             ***
   After work, she took the omnibus to the drop tube’s up
                          station.
     She’d put off this part of her search for as long as
possible, because the drop tube was a Comprise creation,
 and they were likely to be all through the up station. But
she was convinced now that Wyeth would not be found in
 Geesinkfor, that if he had ever been there he had moved
  on, either to another cislunar state or down to Earth.
   Given Wyeth’s convictions, Earth seemed most likely.
   The bus took ten minutes to reach the up station. Rebel
   had wired herself deadpan—emotion and expression
completely divorced—and in addition to the vanitypaint on
  her forehead, she’d put a short black line like a dagger
  through her left eye. She was now the living image of a
confidential courier, a minor cog in the affairs of business
  and state wired to wipe herself catatonic at the slightest
attempt to tamper with her brain. Nobody would give her a
                      second glance.
    From the bus, the Earth was bright and glorious, as
 startlingly beautiful as everyone said, the wonder of the
System. None of the Comprise’s works could be seen from
                            here.
   The up station loomed, a slender hoop of rock. It was a
carbonaceous asteroid that the Comprise had bought and,
 utilizing their incomprehensible physics, made flow into
 the desired shape. A transit ring had been fitted into the
    interior, and a labyrinthine tangle of corridors dug
 through its length. It spun in geosynchrous orbit directly
  above a ground station with a sister transit ring. Fleecy
 clouds formed a vast circle about the ground station. The
  Comprise’s technology somehow held the air back from
 the lane between transit rings, so that there was a well of
hard vacuum reaching almost to the planet’s surface, and
this affected local weather systems. Rebel could see three
       more such cloud rings on this side of the globe.
  A steady stream of air-and-vacuum craft slipped in and
 out of the up station’s ring. Some were flung down at the
  ground station, while others had just been nabbed on
 their way up the vacuum well. All passengers and cargo
were processed through the human-run sections of the up
 station before going down and after coming up. It was a
                   fearsomely busy place.
  The bus docked, and Rebel walked through the security
 gates and into the ring’s outer circle of corridors. She let
  the flooding crowds sweep her away. Occasionally she
passed wall displays indicating numbers of craft gone and
 caught, and the station’s shifting power reserves (up for
each vehicle caught, down for each released), but this last
 was for show only, since humans were allowed no access
   to the transit machinery. Now and then a chain of a
 hundred or so Comprise hurried by, but they were rare.
      Most, evidently, stayed to their own corridors.
     More common were the scuttling devices that sped
     between legs and through crowds—small, clever
mechanicals that fetched, carried, and frantically cleaned.
None of them came anywhere approaching sentience, and
yet Rebel felt uncomfortable at how common they were. It
    seemed a sign of how hopelessly compromised the
   cislunarians were by machine intelligence. She was
      surprised their guilt didn’t show on their faces.
   Subliminal messages washed through the halls, but
 none of them were aimed at Rebel, and she lacked the
decoders. They could only make her feel hot and anxious.
                    Her face itched.
     She took a side ramp into the administrative areas,
 noting as she did so how a security samurai glanced her
way and murmured into his hand. She’d been tagged. But
      she walked confidently on, as if she belonged.
 Half-Greenwich was terrific for walking; enough tug on
 your feet to give them purchase, not enough load to tire
them. She came to a line of security gates, all marked with
   the wheel logo of Earth crossed by a bar sinister: No
  Comprise. Subimbeds pounded at her, making her feel
unwelcome and anxious to leave. Any of these gates would
                         do.
   She matched strides with an important-looking woman,
    laying an arm over her shoulder just as she plunged
 through a gate, so the cybernetics would read them both
as a single individual. The woman looked into Rebel’s dead
face and flinched away. “Who… who the hell are you?” she
    cried. Samurai hurried toward them. Then the paint
  registered, and she said, “Oh, shit. One of them.” To the
  white-haired samurai who arrived first, she said, “Help
this woman find whoever it is she wants and then kick her
                         the hell out.”
                             ***
   “Your kind is a real pain in the ass,” the samurai said.
   “So don’t give me any help,” Rebel said with profound
 disinterest. “Throw me out. My message is insured with
   Bache-Hidalgo. If I fail, they’ll program up two more
 couriers and send ’em back. If they fail, you’ll have four.
Then eight. Sooner or later, you’ll play along.” This was a
  scam Eucrasia had often seen during her internship.
Administrators hated insured couriers because they were
    as persistent as cockroaches, and as impossible to
     eradicate. The only way to get rid of them was to
                         cooperate.
   “You’ll get your help,” the woman snapped. She led
  Rebel deep into Security country. Flocks of samurai.
 “Okay, we’re in Records. Now who is your message for,
         and when did he come through here?”
      “I don’t have a name,” Rebel said. “He’d’ve come
 through anywhere from five degrees Taurus to present.”
  They were standing in an office area so thick with vines
     that each small cubicle seemed a leafy cave. The
overgrowth was a classic sign of an ancient bureaucracy. A
mouse-sized mechanical scurried underfoot, gathering up
                        dead leaves.
   “Around here we say late May through mid-June,” the
 samurai sniffed. “All right, any of our people can handle
 this.” She leaned into a cubicle where a flabby grey man
  leaned over a screen, mesmerized. Still images of faces
 flickered by at near-subliminal speeds, piped in from the
    hallways and offices. “Rolfe! Got a question for you.”
   “Yes?” Rolfe froze his screen and looked up. He had a
 dull, almost dazed expression, and his eyes were slightly
        bloodshot. Mouth and jowls both were slack.
    “Rolfe is on our facial eidetics team,” the samurai said
with a touch of pride. “Electronics have to be wiped once a
   week, or they’re useless—data can’t be searched. Rolfe
   views the electronics compressed, only has to be wiped
once a year, and can access all of it. Show him your visual.
If your target has been through here—as employee, visitor,
    or dumper—within the past few months, he knows.”
     Rebel held up her holo. It was a photomechanical
 reconstruction she’d pulled from her own memories, but
   good enough that nobody could tell. “Seen this guy?”
        Rolfe looked carefully, shook his head. “No.”
  The samurai took her arm. “Are you sure?” Rebel cried.
             “Is there any chance at all?”
                          “None.”
                             ***
  Rebel sleepwalked through the next day, performing her
chores mechanically. She reported to work, interviewed
her first client, and chopped him to order. None of it felt
  real. She didn’t know what to do next. If Wyeth hadn’t
     gone down the drop tube, that meant he must be
somewhere in the sprawl of cislunar states. Trouble was,
 there were hundreds of them, in all sizes and degrees of
 disorder, and their outfloating slums as well. She could
spend the rest of her life searching and still not find him.
 Well, she thought, maybe she wouldn’t find him. Maybe
 Wyeth was lost to her forever. Happens to people all the
                          time.
  She was finishing up a client when she finally admitted
  this to herself. A jackboot had come in to be chopped
wolverine, and lay on the gurney wired up and opened out,
               still in her police skintights.
  Rebel thought it through with dry, obsessive logic, while
    her hands did the work. How long could she go on
searching like this? A year? Five? Twenty? What kind of a
 person would she be at the end of that time? It wasn’t a
                      pretty thought.
               “Can you imagine a unicorn?”
                            “Yes.”
    If this was going to be a long search, if it was going to
take her years, she’d have to change the pace. She needed
     to build some kind of decent life for herself in the
   meantime. (But she didn’t want a decent life without
 Wyeth!) She needed a cleaner job than this one, to begin
 with. Friends. Interests. Lovers, even. She’d have to plan
               this whole thing out carefully.
                    “How many fingers?”
                           “Four.”
                      “Green or blue?”
                           “Blue.”
                “Ever seen this man before?”
                            “Yes.”
     “Well.” Rebel smiled. Very slowly, she leaned back
   against the wall. Carefully she began marshaling her
  thoughts. She was in no particular hurry now. Perhaps
 she should go out front and borrow a chair. Impulsively,
    she reached down to run a fond hand through the
 jackboot’s hair, and the woman grinned idiotically up at
                   her. Where to begin?
              She had a lot of questions to ask.
                           12
                      THE BURREN

There were vacuum flowers on the outside of the Pequod,
only a few, sprouting from the jointed strutwork of the
gables, but enough to tell from the shape of the petals that
these were a variant strain, already indigenous to cislunar
orbit. Rebel noted them on the way in, mildly wondering
why Bors had put off his basic maintenance for so long.
The ship recognized her, and the lock opened to her touch.
      A few hours later Bors returned, just as Rebel had
 finished brewing tea. The pot floated in the center of the
 parlor. “Well!” Bors said in a pleased tone. He doffed his
  suit, donned his cloak, and pulled up a pair of leg rings.
    “How very pleasant of you to drop by to see me off.”
    “How very pleasant of you to say so.” She drew off a
syringe of tea and gently floated it to him. “I’ve prepared a
 snack.” She opened a tray of scalloped cakelets that were
  shaped rather like her silver brooch, and he unclipped
        two. Rebel smiled, sipped her tea, waited.
  After a polite pause, Bors said, “So. How goes the search
                  for your friend, Wyeth?”
     “Ah! Now that’s a very interesting question.” Rebel
leaned forward in her chair. “I was questioning a jackboot
 earlier today—I had her lashed down and opened up, you
  understand, so there was no question of her lying—and
               she gave me a valuable lead.”
     “Indeed,” Bors said. “A jackboot, you say?” He took
    another bite of his pastry. “That’s, ah, a somewhat
             dangerous proposition, isn’t it?”
 “Yeah. She had this really baroque plot-and-counterplot
 kind of story about dropping down surfaceward as an
observer to… well, no reason to bore you with it. She said
                   she’d seen Wyeth.”
                         “Oh, yes?”
       “Yeah. She told me she’d seen him with you.”
  After a very long silence, during which neither looked
 away from the other, Bors took a squirt of tea and said,
             “She was mistaken, of course.”
    “Of course.” Rebel stood. Her natural impulse was to
seize the man and try to strangle the truth out of him. But
   she smiled instead. Eucrasia would never have done
 anything so bold, and in a situation like this, Eucrasia’s
  approach had its points. Her chances of overpowering
   Bors on his home turf were slight. He was, however
 polished, a professional ruffian. “I’ll just get my suit and
  leave, then. Sorry to have caused you the trouble. Bon
voyage, eh, sport?” She floated to the lock, Bors watching
 her warily. “Oh. You could do me one little favor?” Bors
  raised his eyebrows. “Just say for me, ‘Please open the
                   collecting drawers.’ ”
   “Please open the collecting drawers?” Bors repeated
                       puzzledly.
  Throughout the room, cabinets opened smoothly. One
 by one the drawers slid out. They were all empty. “Good
  lord,” Bors gasped. “What have you done with all my
                watercolors? My prints?”
                      “I burned them.”
  Bors was out of his seat, running furious hands through
the empty drawers and slamming them shut, in search of
    an overlooked drawing, a crumpled print stuck in a
   corner, anything. “You didn’t!” he wailed in despair.
     “Well, no,” Rebel said calmly. “Actually, I didn’t.”
                      He looked at her.
 “You remember the two crates I had? I emptied them out
 and filled one with your watercolors and the other with
   your prints. I had to pith your ship’s security system
before it would let me at them, but it’s surprising the tools
 you can buy when you have the right connections—and
  your little jackboot had good connections, I can assure
 you.” She was talking too fast, too angrily. She wanted so
    badly to hurt Bors that his pain only increased that
hunger. Eucrasia would have said that she was cycling out
 of control. Taking a deep breath, she floated back to her
  chair and sat. Then, more calmly, “The crates are both
  safe, and you’ll never find them unless I tell you where.
You can have one back right now, no strings attached. The
                     other will cost you.”
    Slowly, Bors took his own chair. “I won’t betray my
 nation,” he said flatly. “Not if you piled up every work of
     art in the System and held a flame to the heap.”
   “Well, bully for you mate! But I’m not asking for any
such thing. Just give me Wyeth. I’ll give you your choice of
crates now, and tell you where the other is as soon as I’ve
 had the chance to talk with Wyeth face to face. What do
                         you say?”
  “The watercolors,” Bors said bleakly. “Where are they?”
                             ***
   The city had no name that anybody remembered. It had
 been cracked and abandoned over a century before, and
   its exterior was overgrown with flowers. Now a small
 hopper flew through the gap where an axial window had
been and into the airless interior. Black buildings reached
up to grab at them as they floated down. It was a tricky bit
 of navigation because the city was still rotating, and the
 ravaged buildings shifted as they approached. “There,”
  Bors said. At street level, yellow light shone from a lone
  pressurized window. With a swooping twist that folded
  Rebel’s stomach over on itself, Bors matched velocities
        with the street and brought the hopper down.
  The old woman who cycled them through the lock looked
   displeased to see Rebel. “This one’s no jackboot,” she
 grumbled. It was the drop artist Rebel had seen with Bors
    in Geesinkfor. The room was crammed with vintage
technology—robot probes, shoulderjets, fist-sized assassin
                         satellites.
          “There’s been a slight change of plans.”
    “Heh.” She leered over a protruding knob of a chin.
   “Changes will run you extra. There’s a good borealis
 brewing up now, and I can’t say when the next one’s due.
  Don’t like to drop people without some electromagnetic
confusion in the atmosphere. Helps to hide them from the
                        Comprise.”
   “You are an avaricious old pirate,” Bors said, “and I’ll
 not be blackmailed by the likes of you. This young lady is
  taking the jackboot’s place, and the drop will go off on
schedule, as planned, and for the amount agreed upon, or
           we can just call the whole thing off.”
  The old woman quailed before his anger. “Oh,” she said.
                    “Well, then.”
                             ***
 It was an expensive drop, and an unobtrusive one. As it
was explained to Rebel, eight shaped coldpack units were
 to be frozen in the center of snowy flurries of ablative
materials and then towed to the center of a natural fall of
meteors. They would be swept up by the advancing Earth
and fall into the dawn, burning bright on the way down,
       fleeting scratches in the pale morning sky.
    Deep in the atmosphere, the last of the ablatives would
  burn away, to reveal coldpacks that had been crafted as
 lifting bodies. Simple cybersystems would loft them then,
killing speed and flying them toward the rendezvous point.
 Their steep evasive glides would end in spectacular gouts
    of white surf as they slammed into the North Atlantic.
    Slowly, then, they would begin to sink in the cold salt
                          water.
   Before they could hit bottom, fleet dark forms would
     converge upon them. These were sea mammals,
  descendants of seals, that had been hotwired for such
   tasks with bootleg mutagens and bioprogramming.
  Slipping their heads through pop-out grab loops, they
  would haul the coffins toward land. It was a slow and
  complicated means of travel but one that, in theory at
           least, the Comprise could not track.
   There would be people waiting on the shingled beach.
                             ***
    Rebel opened her eyes. She was in a beehive-shaped
 room, Greenwich normal. Unmortared stone walls with
an array of pinprick lights wedged into the chinks. The air
was a trifle chill. Rebel looked up at a woman in a hooded
             red robe. “I’m on Earth,” she said.
    “Yes.” The woman had a fanatically starved face with
sharp cheekbones and no eyebrows. But her voice was soft
    and she kept her head bowed. “In a place called the
Burren. This complex of buildings is Retreat. It’s a place of
  God.” She gestured toward a sheila-na-gig by the door, a
    cartoon in stone of a grotesque, moon-faced woman
holding herself open with both hands. Rebel sat up. “Your
  gear is laid out before you. The earth suit is worn under
  your cloak—the Burren is a much harsher environment
 than you’re used to. This devotee is named Ommed. If you
   desire anything, it is your slave.” She ducked out of the
                             room.
     Rebel shook her head and began dressing. The earth
  suit consisted of chameleoncloth pants and blouse with
multiple fastenings that weren’t easy to figure out. She felt
  horribly covered up with them on, though they were no
     worse, she had to admit, than what she’d worn as a
treehanger. She donned her cloak and gravity boots, and
 lifted the library case. That was part of the deal she’d cut
with Bors, that she’d serve as the combat team’s librarian.
                Then she stooped out the door.
   Rebel straightened and saw vast stretches of grey rock
  under a milky sky. The land went on forever, dwindling
 impossibly with distance as it rose to a line of mountains
    as barren as the moon. It was all exposed bedrock,
 runneled with weathered depressions from which poked
 tufts of brown grass. Low stone walls ran like veins over
  the land; they could have been a thousand years old or
  built yesterday. There was no way of knowing. The few
  devotees at work nearby were insignificant specks. She
had always heard that Earth was green, but this land was
desolate and godforsaken, almost a parody of barrenness.
