Vacuum Flowers by Michael Swanwick Page A

laugh was light and gracious. “Well, that’s true, darling, but I’d rather hoped to spare your ego that realization.”
    â€œMmmm.” Wyeth stood and took up file 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?”
    â€œWhat’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?”
    â€œThe 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!”
    â€œHey,” 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.”
    â€œWho 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?”
    â€œNo. 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?”
    â€œPlease. 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?”
    â€œA 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
    â€œYou’re in for something that’s pretty rare this far from a planetary surface,” Wyeth said.
    â€œWhat’s that?”
    â€œA 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