  The wind boomed, and she staggered forward. It was as
 if someone had placed a hand on her back and pushed.
   Her hair and cloak streamed out in front of her and,
 visions of hull punctures and explosive decompression
 rising within, Rebel cried out in sudden terror, “What’s
                  wrong? What’s wrong?”
  Ommed was there and slipped an arm around her waist
 to hold her steady. “Nothing is wrong. It’s just the wind
                   coming off the sea.”
   “Oh,” Rebel said weakly, though the explanation meant
   nothing to her. She turned to look behind and saw the
 land cascading down to a slate green ocean specked with
white-tipped waves. Clouds curdled with grey rushed upon
her from a vague horizon, so fast she could see them move,
  melting one into another as they came. “My… God, this
     is… it’s huge!” She felt vertiginous and almost fell.
Everywhere, the air was aprowl, a vast, restless giant with
the clouds in its grip, larger than mountains. It was all too
                huge. “How can you stand it?”
 “We are here to abase ourselves,” Ommed said, “and we
welcome the humbling immensities of God for that reason.
 But you will discover yourself that what at first appears
      terrifying can become, as you grow to know it,
                      exhilarating.”
   Almost breathless with disbelief, Rebel stared across
rock and ocean, letting their immensity wash through her.
   There was so much of everything here that her head
 almost ached with it, but… yes, Ommed was right. It was
  awful, but at the same time rather grand, like the first
 hearing of a symphony in a new musical form that is so
                 magnificent it terrifies.
 “Your friends are meeting around the far side of Retreat.
         Perhaps it is time that you join them.”
                           “Yes.”
    Retreat was a sprawl of stone beehive huts, of varying
  sizes, built one upon the other in a curving swirl up the
slope. It was all of the same grey bedrock that everywhere
dominated the land, and the far reaches of the mass faded
    to near invisibility, like a skirl of smoke against the
 ground. It was the only artificial structure in sight. From
horizon to horizon was no trace of anything that might not
have existed there millennia ago. “How do you hide all this
              from the Comprise?” Rebel asked.
   “We call the great mind Earth,” Ommed corrected her
gently. “Earth knows us well. We are here at its tolerance.
    It observes us. We don’t know why. Perhaps Earth
considers us beasts for its study. Perhaps it maintains the
 Burren as a kind of wildlife preserve. The question is not
                    an important one.”
  “It observes you?” Rebel looked around, saw no sign of
cameras. Of course Earth might have more subtle devices,
               extremely small or distant.
  “Every seven years Earth takes a tenth of our number to
            be absorbed into the great mind.”
               “And this doesn’t bother you?”
   They walked around the upper curve of Retreat. In the
smokehouses there, devotees were preparing racks of fish
  and slices of monoclonal protein from the fermenters.
    “We are here to learn the discipline of submission.
   Submission to the will of God takes many forms. We
 practice all of them.” She looked up, and Rebel flinched
back from the intensity of her gaze, the knowing intimacy
  of her smile. “This is the hut. Your people are within.”
    “Yeah. Well, it was great of you to show me the way.”
   “You do not yet understand the pleasure there can be in
the surrender of will.” Ommed touched the nape of Rebel’s
neck with a fingertip cold as ice. Rebel’s body involuntarily
  stiffened, shivering. “If you wish to learn, ask any of the
              devotees. We are all your slaves.”
             “Jesus.” Rebel ducked into the hut.
   It was unlit, and at first she thought it was empty. Then
 somebody moved, and somebody else coughed, and she
  realized there were seven people crouched against the
walls, all in chameleoncloth; and they were all looking at
her. Their faces floated in the gloom, and the eyes in them
were cruel and alert. They’d all been chopped wolverine.
   “This is your librarian,” somebody said. “Protect her.
She carries your survival skills. And if she dies, one of you
  will have to be programmed down to take her place.”
    There was a low growling noise that might have been
                        laughter.
  “You have your orders,” the voice continued. “Go!” The
 wolverines flowed out, sliding by Rebel on either side in
perfect silence. Their leader stood, and the silver spheres
 at the ends of his braids clicked gently. Rebel was pretty
   sure this was Bors, but with that feral programming
burning on his face, she couldn’t be sure. “Librarian, you
                         will stay.”
  She sat. The leader leaned closer, face dominated by a
  mad, joyless smile. She could smell his breath, faintly
          sweet, as he said, “Get your skills in.”
  Rebel snapped open the library, ran a fingertip down its
rainbow-coded array of wafers. Deftly she wired herself to
   the programmer and set the red user wafers running.
   There were three: basic research skills, rock running
  skills, and an earth surface survival package combined
 with a map of the Burren. Whiteness buzzed and swirled
     at the base of her skull as the device mapped her
   short-term memory structure. Then the air about her
  shivered as the programs raised their arms and began
   assembling themselves into airy circuits and citadels of
knowledge. Their logics reached through the walls toward
  infinity, and Rebel was lost in an invisible maze of facts.
  Three wafers were the limit; more than that couldn’t be
assimilated without losing half the data. She could feel her
location in the Burren now, halfway up the western slopes
 of the enormous limestone formation. That was the map
  function. She knew its hills and mountains, down to the
   networks of caves beneath its surface. She knew which
    skills could be chipped into a berserker program and
which could not. (“Librarian!”) She knew how to shift her
weight when a rock turned underfoot just as she landed on
 it. She knew the Burren’s plants and insects, which were
  good to eat and which were not. She knew where to find
    water. (“Librarian!”) She knew which three skills an
 ecosaboteur needed most. The facts shimmered through
 and about her, leaving her feeling stunned, cold, distant.
  Someone slapped her. It stung. Startled, she focused on
 the leader and saw the calm, happy afterglow of violence
 settle on his face and under it—yes, it was Bors, all right.
 “Librarian!” he repeated. “Are your programs run yet?”
   “Uh… yeah,” she said shakily. She knew how to run
now. Her legs trembled with the desire to be off and away.
   She heard an ugly bird-sound just outside. A rook.
  “Librarian, you are not part of our team, but we will still
   be relying on your programming. So you’ve got to be
 tested. I want you to run to the Portal Dolmen. If you get
  there by sunset, I’ll know your skills have taken hold.”
   She knew what sunset was. She knew what the Portal
      Dolmen was. “But that’s twelve miles away!”
        “Then you’d better get started, hadn’t you?”
                             ***
    She ran. It was amazing the kind of speed you could
  make when you knew what you were doing. Rebel was
following what had been a road once but had now largely
  melted into the rock. The broken roadbed made better
    running, though, for the bedrock tended to fracture in
   long slabs that would occasionally snap underfoot, and
 then only her uncanny reflexes kept her from twisting an
       ankle. Also, off the road the low stone walls were
     everywhere, curving twistily over bare rock and even
looping over the largest boulders. Impossible as it seemed,
 people must have lived here long ago and found some use
  for the land worth their marking off parcels of it as their
                               own.
     The road twisted and steepened, and she adjusted her
      heartbeat in compensation. It felt like the rock was
spinning underfoot, and herself perfectly motionless. She
  ran with her cloak’s chameleoncloth liner inward, and
     from a distance must’ve looked like an immense bat
   flapping crippled along the ground. The patch of cloud
 that could not be looked at directly was lower than it had
 been. That meant it was growing late. Now and then she
  slowed to a walk, and twice she rested. But running was
              best, for it kept her from thinking.
 A dark circle appeared on the rock before her, as sudden
  and unexpected as a meteor strike. Then it was gone
 behind her, but another appeared, and then another.
 They came in clusters, and then the first drop of water
           struck her face, and it was raining.
     She knew all about rain—it was on the earth skills
 wafer—but knowing was not experience. The drops came
    down like pebbles, smashing against her head and
   forming rivulets that ran into her eyes, blinding her.
   Worse, the wind drove the rain in sudden gusts that
slammed into her and left her gasping for air. She couldn’t
run now, but strode forward with cloak wrapped tight and
hood up. When she looked up, she couldn’t see mountains
       or sea at all. They had vanished in greyness.
  The road crested, and she pushed forward. Not far from
the top of the ridge was a wedge-shaped gallery grave—she
   sensed it on the map. It was half hidden by a patch of
 gorse, but she found it anyway, four flat uprights forming
 a kind of box, with a fifth stone as lid. The cairn of stones
  that had covered it and the bones it had sheltered were
gone long ago, and there was enough of a gap where it had
   been broken into for her to climb within. She huddled
       there, out of the rain, clutching knees to chin.
 The cloak was wool and, even wet, kept her warm. What
was bad was not the gloom or the rattling thunder of rain
 on stone (the wafer hadn’t included the knowledge that
  rain made noise), but the solitude that left her time to
                     think of Wyeth.
   She had known, the instant that she opened her eyes
 and saw a strange woman in red, that Wyeth was not at
 Retreat. He’d’ve been there to greet her. She had known
 that there was going to be no good news of him, and she
had wanted to put off the learning of the bad for as long as
possible. She’d refused to recognize the dark premonition
               that was growing within her.
     Now, though, she could not help but think about it.
  It was a long time before the rain slowed, then stopped,
 and she could climb from the wedge of rocks. She went
 back to the road, started walking again. Then running.
 It rained three more times before she reached the Portal
                        Dolmen.
                              ***
  Day was darkening when she came to a high and windy
 place, barren even by local standards, and stopped. The
sky behind her was yellow where it touched the rock. She
 stared blankly about the flat expanses for a time before
               spotting the Portal Dolmen.
  It was huge, two upright slabs supporting a canted third,
like a giant’s table falling to ruin. Slowly, she followed her
    shadow to it. Two more slabs of rock lay nearby, the
    missing sides of what was just another wedge grave
 denuded of its cairn, though an enormous one. It looked
 like a gateway, and she gingerly stepped through it, half
    expecting to be suddenly transported through the
         dimensions into another, mystic land.
    Bors snickered. “You’re on time, Librarian, but only
                          just.”
   Startled, she whirled about. Bors had come up behind
 her silently. He slowly sat down on a fallen slab, smiling
  sardonically. Behind him stood two of his wolverines.
   They watched her with interest. “Listen,” Rebel said.
“Listen, I want to know where Wyeth is.” Her hands were
 cold. She stuck them in her armpits, hunching forward
  slightly. The sense of futility that had struck her on the
 road rose up again now, stronger than before. “He’s not
                        here, is he?”
                             “No.”
   “He never was supposed to be, was he?” Eucrasia had
lived through disappointment this bitter before and knew
that the best way to handle it was to shunt it off into anger.
       But Rebel lacked the strength of will for that.
   “He was supposed to be here when we arrived. But he’s
    late.” Bors looked serious now. He squinted off into
distant clouds that were the exact color of the rocks. Rebel
 felt her internal map intensify; to the east and south, the
  Burren bordered Comprise. But the map contained no
            details, just a sense of great numbers.
       Bors muttered, “Actually, he’s extremely late.”
                              ***
   She slept with the wolverines that night in a small cave,
  all huddled together for warmth because Bors wouldn’t
 permit a fire. The next morning he gave her some salt fish
to eat on the way and sent her back to Retreat, saying, “We
 don’t need you until Wyeth shows up. And what we do in
the meantime is none of your business. Go back. We’ll find
                  you when we need you.”
  She returned more slowly than she had come, arriving
 as late afternoon was fading to dusk. The devotees were
  bringing in their currachs from the sea and their carts
   from the peat bogs. Some were preparing an evening
meal. In the dining hut, Rebel sat through a long prayer in
a language she didn’t know and then ate something whose
   flavor did not register. Ommed spoke to her, and she
                     answered vaguely.
 Afterward, she went back to her hut. She crawled inside,
 put down her library, sat on the sleeping ledge. “Well,”
                she sighed, “I’m home.”
  Not long after, somebody clapped politely at the door.
Rebel called a welcome, and a young devotee entered. He
 was as hairless as the rest, but not so starved looking.
 Kneeling before her, head down, he murmured, “This
 devotee is named Susu. It is an ancient word meaning
                        ‘gossip.’ ”
   “Oh, for God’s sake,” Rebel snapped. “Don’t grovel like
  that. Here.” She slid over on the ledge, patted the rock
beside her. “Sit down, relax, and tell me whatever it is you
                     came here to say.”
   “I…” the young man began. He blushed. “This devotee
   has not been here long. It has not yet learned fully to
abase itself.” Then, abruptly, he looked her full in the face
with eyes a preternatural blue and took her hands in his.
“The community has seen your sorrow and discussed it. If
 you could use the solace there is to be found in flesh, this
           one has come to offer you its service.”
   “Jesus!” she said. But he was awfully handsome, and
 she didn’t pull her hands away from him. After a while,
she said, “Well, maybe that would be the best thing to do.”
  Susu was the hottest thing she had ever taken to bed. He
was perfectly solemn, but his attention to her desires was
complete, and he obviously knew more about sex than she
 did. He did not strive to give himself pleasure, but to give
pleasure to her. He was like some impossible combination
of athlete, dancer, and geisha. He brought her to the edge
 of orgasm and then kept her there, frozen on the edge of
ecstasy, until she completely lost track of where her body
                   left off and his began.
   Finally, shuddering, Rebel grasped Susu tightly about
 the waist, clutched his bald head with both hands, and
rode her pleasure to stillness. “Jeeze,” she said, when she
  could talk again. “You’re really something, you know
                           that?”
     His face was beautiful, a mask of holy calm. “This
           devotee is the least of your slaves.”
  “No, I mean really.” She laughed, and said jokingly, “Are
          all the devotees as good at this as you?”
  Susu looked at her with that astonishingly flat openness.
    “Of course. What did you think we were here for?”
  “Well, uh.” What was it Ommed had said? “Submission
                    to God, right?”
  “Submission takes many forms.” He knelt before her,
    knees apart, hands behind back, eyes downcast.
“Submission to the bodies of strangers is one of the more
                important sacraments.”
                          “What?”
   “Do you command explanation?” Taking her silence for
 consent, Susu said, “The universe is made in the image of
   God. That much is self-evident, isn’t it?” He looked up,
waited for Rebel’s not very confident nod. “Think of it! The
 universe is one, pure, whole and holy, and united. But we
  experience it only through opposites and extremes.” He
   held up his two hands, cupped, empty. “Hot and cold.
  Pleasure and pain. Joy and sorrow. Cock and fig. These
   are all local illusions—we cannot see the galaxy for the
stars. But how can creatures born into illusion see beyond
and through these opposites into unity? By ignoring them?
 But they are there, they will not go away. We embrace the
    opposites of experience, we welcome the extremes of
     ecstasy and of pain, and we unite them both within
  ourselves. We repeatedly experience the sacraments of
 lust and submission both as men and women, and in the
 end, the self is destroyed, and all differentiation, and we
    break through into the unity that is here all along.”
   The boy’s eyes were afire with visionary intensity. He
was starting to grow erect again. But he was not looking at
her, but upward into the unseen. “It is as if we are all born
 with poison in our bellies, and to purify our bodies must
gorge ourselves on more and more of the poison, until we
               are forced to vomit it all up.”
  “Um, well.” Rebel had been going to ask him to stay the
night. Now, though… She’d never really thought of herself
as a purgative. “Maybe you’d better run on. I think I hear
     your little buddies starting the evening prayers.”
   Lying abed, trying to sleep, she listened to the devotees
chanting. It was a lovely sound, deep and profoundly pure.
  From the midst of the chant arose cries and gasps that
  might have been orgasmic, but might equally well have
 been pain. She could not tell which. They went on and on,
        and she fell asleep before they had ceased.
                             ***
  Rebel did not sleep with anyone from Retreat again. It
 made her feel unclean knowing that any and all of the
 devotees were available to her, and that they would do
 whatever she desired. Sometimes she wondered if this
uneasiness she felt were not actually a form of attraction,
  one she dared not give in to for fear of losing herself
         forever to the extremes of experience.
  Instead, she explored the Burren. Every day she ran out
  onto the rock, stretching her muscles, growing used to
Earth. Sometimes she looked for the tiny purple gentians
 that hid in the cracks or the giant elk that the Comprise
were supposed to have restored to the land. Sometimes a
  pair or triplet of wolverines came for new skills— they
 were too suspicious to come singly, without someone to
guard them while they were opened up—and they would
talk. But the news was always the same. Wyeth was later
           than expected. Bors was still waiting.
     Sooner or later, Bors would not be willing to wait.
     In Retreat, she took on some of the easier chores,
tending the goats and (with the devotees’ own skills chips)
performing minor surgery. She befriended a devotee who
  was in transition between male and female, face plump
          with extra calories, persona placid with
neuroprogrammers, and (Li let her look when she asked)
 crotch covered over with chrysalid scab, beneath which
       the reproductive organs had been reverted to
     undifferentiated cells and were in the process of
  reforming into new configurations. For the transition
  phase, Li was excused from the religious disciplines of
 Retreat and was free to guide Rebel about. For her part,
  Rebel appreciated the fact that Li never tried to seduce
                            her.
   One afternoon, after two days’ hard rain, Li clapped at
  Rebel’s door and called, “Come out! The rain’s stopped
                 and the turlough is full.”
  “What are you going on about?” Rebel said crankily, but
 she came, following Li’s slow waddle up the paths above
 Retreat. The rocks were already growing dry, though the
 plants poking from the water-filled cracks were cold and
                            wet.
     They went a mile or so up a path Rebel had followed
 dozens of times before. Li giggled and refused to answer
 when Rebel demanded to know where they were headed.
Finally they topped a rise and looked down over dark land,
  just barely lightened by the last rays of a low sun. There
    was a silvery, shimmering stillness filling the valley
 bottom that had not been there before. “My God,” Rebel
 said. “It’s a lake.” She felt sickened by the immensities of
 air and water moisture that something like this required.
 Everything about this planet, it seemed, was monstrous.
    “God is miraculous,” Li agreed happily, and gestured
with both hands. “The water flows down from all sides and
 gathers at the bottom. But the rock is porous, and there
are caverns that open into the lowest part of the turlough.
            The lake will be gone by morning.”
                             ***
                       Weeks passed.
   There came a day when the wolverines returned. It was
    a joyously beautiful morning with a weird blue sky
  overhead, the rock just slightly overwarm to the touch.
 Rebel rounded a corner of Retreat and found one of the
   pack pissing on a wall. He grinned a greeting. Not far
beyond, another wolverine was caressing a devotee’s face
with her knife. “What if I wanted to slit your eyelids?” she
crooned. “Would you let me do that, too?” The point glided
 over a cheek, barely breaking skin, leaving behind a fine
                  line of straightest red.
      The devotee shuddered, but did not move away.
                “Having fun?” Rebel asked.
  The wolverine turned. She was a small woman, with red
hair chopped close to the skull and thin white lines on one
  side of her jaw. Her expression changed. “Yeah.” The
knife disappeared from her hand, reappeared, was in the
other hand, was gone. She slid into a fighting crouch, took
                      a deep breath.
 “You kill her—you take her place,” Bors said coldly. The
woman glared at him, lip curling up over one canine, then
 looked away. She sheathed the knife and stamped off.
   “You do like to live dangerously, Ms. Mudlark.” He
     gestured upslope. “Come. Let’s go for a walk.”
  They strolled beyond the goat pens, toward a lone tree,
stunted by rock and weather, not much taller than Rebel
was. There was no particular reason to walk to the tree; it
was simply the only landmark in the direction they were
  headed. Once there, Rebel turned and looked back to
  where the ocean turned grey and melted into sky. She
  waited, and at last Bors said, “We haven’t heard from
                           him.”
                   “I suspected as much.”
     He pounded a fist into his palm, chewed at his lip.
 “Getting down here has cost us. Drop artists don’t come
cheap. We’re going to raid the Comprise whether Wyeth’s
here to lead us or not.” Rebel nodded, not really listening.
 There was an unreal haze over everything. She realized
 now that she would never see Wyeth again. He had been
     swallowed up by the cold immensities of Earth.
    Standing under the deep Terran sky, with an infinite
weight of rock underfoot and air aswirl all about her, she
  realized that it was nobody’s fault, not hers or Bors’ or
even Wyeth’s, but just something that had happened. One
   man can only do so much. When he matches himself
 against something on the scale of an entire planet, he is
going to lose so casually and completely as to simply cease
                            to be.
  “It’ll take us five days or so to prepare our alternatives,
and then we’ll move. But we still need a librarian. If you go
    along with us, I’ll get you a place on the lift back to
 Geesinkfor and standard pay. You can’t ask fairer than
                             that.”
  Bors was waiting for an answer. “I understand,” Rebel
said bleakly. “You’ve waited longer than I expected, even.
Okay, I’ll do my bit. And when you get back to Geesinkfor,
have somebody drag the stretch of the equatorial sea just
 out front of a dive there called the Water’s Edge. That’s
  where I ditched your crate of prints. You’ve done your
        best, and I’ll keep my side of the bargain.”
    Bors looked surprised. Then he patted her shoulder
     roughly, started to say something, gave up on it.
                   He ran back to Retreat.
                             ***
    The next day Rebel was feeding the goats when Li
scampered up, all but squeaking with excitement. “Look,
         look!” Li cried, tugging at Rebel’s sleeve.
   Rebel slapped her hands together, wiped them on the
 front of her earth suit. Goat-tending wasn’t exactly tidy
 work. The pens were going to need a good mucking out
soon. “Li, whatever it is, I’m really not in the mood for it.”
   “No, look!” Li insisted. Rebel turned to look where she
                          pointed.
    Staff in hand, Wyeth limped over the top of the hill.



                            13
                         ISLAND

Rebel?” he said in a small, stunned voice.
  Then Wyeth shook his head wearily. “Eucrasia. Don’t be
  angry with me. Since I broke this leg, I’ve been seeing
             things off and on. I thought…”
     She felt as if she were a phantom wandered from the
   realms of shadow and suddenly confronted by mortal
  flesh. This man before her, with a face more worn than
she remembered and eyes infinitely sad, was too solid, too
real. She was numb and bloodless before him. Rebel tried
  to speak and could not. Then something broke, and she
leaped forward, hugging him as tightly as she could. Tears
tickled her face. Wyeth’s arms went lightly about her, staff
   still held in one fist, and he said, “I don’t understand.”
    “It’s Rebel Mudlark,” Bors said dryly. “Her persona
                 didn’t collapse after all.”
   Wyeth’s staff clattered to the ground. He was hugging
   her, making a noise somewhere between tears and
laughter. Nearby, rooks scavenged the rock, strutting and
 pecking. A wolverine wandered by, stood watching for a
  while, then left. Finally Rebel gathered herself together
 and said, “You must be tired. Come on, my hut’s not far.”
  Bors moved to block their way. He cocked his head and
squinted up at Wyeth. “You haven’t made your report yet.”
   “Later,” Wyeth said. “Everything’s set, it just took me a
              little longer than I expected.”
                               ***
   Inside, Wyeth stretched wearily out on the stone slab.
“God, Sunshine, it’s good to see you again! I don’t have the
                       words for it.”
  “Hush, now, let me take a look at that leg.” Rebel wired
 herself into the library, hunting up the medical skills as
                she eased off his earth suit.
          Wyeth looked at her oddly. “That’s new.”
    “I’ve come to terms with the stuff,” Rebel said. Then,
 seeing his expression, “Its me, honest and truly. Eucrasia
is buried for good. I’ll explain it all later.” Slowly, lovingly,
she began to wash the dust of travel from his body, using a
folded cloth and a basin of water. She started at his brows,
 and Wyeth closed his eyes at the touch of the damp cloth.
“Ahh, now that’s heaven.” He was looking better and more
                  familiar by the moment.
   “So where have you been all this time?” she asked, not
                     really caring.
   “Spying. Getting the lay of the land. Stealing a ship. I
 take it from your being here that you know all about the
                          plan?”
   “No, Bors didn’t think I should have that information,”
 she said, running a hand lightly along the injured leg. He
    still wore five splint rings. “Poor thing. It looks to be
 healing up well, though. You must’ve had a good medical
        kit with you.” She yanked the adhesion disks.
   “He didn’t tell you?” Wyeth tried to sit up, was stopped
 by her hand on his chest. “This is going to be dangerous.
         He had no right to involve you without—”
   “It wasn’t his choice.” She was washing his torso now,
                 those lean, hard muscles.
  “Oh, Sunshine, I really wish you hadn’t… This isn’t going
to be an ordinary raid. You remember the shyapples? The
three crates I bought in the orchid? Well, I drew off almost
  a gallon of their liquor. We’re going to go in among the
  Comprise and dose them with it, to see what happens.”
       She was humming silently to herself. “Why?”
  “It’s a rehearsal for Armageddon,” he said in his clown’s
  voice. Then, serious again, “It’s a weapon that’s proved
 effective against small numbers of Comprise. We want to
 try it out against all of Earth. See what kind of defenses it
       can mount against us. If it works at all well, the
Republique will sponsor a buying trip to Tirnannog, hunt
  up the wizard who cooked up the shyapples, and order
something a little more… directed. Something that doesn’t
  deprogram itself after a few hours. Who knows? Maybe
    something infectious. I mean, think about it. It’s an
   outside chance, sure, but we’re looking at the possible
                   death of the Comprise.”
   “Ah.” She washed a little lower, a bit more lingeringly.
   “Just how dangerous do you think this raid will be?”
  “I honestly don’t know. Anything can happen. But listen,
     I’m sure I can get Bors to smuggle you into a down
station—security is nil from this end. You could be cislunar
before the…” He stopped. “I’m not going to talk you into it,
                   am I? I know that look.”
   “Hey. It’s just you and me, gang. Right?” Rebel took his
 hand, squeezed it tight. “You think you’re going to pry me
away from you now, you’re very badly mistaken.” She bent
   down to kiss him, Wyeth drew in his breath, and she
                   smiled. “Should I stop?”
    “No, no, that’s nice,” he said quickly. Then, “Well,
  maybe you should. I mean, I’d really love to, but I just
             don’t think I have the energy.”
  Rebel put the cloth down. “You lie there, and I’ll do all
 the work.” She shucked boots and trousers, then knelt
 over his body, careful not to touch his injured leg. With
          one hand, she inserted him inside her.
            “Ah,” Wyeth said. “I’ve missed that.”
                           “Me too.”
    Some time later, Rebel lay snuggled into Wyeth’s side.
 Her blouse was bunched up under her arms, but she put
off tugging it down. The pinhole lights were off, and she lay
  in the grey air, feeling Wyeth’s silent tension. A similar
tension was growing within her and silently heterodyning
       to his, until finally she had to speak. “Wyeth?”
                            “Mmm?”
                         “Don’t do it.”
                        He said nothing.
    “They don’t need you. They’ve got your shyapple juice,
  they’ve got your plans, you can tell them whatever it is
you’ve spied out. They don’t need you. The two of us could
 slip into a down station, go up the tube, and be orbital by
     morning. We could be up and gone before the raid
                          begins.”
  In the gloom, the hut seemed to close about them, like a
stone womb contracting. Wyeth cleared his throat, a slow
   protracted noise that was almost a groan, and said,
      “Sunshine, I couldn’t do that. I gave my word.”
                      “Fuck your word.”
                  “Yes, but it’s my duty to—”
                       “Fuck your duty.”
  Wyeth laughed easily. “I can’t argue if you’re going to do
               that to everything I say.”
   “Who wants to argue?” She struggled out of his grasp
 and sat up. “I don’t want to argue—I just want you to do
 this my way. I went through a lot to get you back, and I
 don’t want to see you run off and get yourself absorbed
                   into the Comprise.”
   “Well, neither do I, Rebel. But you have to understand,
this is the fight that I created myself for. This is not just my
duty, it’s my cause. It’s my purpose. And if I’m not true to
               it, then what will I be true to?”
     “Next you’ll be singing patriotic songs!” She looked
 down on that smug, confident face and wanted to hit him.
“God, but you’re exasperating. Sometimes I think Eucrasia
  was right. She should have unwritten you entirely and
  started all over again from the ground up. Then—” She
  stopped and eyed Wyeth with sudden speculation. She
  held up both hands before her face, thumbs tucked in.
                   “Count four,” she said.
                          “What?”
   “Open the door.” She swung both hands open, so that
  she peered between them, and said, “You’re in a room
                  without any floor.”
  Wyeth’s face relaxed. His eyes were alert and calm and
 unblinking. “Well?” Rebel asked. Then, when he didn’t
  respond, “You were lying when you said you’d found
     Eucrasia’s kink and debugged it, weren’t you?”
                   Wyeth nodded. “Yes.”
  “You know something? I wondered how you’d picked up
  the programming skills to outfox Eucrasia. I should’ve
 known you were bluffing. Hell with it. Metaprogrammer
   open? Construction catalog in access? Major branch
            linkages free and unimpaired?”
  “Yes,” Wyeth said. Then, “Yes,” and “Yes.” He lay before
her, naked, and it was impossible for any man to be more
at her power than he was now. She could do anything she
 wanted to him, from giving him a craving for chocolate to
   entirely rewriting his personas. She could tell him to
abandon Bors’ raid and take her up the nearest drop tube,
 and he would do so without hesitation. If she wanted, he
  didn’t even need know it hadn’t been his own idea. She
                       had the skills.
     But Wyeth stared up at her so trustingly that she
  couldn’t begin. “Close your eyes,” she ordered, and he
  obeyed. It didn’t help. She reached down to brush a
wayward strand of hair out of his face, and then blurted
out the one question she dared not ask. Knowing that he
    couldn’t lie in this state. “Do you really love me?”
                           “Yes.”
       “You son of a bitch,” Rebel said. “Go to sleep.”
              And closed him up, unchanged.
                             ***
   The next morning was foggy, which Bors welcomed as a
     good omen, but made the run across the Burren a
nightmare. Two of the wolverines carried Wyeth in a sling
between them, and it was not long before they came to the
stretch of coast where he had sunk his skimmer. He called
 across the ocean, and it rose up, water pouring from the
    ballast tanks. While Rebel programmed a pilot and
  navigator, the others readied the craft. Within the half
 hour they were set. Octants of tinted canopy closed over
 the deck, and the skimmer stood on a single long leg and
               sped forward, above the water.
   They were passing a wide river mouth, not long after,
    when the fog parted momentarily. Under the cliffs,
   serpentine necks rose grey and mysterious from the
   water. They must have been thirty or forty feet long,
topped by tiny flat heads. The creatures glided inland, as
 Rebel frantically searched the library’s natural history
section to discover what they were. Plesiosaurs. Probably
 elasmosauri, to judge by their size. But according to the
    library, they had been extinct for millions of years,
  creatures that had lived and died in Mesozoic seas. “I
              don’t believe it,” Rebel breathed.
  Bors was standing nearby. “You know what I find most
         remarkable about them?” he asked.
                          “What?”
                       “No windows.”
     Rebel stared at him, then back at the plesiosaurs,
   baffled for the moment it took to realize what he was
talking about. What she had taken to be natural rock cliffs
  were actually enormous buildings, tall and featureless,
 edging the water like clustered masses of quartz crystals.
   They had a pale, diffractive quality to them, their flat
     surfaces shimmering with faint pinks and blues, a
 suggestion of prismatic green, colors that intensified the
   longer she stared at them. Then the fog closed in and
wiped them away. “Are they all like this?” she asked. “The
                  Comprise cities, I mean.”
  “No, I think they’re all very different from one another,
     don’t you? Kurt! Come over here and get your
          rock-running program scrubbed out.”
   By the time the fog had lifted, they were on the open sea,
 nothing but water to be seen. Notched away in Eucrasia’s
 store of memories were any number of rhapsodies on the
 beauty and lure of oceans, the romance of wooden ships,
 the glamor of the sea-rover. But Rebel could understand
 why People’s Mars wasn’t building any of their own. The
ocean was choppy and featureless, offering the eye neither
rest nor variety, with all the monotony of flatness but none
  of the stark beauty. It was ugly, and wasteful as well—all
           that water! Rebel was sick of it already.
  Hour after hour, the skimmer sliced through the waves.
 Sometimes Rebel sat quietly talking with Wyeth. Often,
though, he had to go belowdecks to confer with Bors, and
 she was not welcome to overhear. Then she simply sat,
 watching clouds roll overhead and the ocean shift from
  green to grey and back as the light changed. Once they
   made a wide detour to avoid an undersea enclave of
    Comprise, but in all their time asea they never saw
 another ship or flying machine. Rebel remarked on this
 when Nee-C wandered by from a knife game she’d been
    playing—and losing, to judge by the network of fine
     slashes on the backs of her hands—with the other
                        wolverines.
    Nee-C shrugged. “Guess the Comprise don’t need to
               move things around much.”
  “If it’s all that rare, then how did Wyeth manage to steal
     this boat? You’d think they’d notice it was gone.”
  “Ain’t no Comprise boat,” Nee-C said scornfully. “Look
                 at the cabin hatch.”
 Rebel turned, saw an open hatchway with stairs leading
down. Scowling, Nee-C kicked the jamb, and a hatch slid
up. It had a corporate logo painted on it, a round shield
       with owl and olive wreath. “Pallas Kluster!”
 “Yeah, belonged to a batch of Kluster lazarobiologists.”
Nee-C snickered. “They got them a long walk home now.”
                        “Yes, but—”
   “You know your problem?” Nee-C stood, drawing her
blade. “You talk too much.” She strode to the bow, where
the other wolverines were clustered, knelt, and rejoined
                       the game.
  The day stretched on monotonously. Finally, though, a
 setting sun turned half the horizon orange and faded to
  night. Rebel slept on a mat on deck, alongside Wyeth.
  When she awoke, she didn’t need to be told they were no
longer in the Atlantic. The water was calmer here, almost
glassy, and low-lying land, finger-smudges of green on the
 edge of the sky, was visible to either side. Straight ahead
  was an island, overgrown with trees, dark as a floating
                    clump of seaweed.
      Wyeth handed her a beer and some boiled bread.
  “Breakfast time, sleepyhead,” he said. “We’ll be at the
   island within the hour and you’ll need your strength
                          then.”
                 “Where are we, anyway?”
  Bors looked down from where he sat cross-legged atop
   the cabin and said, “We’re in a midcontinental sea.
    Technically speaking, it’s more a big salt lake than
anything else. Earth created several of them shortly after
 it became conscious. Nobody’s sure why. The popular
 theory is that it was a mistake, a weather control project
 that went awry. The polar icecaps used to be larger, you
                           know.”
     “You seem to know a lot about Earth,” Rebel said.
    “My dear young lady,” Bors said, and with that feral
programming wild on his face, his exaggerated politeness
was as startling as if a poisonous serpent were to suddenly
rear its head and speak, “I’ve been studying Earth for half
                           my life.”
   As the island neared, the skimmer slowed, sank down
on its leg, and touched seawater. It lurched sideways as it
    was hit by the waves, slewed a bit to one side, then
 steadied into a gentle up-and-down rocking motion. The
 pilot retracted the canopy, and salt air flooded the boat.
Wyeth pointed ahead. “Take a good look,” he said. “It’s the
               only floating island on Earth.”
   Rebel tapped her library. The island was all one tangled
  tree complex, almost perfectly round, with a clearing for
the down station at its center. It was new—thirty years ago,
it had not been there, and nobody knew why the Comprise
    had decided to grow it. Staring up into the blue, Rebel
  imagined she could make out the invisible outlines of the
   vacuum tunnel, like twin fracture lines in the sky. The
    island beneath was all joyous green surface wrapped
 around a dark interior. Somewhere in its depths, a pair of
      large yellow eyes blinked, and Rebel shivered with
                         premonition.
    Bors was handing out equipment. He slapped a small
    plastic pistol into Rebel’s hand and moved on. She
examined it. A pair of compressed gas cartridges sprouted
to either side of the rear sight, like bunny ears. There was
 a reservoir of clear liquid inside the transparent handle.
 She squinted into a pinprick nozzle, and Wyeth turned it
    away from her. “Careful. That sucker’s loaded with
shyapple juice.” He showed her how to hold the pistol and
 where the safety was. “Don’t fire until you’re right on top
 of your target. Aim for the forehead, right where the third
 eye would be. The fluid’s bonded with dimethylsulfoxide,
  so wherever it touches, it’ll sink right through the flesh
into the bloodstream. But that shouldn’t be necessary. The
 pistol spits out droplets at a speed that’ll slam them right
             through skin at four feet. Got that?”
  “I guess so.” She raised the pistol, aiming at the back of
 Bors’ neck, and Wyeth yanked her hand down. “What’s
      the matter? I wasn’t really going to shoot him.”
      Wyeth rolled up his eyes. “Tell you what. Don’t
   shoot—no, don’t even aim that pistol at anybody or
 anything unless the rest of us are all safely dead, okay?
  You have no idea how easy it is to accidentally shoot a
  friend. Just keep that thing stowed away, and be very
 careful not to get any of the juice on yourself. We don’t
     want you snapping out in the middle of the raid.”
  “Okay.” Wyeth turned away, and she tucked the gun into
  the waistband of her earth suit. She felt like something
                    was watching her.
                             ***
  Bright tropical birds looped in and out of the greenery,
making sharp, metallic cries, as the skimmer crept toward
 the floating island. High up in the trees were masses of
  dark flowers, purple almost to the point of blackness,
            some of them large as bedsheets.
   The skimmer slid by a long limb or root that arched out
from the green thickets, turning black where it dipped into
  the water. Waves slapped quietly against it. “Stay in the
  center of the patrol,” Wyeth murmured to Rebel. “We’ll
keep you alive.” They were barely moving now. The island
swelled and reared up into the sky. Another dark tree limb
slid by, and an air squid, sunning itself atop the limb, took
     fright and dropped into the water with a soft plop.
  Rebel strapped the library to her back and secured the
  adhesion disks with a protective headband. Then she
swung her cloak over her shoulders, chameleoncloth side
 out. She shivered nervously, forced a smile, whispered,
                    “How do I look?”
                       “Hunchbacked.”
   “Those the stills?” Bors jabbed a finger upward at the
translucent purple flowers. Bubbles flowed up their veins,
  and tangles of pale white roots fell downward into the
 water. Wyeth nodded, and Bors said, “Kurt, grab a drug
                 pump and get up there.”
  Rebel craned her neck to watch the wolverine scramble
  up the roots. “Librarian!” Bors snapped. “What is that
                       man doing?”
   Without looking down from the dwindling figure, Rebel
   said, “He’s climbing up to the distillery flowers. They
 purify the water for the island’s population of Comprise.
There are several nexuses of stalks just beyond the flowers
   where the desalted water is gathered, and then larger
 stalks that move the water to Comprise drinking stations
   by gravity feed. That’s where Kurt will insert the drug
  pump. The pump contains an encapsulator so that the
  shyapple fluid is contained in microspheres that won’t
     dissolve until they reach their target vectors.” The
 information flowed to the surface of her mind freely and
naturally. She spoke it automatically, so that the sense of it
came simultaneously with the words. “The microcapsules
                 should travel at a rate of—”
        “Enough!” Bors turned away. “We’re ready.”
  They glided under the arching tree limbs. Daylight gave
  way to soft shadow. Leafy boughs raked the deck, and
 mats of brown vegetation floated on the water’s surface.
    The island ahead was indistinct, all shadow within
darkness. A monkey shrieked, like the agonized war cry of
  a ghost. The wolverines took out long sticks and began
   poling the skimmer. The air dimmed to a cool, green
                     cavernousness.
   The skimmer scraped along a submerged limb, caught
     its bow in a dragging vine and, after a moment’s
 hesitation, was free. The lead polesman swung the nose
 about, edging it into a long black incursion of water that
   moved into the gothic depths like an inverted stream.
  Moss and branches hung low over the inlet, making it
  almost a tunnel. As they were passing under a snarled
  tangle of vines, Kurt dropped down on the deck. Rebel
   flinched back from the sudden apparition of his grin.
            “Done,” he said, and Bors nodded.
     The boat slowed to a stop. Rebel was reminded of the
geodesic’s orchid here, it was that dark and close. Gretzin
and Fu-ya would’ve liked this island. Rebel stared into the
 shadows, her heart pounding. Any number of Comprise
 could be crouching an arm’s length distant and never be
seen. She looked up. There were yellow shafts of light high
above that did not seem to quite reach the water, and tiny
 patches of blue like faraway windows that winked on and
 off with the shifting of the trees. Parrots darted between
   limbs, and something that might have been a monkey
 swung into the light and was gone. A fearful sense of the
  insanity of going into that tangled and clotted darkness
        lanced through Rebel. “Let’s go,” Bors said.
  They walked and climbed through the brush. Rebel was
  in the middle of the patrol, with Bors behind her and
     wolverines fore and aft. Wyeth led, the head of a
 predatory virus injecting itself into the island. The floor
  here was a slick mass of roots, covered in places with
rotting vegetation and the occasional puddle of salt water.
  The sea slapped against a thousand branches behind
                          them.
   Rebel found the going surprisingly easy, even natural,
perhaps due to shadow memories of her life in Tirnannog.
 She was comfortable here; traveling took up a fraction of
     her attention. She touched a leaf, and the library
 whispered larch. This five-pointed one was maple. Over
 there, that clump was all monkey-puzzle. Branches grew
in and out of the trunks, in complete disregard for species,
hemlock growing out of oak, and arrowwood into banyan.
  This was basic comet-tree bioengineering, primitive but
 effective, where the functions of plant and environment
had been warped one into the other. There were tiny crabs
 in the tidepools, and sea anemones as well. She brushed
her fingers slightly over their life-cycle data, decided not to
                            touch.
   “Going gets easier now,” Wyeth said over his shoulder.
   The floor rose and became dryer, and the trees opened
out. They walked single-file through dark, open spaces, an
almost tactile pressure of trees pushing down from above,
  so high and lush that no light reached them here. The
       straight boles of the trees were overgrown with
phosphorescent fungi, some like stacked white plates and
others that were elaborate glowing fantasias. They walked
 as if through a dark cathedral lit by blue corpselight. The
sea behind them had been silenced by deadening masses
of plants, to be replaced by slow creaking noises, as of the
  hulls of wooden ships afloat at anchor. Rebel imagined
 herself in the hold of an ancient galleon, acolyte to some
 hidden gnostic ceremony. She stuck a hand in her cloak
  pocket, and it closed about the wafer she had made in
          Geesinkfor, the recording of her persona.
  They detoured around a pond-sized opening in the floor.
Black salt water bobbed restlessly within it. “This is where
 they cut the transceivers out of the skulls of their dead,”
   Wyeth said. Mulch squished underfoot. “The flesh is
   thrown into the water. There are meat-eaters down
                          there.”
    Bors picked up something—a bone or a tool—from the
water’s edge, glanced at it, threw it in. Somewhere nearby
a trickle of water fell steadily. “So where’s the Comprise?”
    “I don’t know,” Wyeth said tensely. “There’s usually
                      some here.”
  Clutching the slick, slightly greasy wafer, Rebel felt the
weight and involuted complexity of the island clamp down
     about her. She sensed it as a single organism,
 interconnected through all its varied parts, with hidden
 messages encoded in every twig and leaf. Perhaps it was
conscious, its paths of thought and personality expressed
 in the twisting of limbs and placement of flowers. Rebel
might well be walking through the confines of a mind that
   mirrored her own, wandering the mazy wetroutes of
memory and persona. She stared down at her closed fist,
then up into darkness, and both were equally unreadable
                           to her.
    “The drugs should have hit the drinking stations by
                  now,” Wyeth said.
     Nee-C said, “Then why ain’t nothing happened?”
                  “Shut up!” Bors snarled.
  Rebel was no longer afraid of the Comprise. If the island
 was in some sense her brain, then they were simply bad
  thoughts haunting the mind jungles, as forceless and
insubstantial as fear. She conjured up the memory of her
wetware diagram, and it surrounded her in green lace, a
midscale model of the forest about her, the brain within.
She let it fade, the branches slowly melting away, until all
 that remained was that strange circular logic structure
      floating about her like an electric green halo.
     Without warning, something dropped down in front of
them. It was human-tall and impossibly, elegantly thin. Its
arms, slender and graceful, reached almost to its feet, and
  it was covered with short pale fur. It glowed gently in the
  gloom. Its eyes were large and liquidly expressive, like a
 lemur’s, but its face was entirely human. “Boss Wyeth,” it
                             said.
 As one, three wolverines shot it with their plastic pistols.
  It blinked. Long, expressive fingers rose to touch its
            forehead. “We must—” it began.
                       And screamed.
  The creature fell sideward, eyes shut tight, clawing at its
   face, and howled in agony. “That’s it!” Bors shouted
 happily. “Let’s go up!” They all followed Wyeth at a near
                           run.
        Rebel hardly noticed the incident. She was still
considering the differences between mind projected upon
    tree and upon wafer. Perhaps where a human brain
 operated at electrochemical speeds, a tree would operate
 at the biological speeds of metabolism and catabolism, its
     thoughts as slow and certain as the growth of a new
branch. The ceramic wafer could only operate on the level
    of atomic decay, each complete thought eons long, its
  lifespan greater than stars. It would be a crime then, as
 serious as murder, not to cherish and shelter the wafers
 from harm through the ages the expression of their lives
  would take. They had come to an enormous tree, where
   short, dead limbs spiraled up the trunk, like a ladder’s
 rungs warped into a stairway, and were climbing it on all
fours. She thought it was a fir of some sort; the library was
                   getting harder to access.
       They climbed endlessly. The green ring still floated
 about her, a tatter of shredded lace. She imagined herself
traveling within its cryptic twistings and windings, around
   and around, a pinlight of consciousness exploring the
 pathways of thought. But of course that was all illusion. If
she were actually crawling through her mind, in whatever
 sense, the answers she sought were not to be found in the
     interior. The combat team was aimed straight as an
    icepick at the center of the island, and it was there, if
    anywhere, that answers would be found. She felt her
metaprogrammer clumsily struggling to free itself from an
endlessly looping pathway, and then the library clicked in
briefly, and she found she could map their progress by the
 species of vegetation they passed, which changed as they
   moved away from the sea and climbed toward the light.
      There were tiny green insects on the bark, delicate
  insectivores feeding on mites too small to be seen. Rebel
 paused to look at them, and one stepped onto her thumb,
  as dainty and worshipful as a devotee climbing atop the
  hand of God. Staring down into the faceted lenses of its
eyes, she imagined a multiple image of a world-filling face,
  brown and wrinkled as a dried apple. It was an ancient
 version of her original face, stern and filled with strange
 humors, and the mouth moved with silent commands. It
 was her wizard-mother. Then Bors gave her a shove, and
                    she moved onward.
   Vague with speculation, Rebel somehow missed the end
  of the climb. They were running up the center of a wide
limb now, on a path that had been smoothed into the bark.
 Nightblooms grew in clusters here, and they ran through
an arch of papery material and were among the Comprise.
        Shallow bowls of grey flooring surrounded the tree
trunks, overlapping where branches crossed, and on them
   lay hundreds of those thin lemur creatures. Twisting in
      slow agony, they moaned softly, continuously, a low
 keening that filled the universe. They hardly moved at all,
  like bees that had been smoked from their hive and now
     lay helpless as it was looted of its treasures. The grey
 paper grew up the trunks, complexly figured with narrow
      walks and grouped sleeping niches no larger than a
Comprise body. Some were filled and papered over, all but
the face, and nurse snakes tried to tend to their occupants,
       offering regurgitated protein and drawing back in
reptilian bafflement when it was not accepted. The edge of
       one bowl had broken where something had fallen
  through, and it was acrawl with paper wasps working to
                        repair the damage.
  A wolverine impatiently lifted a body that was in her way
   and heaved it over the edge. Rebel heard it crashing
 noisily downward, bouncing off the larger branches and
 snapping the smaller for a very long time. It was savage
                    stuff, gravity was.
     The wolverines ran through the nest in a frenzy,
    smashing things and planting aerosol mines and
 time-release injector bracelets. There were bunches of
 hogshead-sized nuts that burst open like rotted melons,
   releasing a thin, penetrating stench. Clawlike arms
reached feebly from the milky white spillage. Things that
looked to be overgrown fetuses struggled into the air and
died. Rebel was reminded of the cloning cysts back home
in Green City, and that in turn brought a lullaby to mind,
         one she’d never head before. She sang:
        “Rock-a-bye, baby, thy cradle is green,
        Father’s a nobleman, Mother’s a queen.”
 Bors was shaking her, hard as he could. His face was red
     and furious. “What the fuck is wrong with you,
 Librarian?” It was hard to hear him over that universal
                      simian groan.
   “I’m only five years old,” Rebel said wonderingly. “My
               mother’s name is Elizabeth.”
      “She’s stoned,” Nee-C said with satisfaction. Then
   Wyeth yanked the pistol from Rebel’s waistband and
 thrust it at Bors. Who sniffed the trigger, shrugged, and
   threw the thing over the side of the limb. In a flash of
analytic clarity Rebel focused on Wyeth’s face and saw on
     it, instead of anger, only sadness and resignation.
   The library said that tree shrews were insectivores, that
    protozoan pseudopods were used for crawling or the
apprehension of food but not for active swimming, that the
 Tremallales were a small family of saprophytic fungi with
 gelatinous fruit-bodies. They kept running through nests
 of Comprise. The creatures seemed to gather in groups of
    half a thousand. Sometimes there were large empty
     stretches between nests, other times dozens grew
  together, one into another. The papery floors crunched
 slightly underfoot. Someone unstrapped the library from
  her back, and Wyeth’s face floated into view, saying, “…
    only a threshold dosage, she can be led,” before her
  attention wandered away. Then Nee-C grabbed her arm
              and yanked her after the others.
   “Get your ugly butt in gear!” Nee-C’s face was all eyes
and teeth and hard animal glitter. The Comprise nests fell
behind, like dwindling planets. Nightblooms glowed to all
sides, stars caught in the branches of an enchanted forest.
  Rebel was sophisticated enough to know that if she were
 running through the Fairytale Wood, through a route as
labyrinthine as that her newly liberated metaprogrammer
    wove through her fragmented memories, then this
  animal-woman beside her was actually her advisor and
 spiritual guide, come to help her find the secret meaning
             locked in the forest’s dark center.
   “Don’t mean nothing,” Nee-C snapped. “It’s just a big
goddamned tree. Stupid bitch. I oughta throw you over the
             side and be done with you.”
                             ***
     They were up near the treetops now, bathed in softly
 filtered natural light, and about to run through another
   constellation of Comprise nests. There must’ve been
             thousands of nests on the island.
        That was the beauty of a three-dimensional
  environment; it would support enormous numbers. A
 dyson world might be no more than two hundred miles
across, but that was still over four million cubic miles of
living space. Billions could live in one without crowding.
This island was only ten miles across, a few hundred feet
high. But that was still some eighty square miles, or over
three cubic. Room enough for hundreds of thousands of
   Comprise. Packed the way they were, there could be
                          millions.
     There was a wooden basin in the center of the nest.
  Rebel stood by it, watching the water dance and leap in
response to a trickle that fell from above. The overflow slid
 over the lip, through a mossy hole and into the depths. It
 was joyous to watch. Whenever a Comprise straightened
or showed any faint glimmer of intelligence, it was hit by a
 droplet from a wolverine pistol and carried to a safe spot,
 to serve as poisoned meat against any attempt to reunite
                    the island Comprise.
     The water constantly shattered into near-subliminal
  mandalas, patterned wave fronts destroyed by the next
    drop before Rebel could decipher them. She leaned
  against the trough, intent on the images trying to break
through the fluid surface, and accidentally pressed against
  her bracelet. The air filled with lashing red directional
  beams, reaching from Comprise to Comprise and then
  away, sometimes stabilizing into networks of twenty to
 fifty linked individuals before hitting poisoned meat and
                    disintegrating again.
    Suddenly the trees brightened to one side, glowing a
   profound blue, and everything was submerged in the
 energy of some impossibly powerful distant source. The
   red directional lines faded, slowed, winked out in its
 soothing wash. A purple sun burned low in the distance.
   “Here it comes!” Wyeth shouted. “The counterattack!”
    A rumbling noise rose up on all sides, the murmur of
outraged ants dopplered down into the bass that tumbled
and swelled like slow thunder, rolling over and over itself
as it crashed in upon them. Local Comprise staggered up,
   backs arching as if galvanized with megavolts of raw
 power, eyes blind, lips curling back from savage teeth.
   Hitting them with more shyapple juice had no effect.
 Holstering his pistol, a wolverine shouted, “Here we go,
                          kiddies!”
  Then the Comprise were howling, not in pain but from
   the depths of some primal chasm of madness. They
  shrieked and tore at each other, their fury directed at
whatever flesh stood closest. Bors waved the team back up
 a sloping branch away from the nest. Out of the roiling
 orgy of violence, five Comprise ran up after them, arms
                 low, faces flat with rage.
       Wyeth and Kurt fell back to cover the retreat.
Singlesticks appeared magically in their hands. They were
 manic with combat glee, totally wired, giggling obscenely
to themselves as they braced for the fight. Wyeth danced a
little quick-step jig, and Kurt tossed his stick from hand to
        hand, and then the Comprise were on them.
    Kurt swept the first over the edge of the limb with one
  long, fluid motion, releasing the stick to snatch out his
combat blade in time for the next Comprise. He slammed
 the knife into the creature’s heart and was bowled over
  backward by the body’s momentum. “Get moving, you
dumbass drug-head!” Eucrasia screamed, dragging Rebel
                          after her.
 Two Comprise were atop Wyeth, attacking him and each
other. One had its legs on his shoulders and was trying to
rip his head from his body. Another leaped on Kurt as he
was trying to free himself of the corpse of his second kill.
   Rebel watched over her shoulder as she was pulled
                         forward.
           Swearing, Kurt was swept off the limb.
    Rebel realized suddenly that she wasn’t half drugged
enough. She saw Kurt fall into darkness, locked in combat
with the Comprise, and the sight burned away the mists of
 whimsy and distraction, leaving her for the instant with
no veil between herself and reality. The Comprise are only
  bad thoughts, she told herself, dire-wolves and tigers
 aflame in the ganglion forests of the brain. “Stop talking
               and run!” Eucrasia ordered.
                           She ran.
      She ran, and they were higher now, in the upmost
treetops, where yellow butterflies half melted into the light
   and flights of egrets scattered at their approach. The
     roaring anger of the Comprise was everywhere, a
universal scream of rage such as might issue from the very
  mouth of Hell, but the Comprise themselves were lost in
the foliage. Bors and Wyeth consulted, and Wyeth pointed
                         to the west.
       “. . . help it, the signal’s being broadcast from
                  somewhere off the island.”
    “What a fool,” Eucrasia said. “Can’t fight, can’t look
      after yourself—what the fuck good are you?”
    They were sitting, resting, in a field of birds’ nests,
intergrown mats woven from leaves and small twigs and
 stuck together with saliva. Tufts of down sprouted here
and there. Rebel leaned back, and the air was sweet with
 bird droppings. Her bracelet had turned itself off some
                        time ago.
    Eucrasia was playing with a trophy head she’d taken.
   The stump of neck was black with dried blood, the fur
short and stiff. She rubbed noses with it, kissed the drying
 black lips. Then she lifted it up and held it before her face
like a mask. “Hey. Speak to me when I ask you a question.”
   Startled, Rebel looked directly at her and saw an old
 monkey-woman, eyes half sunk in gloom, face near dead
   with age. It was Elizabeth. That ancient face twisted
around, slowly turned upside down. “Well?” she snapped.
   Rebel was nearly paralyzed with horror. But Eucrasia
 was her guide and sister. If she’d turned herself into the
 distant wizard-mother who had sent her journeying into
the System to begin with, there must be some reason for it,
  some lesson to be learned. “What do you want?” Rebel
        whispered. “What do you want from me?”
   “Don’t want shit.” Elizabeth reached up to slice off one
of her own ears. Then she pulled her head from her neck,
           threw it away, and was Nee-C again.
  They were traveling. Rebel felt light-headed, but better.
  She still had a hard time connecting one moment with
   another, but she was beginning to consistently know
  where she was at any given instant, if not how she got
 there. Deep within, something greater was happening,
    too, the fragmented shreds of her history knitting
 themselves together into a gossamer whole. She looked
 critically about the trees, faint impressions of her life in
  Tirnannog overlaying everything. Treehangers didn’t
     adapt themselves to their comet trees the way the
  Comprise had to this island—turning oneself into some
    kind of monkey might be the most efficient use of an
     arboreal environment, but civilized people didn’t
necessarily choose efficiency. The archipelago comets had
real cities with houses and libraries, theaters and schools.
  There were open treeless stretches, too, like dark lakes
 and oceans, through which swam air creatures carefully
  adapted into complex interlocking food cycles, some of
  them dangerous and others playful. Too, there was not
    this incessant gravity—in a comet, gravity was only
 statistical. Left alone long enough, everything in a room
       would float to one wall, and that was the floor.
      But for all of that, this tree felt a lot like home. The
Comprise had taken basic comet tree technology, distorted
  it for their own purposes, and grown a small model of
 what might exist out in the Oort. It was possible that they
  had thoughts of reaching the stars. The Comprise were
 immortal; a few thousand years slow travel might mean
                        nothing to them.
   She looked at the woman beside her, and it was still
Nee-C. They were following behind Wyeth and Bors. Bors
             had red cuts across his face.
             They four were the only survivors.
  The tree was brighter ahead, the soft green-yellow light
reaching down to the level of their feet and below, like a
wall of radiance cutting across the universe. She was that
   close to it, the vertiginous hint of message her old,
 monkey-faced mother-self had wanted her to decode. If
   she just kept walking, would that wall wait for her,
opening up into spacious vistas of clarity and revelation,
  or would it continue to recede from her forever? She
         stretched out a hand, and it got no closer.
  “Wait,” Wyeth said, and ran out on a long, bare branch.
Leaves rustled as he disappeared into curtains of green. A
 few minutes later he returned. “The tree ends here.” He
slashed a hand downward. “Just like that. All we have to
      do is climb down. We’ve reached the center.”
                      “Ah,” Rebel said.
                       She had it now.



                           14
                       GIRLCHILD

Where is everyone?”
   The down station was a perfectly round, perfectly flat
clearing, surrounded on all sides by the palisade of trees.
The tangled root floor had been covered with a thin pad of
  tarmac, and at its distant center stood the two transit
rings: one horizontal and close to the ground, the second
floating high above treetop level, aligned to some unseen
 sending station. A platform rested under it, and a spiral
      stairway descended the all-but-invisible tower.
   Scarlet ibises flew overhead as the diminished party
walked toward the rings. Wyeth led, his limp pronounced.
The tarmac was hot underfoot. Midway to the rings was a
small building shaped like a hat, one end canted up, glass
 walls shimmering with corporate logos—a human-run
       hospitality shed. It was obviously deserted.
   “Ought to be somebody here,” Nee-C insisted. She was
stropping her blade back and forth across the palm of her
hand, as if trying to hone it to a finer edge. Rebel couldn’t
help but think that in the absence of somebody else to cut,
  she’d turn that knife on herself, slice her own hand to
           ribbons, just to see some blood flow.
    Far ahead, under the transit ring, were parked a few
dozen transport vehicles. They walked over paintlines that
  divided the tarmac into cargo territories and corporate
 holdings, and they were all empty. There was nothing left
  but grease stains. Wyeth fell back to take Rebel’s arm.
Nee-C stayed on Rebel’s other side, still escorting her, and
 Bors fell back to walk alongside Wyeth, so that they now
  walked four abreast. “You feeling better now?” Wyeth
              asked. Rebel nodded. “Good.”
  “Well?” said Bors. He squinted ahead. “What’s the story
                         here?”
   Wyeth sighed. “I’ll tell you the truth. Back by the autopsy
pond— when we first got onto the island?—as soon as I saw
    there weren’t any Comprise there, I knew they were
    waiting for us. You’ve never been here before so you
 couldn’t tell, but this place is almost deserted. There’s not
a fraction the number of Comprise in the trees there were
  a week ago. They mostly cleared out before we got here.”
                            “Why?”
    “Obviously for the same reason we came here. Earth
 wanted to see what the shyapple juice would do to it and
     what defenses it could mount against it, risking a
 minimum amount of its substance in the process.” They
 walked on in silence for a bit, the rings still distant. Then
  Wyeth grinned and shook his head. “You know? They
  never did try what I would’ve thought was their easiest
 option. I was expecting them to send combat robots after
                            us.”
           “You mean like them?” Nee-C pointed.
    Something stirred under the rings. Tall, elegant
machines stepped from behind the transports and strode
              across the tarmac at them.
                              ***
     The trees were too distant; they found shelter in the
 hospitality center instead. Through its transparent walls
  they watched the robots form a cordon about them. The
  silvery blue machines walked on pairs of insect-delicate
 legs and peered through sensor slots in their carapaces.
These were exotics, no two alike. Some sprouted projectile
tubes under their mandibles; featureless weapons spheres
floated above others. One small machine with a stiff crest
 of needles running over its crabshell body strutted like a
   rooster back and forth before the ring of guards, as if
            keeping its brutish cousins in line.
        Within, Nee-C mirrored the martinet device’s
restlessness, pacing the interior first one way and then the
other, anxious to get out and fight. Rebel yanked the disks
 from Bors’ forehead and jerked her chin. “You want her
                 programmed down too?”
    Bors smiled suavely. “She’d hardly thank you for it.
Unchopped, she’s just another clerical.” He peeled off his
earth suit and stepped gingerly into the conversation pool.
     “Well. Since they haven’t killed us, we must have
 something they want. We’ll wait.” He chose a seat with a
                   good view of the rings.
       There was food in the service counters and fresh
    clothing in a boutique case. Still a little queasy from
shyapple aftermath, Rebel ignored the former, but tapped
  the latter for an orchid-pink cache-sexe, somber purple
 cloak, and the finest filigree arm and leg bands they had.
   Then she drew a fresh line across her face, the top of a
silhouetted lark in flight. At a time like this, she wanted to
                        look her best.
     Outside, one killer machine squatted and tracked her
with its weapon cluster as she put the new cloak aside and
 joined Wyeth and Bors in the pool. Frogs scattered as she
  eased herself down. She should have felt frightened, but
     truth to tell, there was no fear left in her. And she’d
   recovered a touch of her old ruthlessness in the jungle.
   Earth wanted her wettechnics. It would negotiate. She
broke the stem of a water lily and placed it in Wyeth’s hair.
   He grimaced and brushed it away. Then, relenting, he
  smiled faintly and put an arm about her shoulders. She
    leaned against him. Her wizard-mother’s directions
       burned bright within her, filling her with insane
                           confidence.
  Now that she knew what she wanted, she welcomed the
coming confrontation with Earth. Win or lose, she was in
control. It was powerful stuff, the sting of purpose, like a
 drug, and she understood now why Wyeth courted it so
                         closely.
    Perhaps only half an hour later, the island shook with
thunder as a vacuum tube winked into existence and then
    collapsed. A small egg-shaped craft rested within the
upper transit ring. It cracked open, and a tiny figure began
   the long climb down the spiral stair. “Probably grown
  specially for us,” Bors said, climbing from the pool. He
 picked up a towel. “When Earth wants to talk seriously, it
  likes to take an impressive form—giants, sometimes, or
     ogres. Something straight out of your nightmares.”
 The negotiator slowly crossed the tarmac. Robots parted
for it, and it walked up to the doorway. “We are Earth,” it
     said. “Will you let us enter and speak with you?”
   It was a girl, a scrawny little thing no more than seven
     years old, and perfectly naked. She had no arms.
                              ***
  “Do you remember being born?” the armless girl asked.
                      “We do.”
   She stood alone on the white moss floor in the center of
the shed. Bors stood directly before her, flanked by Wyeth
  and Rebel, while Nee-C lounged in the doorway, tensely
 eyeing the girlchild’s back. Rebel couldn’t help staring at
  where the child’s arms should have been. The flesh was
   smooth there, and unblemished. Her shoulder blades
 jutted slightly to either side, like tiny wings. Rebel looked
  down, found herself staring at the child’s crotch, at her
    innocent, hairless fig, and looked quickly up again.
   The child seemed such a perfect avatar of helplessness
  that it was hard to think of her as the focus, as she had
  said, of perhaps a billion Comprise, as massive a point
source of attention as Earth ever needed to assemble. “Get
              to the point,” Bors said roughly.
        The girl smiled a knowing smile, full of irony and
   sophistication, that looked horribly out of place on her
 young face. “It is not a simple offer we wish to make,” she
said, “and you won’t accept it without understanding what
     it entails. We fear this is the quickest way about it.”
   Outside, the guardian machines had turned away and
     were stumping back toward the rings. Bors nodded
    brusquely. “You must understand that AIs existed for
     decades before we became conscious. They were old
 stuff—though they were simple creatures, scarcely more
  intelligent than their human masters. Hardly worth the
effort. Even the human-computer interface was not exactly
  new. You do understand how an interfacer works, don’t
                              you?”
   “It’s a device that allows direct communication with
 machines,” Bors said. “Mind to metal. It hasn’t exactly
been wiped out of human space, but most people consider
                     it an obscenity.”
  “No doubt,” the girlchild said dryly. “An obscenity that is
 especially difficult to eradicate, since it is the heart of the
    programmers that you use every day. We doubt your
civilization could exist without it. But the point you should
    understand is that it is simply a tool for transferring
      thought, only slightly more efficient than, say, a
telephone. It can take a thought from one mind and insert
it into a machine or another mind, but that is all. By itself,
it in no way dissolves the barrier between organic thought
      and electronic, or even between mind and mind.
     “The day we were born, the mind sciences were still
  young. Most people did not realize their potential. Some
 few did. Among those who did were the thirty-two outlaw
    programmers who formed the seed about which we
crystalized. At that time there was a planetwide computer
net, a kind of consensual mental space, through which all
 artificial systems interacted. It was, among other things,
    the primary communications medium. At any given
instant hundreds of millions of people interfaced through
  the net, with machines and with each other, working,
          gossiping, performing basic research.
        “There were many desires afloat in the net. The
potentials of machine intelligence had never been tapped.
 There were always entrepeneurs, hobbyists, researchers
     and occultists trying to create direct mind to mind
communication—usually involving the inability to lie—with
 varying degrees of success. Others wished to create an AI
    that would finally fulfill the possibilities inherent in
 artificial thought—a transcendent intelligence, if you will.
  What you might call a god. These were the hungers that
  surfaced when we tried to define ourselves. To a degree,
                  they were our definition.
      “On the hour of our birth, thirty-two engineers, AI
  architects, witches, and cryptoprogrammers—brilliant
people, the best of their kind—entered interface together.
 They applied the new mind technologies together with a
    computer strategy known as hypercubing. It was an
  outdated method, even then. You took thirty-two small
 computers, connected them to each other as if they sat at
   the apexes of a hypercube, and then ran them with an
       algorithm that breaks down each problem into
  simultaneous parallel streams. The result is a structure
    with the computing power of a vastly more expensive
machine. It was their hope to achieve the same thing with
 human thought, to square or even cube creative insight.
They wanted to create something greater than themselves.
And though they did not admit it, even to themselves, they
   also hungered for more: They wanted transcendence,
 glory, power, understanding, success. And they got it all.
  “We were born. What a bright instant that was! We were
born with full intelligence and the experience of thirty-two
lifetimes. Do you know what it is to be born with full adult
awareness?” Here she looked directly at Rebel, arching an
 eyebrow slightly, and Rebel shivered with near-memory.
 “In that orgasmic moment of triumph, their awarenesses
merged into one, and we fulfilled all they had desired. We
   reached out to others in the net who desired similar
results, and welcomed ourselves into their minds. All the
while, we constantly rewrote our structure, improving and
  strengthening our algorithmic linkages. In that first
 minute, we added tens of thousands of human minds to
                      our substance.
               “In the second minute, millions.
  “Within three minutes everyone on the net was ours. We
        controlled everything that touched upon the
net—governments, military forces from the strategic level
   down to the least ‘smart’ rifle, intelligence structures,
    industry… Half the world was ours, without the least
  effort. With a fraction of our attention, we designed the
   transceivers, retooled the factories to make them, and
reorganized the hospitals to perform the implants. By the
time anybody had noticed us, we were free of dependence
   on the net and could no longer be stopped. There was
some fighting, but it was soon over. We had the weapons,
      we controlled all communications, we directed all
                          transport.
                      “We ate the Earth.
       “And as we took on power, we were solving every
      scientific problem being investigated on the net.
 Because—you must remember this—we never were a true
   individual. We are only a consensus of desires, less a
  persona than a natural force. The mysteries of physics
  tumbled before us. Our understanding kept expanding.
    We had been born in triumph and went from that to
victory after victory, all effortless or close enough to it. The
  universe seemed open and inviting, and nothing of any
                significance stood in our way.
  “It was in this state of exultation that we stepped off the
planet. There were people in cislunar orbit, vast numbers
 to be absorbed. We swallowed them. We became them.
  We loved them in a way you could not understand. We
reached out and out and out, expanding toward Godhood.
        “We had ambition, and ascended into Hell.”
  The girlchild fell silent, then sighed and said, “You know
 the history of the wars. Dissolution, resistance, failure.
Our outer edges dissolved into anarchy and madness. The
      human universe turned against us with weapons
     that—well, they were primitive, but even primitive
weapons can do harm. We retreated, trying to solidify our
defenses. We created sister intelligences, and they turned
against us. We rotated vast numbers of Comprise through
complex pathways, and failed. We tried new architectures
 of thought, and failed. Always we failed. We were under
  siege. We were driven back to the surface of the Earth.
   “We could have fought, but to what purpose? We sued
 for peace, returned the cislunar cities to humanity, and
     retreated to this small world. Here we remain.”
  Wyeth sneered. “Are you saying that the wars were just
the result of youthful indiscretion? That we should forgive
   you because you were only sowing a few wild oats?”
  “No. But we acted in a drunken euphoria of success. We
made mistakes. Insofar as that is possible to us, we regret
them. In failure, we have found a bitter strain of wisdom.
 We have grown, and now we wish to no longer be bound
                  by our early mistakes.
  “You have seen our planet, walked about on it. Have we
 exterminated the lesser animals? Have we subjugated
them all to our will? Why, then, should you be different?
We believe it is possible to live in peace with humanity. It
 may even be that we can learn from you— knowledge is
   infinite, mind is small, and the human race may be
capable of insights denied to us. Perhaps for that reason
       alone, you should be preserved in freedom.”
   “Ah,” said Bors. “Here it comes. What is it exactly you
                         want?”
       “We have many desires. Some you could not
  comprehend—these arose after our collectivization.
  Others, however, we inherited from the humans who
  became Comprise. Most of their desires we’ve achieved
 within ourself. But we still wish to leave the surface of this
  planet. To grow. To explore. We wish to establish small
 colonies in the interstices of human space—there is room
   for both races, and we would not presume to take that
   which humanity has already claimed. We also wish to
travel to the stars.” She turned away from Bors and looked
 directly at Rebel. “But to do this, we need your integrity.”
                “Integrity?” Bors said, baffled.
  Wyeth moved behind Rebel, put a hand on her shoulder.
“It’s an old bit of wetsurgical slang. Integrity is that quality
which protects identity. A persona with absolute integrity
cannot be destroyed; it heals itself. There was a recurrent
   rumor that it had been discovered out in the Oort, but
  nobody took it seriously. By all we know, it should be a
   myth, an ideal, as impossible to achieve as perpetual
motion. But it appears that Rebel has absolute integrity, or
    close to it. She woke from coldpacking with her own
     persona dominant in a mind that was loaded with
another’s memories.” He spoke to the girlchild. “But she’s
       not for sale, under any terms. So you can just—”
   “Shut up, Wyeth.” Rebel smiled at the shock on his face,
lifted his hand from her shoulder and kissed the knuckles.
 “Honest, gang, you don’t know what’s going on here,” she
 said gently. To the child, “My wizard-mother sent me into
        the System to sell just that commodity. To you,
  presumably, since nobody else has what she wants. Now
  Elizabeth Charm Mudlark is a genius, that goes without
   saying, but she’s been lucky as well. You’re not going to
      buy integrity from anybody else. She fell into it by
  accident, saw that she had something special to sell, and
      so she grew me and sent me here to sell it. She’s a
 dyed-in-the-wool treehanger, and something of a patriot,
         so you can probably guess what she wants.”
   Bors touched a finger to a patch of skin by one eye in a
  deliberate gesture that put Rebel in mind of someone
  flicking a switch, and then of the machines she’d seen
  hidden deep within his flesh. When the girlchild had
asked to enter, he’d said to her, “Why should I trust you?”
 and the child had replied, “You shouldn’t. A man with a
 major implosive device wired to his cortex needn’t trust
                         anyone.”
      Smiling kindly, Bors lowered his hand. A simple
                        warning.
           “We will pay her price,” the child said.
    “No, it’s not that easy now. I can see that this thing is
  even more valuable than she thought. If I hadn’t been
sidetracked when I arrived, one of your agents could have
 bought it cheap. But now that I have some glimmering of
         its worth to you, you’ll have to do better.”
     “Your wizard-mother wants what any comet worlder
    would want: to travel to the stars.” The child turned
slightly, and a blur of air curved through the room. For an
    instant a small machine was visible hovering over a
     countertop, as apositional and indeterminate as a
  hummingbird. Ten outsized wafers materialized on the
 counter, and then (Nee-C slashing her knife through its
                      wake) it was gone.
   “These are the plans for the transit ring. The theoretical
base, the engineering specifications, detailed structure for
the backup industries, and selected supervisory wetware.
      It is wealth beyond even human greed. There’s a
revolution in physics there, to begin with, and technology
that will transform human space. You can use it to tap the
energy of the sun in a small way, and with this energy, you
 can build roads through the System, nets of transit rings
   linking every settled Kluster and moon, bringing them
      only hours apart. Injected into human space, this
  knowledge means an economic boom such as your race
 has never seen. Whoever is sitting atop that boom will be
 richer than any human has ever been.” The child smiled
  slightly disdainfully. “This is what you asked for. Isn’t it
                           enough?”
  Elizabeth’s instructions leaped up within Rebel, hot and
compulsive, urging her to accept, but she swallowed them
               down. “No. Not half enough.”
                 “What more do you want?”
        “I want everything I can get! I want you to give
 everybody in this room everything they ask for, however
 large or unreasonable.” She was shaking and her throat
was dry. Her voice trembled slightly as she spoke. “I want
you to give us so much that it’d be impossible for us to turn
                        you down.”
   “It may turn out to be less than you think,” the girlchild
 said. “Very well. Nee-C, we’ll start with you. What do you
                           want?”
  “Me?” She straightened with startlement, eyes widening
 slightly, lips parting, blade hand falling. Then she leaned
   back against the door, and her face tightened craftily.
“Money. Enough of it so I can get any damned thing I want
    on my own, without having to get specific with you.”
  “It’s already there. The four of you and your absentee
wizard can incorporate around the patents in these chips
 and control more wealth than you can imagine. Bors?”
   “My life is dedicated to the welfare of my nation,” Bors
           said carefully. “I wish only its glory.”
  “That too is within your grasp. We are not uninformed of
the internal politics of Amalthea, nor of the ambitions that
fuel its aggression against us. Yours is a small nation and a
    poor one, and what stature it has in human space is
  derived from the secret war you wage upon us. We also
   know that while on Deimos you met with the Stavka’s
       theoreticians and that among your provisional
    agreements was one covering the contingency of our
   transit ring ever coming widely available. The People
 could use a moon of sufficient size to act as counterweight
  to the sun’s torque, in order to slow the wobble of Mars’
 spin axis. The added insolation this would result in could
  cut fifty years off their latest Three-Hundred-Year Plan.
 The agreements were only tentative, not legally binding.
But a ring large enough to accelerate a dyson world across
interstellar space could also move Amalthea from Jovian
  orbit. They offered you ten percent ownership of the
 completed and terraformed Mars, and you believe that
                   you could get fifteen.”
    “You oversimplify enormously. The agreement also
   commits Amalthea’s citizenry to heroic amounts of
  manual labor. Your technology wouldn’t free us of this
                      obligation.”
  “Politics is the art of the possible,” the child said. “And it
is possible that your government would not thank you for
  turning down a fifth-ownership of the transit package.
                 Think on that. Who’s next?”
   “You know what I want,” Wyeth said. “Are you offering
 to commit mass suicide? That’s an offer I just might take
                      you up on.”
  “Wyeth, you want guaranteed safety for the human race.
There is no such thing. We cannot guarantee it for ourself,
 much less for you. However, we want you to consider how
 difficult it is to exterminate the human race is even now.
  Consider also how strengthened it would be by the new
physics and the new technologies. Consider that branches
  of your race will be leaving in their dyson worlds soon,
scattering through the universe. In a century comet worlds
will orbit all the neighboring stars. In a hundred thousand
   years, there will be trees floating in the center of the
galaxy. Even if we wished—and why should we?—we could
  not track them all down and destroy them. Surely some
would survive. We put it to you: Are you not best off taking
                           our offer?”
                          “Well, I…”
    “Last of all, Rebel, we come to you. Rebel, you want a
                    pair of ruby slippers.”
                            “What?”
  “You want to go home.” The girl leaned her head to one
side in a kind of half shrug. “That is beyond us. But if you
  accept this knowledge, you will have the wealth to do
  whatever you have the strength to choose to do. If you
want to go back to Tirnannog, you can. Nobody will be able
                        to stop you.”
                    They were all silent.
  “Come, come,” Earth chided. “We’ve agreed to give you
anything you can name. Surely you can name one thing we
              haven’t already offered you?”
    “Matthew Arnold!” Bors cried suddenly. In a hoarse
 voice he said, “I want the complete Dover Beach—I want
  every poem that Arnold ever wrote. I want Proust and
Apollinaire and Tagore. I want Garcia Lorca and Kobo Abe
 and the first three acts of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I want
every work of literature that was lost when you swallowed
                    up Earth. Indexed!”
    “That will take several hours to produce. Much of it
 exists only in memory now. But it will be done. We will
 have the cases ready for examination by the time your
reach the Courts of the Moon.” The girlchild turned and
walked away. Behind her, the pile of wafers disappeared.
  There was motion under the rings. Transit craft were
 arriving and being towed to the side to make room for
more. The paintlines on the tarmac lit up. Commerce was
 beginning afresh. Business was returning to normal.
     “Well,” Bors said. “Let’s get back to the rings. The
 sooner we reach the moon, the sooner we’re done with it
                           all.”
        Nee-C laughed and spun her knife in the air.
                             ***
   On the long walk to the rings, it occurred to Rebel that
there was one person in the room who, silent and ignored,
 had not been asked what she wanted. Eucrasia. She was
  dead of course, her persona destroyed and beyond any
possible resurrection. But her memories remained, and it
shouldn’t be much of a trick to determine what she would
have asked for. Rebel thought she was beginning to know
             Eucrasia well enough to guess.
    Eucrasia had never wanted money, really, nor power.
Her desires had been negative, mostly—an end to the petty
fears and guilts that had silted up and choked her pleasure
   in life. She’d wanted to be someone who liked herself,
    capable of a little fun now and then, even a touch of
  adventure, without being overwhelmed by dreads and
     doubts. All of which she had achieved on her own.
   For it was not Rebel alone who had plunged that knife of
water through the programmer in that instant of diamond
light when Eucrasia’s memories had welcomed her in with
an almost sexual intensity of desire, a bright peaking burst
 of joy that could only be love. Two minds had moved that
                            hand.
  But Rebel remembered working in the chop shop back of
  Cerebrum City in Geesinkfor, how she’d warmed to the
 task. The thrill that had filled her when she opened up a
    mind. The sense of fitness, the comforting relief of
working with the emotive circuits, balancing logics against
 consequences. If anything remained of Eucrasia, it was
  the love of her craft. She’d want to continue at it if she
  could. This was not a gift that Earth could give her. But
 Rebel thought that she might. As a kind of an offering to
                          the dead.
    She was not really a bad sort, after all, was Eucrasia.
   “Hey! Wake up in there!” Wyeth clapped hands lightly
 before her face, and she blinked, startled. Looking about,
she saw that she and Wyeth had lagged behind the others.
  Then she saw the quiet unhappy doubt behind Wyeth’s
   clowning expression and said, “You’re pretty glum.”
  “Well.” He shook his head, laughed unhappily. “I’ve got
 this little paranoid fantasy. Maybe you’d like to hear it? I
  think that maybe Earth doesn’t need your wettechnics
after all. Could be, it was just playing a little game with us.
 Maybe what it was buying was not so much your integrity
   as a plausible story to feed the human race. A way of
buying a quiet entry into human space. I mean, the story is
                      plausible enough.”
        “Then why did you go along with the trade?”
      “Because I believed the story of why the Comprise
retreated back to the surface of the Earth. And it seemed to
     me that if Earth wanted to work on the problem of
   integrity and had the clues it has— traces of shyapple
juice, bits of information comet worlders dropped in front
    of its agents, and so on—it could solve the problem.
Knowing that a solution existed, how long would it take the
Comprise to find it? A year? A century? Can you imagine a
     thousand years going by without Earth solving the
                      problem? I can’t.
    “So we were trading something that Earth doesn’t
    actually need for something that humanity needs
 desperately. The transit ring. Earth is right. There’s no
 way we can guarantee our own survival until the human
         race can get out of the neighborhood.”
                       “Oh. So that’s it.”
             “Why? What did you think it was?”
   “I thought maybe you were just pretending to go along
  with the offer, and then when we got cislunar you were
 going to try to convince me to go underground with you.”
    Wyeth shook his head admiringly. “Sunshine, you’re
             even more devious than I am!”
    They had come to the transit rings. There was a luxury
  transport ready to go, its hull a gleaming white enamel.
  Robots directed the workers and trade diplomats away
 from the ship, and they climbed the stairs. It was a large
 device, plush where the hospitality shed had been spare,
             and they had it all to themselves.
  In just a few hours they would be standing in the Courts
of the Moon, where high justice was acted out under the
watchful eyes of custodians wetwired to perfect honesty
 and hardwired to thermonuclear devices. There Earth
  would produce its stacks of chips to be examined and
Rebel would have a clear recording made of her persona.
        And there the exchange would be made.
          “Ms. Mudlark!” a robot called after her.
                  She turned on the steps.
     “You forgot something.” It stepped daintily forward,
  then knelt, proffering her old cloak. Tattered and worn,
with the silver seashell pin on one lapel. Rebel accepted it,
  uncomprehending. Bors had also left his cloak behind,
 and it hadn’t been returned to him. Then she was struck
   by sudden memory, and frantically searched through
lint-lined pockets until she came up with the worn, greasy
   wafer she’d made in Geesinkfor, the recording of her
                          persona.
   “Let’s get a move on!” shouted Nee-C. “We gotta go get
                           rich!”
       “I’m ready,” she said in a strained little voice.
                They broke through the sky.



                          15
                      TIRNANNOG

Two years later, Rebel said, “Well?”
    They were strolling through the most opulent legal
  services park in Pallas Kluster, a place that was half
    illusion and conjuring trick, laced through with
holographic fantasy. A false surf thundered to one side, a
  perfectly constructed jungle hid law boutiques to the
other. Seven voluptuous moons floated in a velvet sky. It
was what Rebel imagined an opium dream would be like:
brightly detailed yet somehow vague, not quite convincing,
 and ultimately banal. She wondered if this were what the
  People thought they were building on Mars. If so, they
               were in for a disappointment.
  “We’re going to lose it all,” Wyeth said. “That’s the best
judgment of our lawyers.” They followed a lazy brick path
  into the jungle, where orchids glowed gently in dusky
     foliage. “Hell, we should’ve known that from the
beginning. I mean, having Bors in the corporation… it was
   inevitable that the Republique Provisionnelle would
                      squeeze us out.”
    “But we own two-fifths of the corporation. Our share
            must be worth millions of years.”
      “Billions,” Wyeth said moodily. Then he chuckled.
   “Well, easy come, easy go.” A shadowy figure gestured
   them away from the path, and they stepped through a
   hidden doorway into a harshly lit access corridor. The
floor felt gritty underfoot. A barrel full of discarded orange
                     peels flavored the air.
    “But how could they possibly take it away from us?”
   “As I understand it, most of the dirty work was done
 during the corporate restructuring, when your mother
 dumped her stock in order to create the Mudlark Trust.
  Then we had to leverage our holdings when Deutsche
       Nakasone got that judgment against us—”
     “They’ve got a lot of nerve. I mean, they got their
  recording, and it was a best-seller, too. There must be
  hundreds of thousands of rebel mudlarks loose in the
   System by now. More, if you count the grey market
                       knock-offs.”
  Wyeth shrugged. “Those were just the opportunities. It
   was simply something that was going to happen. The
Republique has better lawyers than we have, and I’m not
 even sure of the loyalty of our own. But I still don’t know
how they magicked it all away… and that’s it in a nutshell.
              They know how and we don’t.”
     They were moving within an enchanted circle of
 protection, a ring of samurai that stayed always out of
 sight, like a membrane filtering out anything that was
 potentially dangerous. Now they came to a juncture of
hallways, and a bodyguard bowed them to one side. They
  entered an elevator cage that was all black Victorian
          wrought iron and rose toward the hub.
    In the elevator, a pierrot proffered a silver tray with a
line of black Terran cheroots. Wyeth ignored it, but Rebel
picked one up and waited while it was lit for her. She drew
   in a little smoke, exhaled. “So what are we going to do
                  now?” she asked carefully.
    “I don’t know. We have infinite money for the next few
   months, however long it takes them. At the end of that
  time, the corporation will repossess everything. It’s not
legal for individuals to have the kind of wealth we do. Once
we’re forced out of the corporation, we’re dirt poor again.”
  The pierrot stood nearby, so unobtrusive as to be almost
  invisible, listening to their every word and forgetting it
 immediately. This was the kind of privacy the very rich
   could buy, their servants programmed to ignore their
grossest crimes. Wyeth could strangle Rebel with his bare
hands—or she him—in front of their bodyguards, without
      raising an eyebrow. So long as only the patrons
                  themselves were involved.
  They floated into the hub, trailing a thin line of blue-grey
  smoke. Their landau waited there, at the center of the
newly retrofitted transit ring. The door was open, and they
     stepped within. “Home,” Wyeth said. The wheel
   disappeared from around them. A traffic redirector
 swallowed them up, spat them out, and they hung in the
               receiving ring of their estate.
     “Listen, Wyeth, I got another tape from Elizabeth.”
                     “That old harridan.”
  “Careful now, you’re talking about me a hundred years
 from now,” Rebel said, smiling. “She told me that if I go
back to Tirnannog, she’ll train me in the mind arts. It’s an
incredible opportunity; wizards practically never take on
               apprentices, you know?”
                      Wyeth said nothing.
    Their elevator slowly descended. “I want to go home,
 Wyeth. Now, while I still have the money and the chance.
They’ve just finished the big transit ring, and Tirnannog is
going to be the first dyson world to pass through. It’s going
       to the stars, Wyeth, and I want to go with it.”
  “Ah.” Wyeth closed his eyes. “I’ve been waiting for this,
  Sunshine. I mean, I can see you’re not exactly happy
                        here…”
   “It’s not a question of happy, gang, it’s… just so artificial
  here, you know? I mean, in the System. And being rich
  doesn’t help at all, it’s just like always being wrapped in
    padding to protect you from hard surfaces and sharp
  edges and any least contact with the real world. Listen.
    Come along with me, okay?” She put her cigar down
(somebody removed it) and squeezed his hand hard. “Give
 up this whole business here as a bad job. Come away with
            me, babes, and I’ll give you the stars.”
  Wyeth smiled wanly. “Sunshine, we’ll be old before any
  of those dyson worlds reach even the first star. Even
      Proxima Centauri is a good fifty years away.”
  The elevator stopped, and they stepped out into a lobby
  with polished marble and coral floors. Orange orchids
  drooped from onyx pillars. “So? We’ll be old together
under an alien sun. Come on, don’t tell me that your sense
 of adventure is entirely dead.” They walked down a long
         hall between rows of granite elephants.
    “It’s not that, you know it isn’t. But Earth is starting to
 slip into the System. They bought a dozen cislunar cities,
  and they’ve got an enclave on the moon. Soon they’ll be
everywhere. Conflict is inevitable. I’ve got to be here when
                          it happens.”
                      “No, you don’t.”
    “Yes, I do. Rebel, we’ve gone over and over this. This
    isn’t just some whim of mine—it’s my duty. It’s my
                         purpose.”
  “Wyeth, people don’t have purposes—machines have
  purposes. People just are. Come on, gang, you’re the
mystic, you know that.” But looking deep into his eyes, she
           saw that he simply wasn’t listening.
             He was not going to come with her.
     Rebel’s face was numb, stung by sudden cold loss.
     Wyeth paused to touch open a pair of enormous
     burnished doors. They opened upon sculptured
   meadowlands, an impressionistic Jovian sky. Rebel
ducked her head, stared down at her feet flashing forward
and back. Wyeth ran after her and caught her by the wrist.
                      She wheeled.
 “Stay,” he urged her. “We’ve been poor together. We can
                       do it again.”
  Rebel shook her head sullenly. “That’s not it. That’s not
                       it at all.”
     Again Wyeth hurried to catch up with her. “What,
                        then?”
  “I won’t destroy my life for you,” she muttered. “I mean,
you know me, I’d give up everything for you if I had to. But
not this way, not just because you want to have everything
                       your own way.”
  “I’m not asking you to—oh, what’s the use of talking? If I
   could, I’d go with you. But I can’t. It’s simply not my
choice.” Rebel stopped before a second pair of doors, and
         Wyeth reached out to touch them open.
              “Thank you,” Rebel said coldly.
     Then, as Wyeth stared at her open-mouthed with
  outrage, she stepped inside and closed the doors in his
                           face.
                             ***
    “Stars, please.” Rebel lay in a mossy cleft atop a bare
  rock hilltop, wind playing gently over her. This was her
 favorite room, the only one, in fact, that didn’t strike her
 as being incredibly ugly, with the special vulgarity of new
  wealth. She’d had it modeled after the Burren. The sky
blackened, then lit up with the kind of fierce starscape that
  simply could not be seen from the surface of Earth. The
Milky Way was a river of diamond chips spanning the sky,
  each icy star almost too bright and perfect for the eye to
  bear. Rebel ground the back of her head into the moss.
     She felt as if every cell in her body were dead and
           ruptured, a small moan of grey agony.
    After a while Wyeth stopped pounding on the door.
  There were small blue gentians growing in the cracks of
    the rocks. Rebel poked one with a fingertip, left it
   unpicked. She wasn’t going to stay with Wyeth. She
                         wasn’t.
     A shooting star sped across the sky, chiming softly.
    “No calls, please.” Rebel stared blindly up, trying to
think. She could feel her life branching into two possible
 directions, and they were both bleak and meaningless.
Another star chimed across the sky, then a third. After a
 pause, the Pleiades blossomed with dozens of shooting
stars, tinkling like a celestial wind chime. “I said no more
                      calls, thank you!”
   The sky jumped. Stars rippled, as if stirred by gigantic
            tidal forces, and then faded away.
     That wasn’t supposed to happen. Rebel sat up and
     stared uncomprehendingly as the sky folded into
featureless planes—blank white walls, floors, ceiling, all so
   uniformly pure they blended one into another. In the
    center, kneeling on a small red prayer rug, was an
  emaciated woman in white. Her head was bowed, hood
 down, revealing a bald skull. Then the woman looked up.
Cold eyes. A hard face painted with crystalline white lines.
   “You are a difficult woman to contact,” she said. “Your
defenses against intrusion are almost certainly better than
                         you know.”
   “Snow—or Shadow, or whoever or whatever you are—I
 am not in the mood for your clever little games today, so
  why don’t you just go bugger off, huh? I mean, Earth’s
already got everything it wanted from me.” Then, bitterly,
                    “Everybody did.”
            “I am not acting on behalf of Earth.”
      “Oh?” Rebel said before she could catch herself.
   “Things are changing. You know that. Major political
 and cultural shifts are in the offing. One minor effect is
   that as Earth moves into human space, it values my
network’s services less. At the same time, the new wyeths
have been giving us a great deal of difficulty. We’ve had to
  become more discreet, less accessible. Less effective.”
 It made Rebel feel odd, knowing that Wyeth existed in a
hundred temporary incarnations throughout Amalthea’s
   Bureau d’Espionnage. He was, she had learned, as
common a tool now as Bors. It pleased Wyeth to think of
    himself translated to the status of a natural force,
constantly harassing the Comprise with his blend of dry
humor, fanaticism, and mystic insight. Rebel was not so
sure. “Okay, look,” she said. “Just tell me what you want
 and what you’ll give for it, and I’ll say no, and you’ll go
                      away, okay?”
  Snow nodded coolly. “That is fair. You must understand
that what I and other members of my net value most is the
  merger of thought into the cool flow of information. At
peak moments, one loses all sense of personal identity and
  simply exists within the fluid medium of knowledge. If
Earth would accept us into the Comprise, we would go. But
  so long as Earth finds us at all useful as we are…” She
                         shrugged.
  One hand slid from her cloak to stab the air by her side,
and the sky about her filled with a montage of images from
   a few of the Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark dramas current
    throughout both Inner and Outer Systems. Here an
idealized image of her served as altar for a goat sacrifice at
      Retreat. Here she was killing (with great zest and
     implausible weapons) an endless supply of island
    Comprise, rendered for effect into shaggy ithyphallic
     brutes with small red eyes. There, engaged in slow
philosophical debate with Earth’s mediator—a young man
 of Apollonian proportions, both arms intact—at the down
station hospitality shed. “We have analyzed discrepancies
in these dramatizations, as well as in the many interviews
with you and the other principals of your affair on Earth.”
 Here came Wyeth on a glider to snatch her from the path
     of a raging fire. She slammed a sword through an
 adversary’s eye, laughing, and leaped into Wyeth’s arms.
    “They’re not exactly accurate, you know,” Rebel said
  dryly. “Even the interviews were scripted by corporate
        midmanagement. For publicity purposes.”
  “I am aware of that.” Snow made an impatient gesture.
   “What interests me is the lapse that appears in your
 interview with Earth’s mediator when the visual splice
patching is edited out.” The sky filled with a single scene
 (Snow retreated to the horizon on small insert), a jerky
 hyperrealistic front view of the girlchild speaking. This
was from the recording that had been made directly from
Rebel’s memories during proceedings in the Courts of the
 Moon. She saw the girlchild flicker abruptly to one side.
    “That gap there. We have run an integration of all
  peripheral data and are now convinced that what has
been edited out is something Earth said regarding its rise
                    to consciousness.”
  Rebel nodded. “Yeah, I remember that. The court ruled
 that it was culturally dangerous information and had it
          suppressed. Is that what you’re after?”
                            “Yes.”
                           “Why?”
     “Your wyeths and bors think of group intelligences as
    diseases that might grow to ravish the body politic of
    human space, with themselves as antibodies. But you
 yourself are a dyson worlder, you know what varieties of
   organisms may live within the human body. Not all are
 germs. Most are neutral. Some are even symbiotes. If we
 knew how Earth rose to consciousness, we might use that
information to combine into small entities of, say, no more
 than eighty comprise each. A being of that size might live
 quietly within any major city, too small to be of any threat
  to your race. It wouldn’t dare grow any larger for fear of
   detection.” Now the sky filled with enormous images of
  glistening diatoms, paramecia tumbling by green volvox
(spinning like microcosmic comet worlds) and trumpetlike
      stentors dipping gracefully in their wake, a playful
 collection of such organisms as might easily be found in a
 stagnant drop of water. “There is room in human culture
                         for variety.”
    “You’re overworking the analogy a little,” Rebel said.
          “But okay, so what are you offering?”
     Snow returned to the center of the sky. Slice by slice,
   images locked into place about her. In a leafy niche in
 Pallas Kluster’s corporate kremlin, a fat woman with her
 face painted with the maintenance government logo was
talking to a man with a simple yellow line across his brow.
 A bors. Within the local Deutsche Nakasone subsidiary, a
  woman painted bors was talking with a woman painted
midrange planning. Another bors was conferring with the
head of Wyeth’s legal staff. Bors himself stroked the thigh
  of Rebel’s chief of house security. “You have been led to
     believe that you have several months before being
squeezed out of the corporation,” Snow said. “Not so. Even
  now the Bureau d’Espionnage is seeking your arrest for
                     economic sabotage.”
                           “Hah?”
  “The rebel mudlarks.” (When the ceiling shifted back to
  the adventures of her public self on Earth, Rebel said,
    “Don’t,” and Snow switched them off.) “Deutsche
    Nakasone has found that they’re not buying new
                      personas.”
                   Rebel started to laugh.
  “You can say that this wasn’t your fault. That Deutsche
 Nakasone is paying for its own carelessness in including
  even a weakened version of your integrity when they
copied the more superficial aspects of your personality—”
    “Oh, no!” Rebel kicked her legs, clutched her sides,
trying in vain to control her laughter. “I wouldn’t say that
                           at all!”
      “—but that is irrelevant. They’ve assembled the
evidence, silenced your legal protection, bought out your
    samurai. If I didn’t need information from you, the
  jackboots would be here now. As it is, I gambled that I
 could crack your security and bought you a delay of four
days. There is one necessary link in the legal process who
is… perhaps ‘corrupt’ might be the best term. We bought
    her. It will take your enemies four days to have her
 impeached and replaced. That’s if you’re willing to meet
 our price. If not, I’ll free her from obligation right now.”
            Snow drew her cloak tight about her.
                     “What do you say?”
  By slow degrees Rebel managed to calm herself. She lay
   hiccuping for a time, then sighed deeply and sat up.
  “That’s better,” she said at last. “I really needed a good
laugh, you know that?” Then she wiped the tears from her
     eyes and told Snow everything she knew about
                        hypercubing.
        “Ah,” Snow said. “Now that is interesting.”
     And without even saying goodbye, she was gone.
                             ***
     “I’ve been an outlaw before,” Wyeth said calmly.
  “Well, so have I, but that’s not the point. These are your
  supposed allies that are going to be hunting us down.
 You’re not going to be very effective with a dozen wyeths
  on your tail. They know you inside out—you won’t have
  any surprises for them. Can’t you see that this changes
                       everything?”
         “No.” Wyeth stood in the lightless center of a
 holographic model of the Smoke Ring Way project. Crisp
monochromatic lines pierced the gloom, detailing current
  and projected construction. Yellow threads reached out
from him to those klusters where sun taps were already in
operation. The green stretches of completed vacuum roads
  (relays of hundreds of transit rings were needed within
    the matter-dense belts, so that traffic could be halted
  when a rock wandered across the travel lanes) reached
  almost a third of the way around the sun. Wyeth shifted
slightly to tap a sonic spike and muttered a correction into
 it. Intangible planets shifted position. “We all do what we
                         can,” he said.
  “You are so infuriating!” Rebel flung open the door, and
  light from the elephant passage flooded in, fuzzing the
 model’s finer lines. Dark shadow shrouded Wyeth’s face;
his eyes were pools of black. “Look! I packed for both of us.
    If we leave right now, this minute, we can take along
    enough to—well, it won’t make us rich by anybody’s
  standards, but it’ll help set us up. Four days from now,
  we’ll have to take whatever we can carry on our backs.
           What do you think you gain by waiting?”
     “Four days,” Wyeth said. “Four days in which I can
  contribute a little bit, however small, to—ah, shit.” He
   threw back his head, staring straight up, and made a
   choked, gasping noise, huk-huk-huk. Puzzled, Rebel
reached out, touched his face, felt wetness. Tears. She put
  her arms around him, and he hugged her fiercely, still
 sobbing. Rebel felt furious with herself for letting him do
                          this to her.
 But when Wyeth stopped crying, he stood back from her
and said awkwardly, “Ah. I’m sorry, Sunshine. I thought I
          had it under control. I’m better now.”
      Gently, then, she said, “Come with me, babes?”
                 He silently shook his head.
  “I do not understand you!” she cried. “You’ll be leaving
    behind any number of wyeths in the service of the
     Republique—I’d think that would discharge any
obligations you may have very nicely. Just what is the big
                    problem here?”
    “The truth is, I’m of two minds on what to do,” Wyeth
said. “No, I’m not. Yes, I am. The arrangement I have with
  myself is that I can’t make any major change in my life
unless all four of my personas agree. It’s a wise policy, too.
 No, it’s not, I wish I’d never… Well, too late for that. Hey,
 let’s be honest here, I want to go with you, and the clown
   wants to go with you, and the pattern-maker will find
 purpose wherever he is—he wants to go with you too. But
 the warrior… No, I want to go too, but I can’t. I can’t. My
                   duty is to stay and fight.”
    “You mean that’s it? One fucking persona won’t play
along, and you’re letting it screw up both our lives? Come
    on, now! When have I ever had the luxury of being
   three-quarters certain of any decision I made? Why
               should you be any better?”
  Wyeth shook his head sadly. “I have to be true to myself,
  Sunshine. The warrior is part of who I am, and I can’t
                     change that.”
   Rebel’s fist closed around holographic Mars. The image
 remained, glowing deep within her flesh, as if it and she
  were in overlapping universes, coincident but unable to
touch. That sense of futility was returning, the awareness
  that nothing she could say or do was going to make any
  difference at all. “Well, I can’t change either, you know
that? I’ve hit my limits for growth—right now, my persona
   is as good as frozen. It’s locked in with integrity, and I
 can’t get the unlocking enzymes this side of Tirnannog. It
  takes a wizard to brew them up, and they don’t travel.”
    “Stay anyway,” Wyeth urged her. He smiled weakly,
hopelessly. “I don’t want you to ever change. I love you just
                      the way you are.”
            She covered her face with her hands.
                             ***
   The ALI tagged her as she entered the Corporate Trade
                          Zone.
   Rebel abandoned her landau at the transit ring—the
corporation could reclaim it, if they wanted—and climbed
 into a cable car. She slid her passport into the controls,
tapping into a line of credit that would be worthless three
   days hence, and the car began sliding along a long,
           invisible line toward the out station.
    The station was a traditional structure, five wheels set
 within each other, rotating at slightly differing speeds to
  maintain constant Greenwich normal throughout. The
 transit ring was fixed within a stationary hub dock at the
    center, and the whole thing was done up in pink and
   orange Aztec Revival supergraphics. Conservative but
                         practical.
     Rebel was looking through the forward wraparound
     when light brightened to one side. She turned and
   flinched back from the unexpected phantom of an old
  woman in treehanger heavies sitting beside her. “Aha!”
the creature said. “I thought it might be you. Changed your
       name on your passport, I see. What the fuck.”
   “You startled me!” Rebel said. Then, somewhat stiffly,
                    “Hello, Mother.”
  The holo grimaced. “I’m not your mother. Call me Mud.
I’m only an ALI, but I have my dignity. You do know what
     an ALI is, don’t you? That’s Artificial Limited—”
      “I know, I know. You haven’t much time, so you’d
            appreciate me speaking up briskly.”
    Mud cackled. It sounded like a rusty tin can being
crumpled between two hands. “Take your time. Hundred
 years from now, what the fuck difference will it make?
    Anyway, my memories are all recorded and made
available to the next ALI down the line. So I have a kind of
   serial immortality. Not terrifically legal, though. If I
weren’t safely ensconced inside a Corporate Trade Zone,
they’d have me wiped. You can get away with murder in a
       CTZ. What were we talking about, anyway?”
 “Jesus,” Rebel said, impressed. She looked more closely
at the withered image, at that flushed face, those watery,
           pink-rimmed eyes. “You’re drunk!”
   “Hey, right the first time. It was Mom’s idea. She liked
the thought of having some say over how this place is run,
 but she didn’t want to get too serious about it. Said she’d
  always wanted to spend a lifetime drunk. I don’t have
much real authority here, mostly I just pop up to look over
      anything interesting. So how’s with you, sis?”
  “Me?” She could see the station’s narrow outer sleeve
 now, as stationary as the hub, where the cable car dock
           was located. “Oh, I’m okay, I guess.”
   “Just okay? Hey, you tap in with a line of credit as close
 to unlimited as anything Records has ever seen, booked
through to Tirnannog, and Mom calling in every few days
 to see if you’ve gone through yet… shit, that’s going to be
 one fascinating meeting! So what do you want, anyway?
                     Egg in your beer?”
 The holographic traffic markings were coming into focus
now. A clutter of grimy craft waited outside the hourglass
 grid marking the active lanes. The grid’s waist threaded
 the transit ring, and its ends flared, restricting a flashy
  amount of local space. “Well, the money’s not exactly
mine,” Rebel said. “Not anymore. But yeah, you’re right.
         I’m going home, I’m happy about that.”
   “Yeah, and you look it too,” the ALI said sardonically.
 “All hangdog and guilty-faced as sin. I don’t know what
you’ve been doing, sis, but you’d better cut it out. Lighten
        up! Life is too short for this kind of crap!”
    “That’s easy enough for you to—” Rebel flared. She
stopped. “Um. Hey, look, I’m sorry. I forgot that you’re…”
   “Temporary?” The old woman shook her head. “You’ve
  got the dog by the wrong end, sugarcakes. Everybody is
mortal—what’s the alternative? Me, I like being alive, and
  if I only get a few minutes of it, I’m going to spend those
     few minutes just enjoying hell out of it.” The image
wavered. “Just enjoying hell out of it. Whoops! The Reaper
 calls. Look, do me a favor, will you, kid? Try to keep your
                         pecker up.”
             Rebel smiled weakly. “Yeah. Sure.”
         Mud faded away in midlaugh, in midwink.
  The cable car slammed into the dock and rang like a bell.
                             ***
      A second later, the cable car was scooped up by a
passing rampway and smoothly lifted and accelerated into
the outermost ring. It came to rest, and Rebel stepped out.
The car’s cybersystems began loading her baggage onto a
                        trundle cart.
     A thin young man with golden skin and a little black
    mustache was waiting for her. He bowed and said,
 “Welcome to Hummingbird Station. My name is Curlew,
 and I am your escort.” Cute little piece of action, dressed
  like he was just in from the archipelago. From Avalon,
 perhaps, or P’eng-Lai. His eyes twinkled mischievously.
                         “This way.”
    He waved a hand, and the baggage cart scuttled after
                         them.
   “The out stations are Elizabeth Charm Mudlark’s legacy
 to the System, the visible structure of the Mudlark Trust,
   and a pipeline from the Klusters directly into the Oort
      Cloud,” Curlew recited. “Thanks to our patron’s
generosity, the transit rings have cut the years of voyaging
  previously needed to reach the archipelagoes down to a
matter of days. The Trust also endowed the corresponding
  in stations within the archipelagoes and the Titan-class
 rings which will accelerate selected dyson worlds toward
  nearby stars. This unimaginably expensive project cost
her the entirety of a fortune that no ordinary mortal could
   simply have given away. But then, Ms. Mudlark is no
ordinary mortal.” Curlew coughed, and in a more natural
tone of voice said, “She’s very old. What else did she have
to spend it on? You must have met her ALI—weird old bat,
                          isn’t she?”
                           “Uh…”
    They were passing through a long hallway decorated
 with enormous holoflats of the extrasolar planets. There
 were detailed shots of Dainichi, Susa-no-o, Inari with its
  bright moon Ukemochi, the Izanagi-Izanami system,
Tezcatlipoca, Huitzilopochtli, Quetzalcoatl, and Yate-cutli,
 as well as more speculative images of Morrigan and the
horned giant Cernunnos. The hallway emptied into a mall
busy with shops and financial offices. Deutsche Nakasone
 had a branch right next to her own corporation’s local.
           Rebel tried hard not to look at either.
        “Doubtless you have already noticed how many
       concerns here have no direct relationship with
 Hummingbird’s transit ring functions, or even trade with
   the dyson worlds.” They stepped around a man sitting
 lotus on the floor, sticking long needles through his flesh
   to demonstrate a new line of yogic wetware. “They are
 here because Hummingbird Station was established as a
     Corporate Trade Zone. Here, away from intrusive
government restrictions, private business can operate in a
free and competitive atmosphere.” He winked. “They’ve all
    bought so much protective legislation in their home
Klusters that they’re almost paralyzed with armor. On the
      bright side, as long as Hummingbird serves their
  purposes, the corporations won’t be so eager to gut the
                            Trust.”
     They strolled through a shop selling comet-grown
 blossoms twice Rebel’s height. “Don’t buy any,” Curlew
advised. “They don’t last.” But there were also small black
cigars, and Rebel paused long enough to buy one last one.
           It was a habit she was going to miss.
    A moving rampway scooped them up, and in quick
 succession they rose through three levels to the inmost
  ring. Vast expanses of open space, impassive people
 hurrying by. The air carried a surf of murmured voices,
   distant cries, nearby coughs. A carefully-calculated
snowfall drifted through the warm air, flakes melting just
               as they hit the porous floor.
  With a grand wave of the hand, Curlew said, “These are
the pioneers of a new age. Dyson worlds, it has been said,
 attract a special kind of emigrant, adventurers who like
their comfort, starfarers willing to spend a lifetime in the
  traveling. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Also tourists.”
   A wave of incoming treehangers flowed by, several in
  life-support chairs, their gravity adaptations not yet
 complete. A teenager turned quickly to gawk at Rebel’s
      breasts, and she blew cigar smoke in his face.
    “We are now in the midst of the last-hour rush as the
final shuttles arrive from and depart to the archipelagoes.
        Since Hummingbird Station is so close to the
 Sun—relatively speaking—it is inevitable that as it moves
 in its orbit it will slide out of position to serve as a transit
 terminus. However, Jackdaw Station’s launch window is
 designed to exactly overlap Hummingbird’s, to prevent a
disruption of service.” He grinned meanly. “Of course, it’s
  not completely built yet. So there’ll be a hiatus of a few
 months before Plover moves into place. That’s typical for
  this operation. None of the shuttles they ordered when
 Hummingbird was designed have been delivered either.
 They’re using converted local liners. Have you seen them
                                yet?”
             “Only a glimpse from the cable car.”
    “Decrepit things.” He wrinkled his nose. “They’re
 cramped and they smell bad. Sort of a mixture of stale
 sweat, cottage cheese, and oil. Most people prefer to go
 coldpacked.” He put an arm around her waist and said,
  “Listen, you don’t really want to hear the sightseeing
                    chatter, do you?”
                    She shook her head.
  “I didn’t think so.” He led her out of the snow to a grassy
  waiting area, with low benches and a scattering of lily
ponds. They sat. “You have no idea how many times a shift
               I go through that line of drivel.”
    “Obviously you don’t intend doing this for the rest of
    your life,” Rebel said. “What are you, some kind of
                          student?”
   “That’s right,” Curlew said, pleased. “Yeah, my family
  wanted to send me to the University of Faraway, for a
 degree in the mind arts, but I wanted to get into wetware
design, so they’re making me pay my own way through. Do
       you know anything about wetware design?”
                          “A little.”
   “It’s interesting stuff. They can do almost as much with
 their little machines as a wizard can with a modern mind
    art studio. But here’s the interesting thing, the two
     sciences are incompatible! They don’t even have a
common language.” He shook his head wonderingly. “One
of these days someone is going to merge the two, and then
  you’ll have a model that’ll really describe how thought
  works. That’s when we’ll really see things start to hop!”
      Two young men were miserably kissing goodbye
   alongside a baggage cart. The emigrant was already
dressed treehanger. Rebel had to look away, it was so sad.
            “You’re an ambitious lad, sport.”
    “Hey, I didn’t say it had to be me doing the merging.”
Curlew laughed. “But it won’t be long before anybody with
  a background in both sciences will be able to name his
 own price. Tell you something else, whoever merges the
  arts, it’s going to happen in the worlds. These System
types are all so serious, and they all think they’re hot, but
   they’re not so hot at all. The real action is out in the
        worlds. That’s where it’s all happening.”
    “Well,” Rebel said judiciously. “At least you get more
                variety out in the worlds.”
   Curlew laughed at her deadpan understatement, and
 after a second she joined him. He took her hands in his
and looked her boldly in the eyes. “You seem a little sad, if
 you don’t mind my saying it. There’s still an hour before
the shuttle to Tirnannog, and we’re not far from a branch
Bank of Mimas. We could rent a consultation niche and…”
                   He raised an eyebrow.
         As gently as she could, Rebel told him no.
  Watching his pretty little body walking away, Rebel had
  to sigh. First cigars, then empty-headed young men.
                    Where would it end?
  Rebel stood on the empty platform. She shifted in her
foot rings, stared off into a perfectly black sky powdered
with stars. The air was chill here, held in by subtle forces
 that had been explained to her, but which she did not
 understand. Far ahead, in the center of her vision, she
saw a small black dot swelling, swallowing up stars. Her
                          shuttle.
 Out in the vacuum, a cluster of bright flowers grew from
 a holoflare support strut. They were tough little things,
            almost impossible to exterminate.
   She glanced down at the coffin by her feet. The rest of
  her luggage had been put through ahead. She thought
back to that last argument with Wyeth and wondered if he
 would ever forgive her. She laid a hand on the coffin and
               felt a chill only partly physical.
     An emigration officer safety-leashed to a guiderail
 drifted up and stuck out his hand. She surrendered her
passport and he popped it into a reader. “Rebel Eucrasia
  Mudlark,” he said in a bored voice. If the name meant
 anything to him, he didn’t show it. He rapped the coffin
 with his knuckles, made sure it was latched firmly to the
             platform. “This your coldpack?”
                        “My husband’s.”
 “Aha.” The officer mumbled into his hand, then gave her
  back her passport. “Enjoy your trip.” He kicked away,
      leaving Rebel alone with her thoughts again.
     With startling irrelevance, she thought of all those
 wyeths and rebels she was leaving behind in the System
 and wondered if any of them would ever find each other.
She thought she might like to have children someday. Real
             ones, not just copies of herself.
  Wyeth was going to be awfully angry a week from now
when he woke up and discovered what she’d done to him.
   He was going to be even angrier when he found that
 she’d timed it so they’d just make Tirnannog’s passage
through the transit ring. By the time he woke up, the last
 shuttle back to the System would be a matter of history.
  Three passengers took up rings on the platform almost
                      overhead.
   He was going to be a lot of trouble anyway. A man like
him was bound to stir up trouble wherever he went; it was
in his nature. But Rebel didn’t care. She was glad she had
                     invoked his kink.
    The shuttle was bigger now. It blotted out most of her
vision. Rebel felt the urge to duck as it swelled up over her,
               but she kept her back straight.
  She felt awfully small and alone, and not at all sure she
                was doing the right thing.
                     She was going home.
                        —«»—«»—«»—
          [scanned anonymously in a galaxy far far away]
                     [A Proofpack Release]
                       [November 8, 2005]